Changing the Play

by Julia Blake

  Yes, he wanted her—badly—and as he watched her stride out to the field, her coat flapping behind her, he knew that one kiss wasn’t going to satisfy him. Not when he burned this hot for her. But convincing her to trust the pull of attraction between the two of them was going to be tough.

  It had been a long time since he’d dated a woman with anything more than the hope they’d both enjoy themselves and see where things went from there. With a couple of exceptions, those flings had been fun but crumbled as soon as busy schedules and obligations got in the way. None of them were meant to last. That wasn’t what he wanted with Rachel, and so he needed a plan.

  He’d start with a date. Not a business dinner. Nothing that could be interpreted as anything other than romantic. Just one date, and he’d build his case from there.

  Nick scrubbed a hand across his chin. He’d have to think on it and try to figure out the best way to break down Rachel’s knee-jerk objections. He got the impression that the professional and personal didn’t often cross—which he could understand because normally they didn’t for him either. But Rachel . . . Rachel would be his exception to the rule.

  Before he could plan, however, he needed to do his job.

  He walked over to Kevin. “You know how to mic yourself yet?” he asked as Chris handed Nick a wireless mic pack.

  The kid shook his head. “I haven’t done anything except sideline interviews in college.”

  “Better learn now. From what I hear, you’re going to be doing plenty of these soon.” He handed Kevin the wire. “Run this under your shirt so it comes out through the neck.”

  Kevin did as he was told, and Nick clipped the mic to the collar of his gray workout shirt with Syracuse printed on the front.

  “You know Ms. Pollard well?” asked Kevin with a nod at Rachel.

  She stood about ten yards away rubbing her gloved hands together. The wind picked up her hair and made it dance around her face in a red halo. She looked angelic, and he grinned at the thought of how she’d scowl if he told her that.

  “We went to high school together back in Arizona.”

  That made Kevin laugh. “No kidding? I can’t imagine her in high school. You were close?”

  He shook his head. “I was on the baseball team. She managed it. My old coach thought she was brilliant. Better than every one of his assistant coaches at game strategy.”

  “What was she like?” Kevin asked.

  He shrugged. “Not too different from how she is now. Maybe a little less confident, and a little quieter, but everyone knew she was smart. While we were all screwing around, she was making plans. Now look where she is.”

  Kevin grunted. “But what did you think of her?

  I was the jackass who was too hung up on her to get my head out of my ass and do something about it.

  “Sometimes it takes a while to really see people as they are,” he said.

  “And you didn’t know she’d wind up being this pretty, did you?” asked Kevin.

  He laughed. “Pretty, smart, stubborn when it comes to negotiating interview terms. You name it, I didn’t see it coming.”

  “I guess it’d be good to know an agent like Ms. Pollard if you’re a reporter,” Kevin said.

  Good for his career? Maybe. He knew she thought he’d intentionally avoided working with her, and it was true. He’d wanted to break into NYSN on his own, and cultivating his own sources was part of that. Using Rachel as a crutch would’ve been too easy—if she’d even agreed to it. No. He’d wanted to prove that he was a good enough reporter that he didn’t have to rely on the trick of chance that had sent them to the same high school.

  Now, however, things were different. He was established, but layoffs loomed. He wasn’t some proud idiot who was going to sink his chances of holding on to his job because of some misguided principles.

  “She’s a well-connected lady,” he said. “You like having her represent you?”

  “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me other than getting a scholarship to Syracuse,” said Kevin.

  Strong words from a young man who wasn’t even signed to a team yet. “Why do you say that?”

  “I trust her,” Kevin said. “There aren’t too many people in this world I can trust like that outside my family.”

  The words had weight to them that Nick didn’t understand. He thought about pursuing it, but it was too early. Unlike Rachel, he hadn’t earned Kevin’s trust yet. Best to leave the tough questions alone for now and tuck them in the back of his mind for safekeeping. He knew that the harder the questions, the more likely a source would clam up. The last thing he needed was Kevin not talking to him and Rachel threatening to pull the interview entirely.

  “Well, looks like you’ve done a good job picking your agent.” Nick turned the mic pack on and handed it to Kevin. “Got somewhere you can store that?”

  “Sure.” The wide receiver clipped it to the waistband of his warm-ups. “Hey, did you and Ms. Pollard ever date?”

  He looked up in surprise. “Why do you ask?”

  Kevin shrugged and ran a hand over his cropped black hair. “When I walked over, she was looking at you the way my first girlfriend used to look at me when I made her really mad.”

  “We never dated. I was kind of a jerk in high school.” More like an asshole. He was doing double duty, paying penance for never making a move and trying to convince her that he was serious about wanting a date.

  “You should fix that,” Kevin said.

  “I’m trying, man. I’m trying.”

  As Kevin pulled on his gloves and shook out his legs, Nick glanced over at Rachel. She stood there, arms crossed over her chest, watching them. He shot her a smile. Their eyes locked, and even at a distance he could see a flicker of uncertainty before she quickly looked away.

  Kevin’s high school coach threw to him for a solid twenty minutes. Short routes. Long routes. Deep, crazy Hail Mary passes. It was a thing of beauty watching that football sail through the air in a perfect arc and land in the soft, careful hands of a truly talented kid. A couple of times Nick actually laughed in astonishment, impressed with the speed and agility of the draft prospect. Highlight reels didn’t do him justice.

  When Kevin tucked the ball under his arm and jogged back up the field for some water, he beamed like a five-year-old playing catch with his dad.

  “Nothing better than some cold weather football,” the wide receiver said, passing a hand over his short, tight curls to slick away the sweat that had collected in his hair.

  “This wind chill’s brutal,” Nick yelled.

  “You’ve got to get tough if you’re going to play for Xaverian. Sometimes the wind comes on so strong, if feels like sandpaper. You’re begging for the showers at the end of practice in November just so you can thaw out.”

  “You look pretty good out there,” said Nick as he watched Chris move around to get a close shot of Kevin drinking from his sport bottle.

  “Feels good to be catching again. I’ve been inside the past couple days doing conditioning.” He put the water bottle down and tossed Nick the ball. “How’s your arm?”

  “Not bad, but I never played quarterback. I was a wideout like you.”

  That peaked Kevin’s interest. “Oh yeah?”

  “Just in high school. I chose baseball in college. Wound up blowing out my elbow at Mizzou. It never was the same after surgery.”

  Kevin nodded at the ball. “Let’s see if you can toss it around a little.”

  “You challenging me?”

  A mischievous glint lit up Kevin’s eyes. “Old man like you? I just want to see if you can keep up.”

  “Old man?” he scoffed, knowing he was taking the kid’s bait. “I’m thirty-three.”

  “Sounds old to me,” Kevin shouted before turning and rocketing down the field.

  Nick couldn’t help his
grin as he pumped the ball once, gauged his target’s speed and distance, and let loose. The football arced a couple dozen yards before Kevin popped up to pluck it out of the air with one hand, whooping with delight as he tucked the ball under his arm and sprinted for the imaginary end zone.

  “Not a bad throw for an old guy with a surgically repaired arm,” said Rachel, moving to stand by him.

  It was the first time she’d spoken since Kevin started running routes.

  “What’s with everyone calling me old?” he muttered.

  “Truth hurts.”

  Warmth hid beneath her words, and he could practically see her annoyance ebbing away. Maybe sports was their common ground. It was how they’d known each other a long time ago—their one shared language—and even now it was the thing that had brought her back into his life. Maybe for Rachel, just as for himself, this would be the safe spot.

  Yeah, but if you play it safe and take the easy shots, you’ll never win big.

  When Kevin tossed him the ball, he caught it and pointed it at her. “We were in the same grade in school. You can’t be more than a few months younger than me.”

  Amusement flashed over her face as she reached down to tighten the belt of her wine-colored coat. “I’ll take what I can get.”

  Kevin ran another route—short this time with a hard cut to the right and out wide. He wasn’t one of the “diamond in the rough” finds that had made Rachel’s name, but the kid’s stock had definitely risen after he signed with her. Now, even without the usual media exposure high-level draft picks got, everyone knew about Kevin Loder’s speed and ability to haul in a pass at a dead sprint. What Nick was quickly finding out was that seeing the six-foot-three-inch athlete move his 220-pound frame across the field with lightning agility up close was a whole different matter.

  Kevin showed no signs of slowing as he jogged up.

  “Does he ever get tired?” Nick asked.

  “That’s the benefit of youth,” said Rachel with a chuckle. “I swear Coach could run him all day, and he’d be happy.”

  “He’s a natural,” said Nick.

  “He is,” she said.

  “Are you two talking about me?” Kevin asked, picking up his bottle again and squeezing a stream of Gatorade into his mouth. Then he tossed Rachel the dirt-caked ball. She caught it without a flinch.

  “You ever seen Ms. Pollard throw?” asked Kevin, re-capping his bottle and dropping it back onto a patch of dead grass.

  “Not that I remember, but she used to shag balls in baseball practice. She was pretty good at it too.”

  “Thanks,” she said, shooting him a wry smile. He liked her smile. It tipped up at one side as though she almost couldn’t believe he’d been the one to uncover it.

  “She can’t chuck it as far as Coach here, but she throws a pretty good ball,” said Kevin, flashing them a mischievous grin. “For a girl.”

  Nick’s eyes snapped to Rachel, who’d peeled her gloves off and tucked them into the belt of her coat when he wasn’t looking. Her right hand wrapped around the ball, twisting it to get its feel. She watched Kevin backpedal, her eyes narrowed. “I can tell when you’re trying to rile me up. Knock it off or I’ll tell your mother you’re insulting women.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. Besides, you probably can’t throw anymore anyway,” her client taunted.

  In a flash her arm was up, and Kevin was off. He didn’t go deep this time. Instead he ran up to his coach, did a shuffle and spin move around an invisible cornerback, and sprinted in the opposite direction. Right when his momentum changed, she drew back on the ball and hurled it.

  The football flew in a perfect spiral across the half-dead field. But that wasn’t the most impressive thing. It was the speed at which it hurtled toward Kevin.

  Rachel had an arm.

  The ball dropped perfectly into the receiver’s outstretched arms. He cradled it, letting his body protect the ball. Then Kevin tucked it under his arm and took off.

  Nick let out a long exhale, a little dazed and fairly certain Rachel had just ruined all other women for him. If she played fantasy football, he was a goner.

  “Now he’s really showing off,” she said as she brushed off her hands.

  “He must have learned it from his agent. That was a bullet.”

  “Thanks,” she said, shooting him a smile as she pulled on her gloves.

  “If you’d thrown like that in high school, Coach would’ve penciled you in on the depth chart,” he said.

  “I’m sure the team would have loved a girl suited up and sitting on the bench.”

  He shook his head. “If that pass is any indication of how accurate you usually are, I don’t know how much bench time you would’ve grabbed.”

  “Thanks,” she said again, obviously pleased with the compliment. Good. He’d meant it.

  “Where’d you learn to throw like that? If you say your mom or your dad, I’m going to be really mad you kept that kind of coaching from Prescott High’s football team.”

  She laughed. “Not a chance. My mother’s a good tennis player, and my stepdad’s a decent weekend softball league player.”

  “So what’s your secret?”

  “Off the record?” she asked.

  “Off the record,” he said.

  “I made a mistake with a client once thinking he’d been mismanaged in college. It turned out he was just lazy, a quarterback used to coasting on talent. I was desperate to figure out a way to get him to put in the work before the draft, so I struck a deal with him. I wouldn’t ask him to do anything that I wouldn’t also do. That included interviews and passing clinics.”

  “So you worked on your arm in the off season?” he asked, trying to push away the thought of her long legs in slim-fitting exercise pants lining up at a private coaching practice for prospective NFL quarterbacks and going through the drills. He was half-hard just thinking about it.

  “I guess you could say that.” She smiled as she brushed a speck of mud from her coat. “I do everything short of stupid to make sure these guys are ready for draft day.”

  “Hey, man,” shouted Chris from downfield. “I’ve got everything I need here.”

  “That’s enough shooting for today. Let’s wrap this up,” said Rachel, switching the dynamic back to professional, putting them solidly back into their roles. He was a reporter and she was an agent. As though that was all they were.

  He wanted Rachel. Not Rachel the agent. Not Rachel the gatekeeper. Not even Rachel the girl who sat at the front of the team bus. He wanted the woman who arched her eyebrow and half smiled at him and called him out on his bullshit. Without having to ask, he knew he was going to have to earn her trust bit by little bit. To do that, he needed time around her.

  They headed back to the high school so that Kevin could grab his gym bag. Nick was walking just a few feet away with Chris when he overhead Rachel say, “So we’re on for tomorrow night?”

  Kevin’s deep timbre drifted to him. “I’ve never been to a hockey game before.”

  “You’re going to love it,” she said. “It’s a great sport to see live, and the New York Ice Center’s pretty incredible.”

  Maybe . . .

  “I think you’ll like Schneider,” Rachel continued.

  Surreptitiously Nick pulled out his phone as Chris started muttering to himself that it would be best to get back to midtown before rush hour. With a quick Google search, Nick confirmed that Joseph Schneider, right winger for the New York Rush, was one of Rachel’s clients. Another few swipes and he was emailing the NYSN’s scheduler to see if there were any assignments open for tomorrow’s game. If not, he’d figure out a way in because, on the clock or off, he wanted to see her again.

  Chapter 8

  The scrape of skates and rattle of bodies clashing against the boards filled the Ice Center as a New York Rush center tried to dig the p
uck out of traffic. He’d just gotten it free when Rachel’s phone started vibrating in her pocket. She stifled a sigh. Nearly a full game without work interrupting. That had to be a record.

  Pulling out her phone, she glanced at the screen to see Brock Ward calling. Dread spread through her stomach.

  She nudged Kevin with her elbow and half shouted over the noise, “I’ve got to take this. You’ll be okay?”

  He didn’t turn to look, his eyes fixed on the action. “I’m good.”

  Wishing she could stay, she shuffle stepped her way out to the aisle with the phone to her ear. “Brock?”

  “Rachel Pollard,” said the man with a drawl, “where have you been all my life?”

  So tonight she was getting Brock the sweet talker. That meant he needed something. She rolled her eyes as she parted the curtains that separated the seats from the main concourse. All around her, New York Rush fans milled about in their black and blue jerseys.

  “What do you want, Brock?” she asked.

  “Can’t a man call his favorite agent just because he feels like it?”

  Back in the arena, the horn sounded. Rachel whipped around. Between the curtains she could see sirens going off. The Rush had just scored.

  She squinted at one of the TVs mounted above a condiment stand to watch the replay. Naturally, it was Schneider’s goal. Her own client and she hadn’t even seen it.

  “Brock, you never call just to talk, so what is it this time?” she asked. “A fight, booze, or a girl?”

  “You know, this is why I like you New York women. You always cut right to the chase.”

  “Fight. Booze. Girl. Go.”

  “All three?”

  “Jesus Christ, Brock,” she groaned, already calculating how quickly she could get on a plane to Dallas. “Tell me exactly what happened. I need as many details as possible if I’m going to clean this up.”

  She could practically see the two-time Pro Bowl running back sheepishly rub his short crop of blond hair.