by Leslie North
At least that’s what she told herself.
“Ain’t nobody allowed to sit there. Gym rules.”
Claire glanced toward the voice. It came from a kid of about fourteen suspended from a harness. He scuttled atop a girder and perched, giving her the once-over with a critical eye.
“You lost?”
“No. I’m here to see Marcus.”
“Not many people know he comes here. You must be special if he told you that.”
Her body felt leaden, like she had betrayed Marcus somehow. “What is this place?”
“Ain’t got a name. Kids call it The Hive on account of the black and yellow on the equipment. Invite only.”
“Now who’s the special one?” she teased.
At the compliment, the boy shook and bowed his head. A blush crept across his tawny skin.
“How often is he here?”
“All the time. Owns the place.”
Claire glanced down into the cage. Sweat glazed Marcus’s bronzed shoulders. His movements were deliberate, practiced, as if he had been groomed more for fighting than tossing pigskin. His physique was nothing too big or sinuous. Just damned near mouth-watering with a small spray of curly black hair at the center of his chest.
She had seen dozens of athletic builds since this assignment began—had seen Marcus’s body that very day—but somehow knowing that he spent his free day here, in an anonymous building with inner city youth, with no indication of his ego injected anywhere into the space, made her pay closer attention.
Never before had she been attracted to physicality. Brains, yes. Drive, absolutely. Altruism? Never before, but she supposed there was a first time for everything. Maybe it was simply the collision of expectations and reality. The most famous quarterback in the league could easily have been an arrogant tool.
The boy continued to stare. She wondered if he tracked everyone who came in the door.
“I’m Claire.”
“Darius.”
“I know we just met, Darius, but do you think we can keep me stopping by a secret?”
Darius shrugged.
“He’s busy. I don’t want to intrude.”
Darius stared.
The atmosphere in the gym had gone from stale to awkward faster than she could have taken the stairs to the exit, two at a time.
“Good talk, Darius.” She felt like she should add something else since the boy made no movement to continue his agile progress on the course. “Stay special.”
“You too, Claire.”
She smiled. Somehow eliciting words where there had been none eased the discomfort in her stomach. As a reminder, she mimed buttoning her lip.
He gave her a chin tilt in acknowledgement.
Claire climbed the stairs to the top two at a time. Against her better judgment, she glanced back at the extraordinary garden of refuge Marcus had planted in an area void of seeds and light and hope. Impressive didn’t begin to describe what he had done here. She wanted one more look, but instead her gaze fell two stories below to the man in the center ring, his face lifted, his body squared to hers, his stare as concrete as the pavement beyond.
She exited the building, relieved to see the taxi still parked on the street. The rain was cold enough to threaten snow, if her skin-deep chill was any indication. She gave the driver an address far from Hazelwood, while her mind was far from confident Marcus would show up to their session the next afternoon, far from the place she thought she’d be—not caring what Marcus Kingston thought of her.
Truth be told, he had the body and the allure to drive her to distraction.
She curled up against the backseat, her thoughts crippled by the driving rain and a man she could never begin to understand.
“You’re color-blind.”
A statement, not a question.
Marcus’s abdomen wrung like a used towel. Not hello. Not sorry for conning Keane so I could follow you. Not even put on this sensor and run a lap. Claire Wynifred was all business for this session. She wore gauzy pants three sizes too big that tapered to a trim and absurdly high waist, glittery Wizard of Oz shoes, and a T-shirt displaying a matrix of zeros and ones with a ladybug caught in the middle. Her hair fell past her shoulders in soft waves—far too normal for her to pull off. He mourned the crazy delight of yesterday’s punk hairstyle, but not enough to forgive her invasive opening salvo.
“Hello to you too.”
She glanced up from her monitor. The screen cast a bluish light against her astonishingly pale skin. He wondered if she ever sought sunlight. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we’re starting late. I don’t do late well. I like things orderly.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Neither was I. Figured if I showed up here, you wouldn’t show up in Hazelwood again.”
“You didn’t answer my calls.”
“Keane had no business sending you there.”
“He didn’t send me. In fact, he told me not to go.”
“It’s dangerous, Claire.
“And yet you go.”
“Someone has to.” He was done talking about The Hive. The place resided deep inside him—a place he rarely granted access to. Certainly not to her. Her showing up there had been bad enough, but bringing it up, talking about it, set him on edge. He didn’t want to be that close to her. To anyone, really, but the kids it served. He remembered Darius’s words when Claire left: She all that, man. He perched on a nearby stool. “Let’s get this over with.”
Claire reloaded, her voice, her attitude back to business. “Your team know you’re color-blind?”
Marcus glanced behind him. The rest of the team had largely dispersed after practice. Some gathered in conversational huddles at the far end of the field. Most had gone home to their families. She could have announced he had an STD with a bullhorn, and it was doubtful anyone would have heard her.
Still, he considered which was the more off-putting diagnosis. Color blindness showed weakness. Team leaders could not afford weakness.
“No.”
“Anyone know?”
“Jake, the lead on the equipment staff. He leaves me a tag inside the correct jersey. The team doc and Coach Bana. On the play sketches, coach makes certain…”
“Modifications?”
Marcus nodded. “How did you know?”
“The data lines yesterday. None of them were red or green, yet you didn’t say anything. The bright colors at the gym. It must have been hard to be traded to a team whose colors were burgundy and olive green.”
For most aspects of Marcus’s life, he didn’t think about his deficiency. Hell, until he hit chemistry class in high school and got the same color titration results each time, he didn’t know. His cousin couldn’t see out of his left eye because of an accidental gun discharge when he was eight. Left a big fucking hole. Marcus always figured it could be worse.
“Would be better if the NFL did shirts and skins.”
“Now that’s something I would watch.”
A-ha. So Little Miss Code did find something appealing about football beyond data. The insight made him want to push her out of her comfort zone. Take back some of the power play.
“That so?”
“You sound surprised.”
“A little. I had you pegged for the professor type. Button down and khakis. Maybe some eyeglasses. Takes you out on weekends to political sit-ins and art museums. Plays the oboe.”
She wrinkled her nose. He found it unexpectedly adorable.
“So what is your type, Miss Wynifred?”
“Not sure I have one. Most of my time is spent in computer labs surrounded by men with foot odor and coffee breath who think dressing up is breaking out a clean shirt with no holes. Hard to form a type from those desperate conditions.”
He smiled and settled into their banter, far more at ease when it wasn’t focused on his data, his disability, or his career. No longer did he want to simply get this over with. A bubble of t
emptation to flirt surfaced. He pushed it down.
“And now that you’ve ventured into the dark side of Neanderthal athletes?” And he did mean dark side. He wondered if Claire’s developing type would include men of color.
“A type might be easier to come by.”
She unwrapped a package of fresh sensors and drew close. Between his knees to be exact. He made no effort to move, but the casual rhythm of his breaths hit a block. She brought with her an unexpected scent: soft, flowery. Not one of those overpowering flowers, like roses, but a bouquet of something he would definitely bury his nose into to chase more fragrance. He had no idea what her shirt meant, but he gained a fuller appreciation of the pattern when shrink-wrapped against breasts he knew would be slightly heavy should they ever find his palm.
He swelled inside his jock.
And nearly bounded to his feet. Claire was someone to be endured, not wanted.
He was certain she had no idea of the compromising nature of her position until his gaze lifted to meet her eyes. He knew the precise moment she realized her peril by the slow, deliberate stall of her hand movement. She lifted the first sensor clear of the plastic and held onto it as if she had forgotten her task. Her stare edged free of his and found solace in inanimate objects surrounding them; her lips fell slack.
“Heart rate first.” Her voice wasn’t quite there for her.
“Claire?” he whispered.
His gaze dropped to her long neck in time to glimpse a swallow along its subtle curves. He was close enough to thread his fingers through her loose waves and elevate her standard of men with a gentle kiss. Close enough to loop his arms around her waist, bury his face in her numbered shirt, and pull her against his low, mounting ache that refused to listen to his brain. Close enough to entertain the thought of wanting to know her, really know her.
And he would have staked a bet on her return game.
“Hmm?”
Marcus plucked the sensor from her fingertip. Her low V-neck afforded him all the access he needed to affirm that she was affected by his proximity. He pressed the sensor above the warm, slightly exposed swell of her left breast and glanced at the monitor where he’d seen his own heart rate displayed the previous day.
One sixty. One sixty-five. One seventy.
As if she had sprinted a post route for a gain of forty yards.
She gave the screen a side glance. Her gaze crumbled to a spot somewhere on his shirt.
“That’s one way to quantify things,” he said.
“Marcus…”
“What color are your eyes?”
She drew in an uneven breath. “Green.”
He assimilated this with what he knew to be true: that their light, glistening depths appealed to his senses far more than the field of the game he loved. Still, it wasn’t enough. There was freedom in her knowing his secret. A freedom he shouldn’t have pushed past but did.
“And your lips today?”
She pressed her lips together as if the action summoned a memory based upon the feel of her lipstick. All it summoned, however, was an intense desire to taste her.
“Purple.”
“I think I like purple.”
He leaned forward, poised to capture her lips, but he refused to travel the remaining distance to her mouth. Long ago, he had realized the magnitude of his position. He never wanted a woman to mistake lust for obligation. He simply made his intentions clear and settled in for the wait.
With Claire, the wait was a full-on timeout.
Everything about her expression telegraphed that she reciprocated the kiss in her mind. Her creamy skin flushed darker. A deliberate breath raised and lowered her chest as if she could not pull the oxygen she craved. She blinked her way out of her sluggish trance, removed the sensor, and backed away. The readout spiked then recalibrated to a series of dashes.
“We should…” Her words stalled as if her body suggested make out while her brain slammed on the professional brakes. “…work on your helmet today.”
With the mention of her tech, the barrier rose up between them once again. She retreated to the safety of her screens, companions that would never push her beyond preset boundaries. Claire couldn’t argue with science—the data had quantified everything.
Everything but the reason she refused to kiss him.
4
The apartment Sterling put her in for the Rogues’ season stretched the entire fifth floor of a renovated paper factory near Portland’s exclusive Pearl district, nearly two thousand square feet more than her tiny place in the Santa Clara valley she shared with three other freelance techies, eating ramen and skipping meals to survive. She hadn’t known what to do with all the extra space, so she did what any self-respecting female would do in a strange city when surrounded by a constant barrage of testosterone-fueled men: she insisted her closest team member and friend, Jo, stay with her in Portland.
“Tech support,” Claire had said.
“More like blech support,” said Jo. “You need me in your life so you don’t devolve into the pasty-faced grad student I found mainlining caffeine and wearing knee-high wool socks in July.”
“The lab was cold. Even you said so.”
Jo had agreed to accompany her on two conditions: one, Claire was the face of her tech. Jo would be a shadow support for anything code-based that Claire needed, primarily because Claire was prone to selling herself and her tech short; and two, Claire never left the loft without Jo approving her wardrobe.
“No wool knee-highs on my watch. Ever again,” Jo had said.
But on nights like this, Claire was glad Jo had a weakness for the ten coffee bars within a two-block radius and their extensive hipster clientele. Claire found the loft blissfully empty. She turned off all the lights but the artsy, amber-bulb lanterns over the kitchen island and settled onto the couch to watch the rain wash Portland’s city lights into colored streaks down the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Sleep had been her goal, but the colors made her think of Marcus.
The almost-kiss hadn’t been entirely unwelcome, but she attributed that to his fine body and the fact that she hadn’t had sex in over a year. People like Marcus didn’t inhabit her world. She cared about global warming and human rights and ensuring her brother had not died in vain. Even bribed to care whether the Rogues hit the playoffs, she couldn’t even muster one hoo-rah at the prospect. Marcus was an elite player, at the pinnacle of his career, but did that career mean anything in the long run? She lumped professional athletes into the same category as actors and poker tournament players—good for entertainment value but unworthy of their lofty legacy.
At least until The Hive made him worthy.
He was making a difference. He had leveraged his wealth for a greater purpose, which made the almost-kiss all the more problematic. If she had learned anything from her first failed attempt to get wearable tech onto the bodies of soldiers, it was that emotions divert people from reaching their goals. After the first kick in the teeth, in a stark-white room full of generals and Washington brass where her fail-safe demonstration devolved into total file corruption, she had holed herself up for three years, painstakingly combing through lines of code and making her tech more functional, less invasive, and ruthlessly foolproof. The first time, she had rushed it. Clay hadn’t even been in the ground for six months. She had needed time to grieve. This time, she would not allow emotions—even of the relationship variety—to corrupt this second chance Sterling had given her.
Still, she sank into the plump cushions and mentally finished the almost-kiss six ways to Super Bowl Sunday.
A key turned the tumbler in the front door lock.
Claire stirred, groggy. She had the sense she had fallen asleep, that she had lost time. She stretched and sat up.
“There you are.” Jo breezed into the common area, her arms laden with shopping bags and a garment bag. “We were supposed to meet for Pho.”
Needles of remembrance stabbed Claire’s brain. “Oh, Jo. I’m so sorry.”<
br />
“It’s okay. I know you had your session with the King of Hotston.” She switched on the kitchen lights.
Claire recoiled from the bright assault.
“Stop calling him that.” Despite her determination to reprogram Jo’s hormones into healthier diversions, she smiled. Jo had been a lifeline after Clay’s death. She had given Claire permission to rail, to sob, to dress like a homeless woman and then she had reminded her none of that was what Clay would have wanted. And because Jo knew Clay, Claire listened.
“What’s all that?” asked Claire.
“Your dress for the ball.”
Claire’s spine straightened. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not going.”
“Come on, Claire. It’s a military charity event—the perfect forum to talk up your tech. Nothing but military brass and the top one percent, and that means investors with deep pockets.”
“And the entire Rogue organization—which I am no part of, need I remind you.”
“Hooey. If you get their star quarterback to the Super Bowl, Sterling will rename an end zone after you.”
Jo laid the garment bag over the back of the overstuffed chair as if it were a Swarovski crystal gown. Claire didn’t even want to know the expense of a dress that required that level of care.
“Besides,” Jo went on, “Keane invited you and said he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“He already has a date.”
“And his wife adores you. You can’t show up looking like a slob next to her. The woman puts Beyoncé to shame.”
“Let’s see it before I make you take it back.”
Jo unzipped the bag and pulled the dress out with a flourish.
Red silk, high neck, full length sleeves. And zero fabric in the back.
“Where’s the other half?”
“Funny. You show up wearing this, you can assemble your own subcommittee on veterans’ affairs.”
“I want them to license my tech, not parade me on the USO tour.” Claire rose from the couch and gravitated toward the dress. In her hand, the fabric felt addictive and sensual, like water through her fingertips.