Brooks reached across the sofa and brushed her fingers over the back of his hand. “You don’t have anything to prove, Jonas.”
“Sure I do.”
“The best quarterback in the league holds a quarterback rating of ninety-five. Yours is eighty-eight and that’s above average. Your team is ranked near the bottom, but there was a bidding war for your coach in the off-season and your team won.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got about a month before training camp, two more checkups to get through, and then I’ll have my chance.”
“To prove you’re worthy of the game?”
“Something like that.”
“From where I’m standing, you’re already worthy. Do you know how many players I’ve seen put their name on events, but never show? Or how many smile for the cameras, and then charge a kid for an autograph? You were there, all this week, and you didn’t ask for anything.”
Jonas took her hand in his. “You might be a little biased after the other night.”
“I’ve had orgasms before. You’re not that good.”
His eyes danced with laughter. “You’re tough.”
“Raised on football, remember?”
“You said I probably had somewhere better to be.”
“You remembered where?”
He nodded and her heart plummeted. “Here. If that’s okay with you.”
Everything seemed to slow. A soft heat made its way from her chest to her cheeks.
“I, um, still have a job to do,” she said, hoping that wouldn’t change his mind. Because now that he was inside the barn, she wanted him to stay, too.
“To be clear, even if you were running a gossipy piece about my gimpy shoulder right this second, I’d still want to be here. With you.”
Brooks squeezed his hand. “To be clear, I don’t run gossipy stories. And I still want that interview.”
“I have a checkup next Wednesday. That might be a good time to do it.”
“I’ll keep my calendar clear.”
“You want to grab some dinner? Your refrigerator is woefully empty,” he said and his stomach growled.
“I’d love to.”
* * *
JONAS SAT AT the kitchen table at his farm, scratching out his name on the whiteboard Tom had thrown at him that day in the locker room. The letters didn’t look any better today than they had yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that. He pushed the board away, frustrated. He’d been working on this for a week, spending time he could have spent lifting in the weight room or doing shoulder exercises to keep things loose.
No, that wasn’t right. This was the first time he’d picked up the whiteboard and marker since that day in Brooks’s barn. Other than a few hours here and there, the two of them had spent every moment together since the previous Friday. Now it was Tuesday night and he wanted to fit three-and-a-half days of writing therapy in before he saw the doctor tomorrow.
He didn’t regret the time, though. Spending a few days with Brooks had made him look at things a little differently. They’d driven around the Kentucky countryside, made love in her loft and at the side of a creek in the middle of nowhere. Run together. Watched television. Hibernated. Just the two of them. No football. No reporting. He’d gone grocery shopping, for Pete’s sake. When was the last time he bought milk and eggs instead of asking his housekeeper to do the shopping?
He left the table, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank the whole bottle in a couple of gulps. Threw it in the trash and pulled a beer from the fridge door, downed it and considered picking up another.
Getting drunk wouldn’t fix his shoulder.
He should have stayed with Brooks for one more night. He would have, but she’d insisted she had plans she couldn’t break. Something about a girls’ night out.
He sighed as he leaned against the appliance and tapped the back of his head against the smooth stainless steel. Hiding out with her wasn’t the answer to his problems, anyway. Tomorrow he would have an inkling of what came next. The doctor might not see any improvement; he might see minimal. Jonas was ninety percent positive any improvement would be on the minimal side.
His phone rang and he picked it up, desperate for something to do other than think about what-ifs. Ramos, the team safety, was on the phone.
“We’re taking Jamieson to The Last Yard,” he said, naming a bar popular with the team. “You need to be there.”
Going to a bar was the last thing he needed, but he needed to be anywhere except the farmhouse. “Meet you there in thirty,” he said.
He hit the entrance to the club in twenty minutes. Ramos’s Escalade was already in the parking lot, along with a few sports cars he knew belonged to other players. Jonas made his way inside and saw the guys at a corner table behind a thick velvet rope. Bass pumped through the speakers, people talked too loudly and the bartender swung bottles of liquor in gravity-defying motions while waitresses yelled out new orders. For the past couple of years he’d practically lived at this bar.
Ramos motioned him behind the velvet rope, and instead of turning on his heel, he crossed the room. Jonas ordered a drink and settled into the booth. Jamieson sat on the opposite side and Ramos had his arms spread across the back side of the half-circle booth.
“Where are the rest of the guys?”
Ramos pointed to the dance floor. Jonas made out a couple of his offensive line guys in the middle of the horde of dancers, along with a couple of defenders. The waitress dropped off his drink and he saluted the other two men with his glass.
“Gang’s all here.” The liquid burned more than he remembered as it slid down his throat, making his eyes water. He squeezed them closed for a split second, and then realized Ramos and Jamieson were watching him. “What?”
“You look like you needed that,” Jamieson said.
Jonas decided not to reply to the innuendo. “When did you get into town?”
“Sunday. They’re putting me up at the team hotel until I find a place.”
“I told him you had a condo you don’t use anymore.” Jonas shot him a look. He thought he’d kept the farm a secret. Ramos shrugged. “I don’t advertise the fact you don’t live in the complex full time.”
“Ramos tells me a lot of the guys use the complex during the season.”
Barring one or two units, all of them housed players. Only the locals had actual homes in the city. Letting go of the condo, though, felt odd. Especially after the other night with Brooks.
“Couple of the units are empty, I think. I’ll look into it for you.” Jonas turned his attention to the defender. “I’m training with Tom for the rest of the week. You in?”
“Sure. Wife and kids won’t be back from Hawaii until after training camp. Might as well get a few more reps in.”
A woman stumbled up to the table and sat partially on Jonas’s lap. “You wanna dance?” she slurred the words together. Jonas cringed. “Come on, baby, one li’l dance?”
A few of the girl’s friends joined her. One of them drew her long fingernails through Jamieson’s slicked-back hair. The move didn’t seem to affect him at all. The first girl walked her fingers down Jonas’s chest slowly. “Just one?” she purred.
Another girl joined them and looked as if she might climb over the table to get to Ramos, but the big defender held up his left hand making sure his wedding ring glinted in the dim light of the club. “Sorry, I’m just a table sitter, ladies.”
The drunk girl was through flirting. She grabbed Jonas’s shirt in both fists and started walking backward so that he had to move with her or risk A) his shirt ripping off or B) the girl tripping over her own feet. On the floor, the three girls danced around Jonas and Parker like sirens. One slid her hips along the front of Jamieson’s jeans while another pressed her chest tight against Jonas and l
et her fingers do the walking right over his tush.
Why had he ever thought girls like this were great? Not that he’d been with a lot of groupies, but there had been a few.
“God, football is a killer, ain’t it?” Jamieson asked, hands all over the second girl’s ass as she licked his earlobe. “We’re gods, man. Gods!”
They were something, all right, but Jonas didn’t think godlike was anywhere in the vicinity of the five of them on the dance floor. The third girl sidled up behind him and tried to put her hands down his jeans. Jonas sidestepped out of the sandwich the girls were trying to make of him. This wasn’t what he wanted. It was nowhere near what he wanted.
Maybe he was getting too old for all of this.
Maybe it all started last year when he bought the farm on an impulse after another late night with a girl whose name he couldn’t remember.
Maybe it was Brooks.
Whatever it was, he was in no mood to figure it out on the dance floor. Jonas waved to Parker Jamieson, who seemed quite happy when all three girls turned their attention to him, and left the dance floor. Ramos was still in the booth, drinking something dark and icy.
“I’ll have what he’s got,” he told the waitress when she stopped at his table.
“Coke. Straight up,” Ramos said when the waitress sent them a blank look. She nodded and hurried into the crowd. Jonas sat and blew out a breath.
“Why did we come here?”
“Showing the new guy the places to go in Louisville. Gotta keep ’em happy.”
Jonas leaned against the vinyl and tapped his hands against the table top. “Do we? Or are we just perpetuating the cycle we were shown when we were drafted?”
“What’s up your ass?”
Nothing.
Everything.
He didn’t like the pounding bass from the DJ booth. His throat still burned from that first drink, and two hot girls had molested him on the dance floor. Last summer none of it would have bothered him. Now...
He wanted to go home to take a shower. Those girls didn’t want him. They wanted a football player. Jamieson didn’t need to be shown around town because he’d figure it out on his own.
“There’s more than this, right?”
“Damn, man, you’re in a soiled mood.” Ramos waited as the waitress dropped off Jonas’s soda. “You love this place. Loud so you don’t have to make chit-chat, dark so everyone can remain faceless and the drinks are cold. Right?”
God, he’d said that, hadn’t he? More times than he cared to count. He’d been the first to bring the players to this bar, and it had quickly become a favorite.
“Yeah, well, I’m an asshole.”
Ramos chuckled and finished his drink. “Thirty’s hitting you hard, huh?”
It wasn’t thirty. It was everything. Too loud, too crowded. The women wore flowery perfume and too much makeup when all he wanted was a blond ponytail, the scent of vanilla and a pair of sexy feet adorned in jeweled flip-flops. God, he was losing it. Over a woman he’d known barely a week.
“Who is she?”
“Who is who?” Jonas decided to play dumb. Ramos was a good guy. Loyal to his wife. Dedicated to the game. A lifer, as Jonas had wanted to be, only Ramos never seemed to get lost. He played the game full tilt, and then he went home.
“The girl you’re thinking about who is so much better than the three women who’d have taken you and Jamieson on together if you’d let them.” He waited a beat. “It’s written all over you, from the way you choked down that first drink to your too-eager entrance at the door. Who is she?”
Jonas had two choices: lie to Ramos or leave the table. As much as he didn’t want to be in the bar, he didn’t want to go back to the farmhouse alone. And lying meant he didn’t trust Ramos, when he actually did. The man was solid. He needed solid on the team, and didn’t want whatever was going on with him personally to put a wedge between them. They would need all the camaraderie they could muster to make it through the season whole.
“Brooks Smith.”
“The reporter?” Ramos’s jaw dropped.
Jonas nodded.
“I thought this was just about your shoulder and being focused on rehab.”
“Nope.” Jonas sighed. “We’ve been out together once, spent time at her place.” He followed the path of condensation on his glass with one finger. “I can’t get her out of my head.”
“Sleep with her?” Jonas shot the other man a look, but didn’t answer. “Okay, then. She likes you?”
“Seems to.”
“You like her?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why are you sitting at this table with me and a bunch of bozos instead of sitting somewhere private with your girl?”
“She had something else to do. I needed to work on something at the house. Speaking of, how did you know I moved?”
Ramos rolled his eyes. “I live in Louisville, man. On purpose. I’ve been here all winter, you’ve been here all winter. We’ve gotten together a handful of times and every time you leave, you head east out of the city. The condo’s on the west side. I have a better question: If you’re not living at the condo what the hell do you care if a dude like Jamieson is living there?”
Jonas opened his mouth to answer and then snapped it shut. He didn’t care who lived there. Despite taking Brooks there that first night he hadn’t been back, not to relive their night together and not to get away from things. When he wanted to get away lately, he went in search of Brooks. Which is what he should have done tonight instead of meeting the guys here.
“I don’t care,” he said finally. “I’ll rent the place to Jamieson.”
“And the girl?”
“It’s her night off from my candy-ass whining.”
“I didn’t catch any whine in there.”
“Mental whining. Believe me, it’s in there.”
“For what it’s worth, if you’re thinking about the girl this hard you should maybe go find her and figure out why you can’t have any fun without her.”
“I can still have fun as a single guy.”
“Really? I can’t. The music is too loud, the girls are too squealy and I swear to you they keep the heat cranked even when it’s over eighty-five outside.”
“You don’t like it here?”
“I hate it here.”
“Then why do we come here?”
Ramos signaled the waitress for another drink. “Because until tonight I thought you liked this place, and it keeps the rabble—” he pointed to the O-line guys and Jamieson on the dance floor “—out of trouble for the most part. I’d rather spend my nights at home with the girls and my wife. I’m too old for this kind of stuff.”
“We’re the same age.”
Ramos shook his head. “Man, when you get married you get old. It’s the best thing. Ever.” Jonas had assumed Ramos came out with them because he needed a break from the women in his life. Ramos yawned and Jonas looked at his watch. Barely nine o’clock. “You going to keep the kiddies in line?”
“Sure, man. Go home. When do your wife and kids get back?”
“In a few weeks.”
“Maybe we’ll have a quiet barbecue or something.”
Ramos left the booth, and Jonas sat for a long time watching the dance floor. The DJ changed the song and another pounding bass line rumbled through the club. One of the O-line guys caught the attention of one of the girls groping Jamieson. What the hell was he doing here? The guys didn’t need a chaperone. They were grown men, and they seemed to be having a great time. He paid the bill, left a generous tip and made his way to the door.
* * *
BROOKS LIFTED HER glass of wine. “This is supposed to be a celebration. Getting the jobs we dreamed about in college. So here’s to two of the best softball player
s to never make the Olympics.”
Brooks tried to let the sweetness of the wine and a night with her best friend push the other thoughts away. Such as what she was doing with Jonas Nash. She liked him, and she knew he liked her, but it still felt weird to be dating a football player.
“And it only took five years and change to get here,” Trisha agreed. “I wonder what will be next?”
“A partnership for you and maybe the network desk or the broadcast booth for me.” That was what she wanted, the dream she’d only voiced aloud once before tonight. She wanted to be the first woman in the broadcast booth calling the games. She took a breath and then exhaled softly. It felt good to say that aloud again.
Trisha clinked her glass against Brooks’s and sipped her wine.
Brooks looked around, liking that Mendocino’s hadn’t changed much in the few years she had been away. Tables were topped with crisp, white linen. The wait staff wore black trousers and white shirts. The food was spectacular and the wine—she sipped the last of the pinot in her glass—superb.
“So what’s the problem?” Trisha said, her mouth turned down in a frown. She wore skinny jeans and a striped navy top. Dangly, gold earrings hung from her ears, twisting in her brown hair. She forked up a bite of chicken. “Seems like the job is going well, and the guy is definitely interested.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Your best friend has an amazing new job that pays her very well.”
Brooks was quiet for a long moment, pushing the salmon around her plate. “I like him. A lot.”
“And?”
“I like the job. A lot.”
“So far I’m following, but I don’t see the problem.” Trisha ate some of her chicken.
“At some point, whether I like him or not, I’m going to have to ask him some hard questions or I’m going to have to report on something he doesn’t want to share.”
“And you wonder if you’ll do your job or do the girlfriend thing?”
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 90