Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Something like that. She should choose her job; it was everything she’d worked for all these years.

  “There are a million and a half stories about great college players who didn’t get out of the average category in the pros, almost as many falling-from-grace stories.” She sighed. “I’ve told that story at least five times in my time as a sports reporter. It isn’t the story I want to tell.”

  “What if it’s the only story there is to tell?” Trisha asked objectively. “Jonas Nash isn’t exactly afraid of the media. Him not liking the open book his life has become doesn’t have to mean there is some deep, dark secret waiting for you to discover.”

  “It’s more than not liking it. I think he truly wants to be a different man.”

  “And you don’t think he can be?”

  Brooks pushed her uneaten plate away. “I know he can be more. You should see him with the boys at the camp. He’s like the best parts of every good coach we ever had all rolled into one breathtaking package.”

  “You make him sound like a god.” Trisha finished her meal. “He’s just a man.”

  Despite having spent nearly all of the past three days together he was still in her head. The sound of his voice when he whispered to her beside the creek. The feel of his hand holding hers. His feet pounding along with hers when they jogged in the mornings. She didn’t want this story to be another Football Player Who Wasted His Shot. “I think there is more to it than a guy who had everything going in college and was subsequently drafted to a subpar team and got injured. You should see him with the kids. He really has it.”

  Trisha drummed her fingers against the tablecloth. “You like him. We’ve both been blinded by the men in our lives. I had that spectacular run with the secretly married doctor my first year as an intern, remember? Liking a man, even believing in a man, doesn’t equal that man being worthy of anything more.”

  True. There was something about Jonas, though. Something that screamed he not only wanted to be more than his reputation, but that underneath all the football stuff he was different.

  Brooks fiddled with her fork for a moment and then pointed it at her friend. “He isn’t like his reputation, not really.” Trisha raised an eyebrow. “Okay, he can be flirty and a little superior,” Brooks said, thinking back to that first day in the locker room. That night on the awards show stage. “But I just think he has more to give than people give him credit for. He’s more than a handsome face inside a football helmet.”

  Trisha set her plate to the side and folded her hands on the table top. “Okay. If anyone else was going on about him like this, I’d chalk it up to infatuation. Brooks Smith doesn’t do infatuation, not even in high school. Barring that ridiculous crush you had on the boy band. They were so before our time.”

  “Good music is timeless, ask anyone who is still in love with Elvis.” Brooks thought about what Trisha said, though. She wasn’t infatuated. She was curious. Attracted, certainly. Interested. Goofy and giddy when he turned all of his attention her way. “I’d say I’m intrigued,” she told her friend.

  “As a woman who is intrigued with the man and a sports reporter who is intrigued with his back and front stories, how do you take him from might-have-been to actual star?”

  “I have no idea.” That was a big part of the problem. She knew how to tell a redemptive story line for the sports audience. She knew how to tell the fall-from-grace story. The key was getting the subject to work with the reporter, and so far Jonas was willing to spend time with Brooks-the-Person, but he had avoided Brooks-the-Reporter.

  “Let me ask you something.” The waiter brought their bills, and Brooks listened to Trisha as she rummaged through her bag for her wallet. “If you didn’t see his arm shake at the awards show, if he hadn’t been so stingy with details through the spring and up until that day in the locker room, would you be this interested?”

  Brooks considered the question for a long moment. She couldn’t deny that during the winter her focus was the shoulder angle, hyped a little by the fact that he and the team wouldn’t talk about it at all. The sizzle of attraction didn’t hurt, either. The rumble of his Texas twang through voice mail would make her spine shiver, and if she actually reached him on the phone it was as if she could feel his breath hitting her cheek through the phone line. Which was patently ridiculous, but there it was.

  Since that day she heard him talking to Mark, though, it wasn’t just about latent attraction or getting the story on his injury. The attraction was there, sizzling hotter than ever, and the story was always there, too. There was more to him than physical attraction or a career-making story, though. There was a deep, smart, intuitive man who was sensitive enough to understand how to listen as well as how to advise. A man who had lost his way somehow, but who was determined to find his way once more.

  Lord, but she loved a story like that.

  “I would,” she finally said. “From a professional standpoint, I want his story. It will be good for the network and good for my job security. I feel like he has something to say and I want to help him say it.”

  “And the personal?”

  “I like him. The stuff he actually talks about, which is mostly football, and the things that I know are buried inside. I catch little glimpses, like when he talked to that kid.”

  “Then I think you have to help him find out what it is that he wants.” They left the restaurant and got into Trisha’s sports car. “If you want, the clinic is sponsoring a mud run at the end of the summer. We’ve had a lot of local interest and the proceeds will go toward funding our initiatives with the local high schools. Health and wellness programs, some light rehabilitation stuff for underprivileged kids. We’re looking for a couple of local celebrities to be the face of the run. You’ve got a good face. So does Jonas.”

  Brooks considered the charity run idea while Trisha drove through the downtown area. Running wasn’t her favorite sport, but the cardiovascular benefits meant her feet hit the pavement a few times a week. Jonas liked running. Hanging out with some other runners would be fun with the added benefit of attaching his name with a good cause. “I’m in,” she decided. “I’ll talk to him about it, but even if he’s not interested you can count on me.”

  A few blocks later Trisha pulled into a parking lot filled with sports cars and a long line of people waiting inside a roped off area of the sidewalk. The Last Yard was their favorite club in college, filled with co-eds, good music and cold drinks. Back then there was no line to get in the door, and definitely no bouncer.

  “Think we’ll get in?” Brooks asked, eyeing the long line.

  “Positive. The bouncer owes me a favor. He was my first patient this week.” Trisha said as she walked past the long line and straight to the thickly muscled man guarding the door. He had a shaved head, and his skin gleamed like coffee beans in the dim light. “Hey, Perry. How’s the knee?”

  The big man stood on one leg while he bent and stretched the other. “Almost back to normal, Doc. You here on business or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure, definitely. Celebrating new jobs. Do you think you can squeeze us in?”

  The bouncer eyed the crowd for a long moment, and then nodded. “We have a few VIPs tonight. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” the man said with a laugh.

  “That leaves things wide open.”

  They went inside and immediately Brooks felt overwhelmed by the pounding bass and crowd of people.

  “What did we like about this place when we were in college?” she yelled to be heard over the crowd.

  Trisha frowned. “What didn’t we like? Cheap drinks, hot guys and great music.” She waited a beat. “Apparently I don’t like those things anymore. Check out the girls on the dance floor,” she said, pointing at a trio of girls trying to make out with a guy who looked as if he might pass out from excitement.

  Brooks looked around and spott
ed a clear table along the side wall. “Maybe it will grow on us.” They sat at the high-topped table and looked around. “Okay, the guys are hot. Mr. Threesome on the floor has some serious glutes going.” Somehow appreciating a fine backside didn’t seem as exciting as it once had, though.

  The waitress stopped by to take their drink orders.

  “You want to hit the dance floor?” she asked, but Trisha shook her head.

  “I know this was supposed to be our joint job celebration, but I have to be honest. I want to have our drinks and get out of here before whatever is stuck to this table permanently affixes itself to my hands.” She slung her handbag over her shoulder and folded her hands in her lap. She yawned. “And some of us have to be at work by nine in the morning while others of us basically have a vacation until their photographers get back from the college world series.”

  “Perks of the job. Short hours during the spring and summer, work like a dog through the fall and winter.”

  The waitress dropped off their drinks, and Brooks held hers up.

  “To my friend, who made it impossible not to stay in touch. Who is a brilliant doctor and who will no doubt make partner in her firm by the time she’s thirty-five.”

  “And to my friend, who hasn’t stopped chasing her football dream.” They clinked glasses and drank. Brooks choked.

  “Did they forget how to make this?” The bourbon burned its way down her throat and she thought it might eat straight through her stomach cavity.

  “It’s a sign. We are officially too old for a club like this.”

  “We’re not even thirty.”

  “Face it, B, we are the oldest not-yet-thirty-year-olds in Louisville, Kentucky.”

  “Get you girls another drink?” The waitress stopped at their table.

  “Definitely no,” Trisha said and laid a twenty on the table. “Keep the change,” she said as she scooted off the high seat.

  The DJ changed the music again as they neared the exit. Brooks turned for one last look and stopped short.

  A set of wide shoulders in a V-necked, blue shirt blocked her sightline to the dance floor, and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Brooks?”

  “Jonas,” she said, putting her hand to her chest as if that might slow her suddenly racing heart. He looked good. Jeans, shirt, tennis shoes. Not so different from the clothes that he’d worn practically every day since they met.

  In the few hours since she’d left lunch to return to the farm and now, though, something was different. Brooks swallowed.

  She didn’t want to save his image, she admitted.

  She wanted to save him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JONAS AND BROOKS made it outside the club. A few camera phones flashed and he put on a smile and waved to the onlookers, wishing he’d thought to leave by the back door. As crowded as the club had been when he arrived, it must have doubled now. His heartbeat ratcheted up when he saw what Brooks was wearing. Or not wearing. The jumpsuit was white and in the neon light spilling out of the club, he could make out much more than a hint of thigh. He could see skin, and a lot of it. The neckline plunged below her breasts and tied behind her neck, leaving her back bare. The waist cinched in tight, making her hips appear more rounded, and for the first time since the awards show she wore heels. Not spikey, but strappy enough to make his temperature rise. “You look amazing.”

  “Thank you. And it’s a celebratory dinner,” she said and pointed to the pretty woman waiting near the car. “My best friend, Trisha Lamott, landed her dream job a couple of weeks ago at The Bone Clinic. I got the job here. We were celebrating our career fortunes.”

  “And the fact that we’re actually living in the same city and don’t have to drink together via video chat,” the brunette said. She held out her hand. “We haven’t officially met. I’m the new knee specialist. I was interviewing one morning when you were seeing Dr. Phillips.”

  Her face snapped into focus. That was how he knew her. The quiet woman tapping her phone incessantly while he waited to be called into the office. “Nice to see you again,” he said.

  “We kind of got blown out by the noise, and I’ve got an early morning so...you think you can get our girl home for the evening?”

  He shot Brooks a curious glance. She shrugged. “Girl talk. You might have come up. In a purely personal way,” she assured him.

  He laughed. The last thing that he’d been thinking was that Brooks might be using her friend to get information about him. If she were any other reporter, that would have been the first thing to pop into his mind, but this was Brooks. She’d made a deal, and everything he knew about her insisted she would stick with that deal.

  “Sure, I’ll take her home.”

  Trisha spun her key ring over her finger. “Let me know about that other thing,” she said pointedly and then left.

  Jonas pointed to his truck and put his palm at the small of Brooks’s back. This was what had been missing all night, he decided as he dragged a deep breath into his lungs. The Kentucky night was dark, and somewhere nearby a lawn had been recently mown. A hint of vanilla scented the air that was as familiar as the soap in his shower.

  “What did she mean ‘the other thing’?” he asked.

  The pink in Brooks’s cheeks seemed to darken in the dim parking lot light. “I kind of told her I’d be part of a charity mud run at the end of the summer. She asked if any of the players would be interested.” She didn’t meet his eyes as he handed her into the truck cab.

  “Players meaning me?”

  “It’s for a good cause. Health and wellness programs for local student athletes, some scholarships to the clinic for kids who don’t have good insurance.”

  Jonas considered it for a long moment.

  “It would be good for your image,” she added. “Like your camp.”

  “I can come up with my own charities, Brooks.” He didn’t need her playing his personal public relations specialist. He had an agent for that, a damn good one. He needed Brooks to be separate from his life in the game, which was laughable since she was as tied to football as him. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You decided to go out tonight, too?” she asked when he climbed behind the wheel.

  “Nice subject change.” The pink on her cheeks deepened to red. He didn’t want to fight with Brooks. Not tonight. Not at all, really. He wanted to be with her, so he let the fact that she and her friend obviously had some kind of plan cooking go. “A few of the guys were going out, doing the meet-and-greet thing with Parker Jamieson. He got into town yesterday.”

  “How’s he fitting in?”

  “I spent all of five minutes with him before a trio of girls swarmed him on the dance floor, but he seems content to be here. What did you learn from your interview with him?”

  “He says all the right things about teamwork and building a program.” She shrugged. “I think it’s interesting the trade didn’t happen in the winter months.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he here because the team thinks you won’t be ready?”

  “I’ll be ready.” He wasn’t going to talk to her about this, and it had nothing to do with her being a reporter and everything to do with his own feelings about his new teammate and his professional future. “Let’s not talk about football.”

  Brooks opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but then closed it.

  Jonas started the truck and guided it to the highway that led to her parents’ farmhouse. Considered not turning into the drive and instead continuing east until he came to his own lane, and then decided against it.

  He liked Brooks, but the farm was his sanctuary. It was strange enough that Ramos knew about it, even if his teammate didn’t know exactly where the farm was located. He turned into the lane leading to the farmhouse. As he rounded the be
nd to the house Jonas switched off his headlights so they wouldn’t disturb Jimmy and Heidi in the main house. He had yet to meet them, but listening to Brooks talk about her parents painted a very clear picture. Old-fashioned, doting parents. The kind who knew exactly what their children did, but who didn’t want all the details.

  “You’re getting good at this,” Brooks teased from her seat. “I used to do the same thing when I was late for curfew. There is no curfew now that I’ve been kicked out of the main house and stuck in the barn.”

  “You like the barn. The barn is nicer than my college dorm.” Slowly, he meandered the truck past the farmhouse and around to the renovated horse barn. “Although I still think you should have brought those Backstreet posters with you. Very high-class and mature.”

  “Like you never hung anything questionable on your walls.”

  Jonas thought about that. With his mother overseas most of the time, the only person who would have objected was the housekeeper, and she never seemed interested in what he liked, only that he ate well, had clean clothes and showered daily. His walls were perfectly white and unmarked by nail holes until the day he left for college. “Not a single thing.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “What about that photo of you without your jersey or pads, wearing lip liner and false eyelashes for that big tie brand?”

  “That was shot by a world-class photographer and displayed in tie shops all over the world. I claim maturity for that one.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less embarrassing,” she said.

  “The two million they paid me to pose for it helped.”

  “You got two million for that campaign?” He nodded. She whistled. “I guess that puts the photo in a different light.”

  He nodded and shut off the truck. He’d hated every second of that campaign shoot, but his agent swore it would be a good move. “An embarrassing one.”

  She slapped her thigh. “I knew it!”

  They walked together to the door. “What time is your doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”