Kent opened the door, shaving cream on his face and a damp towel slung over his shoulders.
“Did you do it?” Accusing Kent left a bad taste in her mouth. But the fact was he took care of their tapes.
“Do what?”
“Leak the tape of that throw from the first day of the camp.”
Kent’s eyes widened in shock. He used the towel to wipe the thick cream off his face. “No. What are you talking about?”
Brooks pointed to the TV remote. Kent waved her inside the small apartment, and she flicked on the device and began flipping through channels. She stopped on one of the sports networks. The anchor began talking about Jonas, and the footage from the camp rolled across the screen. Kent snatched the remote from her hand, rewound it and watched it again.
“Son of a bitch.” Anger laced the words.
“So you didn’t?” She breathed a sigh of relief.
“No. That’s our footage, though, it has to be because we were the only crew on the field that day. I don’t know how this could have happened. All the tapes were in my desk at the affiliate.” He muted the television. “I swear I didn’t leak it. I wanted you to use it, but I didn’t leak it.”
She believed him. The journalism world was competitive, but it did Kent no good to leak footage to a rival affiliate. Taking the footage to their bosses at the network might have garnered him attention, but giving giving a rival the scoop didn’t made sense.
“We have an interview with Jonas this morning, and a package to get ready for the noon shows. I’ll meet you at the stadium in an hour.”
Jonas thought she needed protecting, but from where she stood, he was the one in danger. And she should do everything she could to protect her quarterback.
* * *
“WHAT WENT THROUGH your mind when you hit the turf last January?” Brooks sat across from Jonas with her legs crossed and one strappy sandal hanging from her toe. She wiggled her foot back and forth as she made notes on the little notebook in her lap. It was distracting. She was a distraction.
For the first time in a long time he didn’t mind the distraction.
She’d been wearing that yellow sundress when they left his house this morning, but sometime between dropping her at her car and beginning the interview she’d changed. Now she wore skinny jeans and a green, jewel-toned button-down top. It was mostly unbuttoned, showing off a lacy camisole, and Jonas was hard-pressed to pay attention to the questions she shot every few minutes.
“Don’t you mean what went through my shoulder?” he worked hard to pull off the joke, grinning at the camera and offering a sly smile. “It was more what I felt. Sharp pain that radiated out. I couldn’t move my arm for a couple of minutes, and then when I could move it the pain intensified. I knew it was bad.”
“And how bad was it?”
“The doctor’s called it a partial labral tear. Basically the tendons holding my shoulder together ripped apart.”
“So surgery.”
“Two days later.”
Brooks put the end of her pen between her teeth. “Last night another reporter insinuated you wouldn’t be back on the field this fall. What is your response to that?”
Anger. White-hot anger. But he couldn’t say that. The news director from the other station had called, but they were standing by their man, and he wasn’t talking to Jonas. “My response is he should have asked me about the injury. I could have told him that just this week I had a checkup, and my doctors are confident I’ll be cleared by training camp.”
“Mobility? Strength?”
“I’m not as strong, yet—” he emphasized the word “—as I was last year, but my mobility is back and I’ve been throwing, so my feel for the ball is coming back. I’m good.”
Brooks asked a few more questions, keeping the tone conversational, but the questions hard. Did he want to play? Hell yes. Was he ready for the field? Almost. What about Parker Jamieson? Great addition to the team. Jonas didn’t add the “as long as he’s not taking my spot” that he wanted to add. Why the secrecy surrounding the injury?
That question stopped Jonas. He didn’t know how to answer the question without opening the door for twenty more questions he didn’t want to answer. Shifting in his seat, Jonas racked his brain for an answer. There were none, and he couldn’t play the we-didn’t-keep-secrets card because they had. From the front office to the locker room cleaning crew, everyone had been told not to reference the injury.
“I’m not sure it was secrecy so much as not having anything to say,” Jonas said, cringing inside because he knew he sounded like an ass. “We knew the extent of the injury, we had a name and diagnosis, and we shared those with the press.” Partially, he almost added, but didn’t. “We didn’t know how quickly my arm would come back, and until we had a time frame or more solid answers, there was just nothing to say.”
Brooks closed her notebook and signaled Kent to cut the camera. “We’ll shoot a couple of stand-ups outside. I’ll meet you in the editing room,” she told the cameraman. Kent tore down the equipment, but instead of leaving he turned to Jonas.
“Sorry about last night, man. All of our tapes were in the cube at the television station. I’m not sure how the other affiliate got their hands on them.”
Jonas shook the man’s hand. “It’s no big deal.”
The other man left, leaving him alone with Brooks. “How did it go with the network?”
“No big deal.”
“Liar.”
She shrugged. “Gary Jacobs is standing by me. The other execs aren’t as happy, but after they see this package, hear from the coach and your doctor—thanks for clearing us for that information—they’ll be fine.”
He wanted to hold her. Run his hands through her hair. Tickle the sensitive spot at her jaw. But they’d agreed. Having second thoughts about not seeing her was a moot point. Jonas had nearly ruined his career; he wouldn’t ruin Brooks’s, as well.
“I know what you’re trying to do.” Brooks put her notebook in her bag and then crossed the room to him. “You’re trying to protect me, but I don’t need protection. This is a blip. An over-eager, desperate reporter made up a story. I don’t need to be protected from shoddy journalism. I may need to be protected from your legion of female fans at some point, but I don’t need protecting from this.”
“We agreed—”
She put a soft hand on his cheek. “No. You jumped to conclusions because you’re used to being the center of tabloid gossip. What happened last night was gossip and you’re righting it. You’re controlling the story now. Let’s just let the rest of it go.”
He wanted to. God, he wanted to. He wanted more time with Brooks, because when he was with her all of the decisions he’d made in the past year made more sense. He had no idea why he wanted that big house in the country, but once he saw her there he knew. That house was for Brooks. For the two of them. That house gave him a place to leave football behind and just be Jonas.
The man who loved Brooks.
“I don’t want you to be scarred by any of this.”
“The only thing that’s going to scar me is sitting across from you during another interview, watching you watch me, feeling like my body is about to burn to the ground and knowing there is not a damn thing I can do about it. I’m willing to take the risk, Jonas. My job is my job and I love it. I love you more.”
Jonas forgot to breathe for a moment.
“Don’t faint on me and don’t go running off like one of the Derby horses on race day. I love you, Jonas Nash. I want to be with you. I’ll wait if you insist, but I’ll make every minute of that wait torture for you. Just FYI.”
He didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve her. A woman like Brooks deserved someone better. Jonas clenched his jaw. He’d kick the crap out of any guy who tried to convince her he was better. She belon
ged to him. She was his responsibility. His joy. His heart.
“No one has ever said that to me. Not ever,” he said, and he didn’t care that his voice was a little raw. They were in a tiny room with the door closed. No cameras, no microphones. It was just him and her, and it was perfect.
“Be prepared, we Smiths say it a lot.”
“Say it again,” he said and this time he took her in his arms because maybe she was right.
“I love you,” she said and pressed her lips against his.
Football had brought him Brooks.
“I love you, too,” he said.
* * *
BROOKS PICKED UP the pan filled with ears of roasted corn and then used her hip to push the screen door open. It was the Fourth of July and they were at her parents’ farm for a barbecue. Jonas sat on the wide deck with her dad near the smoker. The two of them had been talking football for nearly an hour while the smells of smoked ribs permeated the backyard. Her mouth watered, and she admitted it was only partially because of the ribs.
Seeing Jonas here, in her childhood home, it was a little bit too perfect. She set the plate on the table.
“We’ll be ready in five,” she said, prompting her dad to look in the smoker again.
“Us, too,” he said.
Another car pulled into the drive, this one a giant SUV, and Ramos and his family piled out. His wife and girls had surprised him by coming back from Hawaii early. The big defenseman took his wife’s hand, and the little girls ran to the tire swing Brooks’s dad had hung when she was little.
While Jonas made introductions, Trisha arrived, then Earl, and lastly Tom, Jonas’s trainer. The group sat down to eat a few minutes later. As they passed the food and laughed when Ramos did his squirrel impression as he ate corn on the cob, Jonas’s hand found hers under the table and he squeezed, making her smile.
He didn’t grin back, and a coldness began to swarm through Brooks’s belly.
“So, are we doing to do teams for the mud run?” Tom asked. “Girls against guys?”
“Shirts versus skins,” Ramos added with a sly smile. His wife, Anna, elbowed him in the ribs. “What? I didn’t say the girls had to be skins.”
“I know what you meant,” she said, but her voice was filled with laughter and she pecked him on the cheek as she said it. “And since I know what you meant, I’m not running.”
“Me, either,” Trisha added from her side of the table. “I had enough of running when we were playing softball. Strictly a yoga girl now.” She forked up a bite of ribs and chewed. “And that leaves Brooks versus the footballers.”
Brooks looked from Jonas to Tom and then Ramos. “I think I can take ’em,” she said, straightening her shoulder. “Mud runs are about endurance, not speed.”
Ramos wiped his hands on the red paper napkin. “I am quite fast.”
“I’m faster,” Jonas put in.
“We’re only a couple of weeks from training camp, guys,” Earl put in. He sipped his sweet tea. “Let’s keep the athletic heroics for the football field.”
Through the entire exchange Jonas held tightly to Brooks’s hand, but despite his joking with the guys she had the feeling he wasn’t completely there. The table was filled with laughter and friendship, but although the quarterback joined in, his attention was obviously elsewhere.
While her father set up the corn hole game in the backyard, and the girls went back to the tire swing, Brooks helped her mom clear the table. As she put the last plate into the dishwasher she spied Jonas through the screen door. He walked around the yard, watching her father and Earl play Ramos and his wife in a game of corn hole. Trisha and Tom remained on the deck, sitting on chaise lounges and enjoying the hot summer sunshine.
Jonas was taking it all in. Watching it carefully as if deciphering a defense. What was he thinking?
And why was she so worried about what he was thinking?
Things were going well. The network had liked her coverage of the injury and they’d requested a full-hour special featuring Jonas, the trainer and Earl. More than work, though, things with Jonas were going well. After the last week of his camp wrapped, they’d spent nearly every hour together, either at his farm or her barn. She went with him to a couple of training sessions with Tom, and they visited quiet, out-of-the way restaurants.
Brooks closed the dishwasher door. As good as things seemed to be going, she couldn’t get the thought that Jonas was waiting for something to happen out of her head. Something bad. The hubbub surrounding his injury had died down within a day or two of that first, inaccurate report, but he was still uneasy. About the injury or the future or what she couldn’t figure out. She knew it couldn’t be her. She was an open book with him.
“He seems like a nice young man,” her mom said, putting an arm around Brooks’s shoulder and squeezing tightly. “I’m glad you invited him and the rest of them today. Sometimes it’s too quiet out here.”
“I’m surprised some of dad’s players didn’t come.”
Heidi shook her head. “They have their own families to entertain. Besides, he likes to throw an end-of-summer barbecue for them after their camp. And, truthfully, one day of hormone-laden teenage boys is more than enough for me.” She chuckled.
“You love it.”
“I do. But don’t tell your dad or he’ll have them over every Sunday, and I’ll spend my life in this kitchen.” She gestured to the comfortable room with sunny, yellow walls and the same oak table Brooks remembered from her childhood. The cabinets were old, the countertop laminate and the stove and fridge an off-white color. Some would say the place needed renovation. She thought it was perfect.
“It’ll be our secret.”
“You should go join them. Get him interested in a game. He looks lonely out there,” her mom said, pushing her toward the door.
Brooks wasn’t sure she agreed with the lonely part. Distanced was a better word. Jonas was still on the fringes of the party, hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts, watching the game of corn hole, the girls on the swings and every now and then the couple talking on the patio.
“I’m not sure I can fix him.” She blurted out the words and immediately wished them back.
Heidi watched her for a long moment. “Fix Jonas? I think Tom’s got that under control.” She dampened a dishcloth and swiped it over the countertop.
“Not the shoulder. Him.” Brooks closed the kitchen door and turned back to her mother. “He’s finishing the rehab, I’m gathering the interviews and B-roll for the special. We’re having dinner and watching movies and talking about nothing. It’s perfect, right?”
Heidi rinsed the dishcloth and squeezed the excess water out before hanging it just so over the faucet. “Sounds nice.”
“So why do I feel like it’s not. I mean, it is. But...” She gestured toward the backyard. “That isn’t Jonas being lonely or waiting for me out there. That is Jonas being, I don’t know, withdrawn. Or something.”
“Sweetheart, I think you’re overreacting. He’s had a traumatic injury. He’s trying to regain his career. He’s coming to terms with everything.”
But he wasn’t coming to terms with anything, not really. He’d still never talked about what would happen if he wasn’t cleared to play. When she brought it up, he changed the subject. She caught another glimpse of him through the window of the kitchen door. Hands in pockets, attention focused on the corn hole game.
“Look at him, Mom.”
“I’m looking.” Heidi joined Brooks near the door. “He can’t play corn hole because it’s two against two. If you’d go out there, the two of you could take on the winners.” She nudged Brooks with her shoulder.
Was that what this was about? Withdrawing from the party because he was the odd man out?
“What if he can’t play?” Brooks whispered the words, not wan
ting to say them too loudly. She’d told Jonas he had options, but she’d never asked if he could play. She asked if he expected to play. She asked if he wanted to play. She’d never asked if he still could play.
“Whether he can or can’t, it isn’t your job to fix that. He has to do that for himself.”
But what if he couldn’t? After listening to him talk about his mother, she knew why football was so important to him. It was not only a sport he was good at, but it was something he could control. He ran the offense. When he was on the field he knew no one could stop him.
No one could outrun him. No one could outthink him. No one could outplay him. Because he left everything he had on the field, like the tattoo on his back.
“Brooks.” Her mom shook her arm. “Brooks.” She turned her attention from the man in the yard to her mother. “You can’t fix him and you shouldn’t try to. You can show him what comes next, and you can stand by him while he tries to recapture the game. But whatever happens you can’t fix him. Not on the field or off. He has to do that for himself.”
She knew that. She didn’t have a Florence Nightingale complex. Brooks was under no illusions that she had all the answers for Jonas Nash. “I know that.” She wanted to have the answers for him, though.
“But you want to make it all better?” Heidi asked. Brooks nodded. Heidi squeezed her shoulder. “That’s part of being in love. You have to trust that he’ll find his way.” She opened the kitchen door and pushed Brooks gently to the threshold. “Now, scoot. The kitchen is cleaned, and there is a man over there who needs to be taught the game of corn hole.”
Brooks crossed the yard to Jonas. Ramos tossed his last bean bag and it slid over the smooth boards before falling through the hole at the top of the slope to the grass below.
“Twenty-one. Let’s see the coaches make all three of their last shots to win the game.”
“We’ve got winners,” Brooks said, putting her arm around Jonas’s waist. “Hey, there.”
“Hey, yourself.” He pecked a quick kiss on the top of her head. “I’ve never played this game.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 96