Hanssen stepped neatly aside as the ball whizzed by him and directly into the waiting hands of the running back. Tamblyn raced by Hanssen and cut to the left, the ball tucked under his arm as he turned the corner, pursued by the defense. Except, Tamblyn didn’t have the ball.
Somehow, through some remarkable sleight of hand, he’d passed it back to Hanssen. Cade squinted, not quite able to believe his own eyes as the young quarterback cocked his arm back and hefted the ball he shouldn’t have a good thirty yards downfield.
This play was most definitely not R27-6L. It was not, in fact, even in the Eagles’ playbook. At all.
Damn it, she’d been keeping this from him and so had the players, who couldn’t possibly have pulled off anything so carefully choreographed without a lot of practice.
An almost reverent hush descended over the stadium on both sides of the field as everyone’s attention turned and focused on Anton Rodgers, the Eagles’ fastest runner and leading wide receiver. He rocketed down the center of the field, the nearest cornerback more than five feet behind him and losing ground. The ball began to slow and fall, and the only question was whether Rodgers would be at the right place at the right time to catch it.
Breaths were drawn, held. Rodgers slowed his stride ever so slightly. Turned. Jumped.
Caught the ball, came down with it, and all but strolled into the end zone. The referee raised his arms over his head, signaling the touchdown. The scoreboard flashed the new score: Visitor 24, Home 26.
A deafening cheer rose up as the Eagles’ offensive players who were close enough rushed Rodgers in the end zone. And then, just as suddenly, everything fell terribly, unnaturally silent.
“Oh God,” Angie whispered. The words were injected with such abject misery, Cade didn’t even have to see Jake Hanssen, sprawled on the ground near the line of scrimmage, to know what had happened.
Angie had dropped her clipboard and was running to Hanssen’s side before the penalty marker thrown by the line judge hit the turf. The defensive player who’d delivered the blow was yanking off his helmet, remorse and concern etched in the sagging lines of his shoulders.
Cade’s feet felt leaden and his sense of reality disjointed as he followed Angie out onto the field. Seeing Jake Hanssen lying there on his back, limp and motionless, was like an out-of-body experience. This must have been how Cade himself had looked after the tackle that had shattered his shoulder, except as far as he could tell, Hanssen’s limbs looked to be unbroken and intact.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” the defensive player babbled. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, I swear to God.”
“I know you didn’t,” Angie said, her tone almost eerie in its calm. She knelt beside Hanssen’s head, his inert hand clasped in hers. Her face was ashen. “It’s my fault. All mine.”
***
By the time the stretcher arrived, Jake was conscious and able to respond to simple questions, but this fact did nothing to console Angie. As she watched the paramedics trundle him into the ambulance, his worried parents piling in beside him, she knew she couldn’t stay here. His injury was her responsibility. She’d been so determined to prove herself to Cade and the entire town of Harper Falls that she’d accounted for the strategic risk of the play but not the practical one. All she’d been worried about was a turnover. Maybe if she’d run it with the defense on the field, she would have been able to foresee this outcome. Her decision not to do so seemed reckless now.
And more than a little selfish. She’d been so enamored of the cleverness of the misdirection scheme and so sure it would work, she hadn’t taken the care she normally would have.
As the ambulance doors slammed shut, she turned around and walked straight into the broad chest of Cade Reynolds. She nearly fell on her backside, but he grabbed her by the wrists, preventing her from toppling to the ground.
“I have to go,” she mumbled, tugging against his grasp.
“To the hospital?” His voice rumbled out of him in a way that made her realize he was as concerned as she was.
“Yes. I need to be there with Jake and his parents. You can call the last two minutes of the game. You know the playbook.”
But Cade shook his head. “No way.”
“What? Why not?”
He moved his hands from his wrists to her upper arms and steadied her. It was only then that she realized she was swaying precariously.
“Because you’re so upset, you’re in no condition to drive. If you’re going to the hospital, I’m driving. Donnelly can run the show while we’re gone.”
Donnelly in charge of the team with a little over two minutes to go and only a three-point lead, assuming they made the extra point? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Cade might not be entirely on her side, but she knew for certain he was on Harvey’s side, and that meant he’d never blow the game.
“If they screw it up, it’ll be his fault, not yours,” Cade pointed out. “And since that would only hurt him, not you, there’s no way he’ll do it on purpose.”
Angie blinked up at him, open-mouthed. He was right. Donnelly would be a fool to throw the game. But she was still perfectly capable of driving to the hospital. True, she was sick with worry that her mistake might have caused Jake some lasting harm, but that didn’t make her incompetent.
As if he could see the gears whirling in her brain, he added, “Please let me do this. I want to be there, too.”
Something in his delivery of those simple words made up her mind. Whatever issues were between the two of them, Angie knew Cade had come to care about the team and the players, and he’d developed a particular kinship with Jake.
“All right.” She nodded. “You can drive.”
Five minutes later, they pulled out of the school parking lot in his black Cadillac. The hospital was twenty minutes away. Cade covered the distance in fifteen.
They drove in fraught silence until they pulled into the hospital parking lot. Angie grabbed the handle to open her door, but Cade reached across the relatively small interior of the car and stopped her.
“Before we go in there, what did you mean when you said this was your fault?”
Angie’s stomach pinched with misery. “You know why.”
“No, I don’t. I can guess, but I’d probably be wrong, and I’d rather you just told me.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed. “That play was flawed.”
“Flawed?” Cade echoed, his brow furrowing with incredulity. “Are you kidding? I want you to teach me and my next running back how to pull off an exchange like that. Jesus, it was brilliant.”
“That’s not the part that was flawed. I knew when I drew it up that there would be several seconds, right before the ball was thrown, when the quarterback would be unprotected on his blind side. I just thought those seconds would be so brief, the worst thing that could happen would be a broken play or a turnover. Because I never ran it against our own defense, I didn’t see the timing issue.” She scrubbed her palms over her face, wishing she could scrub away the memory of Jake lying there on the turf, looking more like a small, broken toy than a strapping young man. “I never should have asked them to run that play. It was too risky, and now Jake is in there, maybe brain-injured, and…” She reached for the door handle again and pushed on it. “I have to go in and find out what’s happening.”
“Wait,” Cade said, his voice low and urgent.
“I can’t wait any longer.”
“Getting in there sooner isn’t going to change the outcome. And it could make things infinitely worse.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I mean is that you said the quarterback would be unprotected before the ball was thrown. Did I get that right?”
Angie nodded, feeling sick to her stomach.
“Then what happened to Jake can’t be your fault.”
“Of course it can.”
He released his hold on the door handle and brushed the hair back from her forehead before taking
her face between his palms and forcing her to look straight into his eyes. “Think, Angie. If he’d been hit when he was unprotected, before the ball was thrown…” He trailed off, his warm brown eyes urging her to think it through, to find the answer for herself.
And she did. “Then he’d never have thrown the ball and it wouldn’t have been a touchdown,” she breathed. “He was hit late, after he threw the ball.”
“Exactly,” Cade said, allowing his hands to slip from her cheeks.
She closed her eyes and let her head drop back against the leather headrest. She’d been so prepared to take the blame that she hadn’t even looked at the evidence. Because she’d been watching the play develop, and Jake hadn’t been hit during the brief period when the blocking scheme left him exposed. In fact, she hadn’t seen him get hit at all because by that time, she was following the path of the ball through the air and into Rodgers’s hands at the other end of the field.
“You didn’t see it happen, either,” she said after a few seconds. It was a statement of fact, not a question.
Cade shook his head. “No.”
“Then we can’t be sure it wasn’t something else I didn’t see that led to the late hit.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Cade said. “It was a late hit. You’re not to blame. This could have happened on any play, no matter how safe or familiar. No one knows that better than I do.” He flexed his injured right shoulder as he spoke, perhaps without even being aware he was doing it.
The emotion that flooded in the wake of his self-deprecating admission wasn’t just relief or gratitude. It was warmer and sweeter than either of them. And scarier.
Cade had every right to be furious with her, but instead of berating her, he’d prevented her from walking into the hospital and making a bad situation worse. If he were really out to undermine her, he would have let her walk into the hospital and take responsibility for Jake’s injury. Let her put the nail in the coffin of her future.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, he’d reminded her of the simple fact she already knew. Football was a dangerous sport. Everyone who played knew the risks but went out onto the field anyway. She and the other coaches could do everything in their power to keep the boys from getting hurt, from training to equipment to game strategy, but accidents would still happen. Which, come to think of it, made football just like pretty much everything else in life. Nothing that was really worth doing was safe.
Especially not falling in love.
###
“Thank you,” Angie said as she and Cade exited the hospital lobby several hours later, having left Jake to get a well-deserved night’s sleep. He would be fine in a few days, thank God. “I really appreciate what you did for me tonight.”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t let you take the blame for something that wasn’t your fault.”
“Oh, yes, you could have. Donnelly would have been happy to, I’m sure.”
He drew up short on the island between the hospital’s front doors and the parking lot.
“And I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t compare me to that ass-wipe.”
She stifled an amused snort at the more-than-accurate term. “You’re right. You’re nothing like him. I owe you an apology for that.” Her lips twisted. “And for everything else.”
“Everything else?”
Sighing, she nodded. “From the beginning, I just assumed the worst, which was stupid, because I should know better than to think Harvey would ask anyone to do anything to hurt the team or me. I guess my feelings were just bruised because the fact that he asked you to take over as head coach meant he didn’t think I was ready for the job yet. And judging by what happened tonight, he was right.”
“Whoa, wait a minute.” Cade wrapped his palms around her upper arms. In contrast to the increasing chill of the fall evening, his hands were warm and soothing. “I thought we’d already established that nothing that happened tonight was your fault.”
“Maybe not directly, but it easily could have been. I was so determined to prove to you and everyone else that I had the guts to be the team’s head coach that I lost sight of the most important thing, and that’s the safety of the players. I knew there was a flaw in that play’s design, but I called it anyway because I cared more about myself than I did about the boys or the team.” She inhaled a miserable, shuddering breath. “Especially since I deliberately called a weak game to ensure we were behind when I pulled the rabbit out of my hat.”
To her amazement, Cade smiled broadly. “Well, thank God for that.”
“For what?”
“I’m just relieved that you were trying to lose—or fall behind, at any rate. Because if you’d actually been trying to win with that game plan, I would have had to seriously rethink my decision to resign as head coach.”
Angie stared at him, slack-jawed and dumbfounded. “You were going to resign?” She couldn’t believe she’d heard him right.
He nodded. “After we won tonight and with great fanfare. In fact, I was kind of hoping that reporter you like so much from WNSP would interview me so I could tell her and everyone who watches the local news that you’re the primary reason the Eagles are having their first championship level season in sixteen years.” His palms slid down to cup her elbows. “I might even have mentioned the fact that, if it weren’t for you and your football genius, I’d probably be a mid-level manager with a boring desk job instead of an NFL quarterback.”
Her eyes widened with astonishment. “You remember that?”
“Of course I do. Although I didn’t realize when we ran into each other in the coffee shop that you were that girl. Or that it was you Coach was asking me to supervise, for that matter. And I have to admit, I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if I’d realized who you were, I wouldn’t have asked you to dinner, and I wouldn’t have made love to you. Not because I wouldn’t have wanted to, but because I would have known I was about to become your boss. And it would be a damn shame if I’d missed out on that.”
“Oh.” The single syllable was the only coherent response she could form. She was suddenly keenly aware of the proximity of their bodies, of the size and heat of his in relation to hers, and of the seething sexual awareness that was always present between them. The desire she’d been trying—without much success—to suppress sprang to the surface, bright and almost painful in its intensity.
She was still afraid. There were still a thousand good reasons not to give in to the temptation he represented, starting with the thousands of pieces her heart would be in when it ended.
But maybe, just maybe, the splendor of the fall would be worth the sudden stop at the bottom.
In the final analysis, all the logic in the world didn’t matter because her body made up her mind for her. Before she’d even decided that the prize would be worth the price, she was stepping into his embrace, wrapping her arms around his neck, and lifting her face up for his kiss.
Oh, and it was more than worth it. Their mouths crashed together. There was no time for gentle exploration or a slow build-up. Instead, the kiss was instantly open-mouthed and demanding, a passionate melding of lips and tongues. To Angie, it seemed as though she’d spent the past two weeks underwater, holding her breath, and now she was suddenly at the surface, gasping for air. It couldn’t be healthy and it couldn’t be wise, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She couldn’t seem to get enough of him.
Silly, silly Angie. As if you could ever get enough of this.
He cupped her jaw, angling her head for even better access as he stroked his tongue against hers, sending hot shivers of pleasure along every nerve ending. She moaned as his free hand fell into the small of her back, fitting her abdomen against his hips and the telltale ridge of his rising erection. Her breasts pressed tight against his chest, her nipples taut and tingling.
Kissing had never felt so perfect, so elemental, so incredibly, unbelievably necessary to her very existence.
; “Well, well, well, what have we here?”
Angie jumped away from Cade with the speed of a scalded cat. She recognized that sardonic voice instantly. Chuck Donnelly stood a few feet away from them, an evil smile creasing his features.
Again. Good God, it was like the man was clairvoyant. He certainly had an uncanny knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Giving the teacher another lesson, are you, Reynolds?”
Angie squeezed her eyes shut. Damn, damn, damn. Her stomach sank. Somehow, some way, Donnelly was going to use this against her. She just couldn’t foresee how yet.
Cade took her hand and pulled her back toward him. He seemed unperturbed by the interruption. In fact, if anything, he looked oddly pleased. “Actually, I believe she was giving me the lesson this time. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Donnelly’s eyes glittered with calculating malice. “Maybe you should consider not engaging in public displays of affection. Or a-fuck-tion, as the case may be.” He leered at Angie.
“At least you’re consistent; you always sleep with the boss. Yet another reason to aspire to the job.”
Cade’s fingers flexed, and Angie knew he was fighting the urge to deck Donnelly. His tone was neutral, however, perhaps even slightly amused. “Ah, but I’m not the boss anymore. As of the end of tonight’s game, I’ve resigned, which makes Angie the official head coach of the Eagles.”
Donnelly’s face reddened, and he opened his mouth, clearly to say something nasty, but Cade plowed right on with perfect amiability. “In addition, Harvey has decided that he won’t be returning to the head coaching position when he recovers. He’s going to step into Angie’s assistant coaching role instead. Less stress for his heart, you know.”
Angie’s jaw dropped open in perfect synchronization with Donnelly’s. It might have been comical if it hadn’t been so surreal. Surely she hadn’t heard Cade correctly. Or maybe he was just saying it to get under Donnelly’s skin. But if it were real…
Her knees weakened at the thought. She’d always imagined it would be years before she got the job of her dreams. To have that job now, with Harvey’s complete support and blessing, seemed too much to hope for. If she’d been lightheaded with desire when Donnelly interrupted them, she was positively dizzy now.
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