Full Coverage: Boys of Fall

by Erin Nicholas

  Of course.

  Randi was…a new story, a lead he had to follow, an in-depth investigation he had to conduct.

  “But you’re best at transmissions?” he asked, leaning back in his chair, settling in for a long period of discovery. He loved this part of a new story—the interview, the wide open questions, the possibility of uncovering something that neither of them was expecting.

  She gave him a look. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re widely known as the best mechanic in five counties.”

  She nodded. “Because I don’t advertise the cookies and blow jobs. Or get paid for them.”

  “Right. So those are more like a hobby.”

  She laughed. “Something like that.”

  Nolan again appreciated how comfortable she seemed. He decided to test a theory. “I was thinking when we go to New York that maybe you’d be interested in Broadway. I could get us tickets for any show.”

  Something in her eyes changed immediately. “I don’t know much about Broadway.”

  “Or we could go to a few of the museums.”

  She shrugged. “I can’t take too many days off. Maybe we should just go for the party.”

  “And the shopping,” he said, catching on immediately to what was going on.

  “I can get something before we go,” she said. “Just give me an idea of what I might need.”

  “Somewhere around here sells cocktail dresses?” Nolan asked, knowing that was not the case. She’d have to go to San Antonio at least.

  “I can get something online.” Randi pulled her foot up onto her seat and wrapped her arms around her leg. “Will we be walking a lot that night? I’d love to do heels but not if there’s miles to go on foot.”

  He wanted her to wear heels. High, sexy, strappy heels. And a short dress that would show off her legs. And he wanted her hair up so that after the party, back at the hotel room, he could slowly take it down and run his fingers through it.

  And he knew all of that sounded domineering and like he knew far too much about heels and dresses. But he’d been to enough of these parties now to know what he liked, and he wanted to make Randi feel like a princess. Deep down, all women loved to be pampered, didn’t they? Even the ones who actually knew the difference between a lug nut and…other kinds of nuts.

  “We’ll have a car that will drop us off right in front,” he told her. Even if he didn’t want her in heels—which he really did—it was cold in New York. He couldn’t make his Texas girl walk in Manhattan in February.

  “A taxi?” she asked, almost looking excited.

  “A limo.” He was going to do this right.

  “Oh.” She seemed disappointed.

  “You want to ride in a cab?”

  “Well, it’s one of the things that you think of when you think of New York,” she said. “And I’ve never been in a cab.”

  “Okay, then we’ll take a cab when we go shopping,” he said.

  “And can we have a street hot dog?”

  “Um, sure.” Cabs and hot dogs? She certainly wasn’t demanding.

  “The Rangers are in town while we’re there,” she said.

  The Rangers. That meant nothing to Nolan. “Football?”

  “Hockey.”

  Hockey. Something he knew even less about than football. But Randi loved her sports, and if he was going to get her dressed up and eating crab puffs, then he could watch guys skate around for a couple of hours he supposed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She gave him a bright smile, and Nolan realized that there was very little Randi couldn’t get from him with that look on her face.

  “Do you know anything about hockey?” she asked.

  “Is that the one with the black and white ball?” he asked, teasing.

  She laughed. “Okay, so we’ll each need a tutorial before the trip. You need to know about hockey and I need to know what to expect at a party like this.”

  “Guess we’ll have to see each other again before that.”

  “Well, I hope so.”

  They sat smiling at each other for a long moment.

  Finally, Randi said, “You want to have dessert on the couch?”

  He most definitely wanted to have dessert on the couch. Her. She was all the sweetness he needed. And he wanted to have her on the couch. Then on the floor. Then maybe against the wall.

  Something must have shown in his face because she said softly, “I have brownies.”

  “I love—”

  “Or tequila.”

  So he wasn’t the only one thinking about an alternate dessert.

  Nolan stopped and pulled a breath in through his nose. He’d known that Randi had dated a lot of guys. Rumor had it that she’d been—as much as he hated the term—easy. Now, he realized that she’d simply owned her sexuality early. She clearly liked sex and was confident about it. Again, he was stupidly grateful to Matt for making it a positive thing for her. Nolan knew, somehow, that every physical encounter for Randi had been consensual. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d seduced at least half the guys she’d been with.

  But he didn’t want her to think that this was all there was. A book, a party and sex. He wanted more than that from her.

  “I love brownies,” he told her.

  She studied his eyes. Then nodded. “Okay.”

  Nolan helped clear the table before they headed into the living room with brownies and coffee.

  She set her cup on the coffee table and tucked herself into the corner of the couch facing him, her legs drawn up underneath her. She looked gorgeous. Her long dark hair was loose, her tanned legs below the hem of her skirt made his palms itch to touch, and her long slender fingers, adorned with a variety of silver rings, made him itched to be touched.

  But it was her eyes that he kept studying. They were a whiskey brown and framed with long lashes, and they showed every single thing she was feeling. She was attracted to him. He now had no doubt, and he knew he could spend the night in her bed if he wanted to. But there was something that held him back.

  New York. What it represented.

  He wanted to make love to her in a thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suite overlooking Times Square with champagne in a bucket beside the bed and room service whenever they finally exhausted themselves and needed nourishment. He wanted to keep her naked except for the plush bathrobes in the room and an outrageously priced cocktail dress that would make her feel as beautiful and special as she was.

  He wanted to be different. He didn’t want to be another Quinn guy she made brownies for and took upstairs to the bed with the quilt her grandmother had made for her. He didn’t want to be another guy who danced with her at Pitchers and licked salt off her neck before sucking tequila out of her belly button.

  Except, he wanted to be that guy too.

  He was different from the other guys she’d dated and gotten close to. And he relished that. His whole life, his mother had impressed upon him that being different was a good thing and that he should aspire to more than Quinn. But the truth was…he was different. Not because his mom told him so or pushed him to be, but because he was. He was wired differently. Now though, he knew it meant he could give Randi things the other guys never could. Because she deserved something different, something more, something special.

  She’d dated Quinn boys, a few from other nearby towns. Small-town Texas boys who knew ranching and manual labor and other blue collar work. Their social lives consisted of Pitchers—and a hundred other hole-in-the-wall bars across the county. The closest they came to Broadway was the high school production of Oklahoma! and the closest they got to the literary classics was being forced to read Great Expectations in English class in high school. Something most of them got through with the help of the internet and guys like Nolan.

  They were good guys. Loyal to family and friends, hardworking, patriotic and God-fearing. They made honest livings and had found their place in the world in the midst of the hills and plains of Texas. There was nothing wrong
with any of that.

  But Nolan had had options that a lot of them hadn’t, and he’d taken advantage of them. Now he wanted to give Randi options.

  Randi was stuck here. She’d followed her interests into the mechanic shop and now owned the business. She didn’t seem unhappy or restless, but she also didn’t really know what else was out there. She hadn’t been given a lot of chances to see or know or want more.

  He wanted to give those to her.

  And he wanted to suck tequila out of her belly button.

  She lifted her cup to her lips—another body part he’d been thinking about all night—and sipped. “How did the chapter go today?” she asked.

  He leaned into the cushion behind him. “Good. I have the rough draft done.”

  “Can I see it?” she asked eagerly.

  Nolan grinned. He liked that she was excited about it. He reached for the bag he’d set by the sofa when he’d first come in. He pulled out the pages and handed them over.

  She grinned at him and settled even farther into her corner, drawing her knees up so she could rest the papers on them, and started reading.

  Nolan watched her. People read his work all the time. In fact, the more that read, the better for his job security. But this struck him as intimate in a way. They were words she’d helped him construct and it was about something that meant a lot to her. He wanted to do it justice and he wanted her to see herself in it.

  It took her a while to read the entire chapter, and Nolan found himself perfectly content to watch her the whole time. He loved the way she nibbled on her bottom lip, the tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows that appeared and disappeared as she read, even the way she flipped the pages.

  Finally she looked up. And just stared at him.

  Nolan waited. After a few seconds, he shifted on the cushion. Then he frowned. “What?”

  His editor at the paper barely edited him anymore. His book editor had certainly given some important input, but even then he hadn’t had to rework much. Nolan was very confident in his writing and ability to tell a story. But Miranda Doyle was making him sweat.

  She didn’t say anything, but she stacked the papers together and leaned to put them on the coffee table next to her now-cold coffee.

  Then she took a deep breath and crawled over the cushions to Nolan. She climbed into his lap, straddling him, took his face in her hands and kissed him.

  She tasted like coffee and chocolate, which was right up there with tequila, and Nolan didn’t hesitate for a second before opening his mouth and stroking her tongue with his, wanting every bit of her flavor. His hands cupped her hips, his fingers spreading over the perfect curves of her ass.

  They kissed for several long, delicious minutes before Randi pulled back.

  Nolan blinked up at her, almost forgetting what had prompted the sensual assault. “What was that?”

  “That chapter isn’t about the game,” she said.

  “It is. I recounted it quarter by quarter.”

  She shook her head. “But it’s not about the game. It’s about the people. You captured…everything about it. The buzz, the elation, the worry, the way we felt tied together, the hope and the…everything,” she finished. “Is that what the whole book is like?”

  It was. It was a tribute to a man who had coached in Quinn for over thirty years. Who had taught hundreds of boys to play football. But it was about how much more Nicholas Carr was than that. It was about how, through football, he’d taught those boys to be men. And it had extended off the field and into the whole town. He’d taught parents to try harder, inspired teachers to challenge their students and themselves, the rest of the student body how to be part of something bigger than they were and how to stay true even when things weren’t going as expected.

  “It’s about Coach,” Nolan told her. “You know he’s more than the game.”

  Her eyes got a little watery at that. She nodded. “He is. But wow, Nolan, that’s—beautiful.” She gave him a soft smile and stroked her hand along his jaw. “No one else could have written that and done it justice.”

  “It’s just one chapter,” he said, suddenly feeling a little choked up himself. Randi appreciated it. His words had touched her. That was almost as good as physically touching her. Almost. He ran his palms over the curves under his hands.

  “Yeah, one chapter that you said you needed football help on,” she said, her tone growing accusatory. “You didn’t need help with any of that.”

  “I did,” he told her honestly. “Didn’t you read the part about the head cheerleader’s heart pounding and her fingers tingling during the drive halfway through the fourth quarter?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. That was—it’s like you were in my head.”

  “You let me in there today.”

  “We talked football. And about the game, but I don’t know how you knew how to describe exactly what it felt like.”

  “It was in the way you talked about it. The words you used. The look on your face. And you told me your fingers were tingling.”

  “You’re amazing at this,” she said. “Are your newspaper articles like that too?”

  “Like what?”

  “You interview people and tell their stories?”

  He nodded. “That’s always what I’ve wanted to do. It’s one thing to report on the things happening, the events, the facts, but it brings people into the story to get the human perspective. If you can make them feel something, you can make them do something.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get involved. Make a difference. Stand up for something. Speak out against something. Help someone.” He could go on and on. Nolan reeled it in. It was hard to explain, but making people feel something, enough to want to do something with those feelings, was his calling. He knew it. And he was proud of it.

  “What are your articles about?”

  “People,” he said simply.

  “Like who?”

  “Single moms trying to make it, people who are working four jobs and still not making it, vets returning from the Middle East, people rescuing animals, people starting programs, people fighting for what’s right.”

  Randi was looking at him like she’d never met him. But she seemed very comfortable straddling his lap with his erection pressing against her inner thigh and his hands possessively splayed on her butt.

  “Why do you do those stories?” she asked.

  “Because we all need to know those stories. Because if we’re living the same story, we need to know we’re not alone. If we’re not living that story, we need to know someone is.”

  Randi didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she licked her lips and said, “I’d really like for you to suck tequila out of my belly button.”

  Chapter Four

  She was horny because of a book. That was a new one.

  And it wasn’t even a whole book. It was one chapter. But she had never wanted to take her clothes off for a guy more than she wanted to for Nolan Winters after reading his rough draft chapter of his new book.

  She didn’t really read newspapers. She skimmed the Quinn Quibbler, but it only came out once a week, and she usually knew all the news in it days before it went to print. The shop subscribed to the San Antonio Express-News but she tended to flip straight to the sports section and was always called away before she got through it all, and she never thought to go back for other sections.

  Maybe all newspaper articles were like what Nolan had just described. And if so, she’d been missing out on sleeping with journalists all this time. It was a huge turn-on. She didn’t know if it was the words, or the emotion in his tone as he told her about his stories, or what, but there was something about Nolan being able to make her feel things just with his written words that pushed buttons she hadn’t even known she had.

  She was a physical person. She liked to touch things, get dirty, make things happen with her hands. She’d always been that way during sex too. She responded to some dirty talk, but it was always about touch, real
ly.

  Until now. She had a definite desire to have Nolan tell her what he wanted to do to and with her in words. Written down on paper. So she could read them over and over again.

  But they’d have to get up to get a keyboard or a pen and paper. They didn’t need to get up for the tequila.

  She reached for the lower shelf on her side table and grabbed the half bottle of Patron, the salt shaker and the plastic container of lime slices she’d stashed earlier. It was out of sight so as not to seem too overeager, but easily reached if needed.

  “Prepared?” Nolan asked, sounding impressed and amused.

  “Optimistic,” she told him with a grin.

  She felt his fingers tighten on her hips and she definitely felt the evidence that he was turned on.

  She set the shaker and limes on the cushion next to them and propped the bottle in the corner of the couch next to Nolan’s hip. She stripped her shirt off, leaving her in only a lacy crimson bra.

  Nolan gave a low, very male groan. He lifted a hand and traced a finger over the top edge of the bra. Her breath caught at that simple first touch.

  “This is so girly,” he said, watching his finger as it ran over the lace. It was clear that he meant that as high praise.

  “I love girly stuff when I’m not at the shop,” she said.

  “I’ve noticed.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “The dresses, your hair curled, the shoes.”

  “You’ve noticed my shoes?” she asked.

  “And your boots. You’re a gorgeous woman who makes me hard just breathing the same air you breathe. I find everything you wear hot. But yeah, I notice the heels and boots.”

  “A shoe fetish?” she teased, trying not to let on that his words had wrapped around her heart and squeezed. His words got to her.

  “A Miranda fetish,” he said, with all seriousness.

  He got to her.

  Male attention wasn’t new. She liked it. She loved sex, and she knew that the guys who asked her out knew that. Quinn was a tiny town and the surrounding area was made up of similarly tiny ranching towns, and word got around. But the guys also knew that she wouldn’t hesitate to use her impressive right hook and that she could load and shoot a gun—and knew lots of places to hide a body and had plenty of friends who would give her an alibi. If she slept with someone, it was because she wanted to, and she didn’t do it all that much anymore.