by Timms, Lexy
“So,” Coach took over again, “starting today, you’re Nate’s girlfriend.”
“NO!” Nate and Amanda looked at each other. If the look of surprise on her face was anything like the one on his, Amanda was sure Coach Johnson would be having a good laugh. She looked at the other man. Nope, no humor there at all.
Damn.
“Look, Mr. Johnson,” Amanda put out both hands in a pleading gesture. “I know that a job is a job, but I do have a reputation to think of. I do need to protect that reputation.”
“Wait,” Nate dropped his filbert on the table, still intact. It bounced, landing somewhere near Amanda’s foot. “Are you saying that going out with me would… hurt your reputation?”
“Of course,” Amanda said, leaning down to pick up a nut, holding it in her fist. “You sound surprised.”
Nate flapped his arms. For a moment Amanda wondered if he were attempting liftoff. “Are you hearing this, Coach?”
Coach Johnson had evidently accomplished what he’d needed to with this little visit. He was already on his feet and halfway to the door. He paused with his hand on the doorknob, turning his body only slightly so that Amanda could see his face.
Seriously, the guy never smiled.
Until now.
“So, airport tomorrow, 6PM. And, Amanda, I should warn you these things get a lot of press coverage, so wear something appropriate.” Coach looked her up and down. His gaze pausing on her fuzzy slippers.
“Wait, what?”
“And you!” He turned on Nate. “That means you can’t go trolling for women. No ass on this trip. NONE!”
Nate shot to his feet. “Seriously? Coach, come on! I have a friend in L.A. Several, actually. Nothing? How can you ask me to do that?”
Coach Johnson smiled and stepped toward him, clasping a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “I can’t ask something like that from you, Nate.” He smiled bigger as Nate visibly relaxed. “I’m not asking, I’m telling. No girls at all! You have a girlfriend now, and you’re going to stay faithful to her.”
Nate’s eyes darted to Amanda and back. They’d taken on a rather panicked look if the amount of white showing was any indicator. “Coach, if I stay celibate I’m not at my best on the field. I can’t play worth shit!”
“Nate!” Coach slapped the shoulder a second time. Hard enough to rock the big man slightly. “That’s bullshit. And, for the record, you’ve been benched, remember?”
“What’s ‘appropriate’?” Amanda asked, completely lost.
“It’s what someone would wear that was classy enough to date me!” Nate snapped, his eyes never leaving Coach.
Amanda looked down at her V-neck red pullover and jeans, and wondered what was wrong with what she had on. “What, am I too clean for you? What’s it take? Curlers? Bubble gum? NASCAR t-shirts with a gravy stain?” She snorted. “Teddy bear PJs?”
“Enough!” Coach bellowed. “You,” he pointed at Nate, “help her. And be nice.” He turned without another word and left. The door banged shut behind him with enough force to knock a painting off the wall. The glass shattered on the still-life of two calla lilies.
Nate and Amanda stared at each other. Two pouting children regarding each other, neither about to make a move to clean up the mess.
“No girls.” Nate muttered.
“Gee, thanks.” Amanda said, crossing her arms. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “What am I, another guy?”
He eyed her. “Are you saying you want to have sex in L.A.?”
“Not with you,” she answered quickly. Maybe too quick.
Not that he noticed.
He put his hand out, grabbing the doorknob. He was positively sneering. “Then, yes, you’re one of the guys.”
Chapter 6
Amanda shook her head, but kept running on the treadmill. The star quarterback of a major football team owns a mansion with two guesthouses, a pool, and a gym, but he had to go all the way across town to use the gym at the stadium?
And, of course, as his newly appointed ‘girlfriend’, she had to go with him.
Maybe he had to work out at the Broncos’ gym. Or maybe he was doing it just to annoy her.
Face it: if he’d been an actual child wouldn’t you be doing local errands, taking him along?
She plodded along, considering the fantasy. Savoring it, actually. Picturing playdates with young Nathanial making sandcastles with his little friends, while she would be sitting close by, on a rather ubiquitous park bench, comfortably doing research for her thesis.
Not jogging on a treadmill, which was nothing more than a hyperactive welcome mat with delusions.
But, somehow, and she was still puzzling it out, this bad job was getting worse and worse. Now she was a faux girlfriend, like arm candy to an ape. Ok, maybe ‘arm candy’ wasn’t entirely accurate, but it did give her a slight thrill to think of herself that way. ‘Ape’ though…she stood by that phrasing, considering it to be right on the nose.
So, here she was, in the vast cavern of the Broncos’ training room, surrounded by dozens of machines designed to inflict pain and extract sweat, all of them empty but for one idiot and his pretend girlfriend.
She glanced over at him. He looked serene as a Buddha with those damn earbuds shoved all the way in his ears, no doubt trying to keep the last two remaining brain cells from flying out while he ran. He matched her stride for stride for a while and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He sped up the treadmill to a sort of trot, and she matched it without looking. He bumped up the speed to a slight sprint, and she raised her speed accordingly.
Nate put his machine on a long-legged, ground-loping run. Amanda lowered her stance and stretched her long legs out and ran as fast as she could next to him. He was not going to get the best of her!
The pace wasn’t brutal but she was pushing herself. She got comfortable in her stride and looked around again. Seriously, it was a nice gym. A real shame that no one used it. Not that there was anyone else who would be stupid enough to travel all that way…
“HEY, NATE!” a booming voice called from the doorway behind her. Amanda had to grab the rails on the treadmill to stay upright, nearly tripping, and had to jog to catch up. Her heart-rate monitor flared, beeping wildly at the sudden increase.
She let go of the bar before it recorded anything else about her.
“BILLY!” Nate yelled back, and pumped his fist without breaking stride.
The man apparently named Billy walked over to them. He was wearing a sweatshirt with a faded image of the Green Hornet, shorts, and sneakers. He was also something close to the Greek ideal of a god. He was at least 6’5”, broad in the shoulders, and appeared to have a large chest hiding under Kato’s face.
“Hello,” he smiled at her, ignoring Nate completely. “With who do I have the pleasure?” His smile nearly melted her right knee. She even forgave him the bad grammar.
Nate sighed like a child expected to recite a poem. “Billy Bartock, this is Amanda…” He blinked a few times, obviously without the slightest clue as to what her last name was.
“Jones!” Amanda said, giving him a look designed to bring him to his knees.
Nate kept running, facing forward. Totally unaware.
Bastard. Idiot wasn’t even winded. Here she barely had the breath to speak, and Nate was loping along smoothly and barely breaking a sweat.
She smiled at Billy, maybe throwing in a few extra kilowatts just to keep things interesting. Besides, he was pretty to look at. “Jones, Amanda Jones. Just Amanda.” She even managed a slight purr on the last syllable. Just because she could.
“Coach says Amanda’s my new girlfriend,” Nate said, looking up at the TV screen across from him. “You see Buffalo’s game last night? How’d they pull that out of their asses?” He popped his earbuds back in without waiting for an answer.
Amanda sputtered and shook her head. “He’s kidding around. He’s just…” she conserved her breath. Why didn’t Nate sweat? She could barely see at this point.
“Yes, you should.”
“Billy! Nate!”
Nate was too intent on whatever song he was listening to, doubtless sung by a large purple dinosaur, to notice another newcomer. Billy waved at the male voice by the door. “Hey Nick!” He pointed a thumb at Amanda. “Meet Amanda Jones, Nate’s girlfriend.”
Behind her came a low rumbling reply that melted her hips. Or that might have been the treadmill doing that. A moment later the mysterious Nick came into view. Apparently, the Greek ideals of gods gathered around football players. Amanda realized Nick was the Nick Page. Amanda recognized him from the newspaper article wherein Nate was accused of roasting a goat. According to Coach Johnson (she made a mental note to learn the man’s first name), Nick was unaware of the luau on his driveway before the fire department arrived.
Or so he said.
Nick was wearing a t-shirt that was easily four or five times too big, and sweat pants. Where Billy was huge and built along the lines of a WWII tank, Nick was built more like a runner. In his case, like a runner who could carry a girl as he ran. Amanda tried to shake that image out of her head. She failed.
“Nice to meet you, Amanda,” Nick said, and flashed another winning smile.
Amanda heard herself make a noise like ‘hurmmph’ and tried to get some air back. If she couldn’t make proper speech, she wasn’t going to lose the oxygen she needed to breathe. She prayed they would think the red in her face was something less embarrassing, like a stroke.
Billy and Nick walked off to stretch on the mats. They seemed to be talking about her and looking at Nate as they flexed and stretched and pulled and… Amanda lost her footing again and pounded the treadmill hard to keep her feet under her. She got her rhythm back and tried to not look at either man.
Which worked out just fine. For a few minutes, anyway.
Then, as one, their stretches finished, they removed their shirts.
Bare-chested and with a slight sheen of perspiration, they warmed up one more time.
Almost immediately Amanda’s right toes hooked over her left ankle and she face-planted on the speeding treadmill. The blasted thing shot her crumpled body backwards like she’d been launched like a torpedo.
Her sweats glided smoothly over the heavily waxed floors and she spun as she slid across the gym. A neatly stacked collection of jump ropes, medicine balls, and juggling pins scattered upon impact, leaving her feeling like she’d just visited the wrong end of a bowling alley.
Amanda looked up into the faces of two gorgeous, bare-chested men. “Oh, shit,” she mumbled, swallowing hard so as not to throw up. “I’m okay.”
She looked over to where Nate was still driving his long legs on the treadmill. He never looked her way, but she swore if he so much as cracked a smile she’d spend every last dime she had breaking it.
“You alright?” Nick asked. The two men knelt beside her.
She giggled, the laughter taking on a hysterical note that ended on a sob. Then she just looked for a hole in the wall to crawl into until this was all over.
Nate’s rhythmic stomp, stomp on the treadmill continued as Billy picked her up and carried her to a bench.
Amazing.
It really was possible to be deeply in lust while feeling like you’d been hit by a bus.
Chapter 7
Nothing about this job seemed to be easy.
She stood now, utterly lost.
It wasn’t like she’d never been to the airport in Denver before. She’d been past that devil horse enough times that it didn’t at least stop her heart as she drove into the terminal on Friday night.
Much. Let’s face it, the damned thing with the glowing red eyes was creepy as hell, especially at night. Whatever had possessed the powers that be to plant such a thing at the entrance to the airport was beyond her. Especially since it had killed its own creator.
For that matter, it was probably scoping out the incoming cars looking for its next victim.
She shuddered and drove around to the parking lot, fighting traffic which seemed heavier than normal. Of course, people tended to fly places on Friday nights so she wound up way out in the boondocks, making her feet an absolute misery as she crossed the parking lot. And crossed the parking lot. And crossed another parking lot. Then stood forever looking for information on the big board about her flight out to L.A.
I should’ve taken Nate up on his offer to drive in with him.
No. I should’ve just stayed home.
The problem was, nothing looked right on the board. United had flights to L.A. but nothing that left at 8:00 pm exactly. With a sigh, she headed for the ticket counter, walking past strange murals that did nothing for her mood, leaving her more creeped out than ever.
The Denver airport was just…weird.
Kind of like her job.
Kind of like her fake boyfriend.
The girl at the counter gave her a blank look when she asked about the flight. She appeared to be about sixteen years old, peering through Harry Potter glasses at her computer terminal as if the magic words would appear. Or maybe she was willing the information to scroll across the screen.
“It might help to hit some keys,” Amanda finally said helpfully.
This earned a glare and a warning glance from the woman working at the terminal next to them.
“The Broncos have their own chartered flight through United,” the woman said, looking Amanda up and down and oozing false politeness. “They certainly do not take unauthorized passengers.”
Eyes met.
The woman was steel. Unyielding. It didn’t help that the chirpy 15-year-old was smirking. Amanda leveled her with a look that should have left her shaking. “If you want to be taken seriously, lose the ponytails,” she said, knowing it was petty, and stalked away from the desk before they could call security.
Or hopefully before they would call security.
She fought the urge to break into a run as she moved past the freaky murals again, moving into the main part of the terminal. The place was cavernous, big open floor space in the middle taken up by security checkpoints, and shops and restaurants all around the edges. The ceiling towered over her in peaks, giving the whole place the look of a demented circus tent.
There were no signs anywhere to give her even the remotest clue where chartered flights would be. Or how she would go about finding them.
It’s all Nate’s fault, she thought viciously as she whipped out her cell phone. Not that she had any idea how exactly it was Nate’s fault. Only that it was.
Obviously.
She brought up his contact and had only just dialed when she heard a commotion behind her. Of course she heard a commotion behind her. What else could it be but…
“TNT!”
The name went up from a hundred voices at least, causing business travelers to pause in their driven powerwalks, and for mothers to pull teenage daughters in close, as if to somehow shield them from unspeakable horror.
Amanda closed her eyes and counted to ten.
And made it as far as four before a big meaty hand closed around her upper arm and her entire body was shifted abruptly to the left as he simply started to tow her away. “What’re you doing way out here? Coach is having a fit. The plane’s loaded and ready to go. It’s almost eight.”
Being pulled through the airport with her eyes closed—not such a good idea. Opening them when she could already feel the press of the crowds and the continuing shouts and chants erupting around them seemed even worse. Still, she opened them just as they shot through a doorway into an area she’d never seen before. Some uniformed guard was waving them through, and it was all she could to do hang on to her carryon as he rushed her down a long hallway that came out…somewhere.
Somewhere outside as it turned out.
A plane stood on the tarmac, engines already at a high whine.
They weren’t as late as she’d
supposed. There were still players milling about and the last of the luggage was just being shunted aboard.
“I thought you said they were ready to go,” she muttered through clenched teeth, shaking his hand off and bending to rub her ankle which had somehow been kicked in the mad rush.
“Miss Jones, I thought I told you to dress appropriately!”
Coach Johnson didn’t sound happy. In fact, he sounded downright angry. In slow motion, Amanda straightened and turned, noting that every player on the team and no small amount of ground crew were all staring at her.
Amanda looked down at her denim jacket and white silk cami, unable to see anything wrong. Her gaze dropped to the black leather micro-mini skirt. The stockings and impossibly high heels.
Then her eyes went to the coach, who stood a short distance away, his face red enough to clash with the blue and orange of his Broncos jacket.
The team stood in eerie silence behind him.
“What? You told me to dress the way someone who dated him would…”
With that she adjusted the strap of her carryon and pushed right past Nate and the coach, nothing with a certain degree of pleasure that Nate seemed about as dumbstruck as everyone else, as if he’d only just noticed her clothing.
She even managed to push through the line of gaping football players and make it all the way up the stairs that led into the aircraft.
Her exit was absolutely perfect, she noted with a grin. She left them all with their mouths gaping. She tilted her chin just a little higher, straightened her shoulders…and BAM!
Falling flat on her face at the doorway to the aircraft when her heel caught on a seam in the metal there wasn’t exactly the exit she had hoped for.
She wound up with her face buried in the carpet, ass in the air, and thinking that wearing the bright red thong to complete the outfit hadn’t been the best idea after all.