Troubled Nate Thomas: Hot Steamy Sport Romance (T.N.T. Series Book 1)

by Timms, Lexy

  Nate laughed, and pulled himself back onto the bench just as the Chargers snapped the ball. This time the rampaging bull was on his side. Billy was as much on his game as Nate was. He tore through the line like the defenders were little more than an inconvenience. Billy wasn’t particularly fast, but once he got moving, he wouldn’t be stopped by anything short of a brick wall. A reinforced brick wall.

  All too soon, offense was back on the field. Coach Saunders pulled Nate aside to issue last minute instructions. Nate made a point to ignore all of them. He shifted impatiently, making all the right noises until they were motioned to take the field. He half-jogged to catch up with Nick, his head throbbing with the motion, but his vision clear at any rate. He passed Billy on the way. “Hey, how about giving us a chance to catch our breath over here?” He wasn’t joking as he said the words.

  “You’re getting old!” Billy called back grinning. Billy grinning was a scary sight.

  Not that Nate noticed. He was getting real good at not avoiding Billy as much as possible. For the last week, he’d made it an art form.

  “You can’t keep avoiding the guy?” Nick asked Nate as they moved out onto the field.

  “I’m not. I just spoke to him.”

  “A necessity. That’s the only time.”

  Behind them the crowd was going wild. It built like thunder echoing off the mountains, the stomping of thousands of feet hitting the stands, the roar that became a wordless wail of just…sound. He thought he heard his name, a TNT in there, but it might have been wishful thinking. What quarterback didn’t want that attention? The notice. The acclaim.

  Nate loved it. Every last bit of it. He waved at the people in the stands, clowning a little for the cameras sure to be on him after his last pass until Nick shoved him to get his attention.

  “Yo, Nate…you didn’t answer me.”

  Nate shrugged. “What d’ya expect me to say? I’ll talk to him when I have something to say.”

  Then it was time for the next play. Nate motion for a huddle, calling the plays quickly.

  The huddle broke. Lines formed. The damned word GRIMES was still etched on his forehead, actually Grimes was all he noticed. Sure, there were plenty of other players on the field, but the wearer of that particular jersey offered a gesture in his general direction that made it pretty clear that he wanted a replay of Nate’s last time on the field.

  Like I’m going to make this easy for you.

  Nate shouted numbers, the ball was snapped back into his hands. He looked for a runner, but what he saw was Grimes. He was being held, but not by much. It was 1st and 10, they were on the 20, no one was open, Grimes broke through the line and Nate ran.

  If George ran like gazelle, Nate was nearly as fast. Nate, on the other hand, had the ability to high-step his way around the writhing bodies of large men who were slamming against each other just to smash the quarterback. He broke through the line, feeling Grime’s hand clutching his shirt and put on all the speed he could find.

  Someone landed on his legs and he went down. Inside the line. Touchdown.

  Hurt like hell again, but it was all good.

  “Hey, how about giving us some time to rest over here?” Billy called out as he jogged back onto the field.

  “Don’t be a baby!” Nick shot back as he slapped Nate’s shoulder. “Mind your elders!”

  “Great job, Nate!” Coach Saunders nodded as they jogged in. “But that wasn’t the play I called in.”

  It was the play Nate had discussed with the team though. Followed through to perfection. No way in hell was Nate telling Saunders that. Saunders was an idiot. “There wasn’t anyone open! It worked,” he said, with an airy wave of his hand. He grabbed a Gatorade and drained the bottle dry in a couple of gulps.

  “Play the way I tell you to,” Saunders snapped.

  Nate threw the empty bottle in the recycling. With precision. Hard. “Even if we lose?”

  Saunders swore and moved in front of Nate, getting right in face. “You want to go back on the bench?”

  The Chargers made the next down, followed by a whistle blew. It was the end of the first quarter.

  Nate and Coach Saunders stared, unmoving.

  “Nate,” Nick said slapping his friend on the shoulder and dragging him away. “Come on, dude. Let’s grab a drink?”

  Nate shook his head. “I just had one.” He looked over his shoulder at Saunders and then back at Nick. Billy was coming his way and he tried to turn, but Nick’s grip on Nate’s forearm tightened. “No, QB. Billy’s your friend. Deal.”

  “Is he?” Shit. Too late to walk away.

  “Dude, did you hear it?” Billy was nearly jumping with restrained excitement. “They’re calling you TNT.”

  “So? Some damn paper made that shit up and I got saddled with it years ago.”

  “Not for ‘Troubled Nate Turner’,” Billy said, beaming. “I just heard it from a reporter on the sidelines. Now they’re calling TNT for the bombs you throw. You set a Broncos record!”

  “That throw to George?” Nick asked. Billy nodded. “How long was that?”

  “91 yards!” He held up a hand to high-five Nate who stared at it for a long moment.

  I just threw a 91-yard touchdown? There were maybe a dozen men in the history of the game who’d made a 99-yard completed pass, but in the Broncos, no one had ever done more than 90.

  It was worth celebrating.

  “Nate,” Nick sighed, and gave Nate a look so pointed, he could have staked a vampire with it.

  Nate returned the gesture and Billy’s hand caught his and held it. It was like looking at a child’s hand rapped in an adult grasp. Billy pulled Nate to him and the smile vanished. “Dude, I found out that she was hired to run interference for you. I wasn’t trying to move in on you, I swear to it. I didn’t know you loved her. OK?”

  Nate wrenched his hand away. “Who said I ‘love’ her?”

  “You do, every time you look at me like I just kicked your dog. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I promise you that I did not ever try anything with her.” Billy hesitated, glancing down at his feet. “She’s… not my type.”

  “Something wrong with her?” Nate heard himself saying.

  “You would rather I made a move?” Billy snapped, his head coming up, dark eyes blazing.

  “Enough!” Nick yelled and lowered his voice as other team members started turning their heads to see what was going on. “Enough. Nate, you’re not pissed at him. You’re pissed at her. You’re fuckin’ missing her too so you’re being an asshat.”

  Nate spun on the other man, but Nick was having none of it and met his gaze square. After a minute, Nate lowered his eyes and turned away. “Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled.

  “Get her back,” Billy said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “After the game,” Nick added quickly with a sudden panicked look at Billy.

  “After the game,” Billy agreed.

  Nate turned and walked past Saunders without acknowledging him.

  “Asshat?” Billy asked Nick while watching Nate. “Please tell me that’s not a thing.”

  “What?”

  T.N.T. Book #2 – Chapter 2

  “Amanda,” her mother said in that long-suffering tone that set Amanda’s teeth on edge. “Are you even listening?”

  “I’m trying to Mom!” Amanda tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice with little success. “I’ve been here less than a week, can it wait till the game is over? Please?” She never once took her eyes from the screen. There was no way she could, not with Nate on the field. She stared at his number, willing him to turn toward the camera. To do something that would let her get a glimpse of his face.

  “No, young lady, we need to talk now.”

  There was a certain steel to that tone that told Amanda that her mother was done screwing around. Amanda muted the game and set up to record, all the while fuming that she was a 22-year-old woman, not some child. Something her mother couldn’t seem to get thr
ough her thick head.

  As she turned away from the TV she saw the pass from the corner of her eye. Everything else forgotten, she stood and cheered, jumping up and down.

  “Stop that this instant!” Her mother stomped her own foot and had to rescue several knick-knacks from an end table that threatened mass suicide by means of throwing themselves over the edge. “Are you quite finished?” she asked, paying no attention to the fact that it was her own stomp that had upset the table. “Do you have any idea how much crap I had to take about that horrible nickname you gathered?”

  “Bouncing Bronco Girl,” her father added helpfully from his armchair, eyes still on the screen.

  “Thanks, Dad.” Amanda threw him a grin over her shoulder, ignoring her mother who exhaled noisily and rolled her eyes – a feat somewhat akin to patting one’s head while rubbing one’s stomach at the same time.

  “Yes, that one. Listen, dear, I DO understand. Don’t think that I don’t. I know about wild passion.” She looked askance at her husband who looked away, suddenly very interested in the remote Amanda had abandoned on the end table. He shook it a few times and went so far as to take the batteries out and put them back in again.

  “MOM! I do NOT need to know this.”

  “It was before… that doesn’t matter. The point is, I do understand. But it didn’t work out. You ended up in an untenable position, darling, and now it’s time you move on.”

  “Mother, I… Wait, ‘before’?” Amanda shook her head, really not wanting to hear the answer. “It was a job. I was hired to keep Nate out of the papers, to help focus him.”

  “Yes, dear, and you did that by putting yourself in the papers and letting the world see your…”

  “Enthusiasm?” her father tried, rapping the remote on the end table, as it genuinely no longer seemed to be working now.

  “Breasts, Simon, her breasts! You gathered that horrible name and everyone I know spent the next week talking about it. I’m simply trying to save you the embarrassment.”

  “Her?” Simon asked, then shrugged when no one seemed inclined to clarify. He took the batteries out again.

  “Mother, it was nothing I did. I was trying to attract attention… never mind, I heard it as I said it. I was trying to find Nate, I was with George! Your nephew.”

  “I know, Mary called me the other day, dear, George is still trying to find his car.”

  “Amanda,” her father said slowly, putting the remote down again. “This Nate has a reputation… for being a bit of a lothario.” He looked up at her intently, in that way that made Amanda’s stomach turn, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. Though this whole situation was far beyond stealing cookies from the cookie jar.

  And then there was his word choice. “’Lothario’?” Amanda finally asked as the word hung out there overlong.

  “It means a womanizer, dear,” her mother said, batting Simon’s hand away from the remote as he reached for it again.

  Amanda blinked. “Yes, Mom, I know what it means, I just never thought I would actually hear it.”

  “So,” her mother continue, giving Amanda’s father a quelling look guaranteed to keep him silent until she’d said her piece. “You had a fling with a football player. We’ve all done things we regret and you’ve become another conquest for this Nate person. Fine, it’s over and behind us all. However, your father and I have been talking…”

  Amanda guessed how much “talking” her father did.

  “We have decided that we cannot in good conscious continue to pay for your school,” her mother said in a rush. “It was one thing when you were living on campus and things were a bit more discrete, but events have spiraled out of control. You have only to submit your dissertation and you will have your Masters, if you want your doctorate, you will have to manage that on your own.”

  “But…” Amanda sank down into the chair next to her father’s. On the screen football players did that complicated little dance that let you know they’d scored or done something equally important. She didn’t see Nate. “I don’t even know if I want to pursue my Masters at this point.”

  “Of course you do dear,” her mother corrected her with a cluck of her tongue.

  “You need to finish the degree, kitten,” her father added in his slow deliberate way. “If only to…”

  “You’re close enough to the degree that it would ridiculous to leave at this point. It was your decision to follow in my career…”

  Follow her mother’s career? You have got to be kidding me. Amanda had genuinely been interested in the development of the mind, in what made it tick. The decision to pursue child psychology had been entirely her own, for her own reasons. The idea of being able to guide the growing mind had captured her own imagination in her studies from the time she’d first learned about Mary Ainsworth and Jean Piaget and their exploration into the various stages of a child’s development.

  The fact that her mother was a fairly eminent psychologist had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

  She opened her mouth to explain just that but as usual, her mother beat her to it.

  “Of course you chose a different path, working with children. What I don’t understand is why you changed those goals once again and became a babysitter to a footballer with Peter Pan syndrome and classic narcissistic tendencies.”

  “I think your mother…”

  But Amanda’s mother was on a roll now, with too much forward momentum to notice what anyone else was staying. She stood directly in front of the TV, perfectly positioned so that all you could see was a bit of the ref on one side of the screen. “You’re unfocused, dear. You’re all over the place. You need to figure out what direction you want to proceed. There’s absolutely no point to going back to college and spending all that money when you have no idea where you’re going.”

  “Though you’re welcome to stay…”

  “Here,” her mother finished in triumph. All that was missing was the end zone dance. “But you will concentrate on your dissertation first and foremost and you will earn your keep, as the saying goes.”

  Amanda flinched. “I tried to find a job, mother, but—”

  “You tried to find a job with children, my dear,” Her mother said airily, obviously proud of herself for some reason. That reason, whatever it was about to unloaded on them all, and Amanda dreaded the very thought of it. “You’ve already walked away from that path. Why would anyone hire you for it?”

  “She was always good with kids, Margery,”

  “Please, Simon, don’t interrupt.”

  Simon raised his hands in defeat and grabbed the remote again as soon as he attention was off him.

  Margery turned the loving basilisk gaze back to her daughter. “No, my dear, you’ll be coming to work with me in my clinic.”

  “At the VA?” Amanda’s mouth fell open. “Will they allow that? I don’t exactly have the degree yet.”

  “You’re not going to come in as a full-fledged counselor, my dear. Every VA is scrambling for volunteers. You’ll simply be another one on the docket. I’ve already arranged it. You’ll report directly to me, and in that way I can keep an eye on you. And that means,” she grabbed the remote from her husband’s hands, smacked it once on the end table, and switched the TV off. “No more of this ridiculous waste of time. And no more of that… person. Is that clearly understood, young lady?”

  “I…”

  But Amanda was talking to an empty space her mother had just vacated.

  Amanda’s father motioned her over to his chair. Amanda hesitated and then finally came and sat on the arm of his chair the way she used to when she was twelve and the universe wasn’t treating her fairly. His arm came around her, and she rested the cheek on the top of her head.

  Maybe some parts about coming home weren’t so bad after all.

  Her dad tugged her hair until she leaned down, so that her head was even with his own. “It’s going to be OK,” he whispered, planting a kiss on her cheek.

&nb
sp; She sat back and looked at him skeptically. He smiled softly, patted her hand, then got up and wandered off toward the kitchen.

  **END OF EXCERPT**

  T.N.T Series

  Part 1

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/

  Part 2

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/

  Part 3

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  COMING DEC 2016

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  Sometimes the heart needs a different kind of saving... find out if Charity Thompson will find a way of saving forever in this hospital setting Best-Selling Romance by Lexy Timms

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