This is more than just a game...to her

Sports broadcaster Brooks Smith has always been more involved with the game than the players. But after she shares the spotlight at an awards ceremony with tabloid sensation Jonas Nash, one night of letting her guard down around the infamous quarterback spirals into many heated days and nights together when she gets assigned to the story of the year...

The hottest player in professional football is hiding a secret that could end his career for good. Now Brooks is caught on the sidelines between the job she loves and the man she is falling in love with.

“Maybe it’s just me that keeps throwing you off balance, Brook...”

Jonas walked away, and this time Brooks let him because if she didn’t she’d... Well, she might just scratch his eyes out. The man was impossible.

She flexed her fingers.

“It’s Brooks,” she emphasized the s, but he didn’t look back. She raised her voice. “B-R-O-O-K-S, which every other person in the sports world seems to know but which you can’t seem to remember.”

Who was she kidding? She didn’t really want to scratch his eyes out. As obstinate and annoying as he was Jonas was also satisfyingly distracting. He slipped inside the field house, taking his gluteus maximus out of her view. Distracting and energizing and...

She’d rather rake her fingernails down his spine than scratch out his eyes, and that was bad. Very, very bad. Because she was a journalist with a story to tell and a reputation to fix.

Jonas Nash needed to stay off-limits.

Dear Reader,

I’ve been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. Baseball, basketball, volleyball...but there has always been a special place in my heart for football. I like the intricacies of the plays, I like the beauty of a perfectly thrown football, and when that wide receiver reaches into the sky to pull down an uncatchable ball I cheer.

When I started to write Protecting the Quarterback, I wanted to convey not only my love for the game, but also my love for the players. Because there are some amazing men who take the field every Sunday, Monday and Thursday, who wear their colors with pride and who never give up on the game. Jonas, the hero in this book, has lost his way a bit, and has even lost a little of his love for the game. Brooks has a deep and abiding connection with the game and its players, and she helps him find not only that connection to the game, but also himself within the game. I hope you enjoy reading their football love story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

You can find me online on Twitter, @authorkristina, or on Facebook or Instagram...stop in and say hi!

Kristina Knight

Protecting the Quarterback

Kristina Knight

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KRISTINA KNIGHT decided she wanted to be a writer, like her favorite soap opera heroine, Felicia Gallant, one cold day when she was home sick from school. She took a detour into radio and television journalism but never forgot her first love of romance novels, or her favorite character from her favorite soap. In 2012 she got The Call from an editor who wanted to buy her book. Kristina lives in Ohio with her handsome husband, incredibly cute daughter and two dogs.

My deep thanks go out to Dr. Matt and the team at Northern Ohio Medical Specialists; your love of the game, for athletes, and your love of medicine were evident in all of our conversations. Any medical mistakes in this book are my own.

For all the girls out there who love football...

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

JONAS NASH SAT back in the high chair, watching the bustling backstage area. Mandi, a model he’d known for a few years, came up behind him and planted a kiss on his neck. The makeup artist swiped the mark away with a tissue and glared at the model. Mandi rolled her eyes.

“So, what’s the plan after your presentation?”

The plan was to go back to his hotel, pack a bag and get back to Kentucky as quickly as possible. As if the model cared.

The makeup artist swiped more powder over Jonas’s forehead and then leaned back to observe her handiwork. The lights flashed.

“You’re ready,” she said, and Jonas stood while another presenter slid into the now empty chair.

He straightened his bow tie and smoothed his hand over his close-cropped hair. It still felt a little weird to have basically no hair on his head. He’d kept his dark hair long nearly as long as he’d been playing football.

Mandi linked her arm with his, pulling him to a darkened corner of the stage. Jonas winced and withdrew from the contact. Mandi didn’t know the extent of his injury. Very few people did. He intended to keep it that way. By the time the next season started he would be back on the field. Back in control.

“I thought we could hit one of the clubs downtown,” she was saying. “A little dancing, have some fun. I can’t remember the last time you were in town.”

Jonas could. It was last November, when his team played the Gladiators. They’d lost by twenty points, his star running back had gone out with a pulled hamstring, and Jonas had missed the team flight back to Louisville in favor of spending a night wrapped up in Mandi’s sheets.

Instead of spending the night in her bed, though, he’d spent it in lockup while she scavenged for cash after instigating a fight between him and a tattooed giant wearing a dog collar. By the time he finally made it back to Kentucky, all the newspapers and sports talk shows were talking about how out of control Jonas Nash was, and what a blemish he was to the sport of football.

And he hadn’t cared. He’d gone back to his condo, taken a few of the other players out to a favorite club and thrown for two hundred yards—and a win—the following week.

“So what do you say? Dinner and dancing and we’ll see what happens next?”

A pretty blonde across the room caught Jonas’s attention. She was a sportscaster, he thought, and she hadn’t looked his way all night. He’d been watching her, though, from the moment she walked out of the dressing room in those screw-me heels.

He didn’t want to go out with Mandi tonight. Hadn’t wanted to go out with women like her for almost a year. What he did want was a little peace and quiet. To get back on the football field with his teammates and not worry about whether or not his shoulder would hold up.

But there was an awards show to put on, so Jonas pushed the bleak thoughts away and refocused his attention on Mandi.

“Dinner and dancing, huh?”

She smiled and ran her hand up his arm. A year ago that move would have turned every hormone in his body on. Tonight, he felt nothing.

“And whatever else might come up,” she said.

Jonas sighed. He didn’t feel a damn thing.

The stage manager motioned him over, and the pretty blonde from the makeup tables caught his eye again. A spark of something hit his belly.

Weird.

“You’ll present with Miss Smith, entrance here at stage right. After the presentation, you’ll exit stage left together,” the man was saying.

Mandi tugged on his tuxedo jacket and he glanced her way. She made some kind of motion with her hand, but he didn’t quite catch it because the pretty blonde stood and smoothed her hands over the tight dress.

Navy and sparkles shimmered before his eyes, and his mouth went dry. She ran her hand over her hair and something hot began to crawl around his stomach. There. There was something normal. A normal reaction of man to woman.

Something he hadn’t felt in...too long for mental math.

Not that it mattered. He didn’t go chasing after every woman he met anymore. Mandi made another gesture from the side of the stage. He didn’t even chase after women he knew wanted to be chased. That was part of his past. Part of the Jonas he didn’t want to be any longer.

Still, it was nice to know all the equipment still worked.

He watched the blonde for another long moment. Definitely nice to know the equipment still worked.

* * *

THE LIGHTS FLASHED, signaling two minutes to go. Two minutes until she could return to her hotel to get out of this ridiculous dress. Brooks Smith tottered on four-inch heels toward the stage manager, who held a gilded envelope. She’d accepted the hosting gig at the International Sports Awards before she knew she had also been nominated in a completely new category: Hottest Female Sportscaster. Had she known about that award, she would never have agreed. And to have won it... God, another reason for the boy’s club of professional sports broadcasting not to take her seriously.

“No peeking,” the balding man said, and she could practically hear the “tsk tsk” in his voice. “Either of you.” He looked pointedly from Brooks to her presentation partner, Jonas Nash, star of the Louisville Kentuckians, one of the worst professional teams in the North American Football Federation. Which made it odd that he was up for not only Athletic Performance of the Year, but also Player of the Year.

Just went to show what a good PR team could do, she supposed. That and the fact the man looked like Hollywood’s version of a football player, from the reckless gleam in his chocolate-brown gaze to the muscles clearly outlined under the smoothly tailored lines of his Hugo Boss suit.

Brooks plucked the envelope from the manager’s hand. “You might want me to carry it, then.” She shot a pointed look to the man beside her. Six feet five inches of muscle and bad-boy reputation. Six feet five inches of charisma.

Six feet five inches of ball hog.

Which partially explained the Performance of the Year nomination.

“I don’t peek.” Jonas held a hand to his chest and his full lips spread into a wicked smile. “Much.”

The bleach blonde standing beside him near the entrance to the stage offered a finger wave and an air kiss. “See you in the limo,” she practically purred before turning on her heel and disappearing in the hubbub of the backstage area.

“I can make this presentation without you if there is somewhere more important you need to be,” Brooks said.

“No place I’d rather be,” Jonas said, as if the bottle blonde hadn’t just offered herself as his backseat entertainment for the evening.

Why the thought of Jonas with the woman bothered her Brooks couldn’t say. It wasn’t as if she really knew the man. It also was no secret that he’d left a bevy of blondes, brunettes and redheads in his wake for most of his football career. But it did bother her. Brooks pushed the image of the woman from her mind. She needed to focus on the presentation.

The manager ushered them onto the stage as the host for the International Sports Awards introduced them as “Kentucky Football Royalty,” whatever the heck that meant. Brooks rolled her shoulders and pasted a bright smile on her face as they walked into the spotlights. Jonas took the stage with his palm against her lower back, seeming to burn a hole through the silk and sequins of her navy dress.

“Slow down there, Slugger, we stop at the podium, not the next curtain.”

As if.

She didn’t run. Well, except when she ate her weight in salted caramel ice cream.

“I know how to work a stage,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, making sure she kept her smile in place. The problem was being center stage wearing sky-high heels and with nothing to do with her hands. Standing before a single camera in her ballet flats and with a microphone in her hands was so much...simpler.

Jonas waved to the crowd, a big grin splitting his handsome face. “Then try actually smiling for the cameras and waving to the crowd.”

“I am smiling—”

And then her feet betrayed her. Brooks’s left foot slid on the smooth marble floor in the middle of the stage. She tried to grip with her right but she wasn’t used to more than a kitten heel. With sickening clarity Brooks saw the headlines and internet memes and goddamned internet gifs in her mind. Ridiculous hair, ridiculous makeup, ridiculous Brooks sliding across the stage at the International Sports Awards while perfectly dressed, never-out-of-sync Jonas Nash looked on.

Then the strong arm at her lower back seemed to turn to steel as it slid around her abdomen, steadying her. Her face warmed and she couldn’t catch her breath. Heat seemed to envelop her, sizzling across her lower back, dangerously close to where Jonas Nash’s arm held her so tightly, making her stomach clench. And she knew why she made that catty comment to Jonas.

She was attracted to him. God, she’d thought she was over this part of her life. Past being attracted to the men she worked with on a daily basis. She arrived at the station house or the stadium, did her job and went home to her empty apartment to get ready for the next game.

She didn’t feel awkward interviewing half-naked athletes in the locker room. Not once in the five years since she took her first reporting job had she allowed herself to wonder what it would be like to be with one of them. With Jonas’s arm at the small of her back all she could think was how much more heat she would feel if there weren’t several layers of clothing between them.

Brooks swallowed hard and straightened her spine.

“The objective is to arrive at the podium on your feet, not sliding into home,” he said, and this time there was laughter in his quiet voice.

Brooks took a steadying breath, as they continued across the wide expanse. Just a jolt of attraction. She’d had those before. But they’d never left her quite as dry-mouthed or made her heart beat quite so erratically. Probably the cottonmouth feeling and the raging pulse rate were ninety percent fear, and ten percent attraction.

She tried to look past the bright footlights, but only saw shapes. And still her back burned where Jonas’s hand and arm had touched her.

Maybe seventy percent fear, thirty percent attraction.

No laughing faces. She couldn’t hear any telltale titters of derision, either. Maybe no one had noticed.

Jonas’s fingertips trailed across her lower back once more, and the sizzle intensified.

Probably fifty-fifty, but standing next to six feet five inches of pure male perfection, who wouldn’t be attracted? And he’d saved her from an embarrassing fall on international television. That had to add to it.

They reached the podium a second later. Jonas leaned down and whispered, “You’re welcome.” His breath tickled her ear, the slow drawl of his Southern accent seemed to tickle the hairs at the back of her neck, and the heat from his palm at her lower back seemed to scorch another degree higher.

Okay, so it was sixty-forty with attraction making a comeback.

“Thank you,” she said, and the words seemed to echo around the auditorium. The microphone had just switched on. Hot embarrassment flooded her cheeks, but Brooks refused to follow her instincts off the stage and into the blessed comfort of the non-spotlighted backstage area. She chastised herself for the flub.

Cameras and stages were nothing new, but normally she was talking about a great pass or defensive play, not sent out in full hair and makeup as the center of attention at an awards show.

“For accompanying you to the stage? It’s always my pleasure to escort a gorgeous woman,” Jonas said, deadpan. “But it’s not every day I get to escort the Hottest Female Sportscaster. So maybe I should thank you.”

She felt her face flame hotter and closed her hands more tightly around the envelope in her hands. “Maybe we should just stick to the script,” she said, begging him with her eyes to start reading from the teleprompter. Miraculously, he did.

Jonas introduced the first nominee for Most Inspiring Performance, pausing as the producers of the show replayed the highlights for the audience at home as well as the people in the live audience. Brooks concentrated on the clips rolling across the screen and stepped in to announce the second. They traded back and forth for the next nominees and then she waved the envelope. One more minute and she was home free, would be off the stage and could go back to being her ponytailed, flat-shoe-wearing, sports nerd self.

“And the award goes to—” she said, but the envelope wouldn’t open. Brooks tugged on the vellum, tried sticking the long, fake nail the makeup artist had glued to her finger not twenty minutes before under it, but nothing worked. The stage manager had nothing to worry about as far as peeking went: these envelopes seemed to be sealed with atomic-strength glue. Brooks tugged once more. Her hand flew off the vellum and smacked right into the microphone. It popped and hissed. “Apparently these envelopes weren’t sealed with Post-it glue,” she said, and the audience chuckled. Brooks felt the tension ease in her shoulders. Okay, it was going to be okay.

“Let’s just rip it off and see what happens, Brook,” Jonas said and she didn’t even feel the usual annoyance at someone mispronouncing her name. She didn’t care. She wanted to read the winner, hand off the trophy and get the heck off this stage as quickly as possible. She handed the envelope to Jonas.

“Normally, I’m all for a woman doing a man’s job,” she said, “but this time, I’ll just let Muscles, here, do the heavy lifting.”

Jonas tore the edge off the envelope, and a moment later the room swam in applause as a short, balding golfer took the stage to accept the award. Brooks knew she should recognize the man, even if sports wasn’t her job she should recognize him, but all her mind could focus on were Jonas Nash’s hands, trembling as he handed the heavy trophy to the older man, who took it without batting an eye, as if it weighed nothing. She turned her gaze to the man beside her. His face was impassive, his gaze calm, as if nothing in the world was off.

His hands were still trembling. Strike that. Not hands. Hand. His right. His throwing arm. Her mind went back to a cold December afternoon, the last game of the season for the Kentuckians. Jonas had been sacked, driven hard into the frozen field turf. Had that injury been bigger than the team insisted? The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she sensed a story. A big one.

The golfer started his speech and Brooks and Jonas faded into the background. In the shadows of the stage she heard him exhale a long, slow breath. And then he shifted his shoulder.

The worst injury Brooks had faced when she was playing softball was a hairline fracture in her wrist, but there was something about the way Jonas moved that screamed pain.

“Jonas—” she began, but he was already hustling off the stage, turning his toothpaste-commercial smile on the model waiting to lead the golfer back to the interview area. Hands shoved in his pockets, which was odd. In every picture she’d ever seen of him—and there had been many—in every interview, every locker room, Jonas Nash stood with his hands either at his side or gesturing wildly. The man was never still.

Her pulse ratcheted back up.

Make that twenty percent nerves, thirty percent attraction and fifty percent pure, unadulterated curiosity.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins, the way it seldom did now that she was off the field and behind the microphone. Jonas Nash had a story and she would be the one to figure out what it was.

* * *

JONAS NASH SLID into the backseat of his limo, wanting nothing more than a strong hit of whiskey. He’d nearly blown it. His injury was no secret—nothing in the sports world stayed a secret for very long—but only a handful of people knew the extent of his injury.

He’d nearly outed himself on international television with that trophy stunt. He should have left it on the podium. Why hadn’t he left it on the podium like every other presenter?

“Hey, baby.” The model he’d flirted with backstage slid off the side-facing seat as the limo pulled away from the curb.

“Hey, Mandi,” he said, trying not to feel annoyed with the woman who wouldn’t be here if he’d kept his freaking mouth shut backstage. But he’d felt out of sorts, and he’d found it hard to look away from Brook Smith across the prep area, and then he found himself falling back into old habits. Flirting with anything that moved, talking loudly and acting as if life was a twenty-four-seven party.

Mandi’s hand slid up his leg, resting mere inches away from his package. A few months ago he would already be hard. Would ignore the pain in his shoulder, rip off the dress and do whatever he wanted to the blonde. She caressed the back of his head with her fingertips and nuzzled her head against his shoulder.

He felt nothing.

Scratch that. He felt annoyed. He wanted to drink, and he wanted to do it alone.

Mandi kissed her way up his throat, nipped at the cleft in his chin and then settled her mouth over his. He kissed her back, but half-heartedly. She didn’t seem to notice as she inched the hand on his leg closer and closer to his junk.

Jonas hit a button on the armrest and felt the car come to a stop. He pushed his hands gently against Mandi’s smooth shoulders.

“What’s the matter, baby?” she asked as her hand finally made contact with the bulge in his pants. So maybe he wasn’t as uninterested in her as he’d tried to convince himself.

Didn’t matter. He wasn’t screwing Mandi-the-Model in the back of this limo. The thin glass between the driver and them rolled down.

“Take us back to the theater,” Jonas said, and the driver nodded.

“Did you forget something?”

Jonas shook his head. “No, just...” What to say to a woman he’d had no problem sleeping with any number of times in the past? “I’m tired. I want to go back to the hotel—”

“Not a problem,” she said, squeezing her hand gently around his package. Jonas inhaled a sharp breath, and then took her hand in his, removing it from his pants.

“Not tonight,” he said and slid another inch away from her across the seat.

She watched him for a long moment, and then crossed her arms over her chest. “Did I do something wrong?”

Nothing but everything. He was a doctor’s report away from being a washed-up quarterback. Mandi might not expect anything from Jonas, but he’d learned over the past four months that he expected something from himself. He just didn’t know what, exactly, that expectation was. Until he did, he couldn’t just be party-boy Jonas.

He could make out a line of taxis outside the venue and took a few bills from his pocket. “Not tonight. I’ll pay for your cab back home.” The limo stopped at the corner, but Mandi made no move to leave. “I’ll, uh, call you the next time I’m in town,” he said.

Mandi took the money. “Don’t be surprised if I don’t answer,” she said as she exited the car. A few flashbulbs went off as Jonas pulled the door closed with his good arm.

“Take me to the airport,” he said, not wanting another night in the too-familiar hotel. He wanted out of New York.

Once the limo was cruising toward the airport, Jonas shrugged out of his sport coat. Shrugged out was so not the way to describe what he did to contort his body out of the coat so that his shoulder didn’t scream in pain. It merely whimpered. Loudly. He grimaced.

Damned shoulder, anyway. Stupid way to get hurt. No one noticed his hand. No one besides Brook Smith was close enough to see, and she’d been so petrified of the lights—what broadcaster was afraid of a few lights, anyway?—that he would be surprised if she even knew he was her co-presenter tonight.

With his good arm Jonas threw the coat across the car, unbuttoned the sleeves of his shirt and rolled up the cuffs. Dared his right arm to tremble.

Nothing.

Not even a hint of movement. He stretched out his arm at shoulder height. Winced against the pain and willed it not to move. The tremble started in his triceps before shooting through his arm to his fingertips.

A few words his Southern mother had taught him never to say in mixed company painted the inside of the limo red. Didn’t matter. The surgeon said it would take time. He had nine more weeks before training camp. Nine more weeks to figure out why simple tasks like taking off a shirt caused more pain months after the accident than deadlifting two hundred pounds had before he’d ever been hurt.

His phone rang and he nearly tossed it aside because the number was unknown. Something made him answer.

A smooth Kentucky accent poured through the cell, making his muscles clench and his mouth go dry.

Brook Smith. The sound of her voice through his phone was enough to make him...wish she’d been the one with him in the limo instead of Mandi. Before tonight he’d never met the pretty reporter in person. Her legs were longer than he’d imagined, peeking through the long slit of her gown as she’d walked with purpose across the stage to the podium. Her skin had burned him through the thin silk of her dress, and he could still smell the light scent of vanilla that accompanied their trip across the stage. A scent that had nearly made him forget they were in front of an audience for the first sixty seconds of their acquaintance. Now her voice was close, too close, in the limo, and it seemed as soft as he’d imagined the honeyed strands that had escaped her fancy hairdo would feel against his skin.

“...so I’m going to be in Texas next week to do a sit-down with the Bulls for the network, I’d love to chat with you, too.”

“About how I played Prince Charming to your clumsy Belle at the awards tonight?” he asked, trying to throw her off balance.

“Prince Charming ends up with Snow White, not Belle—”

“But the Beast would have let you fall right into the floodlights. Prince Charming always rides to the rescue.” Probably he shouldn’t have mentioned the Beast, not because now she would equate him with the fairy-tale character, but because men like him weren’t supposed to know about fairy tales. He was beer and football and Vin Diesel movies, wasn’t that the basis of a three-week tell-all his last girlfriend sold to the tabloids? Jonas frowned at the phone.

“The Beast would have swept me into a waltz and danced me straight to the podium,” she said, and there was what could only be described as starch in her voice. “After this year you’ll have free agent status and can go anywhere. Fans all over the world want to know if you’ll stay a Kentuckian or find a football home somewhere else.”

Everyone wanted to know. Hell, he wanted to know. Unlike many of his football brethren, Jonas had joined the league with the intention of being a one-team star. He liked the money that came with football, but a strong team was more important. Then he’d been drafted by the Kentuckians and for the past five years he’d only been playing for the money.

Now, if his shoulder was really junked, no other teams would even look.

Then he’d be an athlete without a team. The mere thought made his heel tap against the carpeted floor of the limo.

“Free agency could totally change your career, unless there was more to that injury than the team let on.” She waited a beat. “Jonas?”

He had no skills outside of football.

“Mr. Nash?”

His degree was in freaking Hospitality, for crying out loud, because it gave him more time to concentrate on football. He was goddamned Mr. Football to fans all over the world. He was not, repeat not, sitting down with Brook Smith to chat about his career plans, the injury to his shoulder or whatever else was on her greedy, reporter mind. Not until he was sure he was over football. Right now all he was sure of was that he wanted one more season calling the plays.

It might already be too late, the sly voice in his head said. The voice that sounded a lot like his mother.

“I can make myself available. Whatever works for you, I’ll work into my schedule.” Her voice was cool, at odds with the rising temperature in the limo.

Unsaid questions peppered his mind. What if the rest of rehab went by with as little improvement as he’d seen in the past weeks? What if the Kentuckians didn’t want him? What the hell kind of life could a man have if he was washed up before the age of thirty-two?

“I’ll be in Kentucky, but maybe next time.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE VIDEO PACKAGE rolled across the screen, and Brooks glanced at her phone as her text alert buzzed. It was the assignment editor for the sports department. Nash says no interview. Again.

Damn it. Two months had passed since the awards show, and the man continued to dodge her requests for a sit-down.

“What are the ramifications for the college program now?” The sports anchor in the studio asked, his voice sounding hollow through her earwig.

Brooks refocused. She would get Jonas Nash to sit down with her, but she would not let the promise of a story with him jeopardize this one.

“In the immediate, they’ve lost Bobby McCord, the head coach, and this is only a week after a Spring Game in which the offense looked off-balance and the defense couldn’t seem to make a play,” Brooks said to the sports anchor on the other side of the television screen. “My sources tell me a job search is in the works, but finding a coach willing to take on a program that has lost its star running back and defensive end because of a doping scandal, and before the collegiate authorities have handed down their sanctions, is going to be tough.”

“Thanks, Brooks. We’ll have more on this breaking story as it hap—”

“Was it hard turning your own boyfriend in as the head of the steroid ring?” The news anchor, a man Brooks had never liked, butted into the conversation between her and the sports anchor. Brooks blinked.

“Bobby McCord was not my boy—”

“But you’d been dating.”

“No,” Brooks drew out the word. “We had dinner—twice—but that was months ago—”

“Did you give him any warning about what you were about to do?”

Brooks tried to separate the boiling anger she felt for the anchor from her job to report the facts about one of the biggest sports scandals so far this year. She’d done nothing wrong. Three weeks of serious investigation had led her to discovering Bobby headed up the steroid ring within his program. Three weeks of paperwork and following leads and working with the authorities. Still, the questions the anchor had asked made her clench her fists.

“We asked Coach McCord for an interview after he’d been arrested, but he declined. Of course we will keep in contact through his legal team, and will bring you the latest on this story as it develops,” Brooks said, smile pasted on her face until the director turned off her camera. Then she heaved a sigh of relief and closed her eyes.

Where had all that come from? She knew Alan Gentry didn’t like her, but she never imagined he would try to implicate her in a story like this.

One of the other reporters clapped a hand over her shoulder. “Nice work on the McCord piece,” he said as he passed.

“Thanks.” Brooks unclipped her microphone, leaving it on the high stool where reporters sat during newsroom live shots. She pulled the earwig from her ear and let it dangle over her shoulder, picked up her phone and began paging through her emails as she walked slowly back to her desk, trying to figure out what Alan was up to. It didn’t make sense.

Their station was the first to break the story about steroid use in the program.

“You done for the day?”

Brooks drummed her fingers against her desk. She could make a few more calls, maybe try Jonas’s agent for the hundredth time, since going straight to the quarterback was getting her nowhere. She could confront Alan, but that would accomplish nothing. Or she could go home, have a glass of wine and celebrate being the first sports reporter to break this story. It was another feather in her cap.

“Yeah,” she told the other reporter, who she knew was on until the eleven o’clock news. “I’m going to call this a day.”

She gathered her things, put her earwig into the box in her desk and then slung her backpack over her shoulder.

A definitely good day. And tomorrow, she would go back to her journalistic pursuit of Jonas Nash.

* * *

“FIVE MORE LIKE THAT. Smooth and steady, buddy,” Tom Jenkins, the head trainer for the Kentuckians, said in a low voice. Jonas rested the heavy bar on the palms of his hands as he adjusted his grip. Before he was injured he’d bench-pressed at least twice as much weight and not felt a thing.

Okay, he’d have felt something but that something was a grain of salt in a paper cut compared to the sensation he felt now. It was as if he could feel the tendons in his shoulder straining with each press. As if they might rip off the rim of his shoulder socket. Again.

Or maybe he was just afraid. A candy-ass desperate to be on the field.

Scared shitless to actually be on the field.

“Smooth and steady, my ass,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Three weeks ago you were barely lifting the bar with no weights. This is improvement.”

“Training camp starts in just over a month, it’s not enough.” He lowered the bar again, preparing for the final lift.

“You can only go as fast as your body will let you, you know,” Tom said around a yawn. The first rays of sunlight shot through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the weight room. They usually used the room for rehab in the early afternoon, but because of the clinic, he’d asked the trainer to meet him earlier.

“I know what my body can do.”

“You know what your body could do,” Tom corrected. Jonas bit his tongue to keep the smart-ass reply in check. As much as he hated to admit it, Tom was right. Before that hit, before the strain he’d been feeling became a partial labral tear, he’d been one of the most accurate and strong quarterbacks in the league despite being part of a losing team. Now he was under the mediocre mark and it scared him.

“Same time tomorrow?”

“We aren’t done.” Jonas sat on the edge of the bench and wiped an already sweaty towel over his face. “I want to work on throwing with my left.”

“Jonas—”

“I know what my body can do,” he said, cutting Tom off before he got started on all the reasons why Jonas shouldn’t try to teach himself how to throw with his left arm.

“You can’t just decide you’ll throw left,” Tom still managed to say before Jonas cut him off again.

“Sure I can.” He was Jonas Freaking Nash. He’d be on the field, fear or no fear. It was the only place he knew he belonged.

“You’re never going to throw with your left the way you throw with your right. It’s about grip, not just strength. It’s about how you set your feet, how you roll your hips.”

“Then teach me.”

“No quarterback has gone from lefty to righty or righty to lefty in the month before training camp, and those who have done it never played at your level.”

“There’s a first time for everything. Might as well be me.” Had to be him. He was the leader of the Kentuckians. He had his coach with him again, the defense was coming along. The guys were excited about the start of a new season, new coaches, new playbook. His name and number were the same, but Jonas had changed, too. No more tabloid quarterback. No more Hollywood starlets.

A memory of Brook’s voice on the phone whispered into his mind, but he pushed her away. It was time he concentrated on football again.

This might be his last chance.

The trainer grabbed a whiteboard and oversize marker from the stack near the Nautilus machines and handed them to Jonas.

“Write your name. Not an autograph, just write it.”

Jonas followed his directions. Tom handed him another whiteboard.

“Now write your name using your left hand.”

Jonas started and stopped. Gritted his teeth and ordered his left hand to make the letters look the way they did when he wrote with his right hand. His left didn’t get the message. The letters were crooked and sloped unevenly across the board instead of following the imaginary line Jonas intended to follow.

“When you can write your name the same with your left as you do with your right, we’ll talk about throwing left.”

“Next week.”

“Go home, Jonas. Keep rotating ice and heat. I’ll see you in here tomorrow.” Tom left the workout room. Jonas studied the two boards. The letters on the left could have been a four-year-old’s attempt. He Frisbee’d the boards across the room and then, elbows on his knees, put his head in his hands.

He could figure out a new career path. Could find joy and even meaning in something else. But the something else wouldn’t have the shine that football had. When he was on the field, there was an order.

He stalked over to the treadmill, pulled up a workout program and started to run.

While the incline increased and decreased and the treadmill sped on to nowhere, Jonas focused on his plan. If it started with writing, he would write. It would be better than mindlessly flipping through TV channels, anyway. Less likely he’d run across another commentator talking about his chances of coming back from the injury.

He would get football back, even if he had to change the way he played the game.

* * *

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Brooks sat in an overstuffed chair outside the network offices. Although the network and the affiliate she worked for were housed in the same building, she had never actually been to the fifteenth floor. Had never rubbed elbows with the network heads.

Heck, she’d never gotten so much as an email from them, much less the terse voicemail she’d listened to at least ten times already this morning requesting she meet with Gary Jacobs.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Two minutes past the last time she’d checked the chrome-fitted clock. The well-heeled receptionist studiously avoided her gaze, concentrating instead on the magazine she was leafing through.

She sat back against the butter-soft leather of the chair, willing herself to stop thinking the worst about why she’d been summoned. She hoped he wouldn’t pass along another not-so-veiled insinuation that she had used a man to get a story, never mind the fact she’d barely known said man. Or that said man now faced criminal charges. The receptionist picked up the phone near her elbow, said something Brooks couldn’t hear and then stood, her willowy frame towering over Brooks’s substantial five feet nine inches in height. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, hoping the rest of her usual ponytail was still in place.

“You can go in now,” the receptionist said, motioning her through the thick, mahogany door to the left of her large desk. “Mr. Jacobs, Miss Smith,” she said as she closed the door, leaving Brooks alone with the head of sports programming for the network.

Gary Jacobs tapped a few computer keys as he motioned her to the chairs before his desk. “Hope I’m not dragging you away from another investigation, Miss Smith,” he said, his gaze still focused on the computer screen.

“Not at all, we’ll be following up on the scandal for a few more days. What can I do for you?” Brooks sat in another cool leather chair, crossed her legs at the ankle as her proper, Southern mother had taught her when she was little and clasped her hands in her lap.

“You can pack your bags for your next assignment. Louisville—”

“Pack my bags?” Brooks shook her head. She had to be hearing things, right? The professional baseball season was in full swing, college teams were still in conference play. She didn’t cover basketball, and football players wouldn’t start reporting for training camps for a few more weeks. “We’re still covering all of the bases on the steroid—”

The network exec cut her off. “We’re starting a new pilot program, and we’d like our rising network star to be part of it.” When she didn’t say anything—couldn’t say anything, if she were honest with herself—he said, “The rising star would be you.” Brooks nodded, still not trusting her voice. “One reporter will be assigned to each of the professional football teams as full-fledged beat reporters. News of the day, of course, but we’re also looking for human interest, behind-the-scenes kind of stuff.” He barely paused before launching into more detail about the new program the network wanted to implement, and Brooks’s heart beat faster.

“The local affiliates usually cover that kind of thing.” Those were the kinds of stories she’d been covering for the past eight years. Her heart started to race.

“We’re launching a football-only network this summer, and to do it right we need more than local affiliate reporting. There will be daily shows, special programming, too, but we have too much time to fill for the locals to help.” Jacobs cleared his throat. “You’d be working directly for the network—not for the affiliate in Louisville—but we would need a year’s commitment.”

“I’m not sure what to say.”

“Frankly speaking, you should say yes, and before I call the next name on my list.”

He waited a beat, picked up a pen and began tapping it against the desk blotter. “You have good instincts and you understand the game and the players better than anyone who hasn’t played a down. Women like you because you don’t wear evening gowns and high heels on the sidelines. Men like you because—” he eyed her for a moment and Brooks’s cheeks began to burn “—well, you were voted Hottest Female Sportscaster for a reason. As a network, we like that you draw evenly from both demographics, that you know how to tell a story and that you’re passionate about the game. The only question is do you want this?”

“Y-yes, I want it.” She did want it. She wanted football to be part of her life. So badly. She knew football. Believed in it. Waited on pins and needles every spring to see who was drafted and at what pick. During the season she lived on the highlights, dissecting each play and player to learn more about what made them work. A few bad apples like Bobby McCord couldn’t kill her love for the sport or her love for reporting on it.

“Are you willing to put in the extra time? To follow up on leads like you did on the steroid scandal? To put any personal relationships aside to break a story?”

“Of course.” And she already had her first scoop in mind.

“Then what do you say? And whatever the answer is, I would highly advise it not include the words ‘think’ or ‘about it.’” Gary Jacobs’s voice took on a stern edge as he spoke, making Brooks sit up straighter in the chair.

“When and where do I report?”

They talked a few more minutes about contracts and equipment, what station she would co-op space from and when her photographer would arrive. Brooks surreptitiously pinched her hand several times, hoping that if this was a dream she wouldn’t wake herself up. But when she walked out of the office, she was still on the fifteenth floor. Still wearing her favorite leopard ballet flats, still tucking that same wayward strand of hair behind her ear.

This was real.

She was going back to Louisville. Brooks swallowed. And she knew exactly what her next story would be: Jonas Nash and his future in football.

* * *

“BOOBS ON THE FLOOR, boys,” a gruff voice called out from around the corner.

Jonas splashed his way out of the icy whirlpool bath and to his locker. Grabbed a too-short white towel and secured it around his waist. There were only a couple of other guys in this early in the summer. All of them stood there oblivious that their junk was now on display. More likely they just didn’t care. Jonas had no issue showing off his body, but he was in no hurry to show off to someone outside the organization the surgical scar he’d acquired after the season or answer the questions sure to come with it. He couldn’t keep the rotator cuff surgery a complete secret, but only his circle knew the extent of the tear that happened when a defender laid him out on the last play of last season.

“Don’t pull a hammie, there, Muscles,” a honeyed voice that had haunted him for the past two months said from behind him. “Nothing there I haven’t seen before.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Brook Smith, the Hottest Female Sportscaster.” Damn his rotten luck. Annoyance flashed in her pretty green eyes, and he wondered why. Because of the award? Or because of him? Women usually weren’t annoyed by him, but there could always be a first time.

Jonas pulled the green tee down his flat abs and schooled his features into a careless mask as he turned.

“Or we could just stick with Belle.” He grinned at her annoyed expression. She wore a sleeveless blouse and a bright green pencil skirt that showed off the length of her legs and the curve of her hip. His mouth went a little dry again, as if she’d somehow sucked all the moisture out of the room—out of him—just by walking up to his locker. “I see you’ve traded in your ice skates for a safer option.”

Not that the flat shoes she wore were any less attractive. Her delicate ankle bones flexed as she closed the gap between them, and he decided her calves would be defined whether she wore tottering heels or flip-flops. He’d like to see her in both, or neither, and nothing else. Which was not where his mind needed to be right now. Jonas chastised himself.

“And I’ve finally tracked down the elusive Beast again.”

“Didn’t realize I was so hard to find,” he said and was rewarded when a faint tinge of pink lightened her cheeks. “For a princess you’re very determined.”

“All the best princesses are,” she said, and then seemed to think better of it. “Not that I need a man to come to my rescue.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I didn’t exactly go careening off the stage.” The pink darkened and she narrowed her eyes. Then something switched. She straightened her spine and set her shoulders back and the annoyance in her gaze turned to something else. Real embarrassment, maybe? Whatever it was it made the green in her eyes deepen and Jonas had to remind himself, again, that she was a reporter. He’d had his fill of them.

She sucked in a breath and said, “But thank you, anyway. It could have been a lot worse if you hadn’t been there.”

“True. That was some pretty fancy footwork.” Jonas told himself to stop baiting her. Let her say what she wanted and get out of his locker space. But he couldn’t seem to stop. “I didn’t realize princesses normally walked with their legs going in different directions.”

She bit her bottom lip and then folded her arms across her chest. “I’m trying to say thank you. Would you stop being such an ass about it?”

“Okay,” he said solemnly. “You’re welcome.”

She was pretty without all that goop the makeup artist at the awards show had plopped on her creamy skin. Her face and arms were lightly touched by the sun and a fine line of freckles danced across her nose. Jonas wanted to run his fingers over those freckles, but that would be yet another bad idea, so he stepped over the low bench and into the main walkway, into her personal space. He saw her pupils dilate, and smiled.

“Now that I’ve helped you save face before millions of viewers around the globe, what exactly is it that I can do for you?”

Then his towel betrayed him by slithering down his legs. Jonas wanted to snatch it off the floor, but stopped himself. Athletes just didn’t go grabbing for towels and tees in the locker room.

“You can sit down with me for that little chat we talked about after the awards show.”

Jonas casually pulled up the towel and settled it back over his hips. “Sweetheart, if you just wanted to chat you should have told my agent.”

“About your future,” she said, teeth clenched. “What happens after this season? You’ll be a free agent, but with your old college coach now leading the team, will you stay?”

“I never said I was leaving.”

“No one has said anything, which usually means something is up.”

Jonas had to derail this conversation and he had to do it fast. He couldn’t just turn down the offer; the coaching staff had made it clear to him this morning that the sideline reporter from the network had full access.

Jonas had never met a reporter who didn’t have an agenda where he was concerned.

And in this case it was a woman, which made her naturally curious and, in his opinion, worse than most.

“Something’s about to come up, all right, but I don’t think it’s what you want to know about.” He leaned in, getting a whiff of her lily-and-vanilla scent. The same scent that kept him up nights through the spring he spent busting his ass to get his shoulder back under control. Something was coming up, all right, and it was nothing he should be sharing with a reporter. Especially not a reporter like her. “Or maybe that’s the something that had you calling everyone from my agent to my college coach and the secretary here over the spring.”

She raised an eyebrow and looked him slowly up and down. Which made him go from slightly interested to fully motivated. Finally, her gaze returned to his.

“Like I said, Muscles, nothing there I haven’t seen before. I’ll just schedule our sit-down for tomorrow morning.” She turned away and then glanced back over her shoulder. “The coach already mentioned you were free from nine to nine-thirty.”

With that she stepped over another bench and made her way over the carpeted floor to the door leading to the weight room and out to the field.

Jonas looked down, holding his hands out to the side. “Now you have to go all Magic Mike? The woman doesn’t like us, buddy. The woman could hurt us.” As her scent faded into the familiar locker room smell of Bengay and sweat, his member slowly returned to normal. “That’s better, and don’t even think about doing that tomorrow, got it?”

* * *

THERE WAS SOMETHING about the green of the Kentucky countryside in early June, Brooks thought, as she rolled down the window of her car. A breeze blew through the window and for a moment she wished she still had the convertible Mustang her parents had surprised her with at her college graduation. Why had she ever thought the sedan was a more grown-up car than the Mustang? She closed her eyes for a second and breathed deep. Didn’t matter. She’d made her choices. Maybe she would buy a new Mustang. Or a new-to-her ’Stang. In the mean time she could still enjoy the Kentucky breeze blowing through her windows and the scent of...home was the best way she could describe it. As she continued down the highway the annoyance at Jonas Nash and his continued mutilation of her name melted away into something different.

Something a little more powerful than the story she knew he was hiding. She saw right through the heavy-handed flirting and beneath he seemed just a little bit broken. And she was a sucker for broken.

Brooks turned off the main highway onto the quiet lane that led to her parents’ two-story home outside Louisville. This was as good a place as any to start her tour with the Kentuckians, especially since training camp was held just down the road at a local college.

Her dad’s familiar truck was gone, as was her mom’s classic Thunderbird. She checked her watch. Dad would be at the high school for at least another hour and her mother was likely at the church or picking up groceries. When Brooks had arrived her mother said something about needing extra supplies—as if the addition of Brooks’s one-hundred-thirty-pound body meant the Smith family now needed to shop at the bulk food store or buy an entire cow to get them through the summer. Brooks chuckled as she turned off the engine and gathered her things. She used the key she’d never removed from her ring to enter the back door into the kitchen. A pecan pie sat on the table with a note from Heidi. “Save a little for Dad. The last day of school always makes him crave sweets.”

Smiling, Brooks put the note back on the pie topper and then pulled a bottle of water from the fridge before climbing the stairs to settle in at the small desk where she’d done her homework as a teen. Posters of the Backstreet Boys still lined the walls and she made a note to redecorate—or at least remove them—as soon as possible. She made a few notes about the injury and then pulled the coverage of the hit up on her tablet and watched in real time and slow motion how Jonas’s body reacted when the defender drove him into the ground. His body seemed to collapse in on itself—a trick of the camera and the protective pads he wore, she knew—and then bounce back. For a long moment he was perfectly still, then he slowly got up and lumbered off the field. Holding his right arm close to his body.

Maybe she did need pie.

A moment later, with a generous slice of pie on a plate, she returned upstairs and watched the coverage again, making more notes. She watched the interviews about the “minor surgery” and twisted her mouth to the side. Minor surgery didn’t explain the shaking hands she’d seen or the fact Jonas had been in Kentucky all winter when he’d normally be at his house in Texas or sailing the ocean with one Hollywood starlet or another.

“Even during the off-season, you’re watching film,” her father, Jimmy Smith, said from the doorway.

Brooks put her hand to her chest. “Don’t startle me like that! And I could say the same for you. I can’t remember a Saturday morning you didn’t spend looking over game film.” Her father pushed a chair to the desk and sat beside her. “Speaking of, shouldn’t you be reminding your players not to get into too much trouble over the summer break right about now?”

He shook his head and his shaggy, silver hair fluttered around his head. “I’ll have ’em in camps most of the summer. Don’t remember you minding all those Saturday mornings. You’d be nose-deep in film, too, telling me my tight end was too slow or my strong-side tackle was holding.” He eyed the half-eaten pie as he sat on the edge of her bed. “I see you found your mom’s pecan pie.”

“Plain sight on the counter.” Brooks grabbed the pie and held it close to her chest. “You can get your own.”

“Maybe later.” He nodded toward her tablet. “What’cha got cooking?”

“I’m not sure.” She rolled her chair beside him, reset the video and played it for her dad.

He watched it through a couple of times and whistled low. “I remember seeing that as it happened. Bad way to dislocate a shoulder. I know your job is to report on the Kentuckians year-round, but this is old news, kiddo.”

“I’m interviewing him tomorrow. Something’s off.”

“’Course it’s off. He dislocated his shoulder.” Jimmy started the video again. “See how he’s not moving at all? Sign it’s a bad dislocation. He had surgery, another bad sign.”

“His hands shook. At the awards show a few months ago. He only held the trophy for a moment or so, but his hands shook. The thing couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds.”

“Joint injuries are funny things.”

“He’s also been dodging me since the show.”

“And you’re like a dog with a bone when you think something is going on.” Jimmy slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Sometimes an injury is just an injury.”

“Sometimes it’s more.”

He nodded and stood. “It’s good to have you home, kiddo.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Brooks furrowed her brow as she watched the clip once more. “It’s good to be home.” But he was already gone, probably down to the kitchen to nab a slice of pecan pie.

Brooks finished her slice, savoring the crunch of the pecans and the sweetness of Karo syrup and sugar. As sweet as Jonas probably thought he’d been when he more or less propositioned her in the middle of the Kentuckians’ locker room. As sweet as it had been the past few days to wake up in her old room, bad decor and all.

What is it I can do for you? The quarterback’s voice echoed in her mind.

Oh, she’d been tempted. For a split second, she wondered if she should break her rule about dating athletes. He only wanted to distract her, though, he wasn’t serious. Brooks was a serious-minded woman. She didn’t expect every guy she dated to be the marrying kind, but she had a picture in her mind of how her life should look in a few years and there was definitely a guy and a few kids.

The guy suddenly looked a lot like Jonas Nash.

She shook her head. Jonas Nash wasn’t part of her future, not anymore than any of the Backstreet Boys had ever been, and she was too old for star-struck daydreaming. He was an interview. He was layers and layers of story, but that was that.

Her tablet buzzed in her hands, signaling an incoming video chat.

“I’m staying in Louisville,” Trisha Lamott, Brooks’s best friend since high school, said gleefully as soon as the video window connected. She raised her wineglass toward the screen and then tapped it against the glass. “Me. In Louisville and on track to make partner by the time I’m thirty-five.” She drank the glass of wine, picked a bottle off the cabinet nearby and refilled her glass.

Trisha’s shoulder-length, brown hair was perfectly arranged and she wore a sparkly camisole under her white lab coat. Leave it to Trisha to look like a model for business casual after a day treating torn ligaments and setting fractures. Brooks checked her watch. Just after eleven in the morning, she hadn’t lost an entire day watching the old clip of Jonas.

“You said you wanted Chicago.”

“I didn’t want to jinx it. I love Chicago.” Trisha drank more wine. “There are restaurants and museums and—”

“And Kentucky has the Derby and Louisville Sluggers and Southern Comfort. Not to mention the Kentuckians.”

“Exactly. Kentucky is perfection. To everyone except the girl living in beautiful, sunny Miami.”

Brooks chuckled. “You mean the girl who just got a promotion that landed her in Louisville for at least the next year.” At least, she thought it was a promotion. Technically, she was still a reporter, but she was a network reporter, in charge of an entire bureau. Well, team. Still.

“You’re coming back home?”

“I arrived last night,” Brooks said as she pulled her hair from the elastic band, smoothed it through her hands and then reset the ponytail. “The network gave me all of three days to get here so I spent it packing and making moving arrangements. I was going to tell you all about it this weekend.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t call me immediately to celebrate. You were my first call.”

“Your job offer doesn’t come with a thousand mile move attached.” Brooks chuckled and then tapped the screen separating them. “Should you really be celebrating with wine before noon?”

“Yep. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

The chuckle turned into a full blown laugh. On her side of the screen, Trisha rinsed her wineglass before putting it in the sink.

“So have you caught up with the Captain Quarterback yet? You know, it’s kind of weird that Mr. Always-A-Tabloid-Headline doesn’t want to talk to an actual reporter.”

“Interviewing him tomorrow morning, actually,” Brooks said. Although, Jonas certainly didn’t seem like a media whore now. She couldn’t remember the last time his picture had been in the paper for anything.

Brooks finished her pie. “We should celebrate both our new jobs in style.”

“How about Thursday night, at Mendocino’s? We’ll celebrate your new job and me being the new doc at Bone Creek, Louisville.” Trisha stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled so loudly Brooks thought her tablet screen might crack. “We’ll break out the good stuff. Champagne for me. Tequila for you.” Trisha signed out of the chat window.

Brooks looked around her childhood room. Old wallpaper, old posters. The same lumpy mattress, same prom dress in the back of her closet. Same ribbons and trophies on her bookshelves.

God, she never expected football to lead her back to Louisville. Back to the shadow of her famous father. Somehow, though, she didn’t experience the same strangled feeling she’d felt so many times as a kid. Instead the room felt familiar. Not completely comfortable, but not alien, either. Maybe, though, it would be a good idea to look for her own apartment. Something closer to the affiliate and stadium.

A cool, Kentucky breeze slipped through her open window. Brooks put her tablet away and then stood before the open window, looking out over the rolling, green hills. A lawn mower rumbled to life outside and the crisp scent of clipped grass tickled her nose.

For the next year, Louisville was home again. She had an interview with Jonas Nash in the morning. Good luck was definitely on her side.

CHAPTER THREE

AT EXACTLY EIGHT FIFTY-FIVE the next morning Brooks was outside the office of the new head coach of the Kentuckians, Earl Highland. The walls of the reception area were covered with team memorabilia and signed pictures, and the wood floors gleamed in the bright morning sun. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the practice field, the field turf there a brilliant green. She could see a few players running laps around the field, but knew most of the team were still at their off-season homes. At ten minutes after nine, a ponytailed secretary wearing a Kentuckians tee and faded jeans ushered Brooks through the office door.

The coach wore an old tracksuit with a whistle around his neck, and his light brown hair was cropped close to his head. Not like any other professional coach she’d met, he was more like her father. Earl had coached Jonas through college to two national championships and a number one draft pick position, and the football world had been surprised when he’d stepped into the coach’s office here a few weeks before. She’d met him once, when she tagged along with her dad on a college visit with one of his players, and remembered how he’d brought her into the conversation a few times. Most big-time coaches didn’t pay any attention to her. Earl was part of the reason she followed her father into football.

Every flat surface was piled high with notebooks, DVD boxes and T-shirts. Whistles littered a side table and spilled over to a box between the low table and the desk. A few pairs of old tennis shoes sat under a window and Earl’s trademark bright red hoodie lay in a pool at the feet of a brass coatrack. The room was so much like her dad’s office at the high school and the den he’d made into a second office at the house that she had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t somehow sitting in the little room.

If it were her father’s office the quarterback wouldn’t be six feet five inches of sexuality. The man sitting across from Earl definitely smoldered.

Jonas sat in a worn leather chair, wearing old cargo shorts, black flip-flops and a ragged tee that had “NAVY” written on it. He might have been a kid on a college campus, albeit not the college she’d attended. Somehow the guys Brooks remembered from her school days paled in comparison to the giant sitting to the side of Earl Highland’s desk, ankle crossed over his knee and his long fingers beating a furious tattoo against his well-muscled thigh.

“Brooks Smith, Jonas Nash,” Earl said, his voice gravelly and loud in the quiet room. “Although I hear you’ve already met.” His gray gaze was filled with mirth as he motioned between them. “How’ve you been, kid?”

“Good. Dad sends his regards,” she said.

Earl smiled and his eyes seemed to brighten. “Tell Jimmy we need to shoot the breeze sometime soon, would you?”

“Sure.” Brooks took the seat opposite Jonas and said, “We have met, twice, actually.” And he still doesn’t know my name, a petty voice in her head reminded her. He didn’t know her name, and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Great, just great.

“The second was a little more fun than the first,” Jonas said, “for Brook, anyway.”

Brooks beetled her brows, but before she could offer a retort, Earl cut in. “In any case, you’re probably wondering why I’ve brought you both in this morning.”

“I assumed for the interview, are we going to the field?”

“I’m not doing any damned interview—”

“Jonas.” Earl’s voice was soft but there was no mistaking the command in it. “I had another idea.”

Brooks crossed one leg over the other and sat forward. Whatever this was had to be good. “I’m all ears.”

“Coach—”

“We talked about this,” he said to his player. Then turned his attention back to Brooks. Watching the looks passing between player and coach was fascinating. Brooks didn’t need telepathic abilities to know Jonas didn’t like whatever was about to be said one bit. Which made her like it even more. The coach continued speaking. “Jonas is heading up a youth football camp for the next couple of weeks—”

“Isn’t he still rehabbing the shoulder?”

Earl continued as if Brooks hadn’t said anything. “This is important to him. It’s a program for underprivileged kids. They’ll come in from Louisville, of course, but as far south as Memphis and as far east as Raleigh. Learn some fundamentals, practice drills, and along the way have some real team-building experiences.” Earl looked from Jonas to Brooks and back again. When he skewered her with his gray gaze, Brooks wanted to be anywhere but inside the small office with piles of folders and loose-leaf papers scattered about.

“I’m not sure what that has to do with my interview,” she finally said, her voice little more than a squeak. What was it about the direct gaze of football coaches that left her quavering in her boots? Well, ballet flats, but, still.

“Maybe everything. Jonas and I were just talking about how the program could use a media push. You have network pull, and you’re assigned to the Kentuckians through to the end of the season, so it makes sense.”

“I’m assigned to the Kentuckians, not to one player.” Brooks sat up straighter in her chair. Hard gaze or not, these two were not going to derail her assignment. With the veritable all-access pass she had with the team, she could create real buzz. Maybe land a spot at the network sports desk or maybe even in the booth during games. “I can’t report on the other players if I’m all the way in—” she looked from man to man.

“Hyde Park,” Jonas said, reluctantly. The neighborhood was a ten-minute drive from the training camp facility. Not so far away she couldn’t report on what was going on, but something was off about this request.

“And several team staffers will be on hand, talking to the boys about nutrition and proper training as well as the sport fundamentals,” Earl added. “Think of it as a team training camp, but with an emphasis on kids, not professional athletes.”

With the right angle, this could be something the network would be interested in. There were several initiatives the league was involved in to get kids more active, and this camp sounded like a way to bridge league and team programs. But it could just as easily be covered by the local affiliate. They didn’t need her, and she did need an interview with Jonas. “Why me?”

Earl studied her for a long moment, which was odd because Jonas seemed to be making a point of not looking at her. Not even a sideways glance. His chocolate-brown eyes were focused on the corner wall seam as if something magical might appear at any moment. Weird. He’d had no problem giving her a hard time in the locker room yesterday. He might not like her reporter side, but he liked other parts of her. After yesterday’s locker room incident, Brooks knew where she stood on the personal like-o-meter of Jonas Nash.

The thought sent a shiver of excitement up her spine.

She wouldn’t do anything with the knowledge; she’d stopped dating jocks in high school. But it was still nice to be noticed by a man like Jonas.

“The interview.”

Brooks’s breath caught in her throat. “I get the interview when you get the coverage for the charity camp.”

“It’s not a charity, these kids deserve better than pot-holed streets disguised as basketball courts or football fields.” Finally, Jonas joined the conversation, although he still wasn’t looking directly at her. Instead, those deep, deep eyes were fixed on something just above Brooks’s head.

“Again, not my assignment. I’m the beat reporter assigned to report on your team, not your charity work.”

Jonas clenched his jaw. “You can report on the charity work or you can deal with a locker room full of men who won’t give you the time of day through to early February,” he said. “Assuming we’re playing for the championship.”

“You can’t shut me out.”

“Oh, you can walk that fine ass into the lockers any time. Finding someone who will talk to you, that’s a whole other subject.”

“Jonas.” Earl’s gravelly voice held a hint of warning this time. Jonas shrugged his shoulders and turned his gaze back to the corner. “What we are suggesting is an exclusive. You come to the camp for a couple of hours each day, and at the end of camp you can have your all-access interview with Jonas. Location of your choice, no topic off the table.”

Brooks’s heart beat a little faster. All-access was good. All-access was what she needed to really make a splash in this program. “Is there a reason you want to delay this all-access interview for a couple of weeks?” She caught the look that passed between coach and player and her belly clenched. Yes, there was most definitely more to the Jonas Nash injury than the Kentuckians had reported up to this point. Neither man said a word, though. “My focus still has to be the whole team.”

“Of course, of course.” Earl laid on the charm, leaning across the desk and clasping his hands. “Several of the players, coaching staff and trainers will be in and out for the duration of the camp. A woman with your background has to know how important youth sports are to the healthy development of our kids. Physical fitness, sure, but we’re talking about social responsibility, team building, leadership. All of which can be taught on the football field.”

“My father believes the traits learned on the football field translate into the lives athletes lead off the field,” Brooks offered. “After reporting on professional sports for the past few years, I’m not sure I agree, but I’ll say that I think the football camp you’re talking about is a step in the right direction.”

“Why don’t you drive out there with Jonas this morning? He’s putting the finishing touches on the field and the first of the kids will arrive this afternoon.”

“Thursday is when we start really working with the kids—”

“Today is good, actually,” Brooks interrupted before Jonas could come up with a reason to keep her off the field and out of the locker room. “And I’ll have full access to Jonas at the end of the camp, correct?”

“Interview, mic him during practice, whatever you need.”

“Great.” Brooks picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot in five. I’ll bring my cameraman.”

“I’ll bring repellant.”

“No need, you do just fine with that all by yourself,” Brooks said, putting as much sugar into her voice as she could.

* * *

JONAS PACED AROUND the small office, stealing a look at Earl from time to time. Since Brooks had walked out two minutes before, he’d been trying to put into words exactly how many ways this plan was wrong.

All he’d come up with was throwing the small coffee table against the wall and somehow, while it might succinctly tell Earl just how much he didn’t want this project, he didn’t think it would change the outcome. Earl would still expect him to be downstairs in—he checked his watch—one hundred and eighty seconds.

“You about done wearing a hole in this fine carpet?”

“The carpet’s crap. Just like this assignment is crap.”

Earl just looked at him for a long moment. “You’d rather sit through twenty minutes of ‘how’s the shoulder’ and ‘where will you be playing next season?’ Because I thought we were trying to A) correct your image problems and B) keep the press off your shoulder radar for a couple more weeks.”

“I just...why her? Why this reporter?”

“Because she’s the one sniffing around and I don’t think she’s got her eyes set on becoming the next Miss Thang Dating Jonas. This girl could not give a fig about what you have to offer off the field, but you’ve got the chance to make her care.”

“I don’t want to make her care.” Jonas folded his arms over his chest as he leaned his good shoulder against the wall. He didn’t, he insisted to himself. What Brook Smith thought of him was completely and totally beside the point. She was after a story, his story, and he hadn’t told anyone his story since Earl sat him down more than ten years ago and asked what he wanted out of life.

Jonas had wanted the hell out of Texas, that was what he wanted. Away from constantly falling short of what his mother expected of him. Away from the boring prep-school life he’d been leading. To be anyone and anything other than Jonas Nash, son of renowned particle physicist Beverly Nash. The woman who did everything absolutely right: she chose the paper-perfect candidate to be his father, she swore off caffeine and alcohol and even chocolate while she was pregnant and didn’t even inhale if someone had fish nearby. She vaccinated him according to the rules, never did the baby-talk thing and enrolled him in a fancy preschool by the time he was two. She didn’t cuddle. She read to him from her textbooks.

Only to find out before he even hit the fourth grade that he would never be a scientist. His brain didn’t work that way. Build a replica of New York City from LEGO bricks? No problem. Set him up to discover the secrets of string theory or dark matter and his brain shut down.

Named for a brilliant scientist, she would tell him, and you can’t even get the dosage for Tylenol right.

At seventeen, he’d been a wreck drinking Maalox by the carton diagnosed with his second bleeding ulcer. On a whim he followed the other guys in his class to the football field where he met Earl. From the moment he stepped onto the field he’d felt calm. As if football was something he could control, maybe even excel at. He’d excelled, all right, straight into the headlines of everything from fashion magazines to sports weeklies. Now his shoulder was a visit to the doctor away from junk, and the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about wanted the story that could ruin the one thing that made sense in his life.

God, his life was so freaking messed up right now.

“I don’t want her here. Not on campus and not with the kids, I just want all of this to go away.”

Earl was quiet for a long moment and when he finally spoke, Jonas knew he understood. “It’s this way or have her digging through every last second of your life. Do you remember what I told you that day at the college clinic?”

Jonas shook his head. One more lie couldn’t hurt anything.

“Bullshit. I told you that you have the tools. You can be great with the talents you’ve been given or you can wreck your whole life trying to be something you’re not.”

“And I chose football—my talent—and look where it landed me.”

“Boy, you’re more hardheaded than a mule.” Earl shook his head and threw his pen down on the desk. “You let all the cameras and girls and fluff stories about how hot you are change your focus. You got an agent talking you up to Hollywood instead of figuring out a decent football slot, and a handful of teammates who want to ride your coattails to the next Sexiest Athlete Alive cover story. Women break into your house on a weekly basis because they’re convinced you’re the bad boy their momma always warned them about.” Earl took a breath. “And until I got here three weeks ago, the Kentuckians’ management were so wrapped up in your college legend that they kept drafting for defense, thinking your ability to see and run the field will win them games. We can fix the football, and I’ve seen the X-rays. Your shoulder will come back. But, buddy, if you want the whole package, your image is the next item up for bid.”

His image. Jonas snorted. His image was parties in the Caribbean, mansions in Dallas and Los Angeles and anything else superficial that kept people at a distance. Until five months ago, he had been mostly content with the image. Sure, it chafed now and then, but what image didn’t? Now, though, it felt as if he was wearing shoes that were two sizes too small. “I don’t like people poking around in my business.”

“Didn’t say you had to like it. Said you had to run with it.”

Run with it. Jonas sighed. Hadn’t he tried that? Drafted to a badly managed team and he’d figured out a way to keep the players’ morale high. Of course, high morale didn’t lead to championships.

“Think she’s still waiting downstairs?”

“I’d bet your next paycheck on it.”

Jonas paused at the door. “Maybe I should just give it up.” He rubbed his shoulder, and while the touch didn’t hurt, it still felt off. “I gave it a good run. I’ve got more money in the bank than I can ever spend. I don’t want to be one of those old players who can’t walk because of bad knees or who can’t shower themselves because of shoulder pain.”

Earl was quiet for so long that Jonas had to turn around. The coach stared at him for a long minute. “Is that what you really want?” His voice was quiet in the room, but Jonas could still hear the censure.

“No.” God help him, he wanted more than to live off the millions in his bank account. Wanted more than to be an asterisk in some football trivia book.

“What is it that you want?”

“I want the championships.”

“Because you want more headlines? More fluff stories about the fabulous life of Jonas Nash?”

Jonas shook his head. “Because I want to leave a legacy. I don’t want to be the asterisk.” Earl had made him great in college. Maybe the coach could work that magic again in the pros.

“I can’t make the legacy thing happen, you have to do that. It starts on the field, but what you do off the field is just as important.”

* * *

“WHY ARE YOU doing this?”

Brooks wasn’t one to look a proverbial gift horse in the mouth, but she was still caught up on the why of this whole arrangement. Especially after Jonas let her cameraman, Kent, shoot him from every possible angle, but refused to be hooked up with a mic for even a quick “this is what we do here” interview. Instead he pawned her off on the head groundskeeper and a scintillating ten-minute interview about the benefits of field turf.

Most of the athletes Brooks had come in contact with couldn’t wait to crow about who they helped and why. Most because they were so excited to give back to the communities that raised them; a few because of the status their charities offered.

Jonas looked along the football field at the vinyl-covered Styrofoam numbers marking the yard lines on the grass. He studied the area they’d been walking for a long moment. Finally she was going to get a real answer. Brooks’s fingers itched for her notebook and pen. The same notebook and pen Jonas insisted she leave in the truck along with every other piece of equipment save the actual camera and a single tape.

“Well, from four o’clock this afternoon through noon next Friday, we’ll have fifty ten-and eleven-year-olds on this field. If the work isn’t finished this morning, I have to do it in the afternoon heat. We princes melt in ninety-degree weather,” he added with a waggle to his brows and laughter in his voice.

“You’re no prince,” Brooks muttered.

“And you’re no princess, Princess,” Jonas retorted.

“Because I don’t wave my pom-poms in your face?”

“I wouldn’t mind your pom-poms in my face, come to think of it.”

Brooks blushed, glad Kent had taken the camera back to the truck a few minutes before. “Why do you keep bringing up princess movies? I thought boys were all about SpongeBob and Transformers and things.”

He watched her for a long moment. “You don’t remind me of a square yellow sponge, and your curves are way more enticing than even the sleekest of metal robots,” he said, and the expression in his deep brown eyes made her swallow. Hard.

There was a bit too much honesty in his gaze for her to shrug this off as another attempt to keep her off balance.

“Besides, I like old movies.” Jonas shrugged. “The westerns, the romantic comedies, animated stuff. I’ve watched it all at one time or another.”

“A connoisseur of film?”

He half smiled, but she had a feeling the expression was more self-deprecating than fond memory. “Something like that.”

“My dad and I used to watch old football films—not the game-tape variety.” She followed him down the line as he adjusted first one and then another line marker, seeming to ignore her. “I think my favorite was Knute Rockne-All American.”

“And I’m the Gipp to your Rockne? I’m not dead or dying, Princess,” he said, his voice flat. But his spine was straight and sparks of anger flew from his gaze.

Brooks blinked. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. She just liked the movie. Mostly she liked that she’d watched it eating popcorn and drinking soda with her father on a sultry summer night when she was too young to really understand why Gipp was sick and what that meant. “No, I—” she took a breath “—I just like the movie, watching it with my dad. You like movies, and—”

“And you thought we’d bond over an old black-and-white about a dying football player? Dream on, Princess.” He turned his back on her to adjust another line marker. Brooks hurried to keep up with him.

“If you don’t want me here why did you invite me?”

“I didn’t, remember?”

“You didn’t object.” He raised an eyebrow. “Too much. You didn’t have to go along, but you did. Why?” she asked, hating the fact that she needed to know the answer so badly. Hating even more the fear that he would say he didn’t want her here because he didn’t like her. Physical reactions couldn’t be faked, but people were physically attracted all the time and couldn’t stand the people they were attracted to.

“Why are you so focused on ruining...never mind,” he said as he adjusted the last marker. Jonas positioned it just so in the grass, still not looking at her.

“You think I’m here to ruin your little side project?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” he said and the flatness of his voice was like the scrape of fingernails over a chalkboard. She would never hurt a child, and she had a feeling Jonas knew that and was needling her. Trying to make her walk out so he’d be alone. Well, damned if she would do that.

“It was your coach who came up with this idea. All I wanted was an interview.”

“So you could report on what big, bad Jonas got up to during the off-season.”

“So I could ask big, bad Jonas if he completely dislocated his shoulder on that last play. And, if he did dislocate it, did that lead to a complete labral tear or only a partial?”

Jonas whirled on the field. “Who told you I dislocated my shoulder?”

“I watched the video tape. Even we princesses know how to operate Play and Rewind on our own. Also, the team held a press conference, which you didn’t attend, and the old coach mentioned surgery.”

“Yeah, well, he was mad about being replaced by Highland.”

“He didn’t lie, though, did he?” She put her hand on his arm, ignoring the flare of heat that coursed along her fingertips as she did so. “Fifteen million people saw you get hit. At least ten football analysts have gone on record with shoulder dislocation as the reason for your surgery. I’m one more, but I’m not just asking about the injury. I want to know what happens next.”

“And if I don’t know?” Was it her imagination or was there a rawness to his voice?

“A lot of people don’t know what happens next.”

“You seem to have that all mapped out. Weren’t you in the spotlight a month or so ago because of your relationship with a steroid supplier?” Imagination, she decided, because his Texas drawl was decidedly pompous.

Brooks blushed. “No, I broke the story of steroid abuse at a program.”

“A program that was headed up by an ex-boyfriend.”

“Wrong. But I can see you’ve been doing your research on me. Funny, I thought I was the reporter.”

“So you weren’t dating him?”

“I don’t date football players. Or coaches. Or team executives. I have very strict rules about that. But, we did go to dinner. Twice, with mutual friends.”

“And now you’re here in Kentucky looking for your next big scoop?”

“I’m in Kentucky because this is the assignment the network offered, and it’s a good one. Don’t think I haven’t thanked my lucky stars—”

“And your father’s connections—”

Brooks crossed her arms over her chest. “His connections are less than you’d imagine, but yes, I am the daughter of a Kentucky football legend. I grew up on a football field, remember? I’ve probably attended more games than you’ve played in, wrapped my share of jacked-up ankles and wrists and was seriously considering a degree in sports medicine before the journalism bug bit me.” She took a breath. “I just want to tell your story. Your way.”

“You wanted to be a trainer?” Jonas laughed as he said the words.

Brooks straightened, stepped closer to him and jabbed her index finger at his chest. “I’d have been a kick-ass sports doc. If I could have just passed the fainting test.”

“Fainting test?”

“Me, blood. Don’t mix so much.” Saying those words aloud, to Jonas Nash who had probably never failed at anything, rankled.

Laughter shot from his mouth, but seemed to come from all over his body. He doubled over at the waist and the smile splitting his face was a mile wide. “You were going to be a sports doc and you don’t like blood?”

“Has nothing to with not liking blood. Has to do with fainting at the sight of blood,” she said. “Give me bulging ankles, torn hamstrings, even a dislocated finger and I’m fine. One bone protruding from a leg and I’m going to be flat on the ground with the injured player.” He kept laughing. No, no, howling was more like it. Brooks shook her head. “There, I told you something embarrassing about me. Now, you, and it doesn’t even have to be embarrassing. Why do I need to show up here every day for the next couple of weeks before you’ll sit down with me? Your story, remember? I just want to be the one to tell it.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Even though you’re the daughter of a football legend.” Jonas turned toward the track, crossed it and picked up a couple of orange cones. He began setting them up along the cinder track. Brooks hurried to catch up.

“I’m giving your charity much-needed publicity.”

“In exchange for open access to me,” he put in.

“And I’ve been nothing but nice to you since the day we met, while you’ve spent countless hours thinking up ways to avoid even having a phone conversation with me.”

“So you kept calling for personal reasons.” He put down a cone and, before Brooks could back away, drew his finger down the side of her face. Her skin tingled under his touch and she was frozen by the look in his eyes. Little flecks of gold stood out from the brown and her heart began to pound. He wanted her. Not on this field and definitely not in an interview, but Jonas Nash wanted little Brooks Smith. She swallowed, hard. “All you had to do was tell me that.”

“I-it wasn’t personal,” she said, wondering why it was so hard to concentrate while he touched her.

Jonas twisted his mouth as if disappointed and dropped his hand from the side of her face. “That’s too bad. Because I’m real good at personal,” he said.

“Is the injury why your hands trembled when you picked up the trophy at the awards show?” She had to get this conversation back where she understood what was happening. She didn’t date football players, didn’t even find most of them attractive. Yet with this man all she felt was attraction. Attraction and excitement and maybe just a little hint of danger.

“My shoulder is fine,” he said. “How are your ankles?”

Brooks looked down, dumbfounded by the question. “Okay?”

“I thought it would be polite to ask since, you know, you have so many problems staying upright. Might want to invest in some orthopedic shoes if that imbalance keeps up.”

How dare he? She’d slipped on a marble floor in four-inch heels. Even if every other presenter seemed to have no problem with the stage, this was so not the time to bring that up. This was the time to...to...do something else.

“My ankles are just fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Good to know, maybe it’s just me that keeps throwing you off balance, Brook.” He walked away and this time Brooks let him because if she didn’t she’d...

Well, she might just scratch his eyes out. The man was impossible. Yes, she was a reporter with a job to do, but that job wasn’t to ruin his life.

She flexed her fingers.

“And it isn’t Brook, it’s Brooks,” she emphasized the s, but he didn’t look back. She raised her voice. “B-R-O-O-K-S, which every other person in the sports world seems to know, but which you can’t seem to remember.”

Who was she kidding? She didn’t really want to scratch his eyes out. As obstinate and annoying as he was, Jonas was also satisfyingly distracting. He slipped inside the field house, taking his yummy gluteus maximus out of her view. Distracting and energizing and...

She’d rather rake her fingernails down his spine than scratch out his eyes, and that was bad. Very, very bad. Because she was a journalist with a story to tell.

Jonas Nash needed to stay off-limits.

CHAPTER FOUR

JONAS LAY ON his bed at the farm he’d bought the previous year, staring out the window. What if this didn’t go well? What if the kids didn’t want anything to do with a washed-up quarterback? He grimaced. Washed-up was probably a little strong. The boys had seemed excited enough the previous afternoon, but that could have been from just getting off the buses that brought them in and not enthusiasm about two weeks of football.

He sat up and, with his elbows on his knees, put his head in his hands. He’d never really spent time at the Building Blocks of Football Camp before. Sure, he would show up on opening day and give a ten-minute pep talk, but then he’d be back in his car going to whatever vacation or party was on the agenda, and he’d fooled himself that he was doing it for the team. When he was photographed, the team was photographed. Fooled himself into thinking a bunch of party-hard football players could become a winning team when really it meant they were tired on game day. Unreliable to one another and to the fans.

The worst case of entitlement I’ve seen on the football field, ever. Wasn’t that what Walt Zeigler, their former coach, said before walking away from the press conference podium—and football—in February?

And it was Jonas’s fault. He’d led his college team to a National Championship. He didn’t lead the Kentuckians anywhere except to a bar or a beach.

Obsessing on the past wouldn’t change it, though. Action might change the future of the team. Action that included hard work, and it might as well start with a football camp for kids from around the region.

Within a half hour he was showered and dressed and on the highway, heading to the camp. He ate a protein bar in the truck but stayed in the cab, staring at the banner hanging over the field entryway.

Character. Courage. Commitment.

The camp banner. His camp banner. His idea. And not for a photo opportunity, but because he believed it. He grabbed his bag from the passenger seat and slung it over his shoulder. All those years ago, football had given him direction; it would do it again, for him and for the boys coming to the camp. He was through failing.

“Hey, Muscles,” said Brooks from behind him. “I thought we might get to the field before you today.”

“Probably wouldn’t set a good example if I was late to my own camp on the first full day.”

“And you’re worried about setting a good example?” Her green eyes were sharp, but her tone light.

“Yeah. I am.” It was past time he lived up to the promises he made to himself during that first camp with Earl: that he would be the one to decide his worth, no one else. No more swilling Maalox, no more killing himself trying to be something that he simply wasn’t.

She pointed over his shoulder and he turned to see several of the boys filing out from the main gym where they’d built a kind of dorm system for the duration of the camp.

“Then you’d better get ready. Those boys don’t look like they’re here for a tea party,” she said as one boy jostled another. A few separated from the group to pick up balls from the bins on the sidelines and began throwing to one another.

This he understood. The excess of energy early in the morning. The good-natured teasing and jostling. The need to have a football in his hands. Jonas couldn’t stop the smile that spread over his face.

“If they were here for a tea party they’d have dressed better.”

“They are a little underdressed for finger sandwiches and cucumber slices.” Brooks folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head to the side so that her dark blond ponytail brushed past her shoulders. She wore khaki capris and flat-soled shoes that would make walking on the field turf easier than heels. An emerald-green silky top drifted just past her slim hips and set off her eyes. “Do I pass inspection?”

Jonas shrugged. “I was just thinking you made a good shoe choice. Most of the female reporters I’ve known insist on five-inch heels.”

“I’m not most sports reporters.”

“So I’ve gathered.” Her cameraman brushed past them. “I should apologize for getting your name wrong. Somehow I never heard that s on the end.”

“A lot of people get it wrong.”

“So you’ve told off, what, a thousand people in your lifetime because of your name?”

“Not quite a thousand.” She glanced at him from under her lashes and the connection of their gazes tightened the muscles in his belly. Jonas swallowed. “Most of the time I let it slide. Yesterday afternoon I was tired and hot and I snapped at you. So I’ll accept your apology if you’ll accept mine.”

“Technically that wasn’t an apology.” He couldn’t help the little jibe. Not because he wanted to make her angry or keep her off-balance, but because it was fun baiting her. Fun to watch that slow burn of annoyance straighten her spine or light a fire in those green eyes. Or, like now, make her pull the corner of her lower lip between her teeth.

“Technically you didn’t apologize, either,” she said finally. “I thought this little confab was about burying the hatchet.”

“And I thought it was about saying hello before a day filled with sweaty teenage boys, footballs flying through the air and—”

“And you avoiding more questions from me? Don’t worry, I’m writing all the questions down, and I’ll ask you every single one at the end of the camp. Starting with this one—you hinted that I kept calling because of a personal interest, not business. I postulate that, since you always had a ready excuse, you spent a lot of time thinking about me this spring.”

Jonas opened his mouth to rebut her suggestion, but then snapped his mouth closed. Because he had thought about her. A lot. Her scent had stayed with him after the awards show. The sound of her voice over the phone could make him shiver. And sometimes he could still feel the heat from her lower back against his hand.

Brooks put a bit more space between them. “Just how often did you think about me between the awards show and when I arrived at the stadium this week?”

“You barely crossed my mind,” he lied.

She nodded, but a knowing smile spread across her face. Brooks turned and walked away quickly, joining the photographer at the sideline.

Jonas waited a long moment, but Brooks didn’t look his way. He shouldered his bag again and took the track around the other side of the field. He glanced back once. Brooks pointed at a group of boys and said something to the photographer, seemingly oblivious to him. But then her head turned slightly in his direction. For a split second their gazes seemed to meet across the field, and a spark of electricity seemed to ignite along the connection. That small smile spread across her face again.

He’d been thinking about her.

More often than he wanted to admit.

* * *

BY THREE O’CLOCK that afternoon Brooks was exhausted. She checked the weather app on her phone, called it a liar and then shoved it back in her satchel. If it was only eighty-five degrees on the field, she was Mrs. Claus. She swiped a small towel over the back of her neck in an effort to cool off. For the thousandth time that day her attention was captured by the quarterback.

He wore athletic shorts, an old T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and worn sneakers. While everyone else on the field was shiny with sweat his shirt appeared dry. How could he not be melting in this heat?

Earl and another coach joined in the impromptu water fight, lobbing cups of water toward Jonas and a boy who hadn’t joined the rest of the group. For most of the day, the boy had sat alone on the sidelines. He’d seemed uninterested in anything that was going on in the stadium, and the lack of enthusiasm drew her attention back to him several times throughout the day.

“Grab a few frames of Jonas and the kid,” she said.

“Surprised they’re not in the middle of the water fight,” said Kent Cooper, the cameraman who’d been assigned to her for the season, as he turned the camera and began shooting. He looked longingly at the fun on the field. “That’s where I’d be if I didn’t have a picky reporter making me stand out here in hundred-degree weather without so much as a water-spraying fan to keep me cool.”

“I convinced the local affiliate to let us borrow their portable tent for the day, didn’t I?” That had taken a little fast talking over the lunch hour and a frantic drive to the station and back so they wouldn’t miss anything that happened at the camp.

“We could have wrapped this up by eleven, you know.”

“And done what with the rest of our day?”

He pushed his ball cap back on his head and his sweaty hair stood out in long spikes from his skull. “Found a nice, cool swimming pool and an iced bucket of Coronas? The network doesn’t want a three-minute package about a kids’ football camp.”

“There was nothing new at the stadium today—”

Jonas got up from the sidelines and motioned to the kid to join him. Brooks watched and waited while the kid jogged a few yards down the field. Jonas cocked his arm and threw, and the ball wobbled through the air before plummeting back to earth short of the intended receiver.

“That’s new,” Kent said as he focused on the action down the field. “I didn’t think Jonas Nash knew how to throw that bad.”

“It was...probably just a fluke. It’s been a long, hot day.” The excuse sounded hollow to her own ears.

“Fluke or not, people are going to want to see that.” Kent stopped the tape and rewound to watch the pass through the viewfinder.

“No.” She shook her head. That pass was not going out to thousands of people without an explanation, and she wouldn’t get to draft that until the end of the camp at least. “You’re right. We’ve been here long enough today. Let’s pack it up and we’ll get some more of the coach and kid interviews tomorrow.”

Kent didn’t say anything; he just watched her for a long moment. “I’m sure the network would make room for this if you asked.”

“And what would I report on? A fluky pass at the end of the day between a quarterback and a kid who didn’t seem to want to be here?” Her stomach did a sickening flip.

“There’s the injury from last season, the rumors about his rehab—”

“I’m a reporter, not a rumormonger,” Brooks said. She was not going to put Jonas on the network without asking him what happened with that pass. And she couldn’t ask him because she’d promised to hold all her questions until after the camp. That was their deal: she got the interview after he got publicity for his camp.

Kent watched her for another long moment and then shrugged, mumbled something about being paid whether or not their footage hit the air and began tearing down their equipment. Brooks breathed a sigh of relief that her colleague hadn’t pushed. She could easily tell him about the deal she’d made, but then he’d ask why, and she didn’t know him well enough to trust him with her intuition about Jonas’s injury. Kent’s reputation was solid, but everyone wanted their fifteen minutes of fame.

While the cameraman finished cleaning up, Brooks turned back to the field. The coaches were picking up discarded paper cups while the boys refilled the big water coolers. Jonas and the kid were still apart from the rest of the group, and the football he’d thrown lay at his feet. He’d folded his arms across the chest and said something to the boy who trotted across the field toward the makeshift dorms. Jonas bent down and picked up the ball, tossing it lightly in the air a few times.

Kent tapped Brooks on the shoulder and waved. “Nine tomorrow morning?”

“Make it ten. Like you said, there is only so much of this footage we’re going to need.”

Kent shouldered his camera and tripod. He’d left the tent up for the next day. “For what it’s worth, I get it. Nash has charmed a lot of people.”

“I’m not being charmed,” she said without thinking about it. “I report on facts, not innuendo. If you don’t like that, this isn’t the job for you.”

“Sooner or later you’ll have to report on the injury.”

“I know that, but right now there is nothing to report.”

Kent left. Brooks focused her attention on the field. She knew it. That’s why she made the deal, or at least part of the reason. But Jonas Nash was more than a piece of football news. In total, she’d spent less than a day with him. Fifteen minutes at the awards show, another thirty in the locker room and then Earl’s office. An hour or so the day before and five minutes this morning.

From under the tent, she watched the last of the boys file inside the dorm area. They would have free time until six when the caterers brought in dinner, and then they’d break into small groups to work on team-building exercises. Earl knotted the top of the trash bag and put it into a receptacle and then waved to the other coaches as he left the field. One by one everyone left until it was just her, standing under the tent, and Jonas, tossing the ball on the sidelines.

She’d reported on worse injuries from the sidelines, with even less information available to her, and never felt guilty about doing her job. Less than a day. She’d known Jonas for several months, but had spent less than a day in his presence. So why was she so reluctant to go on the record about his injury without his input?

And why couldn’t she bring herself to leave the field when he was still there?

* * *

JONAS CHECKED HIS watch and then quickened his pace. It was just before seven on the third day of the camp and so far he had the track to himself. The boys would start wandering out of the dorms soon, and he wanted to get another mile in before they did. Even if his shoulder wasn’t one hundred percent by the time training camp began in a few weeks, the rest of him would be in top form.

He heard another set of pounding feet and turned his head to find Mark, a boy who had kept his distance from the rest of the guys so far, pacing him.

“Good morning.”

“Yeah,” the kid said. Sweat left darker streaks in the kid’s brown hair, and his face was red as if he’d been running much longer than the minute or so it would have taken him to catch up with Jonas from the dorm area, and the track had been empty when he pulled up.

“You left the campus this morning or are you just getting back in?”

Mark shot him a sidelong look. “That grounds for sending me home?”

Jonas was no psychologist, but he would swear there was hope in the question. As if the kid wanted to be sent home. Not surprising, given how standoffish he’d been for the past two days. “Not unless you left to buy alcohol or drugs.” Jonas slowed his pace slightly and Mark fell in beside him as if he didn’t notice the change. “You didn’t, did you?”

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