There’s more to win than just the season

Deacon Fallon has made something of himself. Yeah, it wasn’t easy becoming a successful—now retired—pro basketball player, but he did it. In the process, he made his brother’s life better. That’s always been Deacon’s goal.

This latest effort to help, however, may push Deacon too far. He’s been roped into coaching the high school girls’ team! Worse, there’s a little offside action brewing between him and his hot assistant coach, Julia Bradley. Definitely not in his plans, but he can’t resist her. And for the first time, Deacon wants something that has nothing to do with his brother and everything to do with Julia!

Julia clutched his shoulder to keep from crashing into him.

Deacon didn’t flinch, his muscles and balance keeping him rock steady as she gathered herself.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice low and much too close to her ear. She nodded, the pencil forgotten as she let herself touch him for one or two seconds longer than necessary, sliding her free hand through his thick hair, relishing the contrast of soft silk and hard muscle. He rested a hand on her hip.

“I’m fine.” Julia retreated, giving herself space and trying to settle her nerves. “My mom used to measure us like this on our birthdays. The marks are probably still there inside the front hall closet.”

He rubbed his thumb against his lower lip and she turned her back on him, manufacturing urgency around finding the pencil. To keep herself from touching his lips.

Dear Reader,

When I write these letters, I try to choose some element of the story that resonates with me and that I hope will intrigue you. For the first time, I’m struggling with this task because so much about this book is special to me.

Deacon Fallon is exactly the kind of strong, gifted guy with deep vulnerabilities I like to write about best. He has a problem he’s hidden his whole life, and it’s one that he thinks makes him unlovable. Julia Bradley is not only an expert problem solver, she thinks she knows Deacon. But it will take both of them being honest and trusting with each other, in ways that feel dangerous, before they find their happy ending.

In addition to a hero and heroine I love, this book includes a thread about the relationship between Deacon and his brother, They love each other, but don’t know each other. Ever since I was a little girl reading The Outsiders and Tex by S.E. Hinton, or the Sackett novels by Louis L’Amour, I’ve loved stories about brothers. I hope you’ll fall in love with Deacon’s little brother Wes, who has his own book coming in September 2012.

Extras, including behind-the-scenes facts, deleted scenes and information about my other books, are on my website, www.ellenhartman.com. I blog every month with the other Harlequin Superromance authors at www.superauthors.com. I’d love to hear from you! Send an email to ellen@ellenhartman.com.

Ellen Hartman

The Long Shot
Ellen Hartman

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in creative writing and then spent the next fifteen years writing technical documentation. Eventually, she worked up the courage to try fiction and has since published seven novels with the Harlequin Superromance line.

Currently, Ellen lives in a college town in New York with her husband and sons.

All backlist available in ebook. Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

This book is dedicated to my sister, Anne.

I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Contents

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 ONE

“I’M SORRY—did you say they cut the entire athletic budget?” Julia pushed her chair back from her desk and stood to face Ty Chambers, ex-jock, current jerk, her boss and the principal of Milton High School.

“The district is in real financial trouble, Julia. You know this. The budget was voted down and we’re on austerity spending. It’s one of the compromises the board had to make to preserve resources for student necessities like Advanced Placement classes and guidance staff.”

He gestured around her office with a look that clearly showed how little he thought of her kind of necessity.

Julia’s guidance office wasn’t really an office. The cubicle was carved out of a corner of the library and assembled from movable walls. It wasn’t even big enough for angry pacing, which was what she needed to do right now to avoid saying something to Ty that would get her fired.

“But the whole athletic department? The board actually cut the boys’ basketball program? No Milton Tigers?”

“Yes, the board cut the entire department,” Ty affirmed.

Ty had been a Milton Tiger; he was wearing his state championship ring on his hand today as he did every day. He’d gained at least fifty pounds since his playing days, so the ring was probably stuck on his finger, but no doubt a guy like him saw that as a bonus—a perma-ring to match the Tiger tattoo he’d likely gotten during his freshman season. Most ex-Tigers took the team more seriously than they took just about anything, yet Ty was standing calmly in her office, telling her they’d cut the program. Right.

“The boosters put the money back for the boys, didn’t they?” she asked. Not that she needed to. A first-grader would have known the answer.

The Milton Tigers basketball boosters, an independent club made up of former players, parents, community leaders and anyone who wanted to be part of the fever that gripped Milton every Friday during basketball season, was flush with cash and power. The boosters funded all kinds of perks for the boys and their fans. Why not a whole season?

“Community support through the boosters is funding some programs, enabling them to continue at their current levels despite the board cuts,” Ty intoned.

She moved a stack of files filled with the names of kids who needed so much more than she could offer back from the edge of her desk, praying for self-control. Ty never spouted that community-support line spontaneously. It was a rehearsed speech to cut off arguments about why her girls’ team of basketball players would be sitting home this winter while the boys’ team went on undisturbed. “Some programs like boys’ basketball.”

“The Tigers are the heart of Milton High. You know that.”

Ty was right. She knew all about Tigers basketball. She knew the Tigers regularly turned out state championship teams and that the booster support for one athletic team in a small community like Milton was astounding. She knew the boys’ basketball team had fewer scholar-athletes and more kids who walked a thin line between exhibiting high spirits and committing juvenile offenses than any other team in the school. She also knew the sexual favors the Tiger cheerleaders allegedly handed out to the team went beyond anything their parents could conceive of. So yes, she knew what the Tigers meant to the school and she didn’t like much of it.

“Boys’ basketball survives and everything else gets cut?”

“Boys’ basketball has the only team with an active boosters group. Other teams can start cultivating community funding.”

“Basketball season begins in two weeks!”

Ty didn’t smile, but she sensed how much he wanted to.

Not for the first time in her life, Julia wished she knew how to bat her eyelashes and cozy up to a guy to get what she wanted. It would get a better reception from Ty. Unfortunately, growing up with three older siblings who lived in cutthroat competition with one another, she’d learned to always follow up an elbow to the stomach with a kill shot to the groin, not bat her eyelashes. She didn’t have feminine wiles and she was unlikely to find any in the drawers of her beat-up steel desk. So she stuck with what she knew how to do. When you face a problem, pummel it until it gives in.

Stepping out from behind her desk, she got right up in Ty’s space. She didn’t care if he was eight inches taller than her and still had the frame of a jock. She’d been at odds with him since his first year as principal when she testified at a district hearing that ended with the suspension of the team’s starting forward for threatening a teacher’s aide in the art room. She wasn’t about to duck from Ty now. Her brothers had trained her not to show fear.

“Bullshit,” she said. “You got together with your cronies and pulled a miracle for the only team you care about. But my girls get a lot out of playing. At least they’re not on the streets stirring up trouble, or sleeping with one of your precious Tigers.”

Ty didn’t look ruffled, which pissed her off even more. He was probably loving every second of this. “The school is grateful for the help the boosters provide,” he acknowledged.

“You can find some money for the girls’ team and you know it,” she went on.

“My hands are tied.”

“What if I forgo my coaching stipend?” She used that money to provide extras for the girls on the team, like monthly pizza parties and movie nights, but she’d worry about more funding once she convinced Ty to give her team back.

“Julia…”

“You can’t think this is going to fly without a protest. What about Title IX? You can’t have a team for boys and not for girls. I’ll file a lawsuit myself.” She had no idea how to file a lawsuit, or even if she had a case, but her three older siblings were all lawyers and Ty knew it.

He turned around from the door and glared at her. “You’re going to push this, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, every molecule in her body wanting him to dare her.

“Fine. You can have girls’ basketball. There won’t be much of a budget, but that’s okay, because you said you’d work without a stipend. This is a bare-bones operation, Julia. You want it—you’ve got it. However, I guarantee you nobody cares. You’ll save the girls’ team and work your butt off, and nothing will change.”

He’d relented so quickly it confirmed her suspicion that he’d expected her protest. He’d probably already cleared some money for the girls with the boosters, which meant she’d given up her stipend for nothing. He had no idea how much she wanted to step on his foot or spit or do something that would make an impact on his big, blond, jockish certainty that only the boys’ team mattered. Her anger got the better of her.

“How about a bet?” she asked. She was gratified to see his eyebrows lift in surprise. At last she’d gotten a reaction.

“What kind of bet?”

“We make it to the state tournament.”

He laughed at her.

She hated being laughed at.

“And our girls’ boosters raise enough to fund the tournament trip and housing.”

“Julia, you just dived right off the deep end.”

“Does that mean you accept the bet?” she demanded. The logical part of her mind that had set up automatic withdrawals for her rent and her car insurance screamed at her to shut up, accept the funding and move on. But the impetuous part of her mind that had taken the bait when her brother Henry goaded her into streaking at her parents’ Christmas party at the age of six told her she better not let Ty off the hook.

“What’s my offer? After your team makes the tournament and your mythical boosters raise the cash, what do I owe you?”

“Full funding for next year, including a summer camp. With academic enrichment.”

He snapped his fingers as if to say “chump change.” “Fine. And when you lose?”

Her foot twitched toward his instep, but she controlled herself. Barely. “Name it,” she said.

“You run the Boosters Bash in March. You throw the party and you plan and deliver the sincere thank-you to Coach Simon, the Milton Tigers and their fans after another championship season.”

She shook his hand so fast the conversation was over before he’d finished laying out his terms. She’d rather quit her job than fete the Tigers and their supporters, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was meeting Ty’s smug smile with one of her own.

He left, and she felt the effects of adrenaline in her shaking hands and sweaty neck. She lifted her hair with one hand and fanned her skin with the other, musing about the bet. At least the terms were straightforward. Without boosters and a winning record her team was sunk. She’d have to get those two things. Quick.

School was out for the day, so she locked up her office behind her, but made sure her cell number was on the whiteboard on her door—in case any of the kids needed her.

As she cut through the library on the way to her car, she called her brother Henry, and caught him on his cell phone, at their mom’s. He was taking down the awnings to prepare for winter.

“I’m stopping by,” she said. “Don’t leave until I get there, okay?”

Main Street in Milton was like a skeleton stripped of flesh. The storefronts were still there, but almost all the businesses were closed. A restaurant called Murphy’s. A furniture and lighting store. A barbershop with a red-and-white-striped pole. The history of the town was written in the names on the open storefronts. Julia drove below the speed limit, letting the sad street sink in. She lived in a small apartment just off Main Street and walked past the tired storefronts practically every day, but she was usually so busy with her life that she never really saw her neighborhood.

Even if she was the very best guidance counselor, would anything she did alter the bleak outlook for Milton? On a good day at work, she connected a kid with a necessary resource, be it tutoring, counseling or sometimes just a website. But her reach was small and the problems in Milton were not.

It took her less than an hour to drive to Jericho, the town she’d grown up in. A mere forty miles from Milton, Jericho was thriving. The economy had a solid base in Jericho State University, one of the New York State university campuses. A pretty Adirondack setting, low crime and good jobs coupled with the culture of a college town drew young families, who built up the tax base so the Jericho public school system got better and better. Julia was, frankly, jealous of the Jericho school budget.

She pulled her Volkswagen into a space in front of the gingerbread Victorian she’d grown up in. Henry was on a stepladder, unhooking the last of the awnings from the front porch. Their two older siblings, Allison and Geoff, were partners in a Manhattan law firm, but Henry had moved back to Jericho. He’d bought the house next door to their mom a few years ago after he was hired as the vice president for legal affairs at SUNY Jericho. Julia teased him about the family compound, but her mom was happy to have one of her children so close.

“Hey, Henry,” she called. “Got a basketball?”

“Garage,” he said, his voice tight as he struggled to control the rolled awning.

“You want me to help with that?” she asked.

He rested the awning on the porch. “I’m pretty much done. Why do you want the basketball?”

“To see if a miracle has taken place.”

She trotted down the driveway and across the grass, into Henry’s yard. Inside the garage she spotted a bin of sports equipment and grabbed a basketball from the top.

Just then, her mom, Carole, opened the front door. She was wearing a red silk suit—which meant this must be one of her volunteer days. After retiring from her law practice several years ago, Carole kept herself busy with a full volunteer schedule. She and Henry walked down the steps and watched as Julia dribbled and shot the basketball at the hoop their dad had installed over the garage for Geoff’s seventh birthday.

The ball missed the basket, falling far short. Julia grabbed it again and tried for a layup, but she was too far under the basket and she missed once more. The ball hit the rim and dropped fast, banging her on the head. Her mom’s quiet “Oh, dear” made Julia feel foolish and compounded her irritation.

“Come on!” she said as she kicked the ball away from her feet. “You’re round. The hoop is round. Why won’t you just go in?”

“Maybe because you’re a terrible basketball player, Coach Bradley.”

“Henry, don’t tease your sister,” Carole said.

Julia rubbed her head as her brother dug the ball out from under the bushes and sent it back to her with an easy bounce pass.

“The school district cut all the sports today,” she said. “Austerity budget.”

“I’m so sorry,” her mom said.

Julia shot the ball a third time, and it hit high on the backboard before bouncing back toward her. “Not to worry. I made a little bet with the principal so he’ll get the boosters to pay for the season.”

Henry whistled. “Of course you did. Let me guess. He taunted you.”

“Laughed at me.”

“That’s straight out of my playbook circa fifth grade. A little mocking laughter and you’ll take any dare.”

“Julia—”

“I know, Mom. It was dumb and I shouldn’t lose my temper. I’m planning to work on that after I turn thirty-five.” Which gave her three more years to knock heads with Ty. Maybe she’d get him trained to her will before she had to give up her temper.

Henry caught the ball when she passed it to him. He tossed it and it swished through the net.

Julia eyed him thoughtfully. He was about six foot, and for a thirty-four-year-old guy with a desk job, he was in great shape.

“Want to be my assistant coach?” she asked. “The position is up for grabs, and all you have to do is whip my girls into shape so they make the state tournament.”

“That’s your bet?” Even her mom’s professional-grade optimism in her children’s skills was shaken.

“If I can find the right assistant, we’ll make it.” She fist-bumped Henry’s shoulder, reminding him that he was her big brother and she had total faith in him. “Some generous, kind person who’s manly and macho and good at sports.”

He moved a few inches away. “That shot was a fluke,” he protested.

“Maybe not. Maybe God really did send a miracle to help me win this bet. Shoot again and we’ll see.”

Henry picked up the ball and squinted at the basket. “This is not a bet, Julia. We haven’t agreed to terms.”

He shot and the ball slid easily through the hoop.

“Another fluke.” He looked panicked. “Mom, you heard me say it wasn’t a bet.”

Carole said, “Your sister wouldn’t trap you like that.”

“She made me donate one hundred dollars to her uniform fund last year after she held her breath longer than me underwater at the beach.” He kicked the side of Julia’s shoe. “Geoff and I know she cheated.”

“That accusation was never proven.”

Julia settled on the bottom step of the porch, her mom two steps above her and Henry next to her.

“You don’t have time to coach this semester anyway,” Carole said. She turned to Julia. “Your brother is leading a seminar at the library about estate planning and charitable gifts. We’re hoping to secure some new gifts to shore up our funding.”

Julia sniffed. “He sucks at basketball anyway.”

“No one else on the faculty wants to help?” Henry asked.

“I’ve reached out to people in the past, but everyone is pulled so thin.”

“What about a parent from the team?” her mom inquired. “Or an aunt or uncle or something?”

“I asked last year and didn’t get any interest. I can probably find someone who’d be a warm body at practice, but I need an expert—a real basketball genius. With no budget, this expert also really has to be an angel.”

Henry stretched out his legs. “If you were working at a college, you’d go after the alumni. What about that famous guy from Milton who went to the pros?”

“Deacon Fallon?” Julia said. “The boosters turned the trophy case at school into a shrine to him after he graduated.”

Deacon was her first, most public failure as a guidance counselor. He was a senior during her first year at Milton and had flat out refused to follow her advice to get a college education. His situation had been both painfully complicated—two dead parents, a younger brother in foster care, bad test scores and borderline grades—and desperately simple—an incredible gift for shooting the ball through the hoop and a league full of men willing to make him a millionaire if he’d put on their uniform and play.

“You sure dream big, Henry,” she said. “There’s no way he’d do it, and besides, I wouldn’t know how to start asking him for help. What? Just call him up and invite him to coach?”

“Or maybe he’d donate money so you could hire someone. For our donors, we look at their existing relationship with the school. Does he come back? Does Fallon give money? Is he already doing stuff for the boys’ team?”

“As far as I know, he turns down all their invites. He sends a check once a year but he earmarks it for the general athletic fund, so it gets split among all the sports.”

A brief silence followed.

“That doesn’t sound promising,” her mom said.

“‘Not promising’ is putting it nicely. It also doesn’t sound as if Deacon is your miracle.” Henry stood and grabbed the rolled awnings. “I’m taking these to the garage. Be right back.”

Julia scuffed the toe of her black pump in the grass. “Rubbing Deacon Fallon, or even just his check, in Ty’s face would have been so satisfying.”

Their mother scooted down one step so they were sitting side by side. “How much of this bet is about the team and how much is about you hating your principal?”

Julia winced. Their mom knew her too well. “The bet is personal, but the girls deserve a team. Win or lose, at least I got them one last season.”

“And what have you gotten?”

“To do my job.”

“You’re a guidance counselor, not a coach.”

“My job is helping kids. Guiding them. Connecting them with resources for them to find out what they need to succeed. I spend so much of my time tracking standardized test scores, fiddling with the district scheduling software and filing all the paperwork I generate. Every year I drown a little deeper in administrative stuff. The team is where I do real work, you know?”

“Things certainly have changed since your dad was working in the schools.”

“Did he ever think about quitting? Doing something different?”

Her mom stroked her hair. “You’re not your dad, Julia.”

“That’s for sure.” Her father had died when she was ten and at the funeral so many people told stories of how he’d influenced their lives that she decided right then to be a guidance counselor. But it felt so futile most of the time. One of the students her dad had counseled recently endowed an addition to the Jericho High School library in her dad’s name. She wasn’t looking for that kind of acknowledgment. She just wanted to help the kids.

“I wasn’t comparing your results. You approach your job differently. Frankly, you take things to heart more than he did.”

“I keep feeling I should be doing more.” She leaned into her mom’s shoulder. “I can’t lose the team. I won’t.”

Henry returned from the garage. “So what can we do to help?”

Julia straightened up and reached for the purse she’d set down when she’d first arrived. “My new boosters will be key to our successful year. Do you happen to have your checkbook on you?”

Henry rolled his eyes, but he went inside his house and came back with a check. Her mom wrote one as well. She dug out a pad of pink sticky notes and printed Milton Girls Basketball Supporters on the top. She drew a stick figure shooting a ball on the first one and then printed Henry’s name. On the one she made for her mom, she drew two stick figures going up for a jump ball.

“So now we have two fans.”

“Make two more, for Geoff and Allison. I’m going to the city this weekend, and I’ll get checks from them.”

“Four boosters in one day,” she said. “All I need now is my coach.”

* * *

SHE MEANT TO go directly home, but she stopped at her office for two student files she had to review for a special-education committee meeting the next day. She was about to duck out the rear door into the parking lot, but as she turned toward the back of the building, the lights in the trophy case in the lobby caught her eye.

Milton High School had been built in the early 1950s and it showed its age in many ways. The architecture of the lobby, with its thick marble pillars and heavy stone steps grooved deep by generations of students, was still wonderful. The solid stone reassured her. The building would be there the next day and the next, and if she persevered every day, she’d have another chance to do what she could to help the kids she had under her care.

The display case was stuffed full of awards and trophies from years of Tiger basketball dominance. Taking place of pride in the middle of the center shelf, directly under one of the spotlights, was a photo of Deacon Fallon.

He didn’t look like much of a superstar. At eighteen, he had been tall and awkward off the court. Thin enough that he looked gaunt because his body mass hadn’t yet caught up to his height. He’d kept his hair shaved so short his scalp showed through in places, and the combination of blond stubble and pale skin had made him appear, well, mangy. Knowing what she knew now about how some of her students’ families lived, she suspected his diet hadn’t provided much in the way of fruits and vegetables. He’d also suffered from serious acne and a misguided attempt to grow a mustache.

No, nothing about his appearance in the picture said superstar. But she’d seen him play way back then. She might not know how to coach the game, but she knew magic when she saw it. As hard as she’d argued for him to go to college and as much as she still regretted not being able to convince him, she acknowledged his great gift at basketball. She’d just wanted him to trade it for an education and use it as a platform for lifetime employment rather than a get-rich-quick contract.

She’d done her best to persuade him that the NBA would be around for him after college, that he shouldn’t squander his chance to get an education. The entire school had watched the draft in the gym one spring afternoon, but she’d stayed holed up in her office.

She moved a step closer to the case and pulled out her phone, tilting the screen to catch the light from inside the case. She searched his name on Google and turned up a whole lot of pages about his NBA career. She changed her search terms and located him currently—or at least got a step closer to him. He was the financial backer behind a string of physical-therapy clinics, and he resided somewhere near Lake Placid. Did Ty realize he lived just a few hours from Milton, yet still snubbed the boosters?

Finding his phone number wasn’t hard, and before she really thought the action through, she thumbed open her contacts and stored his number. Not that she was planning to call him. Not that he’d come back to coach, anyway. But what if she did call him? Maybe he wouldn’t come himself, but what if he knew someone, or, as Henry had suggested, maybe he’d pay for a real coach? Weren’t professional athletes always looking for photo opportunities for their charities?

Could that skinny, stubborn, serious kid with the sweet shot and ruthless instinct for opportunities on the court hold the key to saving her girls?

CHAPTER TWO

DEACON SLAMMED HIS hand against the glass door of the university administration building and stalked out. He made no attempt to hold the door for the idiot he called a brother. In fact, the way he felt right now, he hoped the door would hit Wes in the face. The kid desperately needed someone to knock some sense into him.

“Deacon, wait,” Wes called.

He kept walking. His Porsche convertible was parked in a visitor’s spot right outside the building. “Deacon!” His brother was behind him, the flip-flops he wore slapping the pavement.

“Get in the car.”

“Can’t you listen for one minute?”

“I was just at a meeting with your coach and a very nice woman from the dean of students office. A meeting in which I fully expected to listen to what you had to say, but— Wait a minute. You weren’t there, were you? They were talking about kicking you out of school, Wes, and you couldn’t be bothered to show up?”

“I got there.”

“A whole hour late. The meeting was over before you managed to drop by.”

“Aren’t you even going to listen to my side of the story?”

“How can there possibly be ‘your’ side to paying your roommate to do your work? How can there possibly be ‘your’ side to skipping practice? Or getting caught in a bar with a fake ID? And I’d really, really like to know how there can be ‘your’ side to stealing your coach’s car and ‘parking’ it inside the weight room.”

He heard Wes’s barely suppressed snicker when he mentioned the car.

Deacon walked back up the sidewalk to face his brother, muscling into his space because he was angry enough that he didn’t care about being nice. Deacon and Wes Fallon were both over six foot and both had spent a good part of their lives in the gym. But Deacon was ten years older and he’d shouldered responsibility for their family at an age when most boys were dreaming about learning to shave. So while he and Wes might be physically matched, he was still able to back his little brother down a step when he wanted to.

“You wouldn’t be laughing if Coach Mulbrake had called the cops when he found out his car was stolen—”

“It was a joke, not auto theft.”

“How is it not theft if you took his car out of his garage without his permission? The only reason he didn’t file charges is that I begged him not to. I worked too damn hard to get to a place where I don’t have to ask anyone for favors, and I spent the last hour doing exactly that because you think everything is a big freaking joke!”

Wes squared his shoulders and put his hands on his hips. “You’re not even going to listen, are you?”

The kid might be eighteen, but he still sounded six when he thought he was being treated unfairly. Which happened more often than expected in the privileged life of Wes Fallon.

“I don’t know what you could say that would convince me you haven’t screwed up the sweet deal you have here to play ball and get a college degree on top of it. You’re suspended, Wes, and unless we scare up three hundred hours of community service and a fistful of letters of recommendation, you can kiss your college-basketball career goodbye.”

Deacon felt sick thinking about how wrong college had gone for Wes. He’d tried to give his brother everything, and he had a horrible feeling Wes didn’t want any of it because he didn’t know how much an education, respect, a life with value meant. How could his brother throw away his life on irresponsibility?

Wes might have been too young to know what had really happened to their parents, but Deacon had watched his dad drug his life away, day after agonizing day, until the man had died of exposure, drunk and strung out in the snow, just a few months after Wes was born. Their mom had died two short years later, killed in a fire at a club on a night when she’d called in sick to work. Deacon understood what happened to people who didn’t fear consequences.

“No, Wes, I’m not in the mood to listen. Get in the car. Keep your mouth shut, and we’ll talk later.”

“I’m not getting in the car.” Wes’s cheekbones were stained with splotches of red, a sure sign he was angry. That only served to piss Deacon off more. What exactly did Wes have to be angry about?

“I’m not asking you, Wes. I’m telling you. Get in the car, because if I leave without you, I’m not coming back.”

He climbed in the driver’s side and slammed the door. He took his time finding the key and fiddling with his seat belt, the whole time praying that Wes wouldn’t call his bluff. Deacon felt a stab of the panic he thought he’d left behind when he signed his first pro contract—panic that he’d lose his brother because he was too stupid to figure out how to rescue him.

Wes took off, striding down the sidewalk in those stupid flip-flops, head and shoulders above most of the other college kids.

He put the car in gear and crept along, keeping behind his brother.

They’d gotten to see their mom in the hospital for a few minutes before she died. He was twelve when he promised his mom he’d look after his two-year-old brother. Not a day of his life had passed since that he hadn’t worried about Wes. Which was why a big portion of his anger today was aimed squarely at himself. He’d let his brother down, and it was up to him to get him back on track.

He pulled up next to Wes. “You’re acting like a child. Get in the car.”

“You’re treating me like a child. Screw off.”

They reached a corner, and Wes crossed, while Deacon had to wait for a bunch of students to slouch past the bumper of his car, cell phones pressed to their ears, oblivious to the traffic, oblivious to the beauty of the campus or the beauty of being kids who fit in there. No wonder Wes took all this for granted. Every last one of them did. When Deacon finally had an opening, he eased the Porsche through and caught up to Wes. He hit the horn, but his brother didn’t turn his head.

“You’re suspended, remember?” he yelled, and three girls turned to stare. “You can’t stay on campus. Where the hell are you even going?”

When Wes stopped walking abruptly, one of the girls ran into him. He grabbed her arm and helped her catch her balance. She swept her hair back off her shoulders, looking up at Wes and falling for his smile without a second thought. One of the other girls stepped closer. Moth to the flame. Deacon shook his head, watching as his brother’s inexhaustible charm claimed another victim. The girls said something, and Wes shrugged. They walked off, Wes eyeing them, focusing anywhere but on him waiting in the car. Wes could follow the girls, walk right on out of Deacon’s life if he wanted to. He’d turned eighteen and the legal guardianship was over. Wes was under no obligation to do what Deacon said anymore, so he did the only thing he could. He held on. Waited.

Finally, Wes opened the passenger door and slumped into the seat, his long legs, in beat-up jeans, stretching under the dashboard.

“Can you not talk to me?” Wes asked.

Yeah. He could do that.

He edged back into the campus traffic. The sooner he got them out of here, the sooner he could start making plans for how he could pull this rescue off.

They stuck to the not-talking plan while they stopped at the dorm and packed up Wes’s stuff. Wes spoke once to ask if they could wait for his roommate, Oliver, whose hearing for his part in the cheating had followed the Fallons’, but Deacon was mad at Oliver, too, and he said no. They didn’t speak again as they loaded the car and left campus, or on their drive back north through New York toward the upstate town of Lamach Lake, where Deacon lived.

In fact, the not talking to each other lasted longer than Deacon had expected. Wes wasn’t normally one for extended silences. Or brooding. If something was wrong with him, everyone in the vicinity knew all the gory details because he whined and moped and generally made a nuisance of himself until someone fixed whatever the problem was or until Wes forgot there’d been a problem in the first place.

The silence lasted so long it unnerved Deacon. He said something he’d never said to Wes: “Do you know what I had to do to give you this life you’re bent on throwing away?”

Wes didn’t look at him. Didn’t move. Deacon should never have said that. He’d raised Wes because he loved him, and he didn’t resent it. When he glanced over, Wes lifted his eyebrows as if daring him to say something else.

“You’re freaking smirking at me? You have no idea how easily your life could have been utter crap. It still could if you’re not careful. You can’t go around not caring and blowing off opportunities forever. Someday you’ll have to settle down and work.”

He could hear himself yelling, hear the things he was saying, and he wanted to stop, but he was just so angry. How could Wes not know he was lucky to be where he was?

Wes’s voice was clipped, controlled and utterly cold when he spoke. “I don’t have to stay with you, you realize. If looking at me is going to piss you off this much, I can leave. I’m eighteen.”

“Too bad you’re suspended from college or you could go back there.”

Wes turned his face toward the window.

“You made a commitment to your team when you took that scholarship. Fallons don’t let their teams down. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

If it did, Wes wasn’t telling.

Deacon couldn’t allow this situation to fester. He needed to put a game plan together quickly, before Wes decided to handle things on his own. He pulled the car off to the side of the highway and, heedless of the traffic spinning past him, got out, then slammed the door. He called Victor Odenthal, his former agent and current business partner.

“Vic, are you busy?”

“Sadly, no. I had a date tonight and she canceled on me. If a woman says she forgot about her salsa class, so she can’t go out with you, are you supposed to volunteer to join the class? Was this a test?”

“Can you meet me at my house? I need to talk to you.”

“Sure. Now? Where are you? Sounds like you’re in a wind tunnel.”

“Standing on the highway. Make it an hour,” Deacon said.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.” He was about to hang up, but then he added, “And yes, she wants you to take dance lessons. Dance lessons are like a free pass to best-boyfriend status. Say yes to them and you could forget her birthday and she’d still forgive you.”

“Okay. Good to know. I’ll sign up while you drive home. See you in an hour.”

* * *

ALMOST BEFORE THE car came to a stop in the driveway of the house, Wes practically climbed out the car window he was in that much of a hurry to get away. Vic drove in right behind them and parked his black Miata into the large turnaround at the right side of the house. Deacon reached into the backseat and grabbed the envelope he’d gotten at the meeting that morning.

He and Vic walked up the flagstone path to the side door of the house, which led directly to the indoor court. When Deacon was a kid, he’d played basketball at any neighborhood hoop he could find. Net, no net. Bent rim. Backboard with bullet holes because some hunter had used it for target practice. Cracked concrete or potholed pavement. None of that had stopped him from playing, because when he was a kid, basketball was the only thing he did that made sense.

Now he had an indoor court laid with perfectly balanced hardwood. The court was well lit and climate-controlled, and had baskets he could raise or lower using the electronic controls concealed behind a panel on the wall near the scoreboard. The same panel controlled the surround-sound system. On this court, basketball didn’t just make sense—it was beautiful.

Deacon grabbed a ball and tossed it to Victor. “Let’s play for fifteen before we talk.” He removed his glasses and set them on the bench under the windows.

Victor dribbled the ball once and said, “You’re on.”

Deacon played harder than he usually did; the tension of the day had him wound so tight he needed the release. Every shot he sank centered him, chipping away some of the load of embarrassed futility that had piled up during the campus meeting. Before too long he and Vic were both sweating, cursing under their breath at missed shots or lost opportunities.

He drove for the basket, sending the ball behind Victor and taking it in. Victor gave up the chase and Deacon went up, one hand pushing the ball over the rim, before he landed lightly on the baseline.

“I had you,” Vic said. Since he was standing with his legs spread, his hands on his knees and his face dripping with sweat as he sucked in one deep breath after another, he was obviously delusional. But since he was also twenty years older than Deacon, and so lacking in natural ability that he’d never even played high school ball despite his deep desire to do so, Deacon cut him some slack.

“You did have me,” he said. And then, because Vic hated condescension as much as he hated cheaters, he added, “In your dreams.”

He walked to the bench and grabbed his water bottle, his glasses and the envelope with the papers about Wes. Vic sat on the ground in front of him and Deacon tossed him a water bottle before opening the envelope.

“Wes got suspended,” he said. “This is the paperwork.”

He looked at the papers as he handed them over one by one. As always when a page of text confronted him, his stomach clenched and the print danced and blurred. He squinted through his glasses and the squiggles on the first sheet settled down enough that he picked out his brother’s name: Weston Bennett Fallon, which reflected his mom’s attempt to mimic the names she heard on her favorite soap opera. He recognized a few other words, but not enough to make sense. Frustrated, he passed the rest of the set to Vic.

He propped his elbows on his knees, head bent, while Victor shuffled through the papers. The court was quiet and he wasn’t sure where Wes was—the one-story modern house was big enough that they could easily avoid each other. The place was far from ostentatious, and at just over three thousand square feet, it wasn’t in contention as the biggest in this Adirondack community. The court was the only true luxury. Deacon didn’t waste money and he didn’t spend it just to spend it. But he’d promised himself that he’d have a court of his own someday and that he did.

He didn’t make many promises. But when he made one, he kept it.

Victor started to read the pages aloud. He’d been reading to Deacon for years, and his voice kept a steady pace. Deacon listened and watched him at the same time. He used to watch kids read in school. With basketball, if he saw a move—a dribble, a fake, a shot—he absorbed the lines of the action unconsciously. Once he’d seen the sequence, his muscles knew how to replicate it. Sure, when he was a kid, he wasn’t perfect at everything he saw on SportsCenter. He had to work on technique and grow into his body. But basketball was never a struggle.

Reading was the opposite. He watched and listened to the other kids, and every time his turn came around, the page looked like a jumble of scratches. Eventually he’d learned enough simple words and patterns to fake his way through. Some of his teachers must have known he couldn’t read, but once he was in fifth grade, none of them did much about it. Of course, that was the year Wes was born, and then his dad had died, so he’d missed a bunch of school. Two years later his mom died and he and Wes got sent to foster care, so maybe the teachers figured he didn’t need to be hassled about his grades. He’d never been sure why no one seemed to realize how little he could read, but he guessed they looked at his parents, his address, his wardrobe and just dismissed him as another dumb kid with no future.

Victor was in the middle of the letter the teacher had written about the assignment Wes had cheated on. Deacon interrupted his friend.

“My draft-day suit was a disaster. You never saw it, but that thing was so no-class.”

“I saw a picture. Green and shiny.” Vic shuddered. “If you’d been my client then, I’d have burned it.”

“Right after I got drafted by the Stars, I got custody of Wes. We moved up here, and that fall, he started third grade at the Dalton Day School. I wore my draft suit to the parent-teacher conference. The teacher never blinked an eye. She treated me straight up, even though I guarantee none of the other parents in Wes’s school looked the way I did. You know what she said? ‘When your brother comes through the door every morning, I can count on his sunny smile.’” Deacon flattened his hands on his knees. “His freaking sunny smile.”

Vic lowered the papers and waited.

“I felt like I was drowning. In high school, I was at the top but in the NBA, I was nothing but a scrawny teenager with acne who played a couple minutes a night off the bench and wouldn’t go out to the clubs with the team. The guys didn’t have any use for me. But then that teacher told me Wes was excelling in school and smiling every day, and I figured I’d pulled off the biggest upset of all time.” He shrugged. “I saved that damn report card. The teacher made an actual smiley face on the bottom. I carried it with me when I went back on the road with the team and looked at it every night.”

“You took care of him, D. Just like you promised your mom.”

“I didn’t see any stupid sunny smile today.”

“Let me finish reading,” Vic said as he stacked the papers back up and squared the corners.

“Can you give me a quick recap and I’ll get a voice file from you later?” Deacon didn’t want Wes to come in and see Victor reading to him. He clasped his hands. “Sorry for making you drive out tonight.”

Vic was the only person who knew he couldn’t read. Deacon hated having to ask him for help. He never would have told him, but Victor figured it out himself when they were in the midst of an intense contract negotiation about six months after they started working together. Victor invited him out for dinner, confronted him and said he didn’t care if Deacon could read English, Martian or neither. They had to be honest with each other, or their partnership had no point.

Deacon thought about the meeting that morning and the additional details Victor had just given him. He couldn’t make sense of the books most second-graders could read with ease, but his memory was exceptional. Without that, he’d never have been able to fake his way along so effectively.

“The community service is the key. If he does that and shows up at the next hearing at school with some letters of recommendation, he can be reinstated, right?”

Victor nodded.

“So I just need to find community service for him to do.”

“Or you could let him find it.”

“Right.”

“Seriously, man. You’ve been cleaning up after Wes your whole life. How many times did he get suspended from high school? Six? Eight? And that vandalism thing when he was a sophomore?”

“That was a prank. They’d sprayed Silly String on some statue, and the town had come down on them because they were from the private school.”

“Be that as it may, Deacon, he’s eighteen. He’s old enough to take responsibility for himself.”

“What if he won’t?” Deacon stood. “My parents never did. What if he’s got whatever they had inside them—and this is the beginning of the end for him?”

“All the more reason you need to step back and let him stand on his own.”

“You know what he’ll do? He’ll find someone in town to give him a cushy job and he’ll live here in our cushy place. How will that change him?”

“What are you going to do? Put him into some hard-labor camp?”

“I don’t know.”

Victor said, “Any chance he could work for a literacy group?”

Deacon’s ears went hot with shame. Victor knew he hated to talk about this. “He’s not a teacher.”

“You’re twenty-eight years old, D. You’ve got years ahead of you to find a girlfriend, maybe have a kid or two, be an uncle to Wes’s kids and godfather to mine if I can ever find a woman with taste impeccable enough to marry me.” Vic held the eye contact. “Maybe you can do all that and keep up the lies about your reading, but it’ll be hard. A part of you will always be off-limits. Is that what you want?”

“Wes doesn’t have to know.” And if Vic didn’t shut up about it pretty quick, Deacon was going to hit him.

“I’m not trying to be a jerk, D, but you’re making a mistake. When he was younger, just out of foster care, he needed you to be the adult. I respect the hell out of you for what you did, and you know it. But he’s an adult now, or as good as. Might be nice to lean on him for some of this stuff.”

“Are you telling me you don’t want to help me out?”

“Don’t be a jackass. I’m just saying maybe he’d like to know you’ve struggled with stuff.”

Deacon felt sick at the thought of telling Wes. He couldn’t bear to see the look on his brother’s face if he found out he couldn’t read. “He’s so damn smart, Vic. He reads all the time. I know he’s in college, but I’m still the only person he’s got to steer him straight. If I tell him I was passed through school with fewer skills than an eight-year-old, he might stop listening to me altogether. How would he ever respect me again?”

“I respect you.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“You don’t depend on me.”

“Maybe it’s time for Wes to quit depending on you. You’ve been carrying him a long while. He might be glad to know he can do something for you.”

“I don’t think that would be helpful, Vic. But thank you for the suggestion.”

Victor shrugged. “No need to go all Ms. Manners on me, Deacon. I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it, but I had to say it. Honesty, that’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

Deacon nodded. “Well, honesty is annoying.”

“So is stubbornness,” Victor said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

They walked together to the side door.

Deacon said, “Honesty isn’t annoying, Vic. I just can’t tell him about this.”

“You can tell him. You don’t want to.”

“And now we’re back to annoying.”

They shook hands. Deacon locked the door behind Victor, then picked up the ball. He spun it on his index finger, then gave it a bounce and spun it on his middle finger before tossing it in front of him and then in one smooth move scooping it up, passing it behind his back and tossing it into the basket. Two points. No sweat. There wasn’t a thing in the world he couldn’t do. Except order off a menu, pick out a birthday card or read the freaking letter when his brother got suspended from college.

* * *

WHEN THE PHONE rang an hour or so later, he was in his room, trying unsuccessfully to nap. He rolled off the bed to grab it, desperate for a distraction.

“May I speak to Deacon Fallon?”

“This is Deacon.”

The pause that followed went on a little too long. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to answer the phone.”

Must be a reporter. He didn’t get as many calls as he used to, but when basketball season started, he usually received a few requests for information. Draft season never passed without a half-dozen calls from reporters looking for a quote.

He wasn’t in the mood to talk about basketball and he almost hung up. But this woman’s caller ID had a Milton area code and he was curious. He grabbed his glasses before he plugged in the earpiece for his phone, then tucked the phone in his pocket. He walked out of the bedroom and down the long hallway to the great room.

“Deacon, this is Julia Bradley,” she said as if she thought he’d recognize her name.

“Uh, hi,” he said, stalling for time and hoping she’d give him some clue about how he knew her. The remote was stuffed between two cushions on the couch and he fished it out to flick ESPN on.

“I was your guidance counselor at Milton High School. Ms. Bradley?”

Ms. Bradley. He wouldn’t have put that together—he’d never called her Julia in his life. She’d been serious, he remembered. Tried like hell to get him to stay in school. She’d jabbed her finger at his coach’s chest during one tense conversation. He’d been half afraid his coach would slap her. He hadn’t thought about that in years, but the scene was still vivid in his memory.

She’d been new to Milton and hadn’t understood how things worked there. He’d been terrified someone might listen to her and upset his plan to turn pro. Everything back then had been so touch-and-go—he sometimes thought he’d held his breath his entire senior year.

A scene from shop class came back to him. The guys had spent most of one period debating whether the new guidance counselor was wearing a thong under her dress at the student awards assembly. Just like that, the image of her at the podium, the light from the back of the stage outlining her legs and the curve of her hips under her skirt, returned as fresh as if it had happened that morning, not ten years ago.

“Ms. Bradley,” he choked out. “Good to see you. I mean, hear from you.” He clicked the remote again, shutting off the TV.

“Well, I hope you’ll still feel that way when you find out I’m asking for a favor.”

“What do you need?” Maybe a signed jersey or a ball. People phoned every once in a while asking for stuff to raffle off.

“I need a basketball coach. A reputable, skilled basketball coach who’s willing to work for nothing. The athletic budget has been cut to the bone.”

“A coach for the Tigers?”

“Yes.”

“They let Coach Simon go? That’s…unbelievable.”

“Times are hard. The school board budget proposal didn’t pass with the voters, so we’ve been forced into an austerity budget. The state sets spending levels.” She rattled off the facts, but her voice had lost its warmth. He imagined she was trying to hold back her opinion of this financial state of affairs.

“Anyway, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. The reason I called is that even though I realize you don’t get back here very much, I’d hoped you might know someone who would be interested in helping out as coach, or maybe you wouldn’t mind sending a donation to help me pay someone.”

Things must have changed in Milton since he’d been there, because no way the town he remembered would have let the team go. Man.

His mouth went dry. Milton needed a volunteer coach.

When he’d told Victor he didn’t want Wes to do easy community service, he’d meant it. He wanted Wes to see what his life could have been like and could still be if he didn’t start to focus. Where better to bring that lesson home than in Milton? He and Wes would both be there still if not for basketball.

On a selfish level, if Wes worked out with the Tigers, that might give him an extra bump when it came time for the university to review his case. If he’d put the time in to stay in shape, would that show his coach he was serious about playing ball?

“You need a coach now?”

“Practice starts in two days.”

“Say I can find someone. Would you be willing to write a letter of recommendation afterward?”

“For a coaching job?”

“For college.”

“Guidance counselors love to write recommendations. If you know someone who’d be willing to help, I’d be more than happy to write a letter.”

He didn’t need to tell anyone about the suspension right away. He’d be able to keep the details quiet while Wes did his work—he could tell Ms. Bradley what she needed to know when they were done.

“Okay. I know someone.”

“Thanks so much, Deacon. I mean, I’m phoning you out of the blue, and it’s just so generous of you to help me out. Would it be out of line for me to ask who you have in mind?”

“Me. Well, me and my brother.”

“You hate Milton.” He heard what sounded like a muffled curse, and she quickly added, “Well, not hate, but you don’t come home and I’ve heard—”

“My business is flexible, so I can work from Milton.” He made the next part sound like an afterthought. “I’ll bring my brother. He’s the one who can use the college letter.”

“So your brother is thinking about college? Good for him!”

Her tone of voice set him on edge. It was that fake-supportive thing teachers always did when they were giving an order but wanted you to believe you were making a choice. Did she think that just because he didn’t go to college he wouldn’t send his brother?

He’d worked hard to get where he was—no shiny green suits hanging in his closet now. He wasn’t that kid with no options anymore, and high school guidance counselors certainly didn’t intimidate him anymore. Not even if they were drop-dead sexy standing at the podium during assembly in a thong. He snapped out, “Of course he’s going to college. Why wouldn’t he?”

“No reason,” she said. “I’ll look forward to meeting him.”

“Why are you helping out the basketball team, anyway? You weren’t too supportive of the Tigers when I was playing.”

“The details are different in this case,” she said. “You never answered why you said yes to this, either.”

Her words held a challenge, but he didn’t owe her anything. He wasn’t about to be baited into spilling his guts about Wes.

“Times change,” he said.

“Well, even though it doesn’t seem like enough, you have my gratitude.”

“Go, Tigers,” he said.

“Go, Tigers,” she echoed.

* * *

HE FINALLY TRACKED Wes down in the gym. His brother was leaning against the wall, his eyes unfocused as he concentrated on the conversation he was having on the phone.

“Call me as soon as you hear,” he said. “The minute you find out.” He listened for a few more seconds and then hung up.

“Hey,” he said to Deacon.

“You want to shoot around?”

Wes shrugged. “I guess.”

Deacon tossed a ball onto the floor. “Want the music on?”

Wes caught the ball, but held it. “No.” He jogged a few feet toward the foul line, then turned and bounced the ball back to Deacon. “We’ll play to twenty. Win by two?”

Deacon didn’t play against Wes. He used to when Wes was much younger. They’d played a lot. But Deacon had always held back, making sure his brother won. With ten years between them, there’d been no way to make the contest even close to fair. When Wes was about eight, he realized Deacon was letting him win. He’d pitched a fit, and when Deacon wouldn’t agree to play him “like a man” in Wes’s words, the boy had stormed off the court. After that, they’d shoot around, run drills, mess with tricks, but they didn’t play games.

“I’m not playing you, Wes.”

“Why not? I thought you’d be happy I’m trying to stay in shape so I’ll be fighting fit when they decide I’ve learned my lesson and can be allowed back on campus.”

“Who was on the phone?”

“Oliver.”

He’d met Oliver during the move-in weekend. At first he’d assumed he was on the team because he was rooming with Wes, plus he was tall and well built. He looked like the other guys on the floor, but then the kid opened his mouth. Oliver was brilliant, no doubt about it, but he was pretty far off the beaten path, maybe far off the planet. At one point he’d spoken what Deacon assumed was Arabic because it sounded exactly that complicated and hard to learn, but Wes told him later it was Elvish.

There’d been a mix-up in the housing office, and somehow Oliver had been assigned to Wes’s room even though he wasn’t on the team and shouldn’t have been on the basketball floor at the dorm.

“He has to have a second hearing. They decided there’s enough evidence he was involved to suspend him, too.”

“He cheated and he helped you steal a car.”

“The cheating thing was a joke. Nobody would have cared about any of it if we hadn’t moved that car. Coach got pissed off because we embarrassed him. He’s been on me since— He’s just been on me. If we hadn’t touched his car, they’d have ignored everything, even the bar thing.”

Deacon felt his skin go cold. Wes really didn’t see why people were mad about what he’d done.

His brother went on. “Maybe I’ll just drop out. I don’t need college. You never went. I should skip the whole thing and get a job.”

“Where? In the fast-food industry?”

“Bill Gates dropped out. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out.”

“So what? You invented some new Internet technology and you’ve been keeping it quiet until you can drop out of school and start minting money in the stock market?”

“No, Deacon. You don’t have to be a jerk,” Wes said. “College is pointless. Like I said, you didn’t go.”

He heard Victor’s voice in his mind. Tell him. Tell Wes. He’ll never know how much his education means if you don’t let him see all the problems you have without it. He told Vic to shut it.

“I couldn’t go. There’s a difference. Unless, that is, you’re actually living in poverty and supporting your kid brother and have interest from NBA scouts, to boot.”

His brother scowled at him.

“I lined up your community service. You’re going to have an immersion course in real life for real people.”

“What does that mean?”

“Look around, Wes.” Deacon swept his arms out to encompass the indoor basketball court, the climate control, the sound system, the entire existence he’d built for them. “You have a sweet life. This is special and you treat it like it’s nothing. Like you’re owed this life. I’m done watching you screw around with this, when it’s a gift.”

“So you’re sending me to some developing country where I can see how hard life is without indoor plumbing?”

“It’s taking indoor basketball courts for granted that’s the problem. We’re going to Milton.”

“Milton? Like our hometown Milton?”

“Exactly.”

“Milton where you said you never wanted to put your foot again? Milton where you’ve never visited since the day we moved away? Milton where the boosters club sends you letters every year to attend the sports banquet to hand out the trophy named for you and you throw the letters in the garbage every time?”

“For Pete’s sake, Wes. Yes. That Milton.”

“Well, don’t act like I’m crazy for asking. You never… Why? Why now?”

“We’re going to coach basketball.”

“What?”

“The Tigers need a coach—some budget crisis or something. My old guidance counselor offered us the job.”

“You and I are going to coach? Together? Why?” Wes asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

This was the closest Deacon had come to getting his brother to pay attention to him since the whole suspension issue had started. Maybe, for the first time in his life, Milton would be the solution instead of the problem.

“Because you, my brother, need three hundred hours of community service.” Deacon tossed the ball through the hoop, admiring the perfect swish. “And Ms. Julia Bradley needs a coach. It’s a perfect fit.”

CHAPTER THREE

SHE CALLED A team meeting after school. She was expecting Deacon later that day, but wasn’t going to tell the girls about him yet. For one thing, she still couldn’t quite believe he’d agreed to her proposal. The way he said yes so quickly was odd because she knew he’d been asked to help before and he’d always refused. Second, there was the little matter of her allowing him to believe he was coaching the boys. When he found out about the girls, would he even stay? She felt queasy when she let herself imagine that he might leave—once again, she’d painted herself into a corner with her tendency toward brinksmanship.

The most important reason she hadn’t told the team was that she didn’t want to risk having Ty find out the Basketball Brothers were coming and then doing something to either sabotage their work for her team or co-opt them for the boys’ team. She slipped the Fallons’ district paperwork through under the catchall bucket for volunteers in the mentoring program. They weren’t getting paid, so there was no requirement for her to consult with Ty about hiring them.

In the couple days since she and the brothers had spoken on the phone, the two Fallons had taken on a superhero-duo mystique in her mind. She would do her best not to refer to them out loud as the Basketball Brothers, and in return, they would rescue her program, save her sanity and help her put Ty Chambers and the boosters in their place.

Good thing Deacon Fallon was used to living up to high expectations.

Once the girls were gathered on the bleachers, she updated them about the budget cuts and then she told them about the bet. They were utterly silent for a few seconds. The only sound in the gym was the rhythmic pounding of a basketball; Max Wright was shooting alone at the other end of the court. He’d been cut from the boys’ team and she’d invited him to practice with her girls, where the team philosophy didn’t allow cuts. So far he hadn’t joined them. He showed up in the gym every afternoon, but kept to himself.

Before she finished outlining the terms of the bet, Iris and Tali were off the bleachers and heading for the door, Tali’s little brothers, Trey and Shawn, trailing after her.

“Stop,” Julia said. “Where are you going?”

Tali tightened her thumbs on the cords of the gym bag she had over her shoulders. “Look, Ms. Bradley, we suck. We lost every game last year. Doing this bet? It’s like we’re asking everyone to laugh at us.”

Iris nodded. “We appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s useless. Nobody at this school cares about anything except the boys’ team.”

“As I told you, I have no intention of letting them disband our team. You girls focus on having a fantastic year. I’ll manage the rest.”

“Fantastic? How? We don’t have one thing you need for a basketball team, including a coach who knows how to coach.” That was Miri. A senior, she’d been on the team since her freshman year. “Sorry, Coach.”

Julia would have to consult her records to be sure, but even without looking, she wouldn’t hesitate to bet Miri hadn’t scored a single point in any of her three previous years. Julia didn’t mention this.

“I’m more than aware of my deficiencies as a coach.”

Cora Turner snorted and Miri smiled at her knowingly.

“I believe I have found an assistant who is more than qualified to handle the basketball-specific parts of the job.” If he shows up, that is. If he stays.

“What parts of being a basketball coach aren’t basketball-specific?” Tali’s posture was challenging.

If Julia hadn’t been certain it would lead to more wrangling, she would have made a list, starting with letting Tali’s little brothers hang around practice every day after the elementary school got out so they weren’t home watching TV. Setting up movie night. Choosing the audio books they listened to on the bus. Making sure the uniforms arrived on time and fit, even if some of the girls weren’t exactly built for speed. Talking to the players. Giving structure to their days. Being there in case they wanted an adult to consult with—during her time at Milton more than one basketball player had come to her about things that mattered. She was necessary. The team was necessary. The only thing that had changed this year was that winning, God help them, was also necessary.

“You understand what our team is about, Tali. Responsibility, partnership, setting goals and meeting them. We’re just adding a resource with a basketball background to round things out.”

“You know a basketball coach?” Cora asked.

Tali snorted. “We don’t need a coach—we need a wizard.”

“You think Coach knows Harry Potter?”

“Maybe if you all practiced for real and didn’t spend so much time doing your nails and babysitting, you could actually get better without a wizard,” Max said. “You don’t entirely suck all the time.”

She hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped practicing and drifted over to listen. His blond hair was caught back in a ponytail and a few strands lay plastered against his neck with sweat.

“How would you know, Max?” Tali said. “Last I looked, you got cut from your tryouts.”

“I know more about basketball than any of you.”

“Too bad you’re not on our team, then. On account of you being a boy and all,” Tali retorted.

“Ms. Bradley said I can practice with you if I want to. I’m considering taking her up on it.”

Tali rolled her eyes. “Between you and our new wizard coaches, we’ll be all kinds of gifted this year.”

Julia walked the few steps across the gym so she was next to the girl. Tali, tall and slender, with deep brown eyes, had long, thick hair she refused to put into a ponytail for games. She’d come close to flunking remedial math during her first season on the team, but because she was rostered for a sport, her record was red-flagged early in the marking period and Julia had been able to get her into tutoring to prop her up. Now, starting her junior year, she was firmly in the middle of her grade-level math class. None of that was “basketball-specific,” either, but it was all important.

“You don’t take anything lying down and I respect that. If you hold on to your anger, then you can put it on the court. Can we stick with each other for one more season, all in, no matter what?”

She held her breath while hoping they would respond. Instead Cora nudged Miri, who dropped her backpack and promptly turned red with embarrassment. Tali straightened up and whispered, “Please tell me that’s my new basketball coach.”

Julia looked toward the door and there they were, the Basketball Brothers, tall and handsome and… She did a double take. Which one was Deacon?

The younger one on the left, with his skinny neck and rail-thin body, resembled the kid she remembered. Except that young guy wasn’t Deacon. She knew because his thick, inky hair was styled in an expensive, professionally messy mop that was certainly not done at home with clippers, and she knew for sure because he smiled at her and his grin was cocky and charming in a way Deacon’s never had been. When Deacon had been at Milton, he’d been wound so tight and been so focused on his sport she didn’t think he’d ever smiled. This kid, the younger brother, had obviously grown up in different circumstances.

So Deacon was the other one. The slightly shorter, but sweet-mother-of-grown-up-hotness-what-a-good-looking-guy one. His acne had disappeared; instead a shadow of dark beard roughened his chin. Dark blond layers of silky hair hit the back of his neck, scissoring out at the sides, and shorter layers lay in golden-brown lines across his forehead—completely erasing her memories of his clippered high school haircut. He wore glasses, which was a surprise, but the smart dark frames had a sexy edge and set off his deep blue eyes beautifully.

“Give me one minute,” she said to the girls as she hurried to meet her new assistants where they stood a few feet into the gym.

Because she was a bit breathless and trying to let her brain catch up with her eyes, she engaged the less intimidating one, Wes, first. “You don’t much resemble your brother.”

“Thank God for that,” he said. “I can’t afford plastic surgery at the moment.”

Reading nonverbal clues was an essential part of navigating the tense parent-child meetings she often facilitated. The expression Deacon shot Wes was clearly a command to shut the hell up and quit screwing around. She gave him credit for saying it silently.

“Ms. Bradley,” Deacon said, “this is my brother, Wes Fallon.”

Wes stuck out his hand and she shook it. When she half turned, Deacon had his hand out, too. She took it, and his handshake was warm and firm. Behind his glasses, his dark blue eyes were hard to read. Did he remember her? How did she look to him after all these years?

“We’re honored you asked us back to help with the team,” Deacon said.

“Well.” She was acutely aware of the girls waiting behind her. “We’re honored to have you.”

And wouldn’t the boosters love to be the ones doing the honoring here? she thought. When Ty and the rest of them found out, she would be in a world of trouble.

She couldn’t wait.

She’d been anticipating the Basketball Brothers, but clearly, she hadn’t taken into account their being ten years older than when she’d last seen them. Their entire lives had changed in that time. The orphans from the wrong side of the tracks in a town where the right side wasn’t very prosperous had grown into a pair of poised, well dressed, frankly impressive men.

Deacon had on a black dress shirt patterned in a light gray check and a pair of dark blue jeans. The way the jeans fit, trim and taut, showed that he had filled out from his gangly high school days. But any weight he’d added was hard muscle. The sleeves of his tucked-in shirt were rolled up to his elbows, showing off more lean muscle and slightly tanned skin dusted with light brown hair. She’d dated a drummer once who’d been a total screwup and had infuriated her by spending his rent money on beer, but he’d had the nicest arms and so she’d stuck with him for a month or two longer than she should have. Deacon’s arms were one hundred percent nicer than the drummer’s.

She hoped he would stay and coach, because she had a sudden need to see those arms shoot a basketball.

* * *

HE DIDN’T KNOW what he’d been expecting. Maybe that Ms. Bradley would still look like a teacher, albeit a hot one, to him. He definitely hadn’t anticipated the flash of attraction he’d felt as she hurried across the gym toward them, the hem of her skirt whipping around well-toned calves and then flipping up to give a glimpse of one smooth thigh.

“Dude.” Wes had poked him in the ribs, and whispered behind his hand. “She’s hot for an old chick.”

Deacon would have smacked his head had they been alone. Manners were important even in the face of hot chicks. In the gym, he had to settle for a disgusted glare.

Now she smiled at them, appearing a bit nervous, and asked, “Are you ready to meet the team?”

And then she swept her arm toward the kids gathered on the bleachers.

“Those are girls,” Deacon blurted.

“Nothing gets past him,” Wes said.

Julia didn’t smile. Her eyes were a light, clear gray-blue, and intense when she focused on him. She held him fixed in place when she responded, “That’s right. That’s my team.”

Even as he spoke, he knew he was being rude, but he was shocked. This wasn’t what he’d said yes to. “You told me you wanted us to coach the Tigers. I brought my brother here so he could work with the Tigers.”

Julia didn’t raise her voice or even change her expression, but he had the feeling she was pissed. Which was ridiculous. He was the one who’d been duped.

“You are here to coach the Tigers.” She pointed toward the group of girls on the other side of the gym. “Right there. Those are your Tigers.”

His Tigers.

Two of them were considerably closer to five foot than six. One of them outweighed him for sure. Not a single one of the ten girls appeared remotely interested in basketball. Especially not the one perched on a ball and wearing a skirt with tights and high-heeled shoes. She had a mirror out and some tiny silver tool in her hand. “What is she doing to her face?”

“They call that tweezing,” Wes said.

“Practice hasn’t started yet,” Julia said. “We were in a meeting. You’re early.”

She looked at him pointedly, but he wasn’t about to apologize for throwing off her schedule when she had just pulled a whopper of a bait and switch on him. Feeling foolish because he’d misinterpreted a situation was his worst nightmare.

“She’s wearing high heels. In the gym.” He thought about his hardwood court at home and what heels would do to the surface. He had nothing against the girls, but he had a lot of trouble with being manipulated, especially when the manipulator was affiliated with Milton sports.

“We don’t have uniforms yet.” She got right up close to him, standing between him and Wes, her back to the girls and her voice pitched so no one could overhear. “Look, Deacon. I fudged the truth. You made an assumption and I should have corrected you.” She edged even closer, more urgency in her voice now. “But you said you’d coach them and I couldn’t believe it. I was too thrilled, and I thought if I clarified, you might not come. You’re here now. Can’t you see they need help? I need to know right now. Will you coach them or not?”

He was about to say or not. Maybe not quite that snottily, but he was ready to walk away, when Wes spoke up.

“Sure we’ll coach them. We said we would. Right, Deacon? Fallons keep their word, especially to the team.”

Wes looked earnest. He had this thing he could do where he somehow transformed himself from a six-foot-four-inch man into a five-year-old kid whose balloon had just blown away.

“I don’t like it when you do that,” he muttered. The protest was a token one and he knew it. He’d been back in Milton High School for less than twenty minutes and he was already as firmly trapped by Wes’s needs and the expectations of the Milton sports program as he’d been in high school.

“What am I doing?”

“Making that face that looks like I kicked your puppy.”

“I’m not.”

Wes had the innocent act down so perfectly it didn’t even appear like an act. Julia probably thought he really was that innocent.

“Your brother’s performance aside,” Julia said, “the girls really need help.”

Underneath his anger about being tricked, he was tempted because Wes wanted it, and Wes hadn’t wanted anything from him since the day he got suspended. He was tempted because this time around, Julia and he were both adults and he’d gotten a tantalizing peek at her thigh and he couldn’t make himself walk away without seeing more.

As he hesitated, one of the girls tossed a shot in from the baseline, and when it went in, she pumped her fist and he felt the pleasure right along with her, the satisfaction of watching a sweet shot swish free through the net.

Nothing but air.

His Tigers.

* * *

HE WAS GETTING ready to walk and she couldn’t blame him. She should have come clean right from the start. He glanced at his brother and then back at the girls. Max put a beautiful shot in and Deacon’s eyes lit up. He still loved the game. Would that be enough to make him say yes?

The girls were unable to control their curiosity anymore and now they were inching forward to group up behind her. She wished he’d commit so they could move on and get the season started.

Tali, putting on the tough sexy-girl act she used around cute guys, shook her hair loose around her shoulders. Cora put her hand over the pimple on her chin. Miri turned sideways, trying as always to minimize her physical presence.

The next second, the situation got even more complicated.

The double gym doors banged open behind Wes, and Ty rushed in. His golf shirt was tucked into navy blue pleated pants and his face was flushed as if he’d been running. He panted as he held out his hand to Deacon, completely ignoring Julia and Wes. “Deacon Fallon, my God. I didn’t believe it when my secretary told me you signed the visitors’ log, but here you are. Right here in the old gym where it all started. Welcome back.”

Close behind the girls, Max hovered without actually joining the group, but she heard his awed, whispered “Deacon Fallon, no way.”

Deacon hesitated and then took Ty’s hand, but there was none of the old one-Tiger-to-a-fellow-Tiger heartiness she was used to seeing from Ty and the boosters. She couldn’t believe this was happening. What if Ty wooed Deacon away right here with the girls watching?

“Nice to meet you,” Deacon said. She gripped her left elbow with her right hand to keep from snatching Deacon from Ty.

“Oh, we’ve met before. Back when you were playing. Ty Chambers. I’m the principal at Milton now.” He held up his right hand, flashing the championship ring. “State—1992.”

She glanced down. Deacon was wearing a thick silver band on his right hand, but no championship ring. He probably had his mounted in some kind of trophy case. Maybe he thought wearing all four rings would be tacky.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around to meet you when you got in.” Now Ty looked at her, but his eyes flashed with simmering anger. “I wasn’t informed that you were coming.”

Julia wanted to get Deacon away so they could seal their deal. If he met the girls, she just knew he wouldn’t be able to say no. She edged toward him, trying to angle her shoulders between Ty and him, but the principal wasn’t about to be angled any which way.

“Coach Simon is in his office.” Ty put his hand on Deacon’s shoulder and gestured toward the back of the gym where the coach had his office. “I’m sure he’d love to say hey. You want to walk back and see him? I can give you a tour after that and we can talk about what brought you to Milton today.”

If she’d been a cat, she’d have hissed at him. How dare he swoop in and take Deacon from her? He wanted her girls to lose, he wanted her to lose, and it looked very much as though he would get his wish. Once a Tiger, always a Tiger. She knew how it worked.

Except, Deacon didn’t budge. Ty must have put some pressure behind his hand, expecting forward momentum, because he stumbled, almost running into Cora, when Deacon’s black boots stayed planted. Deacon’s shoulders rippled, and even in that ridiculously domesticated checked dress shirt, she felt their power. Before she realized he’d moved, Ty’s hand was hanging in midair and Deacon was one step closer to her than he’d been.

“You okay?” he asked Cora quietly, but with an unmistakable undertone that said he wasn’t happy she’d almost been stepped on.

Behind Deacon’s back, Wes lifted his chin and winked at her as if to say, Check out my big brother. The wink was fast, but he was clearly not worried. Maybe the Basketball Brothers really were the good guys.

“I’d love to say hi to Coach, but I actually got here late for my appointment and I have to get a move on and meet my Tigers.”

“Your Tigers?” Ty scanned the gym with a half smile—he thought Deacon was making a joke, but he wasn’t sure what it was about. His gaze skipped right over the girls, dismissing them as no more likely to be Deacon’s team than the bleachers were.

“My brother and I are coaching the Tigers this year.”

“Coaching the Tigers?” Ty’s smile faltered. He was even surer a joke was being told, but he still didn’t get the punch line.

Julia did, though. She met Deacon’s eyes, and knew he’d made up his mind. The girls moved, drawn in as Deacon claimed them in the face of their principal’s dismissal.

Deacon nodded and took one more step so they were standing hip to hip, the gap between them and Ty more pronounced. Wes moved up to stand on her other side. In her mind, she imagined a flourish of trumpets, and it was all she could do not to pump her arms in the air. Tada! The Basketball Brothers saved the day!

An angry flush swept up Ty’s neck into his face as he finally caught on. He hadn’t liked her much before this—being the thorn in his professional side hadn’t left room for affection—but now…she read it in his eyes. War.

Bring it!

Julia lifted her whistle to her lips, ready to get practice started.

“You’re coaching the girls?” Ty asked.

Deacon shrugged. “The budget went haywire, right? Ms. Bradley said she needed a coach. Wes and I weren’t busy.”

“The boosters have reached out to you with paid offers to run clinics, to speak at our awards dinner—hell, to show up for a game—and you never once responded.”

“I sent checks.”

“And now you’re here for what?” Ty eyed her. She didn’t blink.

“To coach the Tigers,” Deacon said. He raised his arm and pointed at the girls standing behind them. “Those are my Tigers, right there. Go, Tigers.”

Wes gave Ty a double thumbs-up that was both resoundingly cheerful and utterly obnoxious. Julia didn’t have to say a word. Ty knew he’d lost, and she savored her triumph.

* * *

SHE BLEW HER whistle and the girls gathered in a circle a few feet away. The kids moved in real close, staring curiously from her to the Fallons, throwing an occasional nervous glance toward Ty, who stood with crossed arms, leaning against the wall near the door. Thank goodness she’d actually put the volunteer paperwork through. He would be gunning for her and Deacon. She’d have to pay strict attention to the rules so he couldn’t find a vulnerability later to take them down.

“Okay, kids,” she said. “I want to officially introduce you to your new coach…coaches, Deacon Fallon and Wes Fallon. Deacon played in the NBA, but before that he was a student right here at Milton.” She pointed to the rafters. “That’s his retired jersey up there.”

Tali tossed her hair back over her shoulder, jutting out one hip to the side in a pose she probably thought was sexy, and raised her hand to ask a question. Deacon would have to figure out how to deal with this, Julia thought. They’d all have crushes on him before the season started.

“Yes?” Julia said.

“Is Coach Wes in high school?”

Cora’s eyes fluttered wildly and then she asked, “Is Coach Wes going to go to Milton?”

“I can show him around,” Iris volunteered. Even though her face betrayed no hint of exertion, she lifted her shirt to fan herself with the hem, purposely exposing a few inches of tanned and toned teenage stomach.

Julia was floored. The girls were preening for Wes, not Deacon. She’d registered that Wes was attractive, but he was a teenager. It made sense, of course, that they’d have a crush on him, not his brother. They were kids; Wes was a kid. Wes’s looks were born of his smiling, good-natured charm, whereas Deacon had a rougher, more worn handsomeness enhanced by the laugh lines around his eyes.

The girls’ reaction to Wes made her feel better about her obsession with Deacon’s arms.

And shoulders.

And glasses. Good Lord.

That she couldn’t shut out her awareness of Deacon was natural. They were both adults, and he happened to be tall and hot and standing really close to her. Her response was pure instinct. She was sure that once she got used to him, she would stop noticing every time he shifted his stance, even if his thighs in tight dark blue jeans were mesmerizing.

Wes spoke up. “I’m out of high school. I’m on a break from college to help my brother out here.”

Julia caught Deacon’s glance at his brother. That answered her question about Wes and high school, but now she had to find out what was with this break from college. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d fudged the truth on the phone the other day.

The kids posed a few more questions, and then she dismissed the team for the afternoon. Tali’s hips had a distinctly forced sway as she sashayed toward the locker room. Julia made a mental note to speak to the team about appropriate interaction with their coaches.

Tali’s brothers crowded up to Deacon after the girls had disappeared.

“You really played in the NBA?” Trey asked.

Deacon nodded. “You two on my team?”

Shawn giggled, but Trey scowled. “We’re not girls.”

Wes snapped his fingers. “I told you they were dudes, Deacon.”

“Darn. I wanted them on my team.”

Shawn giggled again.

Wes crouched so that he was closer to their eye level. “So what’s up? Why are you hanging around the high school chicks?”

Trey rolled his eyes. “Our sister is on the team. Her name’s Tali. Mom says we can’t go home by ourselves after school, even though I’m in fourth grade.”

“Tali says we’re pests, but she has to come here after school, so we do, too.”

“That’s good,” Deacon said. “Maybe you can give me the inside scoop on this team. You know, tell me who’s really good at what.”

“Man,” Trey said, “Tali’s team is so bad nobody’s any good. You sure you want to mess around with them?”

“I’m sure,” Deacon said.

“You’re making a bad decision,” Trey said.

“Yeah, like really stupid,” Shawn agreed.

* * *

DEACON HOPED TALI’S brothers were wrong, but he wasn’t certain.

Julia smiled at him. “I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to coach,” she said. “The girls were over the moon.”

He glanced around, but Wes had moved off to play keep-away with the little boys, dribbling between his legs and behind their backs, while they squealed and darted after the ball.

“Look, Julia. I’m here and I’m staying to coach, but I don’t appreciate being tricked, and I really don’t appreciate being a pawn in whatever war you’ve got going with your buddy Principal Ty.” He’d had enough of being played with by the boosters as a kid.

Her cheeks were pink, whether from the warmth of the gym or emotion he couldn’t say.

“Ty is not my buddy. In fact, he got under my skin, and I may have made some…promises… Right before I called you, I was becoming concerned I wouldn’t be able to keep those promises. I should have explained better, but you didn’t exactly ask a lot of questions.” Which still wasn’t a real apology.

“Promises?” What the hell? She’d made promises and now he’d have to help her keep them? Wes jogged up just then. Deacon kept his eyes on Julia while he dug his keys out of his pocket. “Wes, will you go bring the car around?”

He dropped the keys to the Porsche in Wes’s hand.

“Why? You never let me drive your car. Are you and Julia going to talk about me behind my back?”

“No. And she’s Ms. Bradley to you.”

“Then why are you trying to get rid of me?” Wes asked, even as he put his hand with the keys behind his back as if afraid Deacon would snatch them away. “And she said I could call her Julia.”

“Because as of an hour ago when I accepted this job, I became the head coach and you became the assistant. The assistant does things like carry the water bottles, hold the clipboard and bring the car around. And you’re a couple months out of high school. You can call her Ms.”

Wes still didn’t move.

“You might want to get going before I decide the assistant also does the team laundry.”

Wes attempted puppy eyes on Julia. “Why does he get to be the head coach? I’m a much nicer person than he is.”

“He has more experience.”

“I’m taller.”

She shrugged. “Not by much. Plus, he’s older.”

“This is age bias.”

Julia grinned at him, but she shook her head. “I’m leaving personnel decisions in the hands of the guy with the most experience. But I really don’t mind if you call me Julia. In fact, I’d prefer it.”

“Go get the car, Wes.”

“Fine.” Wes spun the keys around his finger and caught them in his hand, clearly excited by the opportunity to drive the Porsche. “Don’t be rude to Julia while I’m gone.” He turned. “Hey, little dudes. Want to ride in my superfast car?”

The three of them ran out of the gym.

Deacon focused on the situation facing him. Coach Donny Simon, the Milton High School sports program and its boosters were the definition of self-interested. He knew that firsthand. He couldn’t let himself forget that they never offered anything that wouldn’t end with them the winners.

Where Julia stood he wasn’t as sure. They might be coaching together, but that didn’t mean they were on the same team.

“You have someplace private we can go so you can tell me about these promises?”

* * *

JULIA LED DEACON through the library to her office. She took him inside and then closed the door, confident anyone who needed her would knock.

She backed all the way up against her desk in an effort to put some space between her and Deacon. They’d barely spent an hour together, but she’d already realized something very dangerous about him: his eyes were lethal.

Somewhere along the way someone had told Wes he had cute eyes, and he didn’t hesitate to deploy their power, but she spent her days dealing with kids trying to get out of consequences or obligations. She was immune to begging eyes, even if they were as cute as Wes’s.

Deacon’s, however, were a deep, dark blue and they went to navy when he ducked his head, letting his hair shadow them. They were wary, guarded and hit her in the place in her soul that wanted to save people.

Before she’d seen him, she’d worried she and Deacon wouldn’t be able to work together if she couldn’t stop viewing him as a former student. Now that he was in her office, taking up most of the available air, making glasses look sexy, for God’s sake, she knew that fear was groundless. No one would ever mistake Deacon Fallon for a boy. His shoulders alone had enough powerful sex appeal to make her believe he’d been born a full-grown man, because certainly someone who looked the way he did had never been anything but strong and secure.

Even when Ty with all his bulk and bluster was in her office, the space didn’t feel this small. She’d never been so aware of the location of her thighs and chest in relation to Ty’s the way she was with Deacon.

“So you want to explain about these promises?” he asked.

The bet with Ty painted her in a ridiculous light; she hated to explain it. But she had to. After all, Deacon was key to the girls winning.

“It’s more of a bet than a promise. When Ty told me the board had taken away funding for the team, I bet him we would make it to States this year.”

“You bet him you would win States?” Deacon’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“Not win. Just get there.” Four teams went to States, but only one could win. She much preferred the odds for getting there.

“With this team? The one I just met?”

“Yes.”

He gazed at the ceiling as if expecting to see some other team descending from the sky to prove she’d been teasing him all along.

He put his fingers up to his temples. “Okay. So you bet him the girls would get to States.” He was almost talking to himself. Talking himself down, out of his anger. “Heat of the moment. He got under your skin. I can relate. They could be better than they look. I haven’t watched them play yet.”

She wished she could let the issue go there, but she owed Deacon full disclosure. “I also bet Ty the girls’ boosters would fundraise to pay for the trip.”

“Why do I think there’s something I don’t know about the girls’ boosters?”

She had to move. Standing there letting him pick this sorry story apart was making her itch. Yet there wasn’t enough room for her to create a safe distance from Deacon. It seemed that every time she shifted, she brushed against his thigh or hip or one of those wonderfully defined arms. He was making her insane.

“The girls don’t have boosters. We aren’t very good, but that’s not the real problem.” She lifted the foam basketball she kept on her desk and aimed it at the hoop mounted on the back of the door. It missed and bounced off a stack of textbooks, right at Deacon. He caught it out of the air without even looking. He’d known where it would be and just grabbed it, because playing basketball was his magic. Deacon Fallon was helping her coach. That she’d pulled off a huge coup was sinking in. Maybe the season wasn’t out of reach. “The problem is no one believes in them. Not even the girls themselves.”

“I noticed.” He returned the ball to her—a snappy little pass with just enough force to land it neatly in her hands. “You’re telling me the bet had nothing to do with the fact that you’d rather set yourself on fire than be nice to your principal.”

“He’s wrong saying the girls’ team doesn’t matter.”

“Just remember that Ty is your enemy, not me. I don’t like mind games.”

She wanted to protest that she hadn’t been playing mind games, but she swallowed her defensiveness. He had a point.

“Most of the girls didn’t seem too excited about basketball.”

Julia pressed the ball between her hands. “We’ll change that. Now that you’re here, we can make it all work.”

“You hired a coach, Julia. I’ll coach, but I’m not a miracle worker.”

She was right up close to him again. She didn’t remember moving closer.

When someone knocked on the door, she started back guiltily. He settled against the desk.

* * *

WHATEVER THE HELL spell was building between them was broken when a kid knocked on the door. Deacon bumped into a wall shelf as he ducked back, trying to give her space.

Ms. Bradley…Julia…was right next to him and he felt the silky cotton of her skirt brush against his jeans as she leaned forward to hug the girl in the doorway. The thin sweater Julia was wearing pulled tight across her back, outlining her trim waist.

He tried not to listen in on their conversation, but he couldn’t help overhearing it. The girl needed help finding a person to interview for history class and Julia said she’d email her a list of possibilities.

That girl left, but a hulking boy of the no-neck football-lineman variety came in behind her. Deacon stepped around behind Julia so she could talk to the kid, and he watched as she scanned the paper No Neck handed her, then gave him a high five. No Neck had raised his science grade to passing.

So many of his teachers had let so much slide, but he remembered Ms. Bradley checking back until she was satisfied. She was apparently still working double time to connect with the students.

He’d noticed Julia’s toned legs and her round hips, the warm brown hair hanging soft and loose on her shoulders and the way her big, deep blue eyes took in everything with a kind of intensity. When she interacted with the kids, her whole face was alive with interest.

As she leaned back to high-five No Neck, her backside brushed Deacon’s leg and he had a vivid flashback to her silhouette at the podium and the thong. Wes was absolutely correct: Ms. Bradley was hot.

Not that he could do anything except look.

Sure, he hadn’t been with anyone in a while. His last serious relationship had ended more than a year ago.

So yeah, he couldn’t help appreciating Julia’s looks. But he was here to help Wes. Anything else, including legs and hips and intense blue eyes, was irrelevant.

When she was finished with the kids, Deacon said, “What time tomorrow?”

He surprised himself by holding out his hand for her to shake. He pressed her palm lightly. A little innocent contact wouldn’t hurt anybody. “Three o’clock, right?”

She nodded.

He’d be back for certain—even if he had no idea what to expect.

CHAPTER FOUR

HE’D RESERVED A suite for them at an extended-stay hotel while they were in Milton. It was about an hour away, back on the highway near Jericho. The GPS was programmed, but he disliked using it. The little voice telling him to turn right or left usually just confused him, especially when someone else was in the car, and he was liable to go the wrong direction. Rather than making a fool of himself in front of Wes, Deacon let him drive.

Wes, who rarely got to drive the Porsche, took full advantage of the accelerator once they hit the highway.

“You want to turn my iPod on?” Wes asked.

Deacon pushed the button and the iPod came to life. The first song on was “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy.

Wes watched for Deacon’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.