Protecting The Quarterback

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

Character. Courage. Commitment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not most sports reporters.”

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

“A lot of people get it wrong.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You barely crossed my mind,” he lied.

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

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

He’d been thinking about her.

More often than he wanted to admit.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There was nothing new at the stadium today—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

“Good morning.”

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

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

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

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