Skin in the Game by Jackie Barbosa
Copyright © 2017 by Jackie Barbosa. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Chapter One
Cade Reynolds sat in the back corner of Cafe du Coeur, Harper Falls’s answer to Starbucks, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee and watching the denizens of his home town come and go. So far, he hadn’t seen anyone he recognized, which he supposed shouldn’t surprise him. Harper Falls had changed a lot in the sixteen years he’d been gone, growing in that time from a sleepy farming community to a decent-sized suburb of the nearby Twin Cities.
What did surprise him was that no one had recognized him. Not the slightly sullen teenage girl behind the counter with the lip ring and bright orange hair. Not the elderly gentleman wearing the Minnesota Vikings jersey who’d been standing behind him in line. Not even the middle-aged woman who now sat at the table across from his. Although she stole a glance at him every few minutes over the top of the book she was reading, he had a pretty good idea it was because he bore a more-than-passing resemblance to the shirtless hunk on the cover of her romance novel and not because she’d realized she was sitting in a coffee shop in Harper Falls with its one and only bona fide homegrown hero, Cade Reynolds. He was the quarterback who’d won the Harper Falls Eagles their first—and as yet only—Minnesota State Championship in his senior year and had since gone on to a national title at USC, a Heisman trophy nomination, and three Pro Bowls. And then there were the print endorsements and television ad campaigns he’d done, not to mention his regular appearances in Sports Illustrated and on the covers of any number of tabloids. The only way he could have made himself more famous would be by dating a Kardashian.
But since he hadn’t taken a snap in the almost two years since the tackle that had shattered his collarbone and throwing shoulder, he’d been mostly out of sight, so maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that his face and name had faded from the public consciousness. In a way, it was nice not to have to duck the paparazzi for a moment of peace. Notwithstanding, one would think in Harper Falls, Minnesota, of all places, he’d be as instantly recognizable as Jesse Ventura, and he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted.
He was turning this over in his mind when she walked in.
Wow.
Every other thought drained from his brain along with about half his blood. All he could think was that she was the most gloriously sexy woman he’d ever seen in his life.
Shoulder-length blond hair caressed the nape of her neck as she strolled up to the counter on legs that, like the last two minutes of a close football game, seemed to go on forever. Cade guessed she must be five-ten or five-eleven in bare feet, but unlike most exceptionally tall women he knew, she didn’t try to disguise or underplay her impressive height by wearing flats. Instead, her feet were encased in a pair of sandals with a good two inches of heel and one of those straps that hooked around the ankle. In combination with her incredibly long, slender legs and the close-fitting calf-length pants she wore, the effect of that strap was so sexy, his comfortable jeans were getting decidedly uncomfortable. He imagined those trim ankles, encircled by that thread of leather, wrapped around his waist, and got more uncomfortable still.
When she reached the counter, the teenage barista’s dour expression brightened, and the girl spoke in animated tones. Straining to hear the conversation, Cade shifted in the unpadded wooden chair that, like certain parts of his anatomy, seemed to have grown harder.
“Oh, Miss Peterson, you won’t believe it,” the barista said, excitement making her breathless. “I got an A on my first college calculus test. I can’t thank you enough for the help.”
Miss Peterson, eh? That was a definite plus.
Although calculus wasn’t exactly the first thing that crossed his mind when he looked at her. No, the kind of math she made him think about was a lot more basic—as in one and one makes two.
“Oh, Hannah, I’m so happy to hear that. But you did it all yourself, honestly. I just gave you a little push in the right direction.”
A wide, genuine smile spread across Miss Peterson’s features as she spoke, making her look less like a fashion model and more like the girl next door. A girl he’d like to get to know better. Too bad he was only going to be in town for a few weeks, or a month at the most.
Certainly not long enough to delve into anything much deeper than basic arithmetic.
“Well, I couldn’t have done it without you,” Hannah gushed on, “and your drink today is on the house.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Miss Peterson demurred, reaching into the small handbag slung over her shoulder to retrieve her wallet.
“Yeah, I do. You spent a lot of your own time helping me. It’s the least I can do.” Hannah leaned forward and added conspiratorially, “Besides, I get the company discount.”
Miss Peterson laughed, a rich, full-throated sound that filled the shop. The woman reading the romance novel turned around and glared, obviously not pleased to be interrupted from whatever the shirtless guy on the cover was doing inside the pages; Cade suspected math of the one-plus-one-equals-two variety and envied the character his good fortune.
“All right, but only this once. You need to save up your money for college tuition, not spend it on me.”
“I know, I know. Don’t worry. You want the usual, right?”
Miss Peterson nodded and stepped away from the counter, leaving Cade to wonder what “the usual” was. He hoped it wasn’t one of those fancy sweet drinks women seemed so fond of that were more like milkshakes than a good old cup of Joe. A person who drank coffee should actually enjoy coffee, not cover it up to make it taste like something else.
She turned away from him and bent over to rifle through the rack containing discarded sections of the newspaper, treating him to a near-heart-attack-inducing view of her curvy backside. By the time she straightened back up, he was lightheaded. Then he got downright dizzy, because she hadn’t selected the Fashion or Arts section, or even the front page, but Sports.
“Here’s your nonfat latte with an extra shot,” Hannah called.
Holy hell, maybe he’d died and gone to heaven. A tall, beautiful blonde with a great figure who liked sports and took her latte with an extra shot? She was almost too perfect to be real.
She deposited the Sports section back in the bin, retrieved her coffee from the counter, and turned to leave the shop. He was prepared to run out after her if necessary, because there was no way he was letting her get away without asking her out to dinner. Fortunately, he didn’t need to go to such drastic lengths. Her gaze swung toward the corner he was sitting in and came to rest on him. And rest it did, long and hard, her blue eyes narrowing for a second before widening again and flickering with recognition.
Cade Reynolds was no longer incognito.
…
Angie clutched her coffee cup so hard, she nearly crushed it.
Cade Reynolds. Bigger than life and twice as natural. Okay, maybe three times as natural. Because Cade Reynolds had never done anything by mere doubles in his life.
What on earth was he doing here? Not just here in Café du Coeur—which wasn’t even as popular with the locals as the Starbucks ten miles away in Chisago City—but here in Harper Falls? A place he’d left almost immediately after graduating high school, followed in short succession by both his sisters and then his widowed mother, who had retired to Florida after raising three kids on her own. What possible reason could he have for coming back after all these years?
As if his presence weren’t unsettling enough, his eyes met hers. They were just like she remembered—thick-lashed, dark brown, and intelligent—but also blazed with a sentiment she’d certainly never been the object of sixteen years ago: open, unapologetic lust. Her body reacted as if she were still fourteen and in the throes of the crush she’d nurtured her entire freshman year. Her stomach flip-flopped, and her heart twisted with nervous excitement.
He lifted his coffee cup in salute and gestured in silent invitation toward the chair from which he’d just removed his booted feet. Jeans and cowboy boots. Angie mentally rolled her eyes. He’d spent too much time in Texas, obviously.
But that didn’t make him any less hot. In fact, she doubted anything could make him less hot, short of a restraining order from an ex-girlfriend.
Not that she’d harbored any illusions about his attractiveness in the years since he’d left Harper Falls. She’d watched every televised game he’d played at USC and then subscribed to NFL Sunday Ticket after he’d signed with the Texans, and that meant she’d been a party to his transformation from drool-worthy boy to sex-on-legs man. As a teen, Cade had been almost pretty, his hair worn just long enough to curl at the nape of his neck and around his smooth, boyishly handsome face. Girls had swooned over him the way they swooned over members of the latest boy band. He’d been desirable but safe somehow, his sensuality muted by youth. Over the years, however, everything about his appearance had hardened and sharpened, from the planes of his cheeks and square jawline to the deep cleft in his chin. He’d cropped his hair short, too, accentuating the stark male beauty of his features. There was nothing remotely safe about him any longer, and Angie knew it as well as anyone who’d ever watched him answer questions at a press conference. Still, there was a big difference between admiring a gorgeous specimen of masculinity through the TV screen and being in the same room with him, because she was pretty sure he was sucking up all the oxygen in the small café.
And he was looking at her as if she were having the same effect on him. Which absolutely blew her mind.
One thing was clear, however. He had no idea who she was. He thought she had recognized him because he was Cade Reynolds, NFL quarterback, not because a half a lifetime ago, they’d shared the same high school and a few conversations about life, the universe, and football. Well, technically, football was life, the universe, and everything.
With a concerted effort, she relaxed her grip on the coffee cup and walked toward his table. All gentleman despite the fact that he’d spent the past several seconds undressing her with his eyes, he stood as she approached. Even in her heels, she had to crane her neck to meet his gaze, an unfamiliar but not unpleasant sensation.
“Cade Reynolds,” he said in his deep baritone, stretching out his hand in greeting.
Her knees wobbled as she took his hand and shook it. It was warm and dry and positively engulfed hers. He was even bigger and more masculine than she remembered he’d been or imagined he might have become.
“But then, I think you already know that,” he added.
She was a little aggravated by his arrogance, but then she remembered the Sports page she’d been perusing and decided there wasn’t much point in feigning ignorance.
“You’re right, I do.”
“I’m flattered,” he said, holding on to her hand a few seconds longer than could be considered strictly polite. “I haven’t exactly been front and center lately. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.”
Okay, she liked him better already. Maybe fame and fortune hadn’t turned him into a self-centered jerk after all.
“How’s your rehab coming?” Even as she asked the question, the awful image of the tackle that had sidelined his career flashed through her brain.
The linebacker had jumped the snap count and shot straight through the line. The referee blew the play dead, but the linebacker either didn’t hear the whistle or flat-out ignored it. Cade had been completely unprotected when the other player’s helmet collided with his throwing shoulder. The offending linebacker had been ejected, suspended for six games, and fined a hefty sum for the infraction, but it wasn’t enough to put Cade’s shoulder back together. Angie didn’t think she would ever be able to wipe from her memory the image of Cade walking off the field, his lips twisted in a grimace of silent agony, his right arm hanging limp and useless at his side.
As he released her hand, however, she noted that his right arm seemed far from limp or useless now. In fact, based on the musculature rippling beneath his snug-fitting black T-shirt, there was nothing wrong with the man. She swept him head to toe with her eyes. Nope. Nothing at all wrong.
Which did make her wonder whether the rumors of a dependence on prescription painkillers—rumors she’d discounted—might be true, because she could see no visible reason he shouldn’t be staging his comeback on the football field instead of killing time in the back corner of a rinky-dink coffee shop in Harper Falls.
“Oh, slow but steady. These things sometimes take longer than we expect,” he said with a lazy shrug of his broad shoulders.
“Well, you look fine to me,” she blurted, then felt herself turn ketchup-red as she realized how that must sound. She hadn’t said it with the emphasis on fine, but she might as well have. Because Cade Reynolds was fine in every way.
His brown eyes twinkled with amusement. “I’m glad you think so. Maybe you could get the message to my physician?”
She breathed a small sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to make her feel like a stupid, tongue-tied adolescent fan girl, even though he could have.
“I’m not sure he’d take my word for it.”
“He’s a she, but you’re probably right.” Cade gestured again toward the chair. “Sit down and talk a while? I’d like to get to know you better.” The husky timbre of his voice said better meant something a lot more intimate than talking.
Not that she was complaining about his intentions. She didn’t do one-night-stands or casual flings and never had, even before she’d become a high school teacher in a small town where everyone knew everyone else’s business and discretion was unheard of. But for Cade Reynolds, she was willing to make an exception. She’d wanted him for almost half her life, mostly from afar. Now that he was here in Harper Falls and, surreal as it seemed, might want her in return, she wasn’t about to turn and walk away.
With a nod, she slid onto the straight-backed wooden chair. “I’d like that, too.”
He sank into his own seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. Angie resisted the urge to fan herself as she involuntarily conjured the image of him doing the same thing…sans jeans.
Hot.
“So, you teach math?” he asked.
She stopped examining his thighs—okay, to be honest, his crotch—and looked at him in surprise. “How’d you know that?”
“I overheard you talking with the barista.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Was I that loud?” Her voice had a tendency to carry, which was useful in the classroom and during football practice but a nuisance pretty much everywhere else.
“No, not at all. Actually, technically, I didn’t so much overhear as try really hard to eavesdrop.”
Her cheeks flushed, this time with pleasure. That should probably seem more stalkerish than flattering, but it didn’t. At least not coming from him.
“So, Miss Peterson, do you have a first name? And can I use it?”
Oh, God. Her name.
He hadn’t recognized her yet, but once he heard her name, he might recall a clumsy, four-eyed freshman girl named Angie Peterson. When he did, he’d react like all the other men she’d known in high school did. Like Erik Larson, who remarked at their ten-year reunion—which Cade, blissfully, had missed due to training camp—that, wow, she wasn’t coyote-ugly anymore and he’d do her in a heartbeat. Yeah, that had been charming. Or like Matthew Thibodeaux, whom she’d dated for a few months before he dropped his guard and admitted his friends couldn’t believe he was shagging the girl they all used to joke about paper-bagging so they could stand to screw her.
Ugh. Her stomach churned at that memory.
Cade had seemed like a nice guy in high school, though, particularly considering he’d been not only captain of the football team but also homecoming king. She really didn’t want her memories of the few conversations they’d shared tarnished by the knowledge that he was just like the rest of them. And she didn’t want him to think of her as the pathetic, lonely creature she’d been in high school.
But then the voice of reason—and good old-fashioned arithmetic—jumped in to save the day.There must be a dozen Angela Petersons in the Twin Cities area alone, the voice argued. Why would he jump to the conclusion that she was that Angela Peterson, especially when she looked nothing like she had as a teenager?
All right, then. Tell the truth and take your chances.
“It’s Angela,” she said and took a sip of her latte to cover her nerves.
“Angela, huh?” His gaze swept over her, sharp and assessing. Her pulse stuttered to a virtual halt. Just when she was sure he had recognized her and all was lost, he said, “I like it. It suits you.”
The breath she’d been holding shuddered out of her lungs. She only wished she knew whether relief or disappointment had forced the air from her chest. Although she truly hadn’t wanted him to realize who she was, a part of her wished their short-lived friendship had meant half as much to him as it had to her.
But that was then. This was now, and she was going to enjoy the heck out of the fact that the tables had turned—or at least equalized.
“I guess I won’t change it to Agatha, then,” she said lightly.
He coughed to avoid choking on his coffee. “God, no. Why, were you thinking of doing that?”
“Well, you have to admit, it would be a lot more memorable.”
“Any man who could forget you needs his eyes examined.”
She held back a gust of harsh laughter. He’d probably used that line—or variations of it—to great effect on any number of women in the past. It wasn’t his fault that it was the worst possible thing he could have said to her. And for that reason, she wasn’t going to hold it against him.
“Now you’re just trying to flatter me so I’ll go out with you.” Or sleep with you.
“You’re right. Is it working?” he asked, his eyes puppy-dog wide and hopeful. The effect was hilarious…and irresistible.
“Maybe.”
“Good. Pick you up at your place at, say, six o’clock?”
Her place? Crap. That was an idea that had the words “epic” and “disaster” written all over it in capital letters.
“No, I’d rather meet you,” she said hastily. “Where are you staying?”
He named a luxury resort hotel five miles down the river on the Wisconsin side and gave a room number on the top floor. Probably an extravagant suite with a killer view of the falls. The kind of place she couldn’t afford to stay for even one night if she saved up for a year.
“Six thirty, then?” His smoky-lashed eyes swept over her with possessive heat, lingering on her mouth, her throat, the swell of her breasts. She wondered again what he’d think if he realized who she was.
God, he was so out of her league. In every possible way. They might have grown up in the same small town, but they had nothing in common anymore. Cade had become rich, famous, and worldly. In addition to his Texas ranch, which was probably twice the size of downtown Harper Falls, he owned a mansion in Houston as well as a chateau in the French Alps. Over the years since he’d hit the big time, he had dated supermodels, actresses, and heiresses. Angie, by contrast, taught math to wisecracking teenagers, still lived with her father in the modest three-bedroom house she’d grown up in, and counted herself lucky if she could get a date at all.
She wouldn’t lie to herself. There was no future here. This could only turn out one way—badly.
And she couldn’t bring herself to give a damn.
Chapter Two
Fourteen, fifteen, sixt…
Cade’s arms trembled and strained. Gritting his teeth against the fiery pain in his shoulder, he lowered the barbell back into place and let loose a string of vivid curse words. Fortunately, he was alone in the gym at the Chateau Le Croix so there was no one to object to his vain taking of the Lord’s name and any other violations of their virgin ears.
Disgusted, he sat up and wiped the towel around the back of his neck to soak up the sweat trickling from his hair. Damn it! Six months of rehab and training, and he still couldn’t do more than fifteen reps at two hundred pounds. He’d never get back into the NFL before the end of the season at this rate. He could throw as far and accurately as ever, but no one would believe he was durable enough to take a solid hit if he couldn’t bench at least his own body weight.
He rolled his shoulder and winced. He could almost hear the clanging of metal against metal; with all the screws and plates holding his bones together in there, he had more hardware than a Home Depot. Despite the surgeon’s assurance that the pain would fade and his full strength would return with time and rigorous physical therapy, Cade was no longer certain he believed it. He was no longer certain anyone believed it.
His cell phone jangled loudly from its position atop the rack of dumbbells on the other side of the room. He grimaced. The ring tone—Pink Floyd’s “Money”—told him it was his agent. Perfect timing.
He rose from the bench and reached the phone before the third ring. “Hey, Stu. What’s up?”
“Interest in you, that’s what.”
Cade pulled the towel from around his neck and stared blankly in the mirror. When he’d left Houston yesterday, there hadn’t been a single team willing even to give him a look, much less talk dollars and cents. “What happened?”
“Haven’t you seen any of the games today?”
“No.” He’d deliberately avoided it, in fact. Watching football when he couldn’t play—or at least have a hand in the outcome—was a form of torture.
“Got a TV handy?”
Cade glanced up at the flat-screen mounted to the wall across from the treadmill and the stationary bike. “Yeah, hang on.” He crossed the floor and retrieved the remote from the tray mounted to the treadmill’s instrument panel. He hit the power button. “ESPN?” he guessed.
“Nah, just turn on the NFC game. Where you are, you’ll get the right one.”
The Vikings game, then. Cade flipped through the stations until he found it. The first thing he noticed was the score. The Vikings, who’d looked invincible during the preseason and were considered by the pundits to be a serious contender for the Super Bowl this year, were down by four touchdowns in the third quarter to a team they should have been trouncing by the same margin. Then, he noticed something even odder. Warren Harris, star quarterback for the Vikings, his archrival, and—not entirely paradoxically—his best friend, wasn’t taking the snaps. Instead, the second-string quarterback, who didn’t even look old enough to drive, was running the offense. Badly.
A sick feeling came over him. The kind of sick feeling that was accompanied by a tinge of hope. And he hated himself for it.
“Where’s Warren?”
“He was in a minor car accident on the way to the stadium this morning. Broken leg, apparently.” Stu’s tone was a little too gleeful for Cade’s liking.
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“What hasn’t it got to do with you? You know as well as I do Harris is going to be out weeks—if not for the rest of the season—and his backup is barely out of diapers. They need a solid, experienced replacement…pronto.”
“And they want me?” Cade was dubious. There must be half a dozen quarterbacks warming the benches of other teams who looked better on paper than he did.
“Well,” Stu hedged, “they want to take a look at you. And I told them they’re in luck…you’re just up the road. Said you’d drive over there tomorrow and—”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. It’s a fabulous stroke of luck that you’re in Minnesota already. You’re first in line for the job. Once they see you can still chuck a ball sixty yards and with accuracy, they won’t want anyone else. Just be there at ten a.m. sharp and—”
“I can’t do it,” Cade said quietly.
“What do you mean you can’t do it? Of course you can. You’re dying to get back in the game, and you’re more than ready. No more Dilaudid, right?”
Cade grimaced at the reminder. He’d holed up in his Texas ranch last month to kick the painkiller habit. There was no way he was going to check into one of those plush Betty Ford–style facilities. He knew there were rumors—there always were in these kinds of situations—but he refused to air his dirty laundry in public. It had been the most wretched week of his life, but despite the fact that he now felt every twinge of pain like a knife wound, he wasn’t about to backslide.
“No more Dilaudid, but that has nothing to do with it. I have plans.” Plans that he hoped would include eating breakfast in bed with a certain gorgeous blonde after keeping her awake most of the night. He shifted to find a more comfortable position as his cock gave a happy little jerk at the thought. Although the delectable Angela Peterson was far from the only conflict on his schedule.
“Cancel them, postpone them, whatever. I told Grimshaw you’d be there, and you can’t make a liar out of me.” When Stu didn’t get his way, his voice had a tendency to veer into petulance.
“Sorry, Stu, I really can’t do it. Not tomorrow. Not for at least the next three weeks.”
Cade thought he actually heard Stu’s jaw drop open. “You’re not serious. I can’t believe you’re going to pass up a chance to get back in the league to coach your high school football team for three weeks. Getting a favorable trade and the starter’s job somewhere is all you’ve talked about since training camp opened. Now you’ve got the chance and you’re about to blow it to play with the pee-wees? You’re out of your mind.”
And hurting your wallet.
Cade sighed. Maybe he was out of his mind, but it didn’t feel like it. He’d promised Coach Lund that he’d see the team through the next few weeks, since the assistant coach quite literally didn’t have the balls for the job. Cade still couldn’t imagine a woman coaching football, even as an assistant. It had to be obvious to anyone that she’d never played the game, but Lund swore this woman was a flat-out genius when it came to strategy and play calling. Still, a genius at strategy and play calling wasn’t necessarily a genius at coaching, and Cade had to assume that this was why Lund wanted his help.
A vague memory tickled at the back of his brain of a girl he’d met in his senior year in high school. One with a remarkable grasp of football. She’d been the one to tell him, after they lost the first game of the season, that the team would never win a game so long as they only had twelve offensive plays. He remembered staring at her in awe, because that was exactly how many plays they had, but the only way she could have figured it out was to have counted them while they were playing. And not even the most fanatical football fans did that.
He tried to conjure an image of her and got thick glasses, long hair of an uncertain shade, and little else. Certainly not her name. He was sure he’d known it back then—something with a “j” sound in it; Julie or Jenny, maybe? He’d never been good with names, though, and sixteen years was a long time. Still, he felt a twinge of guilt that he couldn’t recall more about her. In a lot of ways, she’d been as responsible for their winning the state championship that year as either he or Lund.
All right, maybe a woman as a football coach wasn’t completely insane.
“Well, what do you have to say?” Stu prodded.
“Nothing,” Cade answered firmly, although he felt a twinge of regret as he said it. He wanted to play again. Badly. He just hadn’t expected an opportunity to come this soon…or in this way. “We’ll just have to pass on this opportunity, Stu. It’s not like there won’t be others. And besides, I don’t want to get a reputation as an itinerant ‘gun for hire’ who goes back to being a benchwarmer the minute the anointed starter recovers.” I am the anointed starter. And at this point in his life, he’d rather retire than settle for less. He didn’t need the money. Hell, Stu didn’t need it, either; Cade’s success, both on the football field and through endorsement contracts, had lined his agent’s pockets nearly as well as his own.
If this turned out to be his one and only opportunity to get back on the field, he would miss the game like hell. But he couldn’t believe it would be his only chance, and he also wasn’t going to back out on his promise to the man who’d practically raised him. This was just the first crumb being thrown at his feet. The Vikings were a team on the rebound, and Cade wasn’t interested in being their first date.
Stu sighed. “You couldn’t be there by noon?” His voice held a pleading note, and Cade knew this was more about salvaging his credibility after making a promise than any hope that Cade would actually take the job—if it were even offered.
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Noon might actually be doable. Coach Lund had asked him to come by between nine and ten in the morning to fill out the necessary paperwork for the district’s mandatory background check and for a primer on the team’s roster, strengths, and weaknesses. That would take an hour at most, but Cade wouldn’t be able to take over coaching the team until the background checks were completed and the district signed off all the approvals—apparently, it was harder to get approval to volunteer at a school these days than to get a job at one—and that would take a day or two.
So, what harm could it do? None, really. Going to the try-out wasn’t a commitment from him any more than asking him to come was a commitment of an offer from the team. Even if one was forthcoming, he could say no. And in the long run, he had a better chance of getting the kind of offer he was looking for if he could demonstrate other teams’ interest in him than if he had no nibbles at all.
Those were all the rational reasons to agree, but the real reason he did was the hollow feeling in the center of his chest when he imagined a future without football.
…
Angie came home to find her father sitting in his favorite armchair, its tattered upholstery protected by a quilt her mother had made years before, with the football game blaring from the TV. This came as no surprise, of course. He’d never done anything else on Sunday afternoons from August through February for as long as she could remember.
Of course, she had all those afternoons to thank for her encyclopedic knowledge of the game, since she’d spent nearly every one of them either on her father’s lap or at his knee, listening in fascination as he explained every formation, every play call, every stratagem. What had begun purely as an attempt by the only girl in a houseful of boys to monopolize a small portion of her father’s attention had grown into both a passion and a calling. Thanks to her father’s tutelage and her uncanny ability to analyze spatial patterns and mathematical probabilities, she’d worked her way from the strange girl who liked football way too much into a position as assistant coach—and for the next few weeks, anyway, head coach.
She walked into the living room and greeted her dad with a peck on his stubbled cheek.
“Hey, chickadee,” he said. “How was Pirates today?”
Angie grinned at the joke. He knew perfectly well it was called Pilates, but he couldn’t resist poking fun at the name. “Good. We said ‘Ar’ the whole time.”
“Then we have something in common, because I’ve been saying ‘Ar’—and worse—at this all afternoon.” He nodded toward the TV.
A quick glance at the screen told her why he was annoyed: the Vikings were down by four touchdowns in the fourth quarter. And their backup quarterback—who didn’t even look old enough to shave, let alone play in the NFL—was taking the snaps.
Angie frowned. “Where’s Harris? Are they just protecting him since there was no chance of a comeback or was he injured earlier in the game?”
Her father’s eyes flew wide open. “Neither. Didn’t you hear? He was in a car accident on the I-35E this morning. Ten car pile-up.”
Angie’s stomach did a nosedive. “Oh God, he’s not—?”
“No, no, nothing that serious. But the news reports say he has a broken leg—or maybe an ankle—although the team hasn’t confirmed anything yet. Anyway, he obviously couldn’t play today after being banged up like that.”
Her insides relaxed a bit. “Well, that’s a relief. Still, they’ll have to get someone else to play quarterback.”
Her dad snorted. “If they don’t, I’m going to become a Packers fan.”
Angie pressed her hand to her heart and pretended she was about to swoon. “You wouldn’t.”
“You’re right. I’ll become a Cowboys fan, instead.”
“Oh, now you’re hitting below the belt.” If there was one team that every member of the Peterson family had agreed to hate, it was the Dallas Cowboys. With the Packers, it was rivalry, but the Cowboys they all despised on principle alone.
Her dad chuckled. “So, what’s for dinner tonight?”
A pang of guilt stabbed her in the stomach. She rarely missed a Sunday dinner with her father, and she never did so at the drop of a hat. Although her mother had died four years ago now, Angie hadn’t quite shaken her fear of losing her father, too. Making sure he remained healthy and didn’t sink into depression due to loneliness was the reason she continued to live in the “apartment” over the garage instead of getting a place of her own.
So why hadn’t she thought of that before she’d accepted Cade’s invitation tonight? The truth was, she hadn’t because the day of the week had completely slipped her mind. If she’d remembered it was Sunday, she would have said no.
Maybe.
She swallowed her remorse and said, a little too quickly, “I have a date tonight.”
Her dad leaned forward, instantly intrigued. A little too intrigued. “A date? With whom?”
She knew his interest was neither prying nor jealous. He’d made it clear for some time now that he thought she should date, that he wasn’t an invalid and could handle a few nights alone. Angie knew this was true, but what was the point of dating when she couldn’t do anything more than that? She sure as heck wasn’t going to move a boyfriend or husband into her father’s house, but she couldn’t move out and leave him all alone, either.
The more immediate problem was that she couldn’t tell him who she was going out with tonight, because her father would be absolutely giddy with excitement if he discovered she had a date with Cade Reynolds. He’d be envisioning wedding bells and a passel of football-playing grandkids in two seconds flat.
She swallowed her remorse and lied through her teeth. “It’s not a date date, just a get-together with some friends, Dad.”
A flicker of disappointment crossed her father’s face, and for the life of her, she wasn’t sure if it was because he was sorry she wasn’t going on a real date or because he knew she was lying to him. He always could see right through her.
Fearing he’d call her on it, she rushed ahead. “There’s plenty of the stroganoff we had last night still left in the fridge. I’ll be home late, so don’t wait up.”
Already feeling as if she was doing the walk of shame, she turned and headed upstairs to her room to figure out what on earth to wear on her date with Cade Reynolds. She wasn’t sure she had a single thing in her closet that would be appropriate for the occasion.
On the other hand, maybe she didn’t need to worry. Brutal honesty compelled her to admit that they might never leave his hotel room. After all, he had given her the room number rather than asking her to meet him in the lobby or the hotel bar. That pretty well indicated what he had in mind for their “date.”
But since it was also what she had in mind, she couldn’t take offense. After all, she’d wanted to get into Cade Reynolds’s pants since the first time she’d seen him take a snap. True, he probably thought she was some easy groupie-type chick who was only interested in him because he was rich and famous. Not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. He couldn’t know she’d lusted after him in high school, and she honestly didn’t want him to. Not merely because she didn’t want to be remembered as the pathetic, geeky girl with the head for math and football, but because she didn’t want him to think she had aspirations of something more than a hot, sweaty roll in the sheets.
Because she didn’t. She couldn’t.
Unlike Cade Reynolds, she was tied to Harper Falls. Not just by her teaching and coaching jobs, but by her father. It had been more than four years since her mother’s diagnosis—the cancer had moved quickly and mercilessly, and Sharon Peterson was gone a mere six weeks after her diagnosis. Though they’d all come home as soon as the prognosis was known—Angie and all four of her older brothers—when it was over, they’d all had to go back to their lives.
All except for Angie, who had known that if she left her father alone in the house, he’d be dead himself within six months. Daryl Peterson had never lived alone a day in his life. He’d gone from the farm to the military to marriage. Without someone to keep him company, he would be utterly bereft, but there was also no way they’d ever talk him into senior housing. He’d always said old folks’ homes were for people who were either sick or senile, and he was neither. Instinct told her that if she left him alone, he’d be like the widowers she often heard about—dead within a year of their wives.
And so, Angie was still here, living at the age of twenty-nine in the house she’d grown up in. For the first three months, she’d had to commute to her teaching job in St. Cloud. But somehow, fate had smiled on her. The cantankerous old math teacher at Harper Falls High, Mr. Lovgren, who’d taught every one of her classes from algebra through calculus, retired. Miraculously, the principal offered Angie the job with little more than a glance at her resume. In the four and a half years since, she’d not only increased the percentage of students passing the AP calculus exam but had also managed to work her way into the position as Harvey Lund’s assistant coach, with results anyone had to admit were impressive. For the first time since she’d been a freshman in high school, the Eagles might get another shot at the state championship and no one could deny that Angie’s creative play calling was the difference.
In short, she was happy with her life just the way it was—and was going to be. She needed a man like Cade Reynolds to sweep her off her feet and carry her away like she needed an athletic supporter.
One night with Cade Reynolds would have to be enough to last her the rest of her life. Because that was all she had to spare.
…
Angie pulled one dress after another from the closet, examined it, then tossed it onto the bed in disgust.
Too plain. Too busy. Too schoolmarmish. Too downright ugly. What had possessed her to buy thathideous thing in the first place?
One thing was for certain. If you could judge a woman’s social life by her wardrobe, Angie’s was pathetic.
She glanced at the clock beside her bed. Almost five. She’d never make it to the mall and back before seven.
Despair seized her. Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling her she shouldn’t go out with him. It was certainly one clearer bit of evidence that she didn’t fit in his world any more than he’d fit in hers.
She was halfway to dragging her cell phone from her pocket to call Chateau Le Croix and leave a message canceling the date when it chirped of its own volition. The display lit up with Rachel Lindsey’s name. Angie clicked the answer button and held the handset up to her ear.
Her best friend, a nurse and physical therapist with a specialty in sports medicine, didn’t even wait for a hello. “Oh my God, Angie, you’ll never guess who’s in town!”
Angie smirked to herself. “Cade Reynolds,” she said flatly.
“What? How did you know?”
“He was at Café du Coeur when I went in to get my latte.”
“Damn. I knew I should have gone with you! But why didn’t you call and tell me?”
“No caffeine for you after three p.m. or you don’t sleep, remember? And I didn’t call and tell you because…” Here Angie faltered.
Why hadn’t she called Rachel? It should have been the first thing she’d done after she left the coffee shop. She never kept secrets from her friend, yet for some reason, she’d really wanted to keep Cade Reynolds all to herself.
Selfish.
“Because he asked me out on a date tonight, and I wanted to wait until after it was over to tell you what happened.” Although she wasn’t one hundred percent sure she would have told Rachel about it tomorrow, either. Or ever.
“You’re going on a date with Cade Reynolds? Get out!”
Angie sighed. “I didn’t actually say I was going.”
“The hell you’re not going.” Rachel sounded downright offended. “Oh my God, Ange, he’s Cade Reynolds. Any woman would give her eye teeth and her eyes to go out with him.”
I would, too. “I know, but I don’t have anything to wear. He’s staying at Chateau Le Croix; you know what those places are like. I don’t own a single outfit that’s dressy enough for it.”
“Then have room service delivered,” Rachel said, and Angie could hear the sly wink in her friend’s voice.
“Trust me, the only thing he’ll want to do when he sees me in any of these rags is nominate me forWhat Not to Wear.”
“Pfft, it can’t be that bad. What about the dress you wore to Kate’s bachelorette party a few years ago?”
“Are you kidding?” It was a beautiful dress—Angie would be the first to admit that—but it was also closer to lingerie than black tie attire. She’d chosen it for her sister-in-law’s party because the theme had required all the attendees to wear the most outrageously sexy thing they could find. The plain black dress, with its figure-hugging design and daringly low-cut back, had definitely fit the bill. But to wear it in public? She might as well go out naked.
“I’m not only not kidding, I’m dead serious. You look incredible in that dress. He’s going to take one look at you and forget Haley Burroughs’s name.”
Angie rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, thanks for reminding me that the last woman he dated was a supermodel.”
“Stop it. You’re ten times prettier than that anorexic thing. And anyway, he asked you out at the coffee shop. What were you wearing then?”
The same thing she was wearing now—capri pants and a tank top with scalloped edges. Nothing special, that was for sure.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Okay, I won’t cancel.”
“And you’ll wear the black dress?”
Angie pressed her lips together. “We’ll see.”
After a brief pause, Rachel asked, “So, do you know why he’s in town?”
That question had crossed Angie’s mind when she first saw him in the coffee shop, of course, but she hadn’t bothered to ask. Now that she thought about it, though, the answer seemed pretty obvious. “He must be here to see Harvey.”
“Did he say that?”
“No, but it makes sense. You know Cade’s father died a few years before the family moved to Harper Falls. Harvey’s the closest thing to a father Cade’s got.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. How long will he be here?”
“I didn’t ask him that, either.”
“Good grief, girl, you’re useless! The guy asks you on a date, and you don’t even bother to ask why he’s here or for how long?”
“Well, I’ll be sure to find out tonight, but I can’t believe it’d be for more than a few days. The Texans are trying to trade him, and they have to do it soon. Plus, knowing how he felt about football in high school, I bet he can’t wait to play again.”
As she said the last few words, everything suddenly fell into place. Cade wasn’t here just to visit his old coach. He was here because he was looking for a job as a starting quarterback. If Warren Harris had been injured badly enough that he couldn’t play for more than a few weeks, the team’s management would be looking for a replacement, particularly given how poorly his backup had performed today. Cade was an obvious choice to take Harris’s place.
If the accident had occurred early this morning, Cade could have flown up from Texas and been here by mid-afternoon, giving him an opportunity to stop in for a visit with Coach Lund before heading to the Cities tomorrow.
That meant Cade’s sojourn in Harper Falls might last longer than a few days. It could be weeks, months, even years. Long enough, possibly, for him to remember her from their high school days.
Her stomach tilted precariously.
As if reading her thoughts, Rachel said, “Hey, that reminds me…did he recognize you from high school?”
“God, no, and I intend to keep it that way.” Although how she’d do it if he wound up moving back to Harper Falls…
“Then you’d better wear the black dress, sweetie.”
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