Dirty Tackle: A Football Romance (19 page)

“Have a minute?” I asked.

“For my best player? Of course. Come on in,” he said waving me into his office. I stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind me. “Whoa, this must be serious. I hope you’re not coming to try and negotiate another raise in your salary. Your contract isn’t up for another two years,” he said.

I chuckled. “We’ll see if you can afford me then. But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about,” I said.

Jeff pointed to the chair across from him. “Pull up a seat. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

I had always liked Jeff. He was a straight shooter, and he ran everything that affected the team like a well-oiled machine. That was why we were one of the most profitable teams in the league, and we attracted some of the best talent to our roster. Over the last several years, Jeff had put together a high caliber team that was going to go to the Super Bowl this year, if we could just keep it together.

“This is kind of awkward,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure where to start. How do you tell a man that his daughter was kicking up all sorts of trouble for the team?

“Well, that’s a rather auspicious start,” he said. He leaned back in his chair.
 

I knew it was better just rip the Band-Aid off. “It’s about your daughter,” I said. There really was no sense in beating around the bush. “You might know that she and I kind of had a thing for a short time a while ago.” That was a very generous description of what Olivia and I had.

“There were rumors, but I don’t stick my nose in my daughter’s business unless I have to. Once your daughter gets a bit older, you probably will understand that.”

I thought about that and realized that wasn’t something I wanted to think about for a long time. If I had anything to say about it, Scarlet wasn’t going to be interacting with boys until college, if even then. And I’d make sure that she didn’t turn out anything like Olivia. But I wasn’t going to say that.

“True. And this normally would be something that I wouldn’t bring to your attention except it’s causing some issues for the team.”

“What do you mean?”

There was no way to delicately say what I had to say. “I ended our relationship a while ago. Olivia seems to be having some problems with letting it go. She’s said a couple of things to that effect to me. And now that Doctor Thompson has joined the team, and my daughter is in the picture, she seems to have turned her attention in that direction, which I definitely have a problem with.”

“I did hear that the new doctor and you had a thing a while ago. So that’s your daughter’s mother,” Jeff said.

I nodded, but I did not underestimate Jeff’s network of information. He knew all of this already. He was just playing a little dumb, if it there was one thing Jeff was not, it was dumb. I had to be careful of this situation.

“I was just talking to Maddy, I mean Doctor Thompson, and she indicated that Olivia had said to her threatening her job, and it’s been an ongoing thing. It’s causing some concern for Doctor Thompson, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

Jeff leaned forward. “My daughter works in marketing. Social media specifically.”

“I am aware of that,” I said not understanding the direction that he was going with his comment.

“I’ve been working with the National Football League for almost thirty years, Shane. I’ve been a general manager for almost a decade. I understand every nuance of how my team operates each and every day. If someone’s causing a problem or not good at their job, I deal with it. I get that information directly from the people who interact with those people in the way that their job is supposed to be interacted with. If someone from marketing came to me and told me that someone from my medical staff was not doing their job, I would investigate that claim, but the source of the information would immediately be called into question simply because marketing doesn’t normally work with the doctors on the team.”

I was starting to get the drift of what he was saying. “Well, that’s good to hear.”

“Whatever my daughter may think she has in terms of influence over my decision making, it doesn’t extend to the degree that she may think it does,” he said. He shrugged. “Olivia is young and headstrong and set in her ways. Just like her mother. But trust me when I say that there is not going to be any harm to you or Doctor Thompson as long as you both continue to do your jobs well.”

“Thank you, sir. That is a relief to hear.” I stood up. I didn’t see that there was any need to continue taking up his time. I thought that he might be slightly frustrated now that I had questioned his judgment. “I’ll see you on the field on Sunday.”
 

I made my way to the door, and as my hand reached the handle, his voice stopped me. “Sometimes, as a father, you’ll find you are a bit indulgent with your children, Shane. So, that’s my responsibility as well as my fault if my children try to overstep their bounds. But like I said, that would never interfere with my job.”

I gave a short nod of understanding and left the room before I could inadvertently offend my boss again.

I regretted my earlier outburst when Shane came into my office. He had just missed Olivia leaving. The woman was insufferable. Although everything that I saw from Shane indicated he wasn’t seeing her, she never resisted an opportunity to make some off-handed comment about what Shane did with her in his free time. If something wasn’t going on, why would she be so insistent trying to prove otherwise?

It wasn’t my place to ask about the relationship in any case, and I had been at the end of my frayed rope having just gotten off the phone with my parents. I couldn’t believe that this was what we had come to. After everything that I had tried to do to help them, funneling every extra dollar I had to them, it still wasn’t enough.
 

Now it sounded like we had to talk about what was going to happen next. I knew my parents were upset, even though they were doing a good job of hiding it from me and Scarlet. My mom had decided to go back to Rosewood to start settling things with Dad, so I had to switch up my schedule for awhile to make sure I had things covered with Scarlet.

That was the state that Shane found me in when he came into my office. The only good thing about the entire encounter with that it had seemed to bring us closer than we had been in weeks. I had been giving him the space that he asked for, and it seemed that as he was getting comfortable with being in the friend zone with me, even though I was starting to pine more for something more. It was almost exactly like high school all over again. He had been the star player on the football team. I had been the book nerd. Still, we had managed to come together and find common ground back then. I just had to keep trusting that if we had warm feelings towards each other, it could eventually lead us to something more.

I remembered the feel of his arms around me as he comforted me. He probably had no idea how much that simple gesture had meant to me. I felt like I was falling apart. All of this time I had just myself to count on. My parents had done the best they could to help me over the years, and I didn’t take that for granted. But in the end, I had always been alone. For some reason, now I felt like I had someone else there. Granted we weren’t in an official relationship by any means, but Shane said we’d figure it out.

We would figure it out. That had a ring of hope to it that I clung to.

Scarlet was as excited as I was to go to Shane’s that evening. We had developed a routine. Shane was the one who would cook, which I always felt bad about. I had asked him to start showing me small things around the kitchen, because after his long days of training, I thought that it would be nice for him to have someone who cooked for him. But his diet was so strict that it seemed to make sense for him to take control of the menu planning. As a result, I’d even lost a couple of pounds. He had remarked on it, and not in a necessarily good way, which was kind of nice when I thought about it. Shane didn’t think I needed to lose any weight at all. He said we needed to add more carbs to me and Scarlet’s meals.

Scarlet was sitting in the living room watching TV as I moved around the kitchen aware that Shane was there up in my space as he showed me again how to dice a celery stalk.

“We are going to make a cook out of you yet,” he said with a chuckle. He had no idea that the reason I kept messing up in the first place was because of his proximity to me.

“I feel helpless in the kitchen,” I admitted.

He took my hands in his and looked at them. He examined them carefully, and I wondered what he was doing. “If these hands can make big football players' injuries all better, I am confident they are capable of putting together a gourmet spread if you just put your mind to it.”

His fingers lingered as his thumbs rubbed against the palms of my hand. I felt my breath catch in my throat, but then he stepped away. I felt a rush of heat in my core. Something had changed that afternoon in my office between us. He was warming toward me again. I was almost sure of it.

“Have you talked to your folks again?” he asked as he went back to the pan on the stove.

I sighed. “My mom is headed back to Rosewood tonight. She’ll be there for at least a couple of days. We have to have a family talk about what’s going to happen next. They’ve discussed moving here to D.C., but I think that would be hard for them to be away from all their friends.”

“What you think about that?” Shane asked. I sensed that there was a bit of tension in his voice.

“I think it would be great to have us all back in the same place again,” I said cautiously. “But if my mom wanted to stay back in Rosewood and start over there, I would understand.”

“She’s the one who provides your daycare though, right?”

I realize then why he was asking. “I guess I will just have to find an alternative plan then.” I didn’t want Shane to think for a second that I was going to move Scarlet away from him. That wasn’t my intention at all, no matter what my parents decided.

“You haven’t let me help with anything financially for her,” he said. “If you need to look at daycare or even a nanny, I would be happy to pay for it. It’s the least that I can do for her,” he said.

There was a part of me that wanted to resist this offer, but it was a common arrangement, wasn’t it? Men paid child support all the time for their kids. Plus, I knew that he wanted to do something on a regular basis to feel like he was contributing to her well-being.

“Thank you. I think that would be a great option,” I said, swallowing my pride in the process. I wasn’t going to have to do it all on my own. It was a completely new feeling.

I was surprised when I felt Shane’s hands on my shoulders. He turned me toward him, and I saw he had a serious expression on his face. “Maddy, it’s okay to let someone help you. I want to help you. I want to help Scarlet. It’s not a big deal. So let me help you.”

I felt the tears well in my eyes. I felt like I had been battling everything alone for so long. I wasn’t sure what he saw in my expression but suddenly his lips were on mine. I was so hungry for him. The knife that I held in my hand slipped out of my grasp and fell to the floor even as I reached up to wrap my arms around his neck.

The noise as it hit the floor startled me, and I heard Scarlet laughing.

We split apart so quickly I almost forgot that we had our bodies pressed together at all.

“Mommy and Daddy sitting in a tree. K-I-SS-I-N-G,” Scarlet sang.

I flushed and looked at Shane who had a small grin on his face. This was a conversation that I needed to have with her before anything else could happen between us.

I saw him shrug as he looked at me, and I smiled back. Whatever had happened that day, we had had a breakthrough. I felt a warm rush through my body. I gave a small nod to Shane asking him without words if he could take over the chopping, and he nodded. The silent communication between us had been growing over the last couple of weeks as well.

I walked into the living room and sat down on the couch next to Scarlet. She had a wide smile on her face. “What are you watching?” I asked, wanting to start the conversation on an innocent topic.

“Just something on Disney. I like this movie,” she said.

Given that I had seen the movie over a hundred times it seemed, I knew that it was the truth. I let her watch another ten minutes or so before broaching the topic with her. “So I know that you just saw me and Daddy kissing in the kitchen. What do you think about that?”

She shrugged. “Aren’t mommies and daddies supposed to kiss?”

Her answer took me aback in its innocence and simplicity. “Not all mommies and daddies kiss. But, I want to make sure that you would be okay with that, if me and your daddy kissed. We wouldn’t want you to be unhappy about it or think that made you any less important to both of us.”

Scarlet shook her head vigorously. “I like it when you’re both happy. It makes me happy. If you want to kiss and be happy, then that’s okay with me.”

I hugged her tightly into my chest. She nestled against me, and I kissed the top of her head. “I like it when you’re happy too, sweetie. “