Under the Lights (18 page)

The compliment was like a punch to the gut. He'd wanted kids, but lately he'd been grateful he didn't have any, because they'd just be caught up in the mess the end of the building boom and Seth Poole had helped bring about. And if he had a wife and kids and a mortgage, he might not have been able to juggle enough to keep himself out of bankruptcy.

“Maybe someday,” he said. “Once I've got my life back on track. How about you?”

She shrugged. “I had planned to have kids, but I guess I wasn't married long enough. I was starting to think it might be time to start a family, when it all blew up in my face, so I'm glad now, of course. As much as I'd like to have children, I'm glad I don't have to maintain a relationship with my ex for the rest of my life for their sake. He's just gone from my life and I never have to see him again.”

“I know what you mean.” He'd dragged the conversation down, and he didn't like it when she talked about her ex-husband. Her eyes grew sad, and it made him want to find the guy and punch him in the face. “Do you want dessert?”

She smiled. “I didn't even finish my lunch. Do you want something?”

“Since I ate my lunch and then yours, hell no.” With his stomach full, he leaned back in the booth and failed to stifle a yawn. “I can't believe I have to play football tonight.”

“Maybe you should come home and take a nap with me,” she said in a low, suggestive voice.

And just like that the tiredness was gone, and he wanted her so badly it hurt. But he remembered the story she told him and tried to force it down. “After what you told me about your day at work, I'm not sure that's a good idea.”

Her stubborn face was almost a carbon copy of her mother's, which he'd seen often enough during the time he spent at the McDonnell house. “My private life is just that. Private. Plus, you can park out back in the town lot and it's only a few feet to the door. There are a dozen trucks just like yours in town.”

So she might claim her private life was nobody's business, but it was obvious she wanted to minimize the chances of anybody seeing him at her apartment. No matter how much he wanted her, he wasn't willing to risk her job. “Kelly, I . . .”

Her calf brushed the inside of his, and she reached across the table to run her thumb over his palm in a way she knew drove him crazy. “Kelly what?”

“I don't suppose it's legal for you to give me a lights-and-sirens escort to the town lot?”

“No, but I know a shortcut that'll shave five minutes off the drive.”

He signaled for the check. “That's five minutes more for
napping
.”

—

“T
hat wasn't a shortcut,” Chase said from behind her as Kelly unlocked her door and walked in. “That was a cow path through the woods.”

“You have a truck.” She didn't see the problem. A sports car wouldn't have made it, but he had four-wheel drive.

“Yeah, but it's a
nice
truck. And it'll stay nice because I don't drive it down glorified cow paths.”

“If your truck had been born with balls, it would be a gelding now. You know that, right?”

“But a nice gelding.”

She tossed her keys on the table, shaking her head. “I can't believe you're carrying on about going through a few mud puddles and splashing dirt on the outside when the inside of your truck looks like a garbage disposal that stopped disposing about two years ago.”

“Nobody sees the inside,” he said, as if it were all perfectly reasonable. Then he stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She nestled against him, feeling the hard line of his erection through their jeans. “But I don't want to talk about my truck anymore. Or geldings, to be honest with you.”

“What should we talk about?” she asked, although she already knew the answer. Conversation time was about to be over.

He pulled her shirt up and over her head and then slid his hands up to cup her breasts. “We can talk about how much I love touching you.”

When he pushed down her bra and ran his thumbs over her nipples, she shuddered and sucked in a breath. In the
past, men hadn't given her breasts a lot of attention because they were on the smaller side, but Chase didn't seem to mind at all, and she liked that.

She liked it even more when she turned to face him and he bent his mouth first to one breast, then the other. Sliding her fingers into his hair, she held him there, wanting more.

She unclasped her bra so she could slide it off and then unfastened her jeans. Before she could push them down, he captured both of her wrists with one hand. The other, he slid over her stomach and under the waistband of her underwear. Then he stopped, just letting his hand rest there, so close and yet still so far away.

Kelly made a sound of desperation low in her throat, but Chase refused to be budged.

“Are you in a hurry?” he asked, his breath hot against her neck.

“I'm not very patient when it comes to getting what I want, and right now I want you.”

He pushed her back onto the bed so he could pull her jeans and underwear off and toss them aside. Then he made quick work of adding his to the pile.

Kelly heard him set a wrapped condom near the pillow, but apparently he wasn't finished tormenting her yet. He teased her until her fingernails dug into his back hard enough to make him wince, his mouth alternating between her lips and her breasts while his hand slid between her legs.

He made her come for him with his hand and his mouth before she heard him tear open the condom wrapper. With her breath still ragged and her heart racing, she opened her legs and pulled him close.

He slid into her slowly, the friction so delicious that Kelly
actually sighed. She lifted her hips as he moved in an easy rhythm, urging him deeper.

His thrusts picked up in pace, and he hooked his hands under her knees to pull her close. Each stroke came faster and went deeper, and she arched her back as the orgasm shook her. He groaned and she felt him pulsing inside her, before he dropped her knees and pushed deep as the last tremors shook them both.

Once they could breathe again and their hearts stopped racing, Chase tossed the condom in her trash can and pulled her into his arms.

“That was worth getting my truck dirty,” he admitted, and she laughed. “I'm a little disappointed you haven't handcuffed me to anything yet, though.”

“I really don't get the whole sex and handcuff thing. Sorry.”

“You don't think they're sexy?”

“They're a tool of my job and, if I have to use them, I'm probably not having a very good day. So, no, I don't think handcuffs are very sexy. You're a builder. Would you think it was sexy if I wanted to bring a tape measure to bed?”

“The last thing
any
man wants near him when he's naked is a tape measure,” he said, wincing. When she was silent for a few seconds, he scowled at her. “This is the part where you assure me I have nothing to worry about.”

“Oh.” She widened her eyes and gave him a totally fake smile. “You have nothing to worry about.”

He reached down and pinched her ass, making her jump. “Smart-ass.”

She let her body relax into his and closed her eyes. It had been a nice day, she thought. Lunch with Chase in a restaurant and then a little afternoon dessert, so to speak, to top
it off. And maybe there was still enough time for an actual nap before she had to get up.

“Okay, maybe you
are
supposed to be abstinent before a big game,” Chase said after a few minutes. “All I want to do now is sleep.”

“Oh, no you don't. Everything we've done has been leading up to this night. Jen did all the details for the game, and I don't know if she shared with me or I forgot, but what time are you supposed to be there?”

She felt him shift and assumed he was looking at her alarm clock. “Sooner than I want to be there, that's for damn sure.”

“Damn.” With a sigh, she disentangled herself from his arms and the sheet. “If you cut it too close, everybody walking to the high school to get the best bleacher seats will see you sneaking out of my apartment.”

“Don't want anybody knowing your dirty little secret?”

She gave him an arched eyebrow. “As secrets go, you're not little, but you're probably a little dirty.”

“Complaining?”

She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. “Definitely not.”

“You have to let me go, or I'll be so weak Coach will bench me. And since I don't know if we even have enough guys in the first place, it'll be pretty noticeable if I don't play.”

“Fine.” She let him go and watched him get dressed. “I have to shower and put my uniform on, anyway.”

“I'll see you there.” He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss, wisely not lingering long enough to let her get her hands on him again.

“I'll be the blonde with the handcuffs,” she said, and he was laughing when she heard the door close behind
him.

C
hase stood in the middle of the football field, looking up at the blur of faces as the last bars of the national anthem echoed through the stands.

For a moment, he felt seventeen again, geared up and under the lights and ready to do the only thing he thought he was good at back then. The thing that made him feel strong and confident and in control. And the one thing that had brought Coach into his life and given him the guys who'd been like brothers to him. Football had made him who he was today.

But he certainly wasn't seventeen anymore, since all the standing around before the game was getting to his back. And they weren't exactly geared up. After much discussion with Coach and an equipment count, they were playing a slightly modified game. It wouldn't be flag football, but it
wouldn't be full contact, either, and they'd play shortened quarters. They were all in practice jerseys, blue for the team and white for the alumni, and they'd basically be playing a glorified version of backyard football.

It was still going to hurt.

The crowd sat, but then Jen walked out onto the field with a microphone, and Chase groaned. He should have brought one of those collapsible camp chairs, because he was seriously getting too old for this shit. Through the corner of his eye, he saw Alex shifting his weight from one foot to the other and knew he wasn't alone in wishing they could get on with it.

Then Gretchen and Kelly joined her and he didn't mind so much. Kelly was technically on duty, but she was wearing cargo pants and a SMPD T-shirt instead of her full uniform, with her ponytail pulled through the matching ball cap.

“Hey, Eagles fans!” Jen yelled. Whatever she said next—even with the microphone—was swallowed up by the cheers, so she paused until the noise subsided. “The Eagles Fest committee wants to take a minute to thank everybody who's given time or services or donated goods to the fund-raiser. As you know, saving Stewart Mills football means every single dollar counts. Actually, I can honestly say every single quarter counts.”

She stopped talking and the crowd quieted, as if every person in the stands was holding his or her breath at that moment. Chase did, too, even though he was certain good news was coming. He couldn't imagine the women would interrupt the pregame to announce they'd failed and there would be no more Eagles football in Stewart Mills.

Jen turned to Coach and held out the microphone. He
shook his head slightly, but she just smiled and kept it extended until he finally took it. The microphone picked up his throat clearing, and Chase got nervous. Coach didn't often get emotional.

“It seems like forever ago and yesterday at the same time that I stood on a field like this one and watched my team win the championship for the first time.” He paused, clearing his throat again. “Not many people thought it could happen. But I believed. And those boys believed. And now they're men and they're standing here with me today to help me keep teaching boys to believe in themselves.”

He turned to face them. “I want to thank every one of you who came back to help us out. It means the world to me and to this town and to Eagles football.”

The crowd added their thanks in the form of applause and whistles, which Coach waited out before speaking again. “To the boys playing for me now: on Saturday, the eighth of August, at nine
A.M.
sharp, I want you on this field, ready to play some football.”

It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, and then the crowd erupted. The people of Stewart Mills were on their feet in the stands, but Chase turned a little so he could see the teenagers. They were overjoyed, jumping up and down like little kids and screaming. Watching them lifted Chase's spirits and made him thankful that, back when he'd been having one of the worst days of his life, he'd answered the call from the 603 area code.

The energy in the stands was infectious so, when everybody but the players had left the field, Chase was revved up and ready to play some football.

By halftime, he never wanted to play football again.

“I'm not getting shut out,” Sam said, once they'd reached the visitors' locker room for a short break.

Alex snorted. “Unless you're playing for some other team, yeah, you're getting shut out.”

“Right now we are, but I mean that I'm not going to let this game
end
with us being shut out. Even Coach McDonnell doesn't have a speech that'll inspire us into a win here, but we're going to put some damn points on that scoreboard if it kills me. Or you.”

“The golden boys of fall,” Chase said with a chuckle. “Determined to get our asses kicked with as much dignity as possible.”

“I think I lost my dignity in the second quarter,” Deck said.

Alex nodded. “I'm pretty sure having to use a time-out because you were laughing so hard you fell down and couldn't get back up will make the highlight reel.
Their
highlight reel.”

“I'm sorry, but that was the worst kick I've ever seen.”

Philly threw a towel at him. “My foot slipped.”

“Okay, here's what we're going to do,” Sam said. “At some point I'm going to say the word
Texas
. When I do that, you take off running to the left and deep, Briscoe. Make it look like you're going for a burst of speed to surprise them.”

“They'd definitely be surprised,” their wide receiver said, rubbing first one calf muscle and then the other.

“Sanders, I'm going to hand the ball off to you, and you'll go off toward the right. Don't step out of bounds, and don't stop running or fall down until you're in the end zone.”

“You're a great coach,” Chase said. “Really. Your plays are so sophisticated, I think you missed out on your true calling.”

“I'd go back to washing cow manure off the walls of a barn before I coach football. You want to end this game with a zero on the board?”

“Hell, no.” Chase stood and twisted from side to side, stretching his back. “Run and don't stop. Got it.”

“And don't drop the ball.”

They were halfway through the fourth and thankfully final quarter before whatever conditions Sam was waiting for came together. They were close enough to the end zone that Chase probably wouldn't have a heart attack and die ten yards short. The teenagers were pretty much goofing off and had let their guard down many plays before.

As they lined up, Sam took his position for the snap and said, “I really wish I was back in Texas.”

As soon as the ball was released, Briscoe took off running and Chase almost missed his mark because he was so impressed by his speed. Startled, the boys realized one of the old guys was actually making a break for it, and they all took off after him like an entire peewee baseball team chasing down a ground ball.

Chase tucked the football and started running. He could hear the crowd going nuts, but he wasn't sure if they were cheering him on or trying to alert the boys to his escape. Keeping the chalk line in his peripheral vision, he focused on the end zone and tried to pretend he was seventeen again.

The first hand grabbed at his shirt right around the five-yard line, and Chase dug for a burst of speed. They'd won the first championship for Stewart Mills, dammit, and they weren't going down in a shutout.

Arms wrapped around him and he tripped, falling to the ground in a tangle with the kid who'd tackled him. The
ground was hard and he was going to feel it in the morning, but he rolled, looking for the white line and whether or not the ball had broken the plane.

Then Don Jones from O'Rourke's, who was acting as a referee, blew his whistle and threw his hands in the air to signal the touchdown.

Chase pushed himself to his feet, feeling an adrenaline rush he hadn't felt in years. His teammates swarmed him, patting his back and slapping him in the side of the head as the people in the stands roared their approval.

He saw Kelly on the sideline, laughing and cheering with everybody else. Her cheeks were red with excitement and she looked so beautiful he couldn't resist. He jogged over to her and, before she could see it coming, kissed her.

Her hands pushed against his chest at the very second he became aware of the shift in the crowd's reaction. Whistles and catcalls joined the cheers, echoing through the stadium, and he knew he'd screwed up big-time as Kelly backed away from him.

Not only had he just kissed her in front of the entire town, but she was on duty, too. Even though she was in the more casual version of her uniform, it didn't change the fact that she was at the game in a professional as well as a personal capacity, and he'd just made a huge mess of things.

“I'm sorry,” he mouthed, but she just gave him a flat look and waved back toward the field as a whistle blew.

“Smooth,” Sam said as they lined up in defensive positions they still had no clue how to play.

He glanced over at the sideline and saw Coach watching him with a blank expression, arms folded across his chest.

Yeah. Real freaking smooth.

—

K
elly couldn't count all the times she'd sat under the lights on a Friday night, watching her dad's teams play football. She'd practically grown up on the Eagles sidelines. But this was the first time she'd ever felt as if the lights were shining on her like spotlights.

“That was . . . something,” Jen said.

“Yeah.” It was something, all right. Something exciting and scary and very, very public.

Because of the alumni team's rally—which put them down by only five touchdowns with a few minutes left on the clock—and the kiss, the crowd's flagging attention had rallied, too. They were loud, yelling and whistling and stomping their feet on the bleachers, which made it too blessedly loud for further conversation.

She didn't know what to make of the kiss. It was obviously a heat-of-the-moment thing, but the look on his face when their eyes met had made her heart rate quicken. In that triumphant moment, he'd looked for her and, when he found her, that sparkle in his eye and grin had become just for her. Then he'd been there, kissing her, and she hadn't known what to do.

Now she adopted her cop stance—as her friends and family called it—with her feet slightly spread and her arms crossed. It was like armor, she supposed, keeping personal conversation at bay while they watched the clock tick down on the alumni exhibition game.

When it was over, the high school football team—buoyed by their decisive win and the news they'd play another season—did some showboating on the field, much to the amusement of the spectators.

Kelly chose to get a head start on the cleaning up, and that's how she ended up being as close to alone as was possible by the watercooler. Plastic cups littered the ground, and she was bent over to pick them up when Chase found her. She looked at his sneakers for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and standing up straight.

“I got carried away. I shouldn't have done that.” He definitely looked contrite, which was both nice of him and also slightly disappointing. So he'd been carried away by the moment, not making a public declaration of his feelings for her. Part of her almost wished he'd done it deliberately, with forethought.

She forced herself to laugh. “It's not
that
big a deal, Chase, so don't beat yourself up about it.”

“Your reputation's taken enough hits this week without me planting a kiss on you in front of everybody.”

“My reputation can handle a little fling. Once you leave, everybody'll forget and it'll be behind me.”

His forehead furrowed for a few seconds, and he nodded. “That'll be good, then. Like it never happened.”

For the rest of Stewart Mills, maybe, but not for her. She had a feeling she was going to miss having Chase around for a good, long time. “Yeah.”

“I should go. The guys are heading for the locker room, and Coach will probably head in there and say a few words.”

“Sure. And nice touchdown.”

He laughed, a self-deprecating sound without a lot of humor behind it. “At least it wasn't a shutout.”

Once he was gone, Kelly went back to cleaning up around the bench, not really caring what anybody else was doing. She was exhausted and now that the intense drive to make
Eagles Fest a success was over, she felt drained. There was still the parade to do, but they'd managed to time everything to take advantage of the town's Fourth of July parade, so most of the prep work was already done.

She was surprised to see her dad walking toward her, and she held up her hands as if in question. “What are you doing? You should be with the guys.”

“And miss a chance to thank my best girl?” Once he was close enough, he held open his arms and she stepped into his hug. “What you did for me and my boys is pretty amazing. I know it wasn't easy, but you didn't give up. None of you did.”

“You don't give up when it comes to people you love,” she said, pressing her cheek to his chest.

“I love you, too, pumpkin.” He pulled back so he could press a kiss to her forehead. “I guess I should go do a tour of the locker rooms. I have a feeling my alumni are just sprawled on the benches, groaning, but I should make sure the kids don't get too carried away.”

“I'll be cleaning up for a while. I know it's late and Mom'll be waiting for you, so if I don't see you again tonight, I'll see you at the parade tomorrow. Did Mom get the candy for the boys to toss? I was going to, but she said she had some coupons.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “She got candy and, yes, she had coupons. She has coupons for stuff we don't even use.”

“I guess it's like you and your shed full of tools you don't use. What is it you say? You never know what you might need.”

“Just like your mother,” he said. “Good thing I love you both so much. And I'll see you tomorrow if not before.”

She watched him walk away, liking the way his head was held high and the spring in his step. It made all the work they'd done worth it. But the work wasn't done, so she went looking for garbage bags. And for Gretchen and Jen, because there was no way she'd let them weasel out of helping.