Chapter 3
ANNIE – SEPTEMBER
Stallion
I’ve met Tanner a few times before at player and family events hosted by the Bears. But it wasn’t until he and the team came to the ranch for our spring dance that I was properly introduced to him.
I was grateful to them all for helping out, showing my gratitude by making drinks and pecan pie, as the guys made Mama’s last dance the best ever.
But I remember most how Tanner made my mama light up.
If he wasn’t hammering or drilling things together, he was making a wisecrack that made her laugh, despite how sick she was becoming.
I can see how he wins over all the beautiful women he’s pictured with online. Looks, athleticism, humor, bank balance.
His car stands out in the parking lot – bright yellow and extremely shiny. I set my backpack on the ground and trace the slick polished surface with my fingertips.
I’ve seen nice cars. I’ve been for a ride and been taken for a ride in nice cars.
I’m the sister of a pro and I got knocked up to one.
I’m as comfortable in something swanky as I am in my daddy’s beat-up and rusting truck, kicking up dirt on the ranch.
But this car, even I can tell, is the kind only a veteran can afford.
I trace the letters ZR1 on the rear by the trunk and near jump out my skin when a gravelly voice asks, “Are you thinking of stealing it or making love to it?”
Without turning, I know Tanner will be wearing a smirk. From what relatively little I know of him, it seems to be his uniform as much as any sports jersey. “It would be pointless either way.”
The man is too smooth for his own good. His status as one of football’s most eligible bachelors and most unlikely player to settle down is no secret.
I accidentally enjoy watching that brawny physique as he walks my way.
As tall, broad and dark as a good stallion, he might be much older and one of my brother’s best friends, but he’s still a pin-up.
“How so?” he asks, reaching around me to collect my backpack from the ground.
His arm grazes my hip in a way that brings unwelcome pimples to my skin, because after what Auston Rogers has done to me, I’m determined to be celibate for eternity.
I’m thrust back to the one dance Tanner gave me at the ranch in spring.
It was a sympathy dance because everyone else attending had coupled up and been swept onto the barn floor to the dulcet tones of a smooth country band.
But it was nice, for three whole minutes, to feel less like a young mama and more like a young woman being held by a hotshot.
The kind of unachievable guy a girl dreams of in high school.
Though, ironically, my ex would seem aspirational to most women and he crapped all over me.
Still, Tanner is not my ex, regardless of their shared profession and athleticism, and my battle scars from Auston don’t change the fact that Tanner is irritatingly handsome.
So, I drop a hand to my side exactly where Tanner just touched, telling my nervous system that this is not something we’re going to get excited about.
Slow your roll, Annie girl.
“If I stole it, I wouldn’t be able to drive it anyway. As for making love to anything or anyone, I have a ten-month-old chastity belt waiting for me at home.”
Tanner laughs so heartily, I’m compelled to chuckle in return. What do you know, despite my shitty day, I can still feign happiness. I ought to have taken performing arts as my major.
I pretty much fall, ungraceful as hell, into the passenger seat, and as soon as Tanner slides into the driver’s seat, I’m engulfed by his freshly showered scent.
Noticing his eyes on me, I tell him in the way a voiceover might sound on a commercial, “The Lexus ZR1. It’s not for girls.
” Even if his proximity is making me feel very much like a girl.
“Now you tell me. The chances of me getting a refund on this thing are slim.”
Then he winks. Honest to God, he winks, again. The engine thrums to life – like my lady parts – and the exhausts make more noise than a firework display on July fourth.
I’m looking to the heavens as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the open road, heading out of the city.
“Thanks, Tanner. Even if it did cost me a horchata and my dignity, I really appreciate you doing this. I imagine you had to reason with my brother for me to be allowed in the same car with you.”
“He’s looking out for you. It’s all good.”
“Hmm.”
He shoots me a brief glance as he rubs his perfectly groomed, yet rugged, facial hair. “You don’t agree?”
“What my brother fails to understand is that he makes me feel like a hussy who can’t keep her panties on.”
Tanner chokes so bad, I wonder if I should thump him on the back. “I don’t think that’s his intention, Annie.”
“Maybe not but he’s overlooking the concept of my self-control. He insinuates that any man who gets within a yard of me has a chance.”
“You know…” He checks his blindside and moves onto the highway. “You’re only making this obvious to me now, so there’s no way Colton has caught onto it.”
“You men always stick together.”
“He’s my brother, too, just not of the same bloodline.” I know this is how team guys feel. They’d play to the death for each other, which is why, as kind as this ride is, it’s not an entirely wild offer of generosity.
“So Annie Bannie, tell me more about this driving problem.”
Annie Bannie? “I get nervous in the test.”
“I can’t imagine you getting nervous. You’re a force.”
I scoff. “That’s because you don’t know me.”
“I know you well enough,” he says, and I have no idea why that delights me. Or why I flash back to that dance at the ranch, again. The way his hand slipped around my waist as we moved. It was nothing, so it makes no sense that the memory would hit me now.
He was simply a guy, there for a girl feeling low.
“What’s in your sound system?” I ask, changing the subject because I don’t know what my body is playing at but I have no time for my hormones doing anything other than getting back to normal. I have no time for anything besides my baby, college and helping Daddy and the team at Sunshine Ranch.
With more luck than judgment, I turn on the music player and with it, Lainey Wilson’s “Somewhere Over Laredo”. I love this song but it’s entirely unexpected from one of the best tight ends in the world, who drives a car like this.
I raise a brow at him and he tells me, “I also light candles and add salts to the bathtub as part of my post-game ritual.”
Remarkably, my lips are curving up again. “Say that on the line of scrimmage and you won’t have to block any linemen, they’ll all be floored.”
He chuckles. I like that I made it happen. “What are you up to for the rest of the day?” Tanner asks me, moving on from his effeminate lifestyle away from the gridiron.
“Mama stuff. Feeding, bathing, bedtime. Then I’m going to go wild and make myself a mug of cocoa and watch the women’s rodeo.”
“Cocoa and rodeo, huh? That’s your thing?”
“Don’t tell anyone but rodeo might be my favorite sport to watch.”
He gasps playfully. “Sacrilege.”
“Yeah, well, your sister happens to be one of my favorites.”
He smiles big and even though he’s never mentioned Darcy Pace to me, I can see they’re tight.
“She’s a rockstar,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone but she’s the most talented of the Pace siblings.”
“How many do you have?”
“Just her.”
“Bummer. It must suck being in the shadow of your pro-athlete sibling.”
He literally chuckles from his very firm belly.
We pass the time like this, having a back and forth, as if, for some reason, we’re each challenging the other to be wittier or funnier.
Time moves faster than it has all day and it’s the first hour that goes by without me having half a mind on how I have no clue what I should or shouldn’t be prioritizing in my life.
As we hit the gravel road on our land, dust kicks up from under the wheels and I offer to walk the rest of the way to the house but Tanner tells me, “This is what insurance is for, don’t sweat it.”
He oozes sixteen-year-old-playing-it-cool vibes and it tickles me.
It’s so far removed from the life of adulting I’ve been catapulted into of late.
Tanner Pace does what he loves for a living, is insanely rich, and has zero personal obligations besides making as many hot women orgasm as possible, so far as I can see.
He probably is as free as an adolescent.
I wouldn’t trade Nelson for the world but I envy Tanner’s freedom.
At the house, as I climb out of the mountain of the Lexus to stand, Mama’s old collie, Bear, barks – a warning bark that’s not too dissimilar to my brother’s reaction to me being anywhere near men.
“Thanks for the ride, Tanner Pace.”
“You’re welcome, Annie Quinn. Any time.”
“D’you wanna come in for something to eat or drink? I’m told Nelson’s been eating Betty’s homemade peach cobbler. I’m sure there’ll be spare.”
He pats his ripped torso – I imagine eight, probably ten, hunky man bumps. “My chef would have a cardiac arrest if I did that five days before season starts.”
I roll my eyes. “I know a man who devoured my pecan pie on this very ranch in springtime. But alright, stud, have a good rest of your day now.”
I’m braced for the roar of that engine as I walk around the picket fence and up to the porch, but it doesn’t come. Instead, words… “You know, my sister didn’t get her driving license until her fourth try.”
Doing a one-eighty, backpack held on my shoulder, I see he’s out of the car, casually leaning on it. If I was a photographer, I’d snap him for a front cover of a magazine right here.
I have had zero sexual desire since having Nelson – I’m too tired and scarred – but I can appreciate that the man who was the first between my thighs for eighteen months today is hot stuff.
“For real?”
He nods. “Guess who started taking her out for lessons before that final test?”
I shrug. “I never can.”
“Why not let me take you out and see if we can’t get you through your test? It’d make your life a whole lot easier.”
I step back down from the porch. “You’d do that? Why?”
“I’d only otherwise be embarrassing the rookies on the golf course on my off days. They could do with some time to improve their handicaps without me putting them to shame.”
I move closer to the car and the man leaning against it. I’m braced, waiting for the punchline, staring at him, trying to read him. “Why’re you being so nice to me, Tanner Pace?”
He raises his arms from his sides. “I believe I’m what the ladies call a cinnamon roll.”
That makes me laugh. “You know I don’t just put out, despite the assumptions of every busybody in town.”
I expect him to smile in response but he doesn’t.
The opposite. He frowns. “I don’t think that, Annie.
In any event, your brother would kill me for even looking at you wrong.
” The way you looked at me all wide-eyed and dazed for a split second when you fell today, until you realized I’m Annie Quinn, exhausted hussy mama.
“Plus, I’m too old for you. A hook-up would put my hip out and I know it. ”
I bite down on my lip to suppress a laugh at his expense. In real terms, Tanner’s twelve years older than me. In athletic terms, that’s multiple operations and arthritic joints.
Part of me feels bad for questioning his generosity but… “It might not surprise you to know I’m not exactly trusting of people recently, especially the male species.”
He nods in a way that feels empathetic, even though there’s a very real chance I’m being rude, offensive, or both.
“Look,” he says, “Quinn’s my guy, which means you’re my girl.”
He’s so sincere, I could believe him. The way the team helped us out here in spring backs up his words now. And it’s… nice. Welcome. So maybe I allow someone else to give me help, for the good of Nelson and the sake of my brother’s personal space.
“I also really do love your pecan pie. I’d like to buy in now with an I-owe-you and collect in the off-season.”
“In which case, thank you, again.”
“My pleasure, Annie Bannie.”