Chapter 14
PACE – LATE SEPTEMBER
Counting Chickens
To add to my DOMS from Monday night’s game, I wake with agony in my neck. I fell back to sleep with Nelson in the chair with my head crooked for hours.
It’s light out but there’s an orange, pink hue glowing around the edges of the blackout blind. My best guess is it’s sometime before seven. My moving stirs Nelson and when I look down to him, he’s smiling exactly like Annie does, a little lopsided, deep dimples.
It throws me back to last night and what in hell I’d been thinking when I ran my thumb over her mouth.
It was the candles. The talking. The laughing and joking, even the way she took care of me. I don’t need taking care of – I have an agent, a chef, a cleaner, more coaches, physical therapists and medical staff than I can count – but damn it was nice to be looked after by Annie.
Maybe it was hard to unwind after our chat about Auston and the overwhelming need I had to take care of her, too. To protect her and shield her from him, as she let it all out in the car.
And, fuck, I was wired enough after the way she felt straddling my thigh in the storm, the silkiness of her skin, the way my dick grew and the way it’s stirring now from memory alone.
Catching me in my inappropriate thoughts, Bear nudges open the door to the nursery and as he comes sniffing Nelson and me, Sonny appears behind him.
He pauses for a moment – reminding me that I’m sitting in the rocking chair with Nelson in my arms and it’s not what he was expecting. Honestly, it wasn’t what I was expecting when I turned up to the ranch yesterday.
“This is where you are…”
It dawns on me… he’s seen the empty guest room.
“Yes, sir. Nelson woke in the night and I—”
He nods once, sternly, not interested in the why, just content that he doesn’t need to get out his shotgun because I didn’t find my way into Annie’s bed in the darkness.
Give me some credit. I’m not a teenager. Lord, do I know it because as a teenage boy, I definitely would’ve found my way to his daughter’s bed.
“Since you’re up, you might as well earn your keep.”
As Sonny walks away, I eye Nelson but he’s giving me no clues as to what Papa has planned for me. Crucifixion, maybe?
“Yes, sir,” I mutter. I’m about to bring Nelson with me but his diaper literally squelches on my hip, so I spend a solid five minutes with Nelson giggling on the changing table while I work out how to take off a sodden diaper and put on a new one.
I’ve no idea if I get it right but the miniature hose seems secure enough for now.
Downstairs, I sit mini-Annie into his highchair. Sonny is nowhere to be found, so I check in the cupboards for some kid-friendly food, while Nelson gets increasingly animated waiting.
I locate a two-handled drinking mug and pour in milk.
That keeps him quiet, even if he is sloshing half the liquid out of the lid and over himself and every nearby surface.
Then I find a box of cereal that seems too small for a ten-month-old to choke on and for want of a better option, I tip out a handful onto the tray table on his seat.
I’m clearly a natural at this parenting thing because Nelson is as happy as Quinnen Jones eating a corn dog.
As he tucks into his deconstructed cereal and milk breakfast, Sonny appears from the porch, holding a mug of coffee. I’d like one of those myself and I’m about to voice that when he hands me a woven basket.
“You can fetch the eggs from the hens, son. It’s one of the best jobs on the ranch at sunrise.”
Fetch what now? From where? Is this for real?
I see that from the glint in Sonny’s eyes, this is some kind of ranch-man test. If I want to sleep in his house, he wants to make sure I’m made of good stock.
I literally and proverbially roll up my sleeves. “Sure thing, Mr. Quinn.” While making a mental note to give Quinn junior a piece of my mind when I see him.
Here I am helping him out to spend time with Sas and as a thanks, I get to collect eggs from real life farm hens.
“Daddy!” Annie says, coming into the kitchen in a pair of very tiny bed shorts and a Bears hoodie.
Come on, I silently scream to the heavens. That’s my kit. And damn does she wear it well. Those legs that were either side of mine yesterday—
Suddenly, I can’t bug out fast enough. Almost fast enough not to notice the way Annie raises one brow at the state of Nelson, sitting in a diaper I’ve now decided is strapped on backward, with half a box of cereal thrown around his immediate vicinity and his hair drenched in milk.
“It’s all good, Annie. It sounds like a nice way to start the day,” I say, not looking back.
In my haste, I don’t even ask where the hen house is, so I have to follow the sound of a noisy cockerel, with which I wholly sympathize this morning.
A Bears’ hoodie? Tiny shorts?
I swear I’m a saint for not even having a dirty— Nope, there it is, a dirty thought about what I would like to do to curves like Annie’s in—
Jesus fucking Christ, Pace. I palm my forehead, lucky that her brother can’t see the filthy storyboard in my mind because he’d hit me a hell of a lot harder than this if he could.
It transpires the cockerel does not get his kicks from one hen but an entire army of hens behind chicken wire, clucking around like nobody’s business.
Annie will be late for college if all these birds have laid. I find the break in the fencing and immediately squish my favorite pair of sneakers into chicken shit. Karma’s a bitch.
Tossing the basket over my arm, I roll up the bottom of my pants and try to avoid being pecked as I move through the clucking chaos to the enormous hen house.
“I don’t have food,” I tell the pesky things.
Inside, there are some lonely eggs in nests but many hens looking like they’re protecting their little bundles of protein.
I take the easy wins, then attempt to shoo the chickens off their wares.
Not working, so I try sweet talking.
“Come now, birds, let’s be having those eggs from you.”
They don’t budge.
So I nudge one off her egg. She flaps and clucks and gets angry as hell in my face, like a woman who didn’t believe me when I told her this was a one-time thing. The clucking bird drives me away faster than the biggest defensive lineman I’ve played against.
I stagger backward into the waiting wrath of a heap more chickens. Then I slip on their shit, mixed with last night’s rain, and the basket of eggs I have collected is unstable as I wobble.
I attempt to save the eggs, or myself, who the hell knows. Whatever, I slip backward and reach out to the fence to save myself but there’s no chicken wire in the world strong enough to hold up a professional tight end.
When I land on the fence, I pull the thing down, and I’m lying in the dirt with chickens escaping all around me.
Then comes the distinct sound of a deep belly chuckle.
Leaning my head back, I see an upside-down Annie laughing at my plight.
“Tanner Pace, you big stud,” she says breathlessly. “There’s nothing finer than a man who can handle a hen.”
“Annie Quinn, if you keep laughing at me, I’ll—”
“What will you do? Set your hens on me? Coz it looks like they can’t get away from you fast enough, hunny.”
I push up to sit, hands in the filth, and see that she’s right. The hens have seen their freedom and made a run for it.
Annie and I spend half an hour shooing chickens and counting them back inside.
Sonny has the good grace not to laugh for too long when we get back to the house but Nelson scrunches his nose at the way I smell.
What is it with my visits here ending up with me covered in animal crap?
Annie offers me some of Colton’s clothes but I opt for a towel to drape over the seat of my car instead and eventually, we’re on our way, one of us absolutely stinking, to San Antonio University.
When we pull up outside the campus café, we draw the attention of onlookers – I guess it’s the car but I don’t like the way people are fixing on Annie. I know she doesn’t enjoy the attention that comes her way by virtue of Colton and now Auston.
I kill the engine, intending to escort her for horchata, when she leans back down through the passenger window and tells me, “Stay put, stud, my reputation can’t handle another pro baller, especially one that smells of poultry excrement.”
I’m shaking my head, irritated that I’m in the situation I’m in, yet smirking at her sass, when she taps the roof of my Lexus.
I watch her go inside, thinking I’ve been punished hard enough for ogling, so I might as well enjoy the way she moves in those stonewash jeans that are practically painted onto her ass, her long hair swishing against the hourglass of her back as she goes.
A bunch of the guys are in the players’ lounge when I get to the training facility, despite it being our day off.
The lounge is state of the art, with a gym that’s stacked with the highest quality equipment, a barbers’ station – where Jad and Terry are currently both getting new looks – a shuffleboard, a pool table, table tennis, large screens for watching and even larger screens for gaming.
There’s food and drinks available twenty-four seven and for a lot of us, staying ahead means coming into the facility on our day off – mostly for physical therapy for me these days – because the game is our lives and when you don’t have someone to go home to or family living close by, you might as well be hanging out with your brothers here or on the golf course.
“Jesus, Pace, what happened to you? You look like you’ve bathed in a sty, and what the fuck is that smell?” Omar asks.
He and Lamar pause their computer game, noses scrunched from their positions lounging on the sofas in front of the big screens.
I reach into the refrigerator and take a can of club soda. Cracking the ring pull, I tell them, “The smell is chicken shit.”
That gets the attention of everyone. Even the barbers stop trimming.
“Chicken shit?” Jad asks from his salon-style chair.
“Why?” Terry asks.
I take a sip of soda. “I was counting chickens with Quinn’s sister.”
“Tell me that isn’t a euphemism,” Max says, heading my way from the gym equipment. “Because if Quinn thinks you’re hooking-up with his sister—”
“Nope. I was genuinely knees deep in hen shit.”
Then I leave them to banter behind my back because I need to shower, change into some spare clothes from my locker, and sign all the merchandise that’s been delivered here for that purpose.
Changed and merch signed – including ten life-size cardboard cutouts of me shirtless (weird) – I head to Colton’s penthouse apartment.
Sas and I agreed to move our meeting there since I was coming into the city with Annie anyway and it means she and Colton can head out together as soon as we’re done going through my contract terms for the sponsor deal.
As soon as Colton opens the door to me, I can tell from the uncommon creases around his mouth that the guys have already filled him in on my hen plight.
I lift my shades into my hair and glare at him in greeting. Then I see Sas, sitting with documents and a laptop in front of her, on Colton’s – or their, these days – long dining table, the entire cityscape a backdrop to the open space. Naturally, she’s covering a smirk with her fingertips.
“That’s the last time I do you two a favor,” I gripe, heading inside.
I don’t wait to be invited because Sas is one of my best friends, an honorary sister, and as unlikely as it seemed this time last year, Colton is my guy now, too. I spend a lot of time here, especially when Sas is home in New York.
“You should be the one thanking me,” Colton says, puttering around his kitchen, giving Sas and me space to talk business.
“How’s that now?” I call back to him.
He plants his paws on the kitchen countertop.
“If it wasn’t for me, Daddy would have brought out his shotgun instead of sending you to collect a few hen eggs.
You stayed over and he wanted to send you a warning.
But he knows the last guy who messed with my sister ended up in the ER having his jaw fixed. So, you’re welcome.”
“Quinn, I don’t know if I love all you ranchers or if I think y’all are fucking crazy.”
He’s guffawing as he leaves the room but I know it’s still about the chicken shit.
I also know he just gave me a reminder that his sister is completely out of bounds.
Which is nothing I don’t keep telling myself. Increasingly often.
“I’ll say thank you,” Sas tells me, smiling softly now. “We appreciate it. Colton’s working hard trying to make everything run as smooth as possible for Annie and the ranch but it’s rough in active season. He and I being long-distance half the time doesn’t help either.”
“I’ve got you, firecracker.” I hold out a fist, which she knocks with her own. “Truthfully, it’s no problem. Annie’s fun to be around. Nelson’s a little dude and Sonny…” I scoff but I’m smiling. “I respect him. They’ve been through a lot and I’m happy to help.”
She nods. “You’re good people, Pace.”
“God loves a trier.”
“Are you taking Annie home later or is she getting a cab?”
“I’ll take her. Make sure she gets back to Nelson. Plus, I’m recording the pod late tonight because Jones has something on first.”
“So long as you’re looking after yourself. How are you feeling being back at it?”
“Like there aren’t enough bath salts and physical therapists in the world to deal with my joints. But there are injections.”
She rolls her eyes, then pulls a lucrative sponsorship contract between us on the table.