Chapter 1
Chapter One
The frozen football smacked against his fingers and spread tingling numbness like an encroaching glacier, slowly but surely. The smattering of people in the stands clapped with the usual rabid enthusiasm of diehard Boston fans. He took a bow.
Practice hadn’t begun yet. Not officially. He was early, but not for the usual reasons. Today he was here to shoot a commercial. Yet again. He blew on his fingers.
If this shoot took long enough, the numbness might reach his shoulder and that wouldn’t be a bad thing for the pain. But he needed to warm up his muscles or they’d crack like petrified plastic.
“Okay, Trent. Take it again from the top and try not to look cold,” the director shouted at him. That got a few gruff laughs from his ever-present audience. Trent noted a few members from the media had arrived.
“That’s a tall order for a southern boy.” He smiled. He should have felt the smile deep down. After all, his team was in contention for the playoffs again. They might even have a shot at the big prize. He shoved the thought aside like a linebacker on a blitz.
Stepping to his mark, he thought of his sister Tammy and how she’d kid him about this one.
A commercial about Calvin Klein boxers wasn’t on her approved list. At least today he was fully clothed.
The thought of his little sister’s horror ought to help make his smile extra big.
He was about to say his line when his cell rang.
“Cut,” the director said. “Damn it, Trent you know better than that—”
Trent raised one hand in a stop sign and stared the director down, pulling the phone from its tight quarters inside his practice pants.
No one had this number except people he wanted to have it and they all knew better than to call him during practice time, especially at this stage of the season.
So it had to be important. A hot surge of foreboding sparked his adrenaline.
He checked the caller’s number as he stepped away from the small commercial set in the margins of the practice field and walked back toward the bench, where he had the absolute respect of his teammates—the few early birds in particular.
They wouldn’t question what the hell he was doing on the phone at this moment even if they wondered about it.
“Mom, you caught me at a bad time.” Wearing a resigned smile, he raised his middle finger at one of his teammates who snickered.
“Trent, honey, I’m sorry. I thought I was calling before practice.”
“Technically you are. I’m doing a commercial shoot.”
“Not another one of those underwear commercials, I hope.” She laughed. “You know your sister would skin you alive. Though I have to say the ladies from my club were fine with it.”
Now he laughed, though he noted that she didn’t say what his father’s reaction had been. He sucked in a breath and, even with the director glaring at him from thirty yards away, he had to ask.
“How did Dad take it?”
“You know him. He sucked it up with his usual gentlemanly stoicism, aside from the annoyed frown every time the commercial comes on the TV. But let me get to what I called you about. We can’t make it up to the game this week as we’d planned.
Your father has a trial coming up and he’s going to be locked away in his den all weekend. ”
“Another big case? When is he ever going to retire? I’ve got more money than I know what to do with. I wish you’d let me give you that retirement house on the Vineyard.”
“He’s convinced he’s indispensable,” his mother said with affection in her voice.
“Doesn’t he know you’re the indispensable one?” Trent meant it, felt warmed at his mother’s pleased chuckle. “Got to go, Mom. Make sure you’re here for the playoffs. We’re going to go all the way this time.”
“I know you will. I love you, honey.”
“Love you too.”
He ended the call, the smile still on his face as he began to slip the phone back into his pants. But it rang again. He lifted the phone to his ear as he walked back toward the director.
“What did you forget, Mom?” His grin in place, he listened to the beat of silence.
“I’m not your mother.”
Trent’s grin disappeared and he stopped in his tracks. This voice most definitely did not belong to his mother, or anyone’s mother for that matter.
“I’m calling for Trent Lockheed. This is Dr. Charline Morneau.” The voice sounded more like it belonged to a dial-for-sex number than a doctor. The doctor added, “A mutual friend of ours, Ralph Nunley, asked me to call you. I understand you have a problem?”
Anxiety surged at the mention of a problem, but the voice, the call, was all wrong—sounded more like a practical joke. His tension snapped and he bounced between amusement and annoyance. “Who the hell is this?”
“I told you—”
“I know what you said.”
“Look, I thought I was doing you and Ralph a favor, so if you’re saying you don’t want to be considered for the drug trial after all—”
“Drug trial?” he whispered, turning around.
“EM-HGH-1.”
The Human Growth Hormone drug trial Nunley told him about.
Tensing to a ramrod-straight stand, he cupped his hand around the phone and gave a game-face glance to the men stretching on the sidelines as he trotted by them and out of earshot of everyone.
The unlikely feminine voice that sounded more like a siren than a doctor no longer sounded remotely like a joke.
He paced a distance away and rasped into the phone.
“Take it easy, Doc. You caught me in the middle of the field.” A whistle blew, signaling the start of practice, as if to prove his point.
He turned, ignored the commercial director, and waved to the coach in a circling motion to let him know to start without him.
He’d earned that much privilege after all these years.
Then again, he wasn’t one of those guys to stand on his reputation or his past or take advantage of his privileges.
He was no prima donna and he didn’t relish acting like one now. But this was important.
Important enough for him to go against every rule in the book and years of religious adherence to those rules.
He’d had his trainer, Ralph Nunley, call this doctor friend of his.
He hadn’t realized Dr. Morneau was a woman.
A woman with the kind of voice that reached inside him and stirred up his blood.
“This is the only time I have to talk. Take it or leave it,” the siren doctor said.
Her attitude would have frozen his ear off if he hadn’t already been freezing cold.
But she got his attention. And a smile—the kind that was automatic, the kind he was unaware of it until after it was too late—formed on his face.
He angled himself away from the field, away from his teammates.
This was a business call—an emergency as far as anyone knew—and he didn’t want them thinking otherwise.
The importance of what she had called about seeped in and, with it, some urgency.
The uptick in the pounding of his heartbeat at the prospect of losing her—his chance—spurred him.
“I’ll take it. When can we meet?”
“I don’t know what your buddy told you, but this isn’t about meeting, it’s about qualifying. I’m already going out on a limb even calling you—”
“I appreciate it. Very much. You tell me what you need.”
“Report tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. to the University Research Center. I’ll meet you there and look you over.”
“You work early.” He tried to keep his voice calm, professional. This woman was on edge. He could picture her checking her watch and tapping an impatient toe. And looking him over in his skivvies. And her in her—
“Your exam needs to happen before the workday starts. Off the record. I shouldn’t be seeing you at all.
The trials have been closed for a week.” She paused, then said, “But I was told that you, well, that you had a lot of money and could be generous.” The words rushed at him in a conspiratorial hush.
Lifting the phone from his ear, he looked at it and wondered if she’d had a wrong number after all. Then he glanced toward the entrance of the locker room a split second before he started walking that way. In earnest. What the hell had Nunley gotten him into?
“I’m not sure I follow you, Doc. I think we’ll need to talk about it. I’ll be there for the appointment. Six a.m.” He shut down his phone before she finished exhaling on the other end of the line. He could feel a retraction coming on from her and he didn’t want to hear it. He knew he needed her.
He had no idea how he knew or why he did, but there was a lead-weighted dread sinking into his gut that told him she was key to his future—her and her clinical drug trial.
His pulse pumped at the promise of what that could mean.
He had to find Ralph Nunley right now and line him up for a heart-to-heart.
Half scared and half thrilled, he picked up his pace and trotted inside the tunnel, heading to the training room.
Could she have been any more tactless? She threw her phone on her desk, wishing she could throw it—and the damn football guy along with all his goddamn money—out the window. She shouldn’t have listened to Ralph. The Boston Minutemen football team’s head athletic trainer, of all people.
Pacing in a tight circle around the room, she spoke aloud to no one. “Charline old girl, you need to get a grip. Get this under control.”
Wound up wasn’t even close to how she felt.
The success of the serum meant everything, from being able to repair the leaky roof of her family’s ramshackle home to easing the effects of her mother’s debilitating disease.
To possibly saving her sister’s life. It would bring money no doubt but, more importantly, the potential for powerful healing was heady, fountain-of-youth-worthy stuff. Rein it in, Charline.
This was round one of the top-secret drug trial for her serum and they’d already encountered political controversies and now financial difficulties. But Mr. Football Guy could be the solution to one of the problems. The financial one. He had money.
Of course, he could also exacerbate the second problem, the controversy—if anyone found out. The risk would go through the roof if she allowed him to become a subject, even as John Doe.
But every great accomplishment was fraught with risk. Why should this one be any different? They were short the one ingredient they needed most: cash. The cost of embryonic stem cell cultures for research had skyrocketed beyond their budgetary means.
If she took football star Trent Lockheed’s donation, they could buy the embryonic stem cells they needed and get through January and the first drug trial.
The only cost would be to allow him to participate in the research as subject John Doe.
Charline stopped pacing and made the decision, her mind snapping into place with the new reality fully visualized.
John Doe meant her research could continue without delay.
Struggling to keep the panic about all that could go wrong at bay, she made herself pick up the phone and dial Baxter Hogarth.
Her boss answered on the first trill—as if he knew she’d have hung up if he hadn’t answered immediately.
She took a shallow breath, all she could manage with tension strangling her.
“I think I have a solution to the problem of the embryonic stem cell culture shortage.”