Chapter 3 #2
“Let’s get a table,” I say and Sean elbows me, but Chloe and Max are on board. He grabs the glass as soon as the bartender slides it over, before I can, and hands it to Chloe.
We get off our stools and Sean wraps an arm around Chloe, staking his claim as we move to a table for four in the corner of the room where we can see everything, including the television showing the local sports, NESH, her channel.
In spite of myself I watch, wondering what the hell she came up with from the afternoon’s exchange.
The clip isn’t too bad. She leaves out her why not more than a hundred and fifty percent comment and even though I feel like there’s an anvil somewhere above that will drop right on my head sometime, I relax.
Or it could have been the second whiskey.
A couple of women come in and steal Sean away after he gets tired of sharing Chloe.
His attention span when it comes to women is notoriously short.
He goes back to the bar and has his food delivered there.
The glass of wine I have with my homemade pasta completes the job of relaxing me, though I tell myself I’m on guard.
The meal makes me think of home and my family’s restaurant and I mention it.
Chloe picks up on that and asks me about my family.
I say it’s out of bounds, off the record, and she laughs.
“As if anyone cares, Fontanna. Don’t worry, I would never inflict such a boring story on our viewers.”
Max laughs. He’s finished his meal. We’ve all inhaled the food, even Chloe.
Max stands. “I need my beauty sleep. I’ll grab an Uber.”
“Admit it, Max,” I say, “You’re an old man and you’re out way past your bedtime.” He slaps my head on his way by me, but there’s no sting in it. Max leaves and I look for Sean, but he’s disappeared along with the two women he’d been flirting with at the bar.
I turn back to a pair of intense violet eyes.
“Looks like it’s you and me, kid,” I say to dispel the intensity.
The slow smile she gives me is anything but lighthearted, bringing home the fact that I’m at the table alone with her.
The intimacy strikes me like an offensive lineman knocking me to the ground.
Doesn’t happen often—if ever. But I feel that way now, taken by surprise, stunned and reeling.
I have no fucking clue what to do or say or how to behave.
This is the one position I didn’t want to be in with her and I feel stuck, trapped in the web of a deadly spider—a black widow.
Showing her nothing but my game face, I pry loose a smile and take another sip of wine, needing to loosen up all over again, get a grip, even knowing I should probably get up and leave.
But my need to figure out her agenda is greater than my need to escape her clutches.
I do an internal eye roll at my ridiculous paranoia.
I can handle her. I know what to say and not to say to a reporter.
All I need to do is remember that’s who she is. A reporter, not a beautiful, fascinating woman.
“He’s a class act,” she says.
It takes me a few beats to realize she’s talking about Max because my head is stuck on her. I can tell in spite of the whiskey and wine and pasta she’s consumed that her mind and her face-reading skills are still sharp.
“He thinks highly of you,” I say, recovering my bearings, “I wonder why?”
She sighs, measures me, and shrugs. “It’s my father.
As long as I don’t do anything wildly imbecilic or outlandishly illegal, because I’m his daughter and he made it known how proud he was of me, introduced me to everyone starting at a young age, as a chip off the old block, I get credit for everything he’s ever done, for his reputation, for who he was. ”
Her voice is heartbreakingly wistful and sad. But I watch her face and in the space of a few heartbeats it goes from sad to annoyed to resentful with a chip the size of a football field on her shoulder ready to do battle.
“So now you need to prove everyone right?”
“Or wrong, as the case may be,” she says, flashing a disarming smile.
“Now I know you’ve had too much to drink. Because that sounded a lot like an admission of potential failure to me.” And, even though I’d never heard of Chloe Smith at all before a few hours ago, I know that she is one tough SOB, not inclined to concede a speck of ground in any fight.
She puts up her hands. “You’ve got it all wrong.
I’m not conceding failure. Only admitting that people can be stupid.
” She arches a brow at me, ready for an argument, but I laugh spontaneously and I could slap myself for it.
I can’t afford to be amused by her, not even for a millisecond.
Not even for even the space of one flirtatious round of repartee. Not for a millisecond.
She’s covering for her moment of vulnerability when she leans forward, showing some cleavage. It has the desired effect because my dick is like putty in her virtual hands for whatever reason. Putty that’s hardening by the second.
“What about you, big boy? What’s driving you besides the obvious?
What makes you tick?” She’s asking like she’s a woman out on a date and I struggle mightily to remind myself she’s a reporter and everything I say can and will be used against me in the media.
Immediately, most likely via Twitter. And I cannot afford to have any blemishes because I need a multiyear contract, need to solidify my career and make the money now while I’m still whole.
Linebackers generally don’t last past seven years in this league and I’m already in year four.
Already starting to feel the wear and tear in my back.
The next contract is my life. My uncle’s words as he talked strategy with me—the night he died—come back.
Whatever you do, once you’ve proven yourself after the first few years, when you’re in your prime, get the fattest, longest contract you can squeeze from those mother-fuckers.
Because that next contract is your life.
Flexing my fingers, I want to pick up my glass and finish the last of my wine to wash away the memory, to wash away the sadness and guilt.
I don’t dare. Along with the sadness, any more wine would wash away the rest of my sanity, the rest of my resistance to the forbidden fruit of Chloe the reporter—the ambitious, too-smart-to-trust and too-beautiful-to-ignore woman.
Leaving my half-filled glass of red wine—the same color as Chloe’s lips, not that I’m noticing—I move back from her gravitational pull, using the strength of every muscle in me to do it.
“You dating some lucky woman?” she asks out of left field. Or maybe she thinks there’s a woman behind me, motivating me. No such luck. Only a dead uncle.
“You dating some unlucky man?” I smile, having no intentions of talking about my personal life with her.
She flips me the finger and laughs. Maybe she does belong with Sean.
I grab her finger because there’s too much cognitive dissonance in seeing her perfectly polished finger flipping me off.
As if she’s too much a lady for that gesture—or at least looks that way.
But I know full well that any ladylike parts of her persona are laced heavily with the whiskey-drinking sports aficionado with a loud, bold streak.
Unable to avoid staring into those man-eater eyes, I wonder what else I don’t know about her.
She pulls her finger from my grip and I let go.
It was a stupid move on my part to touch her.
I don’t want there to be any flirtation between us.
But as I think the thought I realize that ball’s been fumbled, recovered by the opposition, and scored. Way too late to take it back.
“No man has measured up—so far.” She pauses, leans in again and touches my hand, just a brush of her fingers against mine.
Enough to spark the air like a random lightning bolt.
My fault for initiating contact, for giving her license to do the same.
I keep my hand still, shift the sudden tension in every muscle to concentrating on not grabbing her hand and pulling her across the table so I can test those plump red lips, see if they’re as kissable as they look.
Knowing that’s what she’s tempting me, daring me to do.
“Maybe you’re the one, big boy.” She whispers the words, raising the hairs on my neck, raising my dick and spiking my pulse rate.
“You can dream,” I say, my eyes refusing to look away from that juicy mouth, except to drown in her deep-purple eyes.
It’s a test and I have no idea why I’m bothering, why I say anything. Except maybe it’s the alcohol and her impossible-to-avoid eyes sucking me in. Fuck. I should know better. Even if she wasn’t a reporter, she’s so not my type. Too bad my dick didn’t get that memo.
But I can control my dick, even in its current drunken, indiscriminating state.
Tonight is a one-off event midweek, a rare night out only afforded the veteran players because we have films and the weight room tomorrow as long as we make the time in the mile run—meaning we’d better be in shape.
Rookies have classroom, coaching drills, and running.
I promise myself and my dick I’ll never again find myself in a bar drinking with her, or flirting with her ever, or staring into those damn eyes.
My dick protests with a twitch as she pushes a blond curl from her forehead.
“I just might dream of you, Fontanna,” she says, her voice still low until she clears her throat. “In the meantime, how about if you come into the studio for an interview next week?”
“With you?” Surprise mingles with disbelief. She has iceberg-size balls and I’m torn between admiration and disgust, until she parts her lips and lowers her lids to half-mast in nothing short of a sultry look.
“You’re hurting my feelings now, Tate.”
“No.” I force the word out before I forget myself, before I start believing the vulnerable female act. She’s a tough SOB, not some soft, easy woman. Definitely not the kind of woman I’d want to be the mother of my children.
What the fuck am I even thinking? Running my hands through my hair, I stand, nearly knocking my chair over—and it’s a sturdy chair—while I get out my wallet and throw down a couple of twenties for a tip.
Max paid the bill with his credit card before he left, but I can’t help over tipping, a holdover habit from being in the family’s restaurant business all those years.
Until I escaped by way of football with my uncle’s help.
“You leaving, Fontanna?” She doesn’t bother standing, doesn’t seem to care if I come or go. I don’t know if it’s a genuine shrug-off, but I can’t afford to care.
“It’s that time.” She’s a big girl and can take care of herself, got here on her own, but as I step away from the table, I feel guilty. It goes against every grain of decency in my body to leave her here alone at this hour of the night. My mother would throttle me and then my father would kill me.
“You’ll be all right?” I turn my head and say over my shoulder.
She stares at me, filling my veins with racing blood, her slow smile too enigmatic to puzzle out.
“I’ll be just fine, Fontanna. Go.”
Her soft voice and ironclad confidence chase me out the door as the spark in those unfortunately unforgettable eyes burns a permanent impression in my brain. As I get in my car, I know I’m going to dream about her tonight.
And I’m not sure if it’s going to be a wet dream or a nightmare. Probably both.