The Quarterback Who Replaced His Pregnant Wife With A Supermodel

1. On the Clock

On the Clock

Piper

The aluminum bleacher leached warmth through the skirt of my dress. My shoes sat beside Nolan’s discarded jacket and tie, all of it looking absurd against the empty college field. Across the turf, Nolan tossed a football into the air and caught it with both hands.

Thwack.

He turned and paced back the other way.

The hotel lights glowed beyond campus, and the bass from Reid’s Draft party reached us in dull pulses. An hour earlier, Nolan had been trapped behind a VIP table while sponsors, cameras, and men in suits crowded around him before any team had even called his name.

He had lasted less than forty minutes.

Then his hand had found mine beneath the table.

“Come on.”

That was all he had said before we slipped out.

Now he was back on the field where he had spent four years earning this night, and I was barefoot on the bleachers in a dress Reid had approved for photographs.

“If that thing lands over here, I’m not chasing it.”

Nolan caught the ball against his chest. “You wouldn’t chase it if you had shoes on.”

“True.”

He smiled before he sent the football upward again.

The spring chill skimmed over my bare shoulders. I preferred it to the hotel ballroom, where every conversation had been about draft position, contract value, or what Reid called Nolan’s market potential.

Out here, nobody needed anything from him.

Except me, apparently, because I was starting to get dizzy watching him pace.

“Your jacket’s about to fall.”

“Let it.”

“Reid spent twenty minutes fixing that suit.”

“That makes me want to let it fall more.”

I nudged the jacket farther onto the bench before the sleeve could slip over the edge. “You’re such a grateful son.”

“I’m very grateful.”

“For what?”

“That he’s not here.”

I laughed.

That was the version of Nolan I knew. Not the man Reid had posed beneath sponsor logos all evening, but the guy who had spent half his college life on this turf and the other half complaining about how much he hated people watching him eat.

The football struck his palms again.

He had run routes here before sunrise. Stayed after practice until the coaches shut the lights off. Played through bruises he pretended didn’t bother him because scouts had started appearing along the sideline, clipboards in hand.

Tonight, there was nothing left for him to prove.

He just had to wait.

“You’ve walked across that same patch of grass about twenty times.”

Nolan looked down. “Were you counting?”

“I had to entertain myself somehow.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re throwing the ball like it insulted your mother.”

“She’d probably deserve it.”

“Terrible answer.”

“It’s helping.”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

He caught the next toss and held the football instead of sending it back up.

For a moment, he glanced toward the distant hotel.

Then he turned away from it.

Something about that settled me.

Reid had built the whole evening around Nolan’s reaction. Cameras. Screens. Executives waiting to shake his hand. A table positioned so the entire ballroom could watch the instant his life changed.

But when the pressure became too much, Nolan had chosen this field.

And me.

I tucked one bare foot beneath the hem of my dress and watched him pace another lap across the turf.

“You’re going to wear a trench into the turf, Nolan. Reid is probably having a heart attack looking for you.”

He caught the ball. “Let him panic. I can’t sit at that VIP table and smile for the cameras while I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“Please don’t. That suit cost more than my first car.”

Nolan looked at me. “That’s what you took from that?”

“I’m protecting your assets.”

“Don’t start sounding like my father.”

“Never.”

“Good.”

His shoulders eased as he stood near the painted numbers, the football resting against his hip.

The hotel bass carried across campus again.

I looked at the field instead.

Four years of his life were pressed into this place. Every sprint. Every missed dinner. Every Saturday spent limping back to our apartment after convincing coaches he was fine.

He had done the work.

Whatever happened next belonged to the people holding phones in war rooms across the country.

I shifted Nolan’s jacket out of the way and made room beside me.

“Come sit down. You did the work, you broke the records. All we have to do now is wait for the phone to ring.”

For once, he stopped pacing.

I patted the empty space beside me.

He tucked the football against his side and started toward me.

Nolan had taken three steps when his phone rattled against the bench.

The sound cut through the field.

He stopped.

The football dropped from beneath his arm and bounced once on the turf before rolling toward the sideline.

“Nolan. Your phone.”

“I know.”

He stared at it for another beat.

“Then answer it.”

“I’m answering it.”

He crossed the remaining distance and snatched the phone from beside his jacket. The screen washed his face in pale light before he lifted the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

Reid’s voice exploded through the receiver.

“Where the hell are you?! The GM is trying to call you right now! They are on the clock, Nolan. Switch over to the other line!”

My hand gripped the edge of the bench.

Nolan stared straight ahead.

“Dad, slow down.”

“Don’t make me repeat myself. Switch lines.”

The General Manager.

On the clock.

For one ridiculous second, those words refused to fit together with the empty field around us. The hotel bass still drifted across campus. Nolan’s football rested several yards away in the grass. My shoes were still sitting beside his discarded tie.

Nothing looked different.

Everything was.

“Nolan,” I said.

His eyes found mine.

That was when I knew he understood too.

He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the screen. His thumb moved across it once.

Then he put it back to his ear.

“Coach?”

Silence.

I couldn’t make out whoever spoke on the other end.

His breath caught in his throat.

The restless man who had spent the last half hour pacing vanished. He stood beside the bleachers without moving, listening.

“Yes, sir.”

Another pause.

“Yes, sir, I am absolutely ready to get to work.”

I pressed my palm against the bench.

That was it.

Nobody needed to explain it to me.

No announcer. No television graphic. No row of cameras waiting for a reaction.

Four years of predawn workouts, bruised Saturdays, missed dinners, and scouts lining the sidelines had come down to Nolan standing in front of me with a phone against his ear.

His name had been called.

Nolan listened for another moment.

“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”

He lowered the phone.

For a second, neither of us said anything.

“Nolan?”

His smile started small, almost uncertain, as if he needed permission to believe what had just happened.

Then it broke across his face.

“Oh my God.”

I was already smiling. “You did it.”

“We did it.”

“No. You—”

He tossed the phone onto the bench.

“Nolan.”

He grabbed me around the waist.

I barely got my hands onto his shoulders before he lifted me straight off the seat.

“Nolan!”

His laugh carried across the empty field.

“We did it, Piper.”

“Put me down.”

“Not happening.”

“You just got drafted. Try acting like a professional for five seconds.”

“I don’t work for them yet.”

He spun me away from the bleachers.

The hem of my dress flared around my legs, and I grabbed his neck to keep from sliding out of his arms.

“Nolan, put me down! You’re ruining your suit!”

“I don’t care about the suit.”

“I noticed.”

He laughed again, the sound rougher this time, almost disbelieving.

“Number one,” he said. “Piper, they took me number one.”

“I know.”

“Number fucking one.”

“I heard your father.”

“Reid knew before I did.”

“That might be the happiest part of his night.”

Nolan barked out another laugh.

Then his heel caught the edge of the turf.

“Oh, no.”

He tried to steady himself, but there was nowhere for his weight to go without dropping me. His arms tightened around my waist instead, and momentum carried us past the sideline.

“Nolan—”

We tipped together.

The ground rushed up beneath us.

I landed against him first, his arm taking most of my weight before we rolled sideways. Damp grass pressed against my bare shoulder, and part of my skirt twisted beneath my knee.

For half a second, we lay there stunned.

Then Nolan started laughing again.

I pushed myself onto one elbow and looked down at him.

“You are such an idiot.”

“I’m the number-one-overall idiot.”

“Apparently.”

He grinned up at me like he’d never been happier.

The hotel lights still burned in the distance. Reid was probably tearing apart the ballroom trying to find him, and Nolan’s phone sat abandoned on the bleachers where he’d thrown it.

None of it mattered yet.

Nolan was still laughing when he sat up beside me.

Grass clung to one sleeve of his shirt. A damp streak marked the knee of his trousers, and the sight of it made me laugh again because Reid was going to lose his mind when he saw what Nolan had done to the suit.

The laughter faded.

His hand settled back at my waist. Mine rested against his shoulder. Neither of us moved.

The music from the party seemed much farther away now.

“Your phone is still on the bleachers,” I said.

“It can stay there.”

“So can my shoes, apparently.”

“I’ll buy you new ones.”

I smiled. “You haven’t even signed a contract yet.”

“Details.”

He stood and pulled me up with him.

Instead of letting go, Nolan slipped one arm beneath my legs and lifted me.

“Nolan.”

“What?”

“You know I can walk.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you carrying me?”

His grin returned. “Because I can.”

I hooked an arm around his neck before he could drop me. “Excellent reasoning.”

The practice-field door stood open ahead of us, leading into the locker-room corridor. Nolan headed straight for it without bothering to retrieve anything we’d abandoned near the bleachers.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Inside.”

“That’s very specific.”

“You ask too many questions.”

“You give terrible answers.”

He carried me through the doorway.