Chapter 2
Chapter Two
T he last place Jace Carson wanted to be was at a wedding with the entire town of Wilder in attendance. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his hometown and the folks who lived there. Some of his happiest memories were of growing up in Wilder, and he had sincerely missed all the good-hearted people who wanted only the best for him. But sometimes people wanting the best for you was more a burden than a blessing.
At least, that’s how Jace felt.
Ever since he had started showing signs of becoming a football player, the townsfolk had talked about his future. At first, it had been simple comments to other people. “With an arm like that, little Jace will make one helluva quarterback someday.”
But gradually, as he got better and better, people started turning their comments into goals—his goals.
“If you keep working hard, Jace, you could very well make the varsity team your freshman year.”
“All you have to do is win this next game and we’ll be heading to the playoffs.”
“One state championship win was great and we’re sure proud of you, son . . . but if you want football scouts to start showing up, you need to win two.”
“Two state titles! Best quarterback in the state, that’s for damn sure . . . now all you have to do is get a scholarship to a top-ten college and you’ll be playing for the NFL before you know it.”
Jace couldn’t blame the townsfolk for wanting their hometown high school quarterback to become a star NFL quarterback. It had been his dream too. And if he had succeeded, it would have been one thing. He could have come home a hero.
But he wasn’t a hero.
He was just a washed-up Canadian football player with a major case of depression.
What made matters worse was the folks of Wilder still treated him like their hometown hero. They still gave him big hugs and thumps on the back and talked about every play he’d ever made in the high school championship games as if he was still the best quarterback in the state.
Which made him feel like even more of a failure.
The last time he’d been in town, he’d decided to never return to Wilder. The only reason he’d been there was to see if he could correct a mistake he’d made years before. He never thought in a million years he’d have to return because he’d made another mistake . . . and once again with a Holiday sister.
That mistake had sobered him up and made him realize what a downward spiral he’d been on. He was still depressed as hell, but he was no longer drowning his sorrows in a bottle.
After that night, he had sworn off alcohol.
Which was too bad. Because when Hallie Holiday stepped into the hayloft in the short bridesmaid’s dress that hugged her petite curves like shiny red wrapping paper, he could have used a stiff drink.
He pushed down the sudden rush of desire and stepped out of the shadows. “We need to stop meeting like this, Teeny Weeny.”
She stepped closer and he caught her scent. A scent like no woman he’d ever known. “What are you doing here?”
“Hiding out from the townsfolk. If I had to relive one more high school football play, I was going to go crazy.”
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. “No. What are you doing here? In Wilder? At Belle’s and Liberty’s wedding? You told me that you never planned to set foot in Wilder again.”
He didn’t remember saying that. Of course, he didn’t remember much from that night. He vaguely remembered sitting at the bar drinking and laughing with Hallie. Everything else was a blur . . . until he woke up in the wee hours of the morning. He couldn’t seem to forget a second of what happened next. It had plagued him day and night for the last couple weeks. He hoped that once he manned up and took responsibility for his actions, he could put it behind him.
Far behind him.
“I’m here to apologize,” he said. “There’s no excuse for what I did.”
She blinked. “What you did?”
He had been with a lot of women and had openly talked about sex with all of them. But with Hallie it was different. He felt like an adult man talking to an underage girl. Which was ridiculous. The person standing before him was no girl. She was a mature woman who filled out the short-as-hell bridesmaid’s dress in a way that had all the men at the wedding goose-necking as their eyes followed her down the aisle.
Jace’s gaze had followed her too.
But with guilt.
A whole hell of a lot of guilt.
He cleared his throat. “I’m talking about what happened that morning when we woke up at your apartment.”
They were standing in shadow, well away from the orange-and-red spill of the setting sun. But that didn’t stop him from reading the amusement in her green eyes.
“You mean when we had sex?”
He flinched and she tipped back her head and laughed. Not just a soft chuckle, but uncontrollable laughter that had her clutching her sides. He went from feeling guilty to feeling annoyed.
“You want to let me in on the joke?”
She sobered. “I just find it amusing that men always think they’re the ones in control of sex. Which is ironic when they’re usually the ones who are so out of control where sex is concerned. If I remember correctly, I was the one who initiated sex. So what happened is more what I did.”
Images popped into his head. Images he had spent the last couple weeks trying to erase. Mainly, because the hot aggressive woman didn’t go well with the other images he carried in his brain of a cute little pigtailed girl.
He closed his eyes and tried to block both images out. “Okay, but I shouldn’t have let things go as far as they did.”
“Neither one of us should have. You were Sweetie’s boyfriend. And I took an oath a long time ago to never poach on one of my sister’s boyfriends—past or present.”
He opened his eyes. “An oath?”
She shrugged. “It’s a long story that I’m sure you don’t want to hear. What it sounds like you do want to hear is that you’re not some horrible person who molested his ex-girlfriend’s kid sister.”
He cringed. Damn, her bluntness was harsh. “Something like that.”
“Well, put your mind at ease, Jace the Ace. I’m not blaming you for what happened. I’m blaming myself.” She turned and moved over to the open hatch. The sun reflected off her hair, turning the soft curls that hung around her slumped shoulders into an ocean of shimmering orange and red waves. “Some sister I am.”
He should leave. Hallie didn’t seem to need his apology and staying any longer at the wedding would be sheer torture—and not only because of the townsfolk hero worship. But he couldn’t leave Hallie feeling guilty over something he was partially responsible for.
He moved up behind her and looked out at the sunset. “You aren’t a bad sister. You have always cared for your family. Whether it was punching Casey Remington for picking on Noelle or getting after me for forgetting Sweetie’s birthday. And I’ve given what happened a little thought.” A blatant lie. He’d given it way too much thought. “I think we were just feeling down and needing a little comfort from someone we knew and trusted. I was upset about having to quit football and you were upset about . . . umm . . .”
She snorted. “Way to make a girl feel like you were really listening.”
“Hey, my brain was pickled with tequila. What were you upset about?”
“I’d just lost my job after throwing beer in my boss’s face.”
He laughed. “Sounds like something you’d do.”
“Yeah, well, he deserved it. Not only for pretty much telling me that women shouldn’t be brewing beer, but also for patting my butt without permission.’”
Jace wasn’t sure why he felt like hunting the guy down and kicking his ass from one end of Texas to the other. Probably because he’d always been protective of the Holiday sisters. “You should have done more than throw beer in his face.”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, drawing his attention to the smooth skin exposed by her skinny-strapped dress. An image of running his fingers over that soft skin popped into his head. He pushed it right back out.
“Women have to deal with that kind of harassment all the time,” she said. “I was more upset about him thinking I couldn’t do my job.” She was still turned away from him so he couldn’t see her face, but the hurt in her voice had him angry all over again.
“He was wrong. I’m sure you make one helluva beer. If I remember correctly, you never did anything half assed. You were the best damned cowgirl I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, well, a lot of good that did me.” Before he could ask her what she meant, she changed the subject. “So what happened with the Montreal Wolverines?”
He was more than a little surprised that she knew his team’s name. Very few people outside of Canada did. “You follow the Wolverines?”
She paused. “Decker or someone in town must have mentioned it.”
“Doubtful. Decker still calls them the Montreal Wolves and the townsfolk would rather eat hay than follow Canadian football. Which probably explains why they don’t talk about my professional career—just every high school play I ever made.”
“You can’t blame them. Those were their golden years and you were their golden boy.” She hesitated. “So what happened? Why did the Wolverines let you go? Your shoulder?”
He could have just answered with a simple yes . But for some reason—the comfort of the familiar hayloft or the comfort of the familiar girl—he didn’t. “The scar tissue from my two surgeries has hindered my range of motion. I thought it might be fixable with rehab and therapy, but after the tryout in Dallas, I had to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never play professionally again.”
She turned and stared at him. “You had a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys?”
He realized his mistake. “Look, Hallie, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t—”
She placed a hand over his mouth and cut him off. “I won’t say a word to anyone, Jace. I promise. But you can’t drop a bombshell like that and not tell me the entire story.”
The pleading look in her green eyes had him relenting . . . or maybe it was the need to get her soft, warm fingers off his lips.
He took her wrist and removed her hand, noting the strum of her pulse against his fingers for a brief second before releasing her. “Okay, but I swear if you tell anyone—”
“I won’t. Scout’s honor.” She held up three fingers.
He squinted at her. “You were never a Girl Scout. That was Noelle and only because she loved Girl Scout cookies and was hoping to get the secret recipes.”
Hallie rolled her eyes. “Fine. How about if you trust me because now we already have a secret we’d just as soon no one find out about. So pretty much we’re already secret buddies.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Secret buddies?”
“Would you rather we call ourselves Secret Sex Buddies?”
“No! Secret Buddies is good.”
She laughed. “Who would have thought that Jace the Ace, who I’ve heard has his own fan club of football groupies, would be embarrassed about having sex?”
It wasn’t the sex. It was the girl. But surprisingly the girl had a way about her that was lessening his embarrassment and guilt.
“How about if we forget that night and just be the old friends we are?”
“Deal.” She held out her hand. He hesitated for only a second before he took it.
He intended to keep the handshake brief. Too many memories popped up when he touched her. But she had other plans. After a firm squeeze and a hard shake, she tugged him over to the bales of hay that cluttered the loft. Only after she’d plopped down on one and pulled him down to another, did she release him.
“Now tell me about what happened in Dallas. How did you get a tryout?”
He thought it would be hard to talk about, but he was learning with Hallie, talking came easy.
“One of the Wolverine trainers was friends with an assistant coach for the Cowboys. One night on a beach in Galveston, I called the guy and got the coach’s number. Then I called the coach and proceeded to plead like the pathetic fool I am.”
“You were pretty pathetic that night at Amos’s.” She grinned and patted his cheek. “So keep going with the story. The guy caved and gave you the tryout?”
“He shouldn’t have.” He pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “I was delusional to think I’d have a chance. I’d been doing physical therapy and working out. Somehow I got it into my head that I was even better than I had been before the surgery. I found out the hard way it was just wishful thinking.”
“So I guess you sucked at the tryout.”
“So badly the coach who had given me the chance looked like he wanted to crawl under the artificial turf. He finally walked over and told me I could leave anytime.”
Hallie cringed. “Ouch. I get why you wanted to drown yourself in tequila.”
“It was my own fault. I knew deep down my football career was over. I guess I just wanted to give it one last-ditch effort.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. Mimi always says to go down fighting.”
He smiled sadly as he rested his arms on his knees and rolled the brim of his hat through his fingers. “Yeah, well, I’m all fought out now.”
“Aww, I feel real sorry for you, Jacie.” She hauled off and socked him hard in the arm.
He straightened and turned to her in stunned surprise. “What the hell!”
“What the hell is right.” Her green eyes flashed with anger. “Pull your head out of your ass, Jace Carson. You got a chance most people would kill for. You got to spend the last ten years getting paid to do what you love while most of us will never get that chance. So forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for you. Especially when it’s not like you have to give up football completely. With your experience, you can be a coach or a sportscaster.” She hesitated. “I take the sports casting back. You turn into a bumbling idiot when you get in front of a camera.”
“I do not!”
“Then you never watched yourself. Remember the interview you had with that local station after you won the first state title? Instead of saying, ‘I owe the win to my teammates and coaches,’ you said, ‘I owe the win to my comates and toaches.’ I laughed my ass off.”
He scowled. “Oh, you want to talk about embarrassing moments? Let’s talk about the children’s Christmas pageant when you played the Angel of the Lord.” Her amusement faded and he grinned as he continued. “I’ll never forget you walking out on stage with bent wings and a wire halo bouncing over your head and yelling at the top of your lungs, ‘I forgot the stupid words, but it’s something about not being afraid because of Tide detergent and Joy dish soap.’”
“That was all Mimi’s fault. Mama was so busy making our costumes that she gave Mimi the job of teaching me my lines. She said the best way to remember something is by association. It just so happened that we were in the cleaning product aisle of the grocery store when I was trying to learn ‘tidings of great joy.’”
He rubbed his arm. Damn, Hallie had a hard punch. “Kudos to Mimi. Your performance was the highlight of the pageant. The entire town still thinks so.”
“And they still think you’re the best quarterback to ever live. So who cares what some Cowboy coaches think.”
He grinned. “And who cares if some misogynist asshole fires you? Here in Wilder, you’ll always be a badass angel who knows her cleaning products.”
She laughed and he joined in.
Damn, it felt good.