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“Because that little reporter will be here in a few minutes, but first I have to shoo these other rookies out of the locker room so she can get a good photo op with you!”
Chapter Three
Tatum
“Mr. Dixon?”
Tatum stood just inside the locker room doors, holding one of them aloft as if primed for flight. Despite his bellowing voice and crusty exterior, Coach Clayton had been surprisingly accommodating on the phone, offering her the use of the empty locker room as her first photo op of the profile she’d be writing as her part of the Rookie Roundup feature for theStatesman.
She heard stirring and saw the flash of bare skin as a lithe figure danced into view. “Yes? Hello?” A syrupy Southern accent called out from just inside, drawing her deeper in as Shane Dixon stood, tugging down a clingy greyProperty of Sycamore State Athletic Departmentt-shirt over a flat stomach dusted with gently rippling abs above the waistband of equally gripping baseball pants. The knees were dusted with grass stains she somehow sensed would pop in the photo portion of her profile.
Oh shit,was her immediate thought, flashes of Shane’s boyish, tender skin seared into her brain.No wonder Moira warned me about this assignment!
Shane stood before her, blushing vaguely under the soft sodium bulbs lined in long, seemingly endless rows above them. He was compact, just slightly shorter than herself, but taut and lean, soft, and gushing with ripe, youthful enthusiasm, and as her wily editor in chief had so eloquently put it, corn-fed country charm.
“Sorry,” he murmured, cheeks flushed beneath gently batting green eyes and luxuriantly soft lashes. “Coach said there’d be picture taking so I was just trying to suit up right and proper.”
Tatum inched deeper inside the locker room, overpowered by the scent of male testosterone, cheap bodywash and sweat. Lots and lots of sweat. Rich, manly, horny sweat.
Oh, oh, my.Her mind raced, to say nothing of her pulsing hot libido.Why have I never done the jock thing before?
He stood like a little boy trying on his first suit, tugging at the hem of the shirt with long, tender fingers. Tatum struggled to ignore them, to say nothing of the rest of him, just as lithe and tender and aching and dreamy and—
“That’ll do just fine,” Tatum murmured ridiculously, like an old schoolmarm complimenting her student after reciting his ABCs correctly for the very first time.
Shane didn’t look convinced. “You sure you don’t want me in my jersey?”
Tatum’s mind raced. She’d been hoping that Shane would be so obnoxious, so odious, so predictably jock-ish, misogynist, and oafish that she’d want to make this a one-off, peppering questions like arrows from a quill, snapping a few candid shots to fill the piece out and never having to see Shane Dixon again.
But at the first sight of his caramel-colored, athletic body and the first sound of those lilting country words, she knew instinctively she was going to stretch this out for as long as she could. “We’ll do the full uniform next time, okay?”
“Next time?” His tone implied that, perhaps, he’d thought this would be a one-off as well.
She scrambled to avoid sounding desperate. “I mean, this is your big debut to the other students at Sycamore State. You want them to get to know the real you, right?” Tatum had no idea where the words were coming from. She’d never been good at flirting, God knows, but she found that in her role as reporter, she had a built-in reason to see more of Shane.
“Sure, I suppose.” Shane’s accent was pure honey drizzle, like syrup across his thick, plump lips. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”
Tatum stiffened, just shy of wagging a motherly finger. He sensed it, taking an involuntary step back and offering her a curious smile that hinted Shane might not be so innocent after all. “I mean, you know my name but … I can’t just call you Lady Reporter the whole time, now can I?”
Tatum wasn’t so sure. “Lady Reporter” sounded pretty damn sexy in Shane’s smooth, Southern accent. Still, she supposed he was right. Damn him!
“I’m Tatum,” she said, hooking her valise over her shoulder nervously as she extended a hand toward Shane. He took it eagerly, tenderly, his skin warm and smooth against her own. “So … no morema’am, okay?”
He nodded almost bashfully, a soft blush rushing to fill his adorably dimpled cheeks. “Yes, ma’am.”
They chuckled nervously. She shook her head, dragging her hand from his if only to avoid falling even deeper under his spell. “Sorry, I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“No?” Tatum was genuinely surprised. “Big high school star like you, from what I saw you were all over the local papers back in, where was it? Kernersville, Kentucky?”
“How’d you know all that?”
Tatum gave him a little “as if” hip cock. “I’m a reporter, silly. It’s my job to know all that.” She nodded at the long wooden bench next to where he stood. Shane got the hint and sank onto it almost wearily. Though he wore a fresh t-shirt, his skin was flushed and those grass stains on the knees of his soft white baseball pants made her wonder if he’d had time to shower yet.
She wondered if he’d just finished practice, waiting for her in the locker room while all his teammates filtered out. For some reason, that thought made her unreasonably hot. Hotter than she already was, which was pretty damn hot!
She sat across from him, prim and proper in her favorite maroon crinkle skirt and mustard-colored sweater, wishing there’d been room underneath for a bra and wondering how, uh, excited she looked beneath the thin sweater material. “All I’m saying is, this isn’t your first interview, right?”
“No, but all the ones you probably saw on the Internet were from our local paper, and they were all with the same reporter and he sure didn’t look like you, Tatum.”
