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As I thought about the tender kiss she’d pressed to my lips as farewell until the morning, I, unconsciously, reached up and rubbed my mouth.
It had been as innocent as a peck between five-year-old cousins at a wedding party. Simple, demure. Nothing risqué about it.
And yet, she’d ruined all of that by staying a moment too long close to him, hovering in front of him, her body close, so close that less than an inch separated them. Her hands had wavered at her side, and I could feel the need in her, knew she wanted to touch me. Knew she wanted to do so much more than offer me that chaste kiss, but, I let it go. Let her go.
I wanted her to feel in charge. Needed it, in fact.
Was it going to drive me crazy?
Without a shadow of a doubt.
I hadn’t reached my lofty position by waiting on other people to make the first move, but everything that had happened tonight? It had convinced me that waiting on Jessica might be the best thing I ever did.
“You like her.”
The blanket statement had me jolting in place. “Huh?”
“You heard me, boy,” Mackenzie grumbled, and despite myself, I had to laugh.
“I don’t have to answer, coach.”
Mac sighed. “Don’t ‘coach’ me. That was too long ago.”
“Hardly. It all started there for me.”
“True. You were the best player I ever coached too. Shame you had to ruin it by going into business.”
Only a true fan of football would ever consider earning a billion dollars being a waste of talent. I snorted, amused and touched by his irascible nature.
I didn’t say that it was a good job I had for him—he’d had a heart attack, a bad one. One that had left him crippled by medical debts as well as plagued with other health issues.
Working as a coach hadn’t been an option, and his insurance had only covered some of his debts. My billions had been a lifeline for him, and this job was exactly what he needed. He was too young to retire—at only fifty-eight, he had many good years left in him. But it wasn’t stressful unless you counted traffic jams as stressful, which I guessed they were, but he just swore at them and flipped them off like any native from the city.
He now had the best insurance, never had to worry about his wife or sons and grandsons, and the 401k was epic—I knew, because I managed it for him myself.
That he had so much because of those billions and could still bitch about me wasting my talent?
Fuck, it made me love him even more.
This man was like a father to me, and it was for that reason alone that I grumbled, “Yeah, I like her.”
“Thought so,” he said, satisfaction lacing his tone. “She liked you. Skittish, though. Like Bambi or something.”
My lips twitched at that. “Bambi fits, actually.”
She was slender and long, a frail air about her that said she could be knocked over by a feather. Add to the vulnerability that constantly shadowed her eyes, something I’d managed to nudge aside for a handful of moments this evening, she was delicate and it showed.
But, though the desire had never filled me before, it did now—I wanted to protect her.
“You remember that game against the Lions?”
Mackenzie grunted. “I remember. Nicky let us down—I always knew I should have picked a different quarterback. He wasted that last try, and it was all down to you to make sure they didn’t score another point.”
“Well, I want to protect her more than I wanted to protect that ball.” It was the only way I could describe my feelings, the only way he too would understand.
Neither of us were at one with our emotions. We were men’s men, which meant we used as few words as possible or left things unsaid.
As a teenager, I’d been lost, only finding myself in two places—math class and on the football field where I could work my crazy arithmetic and help Mackenzie come up with plays that should have been crazy and illogical but had made perfect sense to me. It had helped that I was huge and made a perfect tight end.
