Over the Middle: A Sports Romance (3 page)

"But . . ." I say, noticing his expression, "you have something else you want to tell me."

"Yeah," Coach Taylor says. "I chose you because you can be tough when you want to be. That's what Duncan needs. He'd try to intimidate any of the male students I could assign to him, and to put it frankly, the female students . . ."

"He'd seduce,” I finish, and Coach Taylor raises an eyebrow. "Alicia Torres was getting her ankle wrapped when Duncan came in. She filled me in on
Touchdown
."

Coach Taylor nods, then laughs. "We get one like him around here every few years. He's not the first football player to be called Touchdown. In any case, he's probably going to make a pass at you. Watch yourself, okay? You're a good kid. I don't want to see you getting yourself all emotionally busted up for a guy like Duncan Hart."

"Don't worry, Coach. I won't," I say. "Did you know he nearly ran me over in the hallway yesterday afternoon and didn't even stop to help me up? You can tell by his face that he didn't recognize me either. You think I'm going to let someone like that get to my emotions?"

"Still, be careful. All right, I'll get you the protocol for him by the time you leave this evening. Thanks."

I go back to work, finishing up my taping duties with Chelsea before she goes on to monitor tennis practice, since the tennis team doesn't practice near the Pavilion. When I'm done, I go get my backpack and change clothes, grabbing my own workout clipboard from the rack and starting my routine. If I'm going to get Duncan's respect, I need to show him that I can hang in here and that I know what I'm doing.

And of course, I'll have to not back down from him. Which is hard, because even as I do my kettlebell swings, I'm still seeing those gray eyes flecked with reddish gold and diamonds and that face framed by coal black hair.

I
get
a rising junior as my rehab specialist? Even worse, my specialist is a
chick
? Is this some sort of joke, or is Coach Taylor just fucking with me?

Thoughts run through my head as I get back to my apartment, fuming as I sling my backpack against the couch. I have a two-bedroom spread in the Vista Towers, not the best set of condos around, but good and close to campus. Best of all, I could bring just about any woman here and it won't be a problem. College chicks are impressed by the hardwood floors and handcrafted furniture, while any professional woman thinks that I'm
doing well for my age
, like they expected their college stud to be living in some frat house or something like that.

Not that I have a problem with frats. Some of the guys that I can possibly call friends are in frats. I say possibly because, to me, well, a guy in my position can’t be sure if they’re just being my friend because they know I’ll be big time someday. Still, at least frats are up front with their aims, so they aren't quite as insufferable as the others.

"Speaking of insufferable," I mutter, thinking back to Coach Taylor and that assistant . . . Carrie. Yeah, that's it, Carrie Mittel. All bitchy attitude and arrogance. Oh, she did a paper on Tommy John surgery. Big fucking deal. I've caused two Tommy John surgeries so far in my football career, laying bitches out.

Still, she has a cute face. I'll give her that. And despite hiding her body underneath a t-shirt that looked like it should have been set aside for someone my size, there was no hiding that rack. Those are prime, that's for sure.

I sigh and look around my apartment, trying to figure out what to do to get my mind off things. My eyes see my helmet, and I grin. Fuck what Dr. Lefort said yesterday. I've been flexing and moving my arm for days now around the apartment, and I can handle my bike. It's not even a real crotch rocket anyway—there's no way that I could get away with that on the team—just a 650 cc Ninja that can walk it out on the freeway, but nothing extreme. Back home in Silicon Valley, I have a 1000 cc Ninja RH that can peel the paint off the road if I want.

A bike ride could be just what I need. In fact, I know just where to go, and I grab my helmet along with my leather jacket and keys. My arm is feeling mighty bare, and some new ink would help me quite a bit.

* * *

"
Y
ou did what
?"

Carrie's looking at me with disbelief, her clipboard in her hand and her mouth hanging slightly open, looking at the bandage that's wrapped around my upper arm. "I said I got a tattoo, so I won't be able to go too heavy today," I reply, touching the bandage. "You know, my skin being sensitive and all."

Carrie taps her pen against her teeth, and I'm struck again at how cute she is. She's still wearing ridiculously oversized clothes though, so my feelings that she's an iceberg are probably true. I mean, we're in the weight room, for fuck's sake, and she's wearing pants like she's getting ready to go out in snow—and we’re in the desert of California, for fuck’s sake!

"Fine. Then we'll just have to modify some things,” she finally says, scratching through and scribbling. “I’ll make sure nothing touches the skin.”

"But—" I start, before she cuts me off, jabbing her pen in my direction.

"It's not my problem that you decided the night before starting a Coach Dave Taylor-written rehab and workout protocol, of all things . . . that you decided to go out and get some ink on your arm. Personally, I don't give a damn if you do the workout shirtless to let it show off to the world and air out, but you’re not getting out of your workout.”

"Still—" I try, and Carrie cuts me off again. I swear, this girl needs to be put in her place, and quick. But, I catch Coach Taylor giving us a look out of the corner of my eye, and I know he's willing to try to back up his threat of breaking a barbell off in my ass if I do what I want to do, which is say fuck this and walk off.

"Still nothing. You know, I bet if we put the weights in the middle of the stadium with thirty thousand women watching, you'd be going at this gung-ho. What, you afraid of being shown up by the others?"

Now she's egging me on? Holy shit. "You know what? You've got a big mouth for a training intern. How about you back it up?"

Carrie considers it for a moment, then nods. "Fine. Give me two minutes to change into my workout clothes. You . . . don't move."

Two minutes was all I needed as I pulled off my shirt, just as she practically asked me to do. Turning around, I checked out my best tattoo, a huge set of eagle's wings that stretched from shoulder to shoulder, and the beginnings of my half-sleeve on my left arm. The guys at Downtown Ink only got a little bit done. I mean, there's only so much even a good artist can do in three hours, but they had given me a sketch of what the final product's going to look like, with Celtic symbolism playing a big part in the design.

"You done showing off for yourself?" Carrie said behind me, and I turned. For the first time, I was struck dumb by her as she stood there with her arms crossed in front of her body.

Those curves.

That ass!

Holy shit, Carrie Mittel's fucking stacked! She's not skinny, but with a guy my size, she’s exactly how I like it.

Her hips flare out from her trim-ish waist in a set that lets you know those hips do not lie at all, before drawing down into legs that I just want to pour some gravy over and gobble. Every man's got a body part they like best, and I've always been one for a strong, toned set of thighs, and Carrie . . . she's got the sexiest set of legs I've ever seen.

My cock twitches in my shorts, and I have to remind myself that I'm supposed to be pissed at her. "Is that for motivation?" I finally get out. "Because you know, I'm wearing less than you."

"We're not playing strip poker," Carrie retorts, but I see her eyes flicker over my torso. She likes what she sees. Still, she's all business, at least on the outside. Give it time, she can’t keep this up for long. “Let's get that hex bar over there. We're starting with trap bar deadlifts."

"The fuck you say?" I ask, surprised. "This is an elbow rehab session, not a full-on workout.”

Carrie looks at me like I'm an idiot, and I shut my mouth again. How is she doing this to me? "Holding the weight in your hands allows you to strengthen your biceps tendon and muscles without putting direct strain on the cleared out areas. Besides, you're a football player. You guys are supposed to have strong hips and lower backs for your sport, right?"

We get started, and I'm surprised when she brings over another hex bar, sliding plates on it herself. "What's that for?"

"You told me to put my money where my mouth is," she replies. "I'm not stupid enough to try to lift the weight you can. But I'm not a prissy princess either."

I watch as Carrie grabs the two handles of the bar and starts copying the motion I was just doing, and even though I'm not as much an expert in weight training as I am in football, I know that she's barely getting started. Setting the bar down, she grins and tosses me a glance with her eyes, which I notice are strikingly pretty for their being brown. They’re gleaming at me right now, and she's smirking. "By the way, pound-for-pound, that's more than what you just lifted. So how about you stop fucking around and we get to work?"

By the end of the workout, not only does my arm ache, but my entire spine aches from my neck to my tailbone. Deadlifts, hip lifts, pullups, pulldowns . . . I swear, I didn't know there were so many ways to work the back. I guess I’ve been taking it a bit too easy.

Through it all though, Carrie was right there with me, going nearly rep for rep even if the weights were lower. She even grunts sexy, and my cock is stirring in my shorts again as I watch her in her now sweat-soaked workout shirt that's clinging to her every curve. She hits the switch on the machine that my elbow is resting in, and a low hum starts up. "All right, that oil's going to warm up here in about two minutes. You've got ten minutes in there before we get you in the whirlpool. Ten minutes in there for a general full-body soak, and you'll be done."

"Think you can hang out while I sit here in this thing?" I ask. "I'd have brought a book if I thought ahead."

"You don't strike me as someone who thinks ahead a lot," Carrie says with a smirk, but she sits down. "Or someone who reads, for that matter.”

"Actually, I'm carrying a 3.2 GPA. Not Dean's List or anything, but I'm not just some dumbass ball player who doesn't know shit outside of pass routes and how to play beer pong." It's true. I'm not an idiot. If I’m going to be in control of my life, and I will be, I need to be smart enough to not get ass-fucked by an agent. Not to mention, when your father is one of the biggest businessmen in the Silicon Valley, you don't grow up without learning a thing or two. "What about you?"

"3.95," Carrie replies, but without taunting. "I'm here full-ride academic, so I've gotta keep the grades up."

"That's impressive," I grudgingly admit. "Those are the sort of grades that you hear about from the engineering geeks or something. What's your deal?"

"What do you mean?" she asks, sitting back and stretching those incredible legs out in front of her. She leans back and spreads her arms out to the side to stretch, not realizing or not caring that it's also turning her chest into twin mountain peaks that stick an impressive way into the air. I admit it to myself that I want nothing more than to get her in the sack—if nothing more than to teach her a lesson on who’s the boss.

"Well, I mean, what got you into training? It's not something a lot of girls go into."

Carrie nods and sits forward, obliterating my view of her curves, but the image is still burning in my mind. "I was an athlete for a long time myself. In high school, I played soccer and softball. Unfortunately, I got injured in a collision at home that tore my shoulder up. I'm not upset about it, though. I wasn't good enough for a D-1 school anyway. I would have been D-2 at best, but in doing rehab, I really got into it. It gave me a way to channel my athletic nature, and so when it came time, I just naturally came here."

I laugh softly, and Carrie gives me a look.

"What?" she asks.

“Nothing. Not everyone can be as amazing on the field as I am.”

Carrie lifts an eyebrow and gives me a look. Okay, I admit it, I'm an asshole, and I was just making a joke. Carrie doesn't take it that way, though, and she gets up, her eyes flaring in anger. "I think you can watch your own timer. When it goes off, get in the whirlpool. I'll see you Friday."

Carrie storms off, and as she does, I'm given the treat of one last view of her tight bubble butt. I bet that same ass gave her plenty of power to drive in balls when she played softball too.

So I pissed her off? Ah well, that's half the fun. Get them so pissed off at me they want to scream, and then make them scream for a whole other reason. Let ‘em think they’re punishing me. Maybe that's just what Carrie needs.

I'm sitting in the whirlpool ten minutes later when Coach Taylor comes in, shutting the door behind him and coming over. "You little punk," he says, and I see that he's in weight room mode, not his normal, relaxed mood. “Ever thought how you’d feel if that injury caused you to never play again?”

"The fuck you worried about, Coach? She said she'd see me on Friday, and I followed your protocol. It wasn’t that serious—and it was true.”

Coach looks at me, then turns around, grabbing the bucket behind him. One of the things the training room always has on hand is buckets of ice water, meant for icing down injuries, and for what the trainers call 'contrast training,' where you soak the injured area in hot water and then immediately dunk it in ice cold water, only to repeat the process back and forth until your balls are about ready to retreat into your body forever.

It’s one of these buckets that Coach lifts up and dumps on me. While the whirlpool absorbs a lot of the cold, my head is fully exposed, and I'm sputtering, chilled, and gasping in a second. "What the fuck?"

"Carrie Mittel is one of the smartest, hardest working, best interns I've had in this program in years. She came here in a sad state from that injury of hers, chunking up forty pounds because of all the changes, and has spent the past year and some change busting her ass. She's a better athlete, a better person than you are, regardless of whether you go to the League or not. So treat her with some respect, Duncan. Don't piss me off."

"I could have your job for this!" I yell, starting to get out of the tub, but Coach Taylor pushes me back down with a firm hand, and I don't have the grip or leverage to resist and go splashing back in.

"And I could have you kicked out of school on a Title IX complaint for sexual harassment," Coach says quietly. "By the way, she didn't say anything to me. I overheard it through the intercom that is installed in here. I left it on because I wanted to make sure you behaved. You obviously didn't. Now get your shit, get dried off, and get the fuck out. Friday, you do your workout, and no shenanigans. We clear?"

"Yeah," I grumble, wiping water out of my eyes. "We're clear."