Winner Takes All (14 page)

“Is there something on your mind you'd like to talk about?”

Cody shook his head again. “Everything's fine.”

Bullshit. Just like Blake always told Annabelle his knee was fine. Blake read the lies all over Cody's face. Had Blake been that easy for Annabelle to read?

Blake decided to take a different tactic. “Okay, then. Let's talk about your field performance.” He grabbed his clipboard and glanced over the notes he'd made during practice. “Your pass completion rate has improved, but your timing's been off.”

Cody shifted in his seat. “I'm sorry, Coach. I didn't sleep good last night and—”

“It's not just today, Cody. You've been off all week. Your handoffs are sloppy and you're not following through with the play. If this had been a real game, the other team's defensive tackle would have annihilated you.” He leveled Cody with a hard look. “So, I'll ask you again. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?”

On some level, Blake understood Cody's unwillingness to open up. Hadn't Blake been that hesitant to let anyone in after his banishment? All the phone calls from his parents in Arizona checking in on him? How many times had he uttered the words
I'm fine
?

Blake leaned forward in his chair. “Listen,” he told the kid. “Our first game is next week. Do you understand what I mean?”

Cody nodded.

“You're the quarterback. The captain,” Blake told him. “You've been on a winning team before, and most of these kids don't know what that feels like. Not only have you played in an arena three times the size as ours, but you're also older than most of them. Now, you may not realize this, but most of those kids look up to you.”

Again the kid nodded and Blake continued. “I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the attitude of the quarterback sets the tone for the entire team. When your attitude sucks, it rubs off on them. When you have no faith, it sucks what little faith they have. You understand what I'm saying, son?”

“Yes, Coach,” the kid replied automatically.

Blake studied him for a moment. “You don't really want to be here, do you?”

Cody lifted one shoulder. “I just want to play football, Coach.”

“But not for the Bobcats,” Blake guessed.

“I didn't say that,” Cody argued.

Blake shook his head. “You didn't have to. Your attitude on the field says it all. You may have been a team player in Texas, but you haven't been much of a team player here.”

Cody didn't say anything, effectively affirming Blake's assumption of the kid.

A heavy sigh flowed out of Blake's lungs. Time for a different attempt. “I understand playing for a small-time 3A team isn't the same as the Texas state champions. But those other players out there?” Blake asked with a nod of his head toward the locker room. “They don't understand that. Every time you step onto the field with that piss-poor attitude of yours, you're letting them down. Now, how are you going to look each one of them in the eye, knowing you're not giving them the same 110 percent they're giving you?”

The sullen kid slid deeper in his chair and averted his gaze to the ground. “I'm sorry, Coach.”

“You keep apologizing to me, Cody, but I don't want to hear you're sorry.” Blake rested his arms on his desk. “You really want to prove to me and the other coaches how sorry you are? Bring it on the field and leave it there.”

Cody nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Blake jerked his head toward the door. “You're dismissed.”

Cody jumped out of the chair like his ass was on fire and jerked open the office door.

With another heavy sigh, Blake dug the heel of his hands into his eye sockets, wishing he could rip them out of his head.

A kid who had no desire for the game was more of a lost cause than the one who couldn't catch a ball.

The biggest problem was that Cody had more talent in his pinky finger than half the other kids on the team. If he stopped caring, it would affect his play and then they'd be screwed.

His cell buzzed from the desk and Blake picked it up, thumbing the screen. The message was a text from Brandon with a photo attached. He pulled up the picture and stared at the screen.

“What the hell?” he muttered as he gazed at a photo of a dog lying on the front seat of Brandon's truck. The animal, with shaggy golden fur and perky ears, had his head tilted to one side, as though posing for the picture.

Found this dog,
Brandon's text said.
Interested?

Blake shook his head and answered.

Not just no, but HELL no.

Brandon's response was immediate.

You're going to make me look in this dog's eyes and tell him no? Heartless bastard.

Blake typed his response.

I'm not making you do anything. But if you leave that dog at my house, I'll tell everyone you wet the bed until you were eight.

Brandon didn't respond right away.

Why can't you take him?
Blake asked.

The phone vibrated.
I already have a dog. And I thought you hated texting.

Blake chuckled and shook his head.
I do so I'm ending this conversation. DO NOT leave that dog at my house.

Brandon didn't respond.

“I can't believe you wouldn't paint your face with me,” Stella complained as she and Annabelle made their way through the entrance of the football field.

“I was going to,” Annabelle replied as she took her ticket from the woman inside the booth. “But then I remembered I'm not a high school student.”

Stella took her own ticket and the two of them weaved their way through people. “You also remembered that you're no fun?”

Annabelle slanted her friend a look and took in the orange paw print on her left cheek. “I'm fun,” she argued. “I'm here with you, aren't I?”

The two of them moved past a group of girls wearing the jerseys of their favorite players. “Yeah, because that coach has one fine ass,” Stella teased.

“I…I…that's not why…” Annabelle could feel her face flush, and she forced herself to take a deep breath. “I'm here for the kids,” she finally said.

The stadium was already crowded with students, parents, and half the town. Since the Bobcats weren't a very good team, most of the attendance had to do with their new ex-pro coach. Many were rooting for him to succeed and bring the team back to its former glory. But Annabelle knew full well that there were as many people hoping to watch the scandal-plagued coach have to admit to more failure.

“Fine. You be here for the kids. I'll be checking out that fine backside,” Stella replied. “I doubt I'll be the only one.”

For some reason the thought of other women looking at Blake, even remotely close to the way she looked at him, had Annabelle's stomach flipping over. Which was stupid. Preposterous.

Stella burst out laughing as they maneuvered through more people and headed toward the concessions stand. “I can see you don't like that idea,” her friend commented. “When are you going to admit you want to jump the guy's bones? Do the nasty? A little horizontal mambo?”

Annabelle stopped at the end of one of the long concession lines. “What decade are you from?” she asked her friend.

“Obviously a different one than you,” Stella answered, and crossed her arms over her chest and turned to face Annabelle.

“All right, when was the last time you went out with a guy? Look, I know you get tired of me bringing this up. But I worry about you. I see you spending all your free time cooking and cleaning for your mother and you never get out.”

The two women took a few steps closer to the open counter of the food stand.

Annabelle lifted one shoulder. “Maybe I like cooking and cleaning for my mother.”

Stella snorted. “Honey, nobody likes that. Okay.” She grabbed Annabelle's shoulders and turned her. “I'll leave this alone if you promise me you'll go out with the next man who asks you.”

Annabelle narrowed her eyes at her friend. “What if I don't like him, though? What if he has BO and scratches his balls?”

Stella shook her head. “Doesn't matter. You have to go out with him anyway.”

Annabelle blinked at her friend. “Why?”

“Because,” she started, then was interrupted when someone bumped her friend from behind. Stella turned around, probably to tell the guy to back off, and both she and Annabelle blinked up at the very tall and very broad-shouldered Brandon West.

Brandon towered over both of them, even Stella who was tall for a woman. He blinked his dreamy brown eyes at the two women.

“You're not going to throw up on me, are you?” he asked Stella.

Annabelle looked at her friend, then back at Brandon, who stared down Stella with an unreadable expression.

Stella offered Brandon a sweet smile. “That depends on how nice your shoes are.”

The slight tilt of Brandon's mouth might have been considered a smile. Obviously Stella didn't because she didn't smile back. She lowered her gaze to the huge hot dog wrapped in a piece of aluminum, cradled in Brandon's equally large hands.

“That's quite a sausage you have there,” Stella commented.

Brandon lowered his gaze to the hot dog, then one of his thick, dark brows arched. “You know what they say. The bigger the sausage”—he lifted the hot dog to his mouth and took an enormous bite—“the bigger the appetite.”

Stella tilted her head to one side. “I was going to say the bigger the mouth.”

Brandon's one-sided grin grew, and then he chuckled and Annabelle could have sworn a layer of goose bumps rose on her friend's bare arm.

Brandon peeled more aluminum away from the hot dog. “You are something else, Stella Davenport.” And then he walked away. Actually, sauntered was more like it. Because men like Brandon West, who had more testosterone in his baby toe than most men had in their entire body, didn't simply walk. They maneuvered.

Stella blew out a breath, which came out as more of a shudder.

“What,” Annabelle said with a poke to Stella's shoulder, “was that?”

Stella turned and faced the front of the line again. They were only three people away from the counter now. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” Annabelle parroted. “I mean the eye raping you just committed in front of me. And why did he ask if you were going to throw up on him?”

“I don't know,” Stella answered. “Maybe he was just making conversation.”

Yeah, because every conversation started with questions about upchucking.

“Stella.” She nudged her friend's shoulder.

A heavy sigh left her friend's shoulder's sagging. “Do you remember that one date I went on a few months ago? The one I said ended badly?”

Annabelle nodded. “Yeah.” She waited for her friend to continue. When Stella didn't elaborate, the lightbulb clicked on. “Wait a minute. The date that ended badly was with that guy?”

At Stella's jerky nod, Annabelle laughed. “You threw up on Brandon West?”

Stella glanced around at the other people. “Why don't you say it a little louder? I didn't mean to throw up on him. I got some kind of weird food poisoning from the restaurant we went to and threw up right as he leaned in to kiss me.”

The two women approached the counter and Annabelle withdrew the twenty bucks from her pocket. “You never went out again?”

“Would you want to go out with the woman who threw up right as you tried to kiss her?”

“Yes, you have a point,” Annabelle agreed. “Maybe you should take your own advice and jump the guy's bones already.”

“If and when I jump a guy's bones again, they will not belong to Brandon West.”

Funny, that was the same thing Annabelle kept saying about Blake Carpenter.

They finally approached the snack shack, after having to shove their way through people who were still waiting for their food. Stella shouldered a man out of her way and signaled one of the women.

Unfortunately, the woman was Dawn Putnam, aka homecoming-queen-PTA-mom-extraordinaire. Annabelle swallowed a groan as Dawn plastered a grin on her face, accentuating the orange lipstick—orange, for God's sake—covering her surgically overfilled lips.

Not that Annabelle didn't like the Dollys. Really, they were fine women. Just a bit…well, exhausting.

“Well, hello there, Annabelle,” Dawn greeted. She'd spray painted her hair orange and black and had teased it into two high pigtails, thus making her resemble a teenager. A look, Annabelle was sure, Dawn had been going for. Rhonda was busy helping other people, which was a relief because Annabelle wasn't sure she could handle both of the Dollys at once.

“What can I get you girls?” Dawn asked.

“Two corn dogs and two Cokes,” Stella told the woman.

Dawn switched her attention to Annabelle. “So, do you think our boys can bring it home tonight? How was Coach Carpenter feeling about the opener?”

Annabelle blinked at the woman and was bumped from behind. “How would I know how the coach was feeling before the game?” She'd almost called him Blake, but thought better of it, knowing how Dawn and Rhonda practically made gossip a sport.

Dawn tilted her head and blinked her long black lashes. “Well, haven't you been spending a whole bunch of time with the team and the coach?”

Stella leaned close. “She's fishing,” she whispered in Annabelle's ear. “In case you haven't noticed,” she said to Dawn, “there's a huge line of hungry fans behind us. Perhaps you could just get us our food now.”

“I only see the team and Coach Carpenter during practices,” Annabelle informed Dawn, before Dawn could respond to Stella's request. “When I come to work with the kids.”

Dawn lifted her shoulders, which were clad in a throwback Bobcats T-shirt. “Well, I only know what I hear.” She turned for a moment, then came back with two corn dogs wrapped in aluminum foil. She graced them with a wide smile, showing her white teeth, which had probably also been altered, and handed over the food. “You know how this town likes to talk.” When Stella accepted the food, Dawn leaned over the counter, smashing her generous breasts over the edge. “Not that I believed any of it.”