Winner Takes All (31 page)

Five months later…

S
top pacing,” Annabelle told him. “You're making me nervous.”

Blake stopped in the middle of the worn linoleum flooring and glanced at her. “
You're
nervous? You're not the one who has to talk to five hundred high school seniors.”

The corner of her full mouth twitched, and if Blake didn't know any better, he'd have sworn she was trying to hide a grin. At his expense.

“So glad I amuse you,” he muttered, and continued his back and forth pacing along the hallway outside the Pagosa Springs High School multipurpose room. On the other side of the closed heavy-duty double doors was the entire senior class sitting through a fifteen-minute educational video about performance-enhancing drugs and the devastating effects they could have on one's body. Blake knew better than anyone else the downward spiral that type of abuse could cause. Which was why the school board had asked him to speak today at a special assembly for the students.

At first Blake had turned them down. He'd been mourning the end of the Bobcats' season five months ago, after they'd lost the first game of the play-offs. It had been a devastating loss, going into overtime. In the aftermath, he'd been damn proud of his players, encouraging every one of them to be just as proud of themselves and how far the team had come, when no one had expected them to do anything.

More than that, he'd worked too long and hard to peel the negative image away from his life, only to dive right back into the dirty details.

“Look at how hard you've worked,” Annabelle had told him one night after they'd shared a dinner on the patio. “Don't look at it as opening old wounds. Look at it as being an inspiration to others. As giving those kids a chance to make an informed decision. Giving them the information that you never had.”

Of course she was right. Annabelle Turner was rarely wrong. And she'd been looking out for him, the way she'd done since the day they'd met. Only then he hadn't seen her persistence in such a positive light. He'd been too stubborn and dead inside to see anything other than his own monsters.

So he'd called the school board back and told them he'd only do it if he could pass a drug rehab program. Those kids deserved someone better than a man who was still battling monsters and couldn't even put his own life back together. He'd needed a detox, literally, so he could present himself with a clear mind and clean slate.

Sixty days later, he'd achieved his goal and had been declared clean and sober from the drug that had been running his life.

With a fresh start and Annabelle by his side, Blake had entered a new phase in his life. One where he'd been able to finally shut that part of the book and start a new chapter.

Except now, as he waited outside the multipurpose room, with Annabelle gazing at him like he'd lost his mind, probably because he was fidgeting like a kid before the prom, Blake had to push back a strange feeling of doubt. Nerves. Second-guessing.

All feelings that were foreign to him. He'd been a huge star once. Confident in front of the camera. Thrived in front of a screaming crowd. That had been his life and he'd craved the rush of admiring fans and thrill of victory.

So why did a room full of seventeen-year-olds make him sweat?

He blew out a breath and shoved a hand through his hair.

Annabelle approached him and grabbed his hand. “Will you stop?” she pleaded. “You're messing up the hair that you just got cut.”

“Those kids aren't going to notice my hair,” he told her.

Her sweet lips tugged in a wider grin. “But I notice it, and I love it.” She pressed a soft and lingering kiss to his mouth. “So quit making a mess of it.”

He grunted and pulled her closer when she ended the kiss too soon. “Let's just blow this joint and find a janitor's closet somewhere.”

Her chuckle tickled his jaw. “How romantic.”

His palms gripped her lush hips. “You didn't seem to mind when we were in the field house last week.”

A soft pink flush bloomed across her high cheekbones. “That's because you didn't have a room full of kids waiting for you,” she reminded him.

Blake pressed his forehead against hers and drank in her strength. “So? I don't belong in there anyway. I don't know any of those kids.”

“Hey.” She leaned back slightly and gazed at him out of crystal-clear hazel eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you? You've earned this. You have more right to be here than anyone else.” Her cool fingers curved along his smooth jaw. “Yes, you've been through a lot. Yes, you went through a dark time. But that's what makes you special enough to guide those kids. Only someone who's lived it can teach it.”

Damn, she was right. Again. “That sounds like something from a fortune cookie,” he said with a curve of his lips.

She rolled one delicate shoulder. “Maybe it is. Doesn't mean it's not true.”

From inside the auditorium, Blake heard the video shut off, followed by the voice of the principal speaking through a microphone. The words were inaudible, but the magnified voice matched the thumping of his heart.

“Quit that,” Annabelle urged.

Amazing how the woman could figure him out with a simple look.

She's had you figured out from day one.

Yeah, that was true. Only he hadn't wanted to see it, then he'd spent too much time denying it. Amazing how a little pride could force a person to waste months of what would have been bliss with a beautiful woman.

A little pride?

Okay, yeah, he'd been more stubborn than a mule. But only a woman like Annabelle, a determined, gorgeous, and persistent pistol in a petite package, could have shattered all that bull-headedness.

Not that he'd gone down easily. No, he'd fought it.

Then it had only been when she'd fought back that he had realized he'd been fighting a losing battle.

Blake heard his name spoken over the microphone, followed by an uproar from the students.

Annabelle glanced back at the door, then offered him a full smile. “Almost time.” She took his face in her soft hands. “You're going to kill it.”

He gripped her face in return and touched his lips to hers. The kiss, which was only supposed to be quick, turned deeper. They always did with her, because he couldn't help himself. He simply couldn't get enough of the woman.

“Mmmm,” Annabelle groaned when the kiss ended. She swiped her tongue across her bottom lip.

“I'm still going to drag you off to a closet after this. The house is too far away.”

“I'm going to hold you to that,” she said with a smack of her palm to his ass.

With one last kiss and a lingering look, he left her and pushed through the doors to the auditorium and the raging ruckus of five hundred kids who rushed to their feet when they saw him.

Yeah, this was going to be a total touchdown.

Along Came Trouble

Here Comes Trouble

Looking for Trouble

Y
ou know, if you didn't want to come this afternoon, you could have just said so.”

Stella Davenport feigned an I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about look at her friend Annabelle Turner, who practically glowed under the hot Colorado sun while Stella had her hair plastered to her neck and streams of sweat running down her back. If Stella didn't adore the woman to pieces, she'd resent the hell out of Annabelle for her ability to look like a sun goddess while Stella felt like a roasted pig, even with her best efforts.

Ten rows below them, the Blanco Valley Bobcats, who were coming out of their first winning season in…well, Stella had no clue how long, were in the middle of the third game of the season. The kids were playing their hearts out, the taste of victory still fresh on their minds after making the play-offs the previous season. The accomplishment had been well earned, not to mention a long time coming, and had brought the whole town together, Stella included. Even though she'd never been a huge football fan, the Bobcats had become her adopted team and she'd ended up going to every home game last season.

Stella nudged her sunglasses higher after they'd glided down the bridge of her nose for the umpteenth time. Why did it have to be so freakin' hot? “It's not that I didn't want to come. It's just…”

You didn't want to come.

Yeah, that.

Okay, so she'd been a bit off her game lately. Distracted. Restless.

In other words, she'd been in one place too long and that itchy feeling had begun to crawl through her system. Moving from one place to the next as a kid, thank you very much, Gloria Davenport, had become the norm by age ten. The two-plus years she'd been in Blanco Valley, otherwise known as God's painting canvas, far exceeded any time she'd spent anywhere else. Except for her years with the Chicago Ballet Company. The urge to pick up and move wherever the wind blew her was more muscle memory than anything else, but the itch was there.

The feeling contradicted her memories as a kid, because she'd hated moving around. Hated staying in one place long enough to make a few good friends, only to leave. The lack of stability had cemented her urge to put down roots as an adult. But now…after two years in the southwestern corner of Colorado, Stella felt like she needed to pick up and go. As though there were somewhere else she needed to be. Somewhere more beautiful or diverse, as her mother always said. Gloria Davenport was a drifter at heart and had dragged her daughter from one part of the country to the next, always following that one guy who'd made meaningless promises to take care of them.

Whatever.

Stella had learned a long time ago that promises were easy, but contentment was hard to come by. Gloria Davenport had never been content, thus creating the same itchy, wandering tendencies in her daughter.

“Okay, whatever.” Annabelle nudged Stella's shoulder with her own, just as the Bobcats' defense sacked the opponent's quarterback with a shuddering crunch. “Sit there and be silent,” Annabelle went on. “We both know that this is way better than what you were doing at home.”

That was true.

Why did Annabelle always have to be right?

Trying to mend the holes in her deceased grandmother's favorite blanket, when everyone who knew her knew she couldn't sew for shit, was downright masochistic. Her mother's mother was what had brought her to Blanco Valley two years ago when she'd been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. At the time Gloria had been off gallivanting in who-knows-where and Stella had been the only one to take care of Grammy Rose. Stella's subsequent retirement from professional ballet after multiple knee injuries had been perfect timing. Although, at the time,
perfect
hadn't been the word Stella had used to describe the all but forced retirement from something that had been her life. Her reason for living. The only solid and constant thing she'd had growing up.

And now she didn't have her grandmother. Her sweet, frail Grammy who'd been strong and resilient through her cancer treatment and into the last days of her life. Stella had watched her slip away, slowly succumb to the tumors that had ravaged her body and then breathe her last breath two months ago. A piece of Stella had died along with Grammy and she hadn't felt the same since then.

Which was probably why she hadn't felt like watching her home team play football.

Yeah, Annabelle knew that. Annabelle knew everything about her.

The grieving part of Stella thanked her friend for dragging her out of the house, when all Stella had been doing was sloppily mending an old blanket while tears streamed down her face.

The stubborn part, the one that bullied all of her other parts into submission, wouldn't admit in a million years that this was better.

The Bobcats intercepted the ball, turning the play around in their favor, and gained twenty yards. The fans surged to their feet, Annabelle and Stella included. Only Annabelle blew a kiss to Blake Carpenter, the team's head coach, former professional football player and all-around hottie. The man towered over his players in both height and intimidation, but the hard set of that square jaw of his, which was hardly ever without a shadow of a scruff, softened when he locked gazes with his fiancée.

The corner of his mouth tilted just slightly enough to minimize the bad-assery the man always had going on.

Annabelle's love-struck sigh was enough to have Stella's stomach turn over. Sometimes people in love were annoying with all their love and happiness and…love.

“Isn't he the dreamiest?” Annabelle said.

The two of them sat back down on the bleachers. “I think you've mistaken me for a character in
Grease.
”

“Just because you don't believe in love doesn't mean it doesn't exist,” Annabelle commented.

Stella pushed her sunglasses up when they slid down again. “I never said it doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist for me.”

“That's what everyone says until they fall in love,” Annabelle reminded her.

Which probably won't ever happen for me.

Everything happens at least once.
That's what Grammy used to always say and Stella had believed her. Until she'd grown up and one too many failed relationships, including the one she'd given up her dreams for, had smacked the rose-colored glasses off her face so fast she'd had whiplash.

Not everybody fell in love and Stella had come to the realization that it wasn't in the cards for her. Which was totally a-okay with her because the less strings she had tied to her heart, the less likely she was to trip over them.

Did that make her a cynic?

Her mother would say it made her a realist.

The whole is-the-glass-half-empty-or-half-full question. Some people said half full. Some said half empty. Gloria Davenport would say that someone beat her to the punch and drank half her water.

Grammy Rose would say the glass is whatever you want it to be.

Just the thought of her soft-spoken grandmother, with her rheumy blue eyes, thinning gray hair, and never-failing optimism brought the lump back and pulled her thoughts away from the game in front of her.

“Hey,” Annabelle said with a comforting touch to Stella's shoulder. “Don't do that. Rose wouldn't want you to sit here and be all glum,” Annabelle urged, knowing what a driving force Grammy Rose had been in Stella's life and how hard she'd taken the woman's death. Annabelle had been there the day Rose had slipped away, had held Stella's hand and cried with her when her grandmother had left the world. She'd taken Stella's grief as her own, and then her sympathy had turned into tough love when she'd urged Stella time and again to get the hell out of the house and do something with herself.

With the exception of her dance studio, which she owned and taught classes, Stella hadn't done a whole lot of anything.

Annabelle had recognized the wallowing after her divorce from her cheating husband years ago.

“You're right, she wouldn't,” Stella agreed.

“She'd tell you to get your shit together and live your life,” Annabelle went on. Then she fingered the top of Stella's head, running her index finger over the part. “She'd also tell you to get your roots done.”

Stella swatted Annabelle's hand away. “Thank you.”

Annabelle held her hand up in surrender. “All right, fine. Then she'd tell you to check out Cameron Shaw's spectacular ass. And remind you that he's single.”

Cam was a sight to look at. Tall. Broad shouldered. Easy, graceful walk and cocky enough to heat up a woman's cheeks. But the guy just didn't float her boat. Okay, yeah, she could look at him just about all day. What woman wouldn't enjoy mentally undressing that prime piece of male meat?

Annabelle leaned closer and whispered, “Then she'd say you need to get laid.”

Stella jerked away from her friend. “Excuse me? I'm perfectly fine the way I am.”

Her friend chuckled. “That's what I said before I met Blake, and I'm pretty sure I remember you telling me to just do him already.”

“I didn't say that,” she hedged. “I never would have said that.”

“Okay, forget Cameron. I don't think you're his type either.”

Stella whistled with her two fingers when the Bobcats sacked the opponent's QB again. “If I would have known you were going to turn this into a matchmaking session, I would have stayed at home. Besides,” Stella went on, “it wouldn't make sense for me to have a relationship right now anyway.”

Annabelle scanned the field. “I told you before not to talk about that. Anyway, I'm not talking about a relationship. I'm talking about time between the sheets.”

“Why can't we talk about it?” Stella wanted to know. “I'm not leaving for good. And time between the sheets always leads to the R word. Just look at you and Blake.”

“It'll only lead to a relationship if you want it to.” Annabelle was silent for a moment. “How do I know you'll come back? You'll get to Chicago, realize how much you miss it there, and you'll want to stay.”

Stella studied her friend's profile, noting the firm set of her mouth and eyes hidden behind dark aviators. The two of them had hit it off two years ago when Stella had moved to Colorado from Chicago and let herself through the doors of Annabelle's physical therapy practice. Her knee had been in bad shape and she'd needed time to heal before she could open her studio and teach. Annabelle had pushed her until she'd wanted to strangle the woman, but the toughness had been necessary. Stella's knee had eventually regained its strength and mobility and she'd been able to move forward with her dance studio.

Now the two of them were closer than any friendship she'd ever had.

Stella laid a hand on Annabelle's bare shoulder. “I promise I'll be back,” she told her friend. “Because if I don't, no one will be here to nag you about your nauseating relationship with the hottie coach.”

The corner of Annabelle's mouth turned up. Good. Humor she could do. The sappy stuff was totally lost on her. “Methinks you're jealous. And I know you have to go. Just promise me you won't ditch me.”

“You know I won't. I'm not leaving for another four months anyway.”

Annabelle sighed. “I still can't believe you're going to miss State for some stupid choreography job.” Annabelle placed her attention on Stella. “
Rapunzel
over State, Stella?”

“Aren't you jumping the gun a little bit?” Stella reminded her friend. “They've only played two games.”

Annabelle placed a hand over Stella's mouth. “Hush, you'll jinx them. They may have only made it to play-offs last year, but they're making State this year. Mark my words, Ms. Davenport.”

“Joking,” she said behind Annabelle's hand, then removed the thing from her face. “Plus, I heard there are financial problems.”

Annabelle tossed her friend a startled look. “What're you talking about?”

Stella lifted a shoulder and followed the play on the field. “About the boosters. That they're not donating as much as the team needs. Going to State is expensive and they need the money.”

“Rumors and lies,” Annabelle argued.

Stella watched Annabelle for a moment. “Honestly?”

“Honestly?” Annabelle answered with a weary sigh. “I don't know. Blake doesn't talk about that part of it and I only know what I catch in passing. When I ask him, he just tells me not to worry about it. I think as long as West Custom Homes keeps backing them, they'll be okay.”

Just the name West sent a shiver down her spine. And as the tingling feeling snaked down her back, the man himself appeared, as though her body's reaction to his name summoned him from wherever he'd been lurking. Because where she was, he appeared. Just like that. Simple, yet complicated because Stella couldn't figure the guy out.

More like you can't figure out how you feel about him.

Okay, that too.

Because he'd become
that
guy.

That guy she didn't want to think about. That guy who made her teeth grind together.

That guy her mind constantly drummed up fantasies about, most of them without clothing.

The one who'd taken her out on one glorious, romantic, unforgettable date. Sweet-talked her. Bought her dinner. Melted her bones with that subtle curl of his full lips. And then never called her again.

Probably because you threw up all over him.

Yeah, there was that.

What guy would want to go on another date with a woman who'd ruined his shoes with regurgitated prime rib?

Obviously not Brandon West.

He probably hadn't given her another thought after that, other than his dry-cleaning bill. Which she should have offered to pay for, but the humiliating memory of doubling over in front of him had been too fresh in her mind. Especially since he'd been about to lean in for a kiss. Because a girl instinctively knew when she was about to be kissed and Brandon had had that look about him.