Homecoming (A Boys of Fall Novel) (6 page)

“You’re practically running backward, so you’re not going fast enough to touch him at all. You need to watch
him
. He
knows where the ball is supposed to be thrown and if he’s still got his head down, running flat out, he’s not there yet, so neither are you. You’ll learn to spot when he’s getting ready to make his move and
that’s
where the ball is.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The kid put his helmet back on and trotted out to his teammates.

Sam looked at Jen, who shrugged. “When you spend most of your life hanging out at Coach’s house, you learn things.”

“That’s incredibly sexy.”

Her cheeks turned pink and she rolled her eyes at him as she turned to face the school. “If you could not make me blush in front of two dozen teenage boys, that’d be great.”

He loved how easy it was to make her blush. Actually, he loved how easy it was for
him
to make her blush. She was always pretty calm and unflappable around other people, but he could unnerve her with just a look and he liked that.

“This dance thing,” he said. “I have to chaperone, right?”

“Yes. You don’t have to dress up or anything, though. What you’re wearing would be fine.”

“I don’t care about the dress code. Do chaperones get to dance?”

She laughed. “Are you going to get out on the dance floor and bust some moves?”

“God no.” He took a step closer to her, so she had to look up to see his face. “I want to dance with you.”

Her lips parted slightly and then she gave him a saucy smile. “I’ll have to check my dance card. It might be full.”

“I’ll bring an eraser.”

Jen jumped a little when Dan blew the whistle three times, signaling the end of practice. “I need to get back to
my office. I think my to-do list is self-populating when I leave it unattended for too long.”

“See you later.”

The team was leaving the field, so Sam didn’t allow himself the pleasure of watching Jen make the walk back to the school doors. It didn’t matter. All he had to do was close his eyes to summon the sexy sway of her hips as she walked.

“Good practice, Coach,” Shawn said as he jogged by.

“You too,” he called after him.

Dan took off right away, but it was almost a half hour before the last of the players left the locker room. Once everybody was gone, he locked the door to the office and killed the lights in the gym before stepping out into the lobby area.

He stopped in front of the tall glass case and stared at the trophy—the first football championship for the Stewart Mills Eagles football team. It dominated the others from the top shelf, and had a framed team photo next to it. Several newspaper clippings were mounted to the glass behind them. But he didn’t see the pictures.

All he saw was the trophy.

—

J
en purposely stayed in her office until practice had been over long enough so she was sure everybody associated with the football team—especially the coach—had left the building. Since a truck restocking the vending machines had messed up the parking situation that morning, she was parked in the big lot, and cutting through the gym lobby was the fastest way to get to her car.

She stopped short, though, when she saw Sam standing silently in the middle of it, staring at the trophy case. “Sam?”

For a few seconds, she wondered if something was wrong with him because he gave no indication he’d heard her. Then he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “I can’t do this.”

It would be a lot easier to throw out a chipper
of course you can
and go about her business, but something rough in his voice froze her in place. “It looked like you guys were having a great practice today. What is it that you don’t think you can do?”

Because he was staring at the trophy, she was guessing he meant coaching the team. But he could also mean something else, like trying to heal his relationship with his mother or being back in Stewart Mills. Or seeing
her
every day, even. Just because he was looking at the trophy case didn’t mean he was talking about sports.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, you do. It’s just you and me here, Sam, and you know I’m a good listener.”

He turned then and looked at her, his dark gaze locking with hers. The last time she’d given him a shoulder to lean on, she’d ended the night leaned over the hood of her car and, judging by the sizzle in that look, he was thinking the same damn thing.

Then the heat faded and he turned back to the trophy case. “I can’t be to these boys what Coach was to me.”

“They don’t need you to be Coach McDonnell. They still have him. But now they have you, too. Another man in their lives who believes in them and wants to see them succeed.”

“Fighting to win that trophy saved my life.”

She went and stood next to him, facing the trophy case. “No. Having a positive male role model and good friends changed your life. You saved yourself by letting them in.”

“What if I let these kids down?”

“You can’t compare the impact Coach and the Eagles had on you with what you’re doing now. These kids aren’t you, Sam. They all struggle in different ways and some have it tougher than others, but none of them have gone through what you did. Hell, some of them are only on the team because there’s nothing better to do.”

“You can’t tell me it doesn’t mean anything when you and Gretchen and Kelly worked your asses off with Eagles Fest to fund the team.”

“I would never say it doesn’t mean anything. I’m just saying it means different things to different kids and you might be projecting what it meant to
you
onto the kids, which is putting too much pressure on yourself for no reason.” She turned to face him and put her hand on his arm. “You know I’ve been watching and I promise you’re doing a great job. They’re lucky to have you, Sam.”

“I’m being stupid.”

“It’s never stupid to care. You’ve had a lot going on. Coming back here the first time. Seeing your mom. Then getting the call Coach had a heart attack and coming back. It’s a lot and it stirs things up inside. That’s all.”

He smiled down at her, setting the nervous butterflies off. “There
has
been a lot.”

“You just need to relax.”

“Talking to you relaxes me.” His voice was low, with a husky tone to it that made her realize she still had her hand
on his arm. She let it drop, but he grabbed her wrist and tugged her closer. “I could use a hug.”

Big mistake, she thought.
Big
. But she didn’t seem to have any willpower when it came to him. When he looped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, she didn’t resist. Closing her eyes, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her hands against his back.

“Feel better?” she asked.

“You feel amazing.” His hand slid up to the back of her neck.

“That’s not what I meant.”

When he used his other hand to tip her chin up, she opened her eyes. His expression was soft, but there was no missing the underlying heat. “I keep thinking that someday I’m going to crawl into bed and close my eyes and
not
think about that night.”

“Sometimes I hope that day comes, but I like thinking about that night,” she confessed.

He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “I didn’t kiss you that night.”

“We kind of fast-forwarded to the getting naked part.” Every nerve in her body seemed zeroed in on the sensation of his thumb stroking her mouth.

“Let’s rewind a little bit.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, lowering his thumb so his lips could take its place. She leaned into him and her fingers curled, gathering the fabric of his shirt into her fists as he kissed her.

When his tongue dipped between her lips, she opened to him. His hand slid up the back of her neck, into her hair, and she sighed. Nothing existed in her world anymore except Sam’s mouth and his hands.

He kissed her—one hand fisted in her hair and the other cupping her ass—until they were both breathless and their bodies were pressed together. Then he broke it off, exhaling a shaky breath.

“God, woman. You make me forget everything.”

The words washed over her like a glass of ice water, leaving her confused and uncertain of what was happening. The first time they’d been together, he’d been upset by seeing his mother. Tonight, besieged by doubts and memories of the past, he’d reached for her again.
You make me forget everything.

“I’m not some kind of comfort object you can reach for when you’re feeling crappy.”

“What? I didn’t mean . . .” He scowled, taking a small step back. “Is that what you think is going on?”

“I don’t know. I know it seems like when you’re feeling low emotionally, we end up with our hands on each other.”

“Or,” he said, arching his eyebrow, “maybe when I’m feeling emotionally low is the only time you soften up enough to forget I’m not your type.”

“That’s not . . . soften up? What the hell does that mean?”

“I . . . hell, I don’t know.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know what’s happening. What I
do
know is that we could win the football championship and I could have the trophy in one hand and the keys to a new Corvette they want to give me for being Coach of the Year in the other, and then they could interrupt me to tell me I won the lottery, and if I saw you in the crowd, I would
still
want my hands on you.”

She took a second to sort through that in her head and then smiled. “That sounds like quite a daydream you’ve got going on.”

“I’m just saying, even if I was on an emotional high, I would still want you. And when I said you make me forget everything, I meant the fact we’re in the middle of a high school hallway, so this comfort object theory of yours is bullshit.”

“Okay, let’s say it’s bullshit. You still have a lot going on.”

For a few seconds, she thought he might argue with her. But he sighed and put a little more space between them. “You’re right, I guess.”

There was something in his eyes that made her want to explain more—to try to make him understand why she was keeping him at arm’s length. She wasn’t totally sure she understood it herself, so trying to verbalize it would probably end in disaster.

Before she could try, they heard the squeak of sneakers on the waxed floor and moved apart. It was Ronnie, and he looked frustrated.

“Hey, Coach. My car won’t start and everybody’s gone. They let me in the office door because your truck’s still out there so you must still be in here.”

“I am,” he said.

“I should go,” Jen said quickly, and Sam gave her an inscrutable look. “I’m not good at cars not starting, so good luck.”

She practically ran to the exit and across the parking
lot.

C
arrying two bags and a few boxes up a flight of stairs wasn’t so bad, but it made Sam keenly aware that he was going to spend at least the next few weeks, if not a couple of months, with very few possessions to call his own.

But the one-bedroom apartment over the insurance office had been available for immediate move-in and it met all of his requirements for a residence—no long-term commitment, a bathroom, and an outlet for the coffee machine. And the previous tenant had abandoned the couch—for good reason—so he had something to sit on.

The primary reason he’d jumped at it, though, was that he’d wanted to get out of the McDonnell house as quickly as possible.

He didn’t think there was another woman in the world who could make a person feel as welcome and comfortable
in her home as Mrs. McDonnell. But with that came a need to fuss over her guest and Sam knew she had enough on her plate with Coach’s health. No matter how much Sam told her he could cook for himself and do his share of cleaning up, she wouldn’t hear of it.

He wanted her to worry about two people—Coach and herself.

Then there was the fact he’d lived alone since he left Stewart Mills after high school, and he wasn’t very good at living his life on somebody else’s schedule or remembering to put on pants before coffee in the morning.

When he went down for the last box, he left the apartment door propped open. Unlike most of the apartments over downtown businesses, he didn’t have an interior staircase with a second door at street level. There was a small parking lot behind the insurance company, and an exterior set of stairs led up to a deck just big enough to allow him to open the screen door without knocking himself off.

After hours, the lot was only for residents, but during the day people who couldn’t parallel park worth a damn used it when they had errands on the main street. As he climbed into the bed of his truck to grab the last box, Sam noticed a small car doing a slow roll past him.

He looked at the driver and couldn’t hold back the grimace. Edna Beecher. The Wicked Witch of Stewart Mills. Nobody knew exactly how old she was since she seemed to predate every other living person in town, but she didn’t seem to be slowing down any.

She thrived on being in everybody’s business and, if she didn’t like what she saw, she threatened to call the FBI. Half the time, she
did
call them, and Sam could only imagine
what they thought of her. She’d even called them on Alex recently because he was taking pictures of the teenage boys. The fact that he was a photographer chronicling the football team didn’t even slow her down.

Edna glared at him as she slowly drove past, and he thought for a minute she might stop and roll down her window to give him a hard time. But she didn’t. Many years ago, she’d insinuated that Sam’s father hadn’t run off, but had been “taken care of.” At the time, Sam had simply smiled and refused to rise to the bait and, ever since, she’d given him a wide berth. She’d watch and glare and let him see she was there, but she didn’t verbally harass him like she did other residents.

“She’s watching you,” he heard a voice say, and he turned to see Paul Decker standing on the other side of his truck.

Deck was a big tree trunk of a guy and he’d been the heart of the Eagles defensive line back in the day. Now he owned and operated Decker’s Wreckers and had a wife and two boys. He was also holding what looked like a pie carrier, and Cheryl Decker was no slouch in the kitchen.

“Tell me that’s for me.”

“Yeah. The wife heard you were moving—like literally heard you were carrying a box up the stairs—and whipped it up. It’s still hot.”

Sam dragged the box down to the tailgate and jumped to the ground. Then he hefted it and nodded for Deck to follow him up the stairs. “I don’t know if I have plates, but I know I’ve got two spoons.”

After setting the box in the corner of the combination living room and everything but the bathroom, Sam turned to take the pie from Deck, but the big man had stopped in the doorway.

“Interesting design scheme,” he said.

Sam looked around his temporary new home. Besides an ugly, brown couch, there were two collapsible camp chairs he’d picked up at the hardware store, facing where the television would go if he had one. A folding camp table was between the chairs so he and a guest had a place to set their drinks. A couple of duffel bags and some boxes rounded out the look.

“Easy to clean,” he said.

“I guess I’ll stand. That couch looks like it wants to bust a spring up my ass. And those chairs, man. Best-case scenario is the chair collapsing under me so I land on my ass.”

Sam laughed. “What the hell is the worst-case scenario?”

“Me walking around with a chair stuck on my ass because I’m wedged in so bad even you can’t pull it off.”

“I’ve got a bed coming tomorrow. Had to call and order it over the phone, so I hope it’s as comfortable as it looked online. And I might hit the secondhand shop today and see if they have a decent TV.”

“You’re living large, my friend.” Deck set the pie on the counter and pulled off the lid while Sam grabbed a couple of spoons out of a box with
coffee
written on it in big, bold letters. “It’s good to have you back again.”

“It’s good to
be
back. For a while.”

“How the boys doing?”

“They’re good. They miss Coach, but Mrs. McDonnell said maybe this weekend they can stop by and visit him for a little while. Away game tomorrow night, and I can’t decide how I feel about it. On the one hand, I’d like to coach my first game in front of people who already know I have no idea what I’m doing. On the other hand, if I screw it up too badly, maybe having a bunch of strangers in the bleachers wouldn’t suck.”

“Trust me, if you screw it up, we’ll all know before the bus even rolls back into town.”

“Funny. You know, you can stop in and give me some advice anytime.”

Deck winced, then dug his spoon into the hot blueberry pie. “I filled in for Coach once a few years back when a stomach flu wiped out the coaching staff. It was a disaster. It seems I’m a big softie and I’m incapable of telling people what to do, especially kids.”

“I’ve spent some time with your boys and it seems like you keep them in line. They’re good kids.”

“I’ll tell Cheryl you said so, since she’s the one who does the actual keeping in line.” He put a big spoonful of pie in his mouth, closing his eyes as he savored it. “Speaking of Cheryl . . .”

And here it comes
, Sam thought, going to the fridge to grab a couple of waters since he hadn’t bought milk yet. Someday he was going to have a conversation with somebody in Stewart Mills that didn’t circle around to Jen Cooper. And it was a crying shame to have hot blueberry pie without milk.

“Heard you had a nice dinner with Jen at O’Rourke’s night before last,” Deck finished.

“I don’t know about a nice dinner, but we grabbed a couple of burgers.”

“They make good burgers.”

“True. Anyway, yes, Jen and I grabbed a bite to eat while we talked about team stuff.”

“And?”

Sam shrugged. “And we talked about team stuff.”

“Cheryl’s going to be disappointed.”

If she knew she was missing out on the details of a
smoking-hot kiss in the gym foyer, she’d be
really
disappointed. “Your wife’s not alone. I swear, Stewart Mills needs a movie theater or something.”

They made a hell of a dent in the pie before Sam put the lid back on the dish and set it in the fridge. “I can’t believe we ate half a pie for breakfast. Hell, I can’t believe your wife
baked
a pie first thing in the morning. You’re a lucky man.”

“Nothing luckier than watching your wife bake pies meant to be given away.”

Sam put his hand on his stomach and groaned. “Okay,
I’m
a lucky man. At least there’s practice after school so I can work off some calories.”

“Yeah, it’s a helluva workout, standing there blowing that whistle.”

“Asshole. Watch it or I’ll shove you into a chair and leave you there.”

Hot kisses, blueberry pie and trash talk with an old friend. For this moment, at least, it sure was good to be back.

—

A
t least once a month during the school year, and sometimes during the summer break, Jen met Kelly at O’Rourke’s for a meeting. It wasn’t really business, since their discussions were off the books, but they both considered the unofficial meetings a core part of their jobs.

Today they were meeting for a late breakfast because Kelly had the day off and was expecting Chase to get home in the early afternoon. He was still commuting back and forth to New Jersey to wrap up some business he had going on before Eagles Fest had brought him back to Stewart Mills and Kelly for good. Jen had told the office she had an off-site
appointment and would be late getting in, and she’d taped a note for students on her door before she left the night before.

It was the last thing she’d done before ending up in the gym atrium, kissing Sam.

“How’s the new school year going?” Kelly asked once they had coffees on the table and their breakfast orders in.

“So far, so good.” She rapped her knuckles lightly on the table, even though it probably wasn’t real wood.

“I know you’ve been focused on the football team quite a bit, for which my dad and I can’t thank you enough, but how are things going at the middle school?”

“Not too bad. I’m dealing with a few kids who aren’t handling the step up in academics very well. And a couple of parents who are really overreaching for their kids. It’s a huge adjustment.”

“And Em?”

Jen smiled. She and Kelly knew each other so well they could usually communicate without using names in public. But the restaurant was almost empty and they both had a soft spot for twelve-year-old Emily Jenkins. Her mother had passed from cancer about two years back, and the little girl and her father really went through a rough spot. It had culminated in the police being called when Emily shoplifted feminine pads from the convenience store because she knew money was tight and was too embarrassed to ask her dad for them.

Luckily the police officer who responded, Dylan Clark, had called Kelly in and the situation was quietly resolved. Jen spent some time working with both of them—especially stressing to Mr. Jenkins that his girl was heading into puberty and didn’t have a mom, so he needed to get comfortable with
awkward conversations pretty quickly—and she checked in with Emily on a regular basis.

“They’re doing really well,” she said. “And now they have a little basket on the kitchen counter where they can leave notes to each other. She’s at that age where father-and-daughter talks can be awkward and make each other uncomfortable, so they write notes back and forth. She said at first it was mostly hard things, like her needing to go bra shopping or talking about her mom, but now they share funny stories and jokes, too. Her grades are good and her teachers say she’s bouncing back.”

“I’m so glad.” Kelly leaned back against the booth. “That’s one of the things I love about being part of a small-town police force, especially in my hometown. We have a better chance of helping people
before
things get too bad.”

“Speaking of, anything on Spruce Street?” Jen had gotten a tip over the summer that one of the high school students might be involved in a drug situation, though she hadn’t been given specifics.

Kelly shook her head. “Nope. We’ve been patrolling and we even got an undercover from the county task force to go in as a strange face and look around. Nothing at school?”

“Nothing.” Besides the random locker checks that were a regular part of the school policy, they’d been keeping a close eye on the student. “I’m starting to wonder if that little tip was somebody just looking to cause trouble. Maybe they thought we’d bust down the door first and ask questions later.”

“Maybe.” Kelly brought up another name and they went through the list of kids they’d had concerns about before or were keeping an eye on now.

The list was a lot shorter than it had been earlier in the year, which Jen was thankful for. Stewart Mills had been a
mess for a while. When the economy tanked, families were stressed—some of them beyond the breaking point—and the kids started acting out. More drinking and more petty crimes. And then they took away football.

Things were looking up now, though, and by the time their breakfast came, they’d run out of problems to talk about. Just a few minutes after the server left their plates, Kelly frowned and leaned over to see past Jen. “What the hell?”

Jen turned in her seat to see Sam walking toward them with Coach McDonnell. Her stomach knotted at the thought of the guys joining them because Kelly would definitely notice her staring at Sam Leavitt’s mouth the entire time. But Cassandra peeled off and set two menus on a table over by the wall, so she blew out a sigh of relief.

“Does Mom know you’re here?” Kelly asked, standing to kiss her father’s cheek.

“She does.”

Kelly narrowed her eyes. “And she doesn’t care?”

Sam laughed. “She called me and told me if I didn’t get him out of the house, she was going to put a pillow over his face and count to five hundred.”

“That sounds like Mom. I thought you were moving this morning.”

“That didn’t take long.” He rubbed his stomach, which drew Jen’s gaze to where his shirt hid abs she’d like to run her hands over again. “It took longer to eat a quarter of the fresh blueberry pie Deck showed up with. Hell of a breakfast.”

Jen snorted. “Only Cheryl could whip up a pie in time for it to be breakfast.”

“She must use frozen crusts,” Kelly said.

“She must.”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know, but it was good.”

“Shut up,” Coach barked. “I’m allowed to have scrambled egg whites, dry toast with some jelly and decaf with skim milk.”

They all winced. You knew it was serious when you had to have skim milk in your coffee. Jen took a sip of her own coffee to avoid looking at Sam, and then felt guilty because hers was pale from the extra half-and-half cups she’d dumped into it.

“Helen even called Cassandra before I left to make sure I didn’t try to sneak a hash omelet by her,” Coach grumbled.