Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (17 page)

“Kindred spirits and all. I could see a fellow football analytical mind in you; and the Facebook commentaries you posted on your timeline about the games all last season confirmed it.”  He thought back to her posts.  “Clearly, you’re a stats person like I am.  So why’d you go for a sideline reporter position instead of an analyst?”

“I love getting on the field and talking to the coaches and athletes. I did it for a brief stint back in college and just got hooked. Don’t get me wrong, stats always give me the answers that I’m looking for. But seeing football from the coaches’ and the athletes’ perspectives...that teaches me to think about the
questions
I’m looking for, and how to ask the right questions.  The questions that matter.”

“Like I said,” he murmured in approval.  “Kindred spirits.”

“But I thought you don’t go out in the field to analyze.”

“Not since my glory days back in high school. But what I mean by kindred is that you see football in a different way than most of the folks here. No one sees it the way I do either.”

Her eyebrows hopped up in surprise.  “You’re not all about the numbers?”

“I love the numbers, live for them.  My dad and I used to talk stats almost my entire life. So career-wise, becoming an analyst was a natural fit for me.”

“So what do you see when you see football?”

A small smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.  “I see the perfect plays. Like one big puzzle.  I see the pieces fitting together and revealing the bigger picture.  Everything the players
should
do, along with what they end up doing…which creates a whole different, equally moving picture.”

“So you see the before and after. The potentialities and the realities.”  She shook her head.  “So why are you on this side of the field?  You should be up in the box coaching and analyzing for the team, not the public.”

Shrugging, he gave her a sad smile.  “We all have to play the hand we’re dealt. Being on that side of the game was never in my cards.  But no matter, I wouldn’t exchange what I have here.”

After a long pause, she said, “For what it’s worth, I think you can always change your cards.”

“Ah, and that brings us into the territory of the complicated life I told you about.”

“Your deep, dark secrets.”  She nodded.  “Makes sense.”

A few more moments of silence passed, and he stared at her in surprise.  “You’re not going to ask?”

She gave him a smiling headshake.  “Not until I’m ready to tell you mine.”

“Good answer.”

“I thought that was the right one.”

Studying her chuckling eyes, he nodded. “You know what, grasshopper.  I know it’s still your first day, but I think you’re ready to be thrown into the deep end.”  He grabbed his office phone and dialed a number from memory.  When it began ringing, Leila leaned forward, curious.

“Are you calling to apologize, jackass?”
barked the voice on the other end.

***

Leila’s eyes practically popped out of her head.  She recognized the voice from a number of ESPN phone interviews.  The legendary head coach of the Arizona Hawks was notorious for phone-only interviews.  If that.

And apparently, he was on a creative-name-basis with Jackson.

Jackson chuckled.  “Skip, by the way, you’re on speaker phone.  And our newest sideline reporter is here with me.”

Silence. 

Then:
“So you finally got rid of Kendra?  Or did she marry some poor, unsuspecting NFL retiree?”

Ouch.  Leila winced, but couldn’t help the smile that mirrored Jackson’s at the moment.  Skip Harding always did tell it like it was. 

“Kendra actually got poached by another network,” called out Jackson.  “Which is great for us because now we have a sideline reporter who actually knows about football.  Enough to give me a run for my money.”

Skip grunted from the other end of the phone line, not in disbelief, but simply in his token gruffness that he was well known for.
  “Nice to meet you, miss.”

Leila knew that she should probably verbally genuflect and tell him how much of an honor it was to meet him.  Or even bombard him with a hurricane of football facts to prove herself.  But before these wise thoughts filtered in, her mouth opened and replied simply with, “Likewise,” and then the first question that popped into her head: “So what did Jackson do that requires an apology?  Not that I doubt he hasn’t done a whole crap ton of things that would require many, many apologies.  But I’m just trying to gauge if he pisses you off at nearly the same levels he does me.  Professional curiosity.”

Leila felt her own eyes widen to the size of saucers.

That did
not
just happen.

Jackson was staring back at her in surprise as well, a wholly approving expression lighting his features.

After a stunned moment of silence over the phone line, Skip abruptly broke out into a loud, appreciative belly laugh—a sound she was positive that most of the Arizona Hawk’s personnel had never been lucky enough to hear.
  “Well, if you’re as pretty as you sound, I’m sure he’s pissing you off way more than he is me.  My pretty years are a bit behind me.”

Leila had to pinch herself.  Holy moly.  Skip Harding had just cracked a joke.  She pinched herself again to make sure she wasn’t caught in an evil dream loop where her dream self was really dreaming.

Skip’s gruff voice crackled over the phone line again: 
“As for what he did to me, basically,   Mary Freaking Poppins here decided to be a show-off and somehow manage the impossible feat of getting my grandkids to go down for a nap right after their birthday party last weekend…which ended up leaving them wide awake all. Night. Long.”
 

“Some people were just born with a good storytelling voice,” defended Jackson, grinning and now outright laughing. At Skip Harding.

Leila didn’t have the balls for such a thing.

“Shit, man,”
returned the grumpy voice on the phone. 
“Maggie and I must’ve watched three hours straight of Barney, and that show about the little bald kid, and I think somewhere in there were a pig and a monkey, it was all a blur.”

Leila was losing the battle against not laughing.  The mental image of the great Skip Harding watching a purple dinosaur dancing around was priceless.

“Okay, well, if you’re not going to have the decency to apologize, I’m hanging up to do some painful G.M. ass-kissing.  By the way, I’m having a barbeque next weekend, you coming?”

Leila put her chin on her hand and awaited Jackson’s reply.

“You.  The one that’s prettier than me.  I’m talking to you, not the jackass.  You coming to my barbeque?”

Her eyes rounded while Jackson’s danced with amusement.  Somehow, by some unnamed miracle, she was able to answer in a relatively normal voice.  “Yes.  Yes, of course.”

“Good.  Then you can bring the jackass with you.”

Then the line went dead.

Leila stared at Jackson, half-expecting him to jump out and yell, “Gotcha!” to prove this was some cruel, but still utterly fabulous prank.

“He liked you,” stated Jackson, grinning his approval as he scribbled down a number on a post-it.  “Do you run?”

She blinked and tried to catch up to the next crazy segue…and failed magnificently.  “Excuse me?”

“I asked if you run.”

“If someone’s chasing me,” she replied honestly.

Jackson chuckled again.  “Call me at this number tonight to finalize the time and place.  It’ll probably be early, and it’ll probably be somewhere around Cactus Creek.  Bring your shoes.  Lyle Peterson is in town visiting family and he’s a fitness freak.  I’m going jogging with him tomorrow morning, and so are you.”

Leila stared at him.  “Lyle Peterson.  As in Lyle Peterson the Scouting Guru?” she asked almost reverently.

“One and the same.  He’s a good contact for you to make.”  He checked the clock.  “Shit, I have a presentation in an hour.  I’ve got to get some work done.  Our office assistant will take care of getting your schedule for the next two weeks all set-up.  Let me know if you have any questions.  Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Leila stood to leave, but stopped, needing to say something.  “Jackson?”

“Mmm?” he asked as he booted up his computer.

“I can see it, too.”

He turned his full attention back to her and gave her a questioning look.

“The picture you had for your life by now? I can see it too.  I think you’d make an amazing husband and father.”

She saw a turbulent wave of emotions pass over his features, before he murmured quietly, “So it’s not just football you see differently from everyone else.”  His eyes ran over the length of her from head to toe, as if seeing something more than a mere woman standing before him. 

More of what, she couldn’t name. 

Just…more.

Though she felt a lightning bolt of jealousy over the idea of him getting married and having kids, the sadness in his eyes at that moment made her wish it so for him.

Just…maybe
after
she got over this massive crush she was developing on the man.

CHAPTER FOUR

Over the next few weeks, Leila got used to Lloyd continuing to be a mildly chauvinistic, but basically good-hearted boss.  A more potatoes than meat sort of producer.  Slightly better than what she’d imagined coming into the job, but for the most part, pretty on-point with her assumptions.

Now
Jackson
, on the other hand…

He was continuing to prove himself to be far more than what she’d expected.

He remembered the kids’ names of everyone in the building who had one—or twelve.  He brought in extra donuts for the morning janitor because he knew those were her favorites.  Basically, he made everyone feel important and checked to make sure that they were all doing okay. 

For example, when Carly, one of the secretaries had come into work looking like she’d spent the night prior crying, he went out and grabbed her an old-fashioned ice cream shake from the coffee shop across the street.  Then he perched himself on her desk and launched into an alphabetized list of all the annoying, atrocious characteristics that described her now ex-boyfriend who’d dumped her for her roommate.  Carly had been cracking up by the letter ‘m.’

Meanwhile, Leila had watched the whole sweet exchange from the hallway, where she’d melted into a puddle of goo by the time he’d gotten to the letter ‘c.’

Not only that, but while it appeared to be flying under everyone else’s radar, since Leila had been hovering in the background studying things like a fly on the wall, she’d noticed a little something about all the strange little occurrences happening around the station that half the workers thought were the act of playful poltergeists.

Yeah…they were all being caused by Jackson.

Leila’s first week here, one of the reporters, a hardworking young woman named Cara, had been frustrated that her story was getting passed over for a tired story that every sports network in the country had been covering all week. But she was outvoted.  Later, just as their main anchor was getting ready to report that tired story, his teleprompter suddenly blitzed out.  Everyone panicked like crazy. The producers scrambled to try and find him a hard copy, but strangely, none—of the seven or so copies—were on the floor. While the other anchor fought to stall and buy them more time, Jackson suggested that they cut to a quick feature in the empty green room with Cara and that interesting little story she’d researched. Left without any other options, the producers followed Jackson’s suggestion.  Cara nailed it.  The producers were happy clams.  But perhaps not
as
happy as the A.V. guys…who she saw later on the receiving end of a Hollywood handshake from Jackson, along with a conspiratorial pat on the back.

Honestly, she couldn’t imagine anyone in her family’s circle who’d have gone out of their way to help someone like that, with no personal agenda involved.  No other intent than to help a fellow worker shine.

That aspect of his character manifested in a bunch of different ways.  In meetings, she noticed he was constantly encouraging the quiet ones to share their thoughts, while challenging the tired ones with something fun and innovative, and offering genuine praise to the spotlight hogs who seemed to need the attention more than anyone else.

He never took credit even when it was rightfully due, and he always stood off to the side with a smile and lavish words of praise for all of his colleagues’ big moments, work-related or not.

As the weeks flew by, the ever-growing list of ways that Jackson kept surprising her was never far from her thoughts.

…And apparently, she was about to add another to the list.

Stopping outside of his office, Leila couldn’t help the small intake of breath that came unbidden whenever she heard Jackson’s deep gravelly voice.

Sexy didn’t even begin to cover it.

In fact, she was so busy swooning over hearing him speak that it took her a few seconds to realize what exactly she was hearing.

“Steve. You’ll be fine. I can see you right now through the in-house feed.  Nod if you can hear me.  Good.  Don’t worry about the producers.  Just stay on my channel.  It’s just you talking to me, man.  Forget everyone else.”

Pause

“Nope, don’t you go tensing up on me.  I hear them counting you in.  Remember, you’re just talking to me.  Telling me how I was a thousand-percent right about your precious Miners with their wimpy little O-line.”

Pause

“Hehe, don’t flare those nostrils too wide now, man.  I don’t need to see any bats in those caves.”

Another pause came, but this one much longer.  Until finally, a proud,
“Look at you.  You nailed it.  Not a single stutter.  You knocked it out of the park.”

Jackson laughed. 
“No thanks needed.  Anytime, buddy.”

A second later, a whooshing sigh filled the office.

Leila followed suit.  Heck, she was pretty certain she’d held her breath the entire time.  They all knew how bad Steve’s stuttering had been getting lately.  What Jackson just did for him…