Broken Play Read Free Page B

room.
    Beau had theories about that, theories that Cass didn’t even want to consider, but there was a voice in his head that kept arguing louder every day that Beau was right. She didn’t like the locker room, that was for sure. She hid it pretty well. She joked and leaned casually against the door like she was doing now. But if she miscalculated and arrived before all the players were inside, there was a moment of panic in her eyes as some big-ass football player came up behind her. And even on the field she never let herself be surrounded by them. She’d stand back or just yell from the sidelines. So it wasn’t only football locker rooms that bothered her. It was football players.
    Cass bit his tongue and said nothing. It wasn’t his place. Not yet, anyway. But the more he got to know Marian, the more he wanted her. If what they suspected was true, then she had more guts than anyone he’d ever met. Football was her passion, anyone could see that, and she’d refused to give it up. She was living the dream, coaching for an NFL team.
    What she didn’t realize was that she didn’t have to worry here. Cass and Beau had made it very clear that Marian was off-limits. She was theirs, period. If anyone messed with her in any way, they’d have to deal with him and Beau. He hadn’t stood in the locker room and made an announcement, but he didn’t have to. He just stood a little too close to her, made her laugh, walked her to her car, and called her “Mari, Mari, Quite Contrary.” Add a little touch here and there that was more than friendly, a few suggestive conversations, a heated look or two. He didn’t let anyone else take those liberties with her, and neither did she. Marian was resisting his slow seduction for all she was worth, but she wasn’t protesting. Which was why Cass was going to step up his game today.
    His only worry was her obvious distrust of Beau. And Beau wasn’t really helping. He had left all the courting to Cass, and that just wasn’t going to work. Cass knew that once Marian really got to know Beau, once he opened up and let her in, she’d change her tune. Everyone loved Beau. Surely she could see that. And he was clean. It was the way Beau wanted it, and Cass helped him stay that way every day. So if it was Beau’s past that was holding her back, Beau would have to make her see that it wasn’t an obstacle. Not at all. Cass wouldn’t let it be.
    “Hey, sugar, come here often?” Jo Jo Jones said to her as he came around from the showers wearing nothing but a towel, his dark-cocoa skin starkly contrasting with the white terry cloth. Jo Jo was a great linebacker, but he had a death wish. He couldn’t stop smoking weed, and he liked to tease Marian. One of those was going to get him thrown out of the NFL, and the other was going to get him dead.
    “Really?” Marian said with exaggerated disappointment. “You had the whole day to think of a come-on line, and that’s the best you could come up with?”
    The guys all laughed and Jo Jo got snapped with a few towels. He laughed, too, as if he’d really been joking, which was good. Cass crossed beating him up off his to-do list.
    “Okay, gentlemen—and I use the term loosely,” she said, teasing them. “Today is press day. You get to be smart and funny and irresistible for the press corps. Make yourselves pretty before you join us back on the sidelines.”
    There were groans from all over the room. “Oh, man,” Tyler Oakes, team quarterback, said. “You have to, too, right?”
    Marian frowned. “Hello? I’m already pretty.”
    Cass laughed out loud with the rest of the team. “You sure are,” he said, loud enough for her to hear him. Her gaze darted over to him, as if she’d been avoiding looking at him but couldn’t help herself now. He was sitting there in his shorts and nothing else, sweating. Beau was leaning on the locker in front of him, similarly undressed. Cass looked at him, hoping to lead Marian’s eyes that way, too.