Protecting The Quarterback. Kristina Knight

pads he wore, she knew—and then bounce back. For a long moment he was perfectly still, then he slowly got up and lumbered off the field. Holding his right arm close to his body.

      Maybe she did need pie.

      A moment later, with a generous slice of pie on a plate, she returned upstairs and watched the coverage again, making more notes. She watched the interviews about the “minor surgery” and twisted her mouth to the side. Minor surgery didn’t explain the shaking hands she’d seen or the fact Jonas had been in Kentucky all winter when he’d normally be at his house in Texas or sailing the ocean with one Hollywood starlet or another.

      “Even during the off-season, you’re watching film,” her father, Jimmy Smith, said from the doorway.

      Brooks put her hand to her chest. “Don’t startle me like that! And I could say the same for you. I can’t remember a Saturday morning you didn’t spend looking over game film.” Her father pushed a chair to the desk and sat beside her. “Speaking of, shouldn’t you be reminding your players not to get into too much trouble over the summer break right about now?”

      He shook his head and his shaggy, silver hair fluttered around his head. “I’ll have ’em in camps most of the summer. Don’t remember you minding all those Saturday mornings. You’d be nose-deep in film, too, telling me my tight end was too slow or my strong-side tackle was holding.” He eyed the half-eaten pie as he sat on the edge of her bed. “I see you found your mom’s pecan pie.”

      “Plain sight on the counter.” Brooks grabbed the pie and held it close to her chest. “You can get your own.”

      “Maybe later.” He nodded toward her tablet. “What’cha got cooking?”

      “I’m not sure.” She rolled her chair beside him, reset the video and played it for her dad.

      He watched it through a couple of times and whistled low. “I remember seeing that as it happened. Bad way to dislocate a shoulder. I know your job is to report on the Kentuckians year-round, but this is old news, kiddo.”

      “I’m interviewing him tomorrow. Something’s off.”

      “’Course it’s off. He dislocated his shoulder.” Jimmy started the video again. “See how he’s not moving at all? Sign it’s a bad dislocation. He had surgery, another bad sign.”

      “His hands shook. At the awards show a few months ago. He only held the trophy for a moment or so, but his hands shook. The thing couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds.”

      “Joint injuries are funny things.”

      “He’s also been dodging me since the show.”

      “And you’re like a dog with a bone when you think something is going on.” Jimmy slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Sometimes an injury is just an injury.”

      “Sometimes it’s more.”

      He nodded and stood. “It’s good to have you home, kiddo.”

      “Thanks, Dad.” Brooks furrowed her brow as she watched the clip once more. “It’s good to be home.” But he was already gone, probably down to the kitchen to nab a slice of pecan pie.

      Brooks finished her slice, savoring the crunch of the pecans and the sweetness of Karo syrup and sugar. As sweet as Jonas probably thought he’d been when he more or less propositioned her in the middle of the Kentuckians’ locker room. As sweet as it had been the past few days to wake up in her old room, bad decor and all.

      What is it I can do for you? The quarterback’s voice echoed in her mind.

      Oh, she’d been tempted. For a split second, she wondered if she should break her rule about dating athletes. He only wanted to distract her, though, he wasn’t serious. Brooks was a serious-minded woman. She didn’t expect every guy she dated to be the marrying kind, but she had a picture in her mind of how her life should look in a few years and there was definitely a guy and a few kids.

      The guy suddenly looked a lot like Jonas Nash.

      She shook her head. Jonas Nash wasn’t part of her future, not anymore than any of the Backstreet Boys had ever been, and she was too old for star-struck daydreaming. He was an interview. He was layers and layers of story, but that was that.

      Her tablet buzzed in her hands, signaling an incoming video chat.

      “I’m staying in Louisville,” Trisha Lamott, Brooks’s best friend since high school, said gleefully as soon as the video window connected. She raised her wineglass toward the screen and then tapped it against the glass. “Me. In Louisville and on track to make partner by the time I’m thirty-five.” She drank the glass of wine, picked a bottle off the cabinet nearby and refilled her glass.

      Trisha’s shoulder-length, brown hair was perfectly arranged and she wore a sparkly camisole under her white lab coat. Leave it to Trisha to look like a model for business casual after a day treating torn ligaments and setting fractures. Brooks checked her watch. Just after eleven in the morning, she hadn’t lost an entire day watching the old clip of Jonas.

      “You said you wanted Chicago.”

      “I didn’t want to jinx it. I love Chicago.” Trisha drank more wine. “There are restaurants and museums and—”

      “And Kentucky has the Derby and Louisville Sluggers and Southern Comfort. Not to mention the Kentuckians.”

      “Exactly. Kentucky is perfection. To everyone except the girl living in beautiful, sunny Miami.”

      Brooks chuckled. “You mean the girl who just got a promotion that landed her in Louisville for at least the next year.” At least, she thought it was a promotion. Technically, she was still a reporter, but she was a network reporter, in charge of an entire bureau. Well, team. Still.

      “You’re coming back home?”

      “I arrived last night,” Brooks said as she pulled her hair from the elastic band, smoothed it through her hands and then reset the ponytail. “The network gave me all of three days to get here so I spent it packing and making moving arrangements. I was going to tell you all about it this weekend.”

      “I can’t believe you didn’t call me immediately to celebrate. You were my first call.”

      “Your job offer doesn’t come with a thousand mile move attached.” Brooks chuckled and then tapped the screen separating them. “Should you really be celebrating with wine before noon?”

      “Yep. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

      The chuckle turned into a full blown laugh. On her side of the screen, Trisha rinsed her wineglass before putting it in the sink.

      “So have you caught up with the Captain Quarterback yet? You know, it’s kind of weird that Mr. Always-A-Tabloid-Headline doesn’t want to talk to an actual reporter.”

      “Interviewing him tomorrow morning, actually,” Brooks said. Although, Jonas certainly didn’t seem like a media whore now. She couldn’t remember the last time his picture had been in the paper for anything.

      Brooks finished her pie. “We should celebrate both our new jobs in style.”

      “How about Thursday night, at Mendocino’s? We’ll celebrate your new job and me being the new doc at Bone Creek, Louisville.” Trisha stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled so loudly Brooks thought her tablet screen might crack. “We’ll break out the good stuff. Champagne for me. Tequila for you.” Trisha signed out of the chat window.

      Brooks looked around her childhood room. Old wallpaper, old posters. The same lumpy mattress, same prom dress in the back of her closet. Same ribbons and trophies on her bookshelves.

      God, she never expected football to lead her back to Louisville. Back to the shadow of her famous father. Somehow, though, she didn’t experience the same strangled feeling she’d felt so many times as a kid. Instead the room felt familiar. Not completely comfortable,