I couldn’t explain a lot of things about my life, frankly.
“Brandon Macnamara,” Liana said dreamily.
Brandon? Ugh. That was annoying. Now all season I had to be reminded of the Brandon that had gotten away.
“He was the assistant offensive coordinator in Seattle,” Jessica said.
Hold on. Seattle? That was where my Brandon had moved from.
Well. Not my Brandon. Not my Brandon at all. Just briefly, when he had been inside me, but not since that one night. He couldn’t possibly be the head coach. That would be… crazy.
Then Jessica pushed Liana back. “Oh, time to go, girls.”
Teri was in front of us giving the go-ahead.
We ran out onto the field and down the sidelines, cheering and waving our hands. I fell into formation, my heart racing with adrenaline. I needed to catch a glimpse of the coach, but I couldn’t see that far down the sideline. But then I saw the jumbo screen, where they were showing the coaching staff.
He had a baseball hat with the team logo on, and his head was down, so I couldn’t see his face at all. But that body looked familiar. Right height, same broad shoulders. I was so fixated on the screen, I almost missed a cue but I pulled it together. Dancing was second nature to me. It didn’t need my entire focus.
Which was how I was able to not miss a beat when the new coach, Brandon Macnamara, lifted his head on the screen.
It was him.
Carriage rescue man.
Hater.
Giver of multiple orgasms.
I would have given anything in the universe to walk thirty yards over to him and demand an explanation for the fake number, but that was obviously impossible.
So instead I was forced to jump and kick and cheer the whole time knowing that the man I had spent the last six months fantasizing about was within reach. The only thing between us was a few suited-up football players and the water boy.
The first two quarters lasted approximately nine hundred hours. It was brutal. I was pinning everything on halftime. I needed a drink of water and five minutes alone in a bathroom stall to google the crap out of Brandon Macnamara. I wanted to know if he had a girlfriend and otherwise torture myself with details about him.
Finally, after half my life, the players ran past us to the locker room.
The coaching staff followed. Normally, I paid them zero attention, but my heart was racing and my throat was tight as I did our cheer. I was terrified I was going to be in a turn when Brandon walked past. I wanted to see him.
Fortunately, I wasn’t facing the stands but directly at him when he walked past, studying his laminated chart in his hand, pushing his headset up and away from his mouth. I gave a high kick.
When my leg was dropping back down, I realized he had glanced at me, then looked away. Damn it. He either hadn’t seen me or he didn’t recognize me. That would be mortifying. I shook my hips. Brandon did a double take almost immediately. It was like his brain had needed two seconds to process he had seen me. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose.
I smiled. I debated giving him a wink, but I wasn’t sure if there were cameras facing me. I didn’t want to get caught flirting with the coach. I would get kicked off the team.
His mouth opened and his steps slowed, like he was going to stop and say something. But then he suddenly seemed to remember where he was.
He gave me a very slight nod to acknowledge that he knew me, then he turned and actually started jogging toward the locker room.
Damn it, he was still hot. Maybe even more so. He was the friggin’ head coach of a professional football team, was a single dad, and gave oral like he’d been born to go down on me. In other words, perfect.
Aside from the fact that he’d pretended to leave me his number.
That aside, he was perfect.
I followed the other girls off the sidelines to our dressing room and declared I had to pee super bad. Then I snagged my phone out of my locker and ran into a stall, knowing I had all of about three minutes before our break would be over.
Brandon had been hired after the team had interviewed three or four candidates. The GM had liked that he had worked with the offensive coordinator before and that he had built up the stats in Seattle during his tenure there.
There were no images or mention of a girlfriend.
I did find an article about his divorce.
A picture of him with his daughters at what looked like a press conference, maybe announcing his hiring. They were cute. Both blond, the older one gangly, like she’d just had a growth spurt. The younger one had round cheeks and a devilish grin. He was holding her hand and had his arm around the older one. He looked loving and protective and it made my heart squeeze.
And a few clips of him speaking about the upcoming season and one video of him at a charity golf event.
I left the stall, and took a paper towel and dampened it. I put it on the back of my neck.
“It’s hot out there, isn’t it?” Jessica asked, washing her hands at the sink next to mine.
“Very hot.” For more reasons than the fact that it was August.
“I wish we had a dome. It’s humid as hell.”
“I need some water.” I put my phone away in my locker and drank a long swallow from my water bottle.
Now what? I couldn’t quit. I needed the paycheck, miniscule though it might be.
But how was I supposed to just cheer on the sidelines with Brandon a few feet away, calling the shots, being the man in charge, and generally speaking being sexy as hell.
I didn’t have a choice.
Maybe if he saw me shaking my ass every week, he would regret giving me a fake number. That would show him. It wasn’t much of a plan, but that was the only one I had.
Dakota was a cheerleader.
Holy shit.
I ran into the locker room, distracted as hell. I wasn’t even sure what had made me glance over at the group of cheerleaders, but I had and there she was, kicking one of those long legs up to her head. I had an instant boner, which was why I had to take off jogging, play sheet over my dick. My gut reaction had been to talk to her, or at least wave.
But common sense had stopped me. I couldn’t talk to her.
I was the head coach.
And I had fucked a cheerleader.
One who hadn’t texted or called me. So she had obviously thought one night was more than enough and hadn’t wanted to see me again.
Which sucked.
And now I had to see her at work, shaking that firm ass and jumping up and down.
Fuck me. This was a disaster.
It was my debut season as a head coach. I could not screw up this opportunity. I had moved my girls across the entire country to take this job, and frankly, Willow wasn’t adjusting well at all. I couldn’t do all of this only to blow it by having Dakota break my concentration.
I needed to put her out of my head.
But I wasn’t going to do nothing either. I wanted to talk to her. I needed to know that she hadn’t texted me simply because she wasn’t interested in me. I wanted to hear that straight from her mouth.
Shoving all of that mentally aside, I focused on coaching. I talked to the guys, pumped them up, relayed my game plan for the second half, given we were only up by one touchdown.
We went back out there and finished it. We won by three. Not what I’d been hoping for, but a victory was a victory. We still had a lot to work on to make the team gel. Monday we would watch film and get where we needed to be.
I purposefully didn’t look in Dakota’s direction on my way back on the field or off.