Qualified: A Sports Romance (12 page)

The car ride made Allie remember the
first time she’d picked up Marc from the airport in Colorado.

It seemed so long ago. She’d thought
he seemed like an asshole then. Now, she wondered if he didn’t look a little
worried.

“What?” Marc swiveled an aggressive look towards
her when she let her gaze linger too long. Like an injured animal baring its
teeth.

Allie shook her head and tried to focus on driving.

He let her lead the way into the clinic at which
Lindsey was a partner. It was probably for the best—she did make a better
vanguard. Allie smiled and spoke to the receptionist while he glowered behind
her. When they handed her a clipboard she glanced at Marc, but the search of
his eyes and surly flick of his chin encouraged her to fill out the entries. He
sat beside her with his arms crossed in the waiting room, a looming presence
while her pen scratched out the details for his chart.

“They want emergency contact information?” Allie
paused to look up at him.

Marc seemed to sink more stubbornly back into his
chair. “Put down Everett’s info.”

Allie frowned, her lifted pen wavering as she
looked quizzically at him. It didn’t take long for the strength of his stare to
chase her back into writing what he’d asked her to.

“Marc Belmont?”

They both stood to face the woman in scrubs who
held open the door which led from the lobby.

“Miss, if I could have you wait out here? It will
be a while. If you prefer, we can call you when we’re done.”

Marc and Allie exchanged a look.

“I’ll stay,” she said while their eyes were still
locked.

Marc didn’t react beyond easing his bag off his
shoulder and handing it to her. His warmup jacket, the same one from that first
picture, was folded over the top. It started to slip as she transferred the
strap to her shoulder. She gathered it up into her arms as she watched Marc
turn and walk through the doors to the imaging suites.

Allie sat down with a flop. The weight of Marc’s
belongings were heavy in her lap. She sat still for a minute, blinking blindly
at the peaceful seascape watercolor that hung in its frame on the far wall.
They weren’t far from the ocean, but outside the front door was a jungle of
cement and glass. She dropped a hand to flip listlessly through the waiting
room’s magazines. Eventually, she pulled out her phone to check for texts from
Violet.

I’ve found the
perfect bar for you to check out

When you go to
the qual tourney

If I go

Allie still wasn’t sure that the team was going to
bother to bring her along. There wasn’t much for her to do relative to the
expense of putting up another staffer in the hotel. Perhaps it was for the
best. As awkward as things had been since Blake’s party, the thought of being
in close quarters with the team outside of work hours made her anxious.
Whatever had earned Marc his reputation, she feared witnessing it in a foreign
hotel’s lobby.

At an imaging
clinic now

With my lab rat

Violet must have been busy, because she wasn’t
messaging back. Allie sighed and resorted to flipping through an old edition of
a magazine, learning how to best choose a lipstick to coordinate with her
summer toenail polish.

She hoped it just looked like boredom when she
popped so fast out of her chair once Marc came back through the doors. Allie
gave him a bright smile which he did not return.

“We’ve iced and re-wrapped,” the tech told Allie as
she passed her clipboard to the woman behind the counter. “And Mr. Belmont
knows that he’s supposed to ice for twenty minutes, every two hours.” The
phrase had the cadence of frequent repetition, and this time the attendant
nodded it along with Marc’s grudging acknowledgement. “We’ll have results in to
Lindsey by the morning. She’s indicated that you’ll be able to oversee
bandaging in the meantime, Ms. Hillsten?”

“Yes,” Allie agreed without wavering. “Is there
anything else?”

“Not for us. I hope you have a nice evening,” the
woman said to Allie. “Good luck,” she added with a shoulder squeeze for Marc.
Allie wondered if the touch didn’t linger a little long. Then again, she could
hardly blame the clinic worker.

“Should we get something to eat?” Allie twisted
back to ask as they made their way to the car. “Might be better not to hop on
the roads just now.”

“It’ll be hours before the traffic gets any
better.”

Allie couldn’t tell if he were being cynical or
suggestive. She looked over her shoulder and up at him as she went around to
the passenger side. She didn’t think twice about opening the door for him and
putting in his bag.

“Probably be best to avoid anything with
chopsticks,” Marc said dryly as he slid into the seat, gesturing with his
bandaged hand.

“I’ll just do a search for what’s good around
here?” Allie suggested.

“Sure.”

Allie went around to hop into the driver’s side.
She left the keys in her lap a minute to get out her phone and tap up reviews
for restaurants in the area.

Marc got comfortable in his seat but he didn’t put
his earbuds in. He entertained himself by watching her.

“Let’s see …” Allie scrolled through, looking
for something close and … “Brazilian?” She found with a grin, turning the
screen towards him.

Her phone buzzed just then. She blinked, clutching
it back quick.

Hook it up with some XxxRay vision

Allie pressed her eyes closed.

Later, Violet D:

“Sounds delicious.” Marc might have actually been
smirking.

“Have you ever been here before?”
Allie asked once they were seated and waiting for their meal.

Marc shook his head, finding a more comfortable
sprawl in his chair. It involved the length of his legs bumping against her
ankles.

Allie tried not to think about it too much. “You
must have favorite places,” she insisted. “You have lived here before.”

“Years ago,” Marc said around slurping at his
water. “Do you have favorite places here?”

“I’ve been so busy …” Allie started to answer
with a shake of her head. She caught onto his implication and started to smile.
“You made friends at least.” She shook out her hair, going for careless as her
lashes flicked and she reached for her own drink.

Marc snorted.

“The girls’ water polo team seems to like you,”
Allie noted around a dainty sip at her straw.

“Yeah,” Marc answered slowly, setting his drink
down and wriggling his shoulders back into his chair. He crossed his arms and
scanned Allie from across the table. “Are you going to bring up the countess
again?”

“No.” Allie blushed at the reminder of their walk
home from Blake’s. “I know you said you didn’t date … Except people seem
to think …” She couldn’t quite bring the thoughts to their conclusions.
Chips of ice chimed in her glass as she chased them with her straw. “It’s just
that on the beach, you looked so close. You and Natalie.”

Marc’s mouth flattened into an uneven line. “That’s
Natalie. All about how things look.”

“So how are things really?”

Somehow Marc seemed less surprised than Allie by
the abruptness of her question. “The thing is, Natalie is on the hunt for
anything interesting enough to get her into the news cycle. She must be
desperate to come barking up my tree with some idea of getting back together. I
know she doesn’t give a shit about me. There’s no way I’m buying her lies. I
told her as much.” His gaze didn’t waver throughout his calm answer. “She
doesn’t like being told no.”

It sounded so much like he didn’t care, but an ache
clutched at Allie’s heart and clawed tension into her throat. “Maybe she does
still have feelings for you.”

“Not that two-faced sociopath.” It was the most
dispassionately certain way that she had ever heard someone called crazy
outside of a psychology class. “That was crystal clear when she cheated on me
with one of her own kind.” Marc’s mouth tilted towards a smile and left Allie
no time to react before he prodded at her with his own questions. “Is this part
of your questionnaire, doctor? Is my sexual history relevant to your studies?”

Allie dodged a look aside and hoped no one was
listening. “I’m not a doctor.” It was the easiest thing to protest.

“Huh.” The weight of Marc’s ankle against the
inside of hers became an active press. “We could pretend you are.”

“Marc,” Allie panicked as she saw the waiter coming
over. “I’m just trying to do my job. Why must you be so … so …
difficult?”

“You’re the one making it hard.”

Allie gave him a stare across the table. She
couldn’t tell if he was trying to embarrass her as revenge for prying into his
life or if he was actually flirting. Either way, her heart pounded fit to flee
for how her personal interest in him felt so exposed.

“Thank you,” Allie said shakily to the waiter when
the plates clattered down in front of them.

Marc just kept watching her. The pressure of his
leg was firm at the inside of her ankle.

Allie picked up her fork and tried to carry on
eating, hoping he would do the same.

“This is good.” Marc not only followed her lead, he
also seemed to be relenting by commenting on the food. “I don’t know if this
place was around, last time I lived here. That was five years ago. You were
probably still in high school.”

Allie furrowed her brow as she assembled a perfect
bite of feijoada onto her fork. “How young do you think I am?” A quick look at
the expression on Marc’s face suggested that she not give him time to answer.
“Five years ago I was at my community college.”

“Community college,” Marc echoed once he’d taken a
drink of water. His wielding of his fork was somewhat impeded by his wrapped
hand so he wasn’t inhaling his dinner at typical athlete super-speed. “In
Colorado?”

She nodded. “I missed out on the fancy scholarships
to fancy schools.” It was supposed to sound airy, but perhaps she failed.

Marc licked at the side of his mouth, studying her
a moment. Then he focused back on his plate and continued eating in silence.

Allie worked through her meal quietly awhile, too.
She was chasing down her last sliver of plantain when she risked another
question. “What was it like, when you left school without graduating? Wasn’t it
like … walking away from everything?” She could only peek towards him.

Marc was frowning. “I was just focused on doing
what I was good at. Playing.” He took a deep breath, shifting his right arm
restlessly on the table where his wrapped hand was curled. “It’s what I live
for. I wasn’t walking away from anything.”

There was something Allie couldn’t quite find, lost
there in the shadows of his expression. But Marc was walled behind that
familiar confident composure when he looked back up. “It’s the one thing that
matters to me. The one thing I can’t lose.”

Allie rolled her lips together, still helplessly
trapped in the dark of his gaze despite Marc making it point blank clear that
she couldn’t mean anything to him. She’d be dismissed as easily as Natalie.
Easier, probably. His skin was still pressed against her leg, making her senses
prickle. She felt like he’d hold her bound unless she could escape his touch.
She deliberately made herself fold her ankles back beneath her chair in a neat
cross of feet.

His lashes dipped slightly, but Marc seemed to
expect that she’d draw away from him.

“You know what that’s like.” Marc continued to
round up the last bites of his meal. “Everything’s a research project to you.”

“Not everything.” Allie frowned down at the wrap of
her fingers around her sweating water glass, too keenly remembering the chill
feel of his hand within hers just hours ago. “I hope it’s nothing,” she offered
as an example to the contrary, her eyes bouncing to his hand and then up to
Marc’s eyes. “I hope you’re back to playing soon.”

“Yeah,” Marc sniffed. He threw down his fork and
looked towards the waiter, grabbing for his bag with his left hand. “We should
get back and ice it.”

“I can get the bill,” Allie floated out in protest
when she saw him get his wallet. “It was my idea to come here.”

“I don’t need your pity.”

It was a snarl so out of nowhere that Allie sat
back dumb in her chair.

She was silent as Marc flagged over the waiter and
counted out bills to pay. He stood quickly thereafter, holding out a hand to
pull her up from her chair. “Don’t look at me like that.” His voice was back to
its cooler cadence. “I’m not Blake, but I can buy a girl dinner.”

“I didn’t think this was a date.” Allie gave him a wan
smile as she accepted his left hand and came to her feet.

“I’ve never been very good at the dinner and
conversation part,” Marc grunted. A dark curl played at one edge of his mouth.
“But you’re going to tie me up later, aren’t you?”