Under the Lights (13 page)

He wished there was an abridged version, though. Sitting in the curved, hard plastic cafeteria chairs wasn't comfortable, and the plays on the screen were all starting to blend together. What really sucked was that it had been his and Alex's idea to do this. They were hoping to fire the boys up in case their energy was flagging only halfway through the fund-raising and, maybe, see what the alumni team was up against.

There was no mystery there. They were up against a team of teenage boys who played good football together and were led by a great coach. Watching game tapes wasn't going to give the older guys an edge.

After a while, Chase pulled up his email on his phone and scrolled through, deleting the spam. There were a few communications from builders he'd talked to about taking over the big jobs he could no longer afford to do, and he went through the slow and painstaking process of responding to them on the phone's small screen.

It was tempting to ask the McDonnells for access to the
computer they had at Coach's office, but then they'd know something was going on and ask him questions about it. Even if they were coming from a place of concern and caring, he didn't really like talking about the mess at home. It felt like a failure on every level.

When he came to an email from his lawyer, he braced himself as he opened it, hoping it wouldn't be some new horror show in the making. It wasn't, but it also wasn't good news. Seth's lawyer had contacted his lawyer, and he was denying he'd taken the money, blaming it on a hacker or computer glitch.

Chase cursed and had to make an effort not to throw the phone across the room. There was no question Seth had taken the money, and it wouldn't be hard to prove he had. But it would take time. And it also meant he'd probably buried the money someplace where they wouldn't easily find it.

“Hey.”

Chase looked up and saw that Deck was leaning toward him. “You're making pissed-off noises. Like sighing and growling and shit. And you're getting louder.”

He flagged the email to respond to later and closed his email. “Sorry.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Just work crap I'm not in the mood to deal with right now. And I'm getting hungry. How much longer do you think this will go on?”

Deck looked at the screen for a few seconds. “There are two games left and they've started fast-forwarding through a lot of it. Not long.”

“Too bad the pizza place doesn't deliver.”

“Dude? Pizza?” That was Cody, from the front of the room.

“There's pizza?”

Somehow they ended up walking to the Stewart Mills House of Pizza when the video ended, where the alumni guys all chipped in enough to buy pizzas for everybody. Chase thought he'd had enough of football for the day, but once they carried the pizzas to the town square and were all sitting in the grass with their slices, he didn't mind. The kids were happy to have the free pizza, and there were no surly attitudes in sight.

Hunter even asked him about his time as running back for the Eagles and, the more he spoke, the more Chase warmed up to the topic. He wasn't sure anything had ever come close to replicating the rush that came from running up the sideline, evading defenders without stepping out of bounds, and breaking the plane for the touchdown.

“Did you ever get hurt?”

Chase shook his head. “No, but I was lucky. Just some bad bruises and a lot of sore muscles. I remember a kid on an opposing team tearing up his knee, though. I don't think he ever played again. That's one reason stretching and workouts and listening to Coach matter. A lot of injuries come from poor conditioning.”

He missed whatever Hunter said next because a police cruiser was driving slowly down the main street, and Kelly was behind the wheel. Wishing he'd thought to ask her if he'd see her again—alone and up close—before he left the night before, he debated texting her. But even if she hadn't been driving, he wasn't sure what he'd say.

Hey, had fun. Want to do it again?

That was lame. Maybe something simple and not pushy.
I had a great time last night.
Or
I'm sitting on the grass eating pizza with a bunch of guys jacked up on football talk and all I can think about is you.

“You going to eat that piece, dude?”

He realized Cody had moved closer and was talking to him. “No, I'm full. Go ahead.”

“I thought it was super lame they were making a big deal out of you guys coming back,” he said around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni, “but it's kinda cool having you around. Like seeing you all went to college and do different jobs and all live in different places and stuff.”

They gave the kids hope there was life outside Stewart Mills. Chase thought he probably would have latched onto that, too, if they'd been in a similar situation back in the day. “You thinking about where you want to go to college?”

Cody shrugged. “I thought I'd work at the mill until they shut it down. So I figured I'd drive over to the furniture factory like some people do, but then that closed, too. So I'll probably go to whatever college will take me.”

Not the most encouraging of outlooks. “Once school starts, you should make an appointment with Jen . . . uh, Miss Cooper, and talk about your options. That's a big part of her job, you know. Helping you figure out what comes after high school.”

“Yeah, she's pretty cool. And hot, too. I'll probably talk to her.”

Whatever got him in the guidance office. “Good plan.”

The cruiser made a second lap, and this time Kelly beeped and waved. They all waved back, but he wondered if she'd looked for him in the crowd. He really should text her soon, because the longer he waited, the more awkward it would be.

How's your day going?
There. That was conversational and friendly, without being about sex. Not that he didn't want to pursue that angle, but he didn't want to be pushy. And it would be a fairly benign message should she not have privacy when she opened it.

He pulled out his phone and punched it in before he could change his mind. A few seconds later, he saw the cruiser's turn signal blink, and it pulled to the curb.

Really? You can actually SEE that I'm driving right now.

Oops.
I thought you'd read it later, when you weren't driving.

I'll text you later, when I can.
The cruiser pulled back into traffic and turned off on a side road.

Chase leaned back on his hands, grinning. Even if the brief conversation hadn't gone anywhere, he knew one thing. She hadn't been able to wait when she saw a text from him, and had pulled over right away to read it. In his book, that could only mean good things.

O
n Tuesday, the three women all managed to finally have free time together, so they met at Kelly's apartment to deal with the money from the street fair. So much of it was one-dollar bills, or even quarters, they knew they couldn't just show up at the bank with the plastic buckets.

It took a lot of trips to get the buckets upstairs, and then they all sat on the floor and started separating the money. The bank had a sorting machine, but they wanted a rough idea of how much they'd pulled in. Jen had pulled in a couple more monetary gifts from some foundations Kelly had never heard of, and there was a possibility they could close out the spaghetti dinner tomorrow night with the good news the Stewart Mills Eagles would report for tryouts in August.

“I wonder if strippers have to do this every night,” Gretchen said.

Kelly laughed. “Hey, the barn has a pole. You could pull in some extra money.”

“I think stripping and a wooden barn pole is asking for splinters in bad places.”

About halfway through, Kelly stood up to stretch her back and try to get some feelings back in her legs. “I can't believe how much money is here. Not that I'm complaining, but this is crazy.”

Jen tossed a handful of quarters into a bucket and made a tally mark on her legal pad. They were going with rough estimates for the coins, or they'd be in her apartment for a week. “After you left, the boys—the current team, I mean—took turns in the booth, since it's to raise money for them. Their girlfriends and siblings were practically begging money from people to dunk them.”

“I noticed you didn't come back after your turn, Kelly,” Gretchen said. It was a statement, but the nosy tilt at the end made it more of a question.

“By the time I took a hot shower and had some hot cocoa, I was done. I fell into bed.” It was the truth.

“Chase disappeared about the same time you did,” Gretchen added.

Kelly gathered four twenty-five-dollar piles of one-dollar bills, very meticulously tapped the paper to line up the edges and then slid a paper band around the stack. She didn't want to lie to them, but she didn't really want to talk about it, either.

“Nothing?” Gretchen pushed, and Kelly shrugged.

“I guess that answers that question,” Jen said. “Was there a wall involved?”

Kelly couldn't hold back her grin as she nodded. “But I'm not saying anything else.”

“That was Saturday night. It's Tuesday. Have you two been filling in the blanks?”

“No. I've barely even seen him, actually. He's been running around with the other alumni players.” Thankfully staying on the right side of the law so far.

“The guys have been hanging out with the kids a lot,” Jen said. “Offering advice on football and life and stuff in general, I guess.”

“It's good for them.” Kelly sat back down and dumped another bucket between her legs. “The kids, I mean. Though it gives the men something to do, too.”

Not that Chase needed anything to do. He seemed to be so busy she'd barely seen him and, other than a couple of text exchanges, they'd hardly spoken. Not that she was pining for him. But if they were going to have a hot, sexy fling while he was in town, she'd like a little more flinging before he left.

They worked in silence for a while, the excitement of having so much money to sort fading over the course of the actual sorting until, finally, they were done. They made multiple trips back down to Jen's car and she left for the bank, promising to text them the official total once they'd sorted the deposit and called her with the amount.

Gretchen went back upstairs with Kelly, since she'd left her sweatshirt on the back of the kitchen chair. “Does Jen seem off to you?”

“What do you mean?”

Gretchen shrugged. “I don't know. She just didn't seem like herself, and she hardly said anything the whole time.”

“Probably just tired.” They all were.

“I know what Jen tired looks like and I know it sounds
weird, but she wouldn't look at Sam when we ran into them on the way over here.”

That got Kelly's attention. “Sam Leavitt? Come on. He's so far from her type it's not even funny. Maybe something's going on with the school administration or something, because there's no way there's anything going on between Jen and Sam.”

It was a crazy thought. They both knew Jen's type—a cashmere sweater, some Shakespeare for fun—and Sam wasn't it. Not that Chase was Kelly's type, either, but that was different. They were just having a fling. She knew Jen was looking for a keeper.

“I have ice cream,” she said as Gretchen pulled on her sweatshirt. “You want some?”

“I should get home to Gram. I've been leaving her alone too much lately because of this Eagles Fest thing, and I told her we'd have a nice lunch together.”

Kelly sighed. “I'm on duty soon, so maybe I shouldn't have ice cream for lunch.”

A few hours later, she was at her desk doing paperwork when the chief loomed over her. She leaned back in her chair, not liking the uncertainty on his face. He was a man who liked being in charge and, even when he had no clue, he moved through his life with utter confidence in himself.

“Hi, Chief.”

“McDonnell. You did a good job in the dunk tank the other night.”

All she'd done was repeatedly fall into frigid water, but she'd take whatever praise she could get. “Thank you. All for a good cause.”

“Yes.” He was actually fidgeting with a button on his shirt, and Kelly got nervous. She silently prayed she wasn't about to be a victim of deeper budget cuts. “There's been some talk about . . . so I heard Chase Sanders walked you home.”

Kelly didn't like where that was going at all. “Yes, sir. I was cold enough so that he was concerned about my fine motor skills and wanted to be sure I got home okay.”

“Oh. And that's it?”

Oh, hell no.
“Are you asking me about a personal relationship, sir?”

“No!” His face flushed and he shook his head so hard she was surprised his hat didn't fly off. “Absolutely not. That would be inappropriate. I was just . . . making small talk. Like I said, good job in the dunk tank.”

“Thank you, Chief.” She looked at the clock over his head. “If that's all, sir, I should head out on patrol.”

“Of course. Uh . . . be careful out there.”

She refrained from rolling her eyes at her chief's back, but just barely. While respect was important to her and she was a police officer in a small, old-fashioned town, she wasn't going to let her boss cross that line.

Unfortunately, she couldn't shut down the rest of the town. But still, it was only conjecture, since she knew neither Jen nor Gretchen would talk about her. So what if she and Chase had left the street fair at the same time and neither had been seen again? There were credible reasons why that would happen that did not involve their having sex up against her wall.

She'd been driving the roads of Stewart Mills for nearly an hour, with no more excitement than clearing the road of
an empty box that had probably blown out of somebody's truck, when her cell phone's text chime dinged. After parking in one of her favorite spots, she pulled it out of its holster.

I'm going crazy.

It was from Chase and, though she waited a few seconds, no more information seemed forthcoming.
Dammit, Chase, I'm a police officer, not a doctor.

Very funny. I want to see you again.

You'll see me at the spaghetti dinner tomorrow.

There was a long pause before her phone chimed again.
Unless you're naked, that doesn't count.

She laughed, the sound loud in her empty SUV.
When scooping dangly pasta out of boiling water, naked is not recommended.

What about after?

Cleanup and I'm covering late shift.

Call in sick.

Sure, because calling in sick to have sex with Chase the day after her boss was having concerns about her having sex with Chase was a brilliant idea.
No.

I'm going to explode.

Hand lotion.
There was an image that could get a girl through a long, lonely night.

Tried. It's all that scent your mom uses. I need therapy now.

And now so do I.

A car was coming, and Kelly looked up from her phone in time to see a minivan, driven by a tall, thin guy who looked vaguely familiar, run the stop sign.

Gotta go. John Briscoe has arrived.

—

S
ince their last trip to the Stewart Mills House of Pizza hadn't ended well and he had his wife and kids with him, the guys joined John Briscoe at his parents' home for a reunion and cookout. They had a huge backyard and a football, so it was inevitable they ended up tossing it around for a while.

Chase had to admit, it felt pretty good. Football was something he'd been good at and, more importantly, it had taught him that the harder he worked, the better he got. It was a lesson that had gotten him through school, then college and into business. The business hadn't ended so well, but that wasn't entirely his fault.

They'd spent countless hours every week on the field, practicing under Coach's watchful eye. They'd been clumsy at first, dropping balls left and right, but they'd learned. Day after day of Sam handing the football off to him until they weren't sloppy anymore. Chase, getting hit from every direction over and over until he learned how to tuck the ball and protect it while he ran.

Briscoe had run sideline routes until he could be fully extended to bring in the catch while still keeping both of his feet inbounds. Scrimmages had pitted Deck and Alex, along with many others, against each other. They'd hit and they'd hit until they could play it strong and clean at the same time.

Coach had given them everything, both on the sidelines and at home, and they'd given him a championship.

“How are things going?” Sam asked Chase when they took a break to have seconds on fruit salad and some cold drinks.

“Pretty good, I guess.” He shrugged. “It's weird. I'll have
been here two weeks tomorrow and, in some ways, I feel like I never left and I'm just here. Like sometimes I have to remind myself I have a life—such as it is—waiting for me in New Jersey.”

“You could stay. Just go home and pack your shit and bring it back.”

“And do what? Stewart Mills isn't exactly having a building boom.”

Sam shrugged. “There's stuff within a reasonable commute to the south, and there's been some activity to the north, from what I've heard. Or don't build houses. Do something else.”

“Just like that, huh?” Chase knew Sam had switched jobs many times over the years, doing whatever suited him at the time.

“Yeah. You'd figure it out and make it work if you had a strong enough reason to stay.”

A reason like Kelly. With the clock ticking down on his stay in Stewart Mills, Chase had to admit he'd been thinking about her a lot. It was hard to believe that when the weekend was over, he'd be heading home and he just wouldn't see her again.

But he could almost see the look on her face if he told her he was spinning his life further into chaos by bringing it all to Stewart Mills, where there was a good chance he'd end up doing small home repairs in exchange for homemade pies and banana bread. He'd probably be the last man she wanted around, and Coach wouldn't be too impressed, either.

“Have you seen your mom?” he asked Sam, not just to change the subject, but because he knew it had been weighing on the guy's mind.

“Yeah.” Sam picked at the label on his bottle of water. “Mrs. McDonnell told me she's been sober awhile, so I stopped by. Mostly just to make Mrs. McDonnell happy, because I stopped giving a shit a long time ago.”

“How did it go?”

Sam inhaled deeply through his nose and blew out the breath. “She cried. She knew I was in town, but she was afraid to see me, so . . . she cried a lot and kept telling me she was sorry over and over. Like she'd do back when she was drunk.”

“But she's not drunk now.”

“Happy for her.” Sam took a long swig of water. “I gave her my email address.”

It was a start. Email was a lot less personal than his phone number or home address, and the messages were easy to ignore or delete, but maybe his mom would at least have the opportunity to open a dialogue.

Not that Chase blamed Sam at all. His childhood had been ugly, filled with alcohol and anger and pain. The entire town had breathed a sigh of relief when Sam's old man had finally taken off for good, but his mom had spiraled even deeper into the cycle.

Without Coach, Sam probably wouldn't have graduated from high school. There was no way he would have stuck it out, and he would either have run away or ended up in jail.

“Say cheese,” Sam muttered, and Chase looked up to see Alex pointing his camera their way. They both flipped him off.

A minute later, John Briscoe joined them, popping the top on a can of beer. “I'd ask if you guys started practicing for the game before I got here but, since we've had to retrieve the football from the neighbor's yard twice and almost broke the living room window, I'm thinking no.”

“We didn't want you behind the curve,” Sam said, and they all laughed. “How's Rhode Island?”

“Not too bad. Things are going well.”

Briscoe, as wide receiver, had been an important part of the championship Eagles team, but he hadn't really been one of Coach's boys. He'd grown up in one of the finer houses in town, with nice parents, had done well in school and gone off to college, where he met his wife.

Chase suspected if John and his wife hadn't seen an opportunity for their kids to visit their grandparents, Briscoe would have passed on the Eagles Fest invitation.