His Most Important Win

The boy’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Well, we’ve been kicking the idea around,” Bryce said. “There would have to be tryouts….”

The instantaneous enthusiasm faded from the boy’s eyes. “I don’t know how my mom would like the idea. Her brother …”

Danny paused, and a fifteen-year-old pain coiled in Bryce’s gut. “Who is your mother, Danny?”

“She teaches at the high school,” he said. “You … ah, you know her. Miss Campano, the English teacher.”

Bryce could only gawk at Danny as if the kid had suddenly sprouted a second head. “You’re Rosalie’s son?” he repeated needlessly.

“Yeah.”

Damn. Bryce’s goal of nabbing the ideal quarterback suddenly didn’t even seem a remote possibility. Of course Rosie wouldn’t want her kid playing football. Of course she wouldn’t want him playing for Bryce.

He walked Fanning a few steps away from Danny and spoke so only the coach could hear. “Do you know my connection to Rosalie’s brother?” he asked.

“I’ve heard, but I don’t want to get in the middle of this.” Fanning rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “History can sure come back to bite you in the ass, can’t it, Coach?”

Bryce realized he must look witless. He tried to smile at Danny Campano. “Nice meeting you, Danny,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

As he walked back to the athletic center, Bryce wondered how fortune could be so fickle. Show him a shining future star and then snuff it out behind a giant rain cloud. But what bothered him just as much was why he kept thinking about what Fanning had said about Rosalie. “I ought to know. I’m kind of dating her.”

When Rosalie pulled into the high school lot, she immediately noticed the familiar tricked-out black pickup parked under the shade of an old oak tree.

“Great,” she muttered to herself and chose a spot several spaces away. She backed in, turned off her engine and looked at her watch. A little before noon. If Danny was on time, a rarity when he was practicing, she’d see him sprinting across the practice field in just a few minutes. Hopefully they would be on their way home before Bryce returned to his truck.

Unfortunately the male figure she saw moments later wasn’t Danny. Even from a distance, Rosalie recognized the features of the man who had been her childhood friend, her teenage companion and her eventual heartthrob. She lowered her sunglasses and stared, allowing herself the guilty pleasure of enjoying the natural grace of his walk, the confident swagger in his step. She smirked to herself. The man was still just too darned sexy for his own good.

She couldn’t look at Bryce without remembering that morning after the prom and the scent of peaches mingling with his crisp, clean aftershave. She couldn’t look at him without recalling the first mind-blowing kiss in the orchard, the first time his hands teased tingles of pleasure out of her eager young body. The first time he … She squeezed her eyes shut. As always, the most tender memory of all was obliterated by the image of her brother unconscious on the ground, the sound of her own sobs and the cry of anguish from Bryce’s lips.

Her senses on overdrive and her emotions on edge, she urged herself to stay in control. She had to expect to see Bryce often. She’d managed to run into him all three days since his surprise appearance Friday night. But she didn’t want to see him again so soon, and not around Danny.

She slumped into her seat, grabbed a novel from the dashboard and opened to her bookmarked page. Even if Bryce realized she was in the car, perhaps he’d notice she was preoccupied and would politely get in his vehicle and leave.

Of course, she didn’t read a word. She kept her gaze intent on the page, but when, a few agonizing minutes later, she heard Bryce’s subtle step on the blacktop, any possibility of actually comprehending a sentence flew right out her open window. When she heard the truck door open, her face flushed all the way to the roots of her hair. When the door slammed, she released the breath she’d been holding. He was leaving. She frowned as she listened for the sound of his engine revving. Would she be thankful or disappointed?

Jeez, Rosalie, what is it that you want?

“Hey, Rosalie, I thought this was your car.”

Her head snapped up. She swallowed a gasp and looked into the lenses of Bryce’s aviator sunglasses. He hadn’t left after all.

“I looked for you but didn’t see you in your car until I got in my truck,” he said, leaning into her window. “We seem to be running into each other everywhere these days.”

She faked a grin. “Yeah. What are the odds in a town this size?”

He removed his glasses and pointed an earpiece toward the athletic building. “Oh, I met your boy today.”

Her stomach plunged.

“Nice kid. Talented, too. He can really throw a baseball.”

She pressed the flat of her hand over her abdomen—a protective gesture, but protective of what? The secret she still harbored? “That’s what they tell me.”

He put on the glasses and peered at her over the lenses. “And by the way, I met your other fella, too.”

“My other fella?”

“Ted, the baseball coach. He says you and he are going out.”

Wonderful. Rosalie had accepted less than a half-dozen dates with Ted this summer. She hadn’t told anyone but Shelby, and intended to keep any relationship with a coworker private. She made up her mind to speak to him as soon as possible about being discreet. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said to Bryce.

“You’re not dating him?”

“What I’m not doing is discussing this with you,” she said, forcing what she hoped was a hint of casual humor into her answer.

“Okay.” He stared over at the field and raised his hand in a wave. “Looks like Danny’s coming now.”

Thank goodness. Now to get Bryce to his truck and Danny out of here before old home week continued. She heard the cell phone ringtone of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and glanced at Bryce’s pocket. “Shouldn’t you get that?” she asked.

He pulled his phone out and checked the caller ID. “Yeah, it’s my real estate agent. We may have an answer to my offer on the Harbin place.” He headed toward his truck. “See you, Rosie.”

She took her first normal breath in minutes as she watched her son lope around the track toward the parking lot. Tall, olive-skinned, dark-haired. Danny looked more like his uncle Ricky than he did his father, a fact which allowed her confidence to return. If she could just keep Danny and Bryce apart, Bryce would never suspect.

Her mind flashed back to the two weeks after that first kiss in the peach orchard, the day a most unexpected jolt of love had zeroed in on her heart. Two weeks later, she still marveled that Bryce Benton, a boy she’d always loved in the way sisters do, was all at once the young man she now truly loved in the way sisters never could. There had been no doubt in Rosalie’s mind that Bryce was the one. She couldn’t wait until he made love to her. Bryce was worthy of her most precious gift, and she was determined to give it to him before he went off to college.

She went to her brother and confided her plan to him. He was the logical one in the Campano family to advise her since her father and mother would have had a tough time accepting that their daughter was planning to lose her virginity before the sacred bond of marriage.

Ricky had no such qualms. “You need to get on the Pill, Rosie,” he told her. “That’s what Beth uses. Guys really don’t like to use condoms. And you don’t have to worry about Bryce having something. I know for a fact that he’s only been with one other girl.”

The Pill. A prescription was needed, so she did what she believed was right even considering her parents’ traditional views. With only two weeks until Bryce would leave for summer training at the University of Texas, she asked her mother to accompany her to the doctor’s office. She believed Claudia would consent. After all, this was Bryce, and Claudia loved him, too.

Claudia staunchly refused to consent to birth control pills, saying Enzo would be horrified at this decision. She couldn’t go against his wishes. Unfortunately for Rosalie, the family doctor wouldn’t prescribe the pills otherwise. Coming up with a backup plan to try an out-of-area clinic on her own, Rosalie drove to Valdosta, thirty miles away. Once again the prescription was denied.

But Rosalie had promised Bryce that she would be on the Pill in time for the special night he’d planned when his parents were going to be out of town. So she went to the Benton home with only a flimsily wrapped foil package she’d discovered in the back of Ricky’s nightstand drawer.

And then she didn’t even offer the condom to Bryce. Too embarrassed at failing to get the pills. Too in love for the first time in her life. Too caught up in the passion of a moment that promised to fulfill all her preconceived notions about love and sex. Later, Rosalie wondered why she’d let those reasons lead her into having unprotected sex and trusting in the most fickle of outcomes.

Even then, everything might have worked out if only that football hadn’t rocketed from Bryce’s hand into Ricky’s temple the very next day. If only Ricky hadn’t died minutes later. Less than twenty-four hours after making love with Bryce, Rosalie lost her brother. The fear and hatred of football, which she’d experienced ever since that day, took root in her soul. And she knew her love for Bryce Benton would be forever tarnished.

“Hi, Mom. Sorry I’m late.”

Danny hopped in the car and Rosalie switched mental gears to be a mother again. “No problem,” she said and started the car.

Danny slanted a gaze at her. “I think I’ve made a decision today,” he said.

“Oh? What’s that?”