Qualified: A Sports Romance Read online




  Qualified

  ________________________

  Ada Croix

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  To you who loved the sand and loved the snow.

  This is a work of fiction. While the locations in this story may bear some resemblance to places that exist, narrative liberties have been taken and the setting is intended to be entirely fictitious. The events and people described herein are imaginary or used fictitiously and any similarities to actual events, businesses, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Ada Croix

  All rights reserved. This book may not be used or reproduced in whole or in part by any means without permission.

  Contact Ada Croix via her Website

  Book Cover Design by Vivian Monir, Vivian Monir Design

  01

  “Allie, I think someone’s here for you.”

  Allie looked up from where she knelt in front of a spread-legged gymnast to smile at the receptionist. “I’ll just be a second.” She was nearly done rolling plastic wrap over Shane’s ice-packed hamstring. A puff of breath cleared an escaped lock of hair from her eyes so that she could see the woman who was walking into the clinic.

  “Don’t hurry on my account.” Violet helped herself to a seat on the adjacent patient couch, balancing a hip on its edge to take her weight off her stilettos. Her heel twisted out girlishly. “Hi Shane.” She dragged her teeth at her lip and ran a look over him. “Overdo it on New Year’s Eve?”

  “The dangers of repetitive stress injuries.” The gymnast suggestively adjusted the waistband of his loose shorts where they slung across his trim abdomen.

  “Sounds like you could use a better workout partner,” Violet purred.

  Allie caught her smile and kept her eyes away from the non-clinically-relevant bulge in the athlete’s shorts. Luckily she could finish off a wrap blindfolded after her first four months at the national athletic training center in Colorado, and Violet made for a convenient focal point. “Is that more work for me?”

  “You’re the only person I know who gets excited about more work.” Violet may have rolled her eyes but she didn’t lose her smile.

  Allie wrinkled her nose at her roommate. If she wasn’t so close to Shane’s crotch, she might have stuck her tongue out. As it was, she tucked in the cut end of wrap just above her patient’s knee and gave it a good-to-go pat. She rocked back to sit on her heels and smiled up at the gymnast. “You know the drill, yeah? Anything else you need?”

  “Too easy, Allie.” Shane flashed his commercial-grade smile at her and sealed his tease with a wink. He let the leg of his shorts shake back down from the high bunch he’d been holding it in to give Allie access to his muscular thigh. “I think I’m set,” he said more seriously. “I’ll let you two get at whatever is in those.” The gymnast tapped at Violet’s manila folder as he slipped out past her.

  Violet played her hair behind her ear as she twisted to watch him go. “Pictures from the wrestling team’s naked Jello match.”

  Shane laughed on his way out. “Oh, yeah? I think we have that team-building exercise scheduled next week.”

  “I’ll be sure to reserve front row tickets.”

  Allie tuned them out while she put away her supplies and washed her hands back to full warmth in the sink. She was ready with a long-suffering look for when her friend left off staring at Shane’s elite ass. “I didn’t know naked Jello was a division in wrestling.”

  “The things you learn here, hmm?” Violet beamed at her sunnily. “All right.” She relented with a roll of one shoulder and a swing of the folder in her fingertips. “Maybe I don’t have pictures of brawny men coated in gelatin. But the camp starting next weekend is almost as good.”

  “Let me guess.” Allie grabbed at the folder, worried that the included pages would go flying from her friend’s careless handling. “Is it the curling team?” She managed a grin as she turned to lead the way towards what passed as her office.

  Violet shook her head and shifted to her feet to drift in Allie’s wake. “Men’s water polo.”

  “Shouldn’t they be somewhere with horses?” Allie was barely paying attention. She moved her record book a little farther down the counter so she could set the hardcopy folder beside her keyboard. Everything neatly in its place.

  “Mm. I do like a man who knows how to ride.” Violet tipped her head up for a fanciful moment, twirling a lock of dark hair around one finger. She broke off the thought with a sigh and perched herself beside Allie’s laptop on the long multi-station desk. “I sent over most of the files by email.”

  “This did seem a little thin,” Allie said of the folder. Sitting down, she booted up her email.

  “I think water polo is like soccer in a pool.” While the program updated Violet idly swung her feet. Those heels, in winter, in a sports complex. Violet said that you had to dress the part of the job you wanted, and she had her sights set high up the corporate ladder in the sporting world. That, and on tall men with bulging biceps. “You know. Balls. Speedos.”

  After living with Violet for nearly four months, Allie had developed some immunity to the kind of comments which would have previously flushed embarrassment across her face. It still was enough to bring her typing to a pause. She stared a moment at her friend. “You are seriously going to get me fired.” Allie peeked over her shoulder towards the glassed-in staff office where thankfully no one seemed to be paying them any attention.

  “I don’t think they call it fired, for an internship.”

  “Dismissed, then.” Allie sighed. “I need good letters of recommendation for med school, I don’t need my supervisors thinking I’m some …” Allie’s words petered out as her gaze roved back to her friend.

  Unbothered, Violet posed herself on the edge of the desk with a provocative arch of her back and a wicked little smile. “Some sports-boy slut looking to rack up the highest score?” Her mascaraed lashes fluttered shamelessly.

  “Yes,” Allie said through a laugh.

  “Allie, sweetheart, I hate to tell you. But you are utterly failing on that count. Do you know that … No.” Violet stopped herself with a palm put to the air. “I refuse to believe that you’ve seen Shane’s Under Armour calendar and still looked at him like he was last week’s deboned chicken.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re a workaholic, Allie.” Violet swung ou
t a foot to jostle at her friend’s knee. “It means I know how to bring you the good stuff. This right here?” She tapped a manicured fingernail at the folder. “These are the extra faxes that came in from Europe for an athlete who signed up for Doctor Kaitech’s study.”

  Allie paused in the middle of dropping the forwarded numeric files into the clinic’s database. “You mean the IgA respiratory study?” Her supervisor’s research in immunology was one of the main reasons this internship had been so attractive to her.

  “Sure.” Violet looked like she was suppressing laughter over Allie’s nerdy excitement. “And with Tracey gone until the end of the month, I wonder who Doctor Kaitech is going to want assisting with the study?”

  Allie looked at the folder with new eyes. “I’ve been dying to get onto this project.” It was exactly the kind of thing she’d been hoping for when she applied to the sports medicine clinic. She needed to broaden her experience in order to be an attractive applicant to one of her dream MD/PhD programs. When she had found out about the internship, it sounded like a way to get both clinical hours and a chance to do research for the scientists partnered with the training center.

  So far, there hadn’t been much opportunity for the latter. Allie reached out to stroke the thin cardboard stock with covetous fingers. “Are you serious?”

  “It’s all there,” Violet gestured to the file with a welcoming flourish. “Go get ‘em, tiger.” With a final swing of her heels, she hopped down to her feet.

  “Thank you for walking this over.” Allie picked up the folder and used it to bat at her friend’s nearer hip to chase her away. “Now get out of here so I can do my work.”

  “All right, all right. I’m going. You’ll meet me for dinner?”

  “If these don’t keep me too late.”

  “You have the rest of the week before your guy comes in, you don’t have to do all of it now.” Violet dismissed urgency with a wave of her hand. “I just thought you might want to get started.” She faked another look towards the main office and made a vague attempt at decorum by lifting a shielding hand up to her mouth. It was ruined by the way she leaned over Allie’s desk, providing a spectacular view of her ass in her pencil skirt for anyone who happened to look over. “You have to help me pick which player to add to my collection.”

  Allie dropped her face into her palm. “You are so unprofessional.”

  Violet simply pattered a cheerful kiss off her fingers and turned to sashay out of the clinic.

  Allie let the folder weigh in her hands a moment. So far, her experience at the sports clinic hadn’t been quite what she had hoped for. She had learned a lot, both in being trained to work directly with the center’s athletes as well as in the administrative and record-keeping tasks that were so important in keeping a busy clinic running. But when it came to special research projects, the closest she’d gotten was being assigned to drive participant athletes to their off-site appointments. This participant could be the key to getting the experience she so much wanted.

  Her fingers slipped to the folder’s stiff edge and eased it open.

  Belmont, Marc

  He wasn’t a smiler. Marc stared at her from his mug shot at the top of the chart, his square jaw clenched as if he were about to punch the photographer for telling him to “say cheese!” The red-piped collar of his team jacket was unzipped, offering a glimpse of sun-bronzed skin beneath. His black hair was wild, like he’d barely run his hands through it after hopping out of the pool. Allie’s finger drifted over the page, but the stray curl of ink licking the side of the man’s neck seemed to be tattooed on his skin instead of accidentally smudged onto the paper from Violet’s print job.

  Her eyes tracked down the cover card, picking out details. He was nearly ten years older than her. His birthplace was some California town she didn’t recognize. He’d been a member of the national teams that had played in the games at Athens and Beijing, but not in London. That discrepancy made Allie frown and flip through the sheets, looking to see if there was an injury record which would explain why Marc was on the team now but not four years ago.

  “Allie?”

  She looked up to see the receptionist peeking around the corner from the lobby.

  “There’s a cyclist who needs ice.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Allie held her smile until the girl disappeared back to the lobby’s desk. Taking a breath, she reached for her mouse to send her computer into its lock screen. “I’ll just have to deal with you later,” she told Marc, escaping his stare by letting the folder fall closed.

  02

  On Saturday Allie checked out the keys for one of the vans and headed for the airport to pick up her subject. Last autumn she’d been assigned more shifts in the transport pool, but with Tracey gone she would be working in the clinic tomorrow to do check-ins when the majority of the athletes arrived for their camp. Today it was only Marc Belmont flying in from New York, since Doctor Kaitech requested that study subjects come to the training center earlier than their teammates. Theoretically it would reduce the effects of traveling on the athlete’s baseline measurements which they would take the next day.

  Allie found a space for the big van in the airport’s short-term parking and grabbed the laminated sign that Violet had made. She hustled through the frigid air and dove through the doors to baggage claim. Since she was early she picked out a spot beneath the big flight arrivals board where she could watch the eclectic stream of people making their way out to the overcast winter’s day. It didn’t do enough to distract her from the anxious flutter of her heart.

  All that keen-edged waiting, and it was nothing to the flop of Allie’s stomach when she spotted a head of black hair above the crowd and the tell-tale red piping of the team jacket from the picture in her file. It looked like Marc had found a comb since then, and today his collar was zipped up tight to his throat. He was watching the carousel, his winter parka stuffed into the bungee cording of a large backpack leaned against his leg while he stood primed to grab a duffle bag as it came around the track.

  She was staring. Allie was only vaguely aware of the fact, mesmerized as she was by the shift of muscle powerful enough to be seen through thick layers of fabric when he tilted to heft his bags. This was her chance to get the experience she needed to make her dreams come true. Opportunity coming towards her in the shape of broad shoulders, towering height and perfectly dark, dark eyes.

  Her jaw was a little slack. It must have happened when she tipped her chin up to keep hold of Marc’s gaze as he walked up to her. Allie felt a sudden longing for Violet’s high heels instead of her own seemingly sensible winter boots. She was still staring.

  “Hi.” She shut her teeth around a swallow and then forced her mouth into a lame smile.

  Marc didn’t smile back. Not really. Something shifted along the shadow-stubbled square of his jaw. His eyes were steady. His attention was riveted on her. “Hey.”

  One of her hands lifted and Allie didn’t catch herself before her fingers began to fidget girlishly with the end of her braid. “Marc?” She sounded like an idiot. It only got worse when she dropped her eyes to the sign she was still holding in her right fist. As if she needed to double check his name. Marc Belmont. Where had her brain gone? She squeezed her eyes shut and told herself to take a deep breath.

  “Yeah.” There was a gravity in the depth of his voice that demanded the return of her gaze.

  Allie forced her eyes to skim lower while she stuffed the sign away into her purse. Like everything would be fine as long as she could avoid the intensity of his eyes. Instead she studied the thick of his wrist as Marc adjusted his hold on his bag’s shoulder strap.

  He re-balanced it so he could shoot a look back towards the terminal. “We waiting on anyone else?”

  “Nope.” Allie looked up and again fell into his gaze. “I’ve just been waiting for you.” Could she sound more idiotic?

  His eyebrows stretched fractionally upward. “Then let’s go.”

  “Ye
ah.” Allie fluttered a blink. “Yeah.” She shook sense into her head and started to turn.

  “Oh …” Allie jerked back around towards him so fast Marc almost trod on her heels. “Uhm. I’m …” She painted on a smile. “Hi. I’m Allie.” She was like an extraterrestrial going through an unknown greeting ritual. There wasn’t even enough room between them for the hand she held out to shake. Allie turned it into an awkward gesture towards his bags instead. “Can I get one of those for you?”

  Given the sideways look Marc was giving her, he might believe she was an alien. “Sure.”

  Allie wasn’t expecting him to toss her the big duffle. She stumbled when he swung it into her arms.

  “You got that?” Marc watched her at a lazy sideways slant while he used his freed hand to tug his parka from the front of his backpack. He put it on before he shrugged into the bag’s straps.

  “Uhm.” Allie puffed a loosened strand of hair out of her eyes and adjusted her hug of the duffle. She tried to ignore how her purse had slid down to the crook of her elbow. “I think … I just need to …” Find the strap. There it was. She got it awkwardly up over one shoulder and then inched her purse back onto the other. “Ready,” she concluded with a grin.

  It was a cold walk out to the van, the weight of the bag increasing Allie’s struggle as she tried to keep pace with Marc’s long stride. Her attempted conversation wasn’t any more successful.

  “Did you have a good New Year’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How was your flight?”

  “Fine.”

  Fine. Allie bit her lip and focused on her fight with the bag’s strap so she didn’t lose all bloodflow to her arm.

  At least it was easy to find where she had parked. The navy hulk of the transport van loomed above the other cars in the row. Allie fished the keys from her pocket and unlocked the doors before going around to the back. Once Marc’s duffle was chucked in, she took a moment to stretch out her shoulder and plume a long breath out into the steely sky.