Qualified: A Sports Romance Read online

  “I’m a clever ape.”

  Something about the way he talked … Allie’s gaze was drawn up to search his eyes for his meaning, but that liquid shadow kept its own mysterious counsel.

  She’d been the best in her phlebotomy certification program and everything had gone well with the athletes she’d seen in her four months at the training center’s clinic, but she was ridiculously nervous when it was time for Marc’s blood draw. There wasn’t any reason for it. She had no trouble locating a vein in that softer nook defined by the built muscle of his forearm. She had never had problems before with her work, but for some reason she was too aware of the man’s body which she now handled.

  Maybe it was because she couldn’t forget how he’d tried to handle her. How he thought he knew what she wanted.

  He wasn’t letting her forget it. “This isn’t a bad joke because I tried to stick my tongue down your throat?” Marc cocked an eyebrow at her after she explained the salivary brush sampling that would be used for the immunology study.

  “I don’t joke about my work,” Allie answered with a half smile. It didn’t really do much to cover her nerves. There was no helping the awkwardness as she wielded the little wand, swabbing it into his obligingly opened mouth. She deposited the single-use brush into its own vial of preservatives. The packaging would protect the sample during its trip to the analytical machine at Doctor Kaitech’s main laboratory.

  “You haven’t done this much, have you?”

  “I’ve …” Allie was mesmerized by the way Marc steadily watched her. “I’ve been assisting Doctor Kaitech with the study but I haven’t …” She dodged a look in the direction of the doctor’s door, still locked up from last night. “There was Tracey before winter break, so you’re the first guy I’ve … the first subject I’ve … escorted.”

  Escorted? She couldn’t open her mouth without it all going wrong. Allie thought about kicking herself.

  “A virgin,” Marc summarized. He actually smiled.

  Allie was almost too mortified to notice. Was she really so transparent?

  Allie groaned once she’d left Marc inside the patient room. Falling heavily into her chair at her desk, she folded forward to thud her forehead against the wood. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  It took her a moment to notice her phone was sitting face-up beside her keyboard. When she tapped it awake, the pings of her calendar reminders were crowded out by Violet’s nosy messages.

  How’s it going with your special assignment?

  Did you have to take his shirt off?

  Does this mean you’ve found a room?

  Allie scrambled to unlock her screen and tapped up her mobile messenger. She scanned back with her pulse sticky in her throat to check the timestamps. Did they come in when Marc was at her desk? She tried to put the thought out of her mind.

  I think I told him I’m a virgin

  Sounds - promising?

  I might die

  Allie’s face was hot with embarrassment. She closed out the app and tapped over to her calendar. Another of the water polo players was arriving that morning who would involve a little more work than the standard intake procedure. Extra notes from the team’s physical trainer were tagged to his file because he was at the tail end of an injury recovery. Allie would need to make sure they scheduled additional appointments for monitoring his status using the clinic’s facilities.

  Resetting her braid over her shoulder, Allie mostly succeeded in focusing on her emails while she waited for Marc to emerge. If she had any hope of pretending she wasn’t hyperaware of him, it was ruined by the speed with which she jumped up to her feet to intercept him on his way out. Despite the time it took him to amble over to her desk, she still had nothing to say to him. Allie offered a smile in place of words.

  There was noise in the hallway. It sounded like the jocular scuffling of young men, their deep voices laughing over some joke she couldn’t quite hear. From glancing in the direction of the door, her gaze tore back to take in Marc’s expression. His tight jaw was so similar to how it looked in his picture.

  “I’ll see you later, Allie.”

  Allie’s breath caught in her throat, but she still found nothing clever to say. “… See you.” Her voice sounded weak, but the thought was reassuring. She would see him again. Allie reasoned that next time, she could prove that she wasn’t some tongue-tied fool. Her gaze lingered too long on the retreat of his back.

  Luckily the energy bounding through the door was a sufficient distraction. “Doctor.” A blond young man planted his feet inside in the door and starfish-spread his arms. “I’m ready for my examination.”

  Allie suppressed her smile as she dragged a quick study over the guy. “Don’t tell me—you must be Adam.” Thankfully she seemed able to recover her friendly professionalism once away from her special patient. She swept up her clipboard neatly and rounded out from behind the desk to sign him in.

  “See,” Adam said to the teammates who had accompanied him into the clinic for their own basic check-ins, swatting the one on the left in the chest. “My reputation precedes me.”

  Biting her lip, Allie didn’t bother correcting him. She neatened her hair behind her ear and collected Adam with a gesture, directing him into the patient area first. “I have notes from your physician in Northern California, as well as from the team’s physical trainer Lindsey. She should be arriving shortly, but let’s get started so we can have you out before lunch?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Adam looked her over. “Maybe you and me, we can walk over together.”

  “Such a gentleman.” Allie smiled back. “I appreciate the offer, but I make it a policy not to accept lunch dates with athletes.”

  “Well if you just have a problem with lunch dates …”

  Allie laughed at the overdone waggle of his eyebrows. “Not any dates.” Waving for him to follow, she led the way farther into the clinic.

  05

  Adam proved more playfully endearing than her last patient. While it wasn’t enough to convince her to break her rule and go to lunch, Allie was enjoying his company enough to at least walk him out to the hallway.

  “Hey,” he turned to ask before he left. “Was that Marc Belmont I saw in here earlier?”

  “Yes.” Allie scuffed to an abrupt stop as the question caught her off guard. “Don’t you know him? I thought you and he played at the same university.”

  “Well yeah.” Adam’s smile had gone lopsided. “But he graduated almost a decade before I started. Or, well, he left.” He scratched uncertain fingers through his hair. “He’s cleared to play and all, right?”

  That set Allie swaying. A faint frown touched her brow as she searched the younger player’s guileless eyes. There were all sorts of reasons she felt uncomfortable answering further, not the least of which was because it seemed strange that she would know more about Marc than one of his own teammates. “Why shouldn’t he be?”

  “Oh I don’t know.” Adam shrugged it off, but he was only making her worry more as he went on. “You just hear things. I don’t think the older guys are that excited to have him back on the team. Our captain isn’t, anyway. I don’t think they got along very well in the past. Plus Belmont was kicked off the team last time around, before that first qualifying tournament in two thousand eleven.”

  And this was the guy that Allie was supposed be running a trial on all week, counting on him for the data which would help her get into Doctor Kaitech’s good graces? “What does someone get kicked off for?” It was kind of a stupid question when she worked in a sports facility’s testing lab. Her mouth twisted unhappily.

  “I don’t know,” Adam repeated with an apologetic spread of his hands.

  “It’s okay,” Allie waved off their worries. “I’m sure, whatever it was … I’m sure that the coaches wouldn’t have put him onto the team if they didn’t believe he belonged.” Except a small voice in her head repeated something she remembered Marc saying when she complimented him on doing the trial. Tell th
at to my coach. Like he needed to be vouched for.

  “I guess.” Adam frowned. “I just hope nothing weird happens to ruin our chances. We need magic after we failed to pull it out in the continental tourney. Our last chance for the summer games is the world qualifying tournament at the beginning of April. Belmont is supposed to be one of the best. And he’s a hole.”

  Allie blinked. “Wait, what does being an asshole have to do with it?”

  “No,” Adam laughed. “The hole is one of the positions. The center. We need our biggest and toughest guy there, because it’s where a lot of the fighting happens.”

  “There’s fighting?”

  Adam stepped back and gave her a funny look. “Have you ever seen a water polo game?”

  Allie stared blankly at him.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” Leaving the past behind, Adam relaxed enough to jostle a friendly shove at her shoulder. “You should come to our practice. I’ll be benched for scrimmage, so I can point out the rules. It will be fun.”

  “Is there even anything to see?” Allie couldn’t help but be shaken into a smile. It softened the dubiousness that she tilted up at Adam. “Isn’t it all in the water?”

  “There’s plenty to watch. Passes and goals and all the swimming back and forth. You’ll probably not be able to see most of the wrestling,” Adam admitted. “The worst of that does happen under the surface.”

  “Wrestling.” Allie shook her head. She was having a hard time matching the image that the word conjured with anything that could be done in a swimming pool.

  “We basically try to drown each other where the ref can’t see,” Adam said with a too-eager grin. “Some people claim it’s the roughest sport, between the sprint-swimming and the contact play. And the ball game, on top of that, of course. Though it’s really the girls’ teams that are the worst. They’ve got nails.”

  “Is that so? I can’t say I’ve ever progressed beyond the doggy paddle.” Allie flapped her hands at the air in sheepish example. “Well, all right then. If you think it’d be fun. I’d like that.” It wasn’t like she was going just to stalk Marc, she reasoned with herself. “I’m on schedule to assist your physical trainer later this week, so it’ll be good to know ahead of time what you boys are actually getting up to.”

  “Sweet. We’ll probably do the first scrimmage the day after tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be able to get away around three?”

  “I’ll have to check my schedule, but I can maybe shift my break. And yeah, I’m supposed to be there at four to do Marc’s sample anyway, so.” Allie shrugged her clipboard up into a hug against her chest.

  “It will be very scientific,” Adam promised her with a wink as he turned to head off to the dining hall. “Observing the wild animal in its natural habitat.”

  “Yeah,” Allie grinned. Wild animal—perhaps it was a little too close to the truth when it came to the one specimen to which she’d gotten closest.

  Allie ate at her desk so she could finish all the scheduling she was responsible for. She had to fit in nutrition and psychology appointments for dozens of athletes around their multiple practice times, gym workouts, and strategy meetings with their coaches. It was quite a puzzle, but after all of this experience, if anyone could figure out how to fit an impossible number of things into one day it was Allie.

  She hadn’t been down to the aquatic wing of the center since part of the Halloween festivities had happened there. The smell of chlorine hit her as soon as she walked into the glass-windowed entry hall. Whistles were ubiquitous. There was a particular way that they and the coaches’ hollering voices echoed off the rocking surface of the pool.

  Wet. Spandex. Balls. Allie was greeted by all of these things even before she ducked inside the opened doors of the large space that enclosed the big pool. Trails of dampness over the cement deck told of exercises that must have brought the guys up onto land. Near the pool’s edge, discarded vests slumped in puddles beside a strange assortment of what looked like metal construction materials.

  She tried to keep from staring at the boys wearing nothing but tiny speedos clustered around their coach. It took her a moment to spot the blue bleachers in the far corner as the obvious place to sit. While Allie made her way over, the group broke up and a damp-haired Adam sat himself on the first bench while the rest of the team plunged back into the water. He spotted her walking around the pool’s edge and waved her over.

  “I haven’t missed it, have I?” Allie asked quietly as she slid herself into the seat beside him.

  Adam shook his head, leaning in to better speak over the strange acoustics of the room. “Perfect timing. We’re just about to run some plays. It won’t really be a game, but it should give you an idea.”

  It was a little difficult to match all that naked flesh to the guys she’d met yesterday, particularly with the funny hats that they either wore or were putting on. There were three colors—two red and the rest evenly split between blue and yellow.

  Some of the younger guys were horsing around. “Get in the pool,” the coach yelled, unamused. The last of them were already falling with ungainly shove-propelled steps into the field that had been defined by the floating dividers in the water.

  Black hair … Allie didn’t see it, but then her gaze latched to familiar eyes looking out from across the water while Marc secured his cap’s bow beneath his stubbled jaw. She didn’t quite stop herself from licking at her lips as her attention dropped down the lightly fuzzed ridges of his torso, the pop of his lats as his fingers worked, and the shockingly small stretch of red-white-and-blue that banded the clean-cut v below his hips.

  His feet-first jump into the pool was as neat as a diver’s.

  “See Belmont?” Adam asked with a bump into Allie’s shoulder. “Wearing yellow cap seven?”

  Feeling caught red handed, Allie darted a look to Adam while she nodded her head.

  He was focused on the guys setting up within the pool, pointing out the arrangements at either end where nets like miniature soccer goals floated. “See how he’s in the middle? That’s hole position. You’ll see Marc stay there, while the others switch up and down on their sides looking for an opening. Except for the goalie—the red cap stays in the cage like hockey or soccer. Our goalie on the left is Austin, he’s one of the veterans of the team too.”

  “Blake, I want to see you take the ball from Chad,” the coach was yelling as he leaned out over the center of the pool with one of the yellow balls extended in his hand. The sharp tweet of his whistle sent everyone but the goalies into a whitewater sprint towards the field’s midline.

  “Chad’s our team captain, that guy out front in the blue cap.” Adam leaned in again to narrate. “And I’ve played against Blake.” He pointed to the yellow cap narrowly winning the race to corral the bobbing ball. “He’s in his final year down in Southern California. They were both on the team for the summer games in London.”

  Allie nodded her head vaguely, but she was too busy watching.

  Blake scooped up the ball in one smooth motion, drawing it up with a back-cast hand to cock for the throw. It was an impressive show of strength, the force that rippled through muscle as he reared himself so high out of the water that his waistband showed.

  As the field coalesced, all those wetslick bodies started to collide in thrashing, roiling whitewater. “Oh my,” Allie flinched towards Adam. “Is it always like that?”

  “Pretty much.”

  There were obviously some rules about contact going on, especially around the ball. The defensive player in blue who was guarding the teammate Blake had passed to seemed to be careful about keeping the flat of his hands out of the water even while he loomed over the other player’s shoulder. But away from the ball, instead of less contact there seemed to be more.

  In the center of the pool, the smaller-built defender guarding Marc seemed to have him in a headlock. Violet had teased Allie about the file containing pictures of wrestlers in Jello, but maybe her friend hadn’t been so far off. And
to be fair, it wasn’t that the guy was small. It was just that Marc was a titan. With a sweep of his arm and a pitch of those broad shoulders, the other guy disappeared under the water and Allie’s study subject threw a hand up into the air to neatly palm the ball that his teammate snapped to him.

  Marc didn’t hold onto it long. He twisted and whipped his arm into a throw around his surfacing opponent, giving the younger guy a faceful of tattooed shoulder to look at while the ball arrowed towards the goal. The goalie came impressively far out of the water with a great winging of arms, but it wasn’t enough to stop the hard smack of the ball into the wetted net.

  “Yeah.” Adam clapped his hands from beside her, his attention on the game. “That’s what we fucking need.”

  Allie hadn’t taken her eyes off of Marc. If she had, she would have missed that moment where he flicked a look up towards her before stretching into a distance-eating crawl stroke for the center of the pool. She felt heat rising to her cheeks. Was he going to be even more of a dick, if he suspected she were a fan?

  06

  Adam jumped up to go rejoin the team for the end of practice, so Allie was left with only her sampling kit to keep her company. She was saved somewhat from awkwardness by the low-key swarm of activity occurring to get the pool back into shape for its open lap swim hours in the evening.

  Sound bent and was drowned out by slaps of water. The pool’s staff efficiently started the rearrangement of lane lines from their field-shaping box into the longer span of rows stretched across the full hundred meters. As the team huddle broke, Adam and a couple of his friends went to help haul the goals out of the water to set them aside on the cement deck.

  Allie was supposed to get this sample set immediately after exercise, but she wasn’t quite sure what that meant when her subject was dripping wet and wearing less than a square foot of lycra. Was she supposed to stop him before he disappeared into the locker room? At the least, perhaps she ought to be sure that Marc remembered that he was supposed to meet her promptly before leaving for the dining hall or whatever he had scheduled next.