Sacking the Quarterback by Alexandra O'Hurley Page B

bar.
    “ There’s nothing wrong
with here ,” Ava
hissed. Her father’s bar, The Sports Shack, was the local watering
hole and had been for decades. The beer was cold, the ten flat
screens always sports filled, and the waitresses scantily clad,
like a bad knock-off of a Hooters her father had seen on one of his
trips to Houston a couple of decades before. “What, did you expect
him to notice you that night and whisk you away with him or
something?”
    Bingo! Yes, it had been a silly teenaged fantasy, but she’d seen
Rhett as her way out of Dixon. Then she’d grown up and realized no
woman should rely on a man for that and she’d focused on her
education. She’d watched plenty of her friends get pregnant,
married, and rooted to the land they were born in.
    They’d probably die in Dixon,
too.
    Not her. But then, it seemed she was
near to invisible when it came to the opposite sex, so it’s not
like she had worries. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, or she
didn’t think so, at least. The problem was she was either their
buddy or the guy was one of her brother’s friends, so she was
forever in the friend’s zone. Luckily, that had helped her focus on
school all the more.
    “ I know I wasn’t leaving
here with him.” Taylor pulled her short shorts down a bit, glad she
wouldn’t have to wear them much longer. Hopefully. She graduated in
the spring, and if she could land a job with that master’s degree,
she’d be on her way. “Here hasn’t changed in twenty years, so hell
yes, I want out.”
    Ava smiled as she went back to
refilling the cutting lemons for the bar. “I tell you your high
school crush is coming back to town, and this is the thanks I get?
I don’t need a reminder of how backwards this place can be, but you
know what? There are a lot of good things here, too. You need to
focus on the positive. But no, now I’ll have to work the entire
shift with your poutin’ ass. And here I thought you might see it as
a second chance.”
    “ A second chance? He just
got a divorce and came crawlin’ back to mama to lick his wounds.
The last thing he’ll be thinking about is me.”
    “ He mighta come crawlin’
back to mama, but from what I hear, he’s thinking about setting
down roots here in Dixon. Lula said he went out to the old Lutz
farm out on one-eighty, checking the place out. Might buy it, from
the sounds of it.”
    Taylor sucked in a breath.
The Lutz farm had been abandoned four years before, and no one had
had the money to buy all that acreage in the downturned economy. It
was also right next door to Taylor’s parents’ place. She’d spent
most of her childhood getting chased outta the pond by old Mr.
Lutz, or kicked out of his orchard. Taylor had just liberated some apples
that fall for her mama to bake some pies for Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
    “ That sure quieted you
down,” Ava said, giggling. “If I had a tall, dark, and handsome man
coming to live next door to me, I think it would get my mind
whirling, too.”
    Taylor threw her bar towel at Ava. “It
doesn’t matter. I didn’t even make a blip on his radar then, and I
doubt I will now. Plus, the years might not have been kind. He
coulda let himself go for all I know.”
    Ava stopped what she was doing and
turned to stare at Taylor open mouthed. “Don’t even pretend you
don’t watch every game on Sunday and know exactly what that man
looks like. There isn’t a hotter QB in the NFL. There isn’t a
hotter man in all of East Texas.”
    Taylor mumbled under her
breath, knowing she’d been caught red-handed. She did watch every single
game. His hair was a little shorter than it had been in high
school, the dark waves no longer curling at the ends. The locks
still screamed for her to run her fingers through them. She
wondered if they were as soft as they looked. She also wondered if
the devilish look she’d once spied in his baby blues was still
there.
    “ That body just doesn’t
stop. I mean, he was always hot in high