Page 40 of First Down Promise

“You should get your suit on,” Pete adds. “I’m not letting you be a hermit today.”

“You sound like our dad,” I argue.

“Yeah, and he was right to call you out on sleeping in too.”

I take a sip of the iced coffee, and a surge of anxiety runs through my nerves. What if Pete knows about Josh? I wouldn’t put it past Pete to play games to get back at us, but how would he know? I sip the coffee again and set it on the counter.

“Fine, I’ll change,” I finally say.

“We’ll be outside,” Pete calls after me as I return upstairs.

I walk into my closet toward my bathing suit section. I have a fair number of cute one-pieces, and I usually opted for them around my brother and his friends. But the tables have turned now. I reach for a black bikini that still has the tags on it. It’s a very standard string bikini with triangles to cover my chest, and the strings on the bottoms go high on my hips. I drop my pajamas and throw the suit on.

I look at myself in the floor-length mirror and realize I need something else. Reaching into my jewelry box, I pull out a dangle belly button ring and swap out the jewelry. I always thought dangle belly rings could be so sexy, but I rarely wear them. I slip into some pool slides and return downstairs.

They’re still outside, so I grab my coffee and tablet and head out there too. They’re both shirtless in the grass, throwing a football back and forth. Josh can throw a perfect spiral like Pete, but Josh next to never throws the ball in games. As a tight end, he only catches and runs with it, whereas Coop snaps it to Pete every play, and Dane almost never touches the ball.

I lay out on one of the pool loungers under the oversized umbrella by the pool. It isn’t abnormal for Tennessee to throw an unseasonably warm day at us in the fall, and after years of football, I think the guys are immune to temperatures. They play through everything from stifling late-summer heat to getting snowed on during winter away games. Pete was sometimes a princess about the cold, but I think the bigger guys like Coop and Dane thought it felt good. We’ll see how they like their last game, which is in Boston after the new year.

Pete and Josh chatter about football, plays, and recent games, but I tune it out and pull up an ebook on my tablet. Another smutty romance. Normally, I avoided reading the overly explicit scenes because they make me blush too much, but I have a newfound, or rather uncovered, interest with sex. Like the mechanics, techniques, and emotions around it. Not that romantic fiction replicates real life, and if all else fails, I could always ask Sadie about it.

I should have had sex by now or, at least, when I lived in Wisconsin. Living with my brother made dating awkward for obvious reasons. His big name doesn’t help, and God knows Josh didn’t help either for his own selfish reasons. But it was high time for him to do something for himself.

“Gonna get in?” Josh asks, approaching me. He kicks off his slides by the lounger next to me, and my eyes trail up his long legs to the soft contours of his stomach, to his big pecs and wide shoulders. Pete walks over and sets the football on the lounger and removes his slides too.

“I turned the pool heater on,” Pete adds.

“I’ve seen you cold plunge,” Josh says to him and laughs.

“Yeah, but I’m not doing it right now.”

“Actually, I appreciate that, too,” I say. “But I’m good for now. Maybe in a bit.”

Pete took down the pool volleyball net after Labor Day weekend, but the basketball hoop is set in concrete. If it’s not football, they’re playing some other sport. Though Pete never played basketball in school. He actually liked baseball and soccer a lot, but shifted toward football in middle and high school when he started showing more promise there.

I know Josh played basketball from Googling him over the years. Most of what comes up is about his career as the Stallions’ tight end, but underneath it all, he was on both his high school’s football and basketball teams. I’ve seen Friday Night Lights—I bet that was what Josh’s life really was like in high school before he left West Texas for college.

I try focusing on my damn book, but the splashing keeps pulling me out of the story. How could I ever focus on a fictional man when a guy like Josh Mackenzie is ten feet away in my brother’s pool? I sigh and reach for my iced coffee, which is melted and nearly empty now. Pete’s phone starts buzzing on the table between the loungers, and I glance at the contact.

“Pete, it’s your manager,” I say, holding up his phone to show him.

Pete puts his palms on the concrete side and hoists himself out of the pool. “Shit, probably another commercial they want to film,” he groans. Water drips off him, bouncing off the concrete and splashing me lightly as he dries his hands and takes the phone from me. “Hey, what’s up?” he answers. He walks off, leaving Josh and me alone. If I had to guess, it’s about his upcoming week in New York, and he’ll be pacing on the phone for a while.

One of those irresistible boyish smiles crosses Josh’s face as he props his elbows on the concrete edge of the pool and rests his chin on his forearm.

“Coming in?” he asks with wide, puppy-like eyes.

“Might as well.”

I press the power button on the side of my tablet and set it on the little table next to me in the shade. I walk over to the steps, and Josh’s eyes follow me as I move. I dip my toes in the water, and it feels warm like bathwater. When he comes back, I’ll have to ask Pete if he’ll turn on the jets.

“It’s not bad,” Josh teases.

“I know,” I reply with a little sass and step fully onto the first step. The warmth engulfs my feet, and the saltwater always feels softer than a chlorinated pool. I carefully take the rest of the steps. “I didn’t know you could throw such a good spiral.”

Josh grins and runs his hand over his soaking wet hair to smooth it out of his face. “I was a QB in high school.”

“You were? Really?”