style="font-size:15px;"> “Sorry I’m late.”
“Where’re the kids?”
She checked her watch. “They should start straggling in any time now.”
“That lack of discipline flies with my dad?”
“Nope,” she said, plunking her overstuffed gym bag on the nearest bleacher seat. “They’re taking advantage of me. They think I’m a softy because I don’t blow my whistle and yell like he does.”
“Dad would turn over in his wheelchair if he found out.”
She laughed, way overdone for his lame comment. Her laugh sparked a déjà vu zing back to when he used to tease her. Good old Joss used to let him bug and nearly torture her, and she’d think it was funny. The sound of her laugh had grown huskier over time, but the sweet nature of it hadn’t changed at all. A smile just sort of popped up on his face. She smiled back, and something about being here with her made his shoulders relax.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to crack the old whip on my dad’s behalf, then,” he said.
She put her hands on her hips and raised her brows above her sunglasses. “You do remember being exactly the same as these kids, don’t you?”
“I’ve made it a point to erase my entire four years at Whispering Oaks.”
“That’s a pity because we had some good times. At least I thought so.” She’d leaned over to stretch out her hamstrings, so he figured he should do something, too, besides ogle. He grabbed his foot, drawing it flush to the back of his thigh, and enjoyed the long pull on his right quadriceps.
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” she asked, head between the V of her legs. Did she have a clue about the power of that pose?
His answer stuck in his throat, which was a good thing because his tongue had momentarily quit working.
A gaggle of teens rushed across the lawn, a few stragglers running behind, as if they’d all arrived on a bus together. Lucas was sorry Jocelyn had quit stretching in order to greet the students. He glanced at his watch—eight-fifteen. Dad would hit the ceiling, and because he’d filled him in on Jocelyn’s insecurity about losing her athletic scholarship and feeling as if she had little right to authority, Lucas decided to step in and give her some back up.
Channeling his father, and avoiding Jocelyn’s questions, he clapped his hands hard enough to make an echo. “Let’s put a move on it. Come on. Practice started fifteen minutes ago.”
Fifteen minutes later, four more teens swaggered in to practice. “That was sick,” the most muscular one said.
“So epic,” the lankiest replied.
“You’re late, guys,” Jocelyn said. “Start your stretching.”
Her comments didn’t register on their too-cool-for-track-practice attitudes. Lucas walked up close to them, and having borrowed his dad’s favorite device, blew the whistle.
“Drop your bags and take laps.” Lucas glanced at his watch. “You’re almost a half hour late, so you four will stay an extra half hour.” If he were still in the military, he would have started the sentence with “ladies.”
The boys stood dumbfounded, kind of like adolescent dinosaurs, waiting for the message to travel from their brains all the way to their legs.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Lucas said, clapping his hands again. Jock number one nodded to the others. Begrudgingly, they dropped their gym bags and halfheartedly jogged around the track, bickering under their breaths.
After the forty or so teens finished their warm-ups, they gathered at the bleachers and Jocelyn made formal introductions. Lucas scanned the group and easily identified the four major food groups in high school: cheerleading-squad material, battling-the-diet group, Jocks R Us, and, last but not least, “I still haven’t figured out how to work my body” bunch. He had to hand it to his dad—every year he was faced with the same material, yet he’d always managed to pull the team together, find the star athletes, sometimes in the most unlikely kids, turn the rest of the students on to team spirit and good sportsmanship and in the process reel in his fair share of track medals. No easy feat.
When Jocelyn introduced Lucas as Coach Grady’s son, he heard one quiet comment in the vicinity of the jocks. “Figures.”
He suppressed the threatening smile. Dear Old Dad ran a tight ship.
As Jocelyn timed her distance runners, she couldn’t prevent her gaze from drifting toward Lucas. One of the hurdlers had stumbled and twisted her ankle. Without being asked, Lucas had come prepared and had already elevated the runner’s leg and put an ice pack on it. That look of earnest concern blew her away.
She checked her stopwatch. What lap was that? Oh, gosh, she’d gotten distracted and lost track.
She glanced at the stopwatch then back toward Lucas, who was now laughing with a tall, scraggly, redheaded kid. The warmth in her heart doubled when she saw him encourage the boy to give hurdling a try, and to her amazement, the kid wasn’t half-bad.
Lucas glanced in her direction, and their gazes met and held. He nodded. She’d have to settle for the subtle lip twitch he offered instead of a smile, but that was enough to send a marching brigade of chills over her shoulders. She wasn’t sure what it was, but Lucas Grady had It with a capital “I”—and she’d known that since she was six years old.
This was the Lucas she’d always seen. The bighearted guy he’d fought to conceal. She’d never let him get away with putting himself down. Not on her watch.
Before Lucas knew it, the two-hour practice came to an end. He finished wrapping an elastic bandage around the little runner who’d twisted her ankle and sent her home with RICE instructions—rest, ice, compression and elevation. Somewhere along the line, he’d abandoned his everyday thoughts and had become completely engrossed in being outdoors, enjoying the sunshine and coaching track. It felt good.
But as he thought of heading home with no particular plans other than helping out his parents, a huge dreary cavity opened up deep inside. He’d tried meeting one of his high school buddies for a beer one night, but they couldn’t relate to each other anymore. Lucas’s world had expanded to include faraway deserts, death and mayhem and his buddy had finished college and spent most of his time at the bar complaining about not yet finding his dream job. Not once did the guy ask what it had been like to go to war, and Lucas sure as hell wouldn’t bring up the topic. He went home feeling even more alienated—and then he had another crazy dream. Maybe tonight he’d have better luck sleeping.
“You were such a big help today, Lucas,” Jocelyn said, jogging his way. “I can’t thank you enough. I think you really got the runners to buckle down.”
Little Miss Sunshine, acting like he was the greatest gift on earth. Didn’t she get it? He was messed up. Always had been, but even more so now. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere, and he really didn’t want to be forced to be around Jocelyn, the perennial cheerleader.
“No problem.” His jaws locked, and the old and familiar tension in his shoulders returned. “I’ll put the hurdles away, then I’ve got to get back home,” he muttered, feeling as though the leftover ashes from the big fire hovered around him—like that
