would be funny to embarrass the coach’s daughter in front of his teammates.
He missed four kicks to the six Reese made and started claiming she cheated. Then, he started in with the insults.
“Doesn’t matter, She-Ra,” he’d called her, watching her father as he’d moved around the field, careful not to let on to his coach that he was insulting his daughter. “No team will sign you unless you wanna go for the Lingerie League.” Then Lucas had looked long and hard over Reese’s body, gaze lingering on her breasts. “But then, they may not want some dyke on their team.”
She’d gut-punched him right then, and the punter went straight to his knees.
“You’re not intimidating,” her father warned her, leading her away from the field. “He was intimidated. They all will be.” He’d reminded her of a Pinterest board filled with inspirational quotes, but the advice made sense to her.
It still did.
But if Reese wanted a place at the table—if she wanted her teammates to see her as an equal—she’d have to show them she wasn’t there to test their manhood. She was there to do exactly what they were: win games.
She cleared away her frustration with long, lathered swipes of her loofa and let the steam and spray of hot water beat into her skin. She liked the smell of vanilla and sugar from the soap she used, the same scent that lingered from her soy candles around her apartment. That scent did the job when she wanted to feel soothed and settled. And as she moved the soap over her tight muscles, the flat, smooth contours of her stomach, Reese remembered how she’d managed to finally win over those Duke alpha males set against her. Liquor and information. It had irritated her to do it, but she knew her father’s players. She knew their stats and their triumphs. She also knew about good bourbon and how it could win over even the sourest of alpha males grumpy from being beaten by a girl.
“Worked once,” she told herself, stepping out of the shower and onto the plush, white floor mat her mother had picked out weeks before. Reese stood in front of the large beveled vanity mirror, her body naked and wet from her shower. Once, a hundred years ago it seemed, this body had managed to get the notice of Duke’s most eligible player. Every girl on campus wanted him, and Ryder had chosen Reese. It had taken years. It had taken convincing, but he’d finally chosen her.
No matter what Lucas had tried spreading around the campus about Reese, after she continued to trounce his ass on the field, Reese wasn’t gay. She didn’t care what anyone called her. Fact was, she knew plenty of lesbians that were way cooler than Lucas ever would be. But the lying… any lie about Reese at all irritated her.
She watched herself in the mirror, tracing the cut lines of her biceps and the ridges along her stomach, the heavy quad muscles and contoured calves. She’d begun looking more and more like her mother as she got older. Reese had noticed the changes, how similar her mannerisms had become—the way she tapped her finger against her leg when she stood in the middle of her closet trying to decide what to wear, or how she pressed her lips together when someone spoke to her. That was her mother, all those things. Her eyes, too—same black irises, same small upturn at the creases. Cuba was written in her DNA, and as she got older, it had started to show itself in small ways over her body. Reese was strong. She was an athlete, but she was still a woman and looked the part.
Once, she’d floored Ryder with a simple dress. One lake party and the right sundress borrowed from Rhiannon had showed the quarterback that the coach’s daughter wasn’t the awkward, nerdy jock he thought she was. He’d watched her all night at that party, never taking his attention from her once.
Could he manage that now if she pulled a repeat? Would Ryder Glenn remember who she’d been to him?
Dropping the towel, Reese hurried to her closet, attacking each hanger as she looked for the black number her mother had made her buy two summers ago for her brother’s rehearsal dinner. He’d married Charlotte Bennington, a wealthy New York socialite. Her mother wanted her to look like a confident woman, not the sports-loving jock who lived in Lycra and running shorts. She’d pulled off