babe.”
“Stop calling me babe.”
“Why? I thought you were my date.”
She rolls her eyes, causing me to laugh.
“Relax,” I say, setting her foil-wrapped hot dog on the cup holder in front of her. “We’re going to have a good time, I’m going to take you home without molesting you, and then you can sleep off your hangover while dreaming about me all night long.”
“You are such a cocky one, aren’t you?”
I grin. “You have no idea.”
We have time before the game actually starts, so Maggie and I settle into our seats. Her eyes are fixed on the field, and I wonder if she’s searching for Coach. I don’t dare ask for fear our almost-good time will turn into something I’m not sure she’s ready for.
A few minutes later, Maggie faces me and opens her mouth. “So you played football for my dad, huh?”
I nod, unsure of where this is going. Something tells me she’s not really asking. She already knows the answer.
“Were you any good?”
My mind flashes to a smaller version of me with my eyes on my opponent while Zach danced around in the pocket. If anyone came near him, I was all over it, pinning them to the ground just in time for Zach to launch his next rocket.
“Yeah, I was pretty good.”
“But you didn’t want to go pro? Or you weren’t good enough?”
I shrug. “Guess I’ll never know if I was good enough. Football was never my number one. I fell into it because of Coach, but my heart has always been with the culinary arts.”
Maggie’s eyes soften. “When did that start?”
I lean back in my chair, spreading my legs and thinking back to all the memories of my dad while growing up. He was my inspiration. “My dad was always baking or cooking something. I remember coming home from school to the most amazing smells. He never had to ask me twice to join him in the kitchen. He’d plop me on that counter, and I’d watch him work and help as much as I could.”
“Did your mom cook, too, before she…” Maggie’s face turns red, and I know she wishes she could take the question back. No one ever likes to ask questions about my mom’s death, which suits me just fine because I normally hate answering them.
I smile faintly. “My mom didn’t cook. She refused, actually. My dad says it inspired him to impress her with every meal. My mom was a photographer. The first camera I ever picked up was hers when I got old enough to fiddle with the thing.”
“That’s sweet.”
The fact that I just blurted all that out to Maggie doesn’t seem sweet to me. In fact, it might just scare the hell out of me. I take a swig of my beer instead. “Your turn. When did you start modeling?”
“I was a regular pageant girl,” she says, batting her lashes at me, “from four years old until my mom decided it was time to start making actual money. That’s when she hooked me up with her old agent, and off I went. Commercial one day, fashion-brand shoot another, and runway event the next. I barely had time for school. Eventually, I had to get a tutor to supplement my time out of the classroom.”
“Wow, that’s pretty intense for a young girl.”
She bites down on her bottom lip. “Yeah, but it was all I knew. My mom’s career ended faster than she wanted it to, and I became her little puppet. She lived vicariously through me until I finally called it quits.”
“How’d you do it? How did you finally break the ties to modeling? Is it because of what happened on that runway?”
Maggie’s face grows red and she shakes her head. “No, I was already on my way out. My heart wasn’t in it anymore, but the timing ended up being perfect. I saw what was happening in the media with Zach and Monica, and I knew she needed me even without her saying a word.”
She’s hiding something, but I’m not going to push it. “A sister’s intuition?”
She nods. “Something like that.”
“Can I ask another question? A personal one?”
She swallows another mouthful of beer and shrugs. “Why the hell not?”
I smile while searching for a safe way to ask the question. “Do you think you’ll ever talk to your dad again? Do you want to?”
Maggie’s eyes snap to the field, like she’s searching for the man. “There’s always been this part of me that wants to see him.” She speaks quietly, but