Touchdown - Leslie North Page 0,39

me know if you ever need an ear. I’m always available. I’d love for all of us to hang out more, too.” She squeezed Jill’s arm and jogged off, joining the hulking, manly football players and other coaches over by the team flags and backdrop.

Tessa smiled over at Jill, shielding her eyes against the sun. “Maxwell’s a good guy. There are some questionable ones on the team, but he’s not one of them.”

Jill appreciated the words of encouragement, but the seeds of doubt had been sown. It didn’t matter—not when she had all those years of quiet agony with her ex to draw on, all the small heartbreaks and suspicions and jealousy to fester and swarm unchecked inside her.

They chatted about other, non-NFL things for a while, including trading toddler horror stories, and then the triplets were getting hungry. Jill herded them toward the grills, the nanny in tow, with Tessa and Angus as her side. She appreciated the camaraderie—hell, she needed a couple solid girlfriends in this strange sports-celebrity world. Daisy and Tessa could be those solid girls. But cultivating a friendship with them needed to happen despite whatever happened with Maxwell.

Because as the evening wore on and she observed Maxwell in his natural habitat—slinging his arm around female fans, cheesing extra hard around the pretty girls, giving those heartbreaker looks to anyone with a decent-sized chest—she realized there was a whole life that Maxwell had that she had no part in. No control over. And certainly no voice in.

Maxwell was a charmer, that much was certain. So if he’d had a reputation six months ago, then it still existed now. All she saw was Home Maxwell—the doting man playing the daddy role, who knew exactly how to kiss her so that she’d turn to putty. She had no idea what Real World Maxwell was like…and if this cookout was any indication, then she had a lot more she needed to learn about him. Her mind worked over the situation endlessly while she drifted through the cookout, interacting with the kids and soaking up the evening sun.

The worst part about the confusion was that deep down, she knew that something real had started to root. Real feelings. Real emotions. Real tenderness for Maxwell, which she might be powerless to control at this point.

But if they weren’t on the same page…then she needed to cut and run early.

Before she lost another five years of her life on the arm of a man who looked good on paper but just didn’t have it in him to love her like she deserved.

14

The season charged on, and the Sharks accumulated two more Sunday wins. The second Sunday after the fan cookout was an away game, which meant Maxwell didn’t hit Savannah until late evening. Sore, tired, and feeling extra wrung out from the season, he came into the house close to 8 p.m., not knowing what to expect from the kids.

As soon as he stepped into the house, he heard a shushing noise from deeper inside. He smiled. “Hello?”

“Yes?” Jill answered, and he could hear the strain in her voice, the suppressed laughter.

“Anybody hooome?” He dropped his duffel bag near the staircase and walked toward the kitchen. Even though he was wrung out, just being home and hearing Jill’s voice soothed him in a way that he was getting more and more used to. When he stepped through into the kitchen, a huge, homemade sign greeted him.

“Congratulations, Unka Mack!” Jill shouted, along with Cameron and Shelley. Kevin just babbled—he wasn’t picking up on the multi-syllable words quite yet like his siblings—and clapped his hands.

In big block letters, somebody—probably Jill—had written Congrats #18, the letters alternating between the team colors of jade and black. And then all across the background were wobbly, light drawings that Maxwell assumed had to be footballs—at least just judging by the one clear example drawn into the upper right-hand corner.

“Wow, you guys.” Maxwell was all smiles as he received the eager hugs of the triplets. Jill came over to him too, squeezing him into a big hug.

“We all watched your game tonight,” she said, smiling up at him. “You were amazing, as usual.”

“So amazing that bedtime was postponed, I see,” he said wryly, reaching down to squeeze her butt cheek. “Not that I mind, of course.”

“We spent a lot of time on this sign,” Jill said while the kids started chasing each other around the dining room table. “We would have stayed up until ten so you could see