4th & Girl (Mavericks Tackle Love) Read online

  No shit, I had to blink three times just to make sure they were real.

  Once I realized what I was seeing was, in fact, reality and not some fantasy born out of medical assisting boredom, I couldn’t stop myself from taking further inventory of the very fine specimen of a football player standing in the doorway of the lab.

  Thick, dark hair.

  A faint little scar resting just below his right eye.

  Strong, chiseled jaw.

  Broad shoulders.

  Trim waist.

  Toned thighs.

  And what I could only assume was the kind of tight ass that would’ve had Grandma Louise doing a double take. She might’ve died ten years ago, but I felt like this guy’s heady gaze held the power to summon her from the dead.

  Which, yes, I can see where that last bit of commentary may have been a bit disconcerting. But if you knew Grandma Louise, you’d understand. The woman’s bucket list included Thunder from Down Under and meeting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

  May she rest in peace.

  “Hi, I’m Leo,” the guy introduced, and holy hell, even his voice was stupid sexy. “Leo Landry.”

  “Hi, Leo,” Lisa greeted, apparently too focused on, you know, doing her job to realize we’d just been graced with the sexiest player on the Mavericks’ squad. “Give us just a minute, and we’ll get you in and out of here quickly.”

  I, on the other hand, was otherwise mute and busy wiping drool from my chin.

  Lisa looked at me. I looked at Lisa.

  And we repeated that circuit a good three times before a scowl started to form across her thin lips.

  Shit. This is my part of the job…

  “Oh!” I muttered. “Right.” I hopped up from my seat and grabbed a cup from Lisa’s Leaning Tower of Pee-sa. “You’re obviously here for a reason, and that reason is to pee in one of these here cups so we can collect it,” I joked as I made the cup do a little dance across the counter.

  Leo tilted his head to the side and watched the cup tip-tap across the surface before bringing his curious eyes back to mine.

  A dancing urine cup? Really, Gem? Could you be any more awkward right now?

  “For drug testing, obviously,” I added. “Not for, like, selling your urine on eBay or something weird like that.”

  I didn’t even bother looking over at Lisa after those words left my lips. It didn’t take a genius to anticipate a bulging forehead vein from Ms. Medical Assistant when things like illegal urine auctions were mentioned.

  Leo’s crystal-blue eyes went a little wide at my words, and it was pretty damn obvious I, Gemma Holden, could be more awkward.

  Hell, if I had five more minutes, I’d probably win some kind of Guinness World Record for the mind-blowing ability to shove my entire foot into my mouth. Make it ten minutes and I might’ve been able to fit both feet.

  “So, uh, let’s get that urine!” I exclaimed, which, ironically, sounded exactly like a psychopath who was, in fact, attempting to collect a football player’s urine to sell it on eBay.

  Just shut up and take him to the bathroom before you can make this any more uncomfortable…

  “Just follow me,” I said and cleared the nerves from my throat. “And I’ll get you out of here lickety-split.”

  Lickety-split? Jesus Christ. Just stop talking.

  With my lips firmly closed, I gestured for Leo to follow me into the small hallway off the lab and led him toward the bathrooms.

  He followed with only slight hesitation, and once I spotted the bathroom door, I quickly remembered I hadn’t really finished reading the whole “How to Collect a Urine Sample” manual.

  Shit. If I screwed this up, Lisa would call the National Board of Medical Assistants and find out I was a fraud.

  Could you go to jail for medical assistant fraud?

  It wasn’t exactly my fault I’d ended up at a job I wasn’t qualified for, but Lord knows, Mable would’ve had my ass if I’d inadvertently let word get out she’d done the sending. She seemed like the kind of woman you found at the temp agency during the week and burning herself with a lighter at a motorcycle rally party on the weekend.

  Okay, just focus and keep it short and sweet, I mentally coached myself. Less is definitely more in this situation.

  “So, uh, here’s the place that you pee,” I instructed…like a moron.

  “It looks familiar,” Leo said, and a small smirk crested one corner of his mouth. “Pretty sure I’ve been inside one of these a time or two.”

  God, even his smirk is sexy…

  Stop gawking, Gemma, and give the incredibly handsome man the damn instructions.

  “Uh…so…you just pee in this,” I said and awkwardly shoved the cup toward his chest. “And when you’re done, you’re supposed to bring it back out to me without the lid on it so I can ensure it’s a proper urine specimen,” I repeated the words from the manual.

  He nodded. “Got it.”

  Just as he started to step inside the bathroom and shut the door, I remembered one last thing.

  “Oh! Shit! And don’t flush the toilet either!” I exclaimed as I clumsily stopped the door’s momentum with my foot.

  And the Medical Assistant of the Day award goes to…not me.

  We stared at each other through the small crack in the door, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smack my head against said door, or run away and hide behind Lisa’s Leaning Tower of Pee-sa.

  But, eventually, there was that sexy little smirk again.

  If it were up to me, the damn thing should’ve been illegal.

  I mean, who in the hell could work under these kinds of conditions? With this kind of hot, red-blooded male with the prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen staring back at them?

  Certainly not me.

  “Pee in cup. Don’t flush the toilet. Don’t put the lid on the cup, and hand it to you when I’m done,” he said, and amusement cradled his voice. “Anything else?” he asked, and I swear on Grandma Louise’s grave, those eyes of his turned even bluer with his words.

  Fuck if I knew. But it was as far as I’d gotten in the instructional manual.

  “That should do it.” I hope.

  I removed my right foot from the door and my left foot from my mouth, and while Leo went into the bathroom and did the damn thing, I slipped on latex gloves and waited outside while I mentally chastised myself.

  When he comes back out here, do not make it awkward, Gemma.

  Don’t say anything like “nice urine” or “good job, buddy” or offer a fucking fist bump.

  For the love of God, just collect the urine and do not make it awkward.

  Piss. Shake. Flush.

  It was the normal routine whenever I, or anyone with a dick for that matter, went to the bathroom. So, honestly, I thought I’d have it down.

  But this wasn’t an ordinary trip for several reasons, and the most glaring excuse of all was the cute blond waiting for me on the other side of the door.

  Suddenly, I was self-conscious.

  Could she hear me peeing? Was she wondering what was taking me so long? Was this all normal practice for her?

  I had no idea, but it was safe to say, thinking about all of it had me rattled.

  Plus, I wasn’t allowed to flush when I was done, a practice ingrained in me from the time I was a toddler by my type A mother, and the change in routine had me repeating the simple instruction in my head like some kind of bathroom psychopath.

  Don’t flush, don’t flush, don’t flush.

  Not to mention, the importance of this sample was significant, as the results would determine if I was eligible to play professional football or not.

  I wasn’t worried—I wasn’t into drugs and had barely even imbibed alcohol since high school—but the pressure of everything falling on one tiny cup of piss still niggled.

  Thirdly, I didn’t think I’d ever had to hand a cup filled with piss to such a pretty woman before.

  My nurses during NCAA testing always seemed to be more Helga t
han Heidi, so mixing thoughts of urine and arousal had never been an issue.

  Until now.

  I guess there’s a first time for everything.

  Setting the cup carefully on the sink, I washed my hands and dried them with a paper towel before grabbing the specimen and opening the door.

  The cute blond’s head jerked up from the spot on the tile she’d apparently been focusing on, and I felt a smirk curl the very corner of my mouth.

  Maybe I’m not the only one feeling self-conscious.

  And good God, she was pretty.

  Pint-sized. Big blue eyes. And the kind of full lips most women would pay large amounts of money to recreate with the help of a surgeon.

  Not to mention, even with her in a pair of navy blue scrubs, I could tell she had curves.

  The exact kind of curves that would make my mouth water and fit perfectly into my big hands.

  I felt like a bit of a bastard for even taking that much inventory on the woman who’d been hired by the Mavericks to help process our urine samples, but I couldn’t fucking help it. She was perfect in all the ways that drew me in, and with her quirky yet adorable awkwardness, she was imperfect in all the ways that I found endearing.

  “All done?” she asked, and my little smirk turned into a smile.

  “Yep. I figured it was best to finish up completely rather than come out halfway through.”

  She blushed at my teasing and looked back to the ground, reaching out for the cup as she did. “Of course. Right.”

  I shook my head slightly, taking the final two steps necessary to close the distance, and pushed the cylinder into the palm of her hand before releasing.

  She exhaled then, looking up from the tile to meet my eyes once more—the connection was powerful.

  A stop to time and thought and a powerful lesson in the influence of one simple look.

  I was mesmerized.

  And then mayhem exploded all at once.

  Not as prepared for the exchange as we’d both assumed she was, the cup slipped in her grip and panic suffused her eyes.

  As a football player, I was familiar with the slow-motion replay after the action—the one that perfectly pointed out your flawed split-second decision-making—and if there were an ESPN for drug testing, this little ditty would have had prime placement on the highlight reel.

  Desperate to stop the cup’s descent, she clenched the fingers of her hand quickly, but the force of her reaction only made it worse. Grazing off the cup like a bat on a ball, it sent the specimen flying. The damn thing arced through the air back toward me and shot the pee, my pee, out in a monotoned rainbow of fucking disgust.

  I jumped back from the tidal wave, but she carried on, lunging for the cup like her life and pride depended on it.

  Once, twice, her hand made contact, but after a bobble, a wobble, and an unwelcome hand-bath, the writing was on the wall.

  And my piss was on the floor.

  Fuck.

  “Oh my God,” she said, the pitch of her voice rapidly approaching a level only dogs could hear.

  My heart bounced in my chest as my brain tried to catch up with the fact that she’d literally just spilled my pee all over herself, but it was a losing battle. The carnage of reality was too unexpected.

  “Christ,” I muttered involuntarily. Her already manic eyes went wider, and I finally found it in me to sound a little less harsh. God, she must be mortified. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh? Me? This?” she blathered, circling a gloved hand above the puddle on the floor in between us and the now urine-soaked legs of her scrub pants. “Totally cool. I’ll just…uh…”

  I looked around as she did, following her around the room like a ping-pong ball, and finally interjected when she didn’t finish the thought.

  “You want me to try to find you a mop or something?”

  “A mop? What do I need a—?” She paused before devolving into a nervous, high-pitched giggle. “Oh yeah. To clean up. Your pee that I just dropped.” Her head fell back, and her eyes turned skyward. “Kill me now.”

  I laughed at that, stepping around the puddle between us and awkwardly rubbing a comforting hand down her thankfully dry back.

  “Hey, I’m sure it happens all the time.”

  “Oh yeah. This is a regular after school special.”

  Glancing up briefly to meet my eyes as I put a little more pressure on my comforting stroke, she clenched hers tightly shut and huffed out a breath of air. “I’m guessing you can’t go back in and give me another sample?”

  “Uh,” I said through a laugh. “Not right this second. Tank’s empty.”

  “Greaaaat.”

  Even in the trauma, she was adorable. A pit in my stomach turned as I searched my mind for a way to make her feel better.

  “Listen, can I—”

  “Why don’t you just take off, okay?” she interrupted me quickly. “I’ve got to clean up, and…” She sighed. “I know this is important, but I’m sure they’ll let you retake it later today or another day or something.”

  My eyebrows drew together. Despite the importance of the testing and results, I hadn’t even thought about when I’d have to make this up.

  The only thing I’d thought about since the moment I entered the room was…well, her.

  “Look, I can probably—”

  “No, no,” she interrupted again. “Just go, Leo. I’ll handle it.” Her voice lowered to a breathy whisper—commentary clearly not meant for me—as she went on. “Lisa is going to flip her shit.”

  With one last lingering look, I did the only thing I could for her. The one thing I desperately didn’t want to do.

  I left.

  Without helping. Without getting a name. Without a usable urine sample.

  Without a goddamn clue how I found myself thinking continuously about a woman I’d just met.

  So, I took an accidental golden shower in some ridiculously hot guy’s urine once.

  Big deal, right?

  I mean, surely, I’d learned my lesson after that horrible scenario. He’d been the first guy in the room, and with time and experience, I’d had plenty of opportunity to gain my footing, and thankfully, a pair of fresh scrubs. I definitely hadn’t spilled pee on myself again, that was for damn sure.

  “From what they told me, it sounded like you weren’t getting the hang of anything besides driving that medical assistant crazy,” Mable said, growing a little tired of my shit. She’d called about five minutes ago, an hour before I was due to wake up to head back to the medical assistant gig for day two. And she hadn’t held back when she’d broken the news that I’d been relieved of duty.

  I’d been pleading my case ever since.

  If I was honest, it was a thin case. Like one of those flimsy, plastic phone cases you bought off Amazon on a whim because it was uber cheap and has kittens on it, and then, twenty-four hours into using the damn thing, you realized it’s utter junk and did jack shit to protect your device.

  Trust me, I did not have an Otterbox, will-survive-anything, kind of case to plead in this conversation.

  Even after I’d spilled a hot guy’s pee on myself, I hadn’t been too hip to the medical assisting game on my first day on the job. I’d mislabeled shit, knocked down Lisa’s tower of pee cups more than once, and three players had to be retested because I’d forgotten to tell them not to flush the toilet.

  But it was a two-week temp job that paid forty bucks an hour.

  I needed that fucking job. I had a gorgeous Gibson acoustic guitar in my sights, and I was only a few hundred dollars and a couple weeks of eating ramen noodles away from buying it.

  “Please, Mable,” I begged. “I really need that job.”

  “Honey, if I sent you back there this morning, they’d have my ass with a stick that is far too big in diameter even for me,” she responded in her raspy voice with wayyy too much information.

  Good God, I think my ears are bleeding.

  Mable was notorious for smoking Marlboro Reds in and out
of her office, and the woman’s voice was so damn throaty and deep, it sounded like a cat had attempted to remove her vocal cords with its claws. Especially when she meant fucking business.

  Unwilling to subject myself to any more of her visuals, I finally gave up the fight for the job I sucked at and started exploring other avenues.

  “Well, what else do you have available this week?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that. Just stay patient, Gemma. I’m sure I’ll find you something in a day or two.”

  Not the news I want to hear. We ended the call shortly after that, and I tossed my phone back down on my nightstand, shoved my face into my pillow, and groaned.

  Not only did I officially have no stream of income, I had nothing to occupy my day. That might seem like a godsend to a lot of people, but ever since I’d dropped out of college, if I wasn’t moving, I felt like I was sinking.

  It was probably the weight on my shoulders courtesy of disappointed parents and no concrete life plan, but whatever. Busy feet kept me out of the quicksand.

  Instead of sulking in bed, I dragged my ass up and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee. As I passed through the living room, I was on a one-woman diatribe about the ridiculousness of getting fired from a job that entailed collecting urine.

  “You’d think it’d be simple, Gem. It’s only something you’ve done since you were a toddler. But no. You have to mess up peeing. Who gets fired for collecting urine? Of all the things. And you had to do it while God’s gift to women—”

  “What are you freaking out about?” Abby asked from the couch, and I just about climbed to the damn ceiling in surprise.

  “Jesus Christ!” I put a hand to my chest and tried to stop my heart from jumping out of my throat. “You scared the crap out of me!”

  “Sorry,” she said, but her voice said otherwise.

  “When did you get here?”

  “Last night.”

  “You’ve been here since last night?” I asked and looked around my apartment in confusion. “How did I not know you were here last night?”

  She shrugged and sat up on the couch. “You were already asleep when I got here.”