Coach Love
Coach Love
The Love Brothers
Book 2
By Liz Crowe
Coach Love
Love Brothers Book 2
Copyright © 2014 by Liz Crowe
Cover Art and Design by Fiona Jayde
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
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For more information: Liz Crowe
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
www.lizcrowe.com
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
A Sneak Peek at Love Brewing
About The Author
Read More Liz Books
Chapter One
“What in the name of all that is holy makes you think I want to do that?”
Melinda stood clutching the prissy, expensive silk robe around her thin frame. Her ice-blue glare sliced through Kieran’s horniness like a Ginsu knife.
“You need a shower,” his model-gorgeous fiancée declared, shifting to the left when he tried to snag her for a grope, or at least a kiss. “You smell like acne.”
Even as he held the expensive champagne in one hand and observed her reaction, he got a whiff of high school emanating from his pores. Sweaty teenagers, bleach, pencil lead with a distinct underlay of old vomit—odors he’d become immune to during his last few months as a history teacher—floated across his consciousness.
Fury raced up his spine and hit his lower brain like a sledgehammer. The small bang the bottle made when it slammed down on the table gave him minimal satisfaction. Temper tantrums were not his style. His peacemaking role in his riotous family of Italian/Irish-American siblings had prepared him for any conflict. He could manage this.
I have to.
I love her.
We’re getting married.
Everything will be fine.
Even as the words crossed his lips he winced at his lameness, “Okay, babe. I’ll shower. Put this on ice though, would ya? I could use a drink.” He glanced down at the bottle of fizzy white wine he could barely afford but did buy regularly, because she loved it.
Bourbon would be better.
A lot of it.
And then to crawl under Melinda’s fluffy comforter on her giant bed and screw until they couldn’t walk. Then have more bourbon. He’d suggested that very thing on a whim. Which had earned him the bleating protest.
She padded closer on bare feet, her tempting form visible under the robe, backlit from the hallway. Cursing under his breath for wanting to get laid so badly, he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from begging her to go to bed with him. It had been over a month since they’d had sex, he justified. Her lips curved downward when she got a look at the label.
“Aw, sweetiekins, I told you. This is not the real thing.” Tapping it with an immaculately manicured finger, she used her sing-songy, lecturing-Kieran-about-expensive-booze voice. “I mean....” She shrank from him ever so slightly when a strange noise burbled up from his throat. “You know.” Tucking the bottle under one arm she let the creamy silk gape open, revealing her angular body to his eager gaze. “It’s fine. Don’t be mad, pookie.” She traced her fingers along one breast, her full lips pouty.
Relaxing the fists he didn’t remember clenching, Kieran acknowledged the pounding in his head that must be hunger, or thirst, or extreme blue balls. His throat constricted as her fingers kept moving down her stomach, reached the upper edge of the neat, sparse triangle of pubic hair before she stopped, giggled, and pecked him on the cheek like a little kid. Sashaying away, leaving him salivating like a randy Pavlov’s dog, she called out over her shoulder, “Shower first. Then we’ll talk about the other.”
His head pounded while his neglected, eager dick pressed against his zipper.
What the hell have I done? How can I possibly tell her I’ve just spent the last thirty minutes in the principal’s office of my high school alma mater, where I got hired six months ago, being pink slipped for next year?
“Don’t forget, I’m out of town after today, for the weekend, ’kay?” Her voice wafted from down the hall.
“Yeah.” He stripped, climbed into her expensive expanse of tile and cranked all six shower heads on full blast. “So once I’m clean, can we fuck? I mean, make love ’cause I am one hard-up dude, pookie,” he said as he jacked off so he could make it through the next few hours with her.
Chapter Two
Cara caught a flash of red hair atop a tall, familiar body the second she looked away from her computer. Face flushed hot, she glanced down at the screen to reabsorb the alarming news that not only would she be now taking on patients at three different locations, the clinic owners had reneged on her raise. Warring emotions made her stomach churn. But when she met Kieran Love’s deep-green eyes, twinkling as usual and focused solely on her, it sent a jolt of serenity through her psyche.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, as he slipped out of his sweatshirt. “Ready for the torture session?”
She blew out a breath and got to her feet, wishing she’d worn her newer scrubs today, even as she shook her head at such an absurd thought. He’d already climbed onto the tall treatment table in anticipation of their hour or so together. She must have sighed out loud because he frowned and put a large palm over hers.
“What’s up, sweets? Why the heavy sighs? Wedding planning got you down?”
Focusing down on their hands that now rested together on his once-shattered knee, she flinched, and pulled away fast—too fast.
“Sorry. Awkward.” He tucked his arm behind his head and trained his gaze toward the ceiling. Her face flamed hot all over again.
“It’s all right.” She got to work putting him through the therapy paces, admonishing him for continuing to play basketball and run on the leg that had been broken on national television during his rookie season in the NBA. They had history—plenty of it—but it remained firmly in their mutual past. Especially now that they were both engaged to other people.
“Ow, easy there, sweetheart,” he muttered, dragging her from the zone-out she entered every time she treated Kieran Love mainly to distract herself from the fact that she got to touch him three times a week. His face, so close to hers as she manipulated his leg, bringing his knee toward his chest, made her a little dizzy. “I’m not made of rubber. My hammies are tight.”
“Because you played again yesterday,” she said, blushing to the roots of her hair at his wide, wicked grin. “Dumbass.” She smacked his shoulder and got out of his away so he could head
over to the treadmill.
“What can I say? The Love family traditions will not be hampered by me and my bum leg.”
“Yeah, well you ought to think before you worry about your stupid traditions. You’re never gonna fully heal if you don’t.”
After programming the treadmill for a light jog, she observed his footfalls and hips while he ran, knowing she’d see the same thing she saw every time—that he favored his left knee so much he’d thrown off his cadence and risked injuring his other leg, the stubborn so-and-so. But she had to admit, seeing him again had lifted her saggy spirits.
They bantered while he ran. When she had the nerve-stimulation machine running along the ugly scar, he got quiet. Unusual, since the man could and would talk the birds right out of the trees.
She watched his face for a few seconds, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from asking about his wedding plans. It was a real downside of moving home after she’d gotten her sports med certification in Michigan—knowing more than she cared to about her first boyfriend and his future wife.
“Cara.” Her colleague’s voice interrupted her rising, irrational jealousy. “Kent’s on the phone. Says it’s urgent. I can take this one.” The woman pointed to Kieran’s leg.
“Oh, um, okay.” Cara headed for the desk in their shared office.
“Hi, hon.” Her fiancé’s voice made her wince. The man had no volume control sometimes. “Whatcha doing?”
“Working. You know that. What’s so urgent?” She clenched her jaw against the urge to apologize for snapping at him.
“Well, the boys want to meet up and I know we still have to do the caterer thing and settle on the menu and all.” He trailed off, unwilling to impart the obvious news—that he would be leaving her to make the final decisions on some important aspect of their looming, giant, over-the-top wedding. She counted to ten. “Honey?” her successful husband-to-be pleaded, waiting for her to relieve him of the burden of saying you’re on your own, kid.
“That’s fine. I’ll pick the menu, but you’re not allowed to complain about any aspect of it.”
“Deal. You’re such a sweetheart.”
“Glad you think so, considering I’m about to marry you and all.”
She caught sight of her former boyfriend flirting mercilessly with the younger, cuter-than-her girl running the machine over his knee. Pausing to issue another mental reminder that she’d caught a live one in Kent Lowery, Jr., she forced thoughts of her stupid, high school obsession with the funny, lanky, redheaded man lying on the treatment table across from her out of her head. The irony that both she and Kieran were about to marry attorneys did not escape her. Never mind that his soon-to-be spouse was a high-powered corporate somebody and her future husband a classic ambulance chaser with billboards blaring out Call Kent 1800lawsuit all over Interstate 64 between here and Louisville.
“Dinner still on tonight?”
She blinked and refocused on the voice in her ear.
“Sure,” she said, leaning against the edge of the cluttered desk. “I found out I’m not getting that raise, though. So we should....”
“I told you that doesn’t matter.” An ugly edge crept into his voice. One she’d only heard a few times and did not care for in the slightest. “My wife won’t have to work.”
“This isn’t the fifties. Stop acting like it doesn’t matter. It matters to me.”
“Oh, hon, you know I’m messing with ya. Besides, once I get you knocked up, you’ll have to stay home.”
Cara’s face burned. Kent’s old-fashioned ways sometimes shocked her. While she appreciated his romanticism, she had to admit that their courtship had been of the whirlwind variety—well, the courtship” after she’d had drunk sex with him in a bar bathroom in Louisville that is. But he’d been full-frontal, complete with roses, wine and fancy dates after that. The whole thing had the aura of fantasy, most days. By way of anchoring in the here and now, she focused on her giant engagement ring.
“You’re so cute when you go all feminist. I can feel you fuming through the phone.” He chuckled. “Relax, Gloria Steinem. I’m kiddin’.”
Problem being of course, he only half-meant it. The Lowerys were old school Republicans with generations of money propping them up. Kent had grown up on the wealthy side of Louisville but had started his practice here in the new suburbs of Lexington after graduating from law school. Claiming that her red hair would be good luck for the Lowery family, his brittle, patrician mother had swept Cara and her own mother into her ritzy social circle so fast neither of them could protest.
Two separate bridal teas in Louisville loomed on her horizon, one at the Lowery family estate on Riverside Drive and the other at the downtown Louisville Athletic Club. Both of which would be crowded with people she didn’t know but who’d clutched her short, less-than-perfect-figured, redheaded self to their collective bosom as if she’d been born with her own silver spoon. Which she most definitely had not.
“Love ya, babe. See ya tonight. Wear a nice dress…one with sleeves.”
Cara clenched her jaw against the urge to remind him that she understood the dress code for the country club, when she realized the phone had already gone dead. Kieran stuck his head around the corner, surprising her.
“Gotta run. Mama Love’s dinner waits for no late sibling.” His crooked smile sent a spike of long-forgotten longing through her gut.
“How is she doing?”
His grin widened. “Great, especially now that there are two grandbabies to spoil.”
She waved as he ambled toward the front door of their strip mall PT clinic wondering not for the first time why she’d dumped him all those years ago.
Chapter Three
As his mother gazed lovingly down at her granddaughter’s small face, Kieran noted that Lindsay Love’s slight form seemed more filled out, less gaunt from the cancer treatments and hip injury. Her recovery provided gut-deep relief to his father and Kieran’s slew of siblings. The last year and a half had been hell on a lot of levels.
He kept a death grip on his beer as the sound of a Reds baseball game filled the air, like so many summer afternoons of his youth. His brothers splashed around and yelled in the pool. His sister Angelique sat holding baby-boy Josh, jiggling him out of a fussy spell.
Even as he finished his second beer, Kieran craved a third and headed for the kitchen, leaving the makeshift daycare to the ladies. He’d wanted to talk to his mother alone, but she’d locked into full-blown granny mode insisting that both her daughters-in-law take the afternoon off and get a manicure or read a book or something equally kid-free for a few hours. Then she’d banished her sons Antony and Aiden, the fathers of said progeny, to the swimming pool, declaring that she wanted quality time with Mandy, Josh and Jeff.
As he reflected on all the years spent heaving basketballs at the goal outside the pole barn, all the practices, the hours going to and from games, and the constant, low-lying disapproval from his mother when he’d declared that basketball would be his career, Kieran pondered his life’s radical reversal. All that time, effort and sweat had only served to bring him home, leg busted all to hell, engaged to a bitchy woman nobody liked, and freshly pink-slipped from the one job he’d managed to find and had thoroughly enjoyed.
The rich hoppy beer soothed his jittery nerves, so he kept drinking and listening to the familiar sounds of babies, baseball, and splashing pool water for a few more minutes before grabbing another bottle and heading outside. He needed to talk to someone about his predicament. But he didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s summer afternoon.
He spotted his father, brothers, and some punk who’d been hanging around lately as Angelique’s boyfriend engaged in a sort of water-polo dodge ball game that had nearly as much water out of the pool as in it. Mood darkening under the bright sun baking the scene in front of him, he popped open his next beer using the opener they’d attached to the outdoor fridge and drank half without tasting it.
Melinda was going to have kittens when h
e told her about his newly unemployed state. She already claimed that being a high school history teacher made him underemployed, that he should apply for some kind of financial-planning job or something that could use his celebrity to get clients.
“Financial planning?” he’d asked, incredulous by the suggestion. “Since when do I know anything about that?”
“They’ll teach you all you need to know. Besides you’d be the front man, getting people in the door? Folks around here love you and your success story. You’d turn the clients over to the real advisors after that.”
Already wanting another beer, he got slowly to his feet and winced at the ever-present pain in his left leg. The second he stepped onto the grass from the pool surround he got drenched from head to toe. Whirling around, he spotted his youngest brother Aiden gripping an empty bucket and grinning ear to ear. Kieran tossed the empty on the ground and rammed into Aiden’s midsection, driving him backward and into the pool. Kieran let his body sink, loving the cool quiet beneath the water.
Later, he sat with a towel around his waist, playing poker on the patio table. Angelique was kicking all their asses and had a pile of quarters in front of her. Her punk boyfriend had gone inside, sucking up by helping with dinner. His brother Dominic had tapped a fresh keg in the outdoors fridge, and they all had plenty of fresh, crisp Love Brewing pilsner. Kieran’s head had gone a little fuzzy, but at least it meant he’d stopped anticipating Melinda’s no-doubt vocal disappointment. He held out his empty glass. Dominic filled it from the pitcher but not before Kieran intercepted a look between Dom and their oldest brother Antony.
“Fuck you both,” he muttered into his fresh brew. The gloom descended again, clouding his vision.
Angelique gave him a snooty look. “Swear jar.”
He glowered at her. “Bite me.”
“What’s up your ass, boy?” His father tossed his cards down.