Page 4 of The Sweet Spot

“Guess they are,” I agree and look at the stem, laughing. “You remember the summer you were determined to learn how to do that?”

She giggles. “What were we? Thirteen?”

“You might have been. Pretty sure I was sixteen or seventeen.” I think back to that summer. The last one before I left for college. It was the last summer I saw her for a few years. And the next time I came home, Brynn didn’t look like a little girl anymore. But she was still jailbait. Something her dad made sure I knew—more than once. Cade may have thought he was being nonchalant about it, but when a former MMA champion makes sure you know exactly how old, or more precisely how young, his daughter is, you don’t forget it.

“Yeah... I guess you were.” She stirs her soda and looks up at me through long lashes. “So I heard you left Boston University. Do you have a new coaching job lined up?”

“Guess you haven’t heard the news yet. I think it’s being announced at some point next week.”

Her nose crinkles in a way that shouldn’t be sexy but is. “What’s being announced?”

She pops another cherry into her mouth and closes those pouty pink lips around it.

“Your family just hired me as the Revolution’s new head coach.”

BRYNLEE

Isuck in a quick, shocked breath and accidentally inhale a cherry. The little fucker slips right down my throat and lodges there until I’m a coughing, choking mess. Deacon pounds my back like a baseball player excited for a teammate’s homerun until I manage to force up the cherry and spit it into a napkin, like the lady my mother raised me to be.

Scarlet Kingston-St. James would die if she saw what I just did.

“I’m sorry.” I wipe the tears from my eyes, pretty sure they’re there from the coughing and not the mortification. At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself. “Could you repeat that?”

A slow, sexy smile stretches along Deacon’s full lips.

Why are guys always blessed with good lips and long lashes?

This man has had both since he was fifteen.

It wasn’t fair then, and it’s certainly not fair now.

“The back pounding?” That smile turns cocky and does things to me it absolutely should not. “I mean... if that’s what you’re into, I’m not gonna judge.”

Damn him, because suddenly that’s what I’d like to be into.

Any kind of pounding that involves this man sounds good to me.

I snicker to myself. Pounding. I have the sense of humor of a teenage boy.

Instead of admitting that, I cross my legs, going more for sexy and less for choking, and try to get control of my racing thoughts, like that’s possible. It may have worked, too, if Deacon’s eyes didn’t catch on my thighs while my shorts ride up on my legs. But there’s no missing the way those eyes darken as he takes in the view.

Some women may be body conscious, but I’m not one of them. I’ve trained at my father’s gym for what feels like every day of my life, and it’s given me a level of confidence that nothing else ever has. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also given me black belts in judo and Brazilian jiu jitsu. And I’m trained in Maui Thai. But I keep that to myself and gently tap him with the toe of my crossed foot. “My eyes are up here, Kane.”

“We going with last names, St. James?” He leans back against the bar, confident and relaxed and so damn sexy, as if I didn’t just hack up a cherry like a hair ball after he told me he was taking over my team two minutes ago.

My. Team.

The one I love.

The one I fought to be a respected part of.

The one I had to prove I deserved to work for.

He can’t be coaching my team.

I’d have heard about that. Wouldn’t I?

I think back to my conversation with Maddox.

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