Page 54 of No More Heartbreakers

“We did it.”

I laughed, too, so happy, so thrilled to seehimhappy.

God, he was beautiful. His perfect lips were inches from mine, his intoxicating sunshine-y smell all around me.

And then I kissed him. A real Oh-my-God-what-am-I-doing-I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this-but-I-am-and-I-can’t-stop lip lock.

Aric kissed me back. With enthusiasm.

Instead of pulling away and giving me the WTF look or accusing me of being wishy-washy or telling me he’d gotten over it and was no longer interested, he pulled me close and kissed me until my knees wobbled and I was seriously entertaining the idea of performing a public sex act right there in the end zone.

That wouldn’t violate my contract’s morality clause, would it?

Finally, Aric must have caught a whiff of common sense because he broke the kiss and lowered my feet to the ground. He still held me close as he stared into my eyes.

As if it had just occurred to him, he said, “We have to interview people.”

“Oh. Yes. Right. The camera…”

I turned to make sure the station’s twenty-thousand dollar investment was still intact and, in fact, still with us.

It was, thank God, and I snatched it off the tripod and followed Aric into the throng of fans overtaking the field.

We waded through bodies until we reached Georgia’s winning quarterback, Richard Lamar. Then I filmed as Aric interviewed the kicker about his game-winning kick and got a concise but good-natured comment from Coach Barton, to the obvious amazement of the competing sports reporters also covering the field.

Then Aric started grabbing fans for man-on-the-street interviews, and it seemed each was louder and more home-team-boastful than the last.

As the furious pace of the post-game coverage slowed, my mind filled with thoughts I’d rather not have considered.

Pretty soon we’d have all the material we could use for Aric’s report.

We’d leave the stadium, climb into the tiny news car together.

And I’d have to face the consequences of the kiss.

What had I been thinking?

I was crazy about him, and he was unbelievably hot, and in the excitement of the moment, my defenses had been lowered—that’s what I’d been thinking.

But now—now I was thinking of how to dig myself back out of this hole I’d jumped into.

Speaking of jumping, four of the bounciest girls I’d ever seen in my life, all wearing Georgia cheerleading uniforms, ran over to Aric and offered to give us a little spirit-to-go for the story.

I rolled the camera as they squealed and whooped and screamed, “Go Dawgs! Whoo!”

I assumed this was a service they performed for every camera crew in attendance? But then, maybe not, based on the flirty looks some of the girls offered Aric.

Before they ran off to shake their shiny pom-poms in someone else’s direction, one of the cheerleaders high-fived Aric. Immediately afterward, he looked down at his palm, then put his hand into his pocket.

She’d almost certainly given him her number, and how could I blame her? I’d almost certainly given him my heart, in spite of all my best efforts to hold onto it.

The trick would be keeping him from knowing it.

“Okay. I think we’ve got all we need. You ready to head back to home base, partner?” He grinned, picking up the tripod.

“Sure.”

I fell into step behind him as he forged a path through the lingering crowd. Once we got back to the station, we would both be working non-stop until news time.

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