Page 35 of Third and Ten

Maybe she doesn’t want us to know she’s sizing Loren up? Maybe she’s actually bothered by the attractive woman on my arm?

And now I’ve got to take a couple of breaths to slow my heart rate.

“Aw, thanks, girl. You’re making those scrubs look pretty darn hot, yourself,” Loren returns. I clamp my mouth shut before I’m tempted to say anything stupid while Loren wags her eyebrows at Tenley until she gets her to laugh.

“Well, I’m sure you both need to get back to work,” Tenley says after a while, trying to extricate herself.

Then Loren nudges my side, but I’m frozen. “Maybe we’ll run into you at the game? I’m on concession-stand duty tonight,” she offers.

“Sure. I’ll be on Aunt Tenley duty.”

Loren throws a hearty elbow into my ribs this time, making me hiss. I try to disguise it with a cough.

“Yeah, she’s, uh, got a special shirt and everything,” I say when I finally manage to find my voice.

Come on, man.

Tenley bites her lip, looking amused. “My mom had it made for me.”

I nod and shoot her a flirty smile. “Then remind me to thank Mrs. T later. I mean, we need all the support we can get.”

“Right,” Tenley agrees hesitantly, and I think she might even be blushing.

Loren pinches the inside of my forearm, and I take it as a signal to continue. “So, I’ll see you tonight? I’ll be the one on the sidelines wearing the coach’s headset.”

“And I’ll be the one in the bleachers wearing Ethan’s number.” She rolls her eyes demurely.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to pick you out of the crowd.”

Tenley’s cheeks flush even darker. “Good luck tonight, Coach. Hopefully I’ll see you around, Loren.”

I exhale in relief as I watch her walk off.

“Holy cow, JD,” Loren says.

“What?”

“First of all, spend enough time in the gym?” she asks, squeezing my arms and contorting her face. “What do you plan to do with these things, anyway? Crush cars? Move furniture? Lift heavy machinery?”

I snort as Blake comes over, his eyes zeroing in on Loren as she grips my arms. I flex my muscles, making her giggle, and she drops her hands before she continues. “Secondly, you should have warned me that you’d turn into a pathetic simp as soon as Tenley came around. How am I supposed to work with that?”

I shrug apologetically. “I can’t exactly help it.”

“See, I told you this would never work,” Blake mumbles under his breath.

“No, no, there’s something there, I can tell,” Loren says thoughtfully, ignoring Blake’s tone this time. “We’ve planted the seed. I think we just need to give it a little water.”

CHAPTER 12

TENLEY

“What took you so long tonight, anyway?” I ask Ethan as we make it to the nearly vacant parking lot.

He shrugs with forced nonchalance, but I notice his eyes darting over to a group of cheerleaders tossing their pom-poms and bags into the trunk of a car. He stops in his tracks when one of them turns and smiles brightly in our direction, a set of well-defined dimples accenting her gorgeous, tawny-brown complexion.

“Ah, I see.” I watch him grin back at her until she lowers herself into the back seat. “What’s her name?”

“Caidence,” he says on an exhale and starts walking again.

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