put a stop to it.
Lauren blew out a long breath. “It’s not a date. Jack and I arefriends, nothing more.”
Campbell jersey woman’s face changed from excitement to disappointment. The woman named Karen with the too-small tank top sniggered loud enough for Lauren to hear.
“It’s not a date?” Henderson jersey woman asked with an expression as if someone had told her Santa Clause wasn’t real.
“It’s not a date,” Lauren reiterated, and because Henderson jersey woman looked so downcast, she added, “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, well, that’s a shame,” Henderson jersey woman said. She nudged the back of
Karen’s shoulder with her finger. “Looks like there’s still a chance for you then, eh, Karen?”
Karen swung her head back around, flicking her peroxide hair over her shoulder, and threw a dirty look at Henderson jersey woman.
It only made Henderson jersey woman laugh. Then she leaned toward Lauren again and said, “I’d be taking up the opportunity to get myself some of that man if I were you.” She beamed.
Lauren shook her head. Did Jack turn all women into giant balls of lust ready to lie down and give their body up to him like a sacrifice to the gods? If these women—herself included, because let’s face it, more than once she could have easily given it up for him—were any indication, she would sayhell yes. She couldn’t blame them. He really was sex on legs.
While the women, excluding Karen, were coming to terms with their disappointment, Jack jogged up the few stairs in the grandstand, put his foot up on the empty seat on the other side of Lauren, and rested his forearms on his thigh. “Lauren, I see you’ve met some of the boys’ mums.” He smiled at the women. “How are we all this afternoon, ladies?”
Jersey women Henderson and Campbell sat up straight in their seats, smiled like young girls, and answered in unison, “Great, Jack. How are you?” Lauren suppressed a laugh.
Fluffing out her damaged hair and puffing out a large chest, Karen answered in a sultry voice, “Fantastic now that you’re here.”
Ducking her head, Lauren rolled her eyes.
The smile Jack gave Karen was polite and showed no interest in whatever she was offering. Women had a habit of doing that around him.
He spoke briefly to the group about their boys, waved to a woman sitting a few seats away, and called out “How’s it going?” to a couple of men standing at the railing around the field.
He looked down at Lauren with a playful grin. “Behave up here, honey. These lovely ladies think I’m a nice guy. Don’t go telling them what you really think about me.” He winked, leaned down, and smacked his lips on hers.
On a chorus of surprised gasps, hers included, he left and jogged back down the stairs and onto the grassy field. Her heart skidded to a stop. How was she going to explain herself out of this one?
All heads swiveled in her direction with surprised and accusatory expressions on their faces. Her face heated up as she struggled to find the words to explain what just happened. She had nothing. Besides, she didn’t think they’d believe any explanations even if she did have full use of her voice.
Henderson and Campbell jersey women smiled at each other like they’d known what was really going on from the start. Karen huffed, picked up her bag from the floor, and moved over to where the others sat in the grandstand.
Jack called out to the boys, “Okay, men, let’s train hard. I want to show my pretty lady what a great footy player I am.”
Some boys whooped and whistled at Jack’s comment while others groaned and made gagging noises. Jack laughed, scuffed the heads of the two boys closest to him, and then told them to run a lap of the field.
For the next hour Lauren watched him put the boys through their training drills. Jack ran along with the slower ones, praising them and cheering them on. He encouraged the boys who had trouble catching the ball to keep trying until eventually they did catch it. Their smiles lit up like Christmas lights at their achievement.
Not one of them complained they couldn’t do something. Jack had made them believe they could achieve anything if they kept practicing. They worked hard, and Jack constantly praised them for it.
At the end, it was the boys’ turn to put Jack through a few drills. They made him run three laps of the field, zigzag through orange cones, and do fifty push-ups and sit-ups. Jack groaned and complained that the boys were torturing him, but Lauren could tell he was doing it easily. And looked super-sexy doing it too. Henderson jersey woman hadn’t been wrong about how good his tanned, muscled legs looked in those red training shorts. His ropey, strong arms when he threw a ball around made her think about wanting them wrapped around her.
Lauren’s attention drifted back to the kids, and by their huge grins, she could tell they adored Jack. The happy expression on Jack’s face as he high-fived each boy at the end of training said the feeling was mutual. Watching him train the boys with their physical challenges had been amazing. More than once a lump had formed in her throat while she witnessed how patient and kind he was with them. He was a good man who cared about the people around him.
How could Lauren have ever thought Jack was shallow when all he’d ever shown her was a caring side? Just look at how he had handled her crying lapses. Most men would have run away, not wanting to involve himself in the problems of someone he hardly knew. Yet Jack made her feel like he genuinely cared and wanted to help take away the pain.
And then she thought about the kiss earlier in the grandstand and how it threw her head into a spin. It wasn’t a lust-fueled, toe-curling kiss like the ones before. It had been quick, sweet, andclaiming. A kiss telling everyone ‘this woman belongs to me’. And she wondered if that had been his intention. When they first met she would have thought it was a smooth trick to get what he wanted, but the more time they spent together she realized he cared and it was his way of showing it.
Damn, he was turning her emotions and everything she believed into a jumbled mess.
Chapter Twenty-Two
