Secret Baby Scandal. Joanne Rock
football legacy, but there was no room for failure. No NFL team sat in a brighter spotlight—the Gladiators doled out the highest number of press passes to media members. And if Jean-Pierre didn’t hold their interest? He lost ink—and fans—to the second NFL club in New York, the one he got stuck sharing a stadium with on the weekends. He’d learned to play the press as well as he played his position on the field, was unwilling to lose the traction he’d gained since arriving in the Big Apple.
“Are you ready?” a New York sports radio personality asked him as the number of interviewers around him multiplied.
Jean-Pierre nodded, shoving his still-damp hair off his forehead before straightening his tie. The fast showers after a game barely took the steam off him. His muscles remained hot long afterward, especially since he did the interviews in suit and tie. His silk jacket weighed on his shoulders like a stack of wool blankets after two hours on the field dodging hits from the fastest D-line in the game.
Around him, the room quieted. The doors had been secured. Waiting for the first question to be fired his way, he peered past the reporters to the fans in the Coaches Club. All around the space, huge televisions that normally broadcast the game were now filled with the feed from the interview room. Jean-Pierre’s gaze roamed over to where the team owner sat, holding court at one end of the bar with a handful of minor celebrities and a few of the first-year players.
And just when he needed his focus most, that’s when he glimpsed her.
The head coach’s daughter, Tatiana Doucet.
Infuriating. Sexy. And completely off-limits.
Their impulsive one-night stand last year had wrecked any chance they might have had at recovering their friendship. But dammit all, just looking at her still set his body on fire in a way that tripled any heat lingering from his time on the field.
He tugged at his tie and took in the sight of her, unable to tear his eyes away.
Tall and lean, she wore one of those dresses that showed off mile-long legs. Even though the rest of the dress was modest—splashes of colors highlighted with sequins, neckline up to her throat, sleeves that hit her wrist—the acres of bare skin from the middle of her thigh that trailed south were enough to stop traffic. She wore a silk scarf around her hair like a headband, no doubt to hold back the riot of dark brown curls that brushed her shoulders. Curls he remembered plunging his hands into during the best sex of his life. She stood at the back of the room, hovering close to an exit as if she wanted to be ready to run at first sight of him.
He understood that feeling well.
The punch to his chest from just seeing her was so strong he missed the first question in the interview, the words a warble of background noise in his head. How long had it been since she’d shown up at any Gladiators event?
Not since last season. Jean-Pierre hadn’t laid eyes on her since that ill-advised night they’d spent tearing off each other’s clothes.
Ignoring the aggravating rush of air though his lungs at spotting the woman he’d once cared about—a woman who’d since traded her soul for the sake of her job as a trial attorney—Jean-Pierre focused on the man holding the microphone.
“Run that question by me again?” He hitched the heel of his shoe on the metal bar of the director’s chair and tried to get comfortable and relax into the interview the way he always did, even though his pulse hammered hard and his temperature spiked.
A low rumble of laughter from the journalists told Jean-Pierre he’d missed something. The throng crowded him, the handheld mics pushing closer while the boom mic overhead lowered a fraction. The sudden tension in the air was thick and palpable.
“No doubt it’s a question you can’t prepare for.” The reporter from Gladiators TV, a popular app for mobile users, grinned at him. “But I have to ask what you think of Tatiana Doucet’s remark to me just a minute ago, that she wouldn’t bet against the Bayou Bomber playing in his home state when you match up against your brother’s team in week twelve?”
The words sunk in. Hard. They damn near knocked him back in his chair.
Tatiana had said that? Implying she would bet against the Gladiators, the team her father coached? Or, more precisely, she would bet against Jean-Pierre.
Her father was going to have a conniption over that remark. Not just because of the suggestion that anyone in his family would bet on a game in any way, which was strictly forbidden. Jack Doucet would also spit nails over the fact that his own daughter was generating media hype in favor of an opponent.
Jean-Pierre didn’t spare a glance to see the head coach’s reaction in real time out in the Coaches Club, however. He’d been giving interviews too long to get caught flat-footed twice in a row. He wasn’t about to let the media play him over a thoughtless remark Tatiana must have uttered with no regard to who might overhear. Hell no. Instead, he spouted the first scrap of damage control his brain had to offer.
“My guess is that Miss Doucet would like to fire up the Gladiators and help us play our best, even if that means putting a little good-natured ribbing into the mix.” He flashed his most careless grin in a performance worthy of an Academy Award given the way she’d just kicked his teeth in.
Ten reporters asked questions at the same time, the cacophony making it hard to hear what anyone was saying. They ended up deferring to the New York Post reporter, a cantankerous older guy who scared off any journalist who hadn’t been around since the typewriter era.
“C’mon, Reynaud,” he growled, a sour expression on his face while he took notes in longhand. “Her words don’t sound playful to me. When even the coach’s daughter doesn’t believe in you—”
“Hey. You can stop right there.” Jean-Pierre cut the guy off, unwilling to let him stir the pot with that line of questioning. “Tatiana and I went to school together and I know her well. I guarantee she was joking.” He sensed the unrest in the room despite his reassurances. This remark was the kind of thing that overshadowed games. Teams. Whole freaking seasons. And he was not going to allow one superficial remark to steal the spotlight from the Gladiators’ hard work.
So he lied through his teeth.
“In fact,” he continued, never allowing that fake smile to falter, “Tatiana will be going with me to New Orleans as a special guest of the Reynaud family during the bye week. She can’t wait to visit Bayou country again.”
He glanced outside the glass to where she’d been standing earlier, but she had disappeared. No doubt she hadn’t wanted to field follow-up questions. Or answer to her father.
Or see him? Yes, that bothered him more than it should. But he couldn’t deny he missed her.
When they were teenagers, Tatiana had spent two years at a prep school half an hour away from the Reynaud family compound. Consequently, she’d visited his house on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain plenty of times when they were younger.
The beat of silence following Jean-Pierre’s announcement might have been laughable if he hadn’t needed the time to brace himself for round two of the questions that didn’t have a damn thing to do with the game he’d just played. But he’d set them all back on their heels for a second.
“A guest of the family or of yours?”
One reporter barely finished speaking before the next question.
“Does it bother you that she prosecuted your old teammate in a sexual harassment suit last winter?”
“Is she invited to your brother’s wedding?”
Reporters were talking over each other again, firing off questions left and right, but this time Jean-Pierre could pick out a few of them. He had no intention of discussing the weeks he and Tatiana had sat on opposite sides of a tense courtroom while she used all her talents as an attorney to win a civil suit against one of his old friends. As for the wedding, Gervais planned to marry a foreign princess in New Orleans during the team’s bye week—the week neither the Gladiators nor the Hurricanes