Loving Him Off the Field (Santa Fe Bobcats #2)(22)

“As far as Bobcats go, I’m pretty low on the totem pole.” He said it so clearly, with no false humility, she knew he believed it. He honestly thought he was the next thing to a nobody. “I don’t have weird fan mail . . . that I know of. Maybe my agent weeds it out. I haven’t had anyone follow me back. A few people in the complex know I’m here, but they have been pretty decent about leaving me to myself. I don’t use the community workout equipment or swim in the community pool, and I don’t linger in the common areas. I’m in, I’m out. And until you,” he added with a hard glare, “no reporters have given me more than a few questions about my personal life.”

She beamed. “So glad to be unique.”

Her phone rang and she dug around in her tote for several seconds, blindly searching for the object shaped like the iPhone. Then Killian reached into his own cargo shorts pocket, pulled out his own iPhone, and silenced the ringer.

“Oh. That was you?” She waited, but the ringing had stopped.

“Yeah?”

“We have the same ringtone.” She smirked. “Something in common. Watch out, or you’ll find out we’re more alike than you want.”

“That’ll be the day,” he said darkly.

She dug around her tote for a moment, pulling out her massive jumble of keys and setting them on the coffee table before continuing to dig for her phone. She heard Killian pick up the keys, but she didn’t look up. “Where the hell is my phone?”

“It was my phone,” he reminded her, like she was an idiot who couldn’t keep up. The keys rattled in his hands.

“No, I need mine. I have a recording app, so I can record this instead of writing . . . ah! There we go.” Phone in hand, she looked up and found Killian rotating the ball of metal and plastic around in his hand, staring at it with a horrified look on his face. “What?”

“This thing has to weigh at least three pounds. Why would you keep this much crap on your key ring?” He shook it, wincing at the clanging sound.

She held out a hand, raising a brow when he ignored it to keep staring at the key ring. “I don’t play favorites with key chains. I like them.” She waited another few moments, then said quietly, “They were my mom’s, okay?”

He must have heard the silent plea in the words, because he gently placed them in her hand without hesitation. “It’s probably a health hazard. All that weight in your bag that is being carried on one shoulder. You could develop a hump. Or a slump. Or whatever.”

She rolled her eyes and let the keys et al. fall into her bag. Opening up her recording app, she set it on the couch cushion between them. Killian shifted so he was facing her, one leg now bent on the couch. She mirrored his pose. And did her best to ignore the fact that they were both short enough, the couch would easily accommodate their bodies, length-wise. “Why kicker?”

He took another swallow of water before setting it down on the coffee table. No coaster. “I tried out for linebacker, but they said I was too big.”

She sighed.

“I enjoy kicking things.” He picked up the bottle, then set it down again without drinking. His eyes stayed on the table. “I played soccer up through high school, not football. Never played a day of football in my life until college. Wasn’t even a fan of the game, really.”

“Yet you played four years in college.” She smiled a little at his glance. “Google, remember? I warned you I’d be looking.”

“Yes, I did. I tried out for the soccer team, but I didn’t make the cut. However, the football coach had been meeting with the athletic director in the stands of the soccer field that day, saw me making goals from the longest distance, and asked if I’d ever thought of kicking a football instead of a soccer ball.”

“What’d you say?”

“I laughed at him.” He shook his head in amusement. “It was so absurd. I just got cut from the soccer team, and here was the football coach asking me to try out for him. Not good enough for soccer, a game I’d played since I was four years old, but good enough for football? Something I’d barely even watched?”

“So soccer was your passion, then.” He scowled at that, as if not caring for her choice of words. “Okay, not passion, maybe. First choice. Soccer was your thing.”

“I knew I wasn’t going to play soccer professionally. It’s just not realistic. But yeah, I wanted to eke out four more years of good, solid competition before I hung up my cleats and moved on. I thought college graduation was the beginning of adulthood, when I’d stop playing games and start being serious about life. Instead . . .” He held up his hands in surrender. “Now I play games for a living. Ironic, right?”

“Did you come to love football like you love soccer?”

He seemed to consider that for a moment.

He started to reach for his water again, then sat back without taking it and ran a hand through his hair. The mass, still damp from his shower, curled behind his ears and flopped in dark lines over his forehead. “I . . . I don’t know.”

The simple question—one she hadn’t intended to trip him up with—seemed to throw him off. “Let’s move on. Did you have to try out for the team?”

“Oh, yeah.” On steadier ground now, he grinned. “I sucked. Didn’t make a single shot through the upright that time. Thank God they had me try out alone . . . and probably for that exact reason,” he added, his voice trailing off. “Hmm. I didn’t think about it at the time. Anyway, I was sure I’d just wasted two hours of my time. And my leg was really f*cking sore. Sorry, freaking.” He winced and stared at her phone, still sitting between them.