Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney #4)(58)
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IAN’S WORDS HUNG in the air after he left, giving Brooke plenty of food for thought. Admittedly, she’d never paid too much attention to football—possibly because she had a teeny, tiny bias against the sport. Growing up, like in many towns, the most popular kids in her high school had been the football players and cheerleaders, and since she definitely hadn’t been part of that crowd, she’d dismissed the whole scene as too clique-ish.
But now she thought back to that day at the Cubs game, and the way Ford, Tucker, and Charlie had nearly swooned when Cade had walked into the skybox. They’d gone on and on about Cade’s college football days, particularly his Rose Bowl victory, yet it was a part of his life that Brooke herself knew very little about.
And maybe that was a good thing. Since she didn’t want to get too close emotionally, then it was probably better that she didn’t know all about Cade’s past experiences, the things that had shaped him to be the man he’d become.
That settled, she went back to work. But she heard Ford’s voice in her head, distracting her.
It’s only one of the most famous moments in college football history.
On the other hand . . .
She did work with sports teams all the time as part of her job. If Cade’s Rose Bowl win was that big of a deal, then she probably should know more about it. It was research, really. Besides, it was one football game—it wasn’t as if she was going to get weak in the knees from watching him throw a few nice passes.
That decided, Brooke got up from her desk and shut her office door. She grabbed her iPad out of her briefcase, then took a seat and fired up Google. She searched “Cade Morgan Rose Bowl,” and clicked on “videos.”
Voilà.
She scrolled through the various YouTube clips, clicked on the link that looked most promising, and settled in at her desk. It was a fourteen-minute highlight clip, beginning with all sorts of pomp and circumstance and an announcer talking over swelling marching band music: “We’re live in Pasadena, where the dreams, the blood, sweat, and tears, the perseverance, and the anticipation, have all come down to this: the 2001 Rose Bowl, presented by . . .”
Blah, blah, blah . . . Come on people, I’m a busy woman, let’s get to the good stuff.
Finally, things shifted to the actual game footage, and—
There he was. Twenty-one-year-old Cade, wearing his purple Wildcats uniform—helmet, shoulder pads, and all—with “Morgan” blazed proudly across the back of his jersey.
So cute.
Brooke watched a montage that covered the big moments in the first half of the game, plays in which Cade dropped back out of the pocket and dodged and weaved and ran and passed the ball, and then right before halftime he did this thing where he fought off one lineman and spun around and charged through another guy to get to the end zone and tie the game, and—
Holy crap, he was awesome.
In the third quarter, they cut to a shot of Cade standing on the sidelines, watching while the refs did a measurement to see if Northwestern had stopped a key first down. It was the first time during the highlights clip that they had shown him with his helmet off, and Brooke smiled when she saw Cade, all sweaty and dirty, with his dark brown hair mussed and shorter than he wore it today.
The video went on, featuring clip after clip of Cade in action. There could be no doubt that he was the star of the game—but as Brooke continued to watch, her heart began to beat faster with nervousness.
Because, unlike anyone who’d been watching that game live, she knew how it was going to end.
As the highlights from the fourth quarter flew by, her anticipation grew. Finally, with fifteen seconds left on the clock and Northwestern down by four points, that purple Morgan jersey got behind the offensive line for what Brooke knew was Cade’s last time playing on a football field.
She held her breath as the center snapped the ball.
Cade dropped back, skillfully moving into position and setting up for the pass—no desperate Hail Mary here—and Brooke saw the linebacker charging around the line, heading right for Cade, and she had no doubt that Cade saw him, too, yet he never wavered as he pulled back and threw a perfect, beautiful, sixty-five-yard pass right into the hands of the wide receiver waiting in the end zone.
The crowd went absolutely wild.
What everyone failed to see at the time—the entire stadium’s eyes had been on the ball and the wide receiver—but what Brooke saw in a slow-motion replay from a different camera angle, was that the linebacker had tackled Cade a split second after he’d released the ball. They hit the ground hard together, all that force and weight landing on Cade’s right shoulder.
Brooke watched the replay with no small amount of awe as Cade used one arm, the one not injured, to shove the linebacker off of him so he could see if the pass was complete. The instant the ball dropped into the wide receiver’s hands, he rolled onto his back on the field, one fist raised in victory.
Seconds later, a mob of his ecstatic teammates fell on him, one piling on top of the other in the excitement.
Brooke saw it in their faces, the moment his teammates knew something was wrong. The raucous celebration gave way to frantic shouts for the trainer and concerned expressions as everyone cleared out of the way to give Cade space. He remained on the field for some time, talking to the coach and the trainers as they looked him over. When they finally helped Cade up and he walked off the field, the whole stadium, previously quiet, broke into thunderous applause and cheers.