Page 51 of Necessary Roughness

Chapter Eight

JORDAN WASN’T SURE how she felt about seeing Tanner’s parents again. They’d met while he was in the hospital. Tanner and Jordan had slept together, so it seemed like the next logical step, but she wondered if she needed to go stay with her parents while his folks were here. Meeting them was one thing; they might feel differently if they knew she was living in his house. It wasn’t like Tanner needed a ton of physical therapy anymore, either. They worked together a little in the mornings and the evenings in his gym, but now it was mostly strengthening and stretching exercises. He was at the physical therapy practice a couple of days a week to work with her, and he saw the massage therapist. Tanner’s rehabilitation nurse, Kyan, was tapering off the time he spent at Tanner’s now, too. He was finally safe to take a shower without supervision. The rest of his recovery depended on Tanner and how willing he was to keep working until he had only a slight limp when he walked.

She’d spent a month with a man who drove her out of her mind with irritation, made her want to scream on a regular basis, and ended up melting her heart as he moved from someone she initially detested to someone she was developing real feelings for. She should get her suitcases out, pack up her stuff, and hit the road before his mom and dad showed up.

The sliding glass door that led to the patio outside her room (and the comfortable padded deck chair) beckoned. If she packed her things, she could spend a few minutes enjoying the chair and the view one last time before she left. She was going to miss the beautiful view and the luxurious and comfortable room, and she’d miss Sadie. She’d filled out a few rental applications over the past week. One of them would pan out, and she’d go back to having her own place again. Tanner would have to ask her out if he wanted to see her. She grabbed her suitcases out of the walk-in closet, flopped them open on the bed, and started pulling stuff out of the built-in chest of drawers.

Ten minutes later, tears were running down her cheeks, and she sat down hard on the side of the bed. She didn’t want to leave. She couldn’t stay.

Sadie looked up at her with entreating eyes. If there was one thing she’d learned from living with a Labrador retriever, they were never full and they all had advanced degrees in begging. She started sniffing Jordan’s pockets for treats.

“Don’t give me the eyes. I know you. We’ll go outside, and maybe your dad will find you some treats later.”

Sadie gave Jordan a play bow. Jordan reached out to open the sliding glass door, and they stepped outside. Despite the fact it was overcast today, the air was still warm and it was comfortable to sit and relax. Sadie explored the yard while Jordan concentrated on breathing deeply. She brushed more tears off her face. Sadie sniffed around to see if other dogs had been in her yard.

Despite Jordan’s best efforts to stay awake, she fell asleep. She woke late that afternoon to Sadie’s happy barking and the dog racing upstairs. She heard a woman’s voice. “There’s my sweet Sadie! Grandpa brought some treats for you, sweetheart. We’ll get them out later.”

“Mom, she knows what that word means. She’s going to bug you until she gets them.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. She’s such a love. Sadie, come over here, and sit on the couch with me.”

She heard an older man’s voice. “Christine, you treat that dog like she’s a baby. Dogs don’t understand that.”

“Your grandpa is just cranky that I didn’t bring any treats for him. Up. Up. There we go! We’ll cuddle and ignore the boys, won’t we?”

Unless Jordan was wrong, Tanner’s mom and dad had arrived.

“Mom, I have some steaks. Would you and Dad like baked potatoes? I also have some salad.”

“I’ll get them, honey. Why don’t you relax with your dad for a little while? Also, isn’t Jordan here? We should ask her if she’d like to have dinner with us.”

“Sure, Mom,” Tanner said. “That would be great.”

“I’m surprised she’s not upstairs yet. Didn’t you tell me she’s in the guest room? I’ll go find her,” Tanner’s mom said. “Come on, Sadie.”

A couple of minutes later, Jordan heard footsteps outside her bedroom and a tap on the door.

“Come in,” Jordan said.

Christine Cole walked into Jordan’s room. “It’s great to see you again. You probably heard us upstairs already.” She nodded at the half-full suitcases on the bed. “We are so glad that you were able to stay here and help Tanner with his physical therapy. He has made such wonderful progress since the last time we saw him. We wanted to stay with him while he was getting better, but he wanted us to come up when he could take us around to the tourist stuff. You know how that is.”

“Yes. My parents live here, and they still go to the tourist spots too.”

Christine either didn’t notice the tearstains on Jordan’s face or chose to not mention them.

“Are you all going to see some of the local stuff while you’re here?” Jordan said.

“I hope so. We came up to find out what happened this morning.”

“Has Tanner explained yet?”

“Oh, no. He has some other things to explain too. He must have told you about his coach calling him.” She reached out and gave Jordan’s hand a squeeze. “You’ve been crying.”

“I—I was surprised.” She was a lot more than surprised, but she wasn’t going to go into it right now.

“Tanner wanted to get into coaching after he retired from the league. He’s not going to play again, so his coach offered him an assistant coaching position with his old team in Atlanta. He’s leaving next week.”

When he’d talked with her about all this last night, Tanner had made it sound like nothing was definite and he was still in the interviewing process. This must have happened in the past couple of hours. Jordan tried to pretend like she knew exactly what his mom was talking about. “Oh, of course.”

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