Page 23 of The Perfect Pass
Bishop stood on the sidewalk in front of the string of quaint shops along Bulldog Avenue, refusing to budge at the end of his leash. Jackson had cajoled and encouraged the animal for the past twenty minutes, and they’d moved all of three feet. If the coach-speak didn’t work, he might have to resort to begging.
“Look, I don’t want to be out here after dark any more than you do.” Jackson gave the leash a gentle tug.
Still nothing.
He’d learned something about the school mascot in the past few days—something that hadn’t been mentioned atall in his employment contract, which Jackson had recently pored over with a fine-toothed comb in an effort to avoid any further surprises. Nowhere in all that fine print—not even in the all-important mascot clause—had anyone thought it necessary to mention that Bishop suffered from separation anxiety. It seemed like a vital nugget of information to leave out. Had he been given a heads-up, he might not have come home from his first full school day to find a hole the size of Texas in one of his sofa cushions.
Just when he’d begun to feel somewhat decent about himself—just when he’d thought he might have what it took to be a leader in this nutty community—he’d walked in the door of his rental home to find bits of foam stuffing covering the entire living room floor. The irony was that he hadn’t even known Bishop was capable of jumping onto the couch. Every time he wanted to get up there when Jackson was home, the dog planted his big head on the edge of the sofa cushion and gazed up at him with sad puppy-dog eyes, imploring to be picked up.
Now Jackson knew better. He was a sucker. Bishop already had him wrapped around his sizable paw, and contrary to what the dog-training videos on YouTube said, taking the pup on a brisk walk every day wasn’t helping his separation anxiety. Yesterday, Jackson had come home and found every single one of his socks scattered about the house. Today, the bulldog had somehow ripped apart a bag of flour. Every surface of the kitchen had been covered in white powder, and it wasn’t nearly as cute and endearing as it looked in Hallmark Christmas movies.
Bishop took a reluctant step and then collapsed into a heap in front of the lone storefront that still had its lightson. Laughter and music filtered from inside. It sounded like a party.
Jackson glanced up at the striped awning, expecting the place to be some kind of pub or maybe a bar. Weirdly, it was a florist. That explained the fresh flowers flanking the door, but it was awfully late for people to be inside a flower shop. He wondered what was going on in there, just like he wondered if there would ever be a day when Bishop Falls failed to surprise him.
Then, as he tried to peer inside the tiny window on the front door, the door itself swung open and a giggly Calla Dunne spilled onto the sidewalk.
At least it looked like Calla. Jackson had never seen her quite so…animated. Her cheeks were flushed as pink as a carnation, and she held some sort of flower arrangement in one of her hands—a giant white bloom with a random assortment of objects glued to its petals. The hodgepodge was surrounded by a tangle of green and white ribbons that hung nearly all the way to the ground. She stumbled as one of the ribbons caught beneath the sole of a red cowgirl boot, and Jackson reached out to steady her.
“Easy there,” he said, regarding her with a bemused grin.
“Oh.” Calla dropped the flower and her hands landed on his chest, splayed over his pectoral muscles. Her gaze traveled upward until their eyes met. “It’s you.”
“It’s me,” he said with a quirk of an eyebrow.
Her hands didn’t budge. She left them right where they were as a cute little furrow formed between her brows. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just out taking Bishop for a walk.” He tipped his head toward the dog, who’d scrambled to his feet to sniffthe dropped flower. Funny how he’d been too lazy to budge a second ago, and now he seemed as perky as ever.
“At this time of night?” She glanced at the full moon overhead, and when her gaze shifted back toward him, it landed on her fingertips, still pressed against the front of his Chicago Cyclones T-shirt.
She cleared her throat and promptly snatched her hands back, folding her arms across her chest as she schooled her expression to one of carefully guarded professionalism. Too bad. He’d enjoyed the brief glimpse he’d gotten of her finally letting her hair down.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked as the color in her cheeks deepened a shade or two closer to the cherry red leather of her chosen footwear.
Good question. He’d wondered the same thing every time he found himself watching her banging away on her laptop or taking notes in the stands at practice when he should’ve been paying attention to what was happening on the field.
“I’m not sure, actually. For some reason, I just find you hard to look away from,” he said in a rare moment of unguarded honesty.
“Stop.” She held up a hand mere inches from his face, and Jackson had the ridiculous urge to reach up and weave his fingers through hers.
This town was doing strange things to him. That’s what Jackson told himself, anyway, because it was a far less dangerous theory than believingshewas the one responsible for his recent earnest streak.
“Stop what?” he asked.
“Stop flirting or whatever it is that you’re doing right now.”Her eyes glittered in the moonlight, as blue and brilliant as the rarest of sapphires.
“Calla, if I was flirting with you, you’d know it,” he said evenly.
She let out a little cough. “Okay, well. It’s just that I’m a reporter and you’re—”
“The object of every single one of your articles.” He nodded. “Got it.”
Her mouth dropped open for a beat, and then she collected herself. “Arrogant, much? I write about the Bulldogs, not you.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he teased.
He’d read all her columns, because of course he had. He’d been dying to know what she scribbled in that notepad of hers. Given his most recent newsworthy occurrences, he’d expected her to rip him to shreds. Color him surprised when she’d called him a natural at coaching, even if that compliment had been tempered by a line in today’s column that called his offensive strategy “unimaginative.”
