Any Way You Want It Read online

  “I assume you played for the Mustangs?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m not the biggest football fan, but even I know that the rivalry between the Maplesville Mustangs and the St. Pierre Pirates goes back a long time. I remember this huge fight during Lance’s senior year. The refs called the game before halftime.”

  “Your brother threw the first punch,” Dale argued.

  Nyree’s eyes went wide. “That was you?”

  Dale rubbed the back of his head again. “Yeah, that was me. I guess Lance called himself getting back at me for that hit against Desmond the year before.” He looked up. “How do you remember that fight? Were you at the game?”

  “Yeah. I was a freshman the year Lance graduated from high school. Thank God we only had one year together.”

  Dale grinned. “Overprotective much?”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you only knew. I wouldn’t have had a social life at all if I’d had to go through my entire high school career with Lance glaring at every boy that so much as looked at me.”

  “Can’t say I blame them,” Dale said. “If you were my little sister—”

  Nyree shushed him with a finger to his lips. “Don’t even say the words.”

  His lips stretched into a smile underneath her finger, which remained on his mouth. “Probably better that I don’t think of you that way,” he said.

  His cellphone rang, startling them both.

  Dale pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen, but instead of answering the phone, he pressed the red decline button and shoved it in his pocket.

  “I have to be somewhere,” he said. “Actually, I should have been there five minutes ago.”

  A thought occurred to her. Nyree gestured to the pocket where he’d put his phone. “I just realize that I never asked you this, but is there a girlfriend in the picture? You can be straight with me.”

  He shook his head. “There’s no girlfriend.”

  His admission made her feel ridiculously happy. “Good,” she said with a smile.

  Dale blew out an exasperated breath. “There’s no girlfriend, but—”

  “Don’t say it.” She could tell what he was thinking. Reluctance traced across his features. “Don’t even think it,” Nyree said, repeating the words he’d said to her not even twenty minutes ago.

  Dale tilted his head back and kneaded the bridge of his nose. He said it anyway. “Me and you…it probably isn’t a good idea.”

  “Neither is eating an entire pan of brownies, but I did that last week and I don’t regret a single crumb,” she said. “I’m not saying we have to dive into anything serious. What’s wrong with the two of us having coffee or dinner while talking about something other than the house renovations?”

  She closed the distance between them and wrapped her fingers around his wrists. “Are you attracted to me?”

  “Do you really have to ask that question?”

  “Apparently,” she answered.

  He blew out another breath. “Yes. I am attracted to you. I’m absurdly attracted to you.”

  “I don’t think it’s absurd at all, because I feel the same way.” She squeezed his hands. “We can start slow. Okay?”

  He nodded, a small smile traveling across his lips. “Yeah, okay.”

  Nyree could barely contain the giddiness coursing through her. The urge to stand up on her tiptoes and kiss him slammed into her, but she was afraid he’d freak out. Instead, she just smiled like a delighted loon while still holding onto his hands.

  The door to the shed opened and Desmond poked his head in. “You’re still here? Don’t you have a house?”

  Dale tried to pull his hands away, but Nyree tightened her grip. She looked at her brother. “Leave,” she said.

  “Mama said the lasagna is ready,” Desmond said. He pointed to Dale. “He’s not eating dinner here.”

  “He is if he wants to,” Nyree said.

  “Thanks, but I have to get going,” Dale reminded her. He gently slipped his hands from her grip.

  Desmond snorted as he closed the door.

  “Don’t let Desmond get to you,” Nyree said.

  “Your brothers have been pains in my ass since high school,” Dale said. “This is just par for the course.”

  “I have to admit, knowing that it pisses Desmond off to have you working for me is a bonus I hadn’t expected.”

  Dale’s deep chuckle reverberated around the small shed. “Happy I could be of service.” He ran the back of his fingers along her arm in a gentle caress. Goosebumps immediately populated her skin. “I really need to get going,” he said.

  “And I need to get through dinner so I can get back to painting baseboards.”

  “Are you sleeping at Whitmer House?”

  She nodded. “Now that I’ve moved my old futon there I’ll probably split my nights between my apartment and the house.”

  “Remember, I plan to work there full-time starting tomorrow, so don’t be alarmed when I’m knocking on the door at five a.m.”

  “You are not showing up at five a.m.,” Nyree said.

  “Hey, you’re the one who wants the house to be done in less than two months.”

  “Fine,” she said. “But don’t be surprised when I’m still wearing my pajamas.”

  He tipped his head back and let out a weary sigh.

  “What’s wrong?” Nyree asked.

  “You just ruined my fantasy. All this time I was hoping you didn’t wear any pajamas.”

  Nyree burst out laughing. She stood on her tiptoes and brought her lips to his ear.

  “Just remember, everything’s negotiable.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Dale climbed into his truck but he didn’t start the ignition. Instead, he thumped his forehead onto the steering wheel, cursing the universe and everything in it.

  Desmond and Lance Grant?

  Seriously?

  Of the billions of men around the world, Nyree’s older brothers just had to be Desmond and Lance, two of the biggest dicks on the planet. The Grant boys were known as “Double Trouble” back in their high school football days. The name fit. They were trouble.

  And they were Nyree’s brothers.

  “Shit,” Dale whispered.

  That revelation sealed it for him. As much as he wanted it to happen, there wasn’t even the remote possibility of he and Nyree getting together. It was a dicey proposition from the start and now there was just no way.

  She may be cute as hell, and the way those medical scrubs hugged her ass had him planning out the wet dream he’d have tonight, but it wasn’t worth the drama of dealing with the Grant boys. Just seeing Desmond again resurrected thoughts of a time that Dale had fought hard to put behind him. A time in his life that he now looked back on with regret.

  He had so damn many regrets. Over what he’d allowed other people to do to him back then. Over the way he’d allowed himself to be used and then tossed away like a washed up rag doll once he could no longer be of use on the football field.

  Dale banged his fist against the steering wheel.

  He couldn’t go there. Not right now. He didn’t have the time.

  He needed to be there for Sam, and the last thing his friend needed was Dale coming over feeling all salty over past disappointments.

  Finally, he started up the truck and backed out of the driveway. As he drove toward Highway 421, a black Mustang rolled past him. Lance Grant sat behind the wheel.

  Dale shook his head. He hadn’t seen the Grant boys for months. Not since he ran into them back at The Corral, when a drunken Sam nearly got his ass kicked for trash talking with them. Yet here he was, seeing both Desmond and Lance in the span of twenty minutes.

  No, he did not need this kind of drama in his life.

  Twenty minutes later, he parked his pickup in an open space in front of Sam’s apartment complex. Dale had considered moving into one of these newer places that had come up in the last couple of years, but he was comfortable in the little one-bedroom shotgun
he rented in an older part of Maplesville. Sure, he had to drive a little farther to pick up a fast food burger or buy groceries, but it was an inconvenience he’d learned to live with.

  He entered Sam’s apartment and instantly felt the pall that had settled over the place. No words were said, only a short nod between him, Ian, and Sam, who sat slumped on the sofa, a can of ginger ale in his hand.

  A few months ago Sam would have been drinking a beer, or even a glass of hard liquor. They’d all had their first taste of alcohol back in high school, but it had never been anything to get worked up about. A beer while watching the NFL on Sunday, maybe toasting each other with a shot of whiskey when one of them had good news to share.

  However, once Sam’s dad was diagnosed with ALS, their friend’s drinking went from occasional to daily. And as his dad’s illness progressed, so did Sam’s drinking. A few months ago, Dale and Ian decided an intervention was in order.

  So far, so good.

  There were times when Dale still felt as if Sam was teetering too close to the edge, but he was no longer on the brink of losing control. Now that they’d all come to terms with the fact that Charlie Stewart’s death was imminent, they were all figuring out their own ways of dealing with it. One of those ways was just being together.

  Dale grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge and went over to the sofa, taking a seat on the opposite end from Sam. A basketball game was on the TV, but not being a huge fan, Dale didn’t pay much attention to the various teams outside of the New Orleans franchise.

  As time ticked by, Dale wished he could say that the silence was comfortable, but it wasn’t. Tonight was different. Ian had called him on his way from St. Pierre and filled Dale in on the decision Sam and his mom had made to transfer Charlie to a hospice facility. It was another significant step on the road to saying goodbye. The reality of what was happening just a few miles down the road at Sam’s parents’ house filled the space.

  Another ten uneasy minutes crawled by before Sam picked up the remote and lowered the volume on the game.

  “Alright, this is depressing the shit out of me. Talk,” Sam said. He tossed the remote on the sofa cushion between them and turned to Dale. “Ian said you left Harding to work on some old house?”

  Dale took a sip of his drink, then set it next to a bowl of popcorn that sat on one of the milk crates that stood in for a coffee table.

  “I haven’t left Harding permanently,” he said. “One of Vanessa’s clients was desperate for a contractor, but couldn’t find one who could do the job by her deadline. I’m helping her to renovate the old Whitmer place on Silver Oak.” He gave them a brief overview of what Nyree planned to do with the house, before dropping the bomb on them. “But get this, she’s Desmond and Lance Grant’s younger sister.”

  “Oh, shit!” Ian burst out laughing. “I haven’t seen those two since that night at The Corral.”

  Sam huffed. “I ran into Lance at a club in New Orleans a few weeks ago. He was trying to run game on this girl that was way out of his league. Craziest part? She fell for it. Who would have thought Shrek would get some play?”

  Dale didn’t ask what his friend was doing at a club. He’d have to trust that Sam was capable of making smart choices from now on.

  “Well,” he continued. “Nyree sure as hell doesn’t take after him. Hard to believe she’s even related to those two.”

  “Oh yeah?” Sam asked, twisting around on the sofa to face Dale. “So, what’s she like?”

  “What are we? Thirteen?”

  “C’mon, man,” Sam droned. “Don’t start holding back on us now.”

  What was the point in remaining tight lipped? Ian and Sam already knew every damn thing about him. Did it really matter if they knew he had it bad for his two biggest enemies’ younger sister?

  “I’m not holding anything back, because nothing happened and nothing will happen.” God, it pained him to say that. Dale looked over at his two friends. “I gotta admit, she’s hot as hell.”

  “How hot?” Ian asked.

  “On a scale of poblano to habanero,” Sam said. Dale rolled his eyes at the mention of his friend’s ludicrous chili-pepper scale. “Come on, man. What is she? Ancho? Serrano?”

  “Ghost pepper,” Dale answered.

  “Bullshit,” his friends both said at the same time.

  Dale took another sip from his soda can. “I swear,” he said. “Turns out she was only a freshman at St. Pierre High back when we were seniors at Maplesville.”

  “Desmond Grant will go ballistic if you try to get with his little sister,” Sam said.

  “I won’t try to get with her, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with whether or not Desmond approves,” Dale said. He wanted to get that straight, for both his friends and for himself.

  Okay, fine. For a few moments there he’d allowed himself to consider the possibility of starting something with Nyree, but Dale knew it wasn’t a good idea even before her brothers came into the picture. He would heed Vanessa’s warning about the risks involved in hooking up with someone you’re doing business with. He’d done enough things in his life that he eventually regretted. He didn’t want to add to the list.

  “I have a job to do for her,” Dale continued. “That’s what I need to concentrate on. This renovation project is the perfect opportunity to jumpstart my own general contractor business.”

  “You’re still talking about that, man?” Sam asked. “What about that kid you’re coaching? Now that’s what you should concentrate on.”

  Dale heaved an exhausted breath. “Don’t start with that again,” he said. “This training thing with Kendrick is just a one-time gig.”

  “How is the training going?” Ian asked.

  “We’ve only had four sessions, but so far I’m impressed. I meet with him again tomorrow,” Dale said. “There’s only a couple of months before spring training starts, and his dad is sending him to this football camp somewhere up north. He wants him to be—and I quote—‘better than any other linebacker in the country’.”

  “From what you’ve said about him, his dad sounds like a dick.”

  “His dad is a dick, but Kendrick isn’t a bad kid. And, to be honest, he has the potential to be one of the best in the country. The kid’s instincts on the field are on point. We just need to work on his concentration.”

  “Dude, you need to do this full-time,” Ian said. “The staff at Maplesville High would hire you as an assistant coach in a minute. I’m tired of telling you this.”

  And Dale was tired of hearing it. His friends had been on his back for well over a year about coaching at their old high school, ever since one of the long-time assistant coaches left to teach at a high school in Baton Rouge. Once he started working with Kendrick, both Sam and Ian had jumped on that bandwagon. If he didn’t want to coach full time, both thought he should launch his own football-training business.

  Dale would never admit it to his friends, but he’d been tempted. With the competition for spots on high school and collegiate teams getting tougher, there was a growing market for one-on-one private instructors.

  When Lowell Robertson first approached him about tutoring Kendrick in the middle linebacker position, Dale hadn’t been sure how to respond. After his career-ending injury in the Senior Bowl in college, which took away all dreams of playing in the NFL and changed the course of his life, Dale had walked away from football. It had taken him two years before he could even bring himself to watch a game on television. But once he welcomed football back into his life, he’d quickly fallen back in love with the game.

  Coaching would be like a dream come true for him. There was something seductive about the game that called to him.

  Back when he was in high school, he never just played the game. He’d studied it. Lived it. He would spend hours going over plays in his head. He would workout in his backyard, using lawn furniture as opposing players, timing the quickness in which he could get past a defender.

  Back then, football wasn’t just
a game to him. It was everything.

  And therein lay his biggest problem.

  Maybe if he had paid attention to something other than football, he would have recognized that the game could be snatched away from him in an instant. And he could have been better prepared for a life without it.

  “Enough with me,” Dale said, needing to put an end to this subject. He turned to Ian. “What about you? How was Las Vegas? You lose all your money at the blackjack table?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to even see the blackjack table,” Ian said. “Sonny’s cupcake baking competition took up most of our time.”

  “That’s a good thing, because you suck at blackjack,” Sam said.

  Ian pitched an empty water bottle at his head.

  “It’s all good. The cupcake competition is the reason we went out there in the first place,” he pointed out.

  Ian’s girlfriend, Madison White, was Maplesville’s new star pastry chef. Sonny had arrived in town last year in her little VW Beetle, rocking a huge Afro and looking like someone who’d walked straight out of a Pam Grier movie from the 70s. She’d started out as Ian’s tenant, living in the apartment above his garage. But that arrangement only lasted a few months. She’d moved from Ian’s garage to his house, and was now helping him to raise his teenage sister, Kimmie.

  “I’m sorry Sonny didn’t win the grand prize,” Dale said.

  “She came in fifth, which is still pretty awesome,” Ian said. “It was enough in prize money to cover the cost of the trip, and now she can say that she placed in a national baking contest. Sonny wasn’t going out there to win it all. She just wanted to gain some name recognition.”

  “At least you two had a good time,” Sam said.

  Ian nodded and shrugged. “We also got married, so that’s good.”

  Sam and Dale both stared for several heartbeats before they simultaneously shouted, “What!”

  Ian just sat there expressionless, as if he hadn’t just dropped atomic bomb-size news on them.

  “What?” he asked with another shrug. “We were going to do it eventually. We passed one of those wedding chapels on our way to the hotel when we first arrived and decided to pop in and get married.”