Brandon had been hired after the team had interviewed three or four candidates. The GM had liked that he had worked with the offensive coordinator before and that he had built up the stats in Seattle during his tenure there.
There were no images or mention of a girlfriend.
I did find an article about his divorce.
A picture of him with his daughters at what looked like a press conference, maybe announcing his hiring. They were cute. Both blond, the older one gangly, like she’d just had a growth spurt. The younger one had round cheeks and a devilish grin. He was holding her hand and had his arm around the older one. He looked loving and protective and it made my heart squeeze.
And a few clips of him speaking about the upcoming season and one video of him at a charity golf event.
I left the stall, and took a paper towel and dampened it. I put it on the back of my neck.
“It’s hot out there, isn’t it?” Jessica asked, washing her hands at the sink next to mine.
“Very hot.” For more reasons than the fact that it was August.
“I wish we had a dome. It’s humid as hell.”
“I need some water.” I put my phone away in my locker and drank a long swallow from my water bottle.
Now what? I couldn’t quit. I needed the paycheck, miniscule though it might be.
But how was I supposed to just cheer on the sidelines with Brandon a few feet away, calling the shots, being the man in charge, and generally speaking being sexy as hell.
I didn’t have a choice.
Maybe if he saw me shaking my ass every week, he would regret giving me a fake number. That would show him. It wasn’t much of a plan, but that was the only one I had.
Dakota was a cheerleader.
Holy shit.
I ran into the locker room, distracted as hell. I wasn’t even sure what had made me glance over at the group of cheerleaders, but I had and there she was, kicking one of those long legs up to her head. I had an instant boner, which was why I had to take off jogging, play sheet over my dick. My gut reaction had been to talk to her, or at least wave.
But common sense had stopped me. I couldn’t talk to her.
I was the head coach.
And I had fucked a cheerleader.
One who hadn’t texted or called me. So she had obviously thought one night was more than enough and hadn’t wanted to see me again.
Which sucked.
And now I had to see her at work, shaking that firm ass and jumping up and down.
Fuck me. This was a disaster.
It was my debut season as a head coach. I could not screw up this opportunity. I had moved my girls across the entire country to take this job, and frankly, Willow wasn’t adjusting well at all. I couldn’t do all of this only to blow it by having Dakota break my concentration.
I needed to put her out of my head.
But I wasn’t going to do nothing either. I wanted to talk to her. I needed to know that she hadn’t texted me simply because she wasn’t interested in me. I wanted to hear that straight from her mouth.
Shoving all of that mentally aside, I focused on coaching. I talked to the guys, pumped them up, relayed my game plan for the second half, given we were only up by one touchdown.
We went back out there and finished it. We won by three. Not what I’d been hoping for, but a victory was a victory. We still had a lot to work on to make the team gel. Monday we would watch film and get where we needed to be.
I purposefully didn’t look in Dakota’s direction on my way back on the field or off.