The crowd went nuts and he glanced over at the stands, surprised to find them filled.
“Sunshine takes its football seriously,” Kel said, offering him a hand up. “Nice catch. There won’t be a second one.”
Parker grinned and as he turned away, his gaze caught on a woman in the top row of the stands.
Zoe.
She was surrounded by other women, all of them clearly together because they each had whiteboards and had written various signs: Go Grif!
Dell Does It Best!
Your mama plays better than you do!
The Other Team Sucks!
Brady’s game is tighter than your spandex!
Parker went brows up.
Zoe grinned and wrote on her board and then lifted it: You’ve Got This.
Shaking his head, laughing, he joined the huddle.
“New plan,” Brady said. “We gotta get the new guy the ball. He knows what to do with it.”
Parker listened to the rest of them all agree and realized with some surprise that he was the new guy.
The rest of the game was a blur. By the end, they won by one safety—his.
Someone had beer in a cooler and they all sat around after, switching out their cleats, pulling on sweatshirts as the sun sank. Parker felt happily exhausted and realized drinking a beer as the sky slowly filled with more stars than he’d ever seen was a pretty damn nice way to start the evening.
The crowd moved off the stands, dispersing. A group of women moved in. The girlfriends and wives, Parker realized. Giving out hugs and kisses. And for one beat he felt like an outsider all over again.
And then he saw Zoe standing in front of him. She smiled. “For tradition,” she said, and as she had that very first time they’d met on her porch, she went up on tiptoe and brushed her soft, warm lips across his.
Just as quickly, she stepped back. “Going back up tonight,” she said, and gave him a finger wave. “Nice game.”
And he found himself grinning like an idiot. That was the best way to start an evening.
Parker walked out of the shower and into his bedroom, sore in a bunch of new places thanks to the game. But it was a good kind of sore and he felt more relaxed than he had in days.
And then, as he moved toward his duffel bag, pain suddenly shot up his leg from his foot. Hopping, swearing the air blue, he looked down to find he’d stepped on a small wire cat brush.
Zoe had brought it home to groom the kittens, but their resident gray hellion loved to trot it around the house.
Which made him realize the house was quiet.
Too quiet.
He looked around and found her curled up on his pillow, fast asleep. Guess Destructo had finally worn herself out. And of course she had to be on his pillow. Her brother and Oreo were on Oreo’s bed, but not her. Figured. It was him she was fond of attacking in her sleep, his ear she purred in when she decided to sleep instead of play, and him she sat on if a calm mood struck her.
He stalked over to the bed and scooped her up off his pillow. She sleepily opened her eyes and at the sight of him, her favorite new toy, she got happy.
And wild.
“Oh no,” he said. “It’s bedtime. Behave or you’ll sleep in the bathroom.” That was where she’d started out sleeping, until her offended howling at being shut off from the house-sized jungle gym had kept everyone up.
He dumped her onto Oreo’s bed. “Your turn to babysit,” he said to Oreo.
Oreo sighed.
Parker slid into bed and sighed, too. Exhausted, he started to drift off.
And . . . heard the kitten climbing her way back onto the bed. “No,” he said to the dark.
The kitten bumped her head affectionately to his chin and then tilted her face to his, staring down at him adoringly.
Shit.