When I Need You (Need You #4)

“He’s abided by that?”

“Completely. If down the road he grows a conscience and wants to establish a relationship with Calder, all contact goes through a mediator. He’ll never have unsupervised or random interactions with my son. It hasn’t been an issue so far.”

“Does he still have an NFL contract?”

“Yes. The two times his team played in Minnesota? I requested a bye week from the cheer squad and took Calder out of town.”

“Good for you.” Jensen gave me a soft smile. “I admire the fact that you don’t take shit from anyone.”

“Thanks.”

“So I remember you saying you were living at Martin’s temporarily while you looked for a house. Have you had any luck?”

Although grateful that he’d changed the subject—and hadn’t asked for my ex’s name—I couldn’t help but tease him for the question. I lightly tapped my foot against his. “You’re already sick of being my neighbor, Lund?”

His lean cheeks went red. “No! I just—”

“Jensen. I was kidding.”

He knocked his foot into mine. “See if I borrow a cup of sugar from you. I’ll head down and ask Lenka first.”

“Lenka,” I repeated. “The woman who lives in the last apartment before the exit to the stairs? Long black hair, pale skin and is rocking the vampire vibe?”

“You’ve met her?”

“Briefly. Why?”

“Did she offer you her oral expertise as a ‘Welcome to Snow Village’ gift?”

I choked on my wine. Then I studied him for a moment. “You’re not joking.”

“I wish I were.”

“I imagine you’re no stranger to offers like that.”

Jensen shrugged. “I imagine a smokin’-hot professional cheerleader isn’t a stranger to propositions either.”

“You’d be wrong. No guy is interested in landing fifth on my list of life priorities.”

“You have a list of ‘life priorities’?”

“Yes. Don’t you?” Doesn’t everyone? hung in the air unspoken.

He laughed. Hard. Then he said, “My life motto is ‘just wing it.’”

“Well, I’m not the type to wing it. My life revolves around lists.”

“So let me see if I can put your life list in order. Obviously Calder is first. Work is second. Training—cheer, et cetera is third. Dating is . . . fifth? What happened to slot four?”

“That’s for friends. It’s a short list so it deserves its own slot. Besides, I can’t even remember the last date I had.” It didn’t matter if Jensen knew this about me; we’d already established a friendship line.

“None of the meathead college guys who train at the athletic center have hit on you?” he said skeptically.

“Sure they have. I ignore them. If they get persistent, I impart my dating rule and they back off because they realize the futility of even trying.”

“What rule is that?”

“I don’t date athletes.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. It’s ironclad. No exceptions.”

He cocked his head. “Meaning . . . you don’t date college athletes. To avoid the potential conflict of teacher/student involvement?”

“No, I mean no athletes. Doesn’t matter if he’s an amateur, a pro, a competitor in the senior games or in the Paralympics. No athletes. Period.”

“Harsh stance, Ro.”

Ro. I liked his use of my family nickname as much as I’d liked him calling me Coach Michaels. I shrugged. “Once burned . . . one thousand times smarter.”

“While I understand your logic, and the egotistical part of me wants to demand a chance to change your mind about athletes—football players in particular—I’m not the guy to take up the challenge.” Jensen smiled and held out his beer bottle for a toast. “It’s a good thing we’re sticking to being friends, Coach.”

I touched my wineglass to his bottle. “Very good thing, Lund.”

“So . . . friend. Wanna watch a movie with me?”

“Only if it has lots of gratuitous violence and sex, an abundance of dirty words and explosions . . . and not a single animated character.”

Jensen snatched the remote. “Deadpool it is.”

? ? ?


Somehow, I ended up spending Saturday night hanging out with Jensen too.

Friday night after I learned he had excellent taste in movies, we swapped cell numbers. On Saturday afternoon when I’d gotten a break to check my phone, I saw two text messages from him.

JL: Movie nite part 2. Have you seen the latest Judd Apatow flick?

JL: Or Transformers?

I texted him back.

Me: You can find something better than those! I’ll be done around 8.

He responded immediately.

JL: Picky woman. Fine. Nothing cool. Just knock.

I didn’t show up until nine.

He asked me how tryouts went, as if he was genuinely interested.

This friendly neighbor thing with him . . . I liked it. A lot. He wasn’t an egomaniac—we didn’t discuss his football career. I didn’t talk incessantly about my son. We just jokingly bickered and had normal, adult conversation. I couldn’t even compare it to hanging out with Daisy. With Daisy I wasn’t distracted by things like massive flexing muscles, a deep, masculine laugh and dimples bracketing a perfect pair of full, smiling lips.

Yes, Jensen Lund was one hundred percent prime alpha male and one hundred thousand percent off-limits.

Although he’d slip in sexual innuendo given the chance, it caused me to roll my eyes, not feel creeped out like with some guys. He had no problem voicing his opinions or questioning mine. I liked his oddball sense of humor. Every once in a while I’d get a glimpse of his cockiness, but not as much as I’d expected from a man like him who literally had it all—and what he didn’t have he could buy.

My level of comfort with him was such that I conked out during the movie.

Rough-skinned fingers caressing my cheek roused me. I awoke to see Jensen stretched out a mere foot away—not on the opposite side of the couch where he’d started the evening.

His lips curved into a sinful smile. “I hated to wake you, but woman, you snore like a bulldog. There’s no way I could catch up on my beauty sleep with that racket, so I hafta toss your cute butt outta my crib.”

I snickered. “Catch up on your beauty sleep? I oughta do womankind a favor and keep you up all damn night, because the last thing you need is to look better than you do right now.” As soon as the words fell from my mouth, I chastised myself. I started to blame my lapse in judgment on sleep brain, but he reached out and gently placed his finger across my lips.

“Don’t.” His eyes had lost their teasing sparkle and burned with intensity. “Don’t take it back or explain it away. Let me have that one thing from you tonight.”

Not what I’d been expecting at all.

But Jensen didn’t back away. Instead he feathered his thumb across my lips. “You’d better go before I give you a reason to stay.”

He moved his hand when I started to speak. “Cocky much?”