Chasing Jillian: A Love and Football Novel

  Dedication

  To Jessi Gage and Amy Raby, my critique partners and my friends.

  Thank you for your kindness, your encouragement, and your honesty.

  Thank you for making a safe space for me.

  Acknowledgments

  I WOULD LIKE to thank my editor, Amanda Bergeron, and my agent, Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency. I have said thank you to them over and over again, but I could never say it enough. Thank you so much for your patience and for going above and beyond. I am so lucky to work with you.

  Thank you to Avon’s art department, and an extra-special shout-out to Beverly of the copy editing department, who makes sure the atrocities I commit against grammar and punctuation remain a closely held secret.

  Thank you to my husband, Eric, for putting up with deadlines and cooking dinner and everything else he does for us every day.

  Thank you to Susan Mallery, who’s ultimately responsible for all of this.

  Thank you to our aunt Suzie Davenport Moore, who has been advocating for and placing foster kids in homes for years now. We are proud you are our aunt, and we love you.

  Thank you to Seattle’s Treehouse for being a beacon of light and hope.

  Thank you to Gary Hopkins of Brotherton Cadillac in Renton, Washington, for answering my questions about Cadillac Escalades.

  Thank you to Nordstrom. I have been dressing the characters in my books from your website for quite some time now. When that’s not happening, I hate to shop, but I’ll always love you!

  Thank you to the Seattle Seahawks for giving interviews in multiple forms of media that are always helpful to my research. And I’d like to thank Michael Bennett for his NSFW sack dances.

  Last but not least, THANK YOU for buying this book. I hope you’ll love it! I also love to hear from readers. I’m on Twitter at @julieinduvall, on Facebook, and I have a website: http://www.juliebrannagh.com.

  Go Sharks!

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Author’s Note

  The World of Love and Football

  About the Author

  Also by Julie Brannagh

  An Excerpt from Heart’s Desire by T.J. Kline

  An Excerpt from Desire Me Now by Tiffany Clare

  An Excerpt from The Wedding Gift by Cara Connelly

  An Excerpt from When Love Happens by Darcy Burke

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  ALL SHE HAD to do was not get caught.

  Jillian Miller let herself into the Sharks’ silent weight room. The coaches, players, and other front-office personnel had all gone home for the evening; it was just her and an exercise DVD. She couldn’t afford a gym membership on her salary. John, the owner of the Sharks, was a great guy to work for, but she was in her first year here. She wouldn’t get a raise for another six months at least.

  She wasn’t sure about the rules involved in using the team’s weight room, but she was fairly sure it might be frowned upon. “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” she muttered.

  The Sharks’ weight room was approximately the size of an airport hangar. One wall was mirrored; the opposite wall consisted of a garage-style glass-and-metal door opening onto the practice field. The room was filled with what Jillian imagined must be hundreds of thousands of dollars of state-of-the-art exercise equipment and smelled surprisingly good for a place seventy guys spent hours each day in working up a significant amount of sweat. She didn’t spend a lot of time working out, let alone hanging around in any gym. She was unsure what she should expect, besides feeling like she’d landed on another planet.

  The last straw for her had been such a little thing, in retrospect. A tall, thin, perfectly groomed woman had eyed the contents of Jillian’s shopping cart at the grocery store yesterday. Two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack, a large bag of dark chocolate M&M’s, and a stack of low-calorie microwave meals. She’d caught Jillian’s eye, shaken her head, and walked away. It had happened before, but the memory still made her flinch.

  Jillian didn’t want to be a supermodel or a size two. Mostly, she’d like to feel more comfortable in her own body, and the feeling had been building for quite some time before yesterday’s incident in the grocery store. She also knew most people spent their weekends in active outdoor pursuits, especially in the Seattle area. She’d never been a big fan of exercise, but she’d like to meet some new people. Even more, she’d like to meet a guy. She’d like to fall in love, and she’d like to have a family. She wasn’t going to accomplish this by spending most of her weekend evenings on her own. A little exercise (and trying some new pastimes) couldn’t hurt.

  She pulled out the DVD she’d brought with her and popped it into the player. An impossibly fit woman began barking instructions, and Jillian tried to follow along. The woman in question, though, weighed a lot less than Jillian did. She wasn’t winded at all. She looked like the professional cheerleaders that passed Jillian’s desk on a daily basis—thin, toned, and perfect.

  Jillian was already dripping. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes? That was it? Surely the United Nations would classify this as torture. The DVD woman was jumping around like a lipsticked chimp on Red Bull. Besides being relentlessly, annoyingly cheerful, she barked out a count only the Energizer Bunny could hope to keep up with. It couldn’t be good to sweat this much. Obviously, sweating was part of working out, but it seemed a little excessive. She needed to breathe too. Maybe some water would help.

  Just a few minutes more. She could do it. Sure she could: All she needed was a transfusion and an amphetamine drip.

  SETH TAYLOR PUSHED his way through the front doors of the practice facility. He needed to work out like some guys needed to get drunk to forget. He’d just had the last fight with his girlfriend. Two years of her jealous rages—her baseless, jealous rages—were more than enough. Seth had finally told her it was over, shortly before he flung his cell phone against the passenger door of his car in utter frustration. The screen shattered on impact. It was the last thing he’d lose to Kim, besides the chunks of his soul she’d already taken. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, but he couldn’t take it another day.

  If he was brutally honest, the problems with Kim were a symptom of what was really going on with him. He was restless. Despite the fact he already had more in life than most, he wanted even more. His inner struggle had nothing to do with wealth or fame. He wanted meaning. He wanted to find something to do in his spare time that made him feel like he’d made a difference in his world, besides attaining the high score on the latest video game. Right after that, he’d like to find a woman who wanted those same things and didn’t make him want to shatter a six-hundred-dollar cell phone against his car door any time soon.

  At least the place would be long deserted. He would lock himself in the weight room, turn the sound s
ystem up to the pain level, and sweat Kim out of his system. She was out of his life, and he could concentrate on things that made him happy for a change.

  He strode to the weight room door and stopped. Someone was in there.

  JILLIAN HEARD A loud, angry male voice behind her.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  All she saw was a tall, dark-haired man with dark, intense eyes. It was hard to respond to him while she was huffing and puffing. Her heart pounded with a combination of exertion and the rushing adrenaline of fear. She knew he was one of the Sharks, but she didn’t know enough about him to know whether or not he would freak out. Her embarrassment took a temporary backseat to her alarm.

  “I’m Jillian.” It seemed fairly self-explanatory what she was doing, at least to her. “I work here.”

  “I haven’t seen you before.” He moved even closer, blocking her against another wall, next to a huge white board, with his height and much-larger, rock-hard body. His muscles had muscles. “Who are you?”

  “I work for John Campbell. What are you doing?”

  She frantically looked around for an escape. She could make it out the weight room doors if she had to. She couldn’t outrun him, but her fingers wrapped around the cell phone in her pocket. She’d hit 911 and scream at the top of her lungs. She stepped away from him. Surprisingly enough, he stayed where he was.

  “Don’t we all? So, who exactly are you?” he asked.

  “I’m John’s assistant.”

  He rested his hands on his hips as he studied her. His brows knit together. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m doing my taxes. What do you think?”

  Jillian was still a bit scared. Obviously, she’d startled him. He had startled her too. The only thing left to do, though, was stand her ground. She didn’t owe Godzilla an explanation, and she took another shallow breath. Her heart was still pounding, but the panic and jitters of surging adrenaline were replaced with dismay. What would happen when her boss heard about this?

  The guy reached out and tried to grab the remote from her; she put it behind her back. She turned to extract the DVD from the player, picked up the case, and shut off the TV.

  “There you go. I’m leaving. You’ll have the place all to yourself,” she said.

  “Wait!” he said, the word bursting out. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.” She swallowed hard. “I . . . I thought everyone was done for the day. I hoped this wouldn’t be a problem.” She flipped the long, damp blonde ponytail over her shoulder and turned toward the door. He reached out to take her elbow. His touch was surprisingly gentle.

  “Hey. Let’s give this another try,” he told her. “I’m Seth. What’s your name again?”

  “I’m Jillian. I know I’m probably not supposed to be in here, so maybe I should just leave.” The flash of irritation she felt at the fact he’d forgotten her name was superseded by dread. “Please don’t tell John. I need this job.”

  Seth took the DVD case out of her fingers. She grabbed at air, but he flipped it over to take a look. “Cardio Burn? Listen, Jennifer—”

  “Jillian,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah. Jill. The treadmill is a lot more effective than this DVD. You also won’t be as prone to injury. How about it?” He took her elbow in his fingertips and steered her in the direction of the treadmills.

  “I have to go . . . ”

  He still held her elbow. A teasing smile moved over his mouth. “Are you sure about that? Let’s walk a little. You know how to use a treadmill, don’t you?”

  She hadn’t been on a treadmill in so long, she wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Surely she could figure it out. She glanced at the control panel, which seemed to have a lot in common with the flight deck of a commercial airliner. She wondered if anyone actually used all of the readouts available.

  “It seems more complicated than I remember,” she said.

  Seth helped her step onto the machine and reached out to punch buttons on the display. “You can handle it,” he said. “How tall are you, Jill?”

  “Five-foot-four. And my name is Jillian.” She looked down at her feet. Godzilla’s eyes were about a thousand shades of brown.

  “Short, huh?” Her head shot up. She narrowed her eyes at him, but she saw the flash of another smile, and she had to smile too. He had a dimple in his chin. His eyes sparkled. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like to see his smile more often. “So, I need your weight.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll just go home.” Jillian stepped off the treadmill.

  “Luckily, there’s a scale right here,” he said. “No big deal.”

  She wasn’t fond of any activity involving a scale . . . He cupped her biceps in both of his hands and guided her onto the flat piece of metal.

  “Don’t look,” she said, but she was too late.

  Seconds later he said, “Got it. Come on.”

  Tears of shame and frustration rose in her eyes. It wasn’t bad enough that she’d gotten caught red-handed in the workout room after hours. He also knew how much she weighed! She knew she needed to lose weight, but she’d prefer to keep that number to herself.

  Her face felt like it was on fire with embarrassment. He glanced over at her and said, “Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t seem to care about seeing the number that was going to haunt her.

  “But I—”

  “Next time, you’ll know exactly how to program this,” he reassured her. He punched a few more buttons on the treadmill readout, clipped the emergency shut-off to her T-shirt, and directed her onto the treadmill. “Ready?”

  “I don’t want to bother you. Maybe I should go.”

  “You’re not bugging me. Come on. Do fifteen minutes with me,” he coaxed. “You can handle it.”

  He hit the “Start” button, and he grabbed her around the waist so she wouldn’t fall when the moving belt started. “Go ahead. Try it.”

  Jillian felt his fingers sink into the softness. She glanced up at him. He didn’t seem to be disgusted. She was horrified, however. He knew how much she weighed, and he’d touched her . . . Oh, God.

  Jillian’s feet started to move, and he let go. He stepped away from the treadmill, picked up the water bottle she’d brought in with her, and put it in the cup holder on the machine. He walked over, grabbed some free weights off the rack, and did butterflies while he watched.

  “You’re doing just fine.”

  She appreciated his encouragement, but she really wasn’t sure she wanted a workout buddy at the moment. Every little humiliation, every awkward moment she’d ever had as the girl nobody noticed rolled into the tall, dark-haired, handsome man standing only feet from her. He moved closer to the treadmill as he watched her. It would have been endearing if it wasn’t slightly annoying.

  The display read eight more minutes. She could accomplish this.

  “I can do it myself,” she insisted as he edged closer while she glanced in his direction. It was like a kitten staring down a Great Dane. He didn’t look worried. He actually looked like he was about to laugh.

  “Sure you can. That’s why you chose a workout DVD that I’d have a hard time with.”

  “Maybe you should work out more, then,” she said.

  He let out a snort. “Sassy, aren’t you?”

  He did a few more curls with the free weights as his mouth twitched with repressed laughter.

  “Why, yes, I am.”

  “So, when’s the last time you went to the gym?”

  “What do you think?” she said. She continued a little longer in silence. Seth set the weights back down on the rack and grabbed a set of lighter ones. He was still standing in front of the treadmill. He didn’t seem to want to leave. She could only imagine how much he’d laugh at her if she told him she’d avoided the whole working-out thing since she was in college. “It wasn’t a priority.” She stifled a sigh.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  She was studying the treadm
ill’s readout. It took her a few seconds to answer him. “I don’t get it.” She’d only burned two hundred calories or so. Maybe the readout was broken.

  “Again, how long have you worked here? It seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”

  She regarded him for a moment. “Two months.”

  “I got here two weeks ago.”

  “Uh-huh.” She pretended like she wasn’t hanging on his every word. He was really cute, his body was even better, and it was all she could do to keep herself from drooling. Breathing was also a priority, and his nearness left her a bit breathless.

  “Southern California’s traffic sucks, but this may be worse. Is the 405 always a mess?”

  He was referring to the freeway that most of the Sharks traveled to get to the practice facility. Jillian had to smile. He looked forlorn.

  “Yes. It is. Don’t you come here in the late morning, though?” she said.

  “Not always. Sometimes I have to be here early because we have meetings. I can’t believe the traffic.”

  “If you carpool with someone, it’s a faster trip. Isn’t there anyone on the team who lives close to you?”

  “I’m not sure. I moved into my house in Bellevue about a week ago. I’ll have to ask around.” The treadmill shut off. He reached out to grab Jillian’s elbow as she teetered. “Easy.”

  “Thanks.” She hopped off, picked up her water bottle, and took a long swallow. He was watching her, but he was trying to pretend he wasn’t. She wondered what he was thinking. Then again, her short acquaintance with Seth had already proven he would have blurted it out. “It’s late, and I should go. Are you staying?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Would you please lock up when you’re done?” She gathered up the DVD case and the water bottle and picked up her purse (and tote bag full of office clothes) off the floor by the television set.

  “I’ll do that.”

  Jillian took a few more steps toward the door. She wasn’t sure what to say to him. Finally, she turned toward him once more. “Thank you, Seth. It was nice to meet you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow and nodded once at her. “It was nice to meet you too. Maybe I’ll see you around.” He gave her a big grin.