Chapter Three
Saturday morning, Lucas showed up for track practice like he told his father he would. It was already sunny at quarter to eight, no wind, mostly blue sky with leftover smoke in the distance along with a lingering sooty scent. He checked his watch. Where were the athletes? More importantly, where was Jocelyn?
He paced the length of the track, pieces of memories patching through his thoughts. Just focus on the race. Give it your full effort. He would swear his father spoke over his shoulder, though he knew Dad was home in the wheelchair where he’d left him—in the family room watching golf on TV. The poor guy was practically on house arrest.
How many times had he let dear old Dad down when he raced? How many times could he have won and made Dad proud if he’d just three-stepped between hurdles instead of stuttering? But signing up for track hadn’t been his idea. Anne had talked him into it, just so she could be around Jackson Lightfoot. Speaking of Anne, she’d never come home last night. Last he’d heard, she’d gone looking for Jack at the fire command center.
More thoughts rushed his mind as he walked the track. Back in high school, Lucas hadn’t yet learned the fine art of total focus, except for when it came to cars. Being the coach’s kid meant having to prove yourself, and it seemed that in his father’s eyes, Lucas never really did. Second place was only a quick flash on Kieran Grady’s track radar; third place didn’t register at all. At least that’s how it’d felt.
Lucas shook the bitter memories from his head.
What the hell was he doing here? Jogging on this track was like reliving his slacker days all over again. It felt idiotic. Old insecurities laced through him, quickly followed by anger. He wanted to punch something or kick over a hurdle and storm off, just like he used to.
Here he was, honorably discharged from the army, a medic, twenty-eight years old, no plans, no job, subbing for his dad for some stinking high school fund-raiser. He squinted into the sun. In some ways he still felt an L was tattooed on his forehead.
Ambushed by frustration, he burst into a sprint, slowed down a few paces, then sprinted again. Maybe he could run off the negativity.
“Lucas!” Jocelyn came trotting across the grass wearing running gear and holding her workout bag in one hand, long strides accentuating the tone and muscle of a female athlete. He could get used to looking at those legs, all right.
“Hey,” he said when she got ten feet away, chiding himself for being so glad to see her.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“Where’re the kids?”
She checked her watch. “They should start straggling in any time now.”
“That lack of discipline flies with my dad?”
“Nope,” she said, plunking her overstuffed gym bag on the nearest bleacher seat. “They’re taking advantage of me. They think I’m a softy because I don’t blow my whistle and yell like he does.”
“Dad would turn over in his wheelchair if he found out.”
She laughed, way overdone for his lame comment. Her laugh sparked a déjà vu zing back to when he used to tease her. Good old Joss used to let him bug and nearly torture her, and she’d think it was funny. The sound of her laugh had grown huskier over time, but the sweet nature of it hadn’t changed at all. A smile just sort of popped up on his face. She smiled back, and something about being here with her made his shoulders relax.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to crack the old whip on my dad’s behalf, then,” he said.
She put her hands on her hips and raised her brows above her sunglasses. “You do remember being exactly the same as these kids, don’t you?”
“I’ve made it a point to erase my entire four years at Whispering Oaks.”
“That’s a pity because we had some good times. At least I thought so.” She’d leaned over to stretch out her hamstrings, so he figured he should do something, too, besides ogle. He grabbed his foot, drawing it flush to the back of his thigh, and enjoyed the long pull on his right quadriceps.
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” she asked, head between the V of her legs. Did she have a clue about the power of that pose?
His answer stuck in his throat, which was a good thing because his tongue had momentarily quit working.
A gaggle of teens rushed across the lawn, a few stragglers running behind, as if they’d all arrived on a bus together. Lucas was sorry Jocelyn had quit stretching in order to greet the students. He glanced at his watch—eight-fifteen. Dad would hit the ceiling, and because he’d filled him in on Jocelyn’s insecurity about losing her athletic scholarship and feeling as if she had little right to authority, Lucas decided to step in and give her some back up.
Channeling his father, and avoiding Jocelyn’s questions, he clapped his hands hard enough to make an echo. “Let’s put a move on it. Come on. Practice started fifteen minutes ago.”
Fifteen minutes later, four more teens swaggered in to practice. “That was sick,” the most muscular one said.
“So epic,” the lankiest replied.
“You’re late, guys,” Jocelyn said. “Start your stretching.”
Her comments didn’t register on their too-cool-for-track-practice attitudes. Lucas walked up close to them, and having borrowed his dad’s favorite device, blew the whistle.
“Drop your bags and take laps.” Lucas glanced at his watch. “You’re almost a half hour late, so you four will stay an extra half hour.” If he were still in the military, he would have started the sentence with “ladies.”
The boys stood dumbfounded, kind of like adolescent dinosaurs, waiting for the message to travel from their brains all the way to their legs.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Lucas said, clapping his hands again. Jock number one nodded to the others. Begrudgingly, they dropped their gym bags and halfheartedly jogged around the track, bickering under their breaths.
After the forty or so teens finished their warm-ups, they gathered at the bleachers and Jocelyn made formal introductions. Lucas scanned the group and easily identified the four major food groups in high school: cheerleading-squad material, battling-the-diet group, Jocks R Us, and, last but not least, “I still haven’t figured out how to work my body” bunch. He had to hand it to his dad—every year he was faced with the same material, yet he’d always managed to pull the team together, find the star athletes, sometimes in the most unlikely kids, turn the rest of the students on to team spirit and good sportsmanship and in the process reel in his fair share of track medals. No easy feat.
When Jocelyn introduced Lucas as Coach Grady’s son, he heard one quiet comment in the vicinity of the jocks. “Figures.”
He suppressed the threatening smile. Dear Old Dad ran a tight ship.
As Jocelyn timed her distance runners, she couldn’t prevent her gaze from drifting toward Lucas. One of the hurdlers had stumbled and twisted her ankle. Without being asked, Lucas had come prepared and had already elevated the runner’s leg and put an ice pack on it. That look of earnest concern blew her away.
She checked her stopwatch. What lap was that? Oh, gosh, she’d gotten distracted and lost track.
She glanced at the stopwatch then back toward Lucas, who was now laughing with a tall, scraggly, redheaded kid. The warmth in her heart doubled when she saw him encourage the boy to give hurdling a try, and to her amazement, the kid wasn’t half-bad.
Lucas glanced in her direction, and their gazes met and held. He nodded. She’d have to settle for the subtle lip twitch he offered instead