Down by Contact - A Seattle Lumberjacks Romance
Read Down by Contact - A Seattle Lumberjacks Romance Online
Authors: Jami Davenport
Tags: #romance, #seattle, #sports, #football, #beauty and the beast, #sports romance, #football romance, #linebacker, #seattle lumberjacks, #boroughs publishing group, #finishing school for men, #forward passes, #fourth and goal, #jami davenport
Down
by Contact
Davenport
Copyright
201
3 Pamela D.
Bowerman
Smashwords Edition
Down by Contact
After twelve years in the league, all Zach
Murphy wants is a Super Bowl ring. He’s been about hard hits not
smooth manners, about breaking quarterbacks not making small talk
at cocktail parties. But now he’s shattered something else. After
dumping a tray of drinks on the team owner’s snooty daughter and
accidentally feeling up the Governor’s wife, his tenure with his
team looks perilously short. And things are getting worse.
Life is looking up for Kelsie
Carrington-Richmond. A onetime beauty pageant star and mean girl,
she only recently stopped living out of her car. But both those
times have passed. Her Finishing School for Real Men has a real
shot, and the Seattle Lumberjacks have hired her to polish up their
roughest player. Except…it’s Zach. Long ago she broke his heart.
He’s just the beast she remembers—gruff, protective—but she’s
nothing like the beauty from his past. Yet, getting knocked down
happens, and getting back up makes a contender. And they both have
the hearts of champions.
Down
by
Contact
Davenport
www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living
or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have
any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or
third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their
content.
DOWN BY
CONTACT
Copyright © 2013 Pamela D. Bowerman
All
rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or
hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of
Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution
of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the
permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable
by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials
violates the author’s rights.
Digital
edition created by Maureen Cutajar
www.gopublished.com
ISBN
978-1-938876-16-5
To Boroughs and my wonderful editor Jill for helping me make
this the best book it can be.
To Laurie Ryan, Adrianne Lee, and Jane Lynn
Daniels who’ve always had my back and don’t mind telling me when
something isn’t working and needs to be changed.
Also to my readers, who’ve stuck with me
through the past two years, waiting patiently for the next book.
It’s my wish that I’ll never disappoint you. I hope you love Zach
and Kelsie’s story as much as I loved writing it.
Acknowledgments
A very special thanks to my husband, a former
linebacker, for his infinite wisdom on how linebackers think and
react. When he read one of my locker room scenes and commented that
I nailed it, that was just how guys would talk, it was the ultimate
compliment.
Chapter 5
Opponents on the Same Team
Chapter 6
One Yard and a Cloud of Dust
Chapter 9
Illegal Use of the Hands
Chapter 11
Scrambling for a Few Yards
Chapter 15
Throwing out the Playbook
Chapter 18
Threading the Needle
Chapter 19
Running it Back for a Touchdown
Chapter 22
Losing Field Position
Chapter 24
The Clock is Ticking Down
Chapter 30
For the Love of the Game
CHAPTER 1
Twelve years and a couple multimillion dollar
football contracts changed a lot of things for a kid who grew up
poor, but obviously not enough.
Zach Murphy shifted uneasily from one foot
to the other. In less time than it took to hike a football, he’d
been catapulted from a man who commanded respect and controlled his
own destiny to one of inadequacy and uncertainty.
He hated these fancy banquets where everyone
pretended to be something they weren’t, and the wealthy paid big
sums to hang out with professional athletes all in the name of
charity. Zach preferred his charitable work to be more low-key and
private. Even worse, he hated how these affairs made him feel like
an idiot—a guy lacking all social graces. He tried to fit into a
crowd like this once, and it’d been a disaster.
The bottom line was he didn’t belong here.
He’d already managed to insult some millionaire geek’s wife by
complimenting her on her healthy appetite. Hell, where he came
from, a man admired a woman who appreciated good food.
He sucked in social situations, especially
highbrow ones like this. His old team never made him attend
anything more than a bowling tournament, but the Lumberjacks
insisted their defensive captain go to all this shit.
Zach ran his fingers through his unruly hair
and almost wished he’d gotten it cut. Too long and curly to be
tamed with hair gel and too short for a ponytail, it kept getting
in his eyes. He tugged on his bow tie, rebelling against how
constricting it was. He’d been here less than thirty minutes, but
it felt like a lifetime. These snooty people stared down their
noses at him as if they saw right through to his white-trash
roots.
Looking for some friendly faces, he walked
up to a couple of his defensive guys and joined their conversation.
“Hey, guys, did you see our jackass quarterback anywhere? I thought
I’d arm wrestle him for a dance with his hot little
girlfriend.”
They stared at him sort of funny. He wiped
his mouth, wondering if he had crumbs on his face or something.
On cue Tyler Harris, the Seattle
Lumberjacks’ quarterback and Zach’s personal enemy number one,
sauntered over with his cute, curvy girlfriend, Lavender, beside
him. Zach liked Lavender, she was sweet and sassy all rolled into
one. Even better, she could put the asshole quarterback in his
place with one damning look. Harris might be an uncontrollable bad
boy in most circumstances, but Lavender led him around by a ring in
his dick, which amused Zach to no end.
Zach grinned at her, and she hugged him then
she straightened his bowtie. Harris snaked his arm possessively
around her waist and tucked her close to his side. His glare cut
right through the bullshit. He hated the linebacker as much as Zach
hated him. The jerk’s gaze swept downward as if assessing and
cataloging Zach’s every social blunder. His gaze fixed on Zach’s
black cowboy boots.
Harris smirked and raised one eyebrow.
“Cowboy boots at a black tie affair?”
“Sounds like the words to a country song,”
Bruiser, their surfer boy running back, quipped, as if he’d ever
listened to a country song in his life.
“Hey, I’m from Texas.” Zach shoved his hands
in his pockets before he did damage to the quarterback’s pretty
face. He liked his boots. The broken-in Justins hugged his big feet
like a comfortable pair of old slippers. Hell, he’d even polished
them to a shine for the occasion. Best of all, the extra two inches
made him an inch taller than the Jacks’ six-foot-four
quarterback.
“Yeah, right. But—” Lavender stomped on
Harris’s foot before he could launch a new insult at the hated
defensive player. She cast a sympathetic look in Zach’s direction
and dragged her stubborn-assed boyfriend to his seat.
Zach barely tolerated quarterbacks as
necessary evils, prima donna jerks every one of them, and he had
zero fucking tolerance for Harris.
As a middle linebacker, Zach made his living
analyzing quarterbacks, studying their body language, watching
their eyes then telegraphing his findings to his defensive
teammates. Last year when his old team played the Jacks, he’d
looked across the line of scrimmage into Harris’s eyes and
seen—nothing. Nothing but a big fat zero, almost as if the QB had
put his body on autopilot and mentally hung out a “closed”
sign.
Zach had lived and breathed football from
the day he took his first baby step. Football was an all-in game.
Either you were all-in or you’d best get the hell all-out. He
couldn’t fathom a football player who didn’t love the game with
every cell in his body and leave every ounce of try he had out on
the field. But Harris had. Last year. He’d fucking quit on his
team, missed practices, put in minimum effort, and only physically
shown up for games.
The team had won their second consecutive
Super Bowl in spite of Harris. Not that Zach had been in the locker
room or on the field. He’d signed with the Seattle Lumberjacks in
the off-season a few months after that second Super Bowl. But guys
talked, and he’d been in the league long enough to see all the
signs, even if he was observing from across the line of scrimmage
or via a flat screen TV.
A Super Bowl?
How could a guy not leave his blood and guts
out on the field during the game of all games? Harris’s
don’t-give-a-shit attitude baffled Zach and put the two team
captains at odds with each other throughout training camp. Zach had
no respect for quitters. If he had his way, the Jacks would start a
different quarterback on the first day of regular season.
Zach ground his teeth together until his
head hurt just thinking about having one Super Bowl ring, let alone
a pair. He’d give both his nuts for a ring. Team loyalty had gotten
him nowhere. For twelve years, he’d played his heart out on the
worst team in the NFL, given them his best and never complained.
The team didn’t make it past one wild-card win in the first round
of the playoffs. During the off-season, his old team dropped him
faster than a rabid coyote. Then the Seattle Lumberjacks came
calling, needing a guy to bolster their defense and tutor their
young players. He’d jumped at the chance.
