Qualified: A Sports Romance (6 page)

The next day Violet was busy with
the PR event she had helped organize, which was good because Allie needed some
space to get over the embarrassment and confusion of the previous night. With
her time off, Allie stuffed her bags with her materials and laptop so that she
could escape to the nearby university. Quietly studying for the MCAT was much
preferable to the risk of seeing Blake and having to explain why she ran away
from him. Worse would be getting caught in conversation with Marc. The way she
felt around him … she didn’t trust herself at all.

As the week started, the grueling schedule of the
water polo team’s camp thankfully prevented much awkwardness even though she
was still shadowing Lindsey. The guys woke up early to start their first pool
session before day lit the sky. After a short break for lunch they had dryland
training in the gym, and following that they assembled again at the pool for
their second big workout.

Allie was due to collect another sample set from
Marc after his practice. He was even quieter than she had come to expect while
he sat in the office chair. She noticed him rubbing at the top of his shoulder
while she bustled about with her routine. When the team was in the water she
saw that he and Blake had been on opposite sides for the scrimmage and had
gotten into it pretty bad. She bit her tongue against the impulse to explain
away the text message from the other night.

Her foolish guilt would have to be eased another
way. “I can book a massage appointment for you at the clinic,” Allie noted as
she secured the salivary sample brush into its little shipment vial.

“It’s fine.” Marc offered out his hand with his
wrist turned up for her, well used to all the steps of her protocol. He was a
quick learner. As he watched her fingers against his skin, his brow quirked.
“You do that, too?”

“The booking? Yeah.” Allie flickered a smile at
him. “Not the massage itself. Although after my time here, maybe I’m
considering that line of work.”

“I wouldn’t complain,” Marc let slip in reply.

Her imagination instantly went wild with thoughts
of running her hands over the muscled bulk of his body. Allie was terrified
that her fingers holding his wrist were about to go rogue. Keeping on task was
a difficult exercise in willpower which she succeeded in only by pretending to
misunderstand. “I’ll see when I can get you scheduled tonight. Or tomorrow
morning, if you’d rather.”

Marc started a protesting breath but swallowed it
before it could turn to words. His jaw flexed. “Thank you,” he said instead.
“Tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Allie brightened a smile. “You should make
use of all the amenities before you go. They’re going to work you hard, right
until the end. Have you been to the recovery center yet? I’ve heard rave
reviews about the plunge pools.”

“Will you be there?”

Allie shook her head as she started to put things
away into her kit. “I have a seminar this evening in one of the presentation
rooms.” It would be so much better to watch the water polo boys jumping from
pool to pool in their little suits. She was going to miss the view once they
left in two days. She bit her lip and cast a sideways look at Marc. “I’ll see
you tomorrow?”

“Yep.” Just like their first appointment, he stood
up without concern for her space to duck into his shirt and grab his gear to
go.

She tried not to think about how, in a few days,
the only time she’d see those abs again would be on television.

Allie used to love the seminars.
Medicine had been her field and her focus and her love for so long. But instead
of being distracted by sports medicine’s frontiers, all she could think about
was her subject.

Leave it to Violet to read it on her as they met up
for dinner. “Hey there, disappearing act.”

Allie rolled her eyes and flopped into her seat.

“Come on, don’t look like that.” Violet nudged at her
foot from under the table. “I’m not the one who torpedoed our chances for
winning the trivia trophy.”

“I’m sorry I’ve deprived your bookshelf of holding
that honor.” Allie slanted an uneven smile across at her friend as she twirled
at her pasta with her fork.

“Don’t you worry, hon.” Violet winked at her around
a bite of salad. “I got the score I was looking for the other night. Hot water
polo player,
check
.” Violet swayed as she mimed drawing the mark into
the air between them. Grinning, she nudged her toe at her friend. “But I want
to know what happened to you.”

“I should be mad at you for saddling me with Blake
like that,” Allie said down to her plate, her shoulders hunching.

“You should be thanking me, you mean.”

“He started to put on the moves,” Allie confided.
“But I couldn’t do it.” She was blushing just thinking about it. “He is
gorgeous,” she admitted.

“I’m not sure I could say no to a man with a
private jet, especially when he looks like that, that’s all I’m saying.”

“He wasn’t offering me a ride in his jet.”

“A ride
on
his jet,” Violet amended her
words slyly. Allie threw a grape at her.

“Well I didn’t go jetting anywhere.” Allie couldn’t
look at Violet. She picked at her grapes. “And I don’t know what Blake did, but
I drove downtown and bought overpriced tea in Starbucks so that someone could
have the room for her nefarious purposes.”

Violet cackled. “You make me sound like some
villain. It’s not like there’s anything evil about sex, Allie. Some of us enjoy
other people.”

“I do, too,” Allie said defensively. She shrugged
one of her shoulders up towards her ear and peeked across at her friend. “Just.
With my clothes on.”

Violet gave her a look like she was hopeless.

“I ran into one of the other players on the way
driving back.” Maybe it wasn’t the best defense to hold up as an example to
Violet. Especially when recalling the previous night made Allie’s smile spread
beyond her control. “Marc.”

Violet stuck her tongue in her molars and made a
humming noise of tentative approval as she scanned a new look over Allie. “Your
lab rat.”

“There’s more to him than that.”

“He’s a world-class athlete,” Violet stated as one
other obvious thing, but that wasn’t what she cared about either. Her eyes were
sparking wicked as she licked at her fork. “More to him, hmm? What’s the story
on
Marc’s
jet?”

“I don’t think he has a … Oh my gosh.” It took
her a moment to get her friend’s meaning, and then Allie dropped her forehead
into the brace of her palm as her cheeks colored. “Why do I tell you anything?”

“Because I love you and I want you to be happy,”
Violet chirped in quick reply. “Now fess up. Did you go at it in the back seat?
Fog up the windows?”

“I didn’t even kiss him.” It should have just been
a fact. Allie didn’t know how her voice came out sounding regretful. She took a
deep breath and shook her head to put logic back into place. “He’s in my study,
Violet. I can’t be … hooking up with him.”

Violet looked at her for a narrow-eyed moment.
“Well I don’t know how else you’re supposed to enjoy him. Maybe it’s all for the
best.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came across some old stories when I was putting
together documents for the PR event.” Violet rearranged what was left of her
meal with her salad with her fork. “There was a piece about his hard partying
lifestyle. Apparently there was some drama with one of the girls on the women’s
water polo team. I didn’t really dig into it, but … maybe it’s better to
keep professional distance with that one. You could use an intermediary step
between Jimmy and the level of player that Marc looks to be. I mean, a guy like
Blake might buy you dinner. I think with Marc, you might just get tetanus.”

“He doesn’t have tetanus.” Allie barely realized
she was answering like a clinical robot. “The study pre-screens demand a
healthy baseline.”

There was no reason for Allie’s heart to be
sinking. “It’s not like Jimmy was such a great guy.” It had taken her a while
to get over her college boyfriend after he made it clear that his moving on to
med school also meant moving on from her. But that wasn’t what was aching in
her chest. It had been nearly a year since they’d split, and when she’d seen
Jimmy around town over Christmas with his new girlfriend, Allie knew that she
was well and truly over him.

“Well sure. But my point is that you’re kind of
lacking in experience doing anything more than some jerk-face’s homework,
right? It’s a big leap to some dick that’s not friendly and offers no
benefits.”

“I’ve done stuff.” Allie was too self conscious to
meet her friend’s eye. Certainly Violet was close enough to the truth and
besides, nothing she’d said about Marc should have felt surprising. Allie knew
better than to go looking for a relationship amongst the athletes. Of course
Marc Belmont was a player and his singular focus was the game.

“Anyway, you’re right, I’m better off not getting
involved. With any of them. And they’ll all be leaving soon.” So it hardly
mattered. Putting on a smile that wasn’t as effortless as she would have hoped,
Allie made a change of subject. “So what’s this thing I heard about, with Adam
and the shrimp cocktail?” With Violet telling the story, maybe she could ignore
the distraught churn of her stomach long enough to finish her meal.

After the weekend of the PR event,
the days slipped by fast. Lindsey had been relying on Allie more and more, so
she began to assist with the dailies and be responsible for all
inter-department appointment scheduling within the training center. It only
worked in conjunction with the workload at the sports clinic because they had
gotten Tracey back after winter break.

With her schedule pulled in so many directions, it
also meant that Allie had hardly any time to worry about Marc’s questionable
past. She sat on the bleachers beside Lindsey during practices and watched all
that bare muscle collide and tried to enjoy it for what it was and not as
something that she would ever be a part of. The team would soon leave Colorado
and be given the rest of the week off, and then they would be flying to their
training center south of Los Angeles where the heat would gradually rise as the
team primed themselves for their last chance to qualify for the summer games in
August.

The final day of the water polo team’s camp
happened off-site, pushing their altitude training to the max with the big
grade climb in the mountains. Allie had to wait until Marc came back from the
excursion to collect the last of his “post-exercise” samples. Half of the guys
had fallen asleep on the drive. They were all muzzy with exertion and eager to
get into the dining hall to refuel. Lindsey had sent her a text message to say
they were on the way, so Allie was ready by the curb with her kit when the van
pulled up. She did her sampling while Marc sat alone on one of the bench seats
after the others cleared out ahead of him.

It went too quickly. Their choreography was down
pat by now. Marc had to know Allie was lingering for no reason when she zipped
her bag up slow.

“Don’t worry, I won’t disappear tomorrow without
submitting myself to your full lab rat routine. You’ll have your data.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Allie lied with a smile. “Now
go get some rest so your immune system can do its thing, yeah?”

“You won’t find a better defense,” Marc drawled as
he hooked his arms on the seats’ headrests to drag himself up out of the van.

Allie didn’t doubt it. She waited a moment,
drinking in the sight of Marc before she turned to walk in the other direction
to the clinic.

The morning of the water polo team’s
departure, Allie went out to the parking lot to see Adam and some of the
younger guys off. They were flying into San Diego to spend a few days’ down
time. From there they’d drive up to Los Angeles where their training pool was
located. Adam caught her in a hug and she returned it.

“Thanks for being my water polo coach,” Allie
teased him with a ruffle at his hair. “Stay out of trouble. And good luck.”

“I guess I’ll try,” Adam replied dubiously.
“Anything for you, Allie.”

Allie snorted at his puppy dog look, not believing
it for an instant. “All right, get out of here.” She fondly shoved him towards
the van.

“Thanks. Take care, huh?”

“You, too.” Allie smiled more warmly as she watched
the pack of young men tumble into the car. “Have a safe flight.” She waved them
off, watching the van bounce on its shocks as they settled into their seats
before it started rolling.

The veteran team members left about an hour later.
Allie begged off being dragged out to the airport by Violet, saying she had too
much paperwork to do. The rooms in the dorm were already being turned over and
more teams would start coming in that night for their training camps.

“Don’t you want to see the jet?” Violet asked as
her final bargaining chip, figuring it was inarguable. For a day and a half,
all the gossip had been how Blake’s family plane would be taking the guys who
were over twenty-one to Las Vegas for their long weekend.

“Maybe next time.”

“Allie. I’m not sure this is a thing you can count
on having a next time.”

Allie just shrugged. “I’m optimistic?”

Violet sighed, long suffering. “You’re a
workaholic.” But she must have known it was futile. She threw up her hands.
“All right, all right. I’ll take pictures for you.”

“Deal.” Allie shifted on her feet. It was tempting,
but she still had one more very important appointment that afternoon. “I’ll see
you at dinner.”

“You know it.” Violet blew her a kiss before leaving.

When Marc came into the clinic,
Allie didn’t know if it was more or less awkward than his first appointment. No
matter how much she told herself it shouldn’t matter, her stomach felt carved
out by the knowledge that it would be the last time she’d see him.

At least she had a better appearance of
professionalism. She was composed at her desk before he arrived. When she saw
Marc turn the corner from the reception area she picked up her clipboard
smoothly and smiled, her motions familiar instead of flustered. He gave her a
little check of fingers that was close enough to a wave.

“Last time you’ll have to put up with me.” Allie
was proud of how lighthearted she sounded as she motioned for him to follow her
back to the patient room she’d prepared.

Marc scraped out a distracted chuckle. She could
see that his headphone cords were curled into the outside mesh pocket of the
backpack slung over his shoulder. She wouldn’t be driving him for his return
trip to the airport, but she wondered if that would be a repeat too—would he be
any more talkative than when he arrived? Surely his mind would already be on to
the next thing.

Allie tried to put it out of her head and focus on
collecting the metrics which were now routine. Then came the litany of
additional basic measures which they didn’t bother with during the week so as
not to hold up the team’s training schedule. Drawing blood wasn’t really the
kind of thing one could linger over. She made do by being careful not to tape
over the hair of his forearm as she secured the little cotton ball over the
puncture point. Maybe she dragged her fingers a little wistfully over the
smooth of his inner arm where his veins tracked strong beneath his skin.

Violet had cast doubt on what kind of life he had
led, but Allie saw little evidence of it on his body aside from the tattoos
which stained his shoulders. Marc was in peak health, which was unsurprising
for a man who’d been making a living playing a sport that demanded both stamina
and strength-burst power. She thought back to the night when she found him
alone downtown and wondered why she had pulled away from him.

What do you want, Allie?

It was too late. She had her lab coat and gloves
on, and he was sitting on Doctor Kaitech’s table. She finished capping her
sample vials and made sure the coded labels were wrapped around their sides.
The only thing left to do was tuck them into the shipping container in which
they’d travel to the university lab for further analysis. Her job here was
done.

Marc was watching her expectantly.

“Doctor Kaitech should be arriving shortly to go
over the final interview portion. Then you should be all set.”

“I never did very well, being grilled by
professors.”

In her nervousness, Allie let a giggle escape
before she could silence it with a bite of her lip. Maybe he was joking, but
his eyes—there was something lurking deep in those liquid depths that was more
weighty. “You’ll survive,” she said with full confidence in him. She allowed
herself to cup a hand at his shoulder. Those shoulders. She tried to tell
herself it was okay as long as she didn’t get grabby with her fingers. “It was
good to meet you. I’ll be expecting to watch you kick ass this summer.”

“Yeah. You too. Good luck getting into med school.”

“Thanks.” She took a deep breath and turned it into
a laugh. There was really no reason she should still be there, and she was
supposed to go over to the business office for a meeting at the top of the
hour. The countdown to August was ticking ever faster. “Goodbye, Marc.”

“Take it easy.”

She slipped backward out of the door and stripped
off her coat to leave on a hook. Allie got out of the office fast to be sure no
one could see her making a fool of herself.