Tricia Lynne’s joining us for the tour for her second chance romance, MODEL BEHAVIOR! Check it out and be sure to order your copy today!
Title: Model Behavior
Author: Tricia Lynne
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Hayes Walker is screwed.Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Google Play | BookBub | Goodreads | Books A Million | Kobo
“Pulling the curtain to the
side, I watched as he fired a tennis ball the length of the room. “I thought
you played defense. That looked like a quarterback threw it.”
“Huh, played being the operative
word. And no, that didn’t look like a quarterback threw it, but you always were
kind.”
Sadie dropped the ball at his
feet. “Do you miss it?”
He picked it up and threw it
again. “Playing? Yes. What playing did to my body? Hell, no.”
I watched after Sadie as I stood
next to Hayes. “I bet she’d have made a great Frisbee dog, maybe even fly ball,
when she was younger.”
“They always say shit like that
about us has-beens, don’t they, girl? Drop it.” He scratched her head, and
Sadie spit out the ball. “If only we were younger, if only our knees still had
all their cartilage. If only time didn’t march on and forget about us.” He
stared at the ball in his hands with a distance in his gaze. Sadie sat
patiently, looking up at the man she so obviously loved with soft brown eyes
and a face going white with age. These two needed each other.
Gently, I pulled the ball from
Hayes’s hand and gave Sadie a scratch. Then I launched it across the room. She
looked after it but didn’t go. “Oh, Hayes. This little girl is sweet on you.”
That made the laugh lines appear
around his eyes. “Go get it, sweetheart.”
Finally, she darted out after it.
“I’m sorry about football. I
just want you to know that you are so much more than the game. I’ve always
thought that.” Today couldn’t have been easy on him, at an event with players
who used to be his teammates, but now he coached them.
Hayes nodded. “I mean, yeah. I’m
a football player. I’ll always be a football player. But it’s the way it got
taken away from me, and the reason I even played so long in the first place.”
He shook his head. “I loved playing. I wanted to play solely because I loved
it, and I wanted to leave on my terms. That didn’t happen. Sometimes I’m a
little jealous of Brody for that.”
Sadie brought the ball back to
me, but I noticed her starting to limp a little on her right hind leg. “All
done, sweetheart.” Breathing heavy, her black coat shined in the light as she
circled and lay down next to Hayes’s leg. I studied his face. The lines etched
into his forehead. The aching set of his jaw. This man was broken, but weren’t
we all a little damaged?
Creating second chances for
people was part of my job…”
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