Her Secret, His Child: A Little Secret by Tara Quinn (rosie project .txt) 📕

just been my mother and me. I even slept in her bed with her. Once John was there, I had to sleep alone, had to share the rest of my mother's time."

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"So you went to your 'room.'"

Jamie nodded. The rest just hung there, unsaid.

"Desperate people do desperate things," he said, almost to himself as he sipped at the small amount of amber liquid in his glass. "When did you start feeling desperate?"

She shrugged. "I couldn't name a particular time." She could name several of them.

"What made you desperate?"

Jamie wanted so badly to tell him the whole sordid story. But she couldn't give him that much of herself. She wasn't ready…

She had to be sure he was in for the long haul first.

"No one thing," she said, shrugging.

After finishing off the liquor, Kyle set the glass down hard. "I'm trying to understand here, Jamie. Because understanding brings forgiveness."

"Understanding doesn't change the facts," she told him, somehow finding the strength to look him in the eye. "And I don't need your forgiveness, Kyle. I need your acceptance."

For a long moment he stared across at her. And he nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"So we're friends—and heading beyond friendship?" He grinned at her.

Jamie nodded. And smiled. The first real smile she'd felt that week. She held no firm hope for the future, but she'd learned a long time ago to take life one small step at a time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Brad didn't show up for tutoring the first Monday in April. His coach did.

"What's with you, Radcliff?" The coach stormed through the empty classroom, approaching Kyle's podium. "Your degree go to your head, make you think you're God?"

Glad he was standing—and with a podium between him and the irate gorilla—Kyle didn't bother to answer the question. "Where's Brad?" he asked, instead. "He missed his tutoring session."

"From what I heard, there's not much point in him being here. He's going to flunk anyway."

"That's possible." Kyle nodded. "Almost a certainty if he doesn't come to tutoring."

"You're something else, man, you know that?" Coach Lippert leaned over the podium, his big ugly nose in Kyle's face. "That kid's been trying. Really trying. He's missed conditioning sessions—sessions he needs if he intends to have a body that's still in decent shape ten years from now—to come to your damn tutoring sessions. And for what?''

The guy had some ugly teeth.

"I'll tell you for what," he continued without

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

giving Kyle time to reply even if he'd wanted to— which he hadn't. "For a great big nothing.?'

"We don't know that yet."

Lippert shoved the podium hard enough to move it. "I saw his last exam, Radcliff. The kid doesn't have a chance. Not unless you bend a little."

Kyle stood his ground. "What kind of message are we sending Brad, and all the others like him, if we tell them they aren't bound by the same rules as everyone else, simply because they can play football?"

"Get off—"

"I'm not finished yet," Kyle interrupted. "The world of professional sports is filled with young men who think they're above and beyond the law. I read the newspapers, Lippert. Athletes in jail for physical abuse, for drug abuse, gambling, murder."

"Next you'll be telling me the prisons are full of athletes!"

"No," Kyle said, supporting his elbows on the podium. "That's just it. They aren't. Because these athletes have managers, coaches and agents. They have money for lawyers who buy them out of trouble time and time again. Is it any wonder the kids' minds rot, that they don't think twice before breaking the law? We've basically taught them it's okay. That their sins will disappear. They've never been taught accountability."

Kyle shut up. He hadn't meant to lecture. Must've been because he was standing behind the podium. He also hadn't expected Coach Lippert to pay attention to anything he had to say, but the man was

TARA TAYLOR QUINN

staring at him, all signs of aggression gone from his body.

"You're right, of course," the big man finally said, though he didn't appear too happy. "But what kind of message are we sending Brad?" He frowned, apparently thinking out loud. "The kid's really tried, done everything that was asked of him and then some. He's done the absolute best he can do." Coach Lippert glanced up at Kyle. "Are we gonna tell a twenty-year-old kid that his best isn't good enough?"

"A college degree stands for something," Kyle said. ' 'It tells any employer that the person holding the degree has mastered certain courses. Basic literature being one of them. If I pass Brad, I am in essence lying to anyone, at any point in his life, to whom his degree matters."

"The only employer that kid'll ever have isn't gonna care!" Coach Lippert came forward again, one hand on the edge of the podium. His arm bulged impressively from the strain. "Brad isn't ever gonna make it in the front door of any organization that'll give a damn about his degree. Not as a potential employee, anyway."

Kyle had to agree with the man there.

"Chances are, he's not even gonna get a degree. He's gonna be drafted before then. We just need to keep him in school long enough to get that offer."

Kyle listened. Really listened to what Coach Lippert was telling him.

' 'Yeah, I want to see my players make it big, but not at the risk of creating immoral human beings."

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Lippert said. Kyle had a feeling it wasn't very often the coach was this honest. He also had no doubt of the man's sincerity.

"Thing is, football is Brad's only chance," the coach continued, looking Kyle straight in the eye. "You've seen his work, Radcliff. You know as well as I do that the only kind of job he'd ever get out there would be menial labor, grunt work. And even that'd be fine, if it was all he was capable of doing. But it's not! The kid's got talent. More talent than I've seen in my twenty-five years as a coach."

Wishing he had some manual