Excerpt: TLC 101 by Janey Chapel

[reviews_and_ramblings]

TLC 101 by Janey Chapel
Release Date: 10/2009
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Buy Link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=1582

Blurb: Sports psychologist Kip Rigsbee feels like an outsider, not part of the players’ circle and not accepted by the coaches of the college team he’s been hired to help. But that hasn’t kept him from feeling the gravitational pull of defensive coordinator Greg Browne, despite the fact that Greg dismisses Kip’s methods as “motivational bullsh*t.” An accident brings the unacknowledged attraction between the two men to the surface, but the common ground of their erotic connection may not be enough to help Kip overcome Greg’s determination to keep his personal life separate from his job.

Excerpt:

Kip fumbled his cell phone off the nightstand and poked at it. He hit the right button on the third try, cutting off the Flo Rida ringtone before it could start spinning right round again. He peered blearily at the clock: 6:22 AM. As in, six in the morning. Clearly too early to be anyone in the Minnesota clan, given the time difference, and they’d know better than to time a peptalk with the first day of Spring Break. So that left local trouble.

“Hello?” he said, dropping his head back on the pillow. Fuzzy cell reception answered him. He held the phone up, checking to see how many bars he had, then tried again, a little louder. “Hello?”

Damn it, if Truck Abernathy had busted up some bar, he could call some other sucker from the coaching staff to go clean up his mess. Kip hoped trouble had found somebody else; he’d talked the manager at Suds-n-Duds into letting Truck work off the damage he’d done, but a second transgression could mean suspension from the team.

A voice growled in his ear: “Rigsbee. What the – Rigsbee? Can you hear me? Come and get me.”

The hell? That sounded like… “Coach Browne? Uh…Greg? Is that you? Where are you?”

For a brief sleep-fogged moment, Kip thought this was it…the long-desired booty call. His morning wood perked up at the thought. What could he say? Terse with a side of taciturn turned him on, especially when it came with broad shoulders and killer quads. Then his higher brain functions pointed out that since Greg’s apartment was right overhead, if he had decided now was the time to act on the long looks and general sniffing around he’d been doing since they met, he could have just walked downstairs and knocked on the door. And he probably wouldn’t have picked the buttcrack of dawn to do it; Greg seemed more like a late-night, possibly hammered booty caller.

“What? I’m – ow, fuck,” Kip heard Greg say. “What’s that? I don’t want any of that shit.”

“Any of what shit?” Kip asked, yawning. Really, who could be trying to give Greg Browne something he didn’t want at this time of day? Some waitress at the IHOP trying to sell him on the joys of orange marmalade?

“Nothing. Never mind. I’m at South Guilford Hospital,” Greg said, his voice clipped. “Come get me. Please.”

The unexpected courtesy snapped Kip awake. He shook off the last blur of sleep, his hard-on subsiding at the word ‘hospital.’

“Wait, what happened? Coach?” A mutter of background voices told Kip that the line was still open. “Uh…Greg? You still there?”

“Am I speaking with Coach Rigsbee? Kip Rigsbee?” Another man’s voice, not wound quite as tight. “This is Dr. Llewellyn.”

Kip sat up and transferred the phone to his other ear, tucking it against his neck as he reached for a pad and pen in the nightstand drawer. He found condoms, three quarters, one gray sock, and aha, a birthday card, but no pen. He turned the card over so he could write on the back.

“Yeah, hi, this is Kip. I work with the team, but I’m not a coach. I’m a sports psychologist.”

Dr. Llewellyn didn’t seem to care. “Well, you’re Coach Browne’s I.C.E. There’s been an—hey, Coach, where do you think you’re going?”

His voice faded as background noise drowned him out. Raised voices, beeps, and a snarled, “Fuck off,” came over the line.

“I’m what?” asked Kip. He peered under the bed. There, a pencil; a dusty pencil, but it would do. “I’m his who?” He stretched for the pencil, rolling it with the tips of his fingers until he could grab it. “And can you spell your name for me?”

“His I.C.E. ‘In Case of Emergency.’ And it’s L-L-E-W-E-L-L-Y-N.”

“Thanks,” Kip said. He scribbled the doctor’s name on the back of the card. Whoa, that was a lot of Ls and Es. “Wait, he put me down? You’re kidding. That’s kind of funny, because–”

“Trust me, there’s nothing funny about this,” the doctor said, and then bit off a curse himself at another upsurge in background noise.

“Hello?” Kip said. “Dr. Llewellyn?” But the line went dead. Shit.

Kip poked the SEND button to redial the number Greg had called from, tapping the pencil on the bed as the phone rang again and again, but nobody picked up. He jumped out of bed and tugged on jeans and a t-shirt, stubbing his toe on the end of the futon as he poked around underneath it for his flip-flops. He tried the call again from the bathroom while he peed and quickly brushed his teeth, but still no one answered.

He went out to the living room and picked up his backpack from the floor by the couch, pawing through it for his car keys. When he realized his hands were shaking, he stopped and took a breath, then blew it out, pushing down the panic. Greg had called himself, so he couldn’t be in too bad a shape, right? They wouldn’t let a head injury make his own call. He patted his back pocket to make sure he’d picked up his wallet and headed out.

As soon as he got the car backed out of its narrow space outside the apartment house, Kip tried the number again. Finally, a woman’s harried voice answered.

“Hello?”

If anything, the background noise had increased. Kip raised his voice and said, “Hi. Can I talk to Dr. Llewellyn?”

“He’s busy right now,” she said. “You’ll have to call back.”

“Wait,” Kip said. “This is Kip Rigsbee. I was just talking to him. Can you please tell Coach Browne that I’m on my way?”

“I can try,” she said doubtfully.

“Please,” Kip urged her. “It’s important.”

“I’ll try,” she repeated.

It looked like that was as good an answer as he was going to get. He thanked her and ended the call. He coaxed his old Honda to go a little faster along the dogwood-lined streets and mulled over the mystery: why would Greg call him instead of one of his buddies on the coaching staff?

He downshifted as he turned a corner and sped past the stadium, its long rows of seats empty in the morning air. He’d run bleachers with the players his first week, and puked right along with them when Coach Turner finally blew the whistle. The players appreciated the gesture; the assistant coaches seemed to think he’d been sucking up. They’d pretty much circled their wagons with him standing on the outside, setting the tone for the rest of the season. Greg, the defensive coordinator, usually walked a fine line between the two: he didn’t dismiss Kip’s approaches out of hand. He listened and then dismissed them. But he must have had some reason why he’d picked Kip as his…what had the doc called it? Right, his I.C.E.

It could be an explanation as simple as being his closest neighbor, but Kip hadn’t given up entirely on the idea that maybe it really was a booty call cleverly disguised as a plea for help.