What a Girl Wants

CHAPTER TWO

TRAVIS WAS HALFWAY out the door for his morning run when his phone rang. It was his mother, and he knew better than to ignore the call.

“Hey, Mom. Did you watch last night?”

“Did I watch last night? Of course I did! You were so great.” Her definition of “great” must have been skewed by motherly devotion. “Your aunt Kelly called me right away to say you looked so handsome. And I just got off the phone with your brother. He thought you did super. Well, except he disagrees with your opinion of the Cowboys’ defense, but you know Conner. He’s decided the Texans are the only team in the state worth watching this year.”

“What did Dad have to say?” Travis feared the answer but asked anyway. His father’s opinion was never affected by silly emotion.

His mother paused. Not a good sign. “You know your father. He was so tired last night and was asleep before the news came on. I recorded it, though. I’ll make sure he watches.”

His dad hadn’t even bothered to watch. Travis was used to hearing his father’s long list of things he needed to work on before the next game, but complete apathy was something he hadn’t expected. Postgame criticism never hurt this badly. Was this what he had to look forward to? Disappointment masked as indifference?

Travis was having a hard enough time dealing with his own disappointment. His football career was over before it had truly had a chance to begin. One and a half seasons; that was all he got before a Chicago Bears linebacker sacked him and reinjured his shoulder. Playing football was all he knew. Since he was six years old, Travis had worked endless hours to be the best quarterback to come out of Texas. His father had been his coach until he was twelve. Then his parents hired the first private quarterback coach. The expectations were high and the pressure increased exponentially over time. Outside of football, his dad apparently had no expectations of him.

“Listen, Mom. I was about to head out for a run before work. I’ll call you in a couple of days, all right?”

“Sounds good. Don’t worry about your dad, honey. Training camp started and he’s in mourning, I guess. But he’ll come around. You’ll see. We love you, Travis. You know that.”

“I know. Love you, too. Gotta run.” He hung up and pushed his earbuds in, turning up the music good and loud. Travis never doubted his mother’s love. The woman had doted on him his entire life regardless of how he did on the field. His father’s love always felt more conditional. When the doctors informed them Travis’s shoulder injury was career-ending, he had seen the look on his father’s face. All the work, all the time, all the money he’d put into Travis was wasted. All his father’s hopes and dreams died that day.

Mourning. His dad was mourning more than training camp.

Travis tried to clear his mind as he ran. He welcomed the burn in his legs and the ache in his chest as he hit the six-mile mark. The air was still a little thick from the rain last night, though there was no sign of it on the pavement. Travis shook his head at the memory of the girl with the red umbrella running to her car. Summer Raines. That girl was unusual, to say the least.

Women loved Travis. Back in high school and college, they lined up to get nothing more than a minute of his time.And his year and a half in the NFL? He could have dated a different woman every week.

He didn’t do that, though. He had one girlfriend in high school, went out with a couple of girls in college and found himself a pretty lady who wanted to marry him during his first year with the Dolphins. But Brooke went running for the hills as soon as she found out Travis Lockwood wasn’t going to be the next Dan Marino.

Fickle hearts. Stupid, fickle hearts.

Losing his career was tough. Losing faith in the person he thought was his true love was devastating. Travis’s life had been on a nice, straight path, then all of a sudden it took a very sharp right. Then a left, before he spun out. Now he didn’t know which direction he was headed. He was alone and unsure if that was the way it should be. After Brooke took his ring and stomped on his heart, trust would never come easily to him again.

Six months after his last football game, Travis picked up the pieces of his broken heart and his busted shoulder and returned to Sweetwater to start over. He was still loved throughout West Central Texas even if he couldn’t play ball anymore. Everybody knew who he was and still thought he was worth something. Ken Collins thought he was worth something. He called Travis up and asked if he wanted to use that communications degree he’d earned. Sportscasting wasn’t Travis’s dream job, but hell, neither was football. Football had simply been his only option. When he couldn’t play anymore, reporting on it seemed like a decent alternative— at least until Travis could figure out what he really wanted to do with his life.

The problem with reporting seemed to be that he wasn’t very good at it. It was probably for the best that his dad hadn’t watched him fail. It was only a matter of time before he disappointed Ken the way he’d let his dad down. Travis needed to work harder if he didn’t want to end up unemployed again. Everyone at the station had welcomed him with open arms. Well, almost everyone. Summer Raines wasn’t impressed. She didn’t know who he was or what he had accomplished in his life. She didn’t seem to know or care much about football at all. The weather girl was dedicated to her craft—period.

Travis sped up, sweat dripping down his forehead. He wiped it out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He was in the zone now, his body working like a well-oiled machine. No one who saw him running would suspect he was damaged beyond repair. Of course, out here there was no one trying to throw him down on the ground, looking to completely destroy his weakened shoulder. He was in great physical shape, just not for the one thing he thought he was born to do.

He pushed himself harder than usual. Rachel would likely give him some on-air pointers. She came off as more than willing to mentor the newcomer. So unlike the weather girl, who was excellent at her job but didn’t seem to be much of a team player. Both women were experienced reporters. He also couldn’t deny they were attractive. Rachel had a face that was made for television—a friendly smile, high cheekbones and porcelain skin. Summer had long blond hair with a little curl and the prettiest eyes he had ever seen.

As he sprinted back toward his house, he thought about how the last thing he needed was to give someone else a chance to break what was left of his heart. Rachel had been incredibly kind to him on his first day, but her intentions were familiarly questionable. She was too impressed with who Travis had been. Summer didn’t like him. She had made that clear, and maybe that was what made her a safe mentor. He’d never get caught in the rain unprepared, and there was no chance they’d ever fall in love. It was a win-win for him, and it’d been a long time since Travis had won at anything.

* * *

“YOU REMEMBER PLAYING Wylie your senior year? My son was tight end. Maybe you remember him— Sean Harper? Number 80. He was a junior. Made all-conference his senior year.”

Travis had played in thousands of football games. He remembered lots of opponents. He knew all the quarterbacks, several linemen, a handful of linebackers. Tight ends? Not so many. But the portly man with the bright green tie sitting beside him looked so desperate for Travis to recall his son, he lied.

“Sean Harper from Wylie.” He paused as though he was trying to place him. “Oh yeah, tight end. He was a helluva player. Where’d he go after high school?”

Mr. Harper was beaming. “He went to A&M. Didn’t play ball. Graduates this spring with a degree in accounting.”

“You must be very proud.”

“He’s got a bright future ahead of him. His mom and I couldn’t be prouder.” Mr. Harper smiled and went back to his lunch. Bright future. Travis remembered what it felt like to have one of those. Suddenly, his shoulder ached and his stomach hurt. He tried to get in a couple bites before someone else asked him a football-related question, reminding him once again that his future wasn’t looking nearly as good as Sean Harper’s.

Making an appearance for the station at the Abilene Rotary Club luncheon sounded like a dream until Travis realized how little eating would actually be involved. After helping to present a service award to a gangly, pimply-faced teenager, he’d been bombarded with a million questions. The small banquet hall was filled with many of Abilene’s finest, people who cared enough to give back to their community. Businessmen and businesswomen, local leaders, regular citizens who found purpose in promoting goodwill through their fellowship. Travis was surrounded by very nice people. Very nice people who wanted to talk to the fallen hero of West Central Texas. Each time he lifted his fork to his mouth, he was thwarted by another question.

“What channel do you work for again?” a woman with silver hair asked from across the table.

“He’s over at Channel 6 with Rachel Crow and that weather girl who always knows when it’s going to rain,” Mr. Harper replied, allowing Travis to indulge in his first bite of the chicken that had been cooling on his plate.

“Oh, Summer Raines.” The woman smiled. “I love her.”

“You have to tell us,” another gentleman in a dark blue blazer said, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Is it true she has magic powers? Can she really predict when it’s going to rain, or is it a gimmick?”

Travis’s mouth was full of some of the best mashed potatoes he’d had in a long time. He swallowed them quickly as all eyes turned on him. It was strange to talk about something other than his football past—or lack of a football future. Summer Raines had offered him a reprieve, and she wasn’t even here. “Well, I haven’t been working there long enough to be sure, but I don’t think it’s magic. She’s just real good at her job.”

“Rumor is she’s a witch,” one of the younger women at the table whispered. “That’s why she’s so connected with nature. Wicca, they call it.”

Travis snorted. Were these people serious? Travis didn’t know the woman well, but she sure wasn’t a witch. “I don’t think she’s a witch. She takes the weather seriously. Spends a lot of time looking at things online. Maps and radars, you know. Weather stuff.” He had no idea what he was talking about. The other diners stared as though they could tell.

“She’s the only one I trust. She’s always right,” the gray-haired woman said, breaking the silence.

The man beside her agreed. “Never been wrong in all the time I’ve watched.”

Travis was impressed. He drank some iced tea and finished his lunch while the table continued to discuss the storms Summer had predicted. The weather girl was quite the legend in her own right. If he could learn from her, Travis might be able to pull this sportscasting thing off.

* * *

THE NEWSROOM WAS quieter today. Yesterday everyone had bombarded Travis with their memories of games they had watched him play over the years. One of the producers had been following Travis’s career since he was in Pee Wee. Today, people were still friendly, but not as in-his-face. There was only one face he wanted to get in front of, and she was already at her desk, on her computer.

“Good afternoon, Weather Girl.”

Her annoyance at that nickname was obvious. Her naturally pink cheeks flushed red and made him smile. She hated him and he loved it.

“Mr. Lockwood, good to see you were able to dry off after last night,” she quipped.

Travis’s laugh was deep. How he’d missed laughing for real and not for show. “I plan on telling Ken it’s entirely your fault if I catch a cold.”

“I don’t control the weather, I just predict it.” She turned her attention back to her monitor. Her soft-looking curls fell down like a curtain, shielding her face from him. He wanted to reach out and push them behind her ear so he could see those cheeks, those eyes. Her eyes really were amazing. They were big and blue like the Texas sky.

He sat on the edge of her desk. She flipped her hair off her shoulder and side-eyed him, saying nothing. He picked up the framed photo of a young couple and a curly-haired, little girl in front of something that looked like a souped-up tank. She snatched it out of his hands and set it back in its place. “Is there something you need? Maybe you’re looking to unload thirty seconds from your segment? Or are you just here to bother me?”

“I was the special guest at the Abilene Rotary Club’s luncheon today. They think you have magic powers. Said you’ve never been wrong about when it’s going to rain.” He left out the part where they wondered if she was a witch.

“No magic powers,” she said, trying to look disinterested.

“That’s what I said. I told them it was nothing but luck, and odds were you’d get it wrong one of these days.”

Summer stopped what she was doing and turned her whole body in his direction. “Did you, now?”

Finally, he had her full attention. He smiled. Most ladies loved the dimples, but they only seemed to fuel Summer’s fire. “I mean, if it’s not magic, what else could it be?”

“You were a football player before this, correct?”

He liked how she had to ask, as if she wasn’t completely sure. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Does that not require any intuition at all? Or do you just learn how to play and that’s it? Anybody with any athletic ability can do it?”

Again, she made him laugh. “Anyone can play. But to be good, you need to read more than a playbook.”

“Exactly,” she said with a smile and a wave of her hand. “I read more than the radar. I can’t explain how it works, I just feel it. I’m sure there are things you can’t teach someone about football. They just know it or they don’t.”

“Well, that’s probably true. My mom swears I was born wearing a helmet. I probably know more about football than I want to.” That was the truth. He had slept, eaten, drunk and breathed football his entire life. “Anytime you want to learn something about the game, I’d be happy to teach you.”

She froze, her pretty pink lips parted. He’d hit the nerve he was looking for. Football held about as much of her interest as watching paint dry held his. She turned forward and shook her head. “I don’t want to learn about football.”

“Maybe you could teach me about predicting the rain, then?” Travis knew all about defensive strategy. She could block his pass all afternoon, but he wasn’t going to stop trying for that touchdown.

She shook her head again. “You don’t want to hear about weather forecasting.”

“I do. I swear.”

“Go away, Mr. Lockwood.”

“You’re leaving me no choice,” he warned. “I’m gonna have to tell everyone at the Rotary Club it’s magic.”

Summer dropped her face into her hands and groaned in frustration. She was too much fun. It took so little to get her riled up. Sitting back up, she swiveled her chair in his direction and narrowed her eyes. “What do you want to know? That it dates back to 650 B.C.? Or how the Babylonians tried to make guesses based on things like cloud formations and other atmospheric phenomena?” He saw something in her eyes flicker. She truly lived for this stuff. “I mean, can you imagine? How accurate could they have been back then? If they did ever get it right, I think those people were simply more in tune with nature. Genetically, as a species, we—”

She stopped and snapped her mouth shut. Travis was entranced; he wanted her to continue. To have someone actually talk to him about something other than what he did when he was in a uniform was refreshing. “What? We what?”

Summer looked up at him, searching. She stood abruptly. “I’m not going to talk about weather only to have you laugh about it later with everyone else in the newsroom,” she snapped. Before he could respond, she took off for the one place he couldn’t follow—the dreaded ladies’ room.

“Don’t mind her.” Travis spun around to find Rachel twirling a strand of hair. “She’s a little socially inept. I think she’s one of those savants. The kind of person who knows a whole bunch about one thing in particular but lacks social graces.”

If she thought speaking of a coworker that way was somehow becoming, she was wrong. Summer’s fear that he’d mock her made complete sense now. One thing he’d learned about women over the years was that the ones who tore down the others deserved his respect the least. Brooke had been a woman-basher, always pointing out the faults in the women she called friends. Travis had no time for that in his life anymore.

“Have you seen Ken? I need to check in with him.”

Rachel’s forehead creased. She was clearly shocked by his disregard for her comments about the weather girl. “He’s probably in his office,” she said, regaining her composure.

Travis nodded and took off. He figured there was only one way to earn Summer’s trust and therefore her help. He had to convince Ken that Summer needed her thirty seconds back.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MORNING SUN was no more forgiving than the one that beat down any other time of day in September. Summer fanned herself with the church bulletin.

“Excellent sermon today, pastor,” her grandfather said, shaking Pastor John’s hand.

“Thank you, David. I meant to ask Summer if we should be praying for more rain or not. You got us a little bit earlier in the week, but it wasn’t enough.”

Summer loved that people thought she had some sort of control over the rain because she forecasted it. Predicting and causing were unfortunately two very different things, but meteorologists got blamed for weather conditions regardless. “Never hurts to pray,” she replied.

“Isn’t that the truth?” The pastor smiled kindly. “We’ll see you next Sunday, Miss Raines.”

Summer followed her grandparents back to the house. They always walked to church unless the weather prevented it. Some people were born for this heat. David and Sarah Raines were two of those people.

“So, tell me about this new sportscaster y’all got over there at Channel 6 now.” Summer’s grandmother hooked arms with her and patted her hand. “I thought he was kind of cute.”

Summer’s eyes rolled behind her sunglasses. Travis was annoyingly cute and ridiculously humble. He was also the reason Summer had to talk faster during her report. Her blood boiled. She fanned herself a little faster.

“He’s barely capable of doing what he’s being paid to do, Mimi. I’m sure we stole a few viewers away from Channel 4 last week, but I’m not so sure they’re going to come back for more.”

“I think if he were on Channel 4, I’d switch over after you were done so I could see him.” Mimi winked and tugged on her arm. The woman always had a devilish look in her eyes—eyes that were the same blue as Summer’s. People always told her she looked like her grandmother. Mimi’s blond hair was a tad lighter but had the same gentle curl, although no one would ever know it because she always wore it in a long braid that fell down her back.

“You hear that, Big D?” Summer leaned forward to get her gentle giant of a grandfather’s attention. He walked without a care on Mimi’s other side. “You okay with her ogling the new sports guy every night?”

He shook his head at their nonsense. “She can look all she wants. She knows she’s stuck with this old man until the good Lord takes me away. Then she can get herself an upgrade.”

Mimi’s sigh was loud and exaggerated. “Knowing how stubborn your granddad is, he’ll probably outlive me and be the lucky one who gets to trade up.”

Summer laughed. “That’s probably best. They don’t make men like they used to. I don’t think you could upgrade if you were given the chance.”

Big D reached behind his wife and placed his hand on his granddaughter’s back. “You’re a good girl, Summer.”

Sundays were always the same—church and lunch with her grandparents, followed by a quiet evening at home...alone. Summer didn’t mind being by herself, but she enjoyed the first part of the day much more than the second. She loved working in the garden with Mimi or sharing the newspaper with Big D. Her grandparents were so different from her parents. They loved their simple life. They believed in putting down roots. They’d both lived in Abilene their entire lives. Before he retired, her grandfather had taught environmental science at the Christian university in town for over thirty years while her grandmother stayed home and raised three children. Summer’s father was the youngest and the only boy. Gavin Raines was more like a leaf in the wind rather than a tree rooted in the ground.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice how you deflected the conversation away from the sports guy,” Mimi said later as they put the finishing touches on an apple pie.

Summer smashed her lips together. She was not going to spill any of the feelings she was having about Travis. No matter how perceptive her grandmother thought she was being, there was nothing to tell. There was never going to be anything between Summer and the ex-football player who couldn’t read a Teleprompter to save his life. His presence at the station ruined her chances of doing more than reporting the highs and lows for the week. All Summer wanted was to share her passion for Mother Nature. Was that too much to ask?

She opened the oven and put the pie in before setting the timer. “Did you know that in ten minutes, a hurricane can release more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined?”

“Well, well.” Mimi rubbed her hands together with a gleeful look in her eye. “There must be a really good story about this boy if I’m gettin’ weather facts.”

“There was a hurricane near Haiti earlier this week. I find hurricanes quite fascinating,” Summer said in her defense.

“I think you find something else more fascinating than you want to admit.”

“He took thirty seconds of my weather report away. I find nothing the least bit fascinating about him or football. Football, football, football! Do people in Texas not know there are other things happening in the world besides football?”

Mimi bit her tongue, trying not to infuriate her already irrational granddaughter. Summer had moved to Abilene when she was sixteen and never quite acclimated to the Texas way of life. Being raised by hard-core storm chasers probably hadn’t helped. “Oh, sweetheart, it’s not his fault that football reigns supreme around these parts. You can’t hold the general public’s preferences against him.”

Summer sat back down at the kitchen table, flustered. She hated that it was so easy for him. He waltzed into the studio and all the viewers were going to love him no matter what. She didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him. She barely tolerated him. “He also calls me Weather Girl. Says it sounds cute.”