Qualified: A Sports Romance

Qualified

________________________

Ada Croix

To you who loved the sand and loved the snow.

This is a work of fiction. While the locations in
this story may bear some resemblance to places that exist, narrative liberties
have been taken and the setting is intended to be entirely fictitious. The
events and people described herein are imaginary or used fictitiously and any similarities
to actual events, businesses, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 Ada Croix

All rights reserved. This book may not be used or
reproduced in whole or in part by any means without permission.

Contact Ada Croix via her
Website

Book Cover Design by Vivian Monir,
Vivian Monir
Design

“Allie, I think someone’s here for
you.”

Allie looked up from where she knelt in front of a
spread-legged gymnast to smile at the receptionist. “I’ll just be a second.”
She was nearly done rolling plastic wrap over Shane’s ice-packed hamstring. A
puff of breath cleared an escaped lock of hair from her eyes so that she could see
the woman who was walking into the clinic.

“Don’t hurry on my account.” Violet helped herself
to a seat on the adjacent patient couch, balancing a hip on its edge to take
her weight off her stilettos. Her heel twisted out girlishly. “Hi Shane.” She
dragged her teeth at her lip and ran a look over him. “Overdo it on New Year’s
Eve?”

“The dangers of repetitive stress injuries.” The
gymnast suggestively adjusted the waistband of his loose shorts where they
slung across his trim abdomen.

“Sounds like you could use a better workout
partner,” Violet purred.

Allie caught her smile and kept her eyes away from
the non-clinically-relevant bulge in the athlete’s shorts. Luckily she could
finish off a wrap blindfolded after her first four months at the national athletic
training center in Colorado, and Violet made for a convenient focal point. “Is
that more work for me?”

“You’re the only person I know who gets excited
about more work.” Violet may have rolled her eyes but she didn’t lose her
smile.

Allie wrinkled her nose at her roommate. If she
wasn’t so close to Shane’s crotch, she might have stuck her tongue out. As it
was, she tucked in the cut end of wrap just above her patient’s knee and gave
it a good-to-go pat. She rocked back to sit on her heels and smiled up at the
gymnast. “You know the drill, yeah? Anything else you need?”

“Too easy, Allie.” Shane flashed his
commercial-grade smile at her and sealed his tease with a wink. He let the leg
of his shorts shake back down from the high bunch he’d been holding it in to
give Allie access to his muscular thigh. “I think I’m set,” he said more
seriously. “I’ll let you two get at whatever is in those.” The gymnast tapped
at Violet’s manila folder as he slipped out past her.

Violet played her hair behind her ear as she twisted
to watch him go. “Pictures from the wrestling team’s naked Jello match.”

Shane laughed on his way out. “Oh, yeah? I think we
have that team-building exercise scheduled next week.”

“I’ll be sure to reserve front row tickets.”

Allie tuned them out while she put away her
supplies and washed her hands back to full warmth in the sink. She was ready
with a long-suffering look for when her friend left off staring at Shane’s
elite ass. “I didn’t know naked Jello was a division in wrestling.”

“The things you learn here, hmm?” Violet beamed at
her sunnily. “All right.” She relented with a roll of one shoulder and a swing
of the folder in her fingertips. “Maybe I don’t have pictures of brawny men
coated in gelatin. But the camp starting next weekend is almost as good.”

“Let me guess.” Allie grabbed at the folder,
worried that the included pages would go flying from her friend’s careless
handling. “Is it the curling team?” She managed a grin as she turned to lead
the way towards what passed as her office.

Violet shook her head and shifted to her feet to
drift in Allie’s wake. “Men’s water polo.”

“Shouldn’t they be somewhere with horses?” Allie
was barely paying attention. She moved her record book a little farther down
the counter so she could set the hardcopy folder beside her keyboard.
Everything neatly in its place.

“Mm. I do like a man who knows how to ride.” Violet
tipped her head up for a fanciful moment, twirling a lock of dark hair around
one finger. She broke off the thought with a sigh and perched herself beside
Allie’s laptop on the long multi-station desk. “I sent over most of the files
by email.”

“This did seem a little thin,” Allie said of the
folder. Sitting down, she booted up her email.

“I think water polo is like soccer in a pool.”
While the program updated Violet idly swung her feet. Those heels, in winter,
in a sports complex. Violet said that you had to dress the part of the job you
wanted, and she had her sights set high up the corporate ladder in the sporting
world. That, and on tall men with bulging biceps. “You know. Balls. Speedos.”

After living with Violet for nearly four months,
Allie had developed some immunity to the kind of comments which would have
previously flushed embarrassment across her face. It still was enough to bring
her typing to a pause. She stared a moment at her friend. “You are seriously
going to get me fired.” Allie peeked over her shoulder towards the glassed-in
staff office where thankfully no one seemed to be paying them any attention.

“I don’t think they call it fired, for an
internship.”

“Dismissed, then.” Allie sighed. “I need good
letters of recommendation for med school, I don’t need my supervisors thinking
I’m some …” Allie’s words petered out as her gaze roved back to her
friend.

Unbothered, Violet posed herself on the edge of the
desk with a provocative arch of her back and a wicked little smile. “Some
sports-boy slut looking to rack up the highest score?” Her mascaraed lashes
fluttered shamelessly.

“Yes,” Allie said through a laugh.

“Allie, sweetheart, I hate to tell you. But you are
utterly failing on that count. Do you know that … No.” Violet stopped
herself with a palm put to the air. “I refuse to believe that you’ve seen
Shane’s Under Armour calendar and still looked at him like he was last week’s
deboned chicken.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re a workaholic, Allie.” Violet swung
out a foot to jostle at her friend’s knee. “It means I know how to bring you
the good stuff. This right here?” She tapped a manicured fingernail at the
folder. “These are the extra faxes that came in from Europe for an athlete who
signed up for Doctor Kaitech’s study.”

Allie paused in the middle of dropping the
forwarded numeric files into the clinic’s database. “You mean the IgA
respiratory study?” Her supervisor’s research in immunology was one of the
main reasons this internship had been so attractive to her.

“Sure.” Violet looked like she was suppressing
laughter over Allie’s nerdy excitement. “And with Tracey gone until the end of
the month, I wonder who Doctor Kaitech is going to want assisting with the
study?”

Allie looked at the folder with new eyes. “I’ve
been dying to get onto this project.” It was exactly the kind of thing she’d
been hoping for when she applied to the sports medicine clinic. She needed to
broaden her experience in order to be an attractive applicant to one of her
dream MD/PhD programs. When she had found out about the internship, it sounded
like a way to get both clinical hours and a chance to do research for the
scientists partnered with the training center.

So far, there hadn’t been much opportunity for the
latter. Allie reached out to stroke the thin cardboard stock with covetous
fingers. “Are you serious?”

“It’s all there,” Violet gestured to the file with
a welcoming flourish. “Go get ‘em, tiger.” With a final swing of her heels,
she hopped down to her feet.

“Thank you for walking this over.” Allie picked up
the folder and used it to bat at her friend’s nearer hip to chase her away.
“Now get out of here so I can do my work.”

“All right, all right. I’m going. You’ll meet me
for dinner?”

“If these don’t keep me too late.”

“You have the rest of the week before your guy
comes in, you don’t have to do all of it now.” Violet dismissed urgency with a
wave of her hand. “I just thought you might want to get started.” She faked
another look towards the main office and made a vague attempt at decorum by
lifting a shielding hand up to her mouth. It was ruined by the way she leaned
over Allie’s desk, providing a spectacular view of her ass in her pencil skirt
for anyone who happened to look over. “You have to help me pick which player to
add to my collection.”

Allie dropped her face into her palm. “You are so
unprofessional.”

Violet simply pattered a cheerful kiss off her
fingers and turned to sashay out of the clinic.

Allie let the folder weigh in her hands a moment.
So far, her experience at the sports clinic hadn’t been quite what she had
hoped for. She had learned a lot, both in being trained to work directly with
the center’s athletes as well as in the administrative and record-keeping tasks
that were so important in keeping a busy clinic running. But when it came to
special research projects, the closest she’d gotten was being assigned to drive
participant athletes to their off-site appointments. This participant could be
the key to getting the experience she so much wanted.

Her fingers slipped to the folder’s stiff edge and
eased it open.

Belmont, Marc

He wasn’t a smiler. Marc stared at her from his mug
shot at the top of the chart, his square jaw clenched as if he were about to
punch the photographer for telling him to “say cheese!” The red-piped collar of
his team jacket was unzipped, offering a glimpse of sun-bronzed skin beneath.
His black hair was wild, like he’d barely run his hands through it after
hopping out of the pool. Allie’s finger drifted over the page, but the stray
curl of ink licking the side of the man’s neck seemed to be tattooed on his
skin instead of accidentally smudged onto the paper from Violet’s print job.

Her eyes tracked down the cover card, picking out
details. He was nearly ten years older than her. His birthplace was some
California town she didn’t recognize. He’d been a member of the national teams
that had played in the games at Athens and Beijing, but not in London. That
discrepancy made Allie frown and flip through the sheets, looking to see if
there was an injury record which would explain why Marc was on the team now but
not four years ago.

“Allie?”

She looked up to see the receptionist peeking
around the corner from the lobby.

“There’s a cyclist who needs ice.”

“I’ll be right there.” Allie held her smile until
the girl disappeared back to the lobby’s desk. Taking a breath, she reached for
her mouse to send her computer into its lock screen. “I’ll just have to deal
with you later,” she told Marc, escaping his stare by letting the folder fall
closed.