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stupid video, that was their loss. It wasn’t like I hadn’t
been disappointing them all my life. It’d never stopped me from
following my heart before, and it wouldn’t stop me now.
    “Brax, you don’t understand. Get mixed up
with me, and you could be damaged in the fallout.” She put her
hands on either side of my face, her eyes begging me to let her go
even as I knew my heart would never allow it.
    I shook my head. “I’ll be damned if I’ll
allow a bunch of assholes from your past to come between us. Or
anyone. This just feels… right. ”
    Her eyes grew wide. “You mean that, don’t
you?”
    “Uh, yeah .”
    “Brax, you know the NFL is leaving no stone
unturned when vetting potential quarterbacks—especially after last
year.”
    The top pick’s girlfriend had posted a sex
tape of her and her boyfriend, and it went viral. I remembered it
well.
    “I don’t want to hurt your chances in the
draft,” she continued.
    “You won’t,” I growled. I’d won a lot of
games from sheer force of will, and winning over Aubrey was one
challenge I wasn’t going to lose.
    “Okay,” I said, “I’m laying myself on the
line right here and now. These past few days have been epic.
Awesome. Incredible. When I see something I want, I go for it. I
see you. I want you. And I’m going for you. I’ll chase you to the
ends of the earth, or at least to the city limits. I’ll take every
class you’re in. I’ll stand outside your window in the pouring rain
and sing love songs.”
    She almost smiled. “You sing?”
    “I’m trying to prove a point here. My
ability to sing isn’t important.”
    “Maybe it is to me. Do you read poetry,
too?”
    Her mouth twitched. She was toying with me,
and it gave me hope. I said, “For you I’d do that. Give us a
chance. Let’s see where this goes. Together we can make this
work.”
    I nibbled on that sweet spot right behind
her ear I’d found last night. She groaned, tilted her head to give
me more access, then thought better of it and moved away.
    “I’m going to be late,” she said.
    I stepped in front of the bedroom door,
blocking her escape route. “You’re not going anywhere until you
agree to go out with me.”
    “That’s blackmail.”
    “I use any means at my disposal to get what
I want. You and I, baby, have magic. You don’t turn your back on
magic.”
    A slow smile spread across her beautiful
face and lit up her green eyes. “We do have magic, don’t we?”
    “Absolutely.”
    I started grinning again, and so did she.
Staying on campus for Christmas break had started out as a lonely
proposition but led me to the best Christmas gift ever.
    She wrapped her arms around my neck and
kissed me, a big wet, sloppy kiss on the lips. I had my answer.
Aubrey was mine, and I kept what was mine close to my heart.

 
    Author’s Note
    In another life I taught high school and
wrote young adult in my spare time. Those books never saw the light
of day, but I always wanted to return to the genre.
    Lately I’ve been reading a lot of new-adult
books written in first-person, and I’ve fallen in love with that genre. It only makes sense that I’d want to give it a
shot myself, so I talked to my publisher about creating a new-adult
subseries of my Seattle Lumberjacks football books featuring the
rookie players on the team, starting with their draft day in
college. Christmas Break is an introduction to that. The
next book in The Rookies will be about Brax’s first year in the NFL
and all the challenges of newly found fame and fortune. And about
how he and Aubrey weather the storm of newfound celebrity.
     
    COMING IN 2014
    FROM BOROUGHS PUBLISHING
    Seattle Lumberjacks: The Rookies series
#1
    Rookie Mistake

 
    About the Author
    An advocate of happy endings, Jami Davenport
writes sexy romantic comedies, sports hero romances, and equestrian
fiction. Jami lives on a small farm near Puget Sound with her Green
Beret-turned-plumber husband, a Newfoundland cross with a tennis
ball