Read Online Ever After (Love to the Rescue Book 3) by Rachel Lacey - Free Book Online Page B

here, and here. You two, there.” He positioned the boys on four corners, partners diagonally from each other. “You two are in the middle.” He brought two more boys in. “The object is to pass the ball to your teammate without letting the guys in the middle steal it. If they get your ball, they get to move out to the corners. Got it?”
    He set them up, then arranged the remaining boys to run the same drill at the other end of the gym. Soon the room filled with the sounds of sneakers squeaking against the floor and boys yelling as they worked together to pass the ball.
    It didn’t take long for the center teams to steal a ball and claim their turn on the corners. After everyone had a turn and the boys were focused and warmed up, he put them on teams and let them play a quick game.
    “Sorry I was late today, guys. I got held up at work,” he said as they were cleaning up.
    “It’s okay, Coach. We’ll give you another chance,” a lanky kid named Lonnie said.
    “Well, actually—”
    Steve Barnes came into the gym then, a big smile on his face. “Pete! Glad you made it. How’d it go?”
    “I barely got here before it was time for them to go.”
    Steve shrugged. “Happens. Want to try again next week?”
    “Oh, I don’t think—” Pete turned away from the boys. “Probably you should find someone with a more reliable schedule.”
    “In a perfect world. But I have a feeling you could show these boys a thing or two about reliability, regardless of what time you got here today.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jason, the tall blond, asked.
    “He’s a cop,” Lonnie told him, with a shrug. “I’ve seen him around town before.”
    “A sheriff’s deputy, actually,” Steve said. “Deputy Sampson was good enough to help us out today after he finished a full day’s work serving our town.”
    “That’s cool,” one of the boys said, before they all headed to the locker room to change.
    “Appreciate you helping us out today,” Steve said. “I’m still in a bind on Tuesdays. I can’t get over here early enough to do it myself, not to mention I don’t know squat about soccer.”
    Pete wracked his brain and came up empty on a reason not to do this. “All right then. Pencil me in on Tuesdays for now.”
    And then he headed home to look up soccer drills. Because if he was going to do this, he was going to do it right.
    * * *
    Olivia sat on the bathroom floor and rested her chin on her knees. This had become her newest unofficial hobby: sitting in the bathroom talking to herself. “It’s all your fault,” she told the little white ball of fur in the corner.
    The kitten lifted its head and stared at her.
    She was making progress though. Yesterday they’d visited the vet, where Olivia had learned the kitten was a female and in overall good health. Naturally she had parasites and was underweight. The good news was that her lameness was caused by an infected cut in her footpad. A round of antibiotics ought to make her good as new.
    In the two days since Pete dropped her off, Olivia had spent hours in here talking to the kitten and holding her despite much hissing and spitting. This morning, she had come close enough to sniff Olivia’s hand. Surely she’d be tame soon, but Olivia wasn’t the patient sort.
    “Come here, furball.” She held her hand out, and the kitten craned her neck to sniff her. “I blogged about you today.”
    She kept a blog on the Citizens Against Halverson Foods website, detailing the group’s efforts to get the chicken-processing plant shut down. The kitten didn’t technically have anything to do with Halverson, but she’d found it on their property and witnessed an employee throw a rock at it, so she’d put up a personal interest piece about how she’d captured it and managed to raise some money for future vet bills while she was at it.
    She got a lot of visitors to her website and a lot of interaction through her blog and on Facebook. There were so many people