Linda turned quickly, and this time she saw him avert his eyes. Once more, she pulled the door closed. When it immediately swung open, she saw her watcher talking with a woman. As the pair left, she waved. Another look in the mirror, and she decided she was as sexy as any high school girl she’d ever seen. Trying on the black dress only confirmed it.
Linda paid for her “finds” and pushed them to the bottom of her sack. She stopped to buy a pretty sweatshirt to have if her mother asked. Walking back to the hotel, they talked about dinner and their purchases, enjoying the warm weather. As they came into the lobby of the hotel, Molly chuckled.
“Want to go to the bar and see if we can pick up a couple of men?”
Linda looked at her mother, eyes wide.
“Just poking you,” Molly replied. “Let’s go to our room and watch a movie.”
“Sounds good,” Linda said, hoping the movie would allow her heartbeat to return to normal.
***
Jack sat at the back of the press conference at Crawford High, there to watch Linda announce her choice of a university. Despite what most of the speculators had predicted, Linda chose the Division I school just thirty miles from her home, actually just on the other side of town. Several of the schools she’d visited had outstanding track and cross-country programs, but she’d ignored them in favor of staying close to home. What the pundits didn’t know was that the university had promised to hire an assistant who was a distance running specialist.
Since it was summer, Jack and Linda were free to spend more time together. She was deciding what daring, dangerous, and hopefully erotic things she and Jack could do together. She wasn’t ruling out things she could do by herself, like the other day in the changing room at the mall. She’d just have to see how things worked out.
Jack was seeing the same change in Linda he’d seen once before. It was a little scary but also very rewarding as he’d never imagined that he’d have a girlfriend as pretty as Linda, nor the amazing sex he’d had either. Now, he was wondering what lay ahead for his summer.
It was two weeks later that Linda received a phone call, asking if she could be at the university the next day to meet the newly hired assistant coach. She drove herself there, curious about the new person she’d be working with–they hadn’t told her if it was a man or a woman.
It was a man. Alessandro Lombardi was in his twenties, handsome, with black curly hair, dark eyes that held your gaze, a dark complexion with two days’ growth of beard, and the lean, angular build of a distance runner. That, along with the big smile and the flashing white teeth, nearly overwhelmed Linda when they met.
“They said you were a fantastic runner, but they didn’t tell me how gorgeous you are.”
Unusual for her, Linda’s cheeks turned bright red.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“I’ve been looking at your times, and they’re exceptional,” he said, his slight Italian accent very fascinating to her ear.
They walked outside to the track, discussing workout regimes and philosophies. Linda noticed that Alessandro (call me Ali) was very handsy, touching her much more than she wanted to be touched. If she wanted a daring, dangerous, and erotic adventure, she was sure Ali could provide it. She understood that would be unnecessarily dangerous and wasn’t about to go there. Alessandro could coach her, period.
Something unexpected had happened, though. It seemed as though her existence was split into two halves. One part of her was turned off by Alessandro’s actions and wanted only to be coached. Another part of her was aroused by his touching her, picturing what she would do if they went into the deserted locker room. She could barely constrain her thoughts as she raced home to Jack.
“Let’s go,” she called to him as she pulled into the Murphy’s driveway.
“We going running?” he asked since he went with her on track workout days.
“Hardly. Get in.”
Jack knew that look and wondered what new adventure she had in store for him.