Free Sinners Football 01- Goals for a Sinner by Lynn Shurr Page B

Besides, Miss Essie fed me too well while I was recovering. I need to take off the five pounds cemented to my hips.” Stevie chuckled to keep things friendly.
    Kristen Riley sighed. “I remember when it was just five pounds I had to lose. Ah well, Keith says he loves all of me and always has from the first time he saw me. Did Connor ever tell you how his father and I met?”
    “No.” Stevie moved aside since the woman seemed determined to come into the room.
    Mrs. Riley settled herself on the edge of the bed that sank a bit under her weight. Stevie took a chair from the small writing desk near the window. The least she could do was listen to the woman’s reminiscence. She couldn’t fault Kristen for this awkward situation Connor had created. The game was tomorrow. Stevie could visit some of Seattle, cover the Super Bowl, then take a cab to the airport and see if a space on a red-eye back to New Orleans had become available. She would go directly to her studio and stay there where she belonged.
    “Well, I had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin where I earned some of my expenses performing as a cheerleader. I wanted to travel and see some of the world, so I tried out to cheer for the Saints. I know, often not so much to cheer about.
    New Orleans is so hot and steamy, like a foreign country to a northern girl. The judges liked my long legs, and of course, my big breasts, but said I looked too corn-fed and needed to lose twenty pounds to make the squad. They took me on as an alternate. I worked hard and lost those twenty pounds, which is not so easy in New Orleans with all the good food, but I did. When one of the other girls sprained an ankle, I got to perform.”
    Stevie wondered how long this story would take as Mrs. Riley went on.
    “I was picked up on the big screen for one of those honey shots, they call them. Keith sat up in a luxury box his engineering firm rented and saw me.
    He said to his boss, ‘That’s the woman I am going to marry,’ just like that. He got my name and waited for me after the game.”
    Kristen Riley smiled fondly. “I had been in New Orleans a few months now and heard that line pretty often in the bars around town, even in the department store where I worked. You know, ‘I want you to have my baby’ and other nonsense from young men and some old ones, too. I tried to ignore him, but Keith persisted until he got my number. He courted me until football season ended, fairly soon for the Saints in those days. I knew from the first night we dated this was the man for me. We were engaged on New Year’s Eve and married in June.
    Three months later, I was expecting Kevin, and two years later, Connor was on the way. It was that simple for us. Love at first sight for Keith and a soul mate for me.”
    “That’s a lovely story, Mrs. Riley.” Stevie smiled wistfully. “You must have been very beautiful. You still are.”
    “No more than you. I suppose being a modern career woman, you don’t believe in love at first sight or soul mates really, do you?”
    “I did once—when I was a silly college girl a long time ago.”
    “It would be my Kevin’s fault you no longer believe such a thing is possible.”
    “And Marcello’s and Dexter’s, some other guys in my life. Let’s not put all the blame on Kevin. The night I met Kevin, he said those same words to me.
    ‘Marry me and have my babies.’ I knew it was a line, but after a few hours with him, I wanted to believe him. Turned out I was only his rebound girl after his breakup with Merrilee the week before. He said she cheated on him, but now he had found someone better. We were over in three months and back he went to Merrilee. End of story.”
    “No, I don’t think it was,” Mrs. Riley disagreed.
    “At the age of seventeen, Connor told me all about you. I guess he was tattling on his brother, too, for having you over when he knew we were out of town, but there was more to it. Connor said he had met the woman he wanted to