That Christmas Feeling by Catherine Palmer, Gail Gaymer Martin

arms.”
    “Yeah, that burly guy is the quarterback. Me.”
    “How can anyone tell who’s who? All the players look alike.”
    “They have numbers on their jersey backs. Names, too, in the pros.”
    She shrugged. “Anyway, it’s always the same. The teams suddenly burst into action and start running around all over the field, the crowd yells, most of the players fall down and the referees throw yellow hankies everywhere.”
    “Flags.”
    “Whatever. Then the football reappears, and the whole scenario repeats itself. I never can find the ball, so what’s the point?”
    He sat up straight and put his slice of pizza down on the plate. Then he pointed a finger at her. “You are coming over to my house tomorrow, Claire Ross, and we’re watching Sunday afternoon football.”
    Claire swallowed. Time alone with Rob West. This was not in her plans. Not at all. She unknitted her fingers and then knitted them back again.
    “Well, I do have papers to grade.”
    “And I have bad guys to catch. I’ve got a methamphetamine ring scuttling around right under my nose, but they’ll just have to wait a couple of hours to start playing cat and mouse with me again. You and I are watching a game together tomorrow. That’s settled.”
    “Is this by order of the police chief?”
    “It’s an invitation.”
    “It sounded like a command.”
    “Seriously, Claire. I can’t let a red-blooded American girl get by without understanding football. That’s not acceptable.”
    “I’m not a girl.” She pushed a piece of crust from one side of her plate to the other. “I’m twenty-eight, Rob. This isn’t high school.”
    “I know that.” His eyes darkened. “Are you saying you don’t want to come over?”
    “Would that be right—you and me alone together in your house? As my grandmother would say, ‘There’d be talk among the people.’ Besides, I don’t care about football.”
    “How can you say that? You don’t understand it, so you don’t know how you feel about it. Look, okay? Just take a look at this.”
    Rob got up and came around the table. Claire barely had time to scoot over before he climbed into the booth, seating himself beside her and sliding the white paper place mat out from under her plate.
    “Now, here’s the thing about football,” he began, pulling a pen from his jeans pocket and drawing a pattern of Xs and Os on the mat. “It’s a game, but it’s more than that. It’s a battlefield, a test of strategy and strength. It’s like that float your students are building—chess come to life.”
    Claire tried her best to concentrate on the place mat and the ink marks and Rob’s animated explanation. With the stroke of his pen, players designated with positions such as wide receiver, tackle and linebacker marched back and forth across the white paper field. Yards and downs and penalties appeared and disappeared. Patterns formed, merged, then dispersed as the opposing teams fought to getthe ball or to keep it out of the end zone. A foreign culture with its own language, football took on an unexpected mystique. The battlefield analogy resonated with the historian in Claire, and she was intrigued.
    But even as she watched the drama unfold, Rob’s shoulder kept inserting itself into her line of vision and disturbing her concentration. Large, solid, covered in blue denim, the mass of muscle pressed against her own shoulder—a firm reminder that the presence beside her was all man. He smelled of clean, soapy skin and shampoo. And shaving cream, of all things. Had Rob shaved before picking her up? Why? Did men normally do that sort of thing at six in the evening?
    His hands kept reaching into Claire’s thoughts, too. Rob had never possessed ordinary fingers, palms, thumbs. Now, ten years later, his hands looked even more amazing to her than they had in high school. They were large and tanned, with long, strong fingers and blunt nails. They had calluses and interesting small scars, and they worked in tandem