Taming Molly: Heroes of Henderson ~ Book 2.5 A DuVal Cousins Quickie Read online

  Taming Molly

  Heroes of Henderson ~ Book 2.5

  A DuVal Cousins Quickie

  by Liz Kelly

  Published by Kelly Girl Productions

  ©Copyright 2014 Liz Kelly

  Cover design by Tammy Kearly

  ISBN: 978-0-9889838-8-5

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at [email protected].

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For more information on the author and her works, please see www.LizKellyBooks.com.

  For all my girl cousins.

  Especially the wild ones.

  You know who you are.

  Chapter One

  Big Jim DuVal loved his firstborn daughter. Hell, he loved all his daughters. Equally. But the moment that first one, his Molly, was born, she captured his heart with a fierceness he didn’t know existed. With that thick patch of rosy hair and those blue-green eyes, she looked just like her momma, and he figured he must be the luckiest man alive to have two beautiful females carrying his name.

  So he doted on them both, chuckling at his wife’s frustration when their baby daughter crawled away during her diaperings to hide her naked tushy behind his legs. And then later, when as a toddler Molly’d scramble into his lap laughing so cute he’d just have to join in as she’d tear off her clothes tossing everything pink and ruffly to the floor. She’d even kick off her shoes and socks, preferring to be unhampered by any clothing as she scampered around the house naked and giggling.

  By the time Molly was four, she was prone to pulling her shirt up over her head in public, exposing her chest and her little round belly. But Big Jim just laughed and took those opportunities to nuzzle up to his exasperated wife’s ear and whisper that Molly reminded him a lot of her.

  His little darling grew up sweet and kind. All of Molly’s teachers claimed she was the one who would befriend the new kid in the class and pick the less fortunate athletes for her kickball team. She insisted on inviting all the girls to her birthday so no one’s feelings got hurt. She was as beautiful on the inside as she was becoming on the outside, and he was so proud of all of it that he paid zero attention to his wife’s concerns. All of his wife’s carryings-on about Molly’s predilection to short shorts and cropped tops didn’t faze him. In his opinion, she looked adorable in whatever she wore.

  But Big Jim remembered well one hot summer day right before Molly entered eighth grade. The day when he got an inkling of what his wife had been frettin’ about all those years. That day spent around Henderson Country Club’s pool with his beautiful family opened his eyes…but good. Because when he tracked the appreciative stares from a bunch of young yahoos to a gaggle of pretty girls chatting around the snack bar, he saw it.

  His sweet little Molly stood half a head taller than the rest of those young ladies, and her baby-girl belly had somehow turned into a tiny tucked-in waist. From her lean, shapely legs to her strawberry-blond curls, his darlin’ Molly had suddenly blossomed into a voluptuous young woman.

  Just like her mother.

  Wearing the skimpiest bikini ever known to man.

  He turned to his darling wife who was stretched out on the lounge chair beside him, planning to complain for the first time ever about what their Molly was wearing. But he quickly bit his tongue because there was nothing Molly was showing off that his beautiful bride wasn’t. And that’s when it hit him. Molly was indeed just like her mother.

  Lord Jesus.

  That’s when his own teenage years began flashing before his eyes, and Big Jim started backpedaling. Fast.

  That evening, once the girls were in bed, he opened a nice bottle of wine and set out to have a heart-to-heart chat with his wife. He suggested that the time had come for her to have a conversation with Molly about dressing appropriately, about propriety, and about the importance of maintaining a good reputation, especially in a small, gossipy town like Henderson. He rambled on, stating his case and his concerns for their eldest daughter and her lovely figure, until he noticed the stony silence and stiff posture emanating from the woman sitting next to him on the back porch.

  Lori Bamberger DuVal, his bride of fifteen years at the time, didn’t mince words. No, she reminded him that her skimpily clad figure and questionable reputation were exactly what had attracted Big Jim to her in the first place. Then she reminded him that he was no damn saint himself. And if he thought she would ever play the hypocrite by openly lying to their daughters about her own behavior in high school—when in this small town they would likely find out anyway—then he had another thing comin’.

  She’d tried to warn him, she said. All these years he’d been laughing at Molly’s nudie-patootie antics, saying she was just like her mother. Well, the chickens had finally come home to roost. And as she stomped by Big Jim on the way to locking him out of their bedroom, she suggested he might want to call his father-in-law and apologize, now that the shoe was on the other foot.

  Like hell.

  Big Jim didn’t call his father-in-law. He called the best darn pool contractor he could afford and had a luxurious inground pool installed. If his wife and daughters wanted to wear skimpy bikinis, fine. They could damn well do it in their own backyard.

  He acknowledged that it sort of backfired on him when they all started sunbathing topless.

  Whatever. He just built a taller fence.

  Two years later, he actually did call his poor father-in-law and apologize for his own earlier behavior. This came after spending half the night tracking down Molly and dragging her shirtless body out of the back seat of some handsy football player’s truck. Big Jim’s apology only served to fuel the fire by making Molly her grandfather’s favorite—which he proved by giving her a farm-girl Ford on her sixteenth birthday.

  Damn fool.

  After that it seemed Big Jim spent his weekends putting out fires where Molly was concerned. Oh, he still loved her to distraction. Was still as proud as any father could be. She was studious enough for him and particularly brilliant in her artistic pursuits. She was sweet to all her little cousins who idolized her. She had plenty of friends he didn’t mind hosting at his home for overnights or treating to dinner at the Club from time to time.

  But that’s where his hospitality ended. When it came to Molly’s dates, Big Jim made it his mission to scare the livin’ hell out of them. Which backfired of course, because then Molly wouldn’t let them pick her up at home. She’d trot off and meet them under the cover of darkness, as far as he could tell.

  There was one good screaming match between the two of them during her high school years that broke his heart in all kinds of places. The next morning, he decided to throw in the towel. He told her he loved her and always would, no matter what. Then he backed off and spent twice the time on his knees praying that she’d make it through high school and into college before any real shit hit the fan.

  It was a challenge when she took off for Mardi Gras after turning eighteen and brought home more beads than any dad need be aware of.

  It was tough to shake off the scandal of the Debutante with the Plunging Neckline, when Molly left her age-appropriate escort
in the middle of the ball only to be seen the next day getting out of a very distinctive Porsche belonging to an older, notorious Raleigh bachelor.

  And then, just before Molly’s college graduation from Elon University, the highlight of the annual student art show were the beautiful nudes done in pencil, ink, and oil. One model seemed to be a particular favorite among the art students. Big Jim had to excuse himself from the crowd, pretending he couldn’t add one and one.

  The truth couldn’t be denied. His precious daughter was an exhibitionist and always had been. She was interested in the human body and didn’t see a need to cover it up. The fact that she planned her European travels around nude beaches shouldn’t have been much of a shock.

  Still, there was so much about Molly to love that Big Jim continued to indulge her. Though he had to admit that when she got engaged at the age of twenty-three to a nice kid from an old-school Henderson family, he sighed in big relief.

  Until the shit really hit the fan.

  Chapter Two

  Henderson High School

  Two weeks before the Evans-DuVal Wedding

  Josh McCourt looked more like a suit-and-tie guy than any sort of assistant athletic coach. His butterscotch hair was businessman short, his shoulders broad but not musclebound. He didn’t have the traditional beer belly many coaches carried around, and he liked to keep his phone in a brown leather case attached to his belt. He might not fit into the stereotypical mold of a football coach, especially when he’d never played a day in his life—but right now he was beyond spellbound by the entirety of his first few weeks of football practice.

  In all his twenty-eight years, he had never, ever thought about doing something like this. But he had to admit, using his computer skills to come up with a software program for the good of a team gave him new perspective. On everything. Yeah, he was taking to this team thing like a duck takes to water. He with his lone wolf, statistically inclined brain and his makeshift Google glassware. Who would have thought?

  After the first two days of practice as assistant to the offensive coordinator, he’d been deemed Coach Razzle by the players.

  Coach Razzle! That was cool, right?

  The crazy success they were having with his razzle-dazzle pitch-back-and-throw plays, along with his end-around and back-around scramble-’em-all-up plays, was bringing new life to the team.

  Of course the defense didn’t like him much at the moment because he was making them look like a bunch of clumsy Neanderthals out there. But once the Bulldogs started scoring against other teams, he figured they’d come around okay. At least he hoped that’s how it would work out.

  Because Henderson’s football team hadn’t done much lately. The decline came on the heels of the first State Championship win for the Henderson baseball team, causing the town’s interest in football to wane and making baseball the sport in Henderson. Over the last ten years, the Mighty Bulldogs had consistently lost an average of fifty percent of their football games.

  Josh himself had been in high school at the time of the big baseball win. Of course, he hadn’t been a student at Henderson then. No, he’d watched it all unfold from Henderson’s archrival in the next town over, Oxford. The school that lost to Henderson just before they headed off to the state championship.

  Being raised in Oxford wasn’t something he shared with his Henderson students. There was no love lost between these two towns when it came to sports and other rivalries. He bet they’d look critically at his strange coaching suggestions and possibly misinterpret his intentions. They might worry that he was over here in Henderson to sabotage the team’s efforts, even though he’d been their AP Computer Science teacher going on five years now. He wouldn’t be surprised if his loyalties were questioned. It was just that kind of rivalry.

  Still, the old Henderson guard had been happy to call on him and his computer skills to do what he could do to get this “Henderson football thing” turned around. That’s what Big Jim DuVal, head of the Boosters Club, had said when he’d addressed the entire faculty at the end of last year. “We’ve got to get our sports teams back on top,” he said. “There is no reason we can’t have a winning football team and basketball team right along with our illustrious baseball team.”

  Everyone knew Big Jim had a storied history playing quarterback at Henderson High. Then he went on to have a winning career as a running back at East Carolina. So it was no secret that the overwhelming love for baseball this town had developed had been burning his ass but good. Now Big Jim’s own nephew was refusing to play tight end this year, so he could focus solely on his pitching arm as Coach Evans suggested.

  Speak of the devil.

  Coach Evans came around the corner at a jog and practically banged into Josh as he was opening the training room door.

  “Hey, Josh! How’s your summer going?” Vance asked, but both men were immediately distracted by the squealing and giggling going on inside the training room. The training room located inside the boys’ locker room. When they forced the doors open, Josh was secretly glad Vance was there. Because to save his life, Josh would have had no idea how to handle the prevailing situation.

  Six boys, all sweaty football players Josh could name, and three pretty young girls dressed in bun-hugging athletic shorts and crop tops—or were they sports bras? Josh never knew the difference—were chasing each other around the weight training equipment slapping hands, pulling ponytails, and generally having a grand ol’ time flirting. The fun scrambled to a dead halt when he and Vance stepped through the door, the girls turning bright red and the guys just smirking like they’d been through this before.

  “Ladies,” Vance said, as he held the door open and let his free arm usher them out of the room. The three of them practically fell over one another, giggling as they pushed through the door.

  Once the giggling drifted away, Coach Evans closed the door and turned his attention to the front line of his offense. Man, Josh hoped this wasn’t going to end poorly.

  “One of those was a DuVal, right?” Vance asked.

  Thatcher Douglas nodded his head. “Tinley. The little blonde with the big tits.”

  Josh heard Vance’s heavy sigh. “Okay. That one—with the last name of DuVal—she is now classified as off limits. The other two, whatever. Only not here. Never in here. This is my office, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know why people think it’s okay to fool around in my office….” He trailed off, rubbing his chin, looking over at the barely chagrined youths. “What do you think, Josh? A little tough love in the form of circuit training?”

  What the F is circuit training?

  “Be my guest,” Josh said. He allowed his left hand to drift toward the boys hoping Vance would go ahead and…do the honors.

  It didn’t take long for Vance to demonstrate a six-machine circuit of punishment for Henderson’s front line. Once the groans were going full force and the sweat was really flowing, Vance gave Josh a cheeky grin as they stood back overseeing the action. “Should I be feelin’ at all bad punishing them for something I would have done back in my day?”

  Josh lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Frankly, I’m feelin’ bad that sneakin’ a girl into the locker room never occurred to me.”

  Vance slapped him on the back. “Welcome to the world of sports, where an athlete’s one continuous thought is thinkin’ about scoring, on and off the field.”

  “I hear ya. One week on the team has certainly opened my eyes.”

  “How’s that?”

  Josh shook his head, not really knowing how to put it in words. “It’s like I’ve been livin’ my life in self-imposed solitary confinement. Lord, when I was their age, all I did after school was take things apart and then put them back together—computers mostly, but other stuff too—just to figure out how they worked. Then I’d try to make them work faster, or better, with fewer parts. Then I’d see if I could design my own computer to do one thing or another, then…well, you get the picture. Now that I’m working with the football team, I still
do the solitary work of designing the program, inputting a specific defensive strategy, layering in whatever stats I have on my offensive players, and then have the computer come up with play options that will run through that particular defense. But when I bring all that to the field, well, I actually don’t know what’s gonna happen. Because, I have now realized, when you add the human factor into the equation that’s when the excitement really begins.”

  Vance stared at him blankly and then blinked a few times before he said, “You have got to meet Lewis Kampmueller.”

  “Been working for the man for years. He’s a buddy of yours, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, Lewis wants me to move to New York. Says he’ll give me an office at KampApps. But I’m not all that interested in leaving North Carolina. Besides, I can work in solitary here just as well as there.”

  Vance chuckled. “Sounds like your days in solitary are numbered.”

  “I didn’t realize how much I’d like the camaraderie. Especially from a group of guys who know next to nothing about physics on paper. But I can tell you this. Their brains and their bodies sure get it out there on the field. Do you know how many mathematical calculations it takes for a quarterback to release a perfect spiral and have it arrive at the exact place and the exact time where a receiver is eventually going to be?”

  Vance shook his head. “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Neither do I,” Josh exclaimed. “It’s like a miracle. The fact that my plays are working out fifty percent of the time and they’ve just started learning them?” He shook his head. “I like the human factor. More than I expected.”

  Just then some pushing, shoving, and cursing broke out among his front line as they shifted from one machine to the next. The physical punishment of a long day out in the summer sun along with the extra burden of circuit training was apparently undoing them.

  “How do you like that human factor now?” Vance asked over his shoulder as he headed to break up the brawl. “All right, all right,” he shouted, clapping his hands. “That’ll do. Hit the showers and then find a whiteboard somewhere and write I will never bring a girl into Coach Evans’ office again, fifty times. We are done here. Move out.”