Dan saw that Valerie was regarding him suspiciously as he entered the office she kept in one of Oak Brook's granite and glass commercial buildings. She gestured toward the nubby, rose-colored chairs that sat around the small conference table.
"Do you want coffee?"
"No, thanks."
He sat down, pushing the chair back on its wheels so he could stretch his legs out. As she rose from behind her desk and walked over to him, he took in her conservative navy business suit and white silk blouse buttoned to the neck. Knowing Valerie, she probably had on a G-string underneath.
"I heard you lost again on Sunday," she said, as she sat next to him. "I'm sorry."
"Stuff happens." He'd wanted to do this right, so he'd told her they needed to talk and asked her to meet him downtown for dinner at Gordon, which was her favorite restaurant. When she'd refused and told him to come to her office instead, he'd figured she knew what was on his mind and just wanted to get it over with.
She snatched a pack of cigarettes from the middle of the conference table. "That incident at your house last night was appalling. I hope she keeps her mouth shut."
"She prob'ly will."
Valerie gave a cynical laugh. "My entire life flashed in front of me when I realized what had happened."
"I imagine hers flashed in front of her, too, when I was draggin' her into the woods. Unlike you, she didn't know I wasn't really going to hurt her."
"You did manage to calm her down?"
"We talked some."
She inhaled deeply on the cigarette she had just lit and made her first not-so-delicate probe. "It's going to put a damper on any seduction plans you have for her."
"Believe me, Val, the only plans I have for Phoebe are to stay as far away from her as I can."
He meant it, too. He was furious with himself for letting things go so far with Phoebe. He should never have kissed her, and he promised himself he wouldn't ever get carried away like that again. Finally, he had his priorities straight.
Val regarded him warily. "Then what's this about?"
He knew she wasn't going to like what he had to say, and he spoke softly. "I've met someone."
She was cool, he'd give her that, and if he hadn't known her better, he would have believed she was unaffected by his news. "Anyone I know?"
"No. She's a nursery school teacher." Val wouldn't understand if he told her he hadn't yet asked Sharon out for a formal date, but after last night's incident, he knew he couldn't indulge in any more sex games with his ex-wife, not when he was getting ready to launch a serious courtship.
"How long have you and this nursery school teacher been seeing each other?" She took a quick, angry drag.
"Not long."
"And she, of course, is everything I wasn't." Her mouth tightened as she stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.
Valerie had a good-sized ego and she didn't usually give in to petulance, but he understood that he was hurting her. "I'm sure she's not as smart as you, Valerie. Not as sexy, either. But the thing of it is, she's real good with kids."
"I see. She's passed your Mother Goose audition." She gave him a bright, hard smile. "Actually, Dan, I'm glad this came up because I've been wanting to talk to you about the same thing."
"What do you mean?"
"Our arrangement isn't working for me."
He feigned surprise. "You want to break it off?"
"I'm sorry, but, yes. I just didn't know how to bring it up without hurting you."
He jumped up from his chair and gave her a little of the outrage he knew she needed to hear. "Who is he? Have you got another man, Val?"
"It was inevitable, Dan. So let's not have any scenes."
He looked down. Shoved his foot around in the carpet pile for a little bit. "Damn, Valerie, you sure know how to cut a man down to size. I don't know why I even try to have the last word with you. Here I came over to break it off with you, and all the time you were getting ready to dump me."
She regarded him suspiciously, trying to see if he was putting her on, but he kept the same sincere expression on his face he'd used in Sunday's postgame interviews when he talked about how well the Broncos had played and how friggin' much they'd deserved to win.
She gave the conference table a brisk thump with her fingertips and stood. "Well, then, I guess there isn't anything more to say."
"I guess not."
As he looked down at her, the good times came back instead of the bad. Most of them had taken place in bed, but he supposed that was more than a lot of divorced couples could say. He wasn't sure who moved first, but the next thing he knew they had their arms around each other.
"Take care of yourself, y'hear?" he said.
"Have a good life," she whispered back.
Twenty minutes later as he pulled into the parking lot at the Sunny Days Nursery School, he was no longer thinking about Valerie. Instead, he was frowning into his rear-view mirror. The gray van that had been following him looked like the same one he'd seen behind him a couple of times last week. It had a crumpled right fender. If he had a reporter on his tail, why the cloak-and-dagger stuff? He tried to see the driver as the van passed by the nursery school entrance, but the windows were tinted.
Shrugging off the incident, he parked his Ferrari and walked into the low brick building, smiling as he heard the various noises of the school: squeals of laughter, off-key singing, chairs scraping. He was due in Wheaton in half an hour to speak at a Rotary luncheon, but he couldn't resist stopping off for a few minutes. Maybe it would clear out his confusion over what had happened with Phoebe last night.
The doorway to Sharon's classroom was open, and as he looked inside, his chest swelled. They were baking cookies! Right then, he was ready to drop down on his knees and propose marriage. What he wouldn't have given when he was a kid to have baked cookies with his mother. Unfortunately, she had been too busy getting drunk. Not that he blamed her. Living with a bastard like his father would have driven anyone to drink.
Sharon glanced up from the big mixing bowl and dropped the spoon she had been holding as she spotted him. Her face flooded with color. He smiled as he saw what a mess she was.
Her curly red hair had flour in it, and a streak of blue food coloring decorated her cheek. If he owned Cosmopolitan magazine, he'd have put her on the cover, just like that. In his mind, Sharon, with her pixie's face and freckled nose, was a lot more alluring than those big-breasted blondes in sequins and Spandex.
An image of Phoebe Somerville flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away. He wasn't going to let lust interfere with a search for his children's mother.
Sharon fumbled for the wooden spoon she had dropped. "Oh, uh—Hi. Come in."
Her nervousness appealed to him. It was nice being with a woman who wasn't used to being with a man like him. "I just stopped by for a minute to see how my pal Robert was doing with his broken arm."
"Robert, somebody's here to see you."
A cute little black kid in shorts and a T-shirt came rushing over to show off his cast. Dan admired the signatures on it, including his own, which was somewhat the worse for wear.
"Do you know Michael?" the child finally said.
In a town like Chicago, there was no doubt which Michael he meant, not even when the question came from a four-year-old.
"Sure. He lets me play basketball with him at his house sometimes."
"I bet he beats you real bad."
"Naw. He's afraid of me."
"Michael's not afraid of anybody," the child said solemnly.
So much for trying to make jokes about Jordan, even after his retirement. "You're right. He beats me real bad."
Robert led Dan over to the table to admire his cookies, and before long some of the other children had claimed his attention. They were so cute he couldn't get enough of them. Kids tickled him, maybe because he liked a lot of the same things they did: eating cookies, watching cartoons on TV, generally messin' around. Even though he was running late, he couldn't bring hi
mself to leave.
Sharon, in the meantime, had spilled a measuring cup of sugar and just dropped an egg. He grabbed a paper towel to help her clean it up and saw that she was blushing again. He liked that curly red hair of hers and the way it was always flying all over the place.
"I seem to have the dropsies today," she stammered.
"That's one of those words you're not supposed to use around quarterbacks. Even retired ones."
It took her a few seconds to get the point, but then she smiled.
"You've got food coloring on your cheek."
"I'm such a mess." She dipped her head and rubbed her cheek with her shoulder, so that she ended up with food coloring in two places instead of one. "Honestly, I don't look like this all the time."
"Don't apologize. You look great."
"Ethan took my sprinkles," a little girl wailed.
Sharon immediately turned her attention to the child who was tugging on her slacks with messy fingers. This was something else he liked about her. Even when she was talking to an adult, the children were her first priority. He watched with admiration as she negotiated a settlement that would have done a diplomat proud.
"They could use you in the Middle East."
She smiled. "I think I'd better stick to sprinkles."
He glanced down at his watch. "I've got to go. I'm making a speech five minutes ago. My schedule's pretty crazy right now, but when things loosen up, let's go out to dinner. You like Italian?"
She had turned red again. "I—Yes, Italian's fine."
"Good. I'll call you."
"Okay." She seemed vaguely stunned.
Impulsively, he leaned forward and brushed her mouth with a quick kiss. On the way out to the parking lot, he smiled and licked his lips.
Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he tasted vanilla.
Chapter 12
« ^ »
Phoebe ran into Bobby Tom Denton in the hotel lobby at eight-thirty on Saturday evening. Although she had just arrived in Portland on a commercial flight from O'Hare, the Stars had been there since noon because NFL rules stated that visiting teams had to be in the city in which they were playing twenty-four hours before kick-off. She knew from an earlier glance at the schedule that the players had been in a meeting until 8:00 p.m. and were now free until their eleven o'clock curfew.
"Hey there, Miz Somerville." Her $8-million man gave her a grin that was nearly as wide as the black Stetson on his head. His stylishly frayed and faded jeans molded to his runner's legs, and his snakeskin cowboy boots had been perfectly broken in so that they were neither too new nor too run-down. Viktor would have been impressed.
Bobby Tom said, "I was worried you might not be here."
"I told you I'd come."
He pushed the brim of his hat back with his thumb. "You're going to be on the sidelines during the first quarter tomorrow, aren't you?"
She nibbled the corner of her lip. "Actually, Bobby Tom, I'm having some second thoughts."
"Hold on, now. I can see you and me need to have a serious conversation." One of his nimble, receiver's hands clasped her arm and gently steered her toward the bar. She could have protested, but she wasn't looking forward to an evening in a strange hotel room without even Pooh to keep her company.
The hotel bar was quiet and dark, and they settled in a small banquette in the corner, where Bobby Tom ordered a beer. "You look like the white wine type," he said. "How 'bout one of those fancy chardonnays."
Phoebe would have loved a chardonnay but she wasn't sure she liked being classified as a "white wine type," so she requested a margarita. The waitress, who'd been gazing at Bobby Tom with hungry eyes, went off to fill their orders.
"Are you allowed to drink the night before a game?"
"We're allowed to do just about anything as long as we give the team all we've got the next day. Drinkin' and curfew are the only two things the coach isn't real strict about. We're supposed to be in our rooms by eleven, but Coach was pretty much a hell-raiser in his playing days, and he knows we all have our own ways of blowin' off steam." Bobby Tom chuckled. "He's sort of a legend."
Phoebe told herself not to ask, but when it came to Dan Calebow, her curiosity seemed to have no bounds. "What do you mean? What kind of legend?"
"Well, some of the stories about him aren't fit for female ears, but I guess everybody knows how much he hated curfews. See, the coach only needs a couple of hours sleep at night, and when he was playin', he couldn't stand the idea of being cooped up in his room at eleven o'clock. Said it wound him up too tight for the game. So what he mostly did was slide in his room for bed check and then sneak out afterward for some serious partying. The coaches found out about it, of course. They fined him, benched him; none of it did any good, because he'd still be out closing down the bars. Finally, he told them if they didn't like it, they'd could either shoot him or trade him, but he wasn't gonna change. The only bad game he had his entire first season was when they put a guard outside his room. The next day, he threw five interceptions. After that, the coaches stopped bothering him about it. 'Course he settled down a little bit when he got older."
"Not much, I'll bet," she muttered as their drinks arrived.
Bobby Tom lifted his frosty mug. "Here's to whippin' some Saber butt."
"To butt whipping." She touched her glass to his, then licked a small space in the salty rim and took a sip of her margarita.
"Miz Somerville—"
"Phoebe's fine." She took another sip. Later, she would regret the calories, but not now.
"I guess when it's just the two of us first names are okay, but since you're the owner and all, I won't do it when we're in public."
"After those pictures in the newspaper, I don't think I have to worry too much about maintaining respectability."
"Weren't they great! Even got my best side." His grin faded. "You weren't serious when you said you wouldn't be on the sidelines tomorrow, were you?"
"I'm not sure it's a good idea. Not unless we can come up with a new good luck ritual."
"Oh, no. We can't do that. Even though we lost, I had one of the best games of my career against the Broncos last week. I've been playing football for a lot of years, and when something's working for me, I stick with it. See, as soon as I start making changes, then I'm thinking about the change instead of how the zone is lined up and whether or not I can get open. You understand what I'm saying?"
"Bobby Tom, I'm really not crazy about having photos in all the Monday morning newspapers of the two of us kissing."
"I'm surprised I have to remind you about this, Phoebe, but we're playing the Sabers tomorrow, and beating them is a lot more important than some newspaper pictures. They won the Super Bowl last year. The whole country thinks we're flushing this season down the toilet. We have to prove to them that we've got what it takes to be champions."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you have to be champions? When you think about it, what's the point? It's not like you're finding a cure for cancer."
"You're right," he said earnestly. "It's not like that. It's bigger. See, you've got good and you've got evil. That's what it is. That's how important it is."
"I'm having some trouble following you, Bobby Tom."
He lifted his arm for the waitress and jabbed two fingers toward their drinks for refills. That's when she realized that she'd nearly drained hers. She had no head for alcohol, and she knew she should refuse another, but Bobby Tom was good company, and she was enjoying herself. Besides, he was paying.
"The way I figure it is this," he went on. "Mankind is aggressive by nature, you agree with that?"
"Mankind maybe, but not necessarily womankind."
Bobby Tom obviously had no interest in sexual politics because he ignored her comment. "Football lets out man's natural aggression. If it weren't for the NFL, we'd probably have gone to war with Russia half a dozen times in the last forty years. See, that's the way Americans are. The minute we get crossed, we're
natural shitkickers. Pardon my language, Phoebe, but everybody knows kickin' ass is part of our national conscience. Football gives us a—whadya-call? A safe outlet."
He was actually making a convoluted sort of sense, which was when she knew the first margarita had gone to hear head. She picked up the second one, and licked another spot in the rim.
He clasped her arm and gave her a pleading look. "So, are you gonna be there for me or not tomorrow, 'cause I'll tell you God's truth—you're a fine woman, and I know you don't want a loss to the Sabers on your conscience."
"I'll be there," she sighed.
"I knew I could count on you." He gave her an engaging smile. "I like you, Phoebe. A lot. If we weren't business associates, I could really go for you."
He was so boyish and darling, she smiled right back at him. "Isn't life a bitch?"
"You said it."
Even without a margarita glow, Bobby Tom Denton was easy to be with. They talked about Mexican food, whether sports teams should be named after Native Americans, and Bobby Tom's resemblance to Christian Slater. She took more time with her second margarita, but even so, she was definitely feeling a buzz when he leaned over and brushed her mouth with his.
It was a light, friendly kiss. Respectful. A mark of comradeship and well-being. The kiss a twenty-five-year-old man gives to a thirty-three-year-old woman he'd like to go to bed with, but knows he won't, and doesn't want to spoil the friendship, but still wishes it could be more than a friendship.
Phoebe understood.
Unfortunately, Dan didn't.
"Denton!" His voice shot through the quiet of the bar like a Confederate cannon over a smoldering battlefield. "Doesn't that high-priced wristwatch of yours tell you you've got exactly three and half minutes to haul your butt up to your room or miss curfew?" He loomed over their table in his jeans and a denim shirt that was open at the throat.
"Howdy, Coach. You want to hear the funniest doggone thing? I was just explaining to Phoebe here how you've always been a little bit flexible about curfew. And then you show up. If that isn't—"