It Had to Be You

  She waited for him to start pulling empty beer cans out of the drawers and crushing them in his fists, but he nodded toward one of the blue and chrome side chairs. She took a seat on the couch instead because it was farther away.

  The chair squeaked as he leaned back. "I already had lunch, so you don't need to look so scared. I'm not going to eat you up."

  She lifted her chin and gave him a smoky smile. "That's too bad, Coach. I was hoping you were hungry."

  He smiled. "I'm glad I met you when I was thirty-seven instead of seventeen."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because I'm a lot smarter now than I was then, and you're exactly the kind of female my mama warned me about."

  "Smart mama."

  "You been a man-killer all your life, or is it something that happened recently?"

  "I bagged my first one when I was only eight. A Cub scout named Kenny."

  "Eight years old." He gave an admiring whistle. "I don't even want to contemplate what you were doing to the male population by the time you were seventeen."

  "It wasn't a pretty sight." Playing games with this man was nerve-racking, and she searched for a way to change the subject. Remembering the empty practice fields, she nodded toward the window.

  "Why aren't the players practicing? I thought you were losing."

  "It's Tuesday. That's the only day of the week players have off. A lot of them use it to make community appearances, speak at luncheons, that sort of thing. The coaches do, too. Last Tuesday, for example, I spent the afternoon taping a public service announcement for United Way at a nursery school the county operates."

  "I see."

  The bantering had disappeared, and he was all business as he slid a manila file folder across the desk toward her. "These are resumes of the three men Steve Kovak and I think are best qualified for the general manager's job, along with our comments. Why don't you look this over tonight? You can let us make the final decision, or you might want to talk with Reed."

  "As long as I'm the owner, Coach, I'll be making my own decisions."

  "Fine. But you need to move quickly."

  She picked up the folder. "What about the current general manager? Has he been fired?"

  "Not yet."

  When he didn't say anything more, her stomach sank. She couldn't imagine anything worse than firing someone, even a person she didn't know. "I'm not firing him! I like my men alive and kicking."

  "Normally it'd be the owner's job, but I figured you'd feel that way so I asked Steve to take care of it for you. He's probably talking to him now."

  Phoebe gave a sigh of relief.

  Dan insisted on showing her around the facilities, and their tour of the two-story, L-shaped building took much of the next hour. She was surprised by the number of classrooms she saw and mentioned this to Dan.

  "Meetings and watching film make up part of most practice days," he explained. "Players have to learn the game plan. They get critiqued and hear scouting reports. Football's more than sweat."

  "I'll take your word for it."

  The coaches' conference room had a chalkboard at one end, which was scrawled with words like King, Joker, Jay-hawk, as well as some diagrams. The weight room smelled like rubber and had an elephant-sized Toledo scale, while the tiny video lab held floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with expensive, high-tech equipment.

  "Why do you need so much film equipment?"

  "A lot of coaching involves watching films. We have our own camera crew, and they shoot every game from three different angles. In the NFL, each team has to send their last three game films to their next opponent exactly one week before they play."

  She looked through a set of windows into the training room, the only truly orderly area she'd seen on her tour. The walls were lined with cabinets. There were padded benches, several stainless steel whirlpools, a Gatorade dispenser, a red plastic barrel marked "Infectious Waste," and a table that held dozens of rolls of tape in foot-high stacks.

  She pointed toward them. "Why so much?"

  "The players have to be taped before each practice, usually twice a day. We use a lot."

  "That must take a long time."

  "We have five tapers at training camp, three during the season."

  They moved on. She noticed that the few women they met visibly perked up when they spotted Dan, while the men greeted him with varying degrees of deference. She remembered what Ron had told her about the boys' club and realized that Dan was its president.

  In the veterans' locker room, the open lockers were piled with shoes, socks, T-shirts, and pads. Some of the players had taped family snapshots to their lockers. There was a soft drink-dispensing machine at one end, along with several telephones and wooden pigeonholes stuffed with fan mail.

  After she promised him she would report back by ten the next morning, Dan left her in the lobby. She was so relieved to have gotten away from him without suffering any major injuries that she had already pulled the keys Annette Miles had given her to Bert's Cadillac from her purse before she remembered that she hadn't thanked Ron for helping her today. She also wanted to ask his advice on choosing the new general manager.

  As she headed toward the wing that held the Stars' management, a stocky man carrying camera equipment came toward her.

  "Excuse me. Where can I find Ron's office?"

  "Ron?" He looked puzzled.

  "Ron McDermitt."

  "Oh, you mean Ronald. Last door at the end."

  She walked down the corridor, but when she reached the end, she decided she'd gotten the instructions wrong because this door held a brass placard marked "General Manager." Puzzled, she stared at it.

  And then her heart gave a sickening thud. She flew into a small antechamber, which held a secretary's desk and some chairs. The phone was ringing with all buttons flashing, but no one was there. She experienced a few mad seconds of hope that Ron was some kind of assistant, but that hope died when she rushed over to the doorway of the inner office.

  Ron sat at the desk, his chair turned away from the door toward the window behind him. He was in his shirtsleeves, elbows propped on the arms of the chair.

  She stepped inside cautiously. "Ron?"

  He turned. "Hello, Phoebe."

  Her heart almost broke as he gave her a rueful smile. Despite his subdued manner, she permitted herself a flicker of hope. "Have you already—Have you talked with Steve Kovak?"

  "Do you want to know if he's fired me? Yes, he has."

  She regarded him with dismay. "I didn't realize you were the general manager. Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I thought you knew."

  "If I had, I would never have let this happen." Even as she said the words, she remembered her agreement with Dan. Part of that agreement had been her promise to fire the acting general manager.

  "It's all right. Really. It was inevitable."

  "But, Ron…"

  "I only got the job as assistant GM because my father and Bert were good friends. Your father was never impressed with me, and he would have fired me after six months if Carl Pogue hadn't gone to bat for me."

  She sank into a chair. "At least someone was behind you."

  "I loved working for Carl. We complemented each other perfectly, which was why Carl didn't want Bert to fire me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Carl has good football instincts and he's a strong leader, but he's not exceptionally intelligent. I had the qualities he lacked—organizational ability, a head for business—but I'm a total failure as a leader. Carl and I had worked it out so that I'd do the planning and strategy work and he'd carry it through."

  "Are you saying you're the one who was running the team?"

  "Oh, no. Carl was in charge."

  "Implementing your ideas."

  "That's true."

  She rubbed her forehead. "This is terrible."

  "If it's any consolation, firing me was the proper decision. If a GM in the pros is going to be effective, everyone who works for him—from the o
ffice staff right up to the coaches—needs to fear him at least a little bit. The men don't even respect me, let alone fear me. I've got the brains to do the job, but I don't seem to have the personality. Or maybe I just don't have the guts."

  "I do." She straightened in her chair, as surprised as Ron that she had spoken aloud the words she had merely been thinking.

  "I beg your pardon."

  Her mind raced. Bert had wanted her to be a figurehead. He had expected her to spend her days sitting in his old office, obediently signing the papers that were put in front of her and doing what she was told. It would never have occurred to him that she might try to learn something about the job.

  She had vowed she wasn't going to play her father's game, and now she saw a way to fulfill the terms of the will but keep her self-respect. "I have the guts," she repeated. "I just don't have the knowledge."

  "What are you saying?"

  "So far, the only thing I know about football is how much I hate it. If my father had suspected that Carl Pogue would quit, he would never have let me anywhere near the Stars, not even for a few months. I was trapped into doing this, first by Bert and then by Dan Calebow, but that doesn't mean I have to do everything their way."

  "I still don't understand—"

  "I need to learn something about running a football team. Even if I'm only going to be in charge for a few months, I want to make my own decisions. But I can't do that without having a person I trust to advise me." She gestured toward the papers she still held in her hand. "I don't know anything about these men."

  "The candidates for the GM job?"

  She nodded.

  "I'm certain you can trust Dan and Steve to have picked the best qualified."

  "How do I know that?"

  "Perhaps your cousin Reed could advise—"

  "No!" She forced herself to speak calmly. "Reed and I never got along. I won't go to him under any circumstances. I need you."

  "I can't tell you how much your confidence means to me."

  She slumped in the chair. "Unfortunately, I promised Dan I'd get rid of you."

  "His request wasn't unreasonable. I've been doing a dismal job."

  "That's only because he doesn't understand what you're capable of. He doesn't know you the way I do."

  "I've known Dan for several years," he pointed out gently. "You and I only met two hours ago."

  She had no patience with that sort of logic. "Time isn't important. I have good instincts about people."

  "Dan Calebow isn't the sort of man you should think about crossing, and right now, you need him a lot more than you need me. Winning football games is the only thing that counts in his life. I knew that when I convinced Carl to hire him away from the Bears."

  "You're the one who hired him?"

  By now, she knew Ron well enough to anticipate what was coming.

  "Oh, no. Bert and Carl made the final decision."

  Based on Ron's hard work. "I need some time to think."

  "I don't believe there's much to think about. You gave Dan your word, didn't you?"

  "I did, but…"

  "Then that's that."

  Ron was right about one thing, she thought glumly. She didn't like the idea of crossing Dan Calebow.

  Chapter 7

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  The humid night breeze blew the curtains and ruffled Molly's dark brown hair as she sat in a rocker by her bedroom window reading Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Although Molly knew she was flying in the face of literary criticism, she thought Daphne du Maurier was a much better writer than Fyodor Dostoyevski.

  She liked Danielle Steel a lot better than Dostoyevski, too, mainly because the heroines in her books survived so many terrible experiences that they gave Molly courage. She knew that in real life Danielle Steel had a lot of children, and when Molly'd gotten the flu at camp, she'd had wonderful fever dreams in which Danielle was her mother. Even when she was awake, she'd imagined Danielle sitting on the side of her bed stroking her hair while she read from one of her books. She knew it was a babyish thing to think about, but she couldn't help it.

  She reached for a tissue and blew her nose. The flu was gone, but she'd been left with a minor respiratory infection. As a result, the headmistress at Crayton wouldn't let her have early arrival privileges. Phoebe had been notified, and Molly had been forced to come home just a few days after her sister's return to Chicago. Not that this horrible house felt like home.

  She wished Phoebe would leave her alone. She kept making suggestions about renting movies or playing a card game together, but Molly knew she only did it out of duty. Molly hated Phoebe, not just because of the way she dressed, but because her father had loved Phoebe. She knew her father didn't love her. He'd told her more than once that she gave him the "goddamn creeps."

  "At least your sister has the guts to stand up to me! You look like you're going to faint everytime I talk to you." He'd told her the same thing whenever she came home. He'd criticized the quiet way she talked, the way she looked, everything about her, and she knew he was secretly comparing her to her beautiful, confident older sister. Over the years, her hatred for Phoebe had settled into a hard shell around her heart.

  The distant, hollow sound of the grandfather clock chiming nine made the big house seem even emptier so that she felt smaller and more alone. She went to the side of the bed where she knelt to pull out the object she kept hidden there. Settling back on her calves, she pressed a bedraggled stuffed brown monkey with one missing eye to her chest.

  She rested her cheek on a bald patch in the fur between the monkey's ears and whispered, "I'm scared, Mr. Brown. What's going to happen to us?"

  "Molly?"

  At the sound of her sister's voice, Molly shoved Mr. Brown back under her bed, snatched up The Brothers Karamazov, pushed Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca beneath her pillow, and resettled in the rocker.

  "Molly, are you in there?"

  She turned the page.

  The door opened, and Phoebe came in. "Didn't you hear me?"

  Molly carefully concealed her jealousy as she looked at her sister's dusty pink jeans and matching crocheted sweater. The sweater had a deep V-neck with a scalloped edge that curved over Phoebe's breasts. Molly wanted to clutch Dostoyevski to her own chest to hide its lack of shape. It wasn't fair. Phoebe was old, and she didn't need to be pretty any longer. She didn't need all that blond hair and those slanty eyes. Why couldn't Molly have been the pretty one instead of a thin, ugly stick with plain brown hair?

  "I was reading."

  "I see."

  "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood for conversation, Phoebe."

  "This won't take long. School starts soon and there are a few things we need to discuss."

  Phoebe's poodle scampered through the door and bounded over to Molly, who drew back and glared at her sister. "Where did that dog come from?"

  "Since it looks as if I'm going to have to settle here for a while, I had Viktor put her on a plane."

  Molly moved her feet away from the poodle as it began to attack her fuzzy yellow slippers. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't let it in my room. I'm highly allergic."

  Phoebe sat on the edge of Molly's bed and reached down to snap her fingers for Pooh, who came to her side. "Poodles don't shed. They're good dogs for people with allergies."

  "I don't care to have animals in my bedroom."

  "Are you this unpleasant all the time, or is it just me?"

  Molly's lips set in a mulish line. "I'm tired, and I want to go to sleep."

  "It's only nine o'clock."

  "I've been ill."

  Phoebe watched as Molly bent her head over her book, deliberately shutting her out. Once again she experienced the familiar combination of frustration and sympathy that took hold of her whenever she tried to talk to the child. She hadn't even been back in Chicago for a week before Molly had been sent home from camp to recuperate from the flu. If anything, their relationship had grown worse in the past two days instead of improving.

 
She plucked at the stitching on the bedspread. "This house has to be closed soon so it can be put up for sale. Unfortunately, it seems as if I'm going to be stuck here for the next few months, so I've decided to move into a condo Bert owned that's not too far from the Stars Complex. The lawyers say I can stay there until the first of the year." She was also being provided with a living allowance to take care of her expenses, which was a good thing because her bank account had dipped alarmingly low.

  "Since I'll be back at Crayton, I don't see how your living arrangements concern me."

  She ignored Molly's sullenness. "I don't envy you going back. I hated it when I was there."

  "I don't have much choice, do I?"

  Phoebe went completely still as an eerie tingling traveled up her spine. Molly's face was stiff and inexpressive except for a small quiver at the corner of her mouth. She recognized that stubborn face, the refusal to ask for help or admit to any weakness. She had adopted some of those same strategies to survive the misery and loneliness of her own childhood. As she watched, she became even more convinced that the idea she'd been mulling over since yesterday was a good one.

  "Crayton is small," she said carefully. "I always thought I'd be happier at a bigger school with a more diverse mix of students. Maybe you would, too. Maybe you'd like to go someplace coed."

  Molly's head shot up. "Go to school with boys?"

  "I don't see why not."

  "I can't imagine what it would be like to have boys in the classroom. Wouldn't they be rowdy?"

  Phoebe laughed. "I never went to school with them either, so I have no idea. Probably." Molly was exhibiting the first display of animation she had seen, and Phoebe continued cautiously. "There are some fine public schools in this area."

  "A public school?" she scoffed. "The quality of education is so inferior."

  "Not necessarily. Besides, anybody with your IQ could probably educate herself, so what difference would it make?" She gazed at her sister with compassion and said softly, "It seems to me that making some friends and enjoying being a teenager is more important right now than jump-starting calculus."