He rose and headed for the bathroom. “I want you gone when I come out.”
Chapter Four
As Cal stood under the locker-room shower, he found himself thinking about Rosebud instead of the grueling practice he had just completed or the fact that his shoulder ached, his ankle throbbed, and nothing on him seemed to be recovering as quickly as it used to. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about Rosebud since his birthday night two weeks ago, but he couldn’t explain why she kept popping into his mind or why he’d been so immediately attracted to her. He only knew that the instant she had walked into his living room with that fat pink bow around her neck, he’d wanted her.
Her appeal confounded him because she wasn’t his type. Although she was attractive with her blond hair and those light green eyes, she wasn’t in the same league with the beautiful girls he’d been dating. Her skin was outstanding, he’d give her that, sort of like French vanilla ice cream, but she was too tall, too flat-chested, and too damned old.
He ducked his head and let the shower water splash over him. Maybe he’d been drawn in by all her contradictions: the intelligence in those green eyes that fought the cockamamie story she’d told him, a funny aloofness in her manner that kept running headlong into her clumsy attempts to seduce him.
He’d quickly figured out that she was an upper-crust groupie looking for a cheap thrill by pretending to be a hooker, and he hadn’t liked the idea that he was attracted to a woman like that, so he’d told her to leave. But he hadn’t put any real energy behind it. Instead of being irritated by her lies, he’d mainly been amused by her desperate earnestness as she’d spun out one story after another.
But it was what had happened in his bedroom that he couldn’t forget. Something had been very wrong. Why had she refused to take off her clothes? Even when they were going at it, she wouldn’t let him undress her. It had been strange, and so damned erotic he couldn’t quit thinking about it.
He frowned, remembering that she hadn’t let him make her come. That bothered him. He could read people pretty well, and although he’d known she was a liar, he’d figured she was essentially harmless. Now he wasn’t so sure. It was almost as if she had some hidden agenda, but he couldn’t imagine what it was beyond putting a check mark in front of his name before she moved on to her next celebrity jock.
Just as Cal was rinsing the shampoo out of his hair, Junior yelled into the shower room. “Hey, Bomber, Bobby Tom’s on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
Cal slapped a towel around his hips and hurried to the telephone. If it had been anybody else in the football world from the NFL commissioner to John Madden, he’d have told Junior he’d call back. But not Bobby Tom Denton. They hadn’t played together until the last few years of B.T.’s career, but that made no difference. If B.T. wanted his right arm, Cal figured he’d probably give it to him. That’s how much respect he had for the former Stars’ player who, in his opinion, had been the best wide receiver in NFL history.
Cal smiled as that familiar Texas drawl came over the phone lines. “Hey, Cal, you comin’ down to Telarosa for my charity golf tournament in May? Consider this your personal engraved invitation. Got a big barbeque in the works and more beautiful women than even you’re gonna know what to do with. ’Course, with Gracie lookin’ on, I’ll have to leave it up to you to entertain them. That wife of mine keeps me on a real tight leash.”
Since injuries had prevented Cal from playing in B.T.’s last few tournaments, he hadn’t met Gracie Denton, but he knew Bobby Tom well enough to realize there was no woman in the world who could keep him on a leash.
“I promise to do my part, B.T.”
“That’ll make Gracie real happy. Did you know she got herself elected mayor of Telarosa right before Wendy was born?”
“I’d heard.”
Bobby Tom went on to talk about his wife and new baby girl. Cal wasn’t too interested in either, but he pretended to be because he knew it was important to B.T. to act as if his family was the center of his life now that he was retired, and that he didn’t miss football at all. Bobby Tom never complained about being forced from the game by blowing out his knee, but Cal knew it still had to be ripping his guts apart. Football had been B.T.’s life, just like it was Cal’s, and without those games to look forward to, Cal knew his former teammate’s existence was as empty as a Tuesday night stadium.
Poor B.T. Cal gave the former wide-out high marks for not whining about the injustice of being forced out of the game, even as he promised himself he wouldn’t let anything in the world push him into retirement until he was ready. Football was his life, and nothing would ever change that. Not age. Not injuries. Nothing.
He finished his conversation, then went to his locker to dress. As he pulled on his clothes, his thoughts drifted away from Bobby Tom Denton and back to his birthday night. Who was she, damn it? And why couldn’t he get her off his mind?
* * *
“You made me come all the way over here today just so you could ask me about my transportation expenses to the Denver conference?” Jane never lost control in professional situations, but as she looked at the man who governed her day-to-day activities at Preeze Laboratories, she wanted to scream.
Dr. Jerry Miles lifted his head from the papers he’d been studying on his desk. “You may regard these kinds of details as minor annoyances, Jane, but as the director of Preeze Laboratories, I assure you they’re not minor to me.”
He thrust his hand back through his limp, too-long graying hair as if she’d frustrated him beyond bearing. The gesture seemed as studied as his appearance. Today Jerry’s uniform consisted of a snagged, yellow polyester turtleneck sweater, threadbare navy jacket with a dandruff-flecked collar, and rusty corduroy slacks now mercifully concealed by the desk.
It wasn’t Jane’s habit to judge people by their clothing—most of the time she was too preoccupied even to notice—but she suspected Jerry’s unkempt appearance was deliberately cultivated to conform to the image of the eccentric physicist, a stereotype that had died out a good decade earlier, but which Jerry must believe would camouflage the fact that he could no longer keep up with the exploding body of knowledge that made up modern physics.
String theories mystified him, supersymmetry left him baffled, and, unlike Jane, he couldn’t handle the complex new mathematics that scientists such as she were practically inventing on a daily basis. But despite his shortcomings, Jerry had been appointed director of Preeze two years ago, a maneuver engineered by the older and more conservative members of the scientific establishment, who wanted one of their own to head such a prestigious institution. Jane’s association with Preeze had been a hellish snarl of bureaucracy ever since. By contrast, her position on the Newberry College faculty seemed remarkably uncomplicated.
“In the future,” Jerry said, “we’re going to need more documentation from you to justify this sort of expense. Your cab fare from the airport, for example. Outrageous.”
She found it mind-boggling that a man in his position could find nothing better to do than harrass her about something so inconsequential. “The Denver airport is quite far from the city.”
“In that case, you should have used the hotel shuttle.”
She could barely swallow her frustration. Not only was Jerry scientifically incompetent, but he was a sexist, since her male colleagues didn’t have to undergo this kind of scrutiny. Of course, they hadn’t made Jerry look like a fool either.
When Jane had been in her early twenties and still operating in a fog of idealistic zeal, she had written a paper that had patently disproved one of Jerry’s pet theories, which had been a slapdash piece of work that had nonetheless garnered him accolades. His stock within the scientific community had never been the same, and he’d neither forgotten nor forgiven her.
Now, his brow furrowed, and he launched into an assault on her work, not a simple thing since he comprehended so little of it. As he pontificated, the depression that had dogged her ever since her failed att
empt to get pregnant two months earlier, settled in deeper. If only she were carrying a child now, everything might not seem so bleak.
As a fierce seeker of the truth, she knew what she had done that night was morally wrong, but she was confused by the fact that something about it had seemed so right, maybe the fact that she could not have chosen a better candidate to be her baby’s father. Cal Bonner was warrior, a man of aggression and brute strength, all qualities she lacked. But there was something more, something she couldn’t entirely explain, that spoke of his absolute suitability. An internal female voice, ancient and wise, told her what logic couldn’t explain. It would be Cal Bonner or no one.
Unfortunately that internal voice didn’t tell her how she was to find the courage to approach him again. Christmas had come and gone, but as desperately as she wanted a baby, she couldn’t imagine arranging another sexual coupling.
The sight of Jerry Miles’s lips thinning into a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile yanked her back to the present. “… tried to avoid this, Jane, but in view of the difficulties we’ve been having over the past few years, I don’t seem to have a choice. As of now, I’m requiring that you submit a report to me by the last day of each and every month detailing your activities and bringing me up to date on your work.”
“A report? I don’t understand.”
As he began to elaborate on what he wanted from her, she couldn’t hide her shock. No one else was required to do anything like this. It was bureaucratic busywork, and the very idea went against the essense of everything Preeze stood for.
“I won’t do it. This is blatantly unfair.”
He regarded her with a faintly pitying look. “I’m sure the Board will be unhappy to hear that, especially since your fellowship is up for review this year.”
She was so outraged, she could barely speak. “I’ve been doing excellent work, Jerry.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind preparing these reports for me each month so I can share your enthusiasm.”
“No one else has to do this.”
“You’re quite young, Jane, and not as well established as the others.”
She was also a woman, and he was a sexist jerk. Years of self-discipline prevented her from saying any of this out loud, especially since she would end up hurting herself more than him. Instead, she rose to her feet, and, without a word, marched from his office.
She fumed as she rode down to the main floor in the elevator and stalked across the lobby. How much longer was she going to have to put up with this? Once again, she regretted the fact that her friend Caroline was out of the country. She very much needed a sympathetic ear.
The gray January afternoon held that ugly hint of permanence that always seemed to hang over northern Illinois at this time of year. She shivered as she climbed into her Saturn and sped toward the elementary school in Aurora where she was scheduled to do a science program for the third graders.
Some of her colleagues teased her about her volunteer work there. They said that having a world-renowned theoretical physicist teaching elementary-school children, especially disadvantaged ones, was like having Itzhak Perlman teaching beginning violin. But the state of science education in the elementary schools disturbed her, and she was doing her small part to change it.
As she hurried into the assembly room where the third graders were waiting and set down the supplies she’d brought with her for the experiments, she forced herself to put aside thoughts of Jerry’s newest act of bureacratic sadism.
“Dr. Darling! Dr. Darling!”
She smiled at the way the third graders had corrupted her last name. It had happened during her first visit two years ago, and since she hadn’t bothered to set them straight, the appellation had stuck. As she returned their greetings and gazed into their eager, mischievous faces, her heart twisted. How she wanted a child of her own.
She felt an unexpected rush of disgust directed entirely at herself. Was she going to spend the rest of her life filled with self-pity because she didn’t have a child, but not doing anything to correct the situation? It was no wonder she hadn’t been able to conceive a warrior’s baby. She didn’t have a backbone!
As she began her first experiment, using a candle and an empty oatmeal box, she made up her mind. From the beginning she’d known her chances of conceiving after only one attempt were slight, and now it was time to try again—this weekend, when her fertility was at its peak.
She knew from her dedicated perusal of the newspaper’s sports’ section that the Stars would be in Indianapolis for the AFC Championship quarterfinals this weekend. According to Jodie, Cal was going to his family home in North Carolina shortly after the season was over, so if she put this off any longer, he might be gone.
Her conscience chose that moment to remind her that what she was doing was immoral, but she firmly silenced that nagging voice. On Saturday, she would put her misgivings behind her and head for Indianapolis. Maybe this time the legendary quarterback could score a touchdown just for her.
It had rained all day in Indianapolis, delaying the Stars’ Saturday morning flight out of Chicago and backing up the schedule. By the time Cal left the hotel bar on Saturday night and headed for the elevator, it was nearly midnight, an hour past the team’s normal game-night curfew. He passed Kevin Tucker, but neither man spoke. They’d already said everything they had to at a press conference a few hours earlier. They both hated the public ass-kissing they were forced to do, but it was part of the job.
At every one of these conferences, Cal was forced to look the reporters straight in the eye and go on and on about Kevin’s talent and how much he appreciated his support and how both of them only wanted what was best for the team. Then Kevin would start in about all the respect he had for Cal and how privileged he was just to be part of the Stars. It was all bull. The reporters knew it. The fans knew it. Cal and Kevin sure knew it, but, still, they had to go through the motions.
When Cal got to his room, he loaded a videocassette of the Colts’ last game into the VCR that the hotel had provided and kicked off his shoes. As he lay back on the bed to watch, he pushed thoughts of Kevin Tucker aside to concentrate on the Colts’ defensive line. He fast-forwarded to the second quarter and pushed the play button, then watched until he found what he wanted. He hit the rewind button and watched again.
With his gaze firmly fixed on the screen, he unwrapped his pillow mint and ate it. Unless his eyes were playing tricks, their safety had a bad habit of signaling a blitz by looking twice toward the sideline. Cal smiled and tucked the information away.
Jane stood in front of Cal Bonner’s hotel-room door dressed in the ecru silk suit and taking deep breaths. If tonight didn’t work, she would have to learn to live with self-pity because she couldn’t go through this again.
She realized she’d forgotten to take off her glasses, and she quickly stuck them into her purse, then hitched the gold-chain strap higher on her shoulder. If only she had some of Jodie’s little relaxation pills, this might be easier, but tonight she was on her own. Summoning all her will-power, she raised her hand and knocked.
The door swung open. She saw a bare chest. Blond chest hair. A pair of green eyes.
“I—I’m sorry. I seem to have the wrong room.”
“I guess that depends on who you’re looking for, buttercup.”
He was young, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, and arrogant. “I was looking for Mr. Bonner.”
“Aren’t you lucky, then, because you found something better. I’m Kevin Tucker.”
She finally recognized him from the televised games she’d been watching, although he looked younger without his helmet. “I was told Mr. Bonner was in 542.” Why had she trusted Jodie to get the correct information?
“You were told wrong.” His mouth grew faintly sullen, and she gathered that she’d insulted him by not recognizing him.
“Do you happen to know where he might be?”
“Oh, I know, all right. What kind of business do you have with the old ma
n?”
What kind of business, indeed? “It’s private.”
“I’ll just bet it is.”
His leer annoyed her. This young man definitely needed to be put in his place. “I happen to be his spiritual advisor.”
Tucker threw back his head and laughed. “Is that what they call it? Well, I sure hope you can help him deal with all his problems about getting old.”
“I keep the conversations I have with my clients confidential. Could you please tell me his room number?”
“I’ll do you one better. I’ll take you there.”
She saw wily intelligence in his eyes and knew that even with his good looks and glow of health, he was far too bright ever to be a candidate to father her child. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Just let me get my key.”
He got his key, but he didn’t bother with either a shirt or shoes, and he padded barefoot down the hallway. They rounded a corner and went down another corridor before they stopped in front of 501.
It was difficult enough facing Cal without having an onlooker, so she quickly extended her hand and shook his. “Thank you very much, Mr. Tucker. I appreciate your help.”
“No problem.” He withdrew his hand and banged his knuckles twice against the door.
“I believe I can take it from here. Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome.” He made no move to leave.
The door swung open, and Jane caught her breath as she once again found herself face-to-face with Cal Bonner. Next to the youthful glory of Kevin Tucker, he looked more battleworn than she remembered, and, if anything, more formidable: a case-hardened King Arthur to Tucker’s callow Lancelot. She hadn’t remembered quite how powerful his presence was, and she fought an instinctive urge to step back.
Tucker’s drawl seemed deliberately insolent. “Look what I found wandering around, Calvin. Your personal spiritual advisor.”
“My what?”
“I was given Mr. Tucker’s room number by mistake,” she said hastily. “He graciously offered to escort me here.”
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