“So when he could no longer do, he decided to teach. Is that it?” She knew Stewart had recognized the bite in her words. She’d gone too far.
With his crossed forearms resting on the desk, Stewart leaned forward. “Professor Trent, C.J. Draper is Ashton University’s basketball coach. As such, he’s a member of this university and will be accorded the same respect every other member receives.”
Carolyn said nothing.
“I believe C.J. Draper is a good coach, a good teacher,” Stewart continued. “And the fact that he’s requested an academic adviser for his players shows me that he has their educational good at heart. That should be encouraged. Don’t you agree?”
“By all means, Stewart.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied with her neutral tone. Carolyn knew Stewart was too accomplished an administrator to expect more than acquiescence at this point.
He pushed the intercom button. “Marsha, please send Coach Draper in.”
Carolyn couldn’t sit still. She went to the window again. The sky-gazing couple was gone. The broken clouds seemed to have dropped closer to the chapel’s bell tower. Walkers pulled sweaters and jackets more tightly around them and hurried their steps. A shiver ran up her spine as she heard the double doors from the outer office open and shut.
“Afternoon, Stewart. How are you?”
She grimaced out the window at the newcomer’s casualness. She should have guessed his words would be delivered in that gravelly drawl.
Perhaps she had guessed. Somehow it fit that the man who’d made her feel so uncomfortable outside was both the prominent figure in the new basketball program she’d fought and the instigator of this job she didn’t want.
“Very well, thank you. How are you, C.J.?”
“Fine. Just fine.”
She heard the words of greeting, but held her position. As long as she could, she’d delay facing this.
“C.J., I’d like you to meet Professor Carolyn Trent. Carolyn, this is Coach C.J. Draper.”
She turned, prepared for a cool exchange across the expanse of the office. But she should have known Coach Draper wouldn’t wait for such formalities. With hand extended, he stood in front of her, new Ashton sweatshirt, worn jeans, white athletic shoes, lopsided grin and all.
“Pleased to meet you, Professor Trent.” His grin cut grooves in his cheek, deeper by his mouth, then shallowing as they rippled higher.
She had no choice; dignity demanded she meet his handshake firmly. A kind of disquiet pushed her heartbeat faster for an instant as her hand disappeared in his large grasp. His palm, slightly roughened with calluses, encompassed her cold fingers like a scratchy woolen blanket. He returned her grip solidly.
He was even taller than he’d appeared at first, at least a foot over her five foot six, and lean to the point of lankiness. But his shoulders were broad enough to block her view of the room, and his handshake promised strength. The sun through the window picked out streaks of gold and bronze and even a strand or two of gray in the straight sandy brown mop of hair that fell across his forehead, ending just above his eyes—the brightest, bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
Their corners crinkled. “And here I thought you might be a student out there in the waiting room,” he said.
Almost gratefully she felt anger sweep away the disquiet. He’d thought she was a student? Him, with his sweatshirt and sneakers? At least she wore a suit, an outfit appropriate to the office of the president of Ashton University.
“I don’t know, Stewart.” C.J. addressed the university president, but his grinning gaze was focused on Carolyn. “She looks awfully young. You think she’ll be able to handle my guys?”
* * * *
C.J. had known who she was right away. He’d had an appointment with Stewart Barron to talk about an academic adviser, and she’d been called in to the president’s office before him. It didn’t take much skill to come up with the right solution to that equation.
Besides, he’d remembered her from his first visit to the school. Dolph Reems, the athletic director, had been showing him around the compact campus, and C.J. had spotted her.
He had stopped Dolph right in the middle of explaining his dream plans for a new arena. Dolph didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’d been nearly as loquacious extolling the attributes of Professor Carolyn Trent as he had of his mirage arena.
C.J. half suspected the older man knew he’d been talking a pipe dream—this school wasn’t likely to ever reach the big time. Settled into the fertile hills of southern Wisconsin, it was about a two-hour drive from Milwaukee and not much more from Chicago—if you measured in miles per hour. Otherwise, it was a world apart. Still, it just might turn out to be his ticket to the big time.
Odd that he’d picked her out right away like that. Not really his type at all. “Women gotta be feisty, flashy and fiery. What’s the fun if there isn’t some sizzle?” That was what Rake used to say when they roomed together. C.J. hadn’t followed the pattern as closely, or as often, as Rake, but looking back he could see he’d tended toward women who moved on a lot. Or was he the one always moving on?
Well, one way or another, it didn’t last.
But this Carolyn Trent was a different kind entirely. Cool and smooth, like marble. Standing at the window in Stewart Barron’s office staring out like that, she looked like a statue he’d seen in Italy.
The image pleased him. As he crossed the room to meet her, he admired the unruffled sweep of her straight shoulder-length hair, as if newly sculpted from some warm golden-brown stone by a meticulous craftsman. Her face was gently rounded with a bone structure Michelangelo might have created. Not beautiful, maybe, by some standards. Her nose was a little too long, her mouth a little too wide. But she was elegant.
That realization made it easier to understand why his eye had been drawn to her all those months ago. Her kind of elegance wasn’t a common commodity in his world. No wonder he’d noted it.
On the other hand, close up she seemed about as warm as one of those marble statues. He watched her stiffen when she turned to him, and sensed the reserve that settled over her. She had the kind of nose designed for looking down—long, straight and narrow. He was just glad nature fixed it so she’d have to look up before looking down on him.
He didn’t usually let a haughty attitude get to him; why it did with her, he didn’t know. Maybe he’d forgotten how it felt because he’d gotten past all that after five months at Ashton. Maybe he was just tired.
When he held his hand out to her, he wondered if he only imagined a moment of uncertainty beneath that surface, just as he’d thought he’d seen out in the waiting room. Both times it disappeared so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. Just as before, a disapproving coolness dimmed the glimmer of light in her eyes. Then she placed her hand in his, and her eyes—the same distinctive color as her hair—flared with temper for an instant at his comment. He revised his image.
Marble had no spark like that... and it certainly didn’t stir him the way she did.
Chapter Two
How dare he think her too young? How dare he question her ability? Carolyn fumed as they left Stewart’s office. As for “handling his guys,” she could teach, and teach she would, even if she didn’t have a classroom. C.J. Draper or no C.J. Draper.
“I suggest, since Stewart has left the details to us…” To her irritation she hesitated over the common pronoun, drawing a grin from her companion. That stiffened her back, and her voice. He found her amusing, did he? “I suggest we go to my office and discuss this program. It would be best if we both knew exactly where we stand.”
“Sure,” he agreed. He followed her out of the Administration Building’s main door and down the shallow granite steps. But there he stopped. “If you want to know about the guys’ courses and grades and all, we’ll have to go to my office first.”
Carolyn held in her impatience with determination. Why couldn’t he have said that in the first place?
They fell into step along a pat
h that led across campus, then up the slope to the ridge where the Physical Education Building sat. It irritated her to realize he was shortening his long, easy stride to accommodate her smaller steps. It irritated her further that besides the disadvantage of a foot in height, she had to contend with a restrictive straight skirt and mid-heel pumps while he swung along completely comfortable in jeans and sneakers.
“It would be helpful, Mr. Draper, if you came to our next meeting prepared.”
“Why, Professor Trent, I came prepared to this one—all prepared to meet you. And that’s what I did,” he said, his drawl seeming to slow along with his pace.
She looked up. “Meet me?”
“Of course. I wanted to meet the guys’ academic adviser.”
“You might have considered what would happen after you met me.”
Carolyn lengthened her stride until it stretched the material of her skirt taut. His pace automatically and effortlessly adjusted.
“I guess I just didn’t count on you being such a gym rat.”
“I beg your pardon?” She heard the tone in her voice that said if C.J. Draper were smart, he’d start begging her pardon. She sounded like someone she hardly recognized—and didn’t particularly like. That didn’t matter, she decided grimly, if her attitude helped make it clear from the start that she would brook no impairment of Ashton’s academic reputation. Ashton was too much a part of her, her history, her heritage, to not defend what it had always stood for.
“Sorry, Professor. That’s basketball talk for a workaholic. Some guy who spends all of his time in the gym shooting hoops—that’s a gym rat.”
“Hoops?” she inquired coolly.
“Baskets, basketball,” he translated as he held a side door open for her at the Physical Education Center.
Carolyn noticed the return of the lopsided grin, and she regarded it with some suspicion.
But he gave her no time to investigate its meaning. He strode away down a dim, narrow hall that echoed faintly of voices, sneakers squeaking on hardwood and bouncing balls. She’d barely caught up when he turned into a doorway, then swung the door open for her to enter his tiny office.
The furniture was worn just short of disrepute. Patches rubbed nearly raw marred a leather couch pushed against one wall, but it stretched long enough for even C.J. Draper’s comfort. Green metal filing cabinets, dented and scratched but neatly labeled, marched across the back of the room. On the walls hung blackboards covered with x’s and o’s drawn in miniature basketball courts and lists of numbers and abbreviations she couldn’t decipher. A door to the left opened to Dolph Reems’s office. Through it she saw another door labeled simply Gym.
“Have a seat.” C.J. gestured toward the couch as he squatted down to search a bottom filing cabinet.
The room really wasn’t that small, Carolyn realized. It only appeared that way because of C.J. Draper’s long frame. Even crouched over the drawer he dominated the room. She caught herself staring at worn jeans stretched tightly over hard thighs and abruptly spun away, moving toward his desk.
She intently surveyed the stacks on top to block the memory of her previous view. The files, envelopes and VCR tapes were orderly; their owner would know where to find whatever he wanted.
Two photographs in frames stood apart from the clutter. One showed two women and a young boy with C.J.—a family group. The woman on his right must be his mother; they had a resemblance not so much of features but expression and posture. The boy, tall and gangly with adolescence, shared enough similarities to link him to both C.J. and the older woman.
The other woman was harder to classify. A wife? C.J. Draper wore no wedding ring. Was he the kind who would? Carolyn didn’t pause to consider her uncharacteristic observation of ringless hands. Maybe a sister or sister-in-law.
Absently she picked up the other frame. She instantly recognized C.J. in the brief uniform of professional basketball. He was lean and polished, the muscles and sinews of his arms and legs standing out in the instant after he’d released the ball that hung two inches beyond his fingers. A black man in the same uniform was poised to receive the pass, his powerful body bunched to go soaring to the basket above, a cocky smile already evident. Between them, a player in a different uniform stood, the realization of how he’d been duped just making an imprint on his face.
“Hard not to smile back at ol’ Rake, isn’t it?”
The words from over her shoulder jolted her into an uncomfortable realization: she was actually smiling. She started to put down the photograph but he intercepted her, taking it from her hand, their fingers not quite touching. She let out a breath.
He was so big. That was why she’d reacted that way, she decided. When someone a foot taller stood near your shoulder, close enough to stir your hair with his words, close enough to breathe in the clean scent of his soap, you had to be aware of him.
“That was my last game with the Tornadoes. Last game with anybody for more than a year.”
He moved to stand next to her. What had Stewart said about his pro career? A serious injury? So it must have been in that game. Yet he smiled warmly at the photograph and its memories. She had to admire his ability to remember the good things.
“Rake and I worked that play to perfection. Rake’s one of the greats. You must’ve heard of him—Rake Johnson. Just retired after last season... Well, maybe you wouldn’t have heard of him. Rake’d be devastated.”
He put down the picture and picked up the other. Casually he answered the questions she wouldn’t have asked. “This is my family. My mom, my sister Jan and my nephew Jason. They’re in Florida now.”
As he reached across her to replace the picture, his arm brushed hers and feathered the side of her breast. Resolutely she ignored the clamoring of her nerve endings. It was ridiculous to react to incidental contact, something that could just as easily happen in a crowded elevator.
She had to think of something else, so she focused on the picture C.J. had put down and wondered briefly about the missing father. Briefly was all the time she had to wonder because C.J. suddenly seemed in a hurry.
“You ready? I figure you’ll want to keep these in your office, so we might as well head over there.” He slid a stack of file folders under his arm and headed out the door.
Annoyance swamped her other feelings as she struggled to keep pace with his long strides, which turned their cross-campus route to her office into an endurance test. He was doing it on purpose, damn him. He was trying to unsettle her. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. In her office, she would control the discussion.
“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Draper?” Carolyn asked as they entered her office. In her own territory she held an advantage. Right now she appreciated even the subtle edge gained by sitting in her big wooden desk chair, and leaving C.J. Draper in the chair a colleague said reminded him of applying for a bank loan. That was exactly how she wanted this man to feel.
But C.J. Draper didn’t sit down. He wandered the room with long strides, examining titles in the orderly bookshelves, twiddling the cord to the blinds, running a hand along her uncluttered desk. And bothering her.
No sense lying to herself. He’d shown a knack for disconcerting her from the moment he’d caught her staring at him in Stewart’s office. She suspected he’d been cultivating the knack ever since.
Steeling herself, she began to speak. She made her points, and he agreed. After the introductory meeting tomorrow, she’d begin scheduled meetings with the ten members of the Ashton varsity basketball team, as a group and individually. She’d be given access to all material on their academic backgrounds and progress. She would serve as liaison with individual professors if that need arose. She would have the right to declare a player academically ineligible, with the time period subject to Stewart’s final approval.
C.J.’s only contribution was the stipulation that any questions from the media be directed to him. She had no trouble agreeing to that.
She raised one eyebrow when she counted
out only nine folders. After checking them, he said he must have missed Frank Gordon’s, and he’d send it to her. There was one final area to clarify. Now she’d find out what he really had in mind. “Mr. Draper, why did you request an academic adviser?”
Deliberately she let her challenge speak louder than the question, and it stilled him. He turned from looking out the window and flipped the blinds closed. “I don’t have anything against academics.” She accepted that with a slight nod; that was what Stewart said of him. “Not like you have against basketball,” he added. Then his usual drawl became less pronounced. “I’ve been meaning to ask, Professor Trent, just what do you have against basketball? Or is it me?”
At the last words, she looked up and saw anger in his eyes . . . and some other element behind it. “I have nothing against basketball, Mr. Draper. When the team played under Dolph Reems at the lower level of competition, I had no objection at all—”
“Gracious of you,” he murmured.
She ignored him. “What I do object to is Ashton becoming one of those schools where academic standards are subordinated to the athletic program.”
“And that’s where I come in?”
She let her silence answer.
“What makes you think I’d do that?”
“Are you an ambitious man, Mr. Draper?”
“Yes.” The flat neutrality of the word carried more weight than passion would have.
“Your ambition, I’m certain, extends beyond Ashton. So this is only a stepping-stone to you. Somewhere to win at all costs, make a name for yourself and move on. How many schools has that happened to? How many schools are better known for athletic scandals than academic achievement? I won’t have that happen to Ashton, Mr. Draper.”
Hoops Page 2