Hoops

by Patricia McLinn

  The porch light glinted on the fair strands of C.J.’s hair, and a smile barely pulled up the corners of his mouth. His double-breasted navy blue topcoat kept the perfect line of his squared shoulders and dropped without a wrinkle or fold. Beneath it the sharp crease of charcoal-gray slacks showed. The coat’s V opening displayed a crisp white shirt and rich burgundy silk tie.

  Wordlessly she stepped back as he entered.

  “This is for you.” He handed her a brown paper bag as he closed the door behind them. He shrugged out of his coat and laid it over the back of a chair. His suit jacket was as trim as the topcoat. The precise fit across the shoulders and down his long arms and torso proclaimed it tailored for him by a master.

  “I can understand your surprise, Professor,” he said with only the brightness of his eyes betraying his sympathetic expression. “But you really ought to do something about that—” he nodded toward the bag she still held “—before it drips on your dress.”

  Abruptly the cold penetrating her hands registered in Carolyn’s mind. “What is it?”

  “Ice cream. And I think it’s melting.”

  “Ice cream! What on earth possessed you to bring ice cream?” For a moment she had an eerie feeling this man could see inside her. How had he divined her vice?

  “The color. You better put it in the freezer first and ask questions later, Professor.”

  The bag was suspiciously limp. Carefully holding it away from her, she carried it to the kitchen, fully aware that C.J. was following her. Blocking his view of the Heavenly Hash carton already there and giving silent thanks that at least he wasn’t a mind reader, she closed the freezer door on the ice cream, bag and all, then moved to the sink to wash her hands.

  “That’s quite a dress, Professor.” His low voice came from right behind her.

  She twisted around to hide her bare back and found herself no more than four inches away from him, and her eyes roughly on a level with his collar despite the three-inch heels she wore. His nearness startled her into a backward step, which was abruptly halted by the counter’s edge.

  His light grasp helped restore her balance, and her hands rested on his forearms for a moment as she steadied herself. Under her fingertips she felt the smooth warmth of his fine wool sleeve. Beneath it, the solid bulk of a muscular arm.

  Carolyn resolutely ignored a thrumming in her veins to concentrate on the knot in his silk tie. He was so big. Standing like this, his body seemed a wall against the outside world. Cutting her off or protecting her?

  She pushed the question aside and concentrated on her heartfelt gratitude that she hadn’t let Helene talk her into the red dress. With that plunge front and from his vantage point... She glanced up quickly at his blue eyes sparkling with something she couldn’t quite describe as mischief, and just as quickly looked down again. She didn’t want to think of what he would have seen.

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly as she stepped around him. “Now, would you like to explain the ice cream?”

  “It’s mocha chip.”

  She waited, but that, apparently, was the extent of his explanation. “Is that supposed to have some significance?”

  He nodded. “I saw the mocha chip in the ice cream store after the game, and I thought for sure I’d got something the exact color of your hair and eyes.” He shook his head forlornly. “But now I see that’s not it, either.”

  Impatiently Carolyn headed toward the front hall. “Really, Mr. Draper, don’t you think this is rather silly?”

  Scooping up his coat as he passed the chair where he’d laid it, he started to follow. “Yeah, I should have known it was too light. Guess I’ll have to try something else.”

  In the mirror over the small hall table she watched his reflection as he smoothly pulled on his coat. Something on the bookshelf next to the bedroom door caught his interest, and he changed direction with an easy economy of motion.

  He held it in one large hand before she realized what he’d seen: the photograph of her as a little girl with her parents, the last one taken of them. Their eyes met in the mirror, and she saw his question. “My parents,” she jerked out. She remembered how easily he’d told her of his family.

  “I’ve heard about them. Both professors here, weren’t they?”

  She nodded.

  “What happened?”

  There was something in his voice. It couldn’t be pity. Pity never would have made her answer.

  “They were killed in a car accident. Up north. Trying to avoid a deer in the road. I was five.” She turned away from the mirror. “I lived with my grandparents until Stewart and Elizabeth Barron brought me back to Ashton.”

  None of it was a secret. He probably knew it already; anybody at Ashton could tell him the story. But she didn’t tell people. Why was she telling him?

  And why was she feeling the urge now to tell him it had been the end of being sure? The end of the security known by that happy little girl holding hands with the two laughing adults.

  “Everybody says how proud they’d be of you.”

  There it was in his voice again. Perhaps an echo of understanding? But why should his understanding mean anything to her? It didn’t.

  She turned to watch his gaze roam the living room, taking in the details the way he had in her office. “Monochromatic,” she said with a snap. “Like me.”

  Confused by her own sharpness, she turned away to open the closet door, reaching for her coat to give herself time. She wished, for an irrational moment, that she could close the closet door behind her and hide in the dark awhile.

  One large hand pushed her fingers aside as she fumbled with the hanger, deftly removing the coat. His other hand ran down the smooth slipperiness of the dress’s tight-fitting sleeve to her wrist, then turned her so that she faced the mirror with her back to him.

  She couldn’t move; her muscles refused to heed her orders. She could only watch him survey the smooth, bare flesh of her back and feel herself become unaccountably heated by the look.

  His eyes rose to meet hers in the mirror as he held her coat for her. “No room’s monochromatic as long as you’re there in this dress.”

  Stoicism and graciousness, Carolyn reminded herself as they headed down the stairs toward his car. Ignore him.

  What about your reactions to him? asked a sneaky little voice from the back of her mind. How are you going to ignore yourself?

  * * * *

  They reached the drive to Mrs. Dawton’s estate and drew into the slowly advancing line of cars headed into the long, curving drive.

  “Still worried about people thinking we’re together?” C.J.’s voice was soft and sympathetic.

  Carolyn looked over at him quickly; just as she thought, the grin lurked just beneath the surface. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Draper?” Detached and calm, her own tone pleased her. Surely her coolness would penetrate eventually—if not to him, at least to herself.

  “I guess I can see your point. You being a professor of literature and all.” He eased the car forward, moving around a curve to the front of the sprawling stone mansion. At the door each car in turn discharged its passengers and a young man in an Ashton jacket took it away to leave room for the next. “And I hear this meeting thing you attended in England is pretty exclusive. Only for the best. Sort of an all-star game for literature professors.”

  She didn’t bother to reply to that, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal, Professor. We’ll call it a bet, as long as you don’t tell the guys—it wouldn’t set a good example for them.”

  They were next in line. Once inside, she decided she’d convince Stewart and Helene to drive her to the dinner-dance.

  “Now what should the bet be, Professor? How about if you can say something nice about basketball?”

  “No.” No need to answer more. Carolyn’s door opened as C.J. stopped the car, and a gentlemanly hand extended to help her out.

  “Professor Trent!” Frank Gordon’s eyes
widened.

  She smiled at him and headed up the stairs. Knowing C.J. was close behind still didn’t prepare her for the warmth of his big hand slipping under her elbow.

  She turned to frost him with a look, but he seemed immune. She could have pulled away from the light grasp; it wasn’t until much later that she came up with the explanation that it would have appeared blatantly rude.

  “Okay, you pick the bet,” he said. “And to make it interesting, we’ll have a little something riding on it. How’s that?”

  For a moment Carolyn considered the satisfying temptation of telling him exactly what she thought of his idea. But parting to hand their coats to attendants gave her time to reconsider. C.J. immediately returned to her side. His palm cupped her elbow once more, guiding her to the end of the reception line.

  He bent his head so that his low voice reached only her.

  “If you win, you’ll be spared my company the rest of the evening. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  His words surprised Carolyn even more than the rasp of his drawl and the tightening of his fingers. She looked up quickly to find his blue eyes disconcertingly close, and even more disconcerting in their directness. Once more he’d come closer to reading her feelings than she liked. She did want to be spared his company. She only hoped he didn’t realize that the reason was the peculiarly unsettling effect he seemed to have on her.

  His customary lightness replaced the slight harshness of his previous question, but his grip remained firm. “And if I win the bet, I continue to be your escort for the evening. And you dance with me—at least twice. Agreed?”

  She opened her mouth to deny it, to end this immediately. But the pressure of his hand on her elbow turned her face-to-face with Mrs. Dawton. C.J. Draper had timed it perfectly.

  Mrs. Dawton said a polite welcome to Carolyn, then gushed over C.J. There was no other word to describe it, Carolyn decided. And Mrs. Dawton wasn’t the only one. In fact, the press of people trying to meet him ultimately succeeded in loosening his hold on her arm.

  Just before she moved away, though, some impulse that took her by surprise pushed her up on her toes to bring her mouth closer to his ear, so only he could hear.

  “You have to make a literary allusion before we leave for the club. An allusion that impresses a professor of literature. How’s that, Mr. Draper?”

  She caught a flicker of his surprise before she slipped past the encircling people eager to talk to the new basketball coach, and gave a short sigh of accomplishment. Maybe it indicated a weakness in her character, but turning his “bet” on him brought a certain satisfaction.

  Glancing back through the thicket of shoulders to the shining head that topped all the others, her eyes caught C.J.’s. For an instant she thought a forlorn shadow crossed his face, and she felt an odd echo in her own heart.

  “Carolyn, how nice to see you. And you look lovely. That’s a wonderful color for you.”

  Shaking off the strange sensation, she turned to Mary Rollins, a longtime friend from the registrar’s office.

  There were so many people she hadn’t seen since the spring, so many eager to hear about her travels and studies that she found herself postponing the moment when she would seek out Stewart and ask to join his party.

  * * * *

  C.J. spent an hour talking basketball and wondering what had gotten into him. He listened to a board member’s analysis of a top national team with flattering interest while watching Carolyn’s progress through the room. Just remembering the urge he’d wrestled with earlier to stroke her ivory back made his fingertips tingle.

  Why did he try to goad her that way? Sure, she hid behind a mask of chilly dignity. So what? People wore masks all the time.

  Take this alum. He downplayed his position as a chief executive officer with carefully cultivated modesty. Behind that an ego drove him to succeed—and to retell glories of his athletic days.

  Why did Carolyn’s retreat behind her marble facade make C.J. want to shake her? Smiling, he answered a professor of mathematics’ question about a famous former teammate.

  Was it because he wasn’t really sure what was behind her pose as the distant academic? Or because he hoped the warmth and vulnerability he thought he’d seen were real? If he didn’t know himself better, he’d say this thorn in his side might well become a full-blown infection.

  With a mental sigh, C.J. wondered how much longer he needed to charm the influential guests. Better get used to it, Draper, he told himself. Coaching doesn’t start on the court, and it doesn’t end in the locker room.

  He’d do his Homecoming duty, then he’d finish up a certain bet with Professor Carolyn Trent. And he’d beat her.

  Masks, thorns and all.

  C.J. smiled broadly at the bragging alum.

  * * * *

  “The seminar sounds like quite an outing, Carolyn,” commented Edgar Humbert, a colleague from the English Department, as he lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he’d just finished. “And I hear they were quite impressed by you. You’re going to make department head before you’re thirty.”

  “Edgar, I’m honored,” she teased. “That my name should be included on your academic grapevine—surely the most extensive one in the free world—is an honor indeed.”

  His slight bow acknowledged the compliment, and the truth of it. A wink, though, pricked any pomposity in his self-congratulations. “I’d like to have you in to lecture to my grads. Let’s talk about a date.” His eyes darted over her shoulder, and a smile flicked on his thin lips. “That is if you can spare time from your basketball players.”

  So the faculty grapevine already hummed with word of her new assignment.

  “Hi, Ed,” came C.J.’s near-drawl from behind her. He moved around to join them. It was the first time she’d seen him free of a crowd since their arrival. “ 'Fraid Caro’s going to be busy with my guys. They’ll take a lot of time. Isn’t that right, Caro?”

  “Caro?” Carolyn and Edgar chorused the name, Carolyn indignantly and Edgar questioningly.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Carolyn called that before,” said Professor Humbert with avid curiosity and a distinct expression of puzzlement as he looked at C.J.

  “Oh?” C.J.’s blue eyes looked with innocence from Carolyn to Edgar Humbert. “It just seemed to suit her. You know, sort of poetic?”

  “Poetic?”

  Edgar kept supplying C.J. with exactly the leads he wanted, and Carolyn wished she could have warned him— better yet, ordered him—to be quiet.

  “Wasn’t there a poem written to a Caro once? ‘Remember thee! Remember thee! Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream . .. ’ ”

  Edgar Humbert spluttered over his cigarette. “Byron, of course! But, C.J., do you know the rest?” Humbert didn’t wait for an answer, but continued the quote:

  “Remorse and Shame shall cling to thee,

  And haunt thee like a feverish dream!

  Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.

  Thy husband too shall think of thee:

  By neither shalt thou be forgot,

  Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

  “Byron wrote it about Lady Caroline Lamb when he’d ended the affair and she kept after him,” Humbert offered, darting a look from Carolyn’s stony stillness to C.J.’s dancing eyes. “Not very flattering to our Carolyn.”

  “No, indeed,” said C.J. with exaggerated repentance. “I beg your pardon, Professor Trent. Now I know why no one calls you Caro!”

  “See you at the club, Edgar.” Carolyn spun on her heel and headed out, too angry to trust herself to say more.

  A setup. She’d been set up. One way or another she’d been set up. She’d picked the test, but he’d been lying. All that drawling unsophisticated talk, all that nonsense of trying to find the right “color” for her, all that supposed friendly openness. All the while he was playing her for a fool by pretending to be an ill-educated jock.

  She took four strides before she felt C.J.’s s
trong fingers grip her elbow.

  “You’re right. It’s time we left for the club.” His voice dropped to a laughing growl in her ear. “How’d you like that, Professor? Impressed two literature professors for the price of one.” Then he said louder, “I was just coming to get you when we got into that very interesting literary discussion with Professor Humbert.”

  She ignored him, carefully avoiding his eyes as he escorted her to his car.

  Why she even allowed that tacit acknowledgment that he’d won his silly bet, she couldn’t imagine. The only possible reason was to use the trip to the Ashton Club to find out how much of a fool she’d made of herself.

  “How much do you know about Byron?” She put the question to him when she could speak with the calm she expected of herself.

  “Not much. You know, the affair with Caroline Lamb, rumors about him and his half sister, sleeping with pistols under his pillow during his honeymoon. When Professor Eggers got to the dissolute life-style, that’s when I listened up.”

  “George Eggers?” His “Uh-huh” confirmed he meant the man who’d been a fixture at the state university for decades. “George Eggers doesn’t teach large lecture classes. Only seminars.”

  C.J.’s murmur was noncommittal.

  “You took a Byron seminar from George Eggers?”

  He shrugged almost apologetically. “I needed one more English class to graduate. The one on Byron was the only one that fit into my schedule. Coach finagled me in.”

  “George Eggers wouldn’t—” She bit off the words.

  “Wouldn’t what?” He was deceptively cordial. “Wouldn’t take a jock in his class? Or wouldn’t doctor a grade to pass me?”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” She couldn’t finish. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t meant just that.

  “Rest easy, Professor.” She thought she heard an edge to his voice, one so thin that it barely existed. “George Eggers’s integrity is intact. I was no scholar, but I passed that course. Legitimately.”