The Thrill of Victory

by Sandra Brown

  Then everybody will know and have an opinion."

  "This conversation is off-the-record, remember?"

  "I just wondered if you did."

  "I won't print the story, but it'll get out the minute you check into the hospital."

  "I'm not sure when that will be."

  "Yeah? Well I think you're nuts for not having this taken care of pronto.'

  'Have you ever had surgery, Mr. Mackie?"

  He hesitated before answering. "Not abdominal surgery."

  "Then who are you to be giving me advice?

  Unsolicited advice, I might add."

  "Look," he said impatiently, "you're not just screwing around with a career here. We're talking about your life*' "Tennis is my life."

  "Now who's being trite?"

  She tossed her head and gave him a lofty glance. "I've got a lot to think about, Mr.

  Mackie, and you're a disruptive element. Now that you've got the sensational story you came after, kindly leave.'' "Okay. Maybe I'll go back to my office and start working on your obit."

  She sprang into a sitting position. The comforter slid to her waist. "You can't possibly understand how difficult a decision this is for me.'' "Life and death? That's a difficult decision?"

  "It's hardly that simple. I don't know that the tumors are malignant. I don't know that delaying the surgery will be fatal. What I do know is that if I have an operation now, my career will be over. That's the only certainty I've got right now and the only one I can base my decision on."

  She pulled in a deep breath, a reloading procedure as it were. "You can't judge me, Mackie, because you've never had to sacrifice your life's dream. Your dreams don't extend beyond the next easy woman and double highball."

  He couldn't argue with her observation since it so accurately described the life he was currently leading, but it made him mad as hell that she'd pegged him correctly. Intentionally or not, she had vocalized his secret opinion of himself.

  He couldn't deny her allegations. He wasn't about to leave, however, without getting in a parting shot.

  "Before I go, there's something you probably should know, Miss Corbett."

  "Well?" she demanded.

  "Your robe is open.'

  'Yes, I'm feeling much better, thank you."

  It was hours later and Stevie was speaking with her gynecologist by telephone. "The medication helped relax me. I took a long nap."

  Her sleep had been interrupted only by dreams of Judd Mackie's handsome, leering face, looking exactly as it had when he had nodded down at her chest and called attention to her exposed breasts. He was despicable and she rightfully despised him.

  "It was just a silly fainting spell, brought on by anxiety over the test results."

  The doctor took issue with her blase attitude and urged her to let him schedule surgery right away.

  "You agreed, doctor, that two weeks wouldn't be critical one way or another," she reminded him. "I need that much time to weigh my options and think this through."

  She hung up moments later. He had urged her to seek a second opinion. She didn't tell him she already had. And a third. The tumors were definitely there on her uterus and ovaries. Whether or not they were malignant could only be determined by surgery.

  On that dismal thought, Stevie padded into the living room and switched on the television. She was just in time to catch the sportscast on the local evening news. There she was, sprawled on the green tennis court like a rag doll while the hushed crowd looked on.

  Her collapse had resulted in a mad scrambling of media and tournament officials. Blessedly she'd been unconscious during the mayhem. She didn't remember anything after walking onto the court, wondering if that tournament would be her last.

  At the time of her collapse, she'd had her opponent down by two games. Her playing must have been instinctual, mechanical. She remembered nothing of it.

  "… can only speculate on the nature of Ms.

  Corbett's illness," the sportscaster was saying.

  "A statement issued by her manager merely stated that her condition isn't serious and that she is resting in an undisclosed location. And now we're going live to Ranger Stadium where the-"

  She switched off the set flippantly, "A few tumors.

  Nothing serious. My career will probably come to an end, and I'll never be able to have children, but it's really nothing at all."

  She went into the kitchen, more out of habit than because she was actually hungry. Spying the glass that Judd Mackie had drunk from, she placed it in the dishwasher. "Out of sight, out of mind."

  But he wasn't out of mind, and that was galling.

  He was very much on her mind. Why? Per haps because she hadn't expected him to treat her so kindly when she started crying. Or maybe because she'd won his promise not to leak her story.

  She supposed that when she did make a final decision, she should call him with the story first.

  For behaving so honorably today, he deserved that consideration.

  She ate a bowl of granola and fresh strawberries -out of spite for his sardonic comment about her healthy diet-and retired again to her bedroom.

  Unplaiting her braid, she was again reminded of Judd. He'd touched her hair, the corners of her lips. He'd held her in his arms, apparently in no hurry for her to stop crying.

  He had even carried her in his arms. It disturbed her that she could so clearly remember the feel of his sleeve against the backs of her bare thighs and the strength of his chest beneath her rib cage.

  He was her mortal enemy who constantly attacked her with his vicious pen. Yet, now that she was alone and no one could read her mind, she confessed that his touch had elicited unexpected physical reactions: a fluttering in her breasts, a tightening in her belly, a sensation of swelling and fever between her thighs.

  Slouching on the bar stool in her kitchen, he had looked rumpled and crumpled and comfortable.

  His dark brown hair was worn long, not because he consciously chose a longer style but because he neglected to have it cut regularly.

  He was attractive in a disheveled, disreputable, range-wolf way. Debonair he was not. But he was sexy. The chip he carried on his shoulder only added to his appeal. So did his arrogance.

  To a woman with sensitivity, he would be lethal.

  Stevie pitied any who might fall in love with Judd Mackie.

  As she brushed out her hair, she chided herself for letting him arouse her temper. She had been foolish to engage in a shouting match with him. No one could understand her dilemma, especially not him. What did he know of denied ambitions? He'd never had aspirations to rise above the level of mediocrity. He was an elegant bum, content with half measures.

  One thing he did know was women, Stevie conceded. He had known that his departing line would be a zinger she wouldn't easily forget.

  She finished brushing her hair and got into bed. She slept on her side because lying on her back and pulling her stomach taut often caused her discomfort. Stacking her hands beneath her cheek, she stared beyond the hem of her pillowcase into the darkened room and thought about Judd. Involuntarily she recalled the drowsy appraisal he'd given her breasts. Had he noticed that her silk kimono had deliciously abraded her nipples to tautness?

  Even as she fell asleep, she was blushing over the possibility that he had.

  .Hello," Judd mumbled into his telephone.

  "This better be damned important," he added after consulting the digital clock on his night-stand.

  "Oh, it is, it is."

  "Mike, for godsake, why're you calling so early?"

  "To fire you."

  Exasperated, Judd blew out a gust of breath and buried his head back into the pillow. "You did that already last week."

  "This time it sticks."

  "You say that every time."

  "You lazy, no-account bastard, I mean it this time. Have you seen the morning papers?"

  "I haven't even seen the morning."

  "Well, let me be the first to inform yo
u that your competitor got the story you were supposed to get and didn't."

  "Huh?"

  "While you were clacking out that less-than-inspiring piece about the Rangers' new Mexican rookie catcher, our friends over at the Morning News were scooping you about Stevie Corbett.

  She's got cancer."

  Judd swung his legs over the side of the bed, cursing the twisted sheets that restrained him, and damning his splintering headache and furry mouth. He and some cronies had gone to a topless joint after the Ranger game the night before.

  There'd been a lot of beer and a lot of bare breasts. He had swilled down beer after beer, in the vain hope that out of the plethora of bobbing breasts he would see something as sexily enticing as an angry Stevie Corbett with her robe gaping open. He hadn't, so he'd kept drinking.

  "What the hell are you talking about, Mike?

  And you don't have to shout."

  "I thought you said you talked to Corbett yesterday."

  "I did."

  "You also said there was no story there."

  "In my opinion there wasn't."

  "You don't think the fact she's got ovarian cancer is a story?" the editor bellowed.

  "She doesn't have cancer!" Judd shouted right back, though it intensified his headache.

  "She's got a few tumors that might or might not be malignant. How'd they find out about it over at the News?"

  For the span of several seconds there was a taut silence. Judd didn't notice. He had left the bed and carried the cordless phone into the bathroom with him. His reflection in the mirror over the basin confirmed what his headache had already suggested: the night before had been a bitch.

  "You knew about this? You knew?" Mike Ramsey roared. "And you gave me tripe for last night's edition?"

  Judd didn't have to hold the telephone against his ear to hear the forthcoming tirade. He had it memorized anyway. So he propped the instrument on the edge of his bathroom sink and commenced to shave.

  "You're no journalist," Mike shouted over the sound of running water. "You wouldn't even have a column if you didn't carouse in the tav erns where players and fans hang out. You're not a reporter, you're a stenographer. All you do is regurgitate boozy conversations and call it creative journalism."

  Judd had finished shaving. He picked up the phone long enough to sputter through a mouthful of toothpaste foam, "The readers eat it like candy, lap it up like ice cream. What would your sports page be without my column? Nothing, Ramsey, and you know it."

  "I'm willing to find out what it would be.

  You've just written your last column for me. You got that, Mackie?"

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "I mean it this time. You're fired! I'll have Addison clean out that rat's nest you call a desk.

  You can pick up the contents at the receptionist's desk on the first floor. Don't let me see your booze-bloated face in the city room again."

  The next sound coming from the telephone was a dial tone. Unperturbed, Judd stepped into the shower. Before he got out, he'd already forgotten Ramsey's call. He got fired half a dozen times a month. It never stuck.

  Even if it did, it might be the best thing that could happen to him. Because Ramsey was right in one respect: his column was just transcriptions of what he overheard after sporting events, garnished with a few witticisms that didn't tax his imagination any longer than it took him to type them. For the past year or so, he'd been telling himself that his readers didn't know his column came that easily for him and that it wouldn't matter to them if they did.

  But it mattered to him. He knew that what he was writing wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. He was grossly overpaid for the amount of work required of him to produce the daily column.

  Fooling his editor, the man who signed his paycheck, and his reading audience no longer gave him any satisfaction. It got harder each day to laugh up his sleeve about it.

  That's why he boozed it up and slept with women he didn't care about and let the days of his life tick by without anything to show for them. He had nothing to care about, nothing to work toward, nothing to get up in the morning for. His life was a big fat zero in the productivity department. Even though he was the only one who realized it, the fact was hard to live with.

  He needed a creative challenge, but was afraid that whatever literary talent he had once pos sessed had been squandered, never to be regained.

  So what? He was too old now to think seriously about a career change.

  His future, however, wasn't his main concern right now. Stevie Corbett's was. Where had his rival columnist heard about her illness? And how did she feel about the most intimate aspects of her life providing fodder for the sports page?

  It didn't take him long to find out.

  She exhibited her famous forehand, aiming the tennis racquet directly at his head.

  "What the-"

  "You bastard!"

  He had ducked her first swing at him, then caught the handle of the racquet as she executed an arcing backhand. They wrestled over the racquet.

  "What the hell's wrong with you?" he shouted.

  "You leaked the story. You told me our conversation was off-the-record. You liar! You-"

  "I did no such thing."

  "Oh, yes you did," she ground out. "You were the only one who knew."

  He yanked the racquet out of her hands and threw it to the floor. "Do you think I'd feed the story to my competition? I didn't write the piece.

  It was printed in another newspaper. I haven't even read the damn article yet."

  Stevie curbed her frustration and fury and thought about that for a second. Why would he give the story to someone else? It didn't make sense. But not much in her life did these days.

  "Then how did you know about the article?" she asked suspiciously. "And how did you get past the police?"

  Since early morning, her yard had been crawling with reporters. Her manager had finally called the police, requesting that they cordon off her condominium.

  ' 'One of the patrolmen on duty owed me a favor."

  "For what?"

  "It has to do with his sister."

  She rubbed her forehead. "I don't think I want to know."

  "I don't think you do, either. Suffice it to say she sneaked into a locker room one night after a big game and served as hostess for a spontaneous victory celebration."

  Stevie stared up at him, shaking her head in dismay. "I believe you. Why would you make up such a sordid tale?"

  He took her by the shoulders and guided her back onto the bar stool in the kitchen, where she'd been sitting when he picked the lock on her back door and slipped through. That's when she had begun hurling insults at him and taking well-placed swats at his head with the racquet she had helped design.

  "How did that columnist find out about me, Mackie?"

  "I don't know. But I intend to learn." He reached for her kitchen extension and punched out a number. He asked for the sportswriter by name. Apparently they were friendly rivals.

  "Hey, Mackie here. Congrats on your story about the Corbett broad." Stevie shot him a fulminating look, which he ignored. "How'd you manage to sweet-talk her into revealing the intimate details of her life? Or should a gentleman ask?" Stevie's mouth dropped open. Judd covered it with his hand. "Oh, no? She didn't tell you? Hmm. Her manager maybe?"

  Stevie shoved his hand away from her mouth and adamantly shook her head.

  "Okay, I give. Uncle. Who talked? Come on, the cat's already out of the bag so you might as well tell me." Stevie watched his brows pull to gether into a steep frown. "Look, you ornery cuss, I busted my buns yesterday trying to track down the reason for her collapse and came up empty. Just tell me who I missed."

  He listened for a moment. His frown smoothed out, but he didn't look any happier. "I see. Well, you pulled a fast one on me this time, pal. Don't let it happen again." She overheard the vulgarity that was offered in a friendly, harmless manner. "Same to you. Have a nice day," Judd finished in a singsong voice.

&n
bsp; "Well?" she asked as he replaced the receiver.

  "A technician at Mitchell Laboratories."

  "Where I had the sonargram done," she wailed softly. "I knew no one in my doctor's office would talk. I never thought of someone at the lab."

  "Don't be naive. Anybody'll talk if you bait the trap right. Coffee cups?"

  "Second cabinet, second shelf.'

  "Want some?"

  "No thanks. I've had plenty.'

  He poured himself a cup and carried it back with him to the bar. He sat down on the bar stool beside her, exactly as they'd been the day before.

  "How'd you sleep?" he asked.

  "Fine."

  "The circles under your eyes say otherwise."

  She had avoided looking directly at him for fear that he'd see she hadn't slept well at all. The truth was that she'd had a very restless night filled with dreams that fluctuated from strange to erotic to terrifying. He'd played a roll in all of them. She was exhausted. But it irked her that he had so tactlessly pointed out how bad she looked.

  "Well you look worse for wear, too," she retaliated snidely.

  "It was a helluva evening."

  "Then what are you doing here? Why aren't you wherever you call home sleeping it off? Or did you come to gloat?"

  She noted the tensing around his mouth, indicating his irritation, but he calmly sipped his coffee. "I might be gloating if I'd written the article.

  I didn't. If I had, I would have gotten the facts straight."

  The starch went out of her then. Gloomily she said, "The way this article reads, I'm finished as a player, and all but dead and buried."

  Judd came off the stool so quickly and cursed so viciously that she started in reaction. "Don't say anything like that again. It gives me the creeps."

  "Well, I'm sorry I offended your sensibilities," she snapped. "But they happen to be my tumors and I'll talk about them any way I damn well please. If you don't like it, you can leave.

  Which isn't a bad idea."

  It was a bad idea. The idea of his leaving didn't appeal to her at all. Now that she knew he was innocent of the crime and no longer felt like murdering him, she was really glad to have him around. At least when he was with her, she had to keep her mental reflexes sharpened. That exercised her mind and kept it from dwelling on dismal thoughts.