The Thrill of Victory

by Sandra Brown

She ignored the edict. "Did you write today?"

  "Write?" he asked incredulously. "Stevie, I've been stalking the corridors of this hospital like a wild man waiting for you to come out of the anesthesia."

  "You should've been home writing. Chapter seven needs work."

  "Yeah, I know. It's dragging in-" He broke off. His eyebrows formed a fearsome V. "How in hell do you know what chapter seven needs?"

  "I've been reading your novel."

  "Since when?"

  "Since you started it." She wanted to touch him badly, but couldn't find the wherewithal to raise her hand. "It's wonderful. Truly."

  She felt the postoperative medication luring her back into oblivion. Before she succumbed, there was something she had to say. "Judd, I love you."

  He took her hand and held it against his lips after pressing a fervent kiss on the backs of her fingers. "I figured that out when you decided to go for life instead of the Grand Slam. Want to know the real corker? I love you, too."

  Smiling wryly, he realized that she'd drifted back to sleep. He regretted that she hadn't heard his first profession of love, but that was okay.

  He would still be there when she woke up.

  Thank you.

  "Thank you," the attractive young woman gushed. "I can't wait to read it. If it's half as good as your picture on the dust jacket, I'll be thoroughly entertained."

  Judd glanced up at his wife, who was glaring at the gum-popping, high-strutting, miniskirted ingenue through slitted brown eyes. When they ventured back to her husband, he gave her a helpless shrug that was at odds with his smile, which defined masculine complacency.

  "Mrs. Mackie, the line outside the door just keeps getting longer," the manager of the Manhattan bookstore said. "Mr. Mackie is going to be busy signing books for quite some time.

  Would you care to sit down?'

  'I'm fine for now, but thank you."

  He glanced at her shyly. "Would it be presumptuous of me to ask for your autograph, too."

  "Not at all," she returned with a smile.

  He produced a pad and pen. "I saw you play at the U.S. Open once."

  "Did I win?"

  "You lost in the quarter finals, but it was a close match."

  Stevie only laughed.

  "You're semiretired now, isn't that right?"

  "I don't play competitive tennis anymore, but I'm busy organizing some instructional clinics."

  "So I've heard. For underprivileged children, aren't they?"

  After six months of recuperation following her surgery, her gynecologist had given her the go-ahead on any project she wanted to tackle.

  Her brainstorm, which she had considered from every angle during her convalescence, had won Judd's hearty approval. He'd helped publicize the idea locally through his column in the Tribune. As a result, donations to support the project had poured in. .

  The original clinic in Dallas had received so many accolades that other cities had approached Stevie to organize similar programs for them. There were now Stevie Corbett Tennis Clinics nationwide, catering specifically to players who couldn't afford club memberships.

  "The clinics are community supported and open to anyone who shows up wanting instruction," she said in response to the bookseller's question.

  "Doesn't your husband mind sharing you with such a time-consuming undertaking?"

  "Not at all. He understands my need to work.

  Besides, he's been busy himself."

  "I understand that his daily column is now in syndication and that he's already at work on a second novel."

  "That's right."

  "What's it about?"

  She gave the man a sweet smile. "I'm sworn to secrecy. You'll have to wait along with all his other fans."

  There was a long line of them snaking out the door and down the sidewalk. Stevie watched as one elbowed his way through the crowd until he reached the table where Judd was autographing copies of his book. He introduced himself as a book editor for the Times.

  "Can I have a minute, Mr. Mackie?"

  "Nope," Judd said amicably, pointing down the line of people waiting to meet the author of the new best-seller. "But I can talk and sign at the same time. Ask away."

  "Is the novel autobiographical?"

  "Parts of it."

  "Which parts?"

  "In deference to my family and friends, I can't answer that question. I will admit that, as a young man, I wanted more than anything to play professional baseball. I was denied the chance.

  For years afterward, I harbored a lot of bitterness and carried a chip on my shoulder the size of Mount Everest." He closed the book he'd just signed, handed it to the customer and smiled a welcome to the next person in line. "Hi."

  As he scrawled a brief message and his signature, he continued. "I was disenchanted with life, so I could relate to the protagonist in this book, who had also suffered a bitter disappointment."

  "What changed your personal outlook?" the reporter asked.

  Judd's gaze found Stevie's across the crowded bookstore. He saw her eyes shining back at him.

  "I met somebody with real guts. She taught me through example that life is damn sure worth living even with all its drawbacks, and that sometimes we have to suffer a defeat in order to recognize a victory."

  A sunny smile broke across Stevie's face. But it was immediately replaced by an expression of alarm. The alarm was telegraphed to Judd, who dropped his pen onto the table and left his position behind it.

  He crossed the store in three strides and pressed his wife's hands between his. "Stevie, is something wrong?"

  "Not at all, darling. Go back to work."

  "Mr. Mackie," the bookstore manager said nervously, "people are waiting."

  "I'll be right back," Judd told him, drawing Stevie down the narrow aisle toward the back of the store.

  "But…but you can't leave now. Where are you going?" he sputtered. "What'll I tell the customers?"

  'Tell them that I've been signing books for two hours and I have to take a leak. I'm sure they'll understand."

  He left the bookseller, the reporter and those customers close enough to hear his statement gaping speechlessly as he pulled Stevie past the overloaded bookshelves into a rear storeroom that was even more cramped than the store proper.

  "What's the matter?" he demanded the second the door closed behind them.

  'Nothing." 'I saw your face, Stevie. You look like I do every time you playfully grab my-"

  "Judd! People will hear you."

  "I don't care. I want to know what brought on that expression that made you look like you'd just been goosed."

  From the day they had returned to the east Texas farmhouse following her surgery, he constantly wanted to be apprised of the state of her health. Only after she'd had a normal menstrual cycle did he begin to believe the doctor's positive prognosis. But he had never totally relaxed his vigilance where her health was concerned.

  "I knew I shouldn't have listened when you begged to come along today," he said now, berating himself for letting her persuade him. "Let me put you in a cab back to the hotel.'' "Forget it, Mackie. I love watching people adore you, because I adore you so much myself."

  She gave him a soft kiss. "Besides, I refuse to stay cooped up in that stuffy little room while you're out getting ogled by every woman you meet."

  "Not every woman," he replied with the insufferable conceit she now found so endearing.

  She linked her arms around his neck and moved in close. "You're incorrigible. Why do I love you so much?"

  "How can you help yourself? What's not to love?" Slipping his hands to the small of her back he drew her even nearer and angled his parted lips over hers.

  "Mackie, you've got people waiting."

  "Let them wait."

  He kissed her thoroughly, using his tongue to search the sweet recesses of her mouth. Their hunger for each other hadn't abated a single degree.

  Judd often joked that he was probably the only husband in history wh
o'd had to wait twelve weeks after the wedding to consummate his marriage. Stevie would retort that he had only himself to blame since he'd insisted on bringing a minister to the farmhouse to marry them while she was convalescing and that, once he'd gotten her gynecologist's okay, he had certainly made up for all the lost time.

  "Hmm, delicious," he said now, lifting his lips off hers at last, "I've been craving-" He broke off suddenly. His expression went completely blank.

  Stevie began to laugh softly. "Now who looks like he's been goosed?"

  "What the hell was that?"

  "That," she said, taking his hand and moving it down to her swollen abdomen, "is our baby, moving for the first time."

  Judd's adam's apple slid up and down his neck when he swallowed hard. "Oh, Geez," he groaned, "I knew I should have insisted that you stay in the room. I knew this would be too tiring.

  Standing up on this damn hard floor brought this on. Why aren't you sitting down?"

  Happiness bubbled out of her in the form of soft laughter. "Will you calm down? It's normal.

  It's right on time. The doctor told me on my last visit to be watching for movement. There it is again. Feel it?" They waited expectantly, but nothing happened. "I guess he went back to sleep."

  "Unfortunately," Judd said thickly, "touching you has brought me wide awake." He nudged her with his middle so she couldn't possibly mistake his meaning. "I'm a lucky cuss. Married to the sexiest prego broad on earth."

  "Have I ever told you that you really have a romantic way with words?"

  "No."

  "Good."

  It was a word game they often played. He was smiling at her wit as his hands skimmed past her thickened waistline and moved up to her breasts.

  Over the past few weeks they'd grown larger with her advancing pregnancy. "Tender?" he asked as he massaged them through her dress.

  "Not as long as you're doing that."

  He swept his thumbs across her nipples; they didn't disappoint him. "God, I love you. You came along when I needed you most." He swallowed hard again, this time with emotion.

  "Every time I think about your surgery and what could have been…" He let the unbearable thought go unspoken.

  "But it wasn't, and we are blessed with each other." Again they kissed, putting behind it the love that brimmed in their hearts.

  "Judd, it's happening again!" she said excitedly.

  She guided his hand down to her tummy and they smiled radiantly at each other as the child of their creation moved within her.

  "Does it hurt?" he whispered.

  "No," she whispered back.

  There was a knock on the door. "Mr. Mackie, the crowd is getting testy."

  "What does it feel like?" Judd asked his wife, ignoring the panicked bookseller and keeping his voice low and stirring.

  "It feels marvelous. It makes me feel alive and wonderful. 'Victorious. Almost as good as I feel every time you're inside me."

  Judd laid his lips against hers and growled,

  "I've gotta go for now, Mrs. Mackie, but hold that thought."

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