“Why did I leave the NFL,” he muttered. He glanced at her again. “I don’t usually talk about that, but if you’re sure you want to know—”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay, then.” He hesitated, remembering that time in his life. “Back when I was a pro athlete I got involved in a mentoring program with teenagers. I was working with this one boy, a really nice kid named Charles. He was a good student and a great football player. I worked with him for two years, right up until he got accepted to Michigan State. The day after he got the letter, he took twenty of his mom’s antidepressant pills with a bottle of vodka and killed himself.”
Holly gasped. “Alex, how awful. But…what did that have to do with you leaving the NFL?”
“After Charles died, his parents and I found out that he’d been using steroids. I didn’t have a clue. He never talked to me about it, never said a word. He must have thought I was too much of a straight arrow to ask about something like that. And he was right—I never got into that crap. One of the many reasons is that it can affect your emotional balance, make you suicidal…especially if you’re a teenager.”
He took a breath. “I kicked myself for not seeing the signs. The acne, the mood swings, the way he bulked up so fast. But the fact is, I’d gotten used to seeing the signs. They were around me every day in the locker room. And even though I never did it myself, I turned a blind eye to it. It was just so much a part of the culture…as bad as it sounds, I started to take it for granted. After Charles died, I decided I didn’t want a job where I could take something like that for granted. I decided I wanted to work with kids instead.”
He grinned suddenly. “Or maybe I was just tired of getting beaten into the ground every Sunday. Either way, it was time to leave and I left.”
Holly was looking at him thoughtfully. “I’m glad you left the NFL,” she said after a moment. “I’m glad you came back here to Weston. I’m glad you’re Will’s coach.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well…thanks, Holly.”
“Can I ask you another question?”
“Sure.”
“Why were you such a jerk in high school?”
Now he raised both eyebrows. “Hey, who said I was a jerk?” He waited a beat, then shook his head. “Okay, even I don’t buy that one. Yeah, I was a jerk. Most teenage boys are, you know. I hope you don’t think Will is typical.”
“No, I know he’s not typical. But you weren’t, either. I mean…I suppose most teenage boys are obnoxious, but you were…”
“More obnoxious than most? Maybe I was. Well—I hated my family, for one thing. One of the original excuses for teenage rebellion.”
“Why did you hate them?”
“I never knew my real father—he took off before I was born. My mom died when I was eight and that left me with my stepfather. He and Brian never had much use for me, and I had even less for them. I wasn’t related to them by blood, and they’re the kind of people that matters to. I left home as soon as I could.”
“So…you didn’t really have a family. After your mom died, anyway.”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to sound so sad about it. I got over it a long time ago. And I’ve worked with kids who’ve gone through a lot worse.” He glanced at her. “You went through worse.”
She looked at him in surprise. “How did I go through worse?”
“Well…you always thought you had your parents’ love. Didn’t you? And they turned you away when you needed them most.”
Holly ducked her head, and he wondered if he’d ventured onto forbidden ground. She had the excuse of alcohol for asking personal questions, while he had no excuse at all.
“How hard was it?” he asked gently.
She looked up again. “How hard was what?”
“Being on your own. In the beginning, I mean.”
“Hard,” she said, leaning back against the headrest. “But I got to watch myself getting stronger. It felt good to stand on my own two feet, to take care of myself and Will without owing anything to anybody.” She turned her head to look at him. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That makes a lot of sense.” He hesitated. “You know, Holly…I never told you this, but I’ve always admired you like hell for what you did. For making a life for yourself and Will like that, out of nothing.”
She tilted her head to the side and started to smile. “Wait a second. Was that a compliment?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. I still think you’re too stubborn and that you make things hard for yourself when you don’t have to. But I do admire you, even when you’re frustrating my chivalrous instincts.”
“The man calls me stubborn,” she said as if to herself, shaking her head. But when Alex shot a glance at her, he saw that she was smiling.
She reached a hand out into the night wind again. “It’s my turn to ask another question now.”
“Fire away.”
“Why did you carry me out of that bar?”
He made a left turn onto Holly’s street. “I’ve known Rich a long time,” he said after a moment. “He’s an okay guy, but he’s not right for you. I’ve seen him go through hundreds of women.”
“Well, so do you,” Holly pointed out. “Don’t you?”
“Not hundreds,” he said evasively. “And I don’t go around breaking hearts. I’m always clear up front that I don’t want to get serious.”
“And that makes it okay?” She shook her head. “Admit it, you’re just as bad as Rich. But I don’t care if he plays the field. I don’t want to pick out china patterns or anything—I just want to go on a date. I could use the practice.”
“You can go on all the dates you want. Just not with Rich.”
She folded her arms and lifted her chin in the air. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded as he pulled into her driveway, “but I can call up my old pal and warn him that if he goes near you again I’ll beat him to a pulp.”
“Alex! You wouldn’t do that.”
“You bet I would. And I will, too.” He turned off the ignition. “As adorable as you look with your nose stuck in the air like that, it’s my duty to tell you that you are now home.”
In the sudden dark and quiet, Holly turned to look at him. “You think I’m adorable?”
He looked back at her for a minute, and then got out of the car. If he stayed there one more second he wouldn’t answer for the consequences.
“You said I was adorable,” she reminded him when he opened her door.
“Like a golden retriever puppy,” he said as he helped her out.
“Wait a minute. Now I’m a dog?”
“A really cute dog. Haven’t you ever seen a golden retriever puppy?”
He walked her to her front door. “Good night, Holly,” he said, but it felt like goodbye. He knew he wouldn’t be this close to her again.
“Good night, Alex,” she answered, but she stayed where she was.
Time to go, he reminded himself. Except he couldn’t seem to move.
He reached out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, and then did what he’d been wanting to all night. He ran his fingers slowly through the lustrous red silk of her hair.
As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Now he knew it was even softer than he’d imagined, and that was not going to help him sleep tonight.
“That felt nice,” she said, sounding surprised. She rolled up her sleeve and showed him her arm. “Look! You gave me goose bumps.”
Really time to go.
Only those big green eyes of hers were holding him there, and for once they weren’t narrowed with suspicion or dislike. Her lips were parted slightly as she looked at him, and if she were any other woman, drunk or not, he would have kissed her.
When the moment stretched out a little too long and he felt himself leaning toward her, he reached past her instead and opened the door.
“You should go inside,” he said. “Take some aspirin before you go to sleep.”
“Aspirin? But I feel great!”
“Not tomorrow morning, you won’t. That’s when you’re going to wake up sober and be really, really mad at me. Remember?”
“Right,” she said, nodding. “Only, I can’t remember now why I was so mad at you.”
He smiled crookedly. “Don’t worry—I’m pretty sure it’ll come back to you.”
Chapter Four
Somebody’s head was hurting. Holly felt really bad for whoever it was, because the pain was a kind of throbbing, pounding—
“Mom! Aren’t you awake yet?”
Holly winced. As she’d begun to suspect, the headache belonged to her. “Don’t shout, Will.”
“I’m not shouting. I think you have a hangover.”
Holly groaned and rolled over in bed, keeping her eyes closed.
“You should worry about the example you’re setting for your impressionable son.”
“Have some pity, Will. Your voice is going right through my head. What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Okay, okay. I think you’re supposed to take Vitamin B and drink lots of water. I’ll make you some coffee, too. Wait right here.”
What did he think she was going to do? Hop out of bed and skip down the stairs, whistling a jaunty tune?
She opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling and praying for death. Instead she got Will, back way too soon, carrying not coffee but the cordless phone.
“It’s Coach,” he said, sounding surprised. “He says he wants to talk to you.” He set the phone down on the bed next to her and went back downstairs.
Oh, God.
Memories of last night came flooding back, and she stared at the phone as if it was a snake about to bite her. The knowledge of who was on the other end made her feel ill.
Well, more ill.
She’d done a striptease in his car and he hadn’t even looked at her.
When she thought about the sweater incident she felt hot all over, and not in a good way. When she thought about the conversation in the bar and then on the drive home, she felt worse. And when she thought about how close she’d come to kissing him on her front porch, she pulled the covers over her head and prayed that somehow, some way, she’d be beamed off the planet and onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
The only thing that kept her from throwing the phone out the window was the knowledge that if she didn’t answer it, Alex would know exactly why. He’d know she was too embarrassed to talk to him.
Holly threw off the covers, picked up the phone and hit the talk button.
“Why are you calling me at dawn?” she asked as crisply as she could.
She could hear him laughing softly over the phone line. “It’s noon, Holly.”
She glanced at the clock and saw he was right. She groaned, and heard him laugh again.
“Okay, then, why are you calling me at noon?”
“I wanted to see how you were feeling. And I wanted to see if you were still talking to me.”
She hesitated. “I feel like crap. Thanks for asking.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” A short pause. “And what about my second question? Are you still talking to me?”
She bit her lip. The simplest thing, she decided, would be to play dumb. If he had any decency at all, he’d go along with her.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked innocently. “Of course I’m still talking to you. I mean, as much as we ever talk to each other.”
There was another pause. “So that’s how you’re going to play it,” he said. “I should have known.”
Her grip on the phone tightened. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You’re going to pretend none of it happened.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? Why wouldn’t I want to forget last night? I was drunk, Alex. If you were a gentleman, you’d forget about it, too.”
“A gentleman? If I wasn’t a gentleman, I—” He stopped abruptly.
“What?” she asked, daring him to finish the sentence.
“Let’s just say you seemed—receptive.”
“If I seemed receptive, it’s because I was drunk,” she said coldly. “Because I am not receptive. Not to you, anyway. And I never will be. You’re pushy and arrogant and you throw women over your shoulder like some kind of Neanderthal. I could never be interested in someone like you.”
“Right, of course. I obviously don’t meet your high standards for men. Like Brian, the disappearing father. Or Rich, who would have slept with you for a couple of weeks and then dumped you.”
A wave of anger made her sit straight up in bed. “How dare you judge me? I don’t see you in any perfect relationship. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve never been in a relationship.”
“I’ve been in plenty of—”
“I’m not talking about sex. Tell the truth, Alex. Have you ever been with one woman for more than three months? Have you ever gotten to the stage where you left a toothbrush at her place?”
There was a pause. “Just because I haven’t found the right woman yet doesn’t mean I—”
“Oh, come on, Alex. You’re in your thirties. You’re never going to find the right woman. I bet you don’t even want to. You’re perfectly happy playing the field. And hey, it’s a free country. I don’t care what you do in your personal life. But you’ve got no right to judge me, and you had no right to carry me out of that bar last night. I’m a grown woman, and if I want to have some fun with a guy I just met that’s my business. If I want to have a wild affair with him, that’s my business, too.”
There was a longer pause.
“Fine,” Alex said coldly. “Forget I said anything. It’s obviously impossible to do you a favor, so I won’t. Good luck with the wild affair by the way. Of course after a three year sabbatical you might be a little rusty—”
“Okay, that’s it. You know, Alex, in my alcohol-induced fog last night there were actually three or four minutes where I didn’t feel like killing you. Those minutes are now officially over. Goodbye.”
She hung up without waiting for a response and fumed. After a few minutes she threw off the covers and got out of bed so she could fume while pacing back and forth. Much more satisfying.
“Hey, you’re up,” Will said, coming into the room with a tray that held, thankfully, nothing but a glass of water, a mug of coffee, a vitamin pill and two aspirin.
“What did Coach want?” he asked as he set the tray down.
“Nothing,” Holly said. She downed the vitamin and aspirin with big gulps of water. “Thanks for this, by the way. Did you have breakfast?”
“Sure, I had breakfast.” He frowned suddenly. “That reminds me. When I was down in the kitchen there was this smell—like burning or melting or something. It was pretty faint and I couldn’t tell where it came from. It might have been my cooking, but do you think we should have it checked out? In case it’s something electrical.”
Holly sipped her coffee. “It’s probably the oven. I’ve been meaning to give it a good cleaning. I’ll go down later to check.”
“Okay. Is it all right if I go over to Tom’s house today? We’re working on that social studies project together.”
“Of course. I’ll enjoy a Sunday afternoon without football for once.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then, around nine o’clock. Tom’s parents invited me to stay for dinner if that’s okay.”
“Sure thing. Have fun.”
“I will, Mom. Don’t forget to check out that smell in the kitchen.”
“I won’t.”
But she did forget. She didn’t go near the kitchen at all that day, not feeling hungry in the afternoon and developing a sudden craving for fast food at dinner time, which she decided to indulge. She went to bed early, even before Will got home.
He didn’t stop by the kitchen, either. He’d eaten a huge dinner with Tom’s family and had no appetite for his usual late-night snack. Like his mom he went to bed fairly early, around ten o’clock. So both of them we
re sound asleep when the fire came through the wall, tongues of flame licking their way into the house, feeding eagerly on the two-hundred-year old woodwork and antique furniture and growing from a whisper to a roar.
The smoke alarms went off, but Holly was sleeping so soundly she didn’t wake up right away. There was so much smoke in her room already that she might easily have never woken up again.
When she did, gasping and then coughing, she realized in one horrified second what was happening.
Will, she thought frantically. She stumbled out of bed and ran into the hall, her eyes smarting and her lungs desperate for clean air. But over the banister she could see an orange glow, hear the fierce roar—and instinctively, she knew they only had seconds to get out.
She flew into Will’s room and shook him roughly awake.
“What’s going on?” he asked groggily, and then he gasped and coughed just like she had.
“Fire,” she said sharply, going to his window and throwing up the sash and the screen and looking down at the ground below.
“Out,” she ordered, turning to face him. He was standing up now, looking terribly young in his pajamas, but holding his jaw firm and trying to control his fear.
“You first, Mom. I can’t just leave you here!”
“Now, Will. I mean it. I’ll be right behind you. The ground slopes up on this side of the house so the drop won’t be so bad, but try to land as softly as you can. When your feet hit the ground, let yourself collapse to absorb the shock.”
Will nodded wordlessly. He went over to the window and sat down awkwardly on the sill, maneuvering his long legs through the opening so they dangled outside, his hands braced on either side of him. He hesitated a moment and then dropped. Holly heard him grunt as he landed.
Holly followed almost immediately. She angled herself to one side, not wanting to land right on top of her son, and crashed into a rosebush. She hardly felt the pain of the deep scratch to her forearm and the one across her face.
For a moment she lay still, fighting to get her breath back. Will had scrambled to his feet and stood looking at the house he had lived in most of his life. It was burning fast, going up like tinder, and the flames were everywhere now. Holly could feel the heat, and a sharp, acrid smell was in her nostrils.
Winning the Right Brother Page 5