All-around exceptional driver for 2002.
The word rooted in her mind and conjured an image of a convertible car roaring down a lonely stretch of highway on a moonlit night. She sat in the front passenger seat, naked and very aroused. Clint sat behind the wheel, just as naked and just as aroused and—
“Are you okay?” His voice shattered her thoughts and she whirled.
“I . . .” The sentence stalled as she found him standing a few inches away, so close she could see the faint laugh lines around his eyes and a tiny feather-like scar at the corner of his mouth.
A really great mouth with strong, full lips.
An exceptional mouth for an exceptional man.
“You don’t look so good. Can I get you some water or something?”
“A cookie,” she blurted before she did something exceptionally stupid like press her lips to his and see if he tasted even half as delicious as he looked. “A really big cookie.”
Chapter Eight
“Where’s the handout?” Skye perched on the edge of her sofa the next afternoon and stared across the room at Clint.
He popped a DVD into her player and pressed the Close button. “This is just the basic stuff. No handout required.”
He punched a button on the remote control and her small television flickered on. “I know we agreed about each of us being in our own place during our lessons, but we should have done this at my house. To get the full effect, you really need a big screen.”
“I’ve never really had the need for one. I don’t watch much television.”
“Neither do I, but when I do, I like to be able to see what I’m looking at.”
“I can see just fine.”
“Bigger is always better.”
“Do we have to go over this size business again? I told you, women don’t care. The bigger myth is typical of a man’s perspective.”
“Isn’t that the point of all of this? For you to get a man’s perspective?”
“On football. Not on the size of my television.”
“I bet if you took a poll, you would find that the majority of big-screen TVs are purchased by men.” He eyed her. “Men who like football. Macho men who like football, and wrestling and fishing and—”
“I’ll get a bigger television.”
“Good girl.” He grinned and sank down to the edge of her cream Victorian sofa. His knee bumped the edge of her antique cherry wood coffee table when he tried to get comfortable. A crystal vase trembled and he reached out, barely catching it before it toppled and lost its bouquet of tiger lilies.
“Let me get those.” She grabbed the vase and deposited it on a nearby divan that held a collection of teacups.
She walked back to the sofa as he leaned back and squirmed around. “Not much cushion on this sofa.”
“It’s an antique. I love antique furniture almost as much as I love antique teacups.” Her attention shifted to the large glass curio cabinet that housed her treasures. A spotlight reflected off the glass, making the china glitter.
Clint frowned and patted the sofa next to him. “Don’t they have any antique La-Z-Boy recliners? Something with a little cushion? I feel like a bull in a china shop. There’s no place to get comfortable.”
“I’m thinking about redecorating. Maybe something a little more man friendly.”
“Good idea.” Another squirm and he gave up. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he held the remote control. “Now,” he hit the Play button and the DVD launched into the pre–Super Bowl highlight show.
“Say hello to one of the biggest spectator sports in the world.”
She watched as a three-hundred-plus-pound player plowed into a mob of equally large men. The group crashed in on each other and she winced. “I know it’s popular, but personally, I really don’t understand the appeal. Other than the tight pants, that is. Those are definitely a plus.” She eyed another tackle and watched a player take a hit right in his middle that sent him doubling over. “Otherwise, it looks painful.”
“It is, but pain can be good. Motivating.” At her skeptical look, he added, “It’s a guy thing.”
“In other words, women aren’t insightful enough to get it.”
“Actually, women are too insightful. It’s a guy thing because it’s so simple. It goes back to the caveman days. Men are motivated by the basic male instinct—survival. The more you push a strong man down, the more he fights to get back up.”
“It looks more like showing off to me.” She indicated the screen, where a man took the ball to the goalposts and stopped to do a booty-shaking dance that earned him a roar from the crowd.
“That’s a victory dance, and he deserves to showoff. He just won the championship for his team.”
“And earned a few extra million that he doesn’t need. Don’t you think the salaries that these guys command is a little ridiculous? Why, we could eliminate the national deficit and bump up social services with what these guys make. Better yet, we could give equal pay to deserving women in the workplace.”
“Spoken like a true, sports-hating, bra-burning feminist.”
She frowned and took a deep easy breath. She was used to this. She’d faced the same reaction time and time again while growing up and it no longer bothered her. She merely informed the other person that they were wrong and talked calmly, informatively, to steer them in the right direction.
She didn’t let the comment get under her skin and she never, ever slapped the smug look off anyone’s face, no matter how badly her fingers twitched to do just that.
Like now.
He grinned. “Not that I have anything against bra burning. Bare is definitely better when it comes to women.”
She clasped her hands together and drew in another deep breath.
Her nostrils flared as the scent of clean soap and warm male filled her head. Mmm... not too bad.
He shifted his feet and the edge of his boot brushed the side of her foot. Her toes tingled and warmed.
Tingling? Warming? She wiggled her digits and tried to ignore the sensation by focusing on her anger.
“First off, the bra burning was a show of liberation. Most feminists I know actually do wear a bra.”
“I wasn’t talking about most feminists and their bras. I was talking about you and yours.”
The heat spread through the arches of her feet and up into her ankles. “I have never burned anything but a few marshmallows during a fourth of July bonfire one year, and the occasional cup of hot chocolate.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I don’t burn it every time. Just when I turn my fire too high. Milk scalds so easily.”
“I wasn’t talking about the hot chocolate.”
“I know.” His grin widened and the warmth seeped up into her calves, past her knees and into her thighs, obviously headed for higher ground.
“Secondly,” she tried to focus on her words instead of her body. Her warm, tingling body. “Most feminists do not hate sports. They hate the good ole boys club that is perpetuated by most sports. Third, I am not a feminist. I’m a womanist. There’s a big difference.”
“Feminist. Womanist.” He seemed to weigh the two. “Yep, I can see the difference.”
“Good because they’re both really very unique . . .” She eyed him and saw the humor dancing in his eyes. A look that made her want to smack his cheek again. Or kiss it.
She pursed her lips and glared. “You’re clueless, aren’t you?”
“Yep, but I bet you’re going to enlighten me before I can blink my eyes, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a sports-hating, bra-burning feminist/womanist if I didn’t.” Her statement earned her a smile, and while the urge to slap him faded, the need to touch her lips to his only intensified. “Actually, womanism has its roots in feminism. All womanists support feminism by definition.”
“Which is?”
“Political, social and economic equality of women. But over the years, many feminists lost sight
of the fact that they were trying to be equal to men. Instead, they tried to hide their emotional, nurturing characteristics behind the strong, stoic façade perpetuated by males in the workplace. That meant no crying on the job. No letting the kids interfere with work. No compassion or sympathy for fellow co-workers,” she said, repeating the spiel she’d
heard time and time again while growing up. “The womanist evolved from the feminists who grew tired of suppressing who they were in order to gain respect. A womanist embraces all things feminine.”
“I know some men who fit that bill.”
“Those are called players,” she said. “And I know a few, too, who I’d rather not know. Anyhow, a womanist doesn’t hide her emotional side for fear that it will make her appear weak. If she wants to cry, she cries. If she wants to stay home with her kids and bake cookies to her heart’s content, she can. So long as she bakes because she wants to,” she stressed. “Not because she has to, or because it’s expected of her.”
“So you like to bake cookies?”
“Actually, I like to eat them.” She’d tried her hand at baking once before, but it hadn’t worked out as she’d hoped. Of course, she’d been motivated not by her own hunger for homemade cookies, but by her hunger for a seventh-grade hockey player named Matt.
She’d been appointed Matt’s study buddy in algebra class. Instead of finding the value for x, however, she’d spent more time studying him. He had had the bluest eyes and the most muscles of any boy in the seventh grade, and by the time Valentine’s Day had rolled around, Skye had wanted nothing more than to have Matt as her sweetheart. And she knew just how to get him. Two dozen homemade goodies oozing chocolate chips—a surefire way to Matt’s heart.
She’d been so excited to give him her Valentine, until her mother had seen her packing the goodies into a shoe box lined with wax paper and decorated with heart-shaped foil cut-outs.
“Baking cookies is fine, dear. I enjoy baking myself.
But baking for a boy? You need to think, Skye. No daughter of mine would ever enslave herself in a hot kitchen and sacrifice her integrity just to catch some boy’s attention.“
Her mother had been right, of course. Skye would rather jump through fire than sacrifice her integrity, and so she’d done what any self-respecting daughter of the leading womanist in America would do—she unpacked the cookies and tossed the box. The next day, she watched while Matt left school with a cheerleader who had big blossoming pom-poms and a giant heart-shaped, homemade fudge brownie.
Her lips twitched and her mouth watered. “Um, could we stop talking about cookies and get back to the subject?”
“Bra burning?”
“Further back.”
His eyes twinkled. “Panty burning?”
“We never talked about panty burning.”
“We should have. It sounds interesting.” “Womanists don’t burn their panties. No one does.” “That’s too bad.” That cocky, teasing grin crooked his mouth and her heart did a double thump.
She stiffened and tried to focus. “I fail to see how my underwear has anything to do with guy stuff. We’re here for football, remember?”
“Football?” He winked. “Oh, yeah.” A serious expression fell over his face and his eyes danced with excitement. “Now, you probably know more about pro ball than you realize. An NFL game isn’t that different from the tag football we all grew up with.”
“Tag football?”
“Yeah. When the guys get together and toss around the football at the local park.”
“I spent every Sunday afternoon at the park at Southwestern University near my grandmother’s house.”
“There you go.”
“It was generally pretty quiet. People studied or just lazed around in the sun and watched the birds. There were never any impromptu sporting events. Except croquet. I’ve seen that played before.”
“Forget tag football. What about high-school ball? They had a football team at your high school, right?”
“Of course.”
“There you go. Now high-school ball is just like pro ball except—”
“But I never actually went to a game.”
“Never?”
“I babysat for the head coach. It was always too cold during football season for his girls to be out and they weren’t into the game anyway. We stayed home and watched the Cosby show. And played paper dolls.”
“What about college? I know you went to college.” He smiled as if he’d thought of something brilliant.
She nodded. “The University of Texas.”
“A-ha!” He clapped his hands. “The Longhorns are a great football team.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
He eyed her. “Don’t tell me you went to UT and never took in a football game?”
She shrugged and tried to ignore the hollowness in the pit of her stomach. “I was too busy with classes and when I wasn’t in class, I was volunteering at the Austin Women’s Shelter.”
“You never saw the Horns play?” He pressed as if he
couldn’t quite believe her. “Not even once? Not even the game of the season against their arch rival the Texas A & M Aggies?”
“That’s Thanksgiving weekend and I always do Thanksgiving at one of the shelters.” She balled her fingers and ignored the urge to reach for the plate of graham crackers she’d set out for lack of cookies to go with the pot of tea she’d brewed. She’d cookie-proofed the entire house just that morning, determined to curb her craving.
She licked her lips. “It’s good to help other women less fortunate. It helps you remember what you’re thankful for. Tea?”
“Don’t drink tea.”
“But you drank tea at your house last night.”
“That was iced tea.”
“But tea’s tea.”
“Not to a man. Men don’t drink hot tea.”
At least not men like Clint.
She not only needed to redecorate, she needed to revamp her pantry, as well.
“So you never saw an Aggie/Horns game? Never?” “No.”
He didn’t look convinced. Instead, he stared at her as if she’d just confessed to crashing his favorite car. “What about your dad? Didn’t he ever watch a football game? Any football game?”
“My dad’s more of an intellectual. He watches A & E. Besides, he wasn’t home very much when I was growing up. He’s a research scientist for UT and he was always away somewhere collecting data for some project or another.”
“So you only had your mom around?”
“Well, my mom was always off lecturing or giving seminars when she wasn’t promoting her books. My sisters and I lived in Georgetown, Texas, with our grandmother who spent most of her time growing vegetables, canning vegetables and reading Reader’s Digest.”
“Your grandfather?”
“He passed away before I was born. It was just us girls.”
“A group of girlie girls.”
“I’m probably going to hate myself for asking this, but what is a girlie girl?”
“A frilly girl. The kind that wear puffy dresses.”
She frowned at him before shrugging. “I may have had a few puffy dresses.”
“And ruffled panties.”
“What’s wrong with ruffled panties?”
“Nothing except they’re not really practical for climbing trees and making mud bombs and doing fun stuff like that.”
“I fail to see the fun in a mud bomb.”
He eyed her. “I bet you cried every time you got dirty.” “Not every time. Once I fell and I didn’t cry at all.” She’d been too mad to cry. Ronnie Samson had called her names as usual and pushed her down, straight into a huge mud puddle.
“Why didn’t you cry?”
“I was too busy punching to cry.”
“You actually punched a guy?”
“He was a boy then. A hateful bully and I knocked out three teeth.” The smile Clint gave her was enough to make her forget the lecture that had followed.<
br />
“I’ll not have a daughter of mine rolling around on the ground like some testosterone-driven male. You’re better
than that, Skye. Smarter. Remember, boys punch. Girls think.”
Clint stared down at her, into her as if she’d just bench pressed three hundred pounds, and the feeling of euphoria she’d experienced after hitting Ronnie came rushing back. The elation. The pride. The satisfaction.
The attraction.
Not to Ronnie, mind you. He’d been ugly and mean. But Clint... He was handsome with the greatest eyes she’d ever seen, eyes as blue and iridescent as the Caribbean on a hot summer’s day.
Skye swallowed and cleared her throat. “I’ve watched Coach a few times.”
“What?”
“The sitcom that features the college football coach. You asked about my football experience and I’m telling you that I watch the reruns sometimes when I’m up late preparing for the following day’s work.” She smiled.
Clint shook his head, punched the Pause button on the DVD and the room went silent. “Maybe we should just start at the beginning with a few basics and work our way up to the video.”
“Perfect.” She reached for her notebook and pen, flipped to the first page and scribbled a quick heading.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking notes since there’s no handout. After we’re done, I would appreciate it if you’d look everything over and fill in any blanks I may still have.”
He grabbed her notebook. “Forget notes. This isn’t economics class. It’s fun. Easy.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “You’ve got two teams each running the opposite direction for a touchdown that scores six points. Then, if all goes well, the kicker comes in and scores another point to make seven.”
“Which position does the kicker play in the game?” “The kicker plays the kicker. He’s a specialty player only on the field when he needs to kick. Or punt.”
“What’s a punt?”
“When you don’t make a first down, you have to punt.”
Kiss Me Once, Kiss Me Twice Page 8