Love Letter for a Sinner (The Sinners sports romances)

by Lynn Shurr

  “What about the grease?” Joe said.

  “A little grease never hurt anyone. Help yourselves to coffee.”

  Only Howdy took her up on the offer. Joe reheated his in the microwave.

  “Not that I don’t get a charge out of your mother, Howdy, but why is she so concerned about Worthy’s innocence?”

  Joe’s kicker took a deep swallow of his brew. “Maybe because she couldn’t protect mine.”

  Joe claimed the beignet bag before Nell dove in for seconds and fished a couple pastries out for himself. “Last time I checked, Rex Worthy was a grown man capable of handling his own problems. He must have fended off women in college. Maybe he reads the Bible to them until they fall asleep, and he can sneak away from their beds. If he does want to change his status, I must say Layla has some prime goods.” As punishment for that statement, Nell purloined one of his beignets. Or maybe she was simply ravenous from great sex. He’d go with that idea.

  “Rex wants to wait until marriage like I should have done.” Howdy sorted through the powdered sugar in the bag to see if he could unearth another beignet before Nell got them all and found one.

  “Still full of Baptist guilt after marriage and two kids? Do you really regret having practiced a little beforehand?” Joe questioned.

  “Not so much, but I respect his position. I’d like to help him out. He doesn’t have many friends on the team.”

  Joe sighed over his plate and sent a cloud of powdered sugar into the air. “Got any ideas?”

  Brian fastidiously brushed the sugar fallout from the sleeve of his casual pink shirt open at the throat to show off his evenly tanned olive-toned skin. “We could find someone for him to marry quickly.”

  Joe shook his head. “Easier said than done.”

  “Not if we flood the market with all the nice, eligible young women we know. We have them over to the ranch for a barbecue sort of like a secret Bachelor show,” Nell suggested, her mouth ringed with white sugar. “Are all the beignets gone?”

  “Have mine.” Brian handed over a single donut, the last in the sack. “My ex-wife might know someone. We are still on great terms. An elegant woman but too old for Rex.”

  “I think Cassie’s youngest sisters are around Rex’s age,” Howdy offered.

  “Some of your many nieces might be available. Ask your mother. It will give her something to do besides butt into our life.” Nell delved a finger into the beignet bag but came up with nothing but a white-coated pinkie that she sucked as avidly as Joe’s earlobe.

  “Okay, fine by me. You know I’m always up for a barbecue. We’ll invite our usual friends as a cover, maybe during the break between the preseason games and the start of the regular season,” Joe capitulated.

  “Not too many of the younger team members. We want Rex to have lots of choices without having to compete too hard,” Nell cautioned.

  “I have to invite everyone on the team, but if I tell them families are coming and only beer and soft drinks will be served, the single guys will leave early to get some action in the clubs before midnight.”

  Glumly, Joe poured more coffee and hid his face in the mug exposing the top of his shaved head to the others. To think he had to save the virtue of his own replacement. What a bitch that would be, or which bitch would it be might say it better. Nell stared at him as if she read his mind. Mentally he corrected that statement to, “Which nice young lady would Rex Worthy choose?”

  Chapter Seven

  Unknowing that his teammates discussed his fate only a few blocks away, Rex Worthy sat at a table outside Café du Monde enjoying his own beignets and café au lait. With the heat and humidity of New Orleans still keeping the tourists at bay, he could sit in peace without being bothered by autograph seekers. The locals, used to seeing Sinners players around, pretty much respected their space. Wearing one of the plain red team caps minus the winking devil logo and some expensive shades did help to preserve his anonymity, but his size could not be hidden easily even behind a planter with a short, thick palm tree in it. The palm appeared to have sprouted a pair of very broad shoulders along its trunk.

  He watched what’s-her-name, Tricia—or was it Patsy—scurry by almost colliding with his table and getting in the takeout line. She seemed as harried as ever, but looked kind of cute in modest shorts, a not-too-tight pink T-shirt with the women’s breast cancer logo on it, and her usual running shoes. Today, she wore her dark hair long, straight, and loose over her shoulders with her bangs brushing the tops of her eyebrows. Not as leggy or busty as Layla, he found the PA to be pleasantly slim, but not stick thin like lots of women nowadays, and a nice height for a woman, neither too tall nor short. Pretty blue eyes not as exotic or unnerving as Layla’s.

  Having invoked the actress’s name like a demon in his mind, Rex hunched his shoulders hoping Layla Devlin did not lurk nearby. The woman left message upon message for him at Sinners headquarters. He tried to make clear to the actress when he answered one of them that he’d be out of town for the preseason games. She should go home to Beverly Hills and not wait around for him to be available. Obviously, Layla remained New Orleans, but she didn’t appear to be with her assistant. Relaxing, Rex stretched out his long, thick-thighed legs and leaned back in his chair.

  Having fulfilled her mission, Tricia retraced her route with a sack of beignets and two cups of coffee in a holder. As intent on making good time as an UPS deliveryman, she forged ahead without looking and stumbled over Rex’s outstretched feet. He caught her elbow, thus preventing a face plant, but the coffee cups went soaring like missiles, their plastic caps flying off and their contents spraying like unused rocket fuel.

  “Oh, no! Oh, no!” Layla’s assistant cried.

  “It’s only spilled coffee.” Rex raised his sunglasses in case she didn’t recognize him. “Rex Worthy, remember?”

  “Yes, yes, I noticed you when I arrived but thought you would prefer your privacy, Mr. Worthy. She only gave me a half hour to get here and back. Those donuts better still be warm, she said. Now I have to go back in line.”

  Tricia’s blue eyes glanced woefully at the large family that had been behind her. They still worked on their order. Who wanted juice or milk? Who was old enough to drink coffee, a huge debate evidently? How many beignets to order to feed their horde?

  Rex raised a hand. A small, oriental girl in a white jacket hurried to his table. “Need a refill, sir?”

  “Not for me. Could you bring two au laits to go, please?”

  “Sure thing.” She rushed off to personally fill the cups.

  “Why don’t you sit down and catch your breath, Patsy.”

  “Please, please call me Tricia, short for Patricia, Welles. I hate Patsy.” Nervous as the nearby pigeons being spooked by the smallest of the children waiting in line, she sat on the edge of one of the metal café chairs.

  “I can understand that. Call me Rex. Mr. Worthy is my father. Actually, he’s Reverend Worthy. Could I ask you a kind of personal question? Why do you put up with Layla Devlin? She treats you like dirt.”

  It registered on Tricia that any other man would have said shit. Again, he reminded her of her brothers. Their mama did not allow foul language at home, though she knew the boys used it behind her back. On the Welles farm, people shoveled manure when Mom was around.

  “Because we come from the same dirt, I guess, and then there is the matter of money. I grew up with Layla in Iowa, only she was Louise Dillman then. She lived in town. My family farmed out in the sticks. We went to school together, had the same goals, and often got in each other’s way. I played Maria in The Sound of Music. The teacher directing the show cast her as the Baroness the Captain was supposed to marry.”

  Trying to keep up his end of the conversation, Rex said, “I’ve seen the movie many times, my mother’s favorite. Isn’t that what they call type casting?”

  “Yes. In the church play about the Bible, I’m the Virgin Mary. Layla played Salome. The minister had to ask her to tone down her dance for John
the Baptist’s head.”

  “Are you?” Rex asked.

  “What, a Baptist? No.”

  The waitress reappeared with two fresh cups of coffee in a new holder. Rex fished a bill large enough to cover the orders and a generous tip from his wallet. He waved away the offer of change. Hesitating a minute, he clarified his question. “I meant, are you a virgin?”

  Tricia, rising with the cup holder grasped in both hands, nearly spilled her burden again. “Now that is too personal a question. I have to go. The beignets are cooling.”

  He stood, too, and said, “Let me carry the coffee. Take the beignets. I suspect I’m more coordinated than you.”

  “Your concern and compliments overwhelm me. I can handle this, thanks.” She might have if one of the pigeon-terrorizing tots hadn’t dashed in front of her flushing a bird directly into her face. The second order of coffee crashed to the ground splashing her ankle to knee.

  Rex got down on his and immediately swabbed the scalding beverage from her skin with a handful of paper napkins. The little Asian girl returned. “More coffees, sir?”

  “Yes, same order. You have any ice back there? We don’t want her to blister.”

  “Right away!”

  Tricia stared down at Rex’s wide back straining his red Sinners knit shirt. His tanned arms with their heavy biceps worked up and down her legs. How many women would love to have Rex Worthy at their feet? No matter because if Layla saw her, she was dead meat or in this case cold, stale beignets. For now, she needed this crappy, shitty job a long way from the farm and her mother in Iowa. “Get up!” He did, the knees of his khakis wet with milk and coffee.

  Their waitress returned with the beverages and a plastic bag of ice chips, setting them on the table. “The manager says no charge.” Rex tipped her again with a couple of bills.

  “Sit down, Tricia, and hold the ice against your burns.”

  “It isn’t that bad.” Still, she sat, accepted the bag of ice, and applied it to her slightly scalded skin. “Boy Scout?”

  “Eagle Scout.”

  “It figures. Look, I really need to get back.”

  This time he stood and clutched the coffee holder before she did. “I’ll escort you safely back to the hotel.”

  “Really, you shouldn’t. If Layla sees you…”

  “I’ll say hi as nice as can be.”

  Tricia touched the side of the bag with the beignets. Cold. She simply didn’t have the heart to order more. “Let’s go and get this over with.”

  They walked side by side with Rex managing to hold the coffees in one hand and still keep the other free to shoot out and steady her every time they approached a patch of cracked sidewalk. Lots of cracked sidewalk in the French Quarter.

  “You were saying you grew up with Layla. How did both of you end up in Los Angeles?”

  “We wanted to study acting at UCLA. Neither of us could afford to pay rent alone. I got a job as a part-time waitress and brought home leftovers. Layla found work as a lingerie model and covered our housing. Her photo shoots paid really well, but when I inquired, I was found lacking.”

  Rex glanced quickly at her chest and away again. “They look all right to me.”

  “Yes, but just all right, average, normal. Layla’s are spectacular—and real.”

  Rex swallowed hard as if remembering Layla’s breasts pressed against his chest. “Money isn’t everything. You shouldn’t have to expose your body to earn a living.”

  “Not so true in Hollywood. I got commercials calling for fresh, perky girls whose mothers told them about feminine hygiene products. Layla started getting small parts almost immediately, scoring almost every time she had an audition. Then, she met a director, a much older man who liked having her on his arm. Micah Stanley, you might have heard of him. Her career took off. She left me in the dust. We both ended up quitting college.”

  “I understand how that might have happened, but why do you work for her? Why not go home and be with your family?”

  They crossed busy Canal Street without mishap. A streetcar clanged behind them making Tricia jump, but Rex continued on without spilling a drop of coffee. She admired his steely nerves. She did not enjoy city life and confessed only to herself that she would always be a farmer’s daughter at heart. A homeless man held out a plastic cup and asked for change. Rex paused to empty his pocket.

  “You shouldn’t do that, you know. He’ll probably buy liquor with it.”

  Rex shrugged. “Or maybe a hot meal. Only the Lord knows.”

  “Right.”

  “You were saying why you work for Layla and take all that abuse.”

  “I wasn’t saying, but if you must know, about the time I thought of going home and getting a teaching degree, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, fairly advanced. She never wanted to squander money on a mammogram.”

  “Did she beat it?”

  “We don’t know yet. After two years, the tumors came back. She’d doing a second round of radiation and chemo right now. Dad’s insurance isn’t the greatest. Farmers have to buy what they can afford. Layla pays me an obscene amount to be her dogsbody. She enjoys tormenting me, and I can endure it for as long as my mother needs my financial aid.”

  “That’s why she calls you Patsy when she knows you dislike it.”

  “That and the obvious meaning of the word. It’s nothing new. She called me that in high school when we were rivals for various parts. Better than her nickname of Dildo—because of her last name, Dillman.”

  “You called her a dildo?” For the first time, Rex appeared shocked to his core. He stopped in mid-stride, but the coffee only sloshed a little in the cups.

  “No! That’s what the guys called her. She certainly proved them wrong. They voted her in as prom queen.”

  “What were you? First runner-up?”

  “Not even that close. I was valedictorian. Oh, if my classmates could see me now.” Tricia rethought her words. She stood on the sidewalk with one of the most eligible men in the NFL surrounded by an exciting if unnerving city most of the folks back home would never see. He carried coffee for her. “We should keep moving.”

  They arrived at the doors of the Windsor Court Hotel. Rex would have continued inside, but Tricia held up her hand. “Stay, Rex. You seem like a really nice guy, so let me tell you something. Layla is determined to have you—yes, in the biblical way. She’s planning to get a condo here and wait you out since her next project doesn’t start shooting until spring. Run, hide, do not let her get near you. You went out of your way for me today. Heed my advice.”

  “Not much out of my way. I live right over there in the Warehouse District.”

  “Don’t tell me where! Layla will get it out of me one way or another. I appreciate your help today, but here we part ways.

  Her sunny skies blue eyes gazed up at him so seriously he finally said, “Okay. Too bad, though. I think we get along great.”

  Tricia shook her head and sent her dark hair flying. She placed one hand on his biceps and said mock seriously, “Sorry, our love can never be.”

  Under her fingertips, his muscles bunched as he gripped the coffee holder too hard. The cups began to tip. She got her hands under it in time and gently removed it from his grasp. “Joking. I did enjoy meeting you, but you need to run along.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right. I hope you mom is better soon.”

  “Me, too. Bye, Rex.”

  He continued down the block leaving her with a last view of a really fine pair of taut, rounded buttocks. She bet he had stamina, lots of stamina. The doorman opened the way for her. She rode up in the elevator thinking over and over, “Our love can never be.” As she entered the suite, Layla pounced and grabbed the sack of powdery donuts. The actress sank her fangs into one of them as Tricia set the coffee on a table.

  “Cold! These are cold, Patsy.” Layla slung the square pastry at Tricia’s chest. It bounced off in a cloud of white. She crumpled the bag and tossed it into a wastebasket. “Now I’ll h
ave to order room service because I am ravenous. What took you so long?”

  “I spilled the coffee and had to get more. It should still be hot, very hot.”

  “Are you sure that is why you are late?”

  “I can’t think of any other reason.”

  “I called downstairs and asked the doorman if you were in sight only a few minutes ago. He said he thought you were coming down the street accompanied by a young man. Which young man? Who do you know in this city?”

  “I ran into Rex Worthy at the café. He insisted on carrying the coffee because he’s a real boy scout.” Tricia gave it up. Layla would have found out somehow, some way, probably by interrogating the doorman later in the day.

  “Why didn’t you invite him to come up?”

  “Oh, I did. He was busy.” Tricia stared hard at the pattern in the rug beneath her feet.

  “Liar! If you don’t help me get what I want, I will fire your sweet ass, Patsy, and your mama will stop getting that top notch care I finance. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Chapter Eight

  Joe surveyed his barbecue party held in honor of the end of preseason and the start of the real football season tomorrow. Only a couple of minor injuries for the team and more wins than losses as Coach tried out his newest team members and various strategies. Joe usually played only the first half if that. Then, Rex took over usually running the ball or settling for short passes and handoffs since most of his long ones ended up as incompletes or interceptions. It went without saying that the get-together would break up early and allow all the players to return to New Orleans at a reasonable hour and completely sober. Also unsaid, the project to get Rex Worthy laid or engaged or married.

  Although his backup offered over and over to help with various preparations or games for the children, the women treated him like King for a Day. You would have thought Mardi Gras came early the way they had him seated under the oaks in a fan-backed cypress yard chair with cold drinks on hand and a plate of food in his lap, making him easy to find as each one trotted up their candidates for Mrs. Rex Worthy. The guy didn’t have a clue. Joe wouldn’t call him a poor guy because the selection provided exceeded average by a long shot.