“Deb’s fine. She went shopping with one of her cronies. You sound as if you lost your best friend. Say, did you tell your boyfriend to quit the dirty work and get himself an office?”
She gasped for breath, stood up and stamped her right foot. “I did indeed,” she said between clenched teeth. “Would you like to know what he said?”
“Uh...what?” he asked in a subdued tone, so unlike himself.
“He said, ‘See you around.’ So, Mr. All Wise, thanks for ruining my life.”
But the stridency quickly returned. “Say! You’re better off. Find a guy with enough savvy to get a white-collar job.”
Her lips quivered, and she walked to the other end of the living room and back, shaking with anger. “All you care about is your Gucci shoes, Hugo Boss suits and Louis Vuitton luggage. He doesn’t give a damn about any of that, and even if he doesn’t work for somebody’s law firm, he works for himself in his own business and hires five adult males.”
“Hey, calm down. I hear you, but I still think I gave you the right advice.”
“I’m hanging up, Brad.” And she did.
Sloan had made his position clear. She’d overstepped the bounds with him, and he wouldn’t forgive her. She stopped examining her old tennis outfits, sat down in the middle of the bedroom floor and wrapped her arms around her raised knees. Hadn’t he told her that he was a mechanic and didn’t need the fancy term “mechanical engineer” to legitimatize himself? Why had she let Brad persuade her to do something guaranteed to hurt Sloan and cause him to turn his back on her?
“It’s time I charted my own course and planned my own strategies,” she said, rising both literally and figuratively. She chose four white sets, for their style was as modern as when she bought them a decade earlier, and she’d as soon not remind tennis fans of her passion for yellow outfits. She put the yellow ones in a sack to be deposited at a thrift shop somewhere.
During the coming week, she intended to work out with Clive and practice with Gary every minute that they would let her, for she didn’t intend to go out in the first round or the second. She meant to let everybody know that she was back and that the women tennis players had to reckon with her.
Chapter 6
For the next two weeks, Lynne worked with Clive to make herself as fit as possible for what would probably be grueling matches in the rapidly approaching tournament. Oddly, she felt better about her game than she did about withstanding what could be hours of combat in the Cincinnati heat. Moreover, she had to win a lot of pretournament matches in order to qualify for the tournament. I’m on the bottom, she reminded herself, but not for long. No media hype attended her qualifying matches, and she thanked Gary for that.
“You ought to be feeling pretty good,” he told her. “You didn’t lose a set.”
“I do,” she said, “but the real test comes Monday. I’ll be facing a tough player in the first round.”
He draped an arm around her shoulder. “You can beat her. She’s good on clay, but you’ll be playing on a hard court, and that’s your best surface. You’ll eat her alive.”
She laughed at the idea. “Just pray. I don’t want to disgrace myself.”
“You won’t.”
Shivers raced down her spine that Monday afternoon when she heard the announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Lorrie Payne and Lynne Thurston.” Like a race car revving to go, her adrenaline began pumping, and she had an urge to run onto the tennis court. With restraint, she followed Payne, waving as she entered the comparatively small arena and enjoying the applause and cheers. This was what she had worked so hard for. She won the toss and served first, a blistering ace down the middle.
Encouraged, she told herself, I’m going for broke, and won the first set with a score of 6–2. Then, her opponent seemed to grasp Lynne’s strategy and began to anticipate her shots, and Lynne tried desperately to break the woman, but without success. Finally Payne double faulted, losing a point, near the end of the second and final set, and Lynne won the set with a score of 6–4, and the match was hers. At the applause and cheers, tears streamed from Lynne’s eyes as she ran to the net to shake hands with her fallen opponent.
“With that level of play,” Gary told her as they drove to her hotel, “you’ll go a long way in this tournament. You took some unbelievable risks out there, though. When you sent up that last lob, I thought Lorrie would clobber you, but you got away with it.”
She wondered if the smile would ever leave her face. The impulse to jump and shout for joy crowded out every negative thought except one. “I had to play as if I had nothing to lose,” she said, “because if I lost that one, not even you would have continued to take me seriously. If only—”
“If only what? This is a time for joy, not... Say, what happened to that tall fellow who used to come over to your place every day at about the time we finished practicing? Is he off somewhere? I thought he seemed like a good guy.”
“I messed up, and he took a walk.”
“What’d you do?”
Her right shoulder flexed in a quick shrug. “I followed my know-it-all brother’s advice and meddled in Sloan’s business. I underrated him.”
“Oops. Can’t you patch it up with him?”
“He’s not going to give me a chance.”
Gary sucked air through his front teeth. “You’re kidding. That guy’s nuts about you. Trouble is you don’t know how to handle him. If he won’t come to you, you go to him. The phone won’t do it. Get him alone, and let him see what he’s giving up. Get busy.”
Somehow, she felt better. In many ways, Gary behaved as an ordinary man, not the corporate achiever that her brother either was or aspired to be, and he expressed sympathy for those less fortunate than he.
“All right, Gary. I’ll try. A man’s opinion got me into this, maybe another man’s opinion will get me out of it.”
With her first four matches under her belt, Lynne should have felt expansive, but when she awakened that morning, her first and depressing thought was that she had to face the tournament’s number one player.
I’ll give it my best, she promised herself. Any way I look at it, this tournament has been a success for me. There’s only one top-five player here, and I’ll meet her today, but the players I’ve beaten were tough tests for me, and no matter what else happens, I can leave here with my head high.
Ana du Pree strolled over to Lynne in the locker room and shook hands. “It’s great to see you back on the tour.”
Her eyes widened at the unusual gesture. “Thanks. You’re the first player who’s welcomed me. I appreciate your kindness.”
Ana grinned. “The rest are probably scared to death, not that I blame them. I figure I’ll always get what’s coming to me. See you on the court.”
Lynne’s heartbeat accelerated, and her nerves unsettled her after she won the first set with a score of 6–4, and she lost the second 3–6. Get your act together, girl. You can beat this chick. Though she fought as hard as she ever had, she lost the third-set tiebreaker, 13–15, after battling for it an hour and a half. She sprinted to the net and embraced the victorious Ana du Pree.
“If I had to lose,” she told the woman, “I’m glad the loss was to you. You played a great match.”
“Thanks,” Ana said. “You’re back in a big way, and everybody had better look out.”
* * *
“What went wrong in that second set?” Lynne asked Gary at her first practice after returning home.
“Your second serve didn’t work, and you have to realize that you won’t lose any power by standing five inches from the serving line. You lost some points by stepping on the line and especially during the second serve.”
“All right, let’s do it,” she said and twirled her racquet in anticipation of her match with him.
“No game. You’re goin
g to serve until you get sick of it.”
By three o’clock that afternoon, she felt as if she never wanted to see another tennis ball. “You think I made any progress, Gary?”
“Some, but what counts is how you do when the chips are down. Incidentally I entered you in the Stanford classic next week.”
“You what?”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, flashing a grin. “You’re playing tennis now.”
When could she make an opportunity to see Sloan if she was playing in a tournament practically every week? “Okay. Okay. When do we leave?” He told her, and she spent the next two hours sorting out what she’d wear on the court starting three days hence.
Around six o’clock, she telephoned Thelma. “I’m making some bean soup and a salad for supper. Want to come over at about seven-thirty?” She needed to share her success with a friend. She needed to share it with Sloan, but there was no Sloan. “I won’t let it get to me,” she swore.
“I sure will, and I’ll bring some corn bread. I sure missed you, and I want to hear all about it. I saw in the Sun Times that you almost beat du Pree. How exciting! See you later.”
“Have you seen Sloan?” she asked Thelma during their supper when she could no longer bear not knowing.
“A couple of times. He told me why you two split up. He’s a proud man, and I guess you didn’t count on that.” Thelma stirred sour cream into her bean soup, tasted it and added some more. “The soup is delicious. I bet you put some ham hocks in it.”
“Of course I did. You want some of it?” Thelma nodded, and Lynne went to the stove, shredded a ham hock and brought it to the table. “All right now, Thelma. What else did he say?”
Thelma served herself some of the meat. “Nothing much except that he’d been there before, and didn’t plan to go through it again. Something like that. I told him I expected to be present when he marries you.”
Lynne’s spoon fell to the table. “What did he say?”
“Well, that was very interesting. Just exactly like a man. He grinned. Now that is one good-looking man, and when he grins... Even at my old age I can see that.”
“Thelma!”
“Oh. He said if it worked out like that, he wouldn’t be angry. At least, I think that’s what he said.” She tilted the bowl and spooned up the last bit of soup. “Tell me. Are you sitting on your behind doing nothing about this and that man is running around loose? You think you’re the only woman who can see? Get busy. He loves you.”
“What am I supposed to do? He froze me out.”
Thelma laughed. “I see you’ve never been to bed with him. If you had, you’d figure something out. That is a sweet, generous and loving man, plus he loves you, and if you don’t know how to get next to him, something’s lacking in your raising. Take your car to get if fixed, for goodness’ sake. If nothing’s wrong with it, kick the door in.”
Laughter bubbled up in Lynne’s throat, and she let it pour out. Girl talk with a septuagenarian. How sweet it was! “Kick the car door in, huh? Better still I’ll tell him it chokes on me, and ask him to repair it. It’ll take him a while to figure out that nothing’s wrong with it, then he’ll give me what for, and I’ll get a chance to...I’ll just hug him.”
“I’m not sure I’d go about it that way, but it’s your program.”
The more Lynne pondered the idea, the more she liked it, but it needed a foolproof strategy and, in two days, she’d be leaving for Stanford, California. “Living out of a suitcase is the aspect of tennis playing that I forgot I hated,” she said to herself.
However, two days later, she took Caesar back to the kennel, parked her car at the airport and headed for California. “The field is heavier with top players than the Cincinnati Western was, but you can handle them,” Gary said. “Go for it...you’ve got everything to win.”
At the end of the week, despondent because she lost in the quarter finals, Gary assured her, “You should be happy. You beat two top-five players, and the one who barely beat you won her last seventeen matches.”
“I guess you’re right, but I’m playing to win. Oh, well. The next time I play, I’ll make it to the finals.”
“Your next one will be the Pilot Penn in New Haven the end of August, and every top player will be there. You’ve got a month, so let’s get busy.”
Her mind wasn’t on tennis, but on Sloan and the possibility that in a month’s time, she could patch things up with him. She glanced toward the sky in a silent prayer. “Lord, my heart aches.”
“What did you say?” Gary asked.
“I’m going to put everything into polishing my serves these next weeks, Gary. I’m not an also-ran, so I’ve got to make a statement.”
“I didn’t think you’d move along so fast. Stop worrying about winning and focus on polishing your game.”
She knew it was good advice, but how was she going to temper her impatient nature?
* * *
Sloan leaned against the hood of the car on which he was working and took out his cell phone. “McNeil Motor Service. McNeil speaking.” His heartbeat accelerated at the silence. Could it be...?
“Sloan, this is Lynne. If I bring my car in, will you look at it, please?”
He held the phone away from his ear and stared at the receiver. “How are you, Lynne? Of course, I’ll look at it. What seems to be wrong?”
‘I don’t know. It...stops all of a sudden with no notice. I guess you’d say it chokes up.”
“How often has this happened?”
“Three times. Once when I was pulling out of my garage, but the other times, I was on a highway.”
“Hmm. In that case, you shouldn’t drive it. I’ll send someone to pick it up. When will you be home?”
“Anytime after nine in the morning will be fine, though I’ll be on the tennis court. I finish practicing at three.”
“Ben and someone else will be there around three tomorrow.”
“Thanks so much. I don’t want to entrust my car to just anybody. Bye.”
“See you,” he said. He didn’t like the feeling that he’d been emptied of something precious to him, but he couldn’t shake it. Why hadn’t she phoned AAA? He hooked the cell phone to his belt and returned to the damage that a flood caused to the carburetor in a 1981 Cadillac. “It wouldn’t hurt this brother to buy a new car,” he said to no one in particular. Twenty-five minutes later, after having bent over the engine until his head seemed to swim, he threw the wrench to the ground, straightened up and wiped the sweat from his face and neck.
Maybe an elegant woman like Lynne deserved a man who would come home at night with his hands looking as if they’d just been manicured. He spread out his hands, turned them over and gazed at them for a long minute. What the hell! He was who he was, and he was damned if he would remake himself to satisfy a frivolous whim. He leaned against the old Cadillac, and released a strong expletive. Lord, but he needed her!
Ben returned to the shop with an SUV that he towed off Route 10. “What’s the problem with that one?” he asked his assistant manager.
“Looks to me like transmission problems.”
“I see a lot of transmission failure with that line. Ben, do you remember where Lynne Thurston lives?”
“Sure do. I think it’s the twenty-seven hundred block of Corpus Christi Lane. Why?”
“Take Jasper with you tomorrow around three and pick up her car. She said it chokes, and I don’t think she should drive it.”
“Chokes? That car? I’d be surprised.”
“Me, too, but that’s what she said.”
“Uh, Sloan, I was planning to ask if I could be off tomorrow afternoon. My boy’s choir is going on a picnic, and I can’t let him play around in the Atascosa or the San Antonio River—I don’t know which one they’re going to—chaperoned by somebody I hardly know
. I want to encourage him to stay in the choir because he has a great voice, so I’m letting him go.”
Sloan blew out a long breath. “You’re right, man. First things first. Don’t worry. I’ll manage it.” Precisely what he had intended to avoid. He didn’t want to go to Lynne’s house. Caesar would greet him enthusiastically, she’d be gracious and he would have to be courteous if nothing else.
He didn’t feel like extending himself. He had been on air, so to speak, dreaming dreams of forever, so full of her and his feeling for her that, apart from his work, he thought of little else. And then with two short sentences, she pitched him back to earth. Flat on his face. If she knew how she hurt him. Oh, the hell with it!
And that Sunday morning when he brought her dog back to her, her eyes had sparkled with unshed tears, and if he hadn’t gotten a tight grip on himself, he’d have grabbed her and kissed her senseless. He ran his fingers through his hair, punishing his scalp. “I’ve got to stop thinking about her.”
The following afternoon at two-thirty, he quit work on the old Cadillac, went into his office and stopped as if he’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. What was he thinking? “I’m going to pick up a car that needs work, dammit, and that means I wear my work clothes. I’m working, so she’ll see me in my work clothes.” He washed his hands, scrubbed them with a nail brush and dried them. He always cleaned his hands before leaving the shop, he assured himself. It had nothing to do with her.
He stepped out of his office and called to Jasper. “I need you to go with me to pick up a car. I’m taking the truck. If the car will run, I’ll drive it back. If not, we’ll tow it.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Just before he reached Lynne’s house, a smile broke out on his face. With Jasper along to chaperone him, he wasn’t likely to do anything stupid. Suddenly he laughed aloud. He’d be thirty-six before the end of the year, and he needed a chaperone?
“What’s funny, Sloan? I could use a good laugh myself.”
“You don’t want to know, man, but I’m here to tell you, it’s funny as hell.” He parked in front of Lynne’s house, got out of the truck and walked around to the tennis court where he expected to find her practicing with her coach.
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