McNeil's Match

by Gwynne Forster

  “All right. All right. I get the message. Are you going to marry him?” Sloan felt the hair on his neck stand up.

  “He hasn’t asked me, but when he does, I’ll let you know what I say to him.”

  “One thing is certain—the man’s good for your ego. Your personality has definitely changed, and you’ve become very assertive.”

  “Right. So, Brad, please lay off Sloan. You hurt me when you say mean things about him, and there’s no basis for them.”

  “I have to admit, he’s a helluva surprise. By the way, is he really cooking?”

  “Yes, and he’s very good at it.”

  “What’s he cooking?”

  “I only know what my nose tells me.”

  “Damn. Don’t ever tell Debra that he cooks.”

  Sloan went back to the deck. “Dinner’s ready.” To Lynne, he said, “I’ll take you inside.” Then he picked her up, carried her into the dining room and sat her in the chair at the head of the table. He served a meal of prosciutto-wrapped melon, broiled, bacon-wrapped scallops, buttered and parsleyed new potatoes, steamed yellow zucchini glazed with parmesan cheese, a green salad and pecan pie.

  “Man, this is food for the gods. Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

  “I live alone, and I like to eat. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

  * * *

  Lynne gave silent thanks when Brad and Sloan shook hands as Brad was about to leave. “I’m relieved to know that my sister isn’t alone down here, and I hope the two of you take care of what you have,” Brad said to Sloan. “Do you plan to marry her?”

  “If she’ll have me. You bet I do.”

  “Then I’m sure we’ll see each other again. Thanks for the great food.”

  The next morning, Sloan took Lynne to the hospital to have her foot X-rayed. “It’s healing nicely and should be as good as new in another three weeks,” the physician said. “It was only a hairline fracture, but that, too, takes time to heal. I want to see it again before you put your weight on it.”

  The days passed slowly and, true to his word, Sloan stayed with Lynne and took care of her. But she became increasingly concerned that, by spending so much time with her, his business could be suffering.

  * * *

  “I brought you some papers,” Thelma told Lynne when she came over one afternoon to bring her a bowl of vegetable soup and a pecan pie for Sloan. “I don’t know where you found Sloan McNeil, but I didn’t know they made ’em like him anymore,” she added. “Look at this.” She opened the San Antonio Sentinel and pointed to a short column at the bottom of page sixteen. “Don’t jump to conclusions, now.”

  The heading read: McNeil Motor Service Sued For Improper Service.

  Lynne blotted out everything else from her thoughts, petrified as she read the brief notice.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “This will ruin his business.”

  “Yeah,” Thelma said. “I’ll stay with you as long as you need me, but you send him back to his job even if you have to tell him you hate him. He’s a good man, and whatever’s going on there is happening behind his back.”

  Fortunately the next morning, Clive told Lynne that he wanted her to have her foot in a whirlpool mineral bath several hours every day, and she could only get that service at a live-in clinic, so she didn’t have to concoct a tale in order to force Sloan to leave her.

  “How are things at the shop?” she asked him when he visited her at the clinic that afternoon.

  “I have some problems, but I’ll work through this.”

  “What kinds of problems? Remember, we are open with each other, and we have no secrets from each other.”

  He told her what she already knew and added, “Local business is definitely down. I’m getting mainly travelers.”

  “I’m sorry, love. You deserve better. What are you going to do about Nick?”

  “I fired him. I should have done it as soon as he made the first bad move, but I always try not to fire a man who has small children.”

  “Take out an ad in the Sentinel, and get on that morning talk show. Want me to make the call?”

  “No, but thanks. I know Zack, and that’s a good idea.”

  Later, when Clive and Gary visited her, she asked them to give Sloan their business, and to send their friends to him. It plagued her that Sloan had been away from his shop because of her, that if he’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened.

  At the beginning of the second week of July, the clinic released Lynne, and her doctor gave her permission to resume training and practicing. Overjoyed, she was unprepared for the brunt of Sloan’s displeasure when he came to her house one evening.

  “It has just occurred to me that all this wonderful new trade I’m getting at my San Antonio service center is coming from tennis players and other sports figures. You’re behind this, and I want it to stop. I am not relying on you or any other woman to make my way, and I don’t want a woman begging her friends to help me.”

  Annoyed and ready to pounce on him, she gazed up at the face she loved, its eyes stormy with the passion of disapproval, a passion so much like the heat that emanated from him when he wanted to make love with her. It had the same fierce intensity as the clouds that heralded a coming storm and darkened with the moments. She stared at him, poleaxed by his powerful masculinity, and he stared right back at her, his eyes getting stormier by the second. His nostrils flared as his libido battled with his anger, and she could feel the blood rushing to her loins. For in spite of her annoyance with him, the man in him leaped out to her and she wanted him, wanted to feel his powerful strokes as they drove her to ecstasy.

  When he took a step toward her, she knew he wasn’t responding to his own anger, but to the desire that had gripped her, and that was mirrored in every move she made and in every breath she panted. As of its own volition, her tongue rimmed her upper lip, and with two quick steps he had her in his arms. She opened her mouth and sucked his tongue into her. She had never wanted him so badly, and as she pulled his tongue deeper into her mouth, their groans echoed throughout the living room. He stopped, backed off and looked at her, panting, his feet wide apart. She grabbed his belt and would have jerked him to her if she could have, if he hadn’t stood his ground.

  “You’re mine,” she said. “I want you, and I’m going to have you. So don’t you think for a minute that you’re going anywhere and leaving me like this.”

  As if against his will, he reached out to her, picked her up and carried her up the stairs, not to her bedroom, but to the room he occupied while he stayed with her.

  It would be raw sex, but she didn’t care. She unhooked his belt and would have taken it off him, but he stilled her hand, looked at her for what seemed like ages, pulled her to him and bent to her mouth. She parted her lips, but he refused her his tongue, and when she put his hand on her breast, he ignored her.

  Frustrated, she caressed his penis, catching him unawares, and he nearly buckled.

  “I want your mouth on my breasts, all over me,” she said.

  He yanked the T-shirt over her head, jerked off her skirt, lifted her and clamped his mouth on her left breast. Screams tore out of her as he suckled her, and she felt the love liquid stream down her leg.

  “If you don’t get in me right now, I’ll...I’ll...”

  “You’ll what? I’ll do it when I get ready.”

  She reached down, unzipped him and caressed the length of him.

  “Oh, hell, baby.” He put her on the bed, stripped himself and mounted her. She wrapped her legs around his back, took him and plunged him inside of her and began to move. But he forced her to his rhythm. And within minutes she erupted all around him, crying out his name. He pumped hard and followed her into ecstasy, screaming as he gave her the essence of himself. “Lynne. Oh, my Lord, Lynne.”


  He held her face in the palms of his hands, stared down into her eyes, kissed her, separated them and fell over on his back. “I’ve never done anything like that,” he said. “I was so hurt, so mad at you and so damned crazy for you.”

  “I know. I didn’t know what got into me, and I didn’t question it. One minute I was annoyed—no, I was furious—and the next I wanted you badly enough to ravish you. And then you got me on your terms and sent molten lava shooting through me. My entire body convulsed into orgasm. I wasn’t myself. I didn’t know who I was or where I was. It was fantastic.”

  “Tell me about it. For a few seconds there, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” He sat up and braced himself on his elbows. “The bad thing about this is that, after this unbelievable experience, I’m still upset with you, and you’re displeased with me for chewing you out.”

  “Are you going to get over it?” she asked him.

  “In time, but right now, I think we need some breathing space.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I’m taking Thelma to Galveston with me this weekend, and...well—”

  She interrupted him. “Isn’t your business doing well? Would you rather have gone belly-up? Aren’t we supposed to help each other? At least that’s the line you’ve been handing me.” She crawled over him, got out of the bed and asked him, “Why did you bring me in here instead of to my bedroom?”

  “Animal instinct, I suppose. It was my room, and I wanted you on my terms and in my kingdom. I’d prefer to make love with you in my house.”

  “What am I supposed to do, ring your bell and ask if I can come in so you can make love with me?”

  He got up. “We’re having a fight, and I don’t want that. I’ll be in touch when I get back from Galveston.”

  * * *

  He didn’t want to break it off with Lynne; in fact, he couldn’t. He loved her, but she had to understand that he would not accept largesse from her friends. How could he and have his self-respect? She meant well; he didn’t doubt that, but certain things a man had to do for himself, and one of them was to get himself out of any trouble he happened to get into.

  He shook his head vigorously as he put the car in Drive and started home. He’d give anything to know what had gotten into Lynne back there. He’d been mad enough to shake her, and she was getting irritated with him, and then she suddenly went into sexual overdrive. The sexual tension in her would have been obvious to a child. She challenged him as no woman ever had, or, evidently, had considered doing. Challenged him, yes, and proceeded to use her woman’s advantage, getting him where she knew he was most vulnerable. Was there a man anywhere who didn’t respond to his woman if she told him she wanted him and meant to have him?

  He balled up his left fist and pounded the steering wheel when he thought of the way she went at him, not merely responding to him, but driving for what she needed. Hell! That woman was as different from the Lynne he’d first met as chalk was from cheese, and mad as he’d been, it made him proud, because he was the man who taught her. He scratched the side of his head. Damn, but she’d nearly blown his mind when she’d erupted around him like a violent storm thrashing everything in its way, wringing everything out of him. He’d been sexually active since he was thirteen, and he’d never experienced anything like it. Lord, but it was heaven!

  Yet, after that eyeball-blistering sex, they were still mad at each other. He couldn’t figure it out. Yeah, he’d connected with her on as deep a level as he ever had, maybe the deepest—and that was saying something—so how could he still be angry with her?

  When he got home, he phoned his father. “I’ll be there tomorrow night and Thelma will be with me,” he said after they greeted each other.

  “What about Lynne? I was hoping she’d come, too. Nothing wrong between you two, I hope.”

  “Nothing that a few hours together won’t straighten out. Lynne is training for her next tournament.”

  “Give her our love, and tell her that your mother and I will be rooting for her.”

  “I’ll do that. Give Mom a hug for me. See you tomorrow.”

  “Will do.”

  He hung up and flopped down in his favorite chair that sat beside the massive fireplace in his den. It pleased him that his parents liked Lynne, but he didn’t want them to like her so much that it constituted a kind of pressure. He slapped his forehead with his right hand. Oh, what the hell! He’d be miserable if they didn’t like her. And he wished Lynne would apologize for meddling in his business, so they could go back to being real friends.

  * * *

  In the meantime, Lynne’s anger had begun to subside, and what she felt was a stinging hurt. The only experiences with the male ego that she’d had as an adult were what she’d come to realize as weaknesses in her ex-husband and in her brother, self-satisfaction that sprang from low self-esteem. But Sloan knew who he was and had the self-pride that went with accomplishment. Yet, he gave so much of himself and from the depth of himself and that, along with his unselfishness in caring for her when she could not take care of herself—as he’d done twice so far—had deepened her love for him.

  “But he’s not going to lose his temper with me and chew me out,” she huffed. “I love him, but I’ve learned the hard way to stand up for myself.” She went to the refrigerator, got a glass of lemonade, took a sip and dumped the remainder in the kitchen sink. It hurt. Oh Lord, it hurt. But she’d hurt before and that hadn’t killed her. Neither would this. She had to win the US Open, and she intended to dedicate herself to that.

  “I’m not tired, Gary,” she told her coach several days later. “I’ve got to win the US Open, and the only way I’ll do that is to train and practice.”

  “Maybe you’re not tired,” he said as he panted, “but I am. Six hours of practice daily for four consecutive days would kill a horse, and it’s too much for you. How many hours a day are you training? Two, when I recommended one. What are you trying to do to yourself?”

  “I’m tired of losing. I’m better than that.”

  “All right. Tomorrow, we’ll practice your serve for two hours, and you will put it where I tell you to put it, but I am not going to see you destroy yourself practicing. Where’s McNeil? Is that what this is all about? I haven’t seen him this week.”

  “We had a tiff, but I don’t think it’s serious. I’m giving him some space.”

  She was doing more than that; she wanted him to know that he’d hurt her, and that she needed an apology as much as she suspected he did. Love is not the be-all and the end-all, Lynne Thurston. Still, she missed him. “When I’m tired and aching after seven hours of training and practicing,” she said to herself, “that’s when I wish he was here to hold my hand and tell me that he loves me and that I’m as good a player as I ever was.”

  Gary threw a ball at her to get her attention. “If I’m your coach, you have to do as I suggest, Lynne. No one wants you to get back to number one more than I do. You’ve made it to number five in a year’s time. Take my advice and you’ll reach your goal. If you overdo it, you’ll sprain or break something, and you’ll be so plagued with injuries that you’ll never reach it. Hasn’t Clive warned you about that?”

  “Yeah. All right, I’ll train one hour and practice four.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Good gal. You’re already as fine a player as any of them. See you Monday. Same time.”

  She dragged herself to the house and into the shower. She knew that Gary was right, that she’d been overtaxing her body, but she wanted to win the Open, to reach her goal and then, if Sloan asked her to marry him, she’d be able to... “I’ll cross that bridge if I ever get to it,” she said to herself. “Nobody can ever tell what a man will do.”

  Her thought applied especially to her brother, Brad, who called her almost as soon as she got out of the shower. “Hi, Brad,” she said. “How’
s everything?”

  “That sounds like a dust-off,” he grumbled. “I just wanted you to know that I think I might have been wrong about McNeil. That guy’s no pansy.”

  “You’re telling me, he’s not!” she said.

  “All right. Don’t get your back up. He’s pretty sure of himself, but I get the impression that he earned the right.”

  “Brad, I don’t mind if you tell me that you were wrong about Sloan, and that you will stop judging people on the basis of one of your biases.”

  “Aw, sis, don’t be so rough.”

  That was his way of capitulating, but she didn’t mind. He was her precious brother, in spite of his faults. “I’m not, but you’ve given me a hard time about Sloan, and you were wrong.”

  “Okay. I was wrong. When is your next tournament?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Good luck.”

  After Brad hung up, she sat on the edge of her bed pondering whether she should call Sloan. She missed him, but she hadn’t forgiven him, and if he had forgiven her, wouldn’t he call?

  She dressed, took Caesar and walked over to Thelma’s house. “Come on in,” Thelma said when she opened the door. “Sloan just left here. He brought me back from Galveston half an hour ago. His folks wanted me to stay awhile longer, but I’m not one for wearing out my welcome. Sloan drove down early this morning to pick me up and bring me home. There isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for that man. Don’t you tell him, but I’m going to change my will with him in mind. What’s wrong with you two now? I’m beginning to think you’re both crazy and I told Sloan that. Why in the name of angels can’t you two get together and stay together?”

  “Did he tell you what happened?”

  “Yes, and I told him that if he was ten, I’d paddle him. He said he’d never been paddled in his entire life. Lucille sent you a bag of apple turnovers, and she said you should come to see her. Sloan’s parents are wonderful people.”

  She barely heard Thelma’s words. Caesar began whimpering the way he did when a storm was imminent, so she rose and started for the door. “According to Caesar, we’re going to have a thunderstorm, so I’d better get home before it starts.” She told Thelma goodbye, took the bag of turnovers and left with Caesar close to her side. In the distance, she could hear the sound of thunder, and Caesar tugged at his leash, so she increased the pace of her steps to a trot.