Heather Graham (2 page)

Football, he thought, has given me a lot, but it’s cost just as much. The words came to him unbidden. Yes, it had cost him his marriage, and in the years that had followed the divorce he had come to accept the fault …

“Mr. Hart, could I have a minute of your time?”

Someone else had his arm. A hand was on it—a gentle touch. A woman’s voice had spoken, and it was a woman’s hand on his sleeve. Long fingers, long nails covered in a silky beige polish. Soft hands, delicately boned …

He shook off the touch without really looking at her. Women in the locker room! He would never get accustomed to it.

“Sorry. I’m headed for the showers.”

Thank God there was a door! He stepped through it and closed it firmly behind him. A couple of the guys were already there.

“Hey, Kent! You old fox. They keep saying you’re the greatest arm around, and I sure do believe them!” Bobby Patterson called to him from the shower.

Kent waved. “Thanks, Bob. You got some muscle there yourself, buddy,” he answered Bobby, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was looking at the whirlpool, then sighing with pleasure and relief. No one was in it. The other guys were hurrying to shower and dress so that they could rush out and enjoy the homage of their fans and loved ones … or whatever spicy and beautiful women happened to be around, he added to himself dryly.

He pulled off his green and gold uniform, feeling a bit like a knight who had been encased in armor. A knight who had been unhorsed, he added. Man, was he beat!

Pads and braces followed his muddied, sweaty uniform to the floor. Whew! Was it going to feel good to crawl into that tub …

“See ya soon, Kent,” Bobby called. Clad in his pants, he was hurrying out to his locker to don his suit, Kent was sure. They’d all packed double outfits, jeans and sweaters if they’d had to slink out of the stadium, three-piece suits if—miracle of miracles—they won.

“Yeah, see ya guys.” He was, at last, alone with his aches and pains.

The warm water whirled and swished around his ankles. Ahhh. Kent sank down slowly. The water covered his calves, his knees, his buttocks. He sat, letting it swirl around his midriff, hot and pulsing, easing the aches and pains. He sank further, wetting his hair, cleaning the salt and grime from his face. He loved hot water, and he loved the healing jets that massaged his battered muscles.

“Just like a sultry maiden’s kiss,” he murmured aloud, smiling with his eyes closed to the steam and light.

“Humph,” a voice said from just inside the doorway. Kent frowned. There had been a softness to the sound, something feminine … and yet there had been an edge to it as well. An angry edge? A feminine, angry edge—angry over his whispered words?

His eyes flew open and he stared at the door.

There was a woman there. His eyes roamed up and down her incredulously. She was fairly tall and slender, dressed in jeans and a gray turtleneck sweater. Her hair was plastered against her skull from the sleet that had fallen from the sky, but it stretched down the length of her back. Even wet, it was a blond color. Her forehead was high, and her eyes seemed huge. They were light … green or blue? Maybe a combination of both.

Kent stared at her several seconds before he realized that she was extremely attractive. Her face was beautifully boned. Her complexion was fine, although a little bluish right now; she seemed to be freezing. But if you set her before a fire and let all that pale hair dry around her, she would be … stunning.

Along with that thought came a burning anger in the pit of his stomach. He glanced at her hands as they clutched a brown notepad. She hadn’t only intruded into the locker room—she had come straight into the showers.

“Oh, God!” he groaned. “Is nothing sacred anymore?”

“Mr. Hart—”

“Lady, get out of here.”

“Wait a minute! All I ask is a minute of your time.”

She seemed as aggravated as he, as if she didn’t like football players and had very little interest in the sport as a great American pastime. So what was she doing here? Kent wondered.

“Lady, do me a big favor. Remove yourself before I take the initiative for you, okay?”

“Dammit, you muscle-bound ner—” She broke off her own speech and took a deep breath, apparently stiffening her spine as she did so. “If you would just listen—”

“The networks will all get their time.”

“I’m not from one of the networks.”

Kent frowned. There was a sense of something familiar about her, the sound of her voice, the classic beauty of her features. He sought quickly through his memory, but it eluded him. He shrugged, then leaned back in the tub, closing his eyes against her.

“I really don’t care if you’re a messenger from heaven. I want a little bit of peace. The same offer stands—get out or I’ll throw you out.”

“Mr. Hart, I’m from
World Magazine.
We’d like to offer you a nice sum for an exclusive—”

“I don’t do interviews.”

“Mr. Hart, I need this article rather desperately—”

“I don’t do interviews.”

She hesitated so long that he almost opened his eyes again. He didn’t; he prayed that she’d go away.

When she spoke at last, it was with hesitation, as if she hated herself for the leverage she was about to use. “Not even for Dante Hudson’s daughter?” Her question was softly asked.

Kent’s eyes flew open, and he knew with certain clarity why she had seemed so familiar.

Sweet Jesus, he thought, she
is
Hudson’s daughter!

K
ENT HART IN THE
flesh. Very much in the flesh. Except, of course, Katie had her back glued to the door, so she wasn’t close enough to him to see much.

But she had done it. She had swallowed the emotions of half a lifetime—not to mention her pride—to come here.

He didn’t look so very different, Katie thought. Not from the last time she had seen him—really seen him, other than a speck on a field or a helmeted form on the TV screen.

And it had been fourteen years since she had seen him last. She had been twelve; he had been … about twenty-two.

Katie could still relive that memory—as clearly as if it had been yesterday. Of course she could see it differently now. She wasn’t a twelve-year-old anymore. But without even closing her eyes, she could recall that child and her feelings.

Time with her father—precious time, since it seemed to be little enough—was being interrupted. “You just gotta meet Kent, Katie!” Dante had told her. Dante, the best father a girl could have, a national hero … but more than that. He was young, barely thirty-two himself at the time, giving, warm, and entirely lovable. A young Nordic blue-eyed blond, he had charmed everyone, especially his own daughter.

Katie had been jealous. It had been her day with her father, her day to listen to the calls, then to astound one of the greatest quarterbacks who had ever lived with her ability—a twelve-year-old
girl’s
ability—to catch the magic pigskin ball. But when her father had picked her up, it had been to tell her that they were going to meet Cougar—Kent Hart, the infallible speed demon out of Alabama. He’d put a little-known college on the map in a big way. Not only had he the arms of an albatross and a grip like an eagle’s talons, but he could run. “Lord Almighty,” Dante had exclaimed to her that day, “that boy can
run!”
His grades had also been great. “Sheer genius!” in Dante’s words.

Katie had hated the man before they’d even reached the football stadium.

Of course, he’d smiled at her. Kent Hart had smiled and ruffled her hair. Why not? He should be decent to the man who had helped him into the pros.

She’d hated to have her hair ruffled.

“Katie, show him your stuff!” Dante had commanded.

Katie had been ready, but for some reason, she had fumbled everything. Then she’d been sent to tackle Kent. “Tag football,” Kent had said cheerfully.

But Katie hadn’t been about to play a game of tag—especially when she had realized that not even her extreme youth and healthy young legs could combat Cougar’s speed. So, once she’d gotten him, she’d tackled him with all her wiry young strength. And when he had laughed and refused to relinquish the ball, she’d clawed his cheek with her fingernails. Hard. So hard that she’d drawn blood.

“Damn!” Had been his astonished response. And he’d shaken her with fury, then kept her firmly away at arm’s length. “Dante! Call off this little she-cat of yours! I think I’m going to need a rabies shot!”

It was the last time Dante had ever tried to mix company with his daughter and his friend. It was painfully clear that they despised one another.

Oh, there had been jokes. Dante warning Kent that everyone was going to think he’d had a row with his fiancée. “Really rough when you have to fight the girls off, eh?” Dante had teased. But he had been furious with Katie, so furious that he hadn’t picked her up the next weekend, and she had learned to hate Kent Hart with a greater fury.

Oh, God, but that had been years ago. Long before her father’s freak injury, before the game he had loved so dearly had quickly cost him his health, then slowly his mind. Long before he had finally died—old before his time, broken, a forgotten hero.

Returning to the present, she forced herself to draw in a breath and close a curtain on the past. She hoped that Kent Hart couldn’t see how she was braced against the door for support.

“I’m Kathleen Hudson, Mr. Hart. Perhaps you don’t remember me, but even with your own personal status, you must remember my father.” Katie winced inwardly. She hadn’t meant to sound so sarcastic and reproachful. It was just that she didn’t want to be here, and she absolutely hated the fact that she had tried to compromise realistically with life and use a past association to get beyond all the walls of privacy Kent Hart built around himself.

Yes, she could see already that the words had been a mistake. He had brown, flashing eyes, so narrowed now that they seemed to burn with a red glint, ready to explode.

His hand—involuntarily, Katie was certain—moved to his cheek, his long fingers moving over it before falling back to the water.

“I could never forget your father, Miss Hudson. And”—he raised a dark and richly arched brow—“I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to forget you.” His words were polite enough, but there was something very hard about his pleasant tone when he continued, “Every time I glance in a mirror, Miss Hudson, I get to remember you. Scars, you know.”

She felt a little ill. Yes, peering through the steam that surrounded him, she could see that there were three scars, pale white lines that stretched from his cheekbone to his jaw.

It was time to apologize, she told herself. Perhaps remind him that she had been a child. Laugh, flirt a bit—wheedle herself into his good graces …

Katie couldn’t do it. She heard herself talking, and she hadn’t even thought out what she wanted to say.

“I hardly think that those little scars can matter much. You’re probably covered with them by now. How long have you been playing? Almost twenty years …”

He smiled at her, but the smile was as stiff as the strong line of his jaw. “Is that it?” he inquired acidly, ignoring her question. “You’ve come to count my scars for your article. That’s why it was so almighty important that you see me, that you had to barge in where you were not invited—and definitely not wanted?”

Katie could feel the heat flaming her cheeks. Again she spoke without thought. “No, you ass! I barged in here because you think you’re so high above humanity that you can’t bother with common courtesy! I—” She broke off, dismally aware that she had just ruined the whole thing. She had put herself through a week of torment before coming here, and now … It didn’t bother her so terribly much that she was going to lose the interview; it bothered her that she had come here at all, used her father’s name, then bungled the whole thing in a spurt of temper.

Temper … it had caused her first disaster with him when she had been a child.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, involuntarily lowering her head and her lashes. She had wanted to at least apologize with dignity, meeting his eyes. Oh, come on, Katie! she chastised herself. Raff said that you could charm water from desert sands if you wanted to!

She looked up and smiled sweetly. “I really am sorry. It’s just that you wouldn’t bother to talk to me. You wouldn’t even bother to look at me …”

His smile became warm in return. She wondered vaguely why his eyes still carried a little glitter, but she was getting too nervous to concentrate on his physical nuances.

“Sorry,” he said softly. “Maybe I was a bit brusque. Be a good kid, will you, and come over here where I can see you? And you can toss me a towel.”

Suddenly, she was feeling very nervous. She didn’t want to get too close to the man, not after she had called him an ass.

“Perhaps,” Katie murmured, “now that we’ve met, you could just meet me back out by the lockers.”

“No, there will still be people around the lockers. Newscasters. I came in here looking for a bit of peace. Come on over—throw me the towel.”

Katie set her purse and notebook on a bench and unhappily approached the whirlpool. The water jets and mist were all around him, so she could rationalize that there still wasn’t anything indecent about it.

Near Kent and the tub was a shelf with a stack of towels. She managed to keep her eyes locked to his until she reached for a towel, but then she averted her gaze and threw it.

“Thanks,” he muttered as the towel landed in the water.

When he began to stand, she found her eyes riveting to him again. “What are you doing? For decency’s sake, sit down,” she snapped.

He laughed, settling back into the water. “All right, but don’t throw the next towel. Hand it to me. I’m wet—that’s why the towel should be dry.”

“You’re supposed to be the greatest receiver in history,” Katie mumbled as she reached for another one, “and you can’t catch a towel?”

“I’d rather not take the chance,” Kent said politely.

Katie felt a little flustered. She kept her lashes lowered and walked closer to the tub to hand him the towel.

Be nice, Katie, she warned herself, gritting her teeth behind a pleasant smile.