Heather Graham (6 page)

“Hey, Sam,” he said quietly.

“I’ll get your soda,” Connie offered, slipping behind the bar.

Greetings were called out in general. Kent noted that Kathleen Hudson spun around on her stool, her eyes—crystal, crystal-blue tonight—raised to his.

There were voices all around them, but Kent didn’t hear them as he returned her steady gaze. “Good evening, Miss Hudson.”

“Good evening.” Her voice was low, silken, husky.

Don’t play the sultry bit on me, he wanted to snap. He looked up to thank Connie for the soda she handed him, then leaned against the bar, watching Kathleen Hudson again. “Enjoying yourself?” he asked her.

“Immensely,” she responded coolly.

There was a challenge in her eyes that he met evenly. What the hell are we doing? he wondered. Just what is the challenge? Sweetie, you may have been hurt with your father, but you got hard somewhere along the line. You know exactly what you want and how you intend to go about getting it, and you’ll deal with any obstacle in your way …

He lowered his voice slightly. “I wouldn’t have thought that you’d enjoy an occasion like this.”

“Depends on the company,” she answered sweetly.

He sipped his soda, raising a brow. “Oh, I thought it was my company you were seeking?”

She smiled. “Yes. But not for enjoyment.”

“Cool as a cucumber, aren’t you … Miss Hudson?” he queried lightly. “That’s what they say a good quarterback should be. But ask our friend Sam, here. He’ll tell you that there are times when the quarterback gets sacked—no matter how good his defenses.”

She listened to him and then leisurely sipped her champagne before answering. “I know my plays, Mr. Hart.”

“Do you? I wonder. An experienced player can sometimes tackle the best of the rookies.”

“But I’m not a rookie, Mr. Hart.”

Now what the hell did that mean? Kent wondered, furious with himself. He was growing really hot under the collar, and it just didn’t make any damn sense. Experience had taught him to control his temper; years of being a bit distant had made it so that nothing could anger him. But he was getting angry now, all the more so because it didn’t make sense.

“Kent!” Sam turned from the others to join into their conversation. “Have you decided to give her the interview? She’s promised no mudslinging.”

“Has she?” Kent inquired. Good—he sounded cool. Almost indifferent. Hell, he
was
indifferent. No, he wasn’t. “And do you trust her, Sam?” he asked.

“Hell, yes! I trust Katie completely,” Sam replied good-naturedly.

Katie, was it? Kent stared at her politely.

“Come on, Cougar!” Connie suddenly exclaimed from across the bar. “Give the girl a break. Give her a nice interview. What will it cost you?”

Once, he thought bitterly, it cost me a lot. But that wasn’t the point here—not anymore. He smiled. “I’m thinking about it.”

“Champagne, champagne—make way for more champagne!” Tony Low, their host, came through the kitchen to the bar area, champagne gushing from the bottle. “Hey, Cougar! You made it! How about some champagne?”

“No, thanks, Tony. I’m off the sauce tonight.”

Tony didn’t press him. He started doling out the champagne.

Kent twisted around and saw that a number of the married couples were leaving. And a number of the lovers from around the fireplace were disappearing up the winding staircase in the back of the room.

Then he heard a shout from outside, and one of the Saxons’ second string offensive backs came rushing in, shaking off water and laughing.

“She did it! Jean Harkin did it! Stripped naked and flew into the pool—said you kept it heated, Tony!”

“It’s heated,” Tony replied.

“Yahoo!” someone shouted. “Skinny-dipping time!”

“Tony!” Connie yelped, “you’re spilling champagne all over me!”

“Hey, it’s okay! I’ll wash you off out in the pool,” Tony replied deviously.

“Get the quarterback, get the quarterback!” someone else shouted.

“No!” Sam protested to no avail. It started to look like a pileup around the bar. Laughing away, Connie was leading that pileup. “Ah, come on, Sammy, we’ll all go if you go. Then we’ll come back for Kent.”

They were all laughing ridiculously as the party turned into one big skinny-dipping free-for-all. Kent realized that he had gotten there very late, and a lot of drinking had been going on. Sam—still protesting—was raised into the air. His tie went flying, then his jacket followed. The group began to move toward the back of the house.

He glanced quickly at Kathleen Hudson. She was still sitting regally on her stool. Her eyes portrayed amusement and tolerance. She didn’t intend on doing any skinny-dipping herself—such things would be beneath the queen—but she didn’t seem at all alarmed.

You little idiot! he thought. These guys aren’t vicious, but they’ll come after you in the spirit of the thing, and you’ll be bare in that water before you get the chance to tell them you just aren’t in that spirit. I should let them.

“Get Kent!” Connie was shouting. “Someone get that hunk out here!”

“And Katie. Get that sexy blond!” came a male shout.

She was laughing. “No, thanks. It’s too cold for swimming.”

Kent shook his head with disbelief. Half the crowd was returning for them.

He didn’t hesitate another second. He tucked down a shoulder as if he had the ball, rammed it lightly to her waistline, and lifted her over that shoulder, clutching her legs.

She was taken so completely by surprise that he was halfway across the room before she could draw breath to shout at him.

“What are you doing, you idiot? Put me down! Kent Hart, put me down. I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Stop it—you’re acting like a lunatic.” She was trying reason. “I mean it. You’re behaving like a gorilla.” Reason didn’t cause a falter in his step. She pounded furiously against his back. “Dammit! Put me—”

He opened the front door and slammed it behind him. Her fists were pounding against his back with such a vengeance that he groaned.

“Am I hurting you?” she grated out in a fury as he started walking down the drive. “I hope so, because I mean to! You let me down. What the hell is the matter with you? My opinion of you hasn’t been the highest, but now—Oh!” She stormed as his quickened pace sent her nose flying into his backbone.
“Dammit—you let me down this instant or else I’ll tear you to pieces!”

She
was
tearing him to pieces. Now she was trying to claw through his sweater to rip into his back. Kent grated his teeth, and suddenly his temper flew. All he could remember was the child who had scratched him years ago.

Ah, hell!

He heard shouts and laughter as the crowd came out the door after them. And she was hindering his speed.

“Son of a bitch!” he suddenly exploded. She was trying her old tactics. He could feel the scrape of her nails trying to take hold through his shirt and sweater.

That did it. He slammed his open-palmed hand with a strength born of fury against her rump, delivering what he knew to be a stinging blow.

She let out a little scream, then she was at it again—but verbally, not physically.

“I’ll kill you!” she garbled out unreasonably. “I’ll strangle you … I’ll tear you to pieces—”

“Fine. Just do it once we’re out of here!” Kent snapped back.

The footsteps behind them were coming closer. But he was a runner, even with added weight, and hers wasn’t that much.

He reached his car, opened the driver’s door, and shoved her in with little grace. She was immediately trying to get out the other side, but he was quicker than she. The key was in the ignition as he slammed his door and hit the automatic locks. She was still swearing away a mile a minute and working feverishly at her door as he wheeled his car around and sped down the driveway.

S
HE WAS CAPABLE OF
going on and on—and on, Kent realized. Katie Hudson continued her verbal attack, her voice rising as her oaths surpassed those of the most seasoned player on the field. How had Hudson raised such a shrew? he wondered.

He was on the highway, going a good sixty miles an hour, and she was still playing with the damned door handle. A headache was growing inside his skull, pounding with a force that matched her venomous words.

He lifted a hand from the wheel.
“Stop!”
he ordered, his voice sounding something like an aggravated roar. It apparently had some effect on her, because she shut up for a minute. “I swear to God,” he continued with exasperation, “I can’t believe Dante could have raised such a stupid child!”

“Stupid child?”

Wrong choice of words—not because they weren’t true but because they got her started again.

“I’m not a child anymore, Mr. Hart. I’m an adult. Twenty-six years old—”

“You may be a chronological twenty-six, but I’m beginning to believe you’re a mental two!”

“You asinine muscle-bound ape! You—”

“Get your fingers off that door handle! Only a stupid two-year-old would do such a thing in a car going sixty miles an hour.”

“Stop the damned car!”

“I will not.”

Katie flung herself back into the seat, crossing her arms over her chest and locking them there. She wasn’t stupid, but she was so infuriated she felt almost insane, ready to do violence—and possibly kill them both.

Calm down, Katie! she pleaded with herself. She knew she was in what her father had termed a “flaming fury.” It was a state of mind so far gone with anger that reason flew away with the wind. She was fighting furiously with herself, but she couldn’t cool down. Never in her life had she been treated so—so barbarously! So totally without dignity or respect. So—

“All right!” she snapped out. Her voice was low but not controlled. Each word fell like a taut whipcrack. “I’m going for a coastal drive with an aging madman who thinks that primal tactics are in. I should report you to the NFL. To the police. What the hell is the matter with you? You’re crazy! You’ve been knocked down so many times that you have no mind left. You—”

“Shut up, will you?” Kent grated out. “Can you really be that stupid? Or are you blind?”

“What are you talking about?” Katie raged, struggling very hard to keep her hands from his neck.

“Idiot!” The word rumbled warningly in his throat. “Don’t you realize that you were about to be good-naturedly stripped by a dozen roaming hands and thrown naked into a pool?”

“Don’t you be an idiot!” Katie retorted. Calm yourself! she pleaded mentally. No good. She hadn’t even known she was capable of being this furious. “I would have said no—”

“You would have said ‘no’?” he yelled at her incredulously. “Just a simple ‘no’ from a catty little tease and a pack of half-smashed two hundred pounders would have been down on their knees—”

“I’m not a tease! And I don’t want anyone down on his knees! I would have—”

“They would have forced you!”

“Bull! They aren’t vicious brutes! You’re the only one who has forced me to do anything.”

“Dammit, they aren’t vicious brutes, but they are men. They’re loaded, and you were acting like a tease, sitting there all night gathering them around you as if you had something to give.”

“You bastard! You weren’t even there half the night. And don’t you dare presume to tell me anything about me—”

“I call it like I see it, lady.”

“Well, you call it however the hell you like! But stop this car and let me out of it—now!”

“Here? In the middle of the road?”

“I wouldn’t care if we were in the middle of a damn desert.”

“Bitch!” he muttered, the sports car jerking with the vehemence of his word. “I should have let them. I should have let every single one of them paw you to their heart’s content.”

Katie was shaking. Was it true? Would the laughter, drink, and spontaneity of the moment have been too much? No! She’d never met a man who was really a beast—except for this one!

She turned on him in the seat, her voice dripping scathingly. “That’s right. You should have just left me alone. What business is it of yours? Maybe I love to skinny-dip! Maybe I would have been the first one out there if Jean what’s-her-name hadn’t started the surge. Maybe I even like being pawed. Maybe I’m just crazy about hands all over me—” She broke off, amazed, when the car jerked off the road and came to a screeching halt. He was going to do it; he was going to let her out. She reached for the door handle again, only to freeze when his voice lashed out at her with a razor-edged warning.

“Touch that handle—just touch it—and I promise on my life that you’ll have hands all over you!”

Oh, she was dying—dying!—to ignore him. Dying to rip open the door and give him nothing more than the contemptuous and indifferent glare he deserved!

But he was shaking just as much as she was. So intense that it seemed he might explode at any second. His fingers were gripped around the steering wheel so tautly that his knuckles were white. And though he appeared slim because of his height, Katie knew that he was totally composed of hard muscle and sinew and his shoulders could have served as battering rams.

And she had learned firsthand that he was capable of moving on whim or insane impulse.

She locked her teeth together so hard she was certain they would splinter and break, and she folded her hands together so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. She barely felt them.

She stared straight ahead, praying that she could get hold of her own temper, praying that she could reason with this madman.

“Miss Hudson,” he said at last, staring straight ahead into the darkness of night just as she was, “if I disrupted an evening of fun and pleasure for you, I’m sorry. I—”

“I went with Sam Loper!” Katie snapped out, then she groaned inwardly, begging herself to shut up. Involuntarily, she turned to him, certain that his eyes were on her. They were. Deep, dark—and yet blazing with a heat that reached all the way inside her and made her tremble. Then his hands flew off the wheel with exasperated strength and fell back to it with a force she was certain would break it.

“Maybe I really was wrong! Maybe you wanted to be in that pool with Sam—and maybe after that you wanted to try out every player on the—”