Hoops (11 page)

“St. Louis?”

“East St. Louis, Illinois, actually. Just over the river. A tough neighborhood, especially for somebody with a name like mine.”

“C.J.,” she pronounced thoughtfully. She hadn’t considered before that the letters meant anything more than him. “What does it stand for?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t know you well enough to tell you that. I trust my name only to people I’d trust my life to—which came down to about the same thing where I grew up.”

Despite his light tone, she wondered at the sort of childhood he’d had. “Do you go back?”

“Not a lot, but I’ve kept some ties. In fact, that’s how I heard about Ellis Manfred. My old high school coach still goes to games all over the area. When I got this job, he called me up and said he knew this good kid and I’d better give him a scholarship.”

“So you went to see Ellis play.”

He shook his head solemnly as he took a breadstick from the napkin-lined basket. “I said, yes, sir, Coach. And that was that. Coach Gates is a tough old bird, and you don’t question him. I got passed from him to another tough old bird at State U. Between Coach Gates and Coach Kenner, I was either going to grow up straight or die with the effort.”

“What about your—”

She broke off as her mind caught up with her mouth. It was none of her business why these coaches seemed to stand in for the father he never mentioned. She had no right to ask questions about the things he didn’t volunteer.

Carolyn watched the breadstick in his hands crumble to fragments. When she looked up, he met her eyes steadily.

“Did you always play basketball?” she asked.

“You mean was I born with a ball under my arm? No. But there were always games going on in the neighborhood and I was always tall for my age, so I’d play with the older guys. Pretty soon I was as good as they were. Then I was better.”

He started in on his salad, and Carolyn toyed with a forkful of greens and creamy dressing. “It kept you out of trouble?” She’d heard that about sports.

“Not entirely. More like a couple of basketball coaches got me out of trouble. Coach Gates and Coach Kenner dragged me up when I got too big for Mom to handle. I was a hellion, always in trouble. Mom tried her damnedest, but with working full-time to keep us alive, and with me bigger than her by the time I was twelve, it was tough. If it hadn’t been for basketball, I’d probably be dead or in prison by now.”

No fanfare. To him, just a simple statement of fact. And somehow Carolyn found herself believing him.

“So you decided basketball came before other things, before...” She took a bite of lettuce to cover the unfinished question. What? What did she know about the sort of things that had faced someone like him or Ellis Manfred?

She wondered again about the father so notably absent from his family pictures—the one on his desk and the one he drew now.

“Coach Gates found me in junior high. Told me basketball could be my ticket out, but every ticket’s got to be paid for. I was going to pay for mine by hard work, keeping my grades respectable and clean living. It took a while, but he finally got through.” He looked at her with a grin crinkling the corners of his eyes. “And, you know, eventually I found I kind of liked some of that classroom stuff. Not in big doses, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed dryly. “But please don’t give that very moving testimonial on academics to your players, C.J.”

Their eyes met in a shared smile, and he promised with a laugh.

As the waiter placed heaping dishes of rigatoni in front of them, she asked about his basketball career. He talked about the championships, the records, the achievements. But the warmth when he talked about his teammates and his game impressed her more.

She looked at the light in his eyes and his mobile mouth cutting grooves in his cheek with a smile. He loved basketball the way she loved teaching.

“Did you mean what you told Frank the other day about making your own opportunities—and if you don’t take them, they’re gone?”

The abrupt question brought a puzzled frown to his eyes. He didn’t seem to remember saying that, but he obviously believed it. “Yes.” He looked at her steadily. “Opportunity didn’t come knocking where I grew up.”

“So you went to look for it?”

“That’s right.” The light tone didn’t eclipse his seriousness. “And when I found it, I followed it right out of that old neighborhood.”

“And took your family along?”

“Yeah, but that took some doing, let me tell you,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “Mom’s a nurse and she’d worked at a pediatric clinic in the area for years. I thought it would take a crowbar to get her away. She kept talking about how much they needed the help there, how much good she could do.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial undertone. “That’s when I got sneaky. See, Jan and her son, Jason, lived with her by then, and I started pointing out how Jason was getting to be just like me at that age, just old enough to start being a problem.”

Sitting back, satisfaction lit his face. “Poof! Like magic. Two weeks later she and Jan decided to let me help them get settled in Florida.”

She laughed. “You are devious, aren’t you?”

“You bet. And it worked out great. That was about four years ago. Now they’ve got a nice place near St. Pete. Mom’s working with geriatrics, Jan’s got a job nursing and Jason’s playing junior varsity basketball. His grades aren’t bad, either.”

“Following his uncle’s example, no doubt.” Carolyn couldn’t resist teasing him a little.

He was unperturbed. “His uncle’s very good example,” he expanded.

“What happened to...” The question about his father waited at the back of her tongue, but she wouldn’t let it out.

“Jason’s dad?” she finished lamely.

He must have heard her stumble over the words. What would he make of it? And of her nosiness. She’d stopped the question about his father, only to blurt out something nearly as bad. She didn’t have any right to ask. What if he didn’t want to tell her? What if he told her it was none of her business? What if...

“Jack died eight years ago. He was in the army. Made it through Vietnam, then got shot when he walked into a convenience store that somebody was trying to rob late one night. Jack tried to stop him.”

He shook his head, but Carolyn saw pain glinting in his eyes. “That was Jack. He and Jan were two of a kind. Took in every kind of stray—dogs, cats, runaway kids, homesick recruits—they sheltered them all. Jan stayed out in California for a while, but it was tough trying to work and raise Jason by herself. Jack didn’t leave much besides the army benefits. So she moved back home with Mom to share expenses. That way Mom could help out with Jason, too.”

“You did, too, didn’t you?” Carolyn didn’t know where here certainty came from, but she spoke with utter conviction. C.J. Draper wasn’t the kind of man to relegate his sister’s fatherless son to Christmas gifts and birthday checks.

He met her eyes, and the look was charged. She could see his pleasure at her words. But also a challenge, as if he were telling her they’d crossed some frontier. That by recognizing that aspect of him, and expressing it, she’d pushed the conversation beyond the surface.

Perhaps she had, because she found herself beginning to open up about her own life. She told him about going to live with her grandparents at the age of five after her parents’ death. She even laughed a little over her first encounter with a cow. She’d started swimming there on the farm in a pond, then had taken lessons and competed in her first meet through the county recreation association.

Her grandparents had her everlasting gratitude. They had opened their home to her and made many sacrifices of time and money for her. But, she said, it had worked out for the best when Stewart and Elizabeth, recognizing her ability, had brought her to Ashton to raise her in a more challenging environment. By her junior year in high school, she’d known what she wanted to do. Swimming and everything else had become secondary.

He listened so well.

He listened to the tale told with so little emotion in the words and so much in her eyes. He wanted more, but for now he’d take what she offered.

Wondering about all the things she didn’t say, he knew exactly how she’d felt when she’d broken off those questions about his family that she’d started to ask. What would he have said if she’d asked?

He could give her the official line from his bio—his mother was a widow. He’d felt mostly relief when that had become the truth. Strangely, he didn’t want to leave Carolyn with that partial reality. He knew he couldn’t lie to her. But to tell the whole truth? No. A voice at the back of his mind added,
Not yet
.

He watched the flickering light change her face with the pattern of shadows. On the spur of the moment he’d chosen Angelo’s because it was the first place he’d thought of with candles on the tables, and he’d wanted to see her by candlelight. He’d made the right choice. Candlelight gave her fair skin an ivory glow.

The sight acted on him in strange ways. Almost like hearing her laugh this afternoon. Standing there in the wind, surrounded by snow, then a simple sound had penetrated right through the Wisconsin cold and warmed him to his bones.

“And so you came to Ashton and became a professor and everybody says how proud your parents would have been,” he finished for her gently.

She smiled, then let out a long breath. He saw that she didn’t even recognize it as a sigh. But he did. And, to himself, he mourned a little for the girl who’d been working so hard to make her parents proud that she’d stopped playing games when she was sixteen years old.

“Well, if they do, it’s all thanks to Stewart and Elizabeth. They were wonderful to me.”

Worry put a single crease in the middle of her forehead, and he longed to smooth it with his fingertips. Or his lips.

But he pulled himself away from the thought. “But...” he prompted with a question in his voice.

“But,” she picked up with a smile that quickly faded, “I wish I could do more now for Stewart. Since Elizabeth died, he’s so lonely, so alone. I wish I knew better how to comfort him.”

“That takes time. I think he’s coming around. He’s happier than when I first met him back in the spring.”

She looked up hopefully. “You really think so? Helene said you went fishing with him right before the semester started. That was nice of you.”

“I really think so. And it wasn’t particularly nice of me. I was dying to get away to a quiet cabin for a while myself. I had as much fun as Stewart and Helene.” He looked down into the liquid red velvet in his glass, then glanced up and let himself sink into the softer depths of Carolyn’s eyes for an indulgent moment. “I think when he’s ready there’ll be somebody there to love him. He’s damn lucky.”

His drawl had become gravelly with a private implication he refused to examine. Then he saw the puzzlement on her face, followed by dawning recognition of his meaning.

“Helene?” As she struggled with the idea, he gestured for the check.

It couldn’t be—not Helene and Stewart. Elizabeth was Stewart’s perfect match, sharing his interests, his thinking. Helene was nothing like Elizabeth.

“Oh, I know they spend a lot of time together,” she said. “And Helene has a wonderful heart. But Stewart...?” Stewart was books, philosophy and education. “And Helene...?” Helene was clothes, fun and fashion. “They’re so totally different.”

Was that really true?
asked a voice inside her. Didn’t they both like games and people and parties? Things that Stewart hadn’t had much time for in recent years because of the demands of his job. But she remembered earlier years . . .

She moved to safer ground. “They come from such different backgrounds. They’ve led such different lives.” Belatedly she saw he’d already paid the check—and she had been determined to pay her own way.

“Maybe so,” he said, “but it seems to me they’re good for each other. I know Helene’s good for Stewart. Makes him forget the pressures a bit so he can go back and pick them up more easily the next time.” He firmly waved away the money she tried to give him. “Besides, when you love you don’t love the credentials. You love the person.”

“Perhaps, but you can’t fall in love without some things in common. Without sharing interests, priorities.”

He came around to help her into her coat, his hands just brushing her neck as he freed her hair from the collar.

“Can’t you?”

Warmth from where his fingers touched her skin shot to her core. She concentrated on directing her oddly spongy muscles into a dignified walk to the door and a smile at the restaurant’s proprietor.

In her mind C.J.’s words reverberated and echoed into another question:
could you
?

He insisted on walking her to her car, although she’d parked around back. He held open the car door. Just as she started to slide into the seat, she remembered her manners and turned to thank him for the meal.

She didn’t expect him to be so close. She didn’t expect to come up against his chest with such impact that she needed to hold on to him to steady herself. She didn’t expect her fingers to instinctively cling to the wool sweater beneath his open jacket. She didn’t expect the warmth of his body to push its heat through her veins.

C.J.’s large, roughened hands softly cradled each side of her head and tilted it back until she looked into his face above her. She saw his eyes on her mouth, then his face came closer. His mouth dropped swiftly to hers. He brushed gently across her lips once, then met her mouth completely.

That mobile mouth she’d watched these past weeks with suspicion or pleasure pressed against hers. Teasing, tantalizing, turning her bones to hot, languid liquid.

Her fingers opened, then curled tighter into the wool over his hard chest. She accepted the tribute of his lips, the caress of his hands sliding through her hair, cushioning her head. She felt the question in his touch and in his tongue’s soft path along her bottom lip.

She couldn’t answer. How could she? He’d erased all thoughts. And with no answer she could neither pull away nor pull closer. Then his lips left hers, and over the sound of her own heart she heard him breathing fast and shallow.