Hoops (12 page)

“Good night, Carolyn.” His whisper came from just a breath away. He kissed her hard and quick, then spun away and strode off.

She sank to the car seat and sat staring at nothing. She felt so odd. Her head floated, but languor weighted her body. One finger traced the line of her lips where his had been just a moment before. Then she curved them upward in a smile.

* * * *

“That was a foul, you jerk! You’re blind! He fouled Ellis!”

Appalled, Carolyn snapped her mouth shut. Good Lord, what had gotten into her? Going to games to support the players and school was one thing. Yelling at officials was something else entirely. She looked around, prepared to meet expressions of condemnation for her outburst.

But no one paid her the least attention. Some yelled. Some shook their heads in disgust. Some described the referee’s failure in heated terms to their equally irate neighbors. Some, like Edgar sitting next to her, booed. No one had noticed her lapse.

Outrage over that play still provided the main topic as alumni, faculty and special guests mixed at a postgame gathering hosted by Stewart Barron. An alumnus, Class of  ’56, now senior partner of a top law firm in Chicago, alternated comments to Carolyn about his business with laments on how tonight’s tough loss hung on one bad call.

Nodding and murmuring at the appropriate moments was a well-honed skill. Carolyn let her attention freely wander over the familiar setting of the university president’s house.

The mahogany Chippendale pieces had furnished the large room as long as she could remember. The style suited the high ceiling, crown molding and formal carving that framed the fireplace, doorways and windows. But the arrangement was less regimented now, and the curtains and carpeting bought a year ago were softer than their predecessors, helping the room blend with the less formal area that opened off the opposite end. She liked that. From where she stood she could see the graduate student, happy to earn extra cash by bartending, ensconced in a corner of what had served as a family room when she was growing up in the house. In those days the pocket doors between the two areas were rarely open.

Helene moved to the doorway and stood, surveying the scene for a moment before moving decisively toward the group surrounding Stewart. For the first time Carolyn wondered if Helene was responsible for the changes in the president’s house.

She admired the way Helene deftly eased an alumnus, who’d had more than his share of consolation bourbon, away from the group and toward the front door where his wife waited, car keys in hand.

In a moment Helene returned to mix the guests into a new configuration with the delicacy of a pastry cook folding in a new ingredient. Everyone would go home feeling he or she had had individual attention from the two most important people at the gathering—Stewart Barron and C.J. Draper. And they’d have Helene Ainsley to thank, Carolyn thought.

Perhaps she hadn’t given Helene enough credit. The older woman possessed skills, valuable skills, she’d taken for granted. Perhaps Stewart recognized and appreciated those skills . . .

She watched Helene say a quick word to Stewart, and searched their faces carefully, but she saw nothing there to confirm what C.J. had said at Angelo’s. He must have read more into the comfortable friendship than really existed.

Her reaction couldn’t be described as relief, precisely— although she acknowledged to herself she had felt an instant of discomfort at the possibility that C.J. was right. That was natural. A romance between Stewart and Helene would change things; would change her view of them, certainly, because in her mind the two kinds of people she'd always thought they were would never have a romance. Everything would be more complicated, and the lack of complications was what she’d hoped to rediscover at Ashton. Here she knew who she was, and who everyone else was.

Her gaze slid to where C.J., as always, topped the heads of those around him. He’d come in late. His duties to the team came first, but this appearance, too, was a duty. She noticed the slight slump of his shoulders and the way his grin never really hit its stride.

Annoyance at the people demanding his attention tugged at her. Couldn’t they see he was tired?

“Bill Barrington, I was looking for you. What are you doing here off in the corner, chatting away with Professor Trent? Stewart said you’d be the very person to ask to help in setting up that trust for poor Armand Trettler’s widow.” Helene gripped the alumnus with one hand and Carolyn with the other and steered them smoothly across the room before either could draw a breath. She never stopped talking.

“You remember him, don’t you, Bill? He ran Milton Hall for almost fifty years. Of course you know him. He used to tell such tales about your undergraduate days. I think you must have been one of his favorites. Well, when he died this summer we discovered he didn’t leave any provision for his poor wife. We just didn’t know what to do until we came up with your name. I’m sure you can help Stewart.”

Helene slipped Bill Barrington in next to Stewart and headed toward the other group with Carolyn still in tow. “Excuse me, C.J., I hate to take you away, but you did say you’d give Carolyn a ride home.” In response to the disappointed murmuring from the others, Helene lied sweetly. “Poor Carolyn has an eight o’clock lecture in the morning.” In response to the stiffening of Carolyn’s arm, Helene simply tightened her grip warningly.

The women’s eyes met for a moment, and Carolyn saw Helene’s well-meant intent. Someone else had seen the signs of C.J.’s weariness.

Carolyn watched C.J. look from Helene’s innocent smile to her own disappearing frown. “Of course,” he said.

They drove the miles in easy silence. Pulling into the driveway at Carolyn’s place, he switched off the engine, pocketed the keys and let out a long, deep breath. His head dropped back to the headrest, and he hooked his elbows on either side of the top of the seat back.

“That was nice of Helene to give me an out back there.” With his eyes closed he spoke to the roof of the car. “Thanks for going along.”

“You’re welcome.” Somehow it didn’t surprise her that he’d seen through the maneuver. “You must be tired.” But she made no move to get out of the car.

He drew in another long breath and let it out with a soft curse. “I lost that game tonight, you know.” He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her.

“What do you mean?”

Lifting his head, he looked straight ahead. “I keep telling Manfred that he’s the one who has to make the split-second decisions on the floor. That he has to know the team as well as I do so he can be my brain out there, so he’s using
his
brain and not just following orders by rote. But when it came right down to it, I took the decision away from him.”

An image of the players huddled around C.J. during a time-out with twelve seconds left in the game and the other team up by two points came to Carolyn’s mind. She’d seen C.J. emphatically drawing on his clipboard. Ellis had looked at him for just an instant in surprise, then had nodded.

“I gave him a play and told him to run it.” Frustration added gravel to his drawl. “The guys ran it just the way I told them, and it was the wrong damn play. If I’d just let ’em go, they might’ve had a chance.”

He swore more vehemently. “When I played I could accept a loss, as long as I’d done my damnedest out there. But that’s not enough in coaching. I’m not just responsible to myself. I’m responsible to those players. When I make a mistake I cheat them. All of them.”

“Aren’t you being hard on yourself? What would you have said to them if they’d run a play that didn’t work? What would you have said to Ellis?”

“Thanks, Carolyn.” He faced her, and for a moment, she wondered if he would kiss her again. She didn’t have time to decide if she wanted him to before he turned away again. “But that’s not really the point. What kind of coach tells his players one thing, then does something else.”

It wasn’t a question, but she murmured an answer. “Human.”

“I tell them to use their minds so they’ll know how to make their own decisions. So they’ll know how to evaluate a situation in a split second and come up with the best way to handle it. That’s what coaching’s about.”

Carolyn understood. That was how she viewed teaching. It wasn’t teaching specific facts that gave her pleasure, but helping develop someone’s skills so he could learn on his own.

“That’s something Coach Gates and Coach Kenner sure as hell taught me. But first chance I get, I grab that decision right away from them. And Ellis just looks at me and says, ‘Okay, Coach.’ ” He looked away from her. “Some coach I am.”

A need to console him moved her hand to rest lightly just above his knee. “Why don’t you ask your players what kind of coach they think you are before you go condemning yourself?”

His eyes came back to her. Their warmth began to kindle to heat. His hand covered hers, moving it a little higher on his thigh and holding it here. The lean strength she’d seen that day in the gym stretched taut and hard under her fingers now.

She’d intended the gesture to comfort; it had turned into something different. For both of them.

Memories resurfaced—his muscular abdomen under the cropped sweatshirt that day in the gym, the feel of his hard chest under her hands as his lips tempted hers in Angelo’s parking lot. Not looking at him, she slid her hand slowly out from under his, forming an inadvertent caress. She looked anywhere but at him, searching for a distraction from thoughts she was trying not to have.

“You know, you were right,” he said.

She welcomed the change of subject, but his low words confused her. “Right about what?”

“That play. It was a foul. That guy hacked Ellis.”

Nonplussed, she stared at him. “You heard me? How could you hear me? Everybody was screaming at the same time.”

“What was it you called the ref? Jerk, wasn’t it?”

“How could you possibly hear me out of all those people?” she demanded.

“I seem to be tuned in to you.”

He’d been teasing at first. But he’d meant those last words. She knew it from the tone. And the intensity of his blue eyes. And the way his breathing changed.

Her own breathing skittered, sending a tingling through oxygen-starved veins. “I . .  I . . ” She couldn’t say anything as long as he looked at her that way. Turning away, she reached for the car door handle. “Thanks for the ride, C.J. Good night.” She escaped the car and him.

From her living room window she watched him drive away and wondered if the distinction between cautiousness and cowardice might really be a blurred line.

Chapter Six

The second-floor corridor in Ripon Hall was cool and quiet after the student newspaper office, where voices shouted, phones rang and computers whirred—all at top speed. The next issue wouldn’t be published for eight days, but with Thanksgiving three days away, not even the executive editor wanted to spend the weekend in the office.

Carolyn paused just outside the sturdy wooden door and enjoyed the peaceful contrast to the journalistic frenzy she’d left behind. A few steps down the dimly lit hall brought her almost to the stairwell.

Into the quiet came quick, sure footsteps on the stairs leading from the third floor. She glanced up and recognized C.J. smiling down at her. Her answering smile was spontaneous.

“See what I mean about being tuned in, Professor? I even find you in dark, deserted places like this.” He hesitated, but so briefly she might have missed it. Then his smile frosted into one of determination as he joined her on the landing. “No, I forgot. You don’t hold with that ‘tuned in’ idea, do you?”

Hold with it? How could she know when the idea of his being tuned in to her was scrambling her thoughts?

“What are you doing here, Professor?” he asked before she had any chance to consider either her own pleasure at seeing him or his abruptly changed mood.

“I dropped off an article on the seminar in England that the Gazette wanted to publish.”

Belatedly, his question pierced her confusion. Behind his neutrality she heard what amounted to a demand for an answer—to a question he had no right to ask.

Her good feelings toward him disappeared in a rush of indignation. She didn’t care one bit about talking to the media about the basketball team, but she wouldn’t be dictated to by anyone. If he wanted to pick a quarrel—and she could almost believe he intended just that—she wouldn’t deny him. “Why? What business is it of yours?”

“Since that’s what you were doing, it’s none of my business.” He slipped a hand under her elbow, apparently to indicate a return to friendliness. But the gesture didn’t mask his cool attitude.

She pulled away. “And if that wasn’t what I was doing here?” she asked with deceptive calm.

“If it wasn’t what you were doing here, I’d have to make sure you weren’t here to talk to the press—even the Ashton University
Gazette
—about my team without my permission. And direction.”

“Your team? Your direction? Your
permission
?” Icy indignation solidified around each word. Who did he think he was?

The man she’d eaten with at Angelo’s and glimpsed the other night in his car had vanished; in his stead stood an arrogant, tight-jawed jock.

He descended two steps before he seemed to realize she’d stopped for good. He turned and faced her, ascending one step to bring them nearly eye to eye, although he remained an inch or two above her. “Yes.”

“What right do you think you have—”

“I have the right of knowing what I’m talking about.” He overrode her without raising his voice. “Listen, Professor Trent, you’re into a world here that you know absolutely nothing about. You’re not going to run into your scholarly magazine types on the basketball beat.”

A short sound of impatience escaped him while she maintained a rigid silence.

“Not all the reporters are bad guys,” he said, “but even the ones who aren’t are looking for one thing—a story. If the media wants to talk to you about the guys, it’s to get a story about the team. Not because they’re students. Not because they’re good kids or not good kids. But because they’re basketball players. And that’s my world. That’s where I make the decisions. Not you. Understand?”