Hoops (16 page)

“Thank you for the dance, Professor Trent,” Brad said, and bowed from the waist as if they’d just completed a waltz at an inaugural ball. Then he winked and headed toward a group of young women off to one side.

She danced with each of the players. Frank tried to refuse, but she wouldn’t let him. And she felt a vicarious pleasure when she saw him dancing later with a pretty brown-haired girl who smiled all the way up at him.

She moved to music that shifted from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to more recent songs she vaguely recognized. She danced with Rake. She even danced with Dolph.

But not with C.J.

She noticed him talking to a woman in a sleek royal blue dress with no more front to it than Carolyn’s teal dress had a back, then spotted them once on the dance floor. She wouldn’t admit to herself that she looked for him or that she wished she’d changed from the soft blue sweater and dark slacks that had seemed so practical for attending a basketball game. But she’d lost track of him until, as the band began the old Beatles’ ballad “And I Love Her,” C.J.’s arm slid around her waist.

They danced without talking. Their movements meshed. Odd, she marveled dreamily. He was so tall that she’d have expected having their arms around each other could prove awkward. Although when they had danced at Homecoming and that night he’d held her in Ripon Hall . . .

Hurriedly she pushed aside the memory, only to have a question of how they might fit together in an even more intimate embrace come whispering into her mind, and be promptly shouted down.

The dance finally quieted the chatter of her thoughts until she felt only the music, movement and C.J. He circled her out of the middle of the floor through a maze of tables and chairs. As the first pulses of the next song’s driving beat overtook the last fading notes, he led them in one last circle that carried them into an alcove not quite shut off from the room.

“Whew, I haven’t been able to get anywhere near you tonight,” he teased.

“Perhaps you were too preoccupied to give it much effort.”

He quirked one eyebrow but gave no other indication of recognizing the trace of tartness. She gave a little sigh of relief to have it ignored.

In the shadows she couldn’t be certain if she imagined the intensity in his eyes. He pushed a strand of hair behind her shoulder with a casual touch. Standing so close, she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. He seemed to take up all the oxygen.

“For somebody who doesn’t like to party, you’re doing pretty well for yourself, Professor. Dancing with all the guys. The belle of the ball.”

She leaned back against the arm still encircling her waist to laugh up into his face. “Perhaps I’m just finding out I do like to party. Perhaps I should thank you for showing me that,” she tossed back.

“Maybe you should.” He challenged her with a grin.

“I will!” She felt giddy with the thrill of the game, her body’s movement to the beat of the music and, yes, the sensation of his arm around her. She stretched up to kiss one lean cheek. “So I thank you, Mr. Draper.” She kissed his other cheek.

For a moment he remained perfectly still. Then he said, “And maybe I should tell you more things about yourself, if that’s the reward I’m going to get.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?” she asked in challenge.

He slipped his free hand under her chin. “Like you’re afraid if you’re not serious all the time, then everyone’ll find out you’re just like everybody else—still wondering when you’re going to grow up inside.”

He’d changed the rules of the game. She tried to back away, but he held her firmly. “And if they do,” he continued, “you’re afraid nobody would ever treat you seriously again. Right, Professor?” His eyes narrowed and his fingers on her chin tightened. “And you’re afraid that if they knew you felt like a woman sometimes, they wouldn’t respect the professor anymore, so you hide the woman.” She pulled her chin free, but his grip on her waist kept her wedged between his body and the wall. “And you want to know something else?”

She lifted her chin and arched one eyebrow at him. But the belated attempt at defiance was halfhearted. She didn’t really want to fight him anymore.

Rake’s deep voice suddenly boomed into the enclosed space. “Hey! What’s this? C.J., what are you doin’, man? You tell me I gotta keep everything like the Boy Scouts and then you go off in the corner with the professor? Nothin’ doin’, man. No way.”

She welcomed the interruption, despite a stubborn inner voice that labeled it an intrusion.

“You want to know something else?” C.J. huskily repeated as Rake tugged them back into the swirl of dancers. C.J.’s arm tightened around her waist, pulling her up against him long enough for her body to respond to his hardness.

A rush of heat swept into her. She looked away. “No,” she answered in a small voice.

In the moment before the movement of the dance pulled them apart, he spoke directly into her ear. “Okay, Carolyn. No more truths.” His words sounded as intimate as a whisper amid the din of the music. “For now.”

* * * *

C.J. jogged across Michigan Avenue ahead of the early Sunday afternoon traffic, then realized Carolyn, Dolph and the players remained on the other side, waiting for the traffic light.

Glumly he stared at one of the lions guarding the Art Institute entrance while he waited, and reviewed the incremental crumbling of his resolutions to stay away from Carolyn.

He hadn’t been able to stay away from her completely, so he’d vowed to limit their meetings. When he’d encouraged happenstances that brought them together, he’d promised himself he’d act distant. He might hold her in his arms, but he wouldn’t sweep her off to a tower somewhere with a locked door that never let the world in.

He swore under his breath.

The big red bow around the lion’s neck suited the season but not its solemn expression. Nor his own mood, C.J. thought. Everything he’d told her last night was true. But he’d been out of line. Her peck on his cheek had pushed him too far—he wanted a hell of a lot more than that.

The light turned, and Carolyn and the others started across the wide avenue. Just watching her walk toward him . . . He couldn’t take this much more. He could work his tail off, he could be patient as hell for something he had a chance for, but this . . . He’d better accept reality or he’d go nuts: whether or not fire existed behind that marble mask, she sure as hell didn’t want him to play the part of Pygmalion bringing Galatea to life.

At least she seemed willing to have peace between them, maybe friendship. Take what you’ve got, Draper. Quit trying for too much.

* * * *

Carolyn listened with surface attention to the guide tell the team of the Art Institute’s collections. She carefully kept her eyes straight ahead or to her left. C.J. stood to her right. Trailing the guide, the group filed into a gallery filled with Rembrandts.

Of all the irritating stunts C.J. Draper had pulled, she decided that making outrageous statements, then pretending he’d said nothing out of the ordinary, topped the list. She wanted to tell him, with remote dignity and words she’d practiced long into the night, that he was entirely mistaken in his interpretation of her. But how could she when he acted casually polite this morning, as if nothing had happened?

Through connecting galleries they walked past portraits of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English ladies and gentlemen.

She couldn’t bring the subject up without making a big deal of it. He’d left her no choice. And she wanted to throttle him.

The idea of taking all six foot six of C.J. Draper and shaking him until that grin disappeared for good brought a glint to her eyes. The man had purposely plagued her since the first moment they’d met.

The guide brought them into the gallery that held
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte
by Seurat and immediately gathered the full attention of all but two of her audience.

All right, Carolyn acknowledged as the players first moved in close to scrutinize the tiny dots of paint, then backed up to see how, together, they formed a whole, he could be charming. And he seemed a good friend to Stewart. He certainly cared about the players. Also, he’d helped when a friend most desperately needed help. Maybe all those things Rake had said about him were true.

After an introduction to the Art Institute’s collection of Impressionists, the guide said they were welcome to look around on their own. She’d remain available for questions, she added with a smile at the attractive young men surrounding her. Carolyn drifted toward the Monets and Van Goghs, her thoughts still working. Whatever his good points, C.J. Draper was the most irritating individual she’d met in her twenty-eight years. She’d led an ordered, planned existence. Before she made changes she considered them carefully. Like Monet’s studies in the altered light of different seasons, the changes were subtle, gradual. Not radical.

She’d known her goal and how she’d get there from the time she was a child. C.J. Draper wouldn’t change that. Eventually he’d get the message that the outrageous things he said and did had no impact on her.

All right, they had some impact on her. But she wouldn’t let them affect her. Not really.

Her gaze moved to a bright sea view by Monet—
Cliffwalk: Pourville, 1882.
Two women stood on the cliffs looking toward the sailboat-studded ocean and a fleet of white clouds. The blue of the sky tugged at Carolyn’s attention. It was the blue she’d seen in a canvas sky over a field of bright tulips in Paris. Monet blue.

“That’s nice,” C.J. murmured from just behind her.

She turned to look into his equally blue eyes with a sense of inevitability.

No more truths, he’d said. Then why did he look at her that way? Why did she look back?

It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything.

* * * *

Beyond its own mechanical hum, the bus was quiet. Carolyn stared out the frost-patterned window at black night air so cold it seemed it would shatter. Inside it was warm. Everyone seemed to be asleep except her and the driver.

The team had filed on the bus after the game, subdued but not down. They’d lost. But they weren’t beaten. They could hold their heads up, knowing they’d given the number three team in the country a close game. They’d contained the other team’s star. He’d scored only fourteen points, and he was good. Perhaps the next Rake Johnson.

Earlier Rake had given her a kiss on the cheek and a big hug, which he’d used as a cover to whisper. “Take care of him.”

Carolyn had pretended she hadn’t heard. Taking care of C.J. Draper—if, in fact, he needed taking care of—formed no part in her plans for the future, immediate or otherwise.

As if her thoughts had stirred him awake, C.J. rose from a few seats in front of her. He seemed a little stiff. Slowly he walked down the narrow aisle quietly checking on everyone. Carolyn wondered if moving helped ease his knee.

He came back up the aisle and sank down next to her.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked softly.

“Didn’t try.”

“I tried, but I couldn’t. Too much to think about.” Carolyn glanced up at him quickly. But before she could respond, he went on.

“This coaching is hell on the nervous system, you know. Don’t sleep when we lose—too depressed. Don’t sleep when we win—too excited.”

“Same thing for eating?”

He met her eyes, and she saw surprise in his. Then, as the look held, she saw more. A hundred reactions and emotions, like the dots of Seurat’s art. But she couldn’t make out the whole. Sitting so close like this in the bus, she couldn’t get far away enough to see the pattern. Maybe she didn’t want to get far away.

“You didn’t do justice to Rake’s chicken and rice, or the steak at the hotel last night,” she explained. Did he think she was prying? Is that why he turned away so abruptly?

“I didn’t want to tell you before,” he answered with a lazy drawl that reassured her, “but I remember some brownies Rake used to bake back when he was living wild, and I wanted to see what that chicken and rice did to you before I dug in.”

Carolyn smothered her laughter before it woke the others, but it left a comfortable afterglow in the silence. She was totally aware of where his shoulder and knee touched hers, and felt no need to change it. It felt good, solid and dependable, like his slow voice.

“When do you leave for your grandparents’?” he asked. “Indiana, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Indiana. Tomorrow. How about you? What are you doing for the holidays?” It seemed intimate and cozy somehow, talking softly in the quiet bus.

“I’ll go down to Florida in a couple of days.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “An Indiana farm sounds a lot more like Christmas than a Florida rambler, but it’s not Christmas without family, is it?” He paused, then added, “You’d like Mom, and she’d like you.”

Such casual words. Polite, really, but they settled a warmth around her that was totally unexpected.

“I’ll spend a few days with them, then tournaments start again on the twenty-seventh. There are a couple I want to hit. Do some scouting, make some connections...” His voice drifted off as his mind seemed to shift to another track. “Watching the guys play tonight, for the first time, I thought maybe this team could be something. Not just respectable, but a good basketball team.”

Just above a whisper, his voice still vibrated with energy. “That loss did more for this team than any damn practice I ever held.” He turned to her. “I saw a team tonight. Not just a group of individuals, but a team. They thought like a unit and played like a unit.” He grinned in light mockery at himself. “I never thought I’d be so happy with a loss.”

“ ‘There are some defeats more triumphant than victories,’ ” she quoted softly. “A sixteenth-century French essayist named Michel de Montaigne said that.”

His self-mockery deepened. “Yeah? Well, Michel must have known his basketball.”

He shifted a little to straighten his left leg into the aisle, and his arm, hip and thigh came into firmer contact with her. Lost in languorous content, she didn’t move away.

“When I first came to Ashton,” he said, “I thought if I could just make the team respectable, I’d have really accomplished something. But now... well, there’s something to be said for having players with brains. Those guys don’t have a lot of talent, most of them, but they make the most of what they’ve got. They could be the base for some really good teams. Add a little more raw physical ability and Ashton could be one of the premier teams at a tournament like this one instead of the cannon fodder they thought we’d be.”