Hoops (3 page)

“Sorry, Professor. That’s basketball talk for a workaholic. Some guy who spends all of his time in the gym shooting hoops—that’s a gym rat.”

“Hoops?” she inquired coolly.

“Baskets, basketball,” he translated as he held a side door open for her at the Physical Education Center.

Carolyn noticed the return of the lopsided grin, and she regarded it with some suspicion.

But he gave her no time to investigate its meaning. He strode away down a dim, narrow hall that echoed faintly of voices, sneakers squeaking on hardwood and bouncing balls. She’d barely caught up when he turned into a doorway, then swung the door open for her to enter his tiny office.

The furniture was worn just short of disrepute. Patches rubbed nearly raw marred a leather couch pushed against one wall, but it stretched long enough for even C.J. Draper’s comfort. Green metal filing cabinets, dented and scratched but neatly labeled, marched across the back of the room. On the walls hung blackboards covered with x’s and o’s drawn in miniature basketball courts and lists of numbers and abbreviations she couldn’t decipher. A door to the left opened to Dolph Reems’s office. Through it she saw another door labeled simply Gym.

“Have a seat.” C.J. gestured toward the couch as he squatted down to search a bottom filing cabinet.

The room really wasn’t that small, Carolyn realized. It only appeared that way because of C.J. Draper’s long frame. Even crouched over the drawer he dominated the room. She caught herself staring at worn jeans stretched tightly over hard thighs and abruptly spun away, moving toward his desk.

She intently surveyed the stacks on top to block the memory of her previous view. The files, envelopes and VCR tapes were orderly; their owner would know where to find whatever he wanted.

Two photographs in frames stood apart from the clutter. One showed two women and a young boy with C.J.—a family group. The woman on his right must be his mother; they had a resemblance not so much of features but expression and posture. The boy, tall and gangly with adolescence, shared enough similarities to link him to both C.J. and the older woman.

The other woman was harder to classify. A wife? C.J. Draper wore no wedding ring. Was he the kind who would? Carolyn didn’t pause to consider her uncharacteristic observation of ringless hands. Maybe a sister or sister-in-law.

Absently she picked up the other frame. She instantly recognized C.J. in the brief uniform of professional basketball. He was lean and polished, the muscles and sinews of his arms and legs standing out in the instant after he’d released the ball that hung two inches beyond his fingers. A black man in the same uniform was poised to receive the pass, his powerful body bunched to go soaring to the basket above, a cocky smile already evident. Between them, a player in a different uniform stood, the realization of how he’d been duped just making an imprint on his face.

“Hard not to smile back at ol’ Rake, isn’t it?”

The words from over her shoulder jolted her into an uncomfortable realization: she was actually smiling. She started to put down the photograph but he intercepted her, taking it from her hand, their fingers not quite touching. She let out a breath.

He was so big. That was why she’d reacted that way, she decided. When someone a foot taller stood near your shoulder, close enough to stir your hair with his words, close enough to breathe in the clean scent of his soap, you had to be aware of him.

“That was my last game with the Tornadoes. Last game with anybody for more than a year.”

He moved to stand next to her. What had Stewart said about his pro career? A serious injury? So it must have been in that game. Yet he smiled warmly at the photograph and its memories. She had to admire his ability to remember the good things.

“Rake and I worked that play to perfection. Rake’s one of the greats. You must’ve heard of him—Rake Johnson. Just retired after last season... Well, maybe you wouldn’t have heard of him. Rake’d be devastated.”

He put down the picture and picked up the other. Casually he answered the questions she wouldn’t have asked. “This is my family. My mom, my sister Jan and my nephew Jason. They’re in Florida now.”

As he reached across her to replace the picture, his arm brushed hers and feathered the side of her breast. Resolutely she ignored the clamoring of her nerve endings. It was ridiculous to react to incidental contact, something that could just as easily happen in a crowded elevator.

She had to think of something else, so she focused on the picture C.J. had put down and wondered briefly about the missing father. Briefly was all the time she had to wonder because C.J. suddenly seemed in a hurry.

“You ready? I figure you’ll want to keep these in your office, so we might as well head over there.” He slid a stack of file folders under his arm and headed out the door.

Annoyance swamped her other feelings as she struggled to keep pace with his long strides, which turned their cross-campus route to her office into an endurance test. He was doing it on purpose, damn him. He was trying to unsettle her. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. In her office, she would control the discussion.

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Draper?” Carolyn asked as they entered her office. In her own territory she held an advantage. Right now she appreciated even the subtle edge gained by sitting in her big wooden desk chair, and leaving C.J. Draper in the chair a colleague said reminded him of applying for a bank loan. That was exactly how she wanted this man to feel.

But C.J. Draper didn’t sit down. He wandered the room with long strides, examining titles in the orderly bookshelves, twiddling the cord to the blinds, running a hand along her uncluttered desk. And bothering her.

No sense lying to herself. He’d shown a knack for disconcerting her from the moment he’d caught her staring at him in Stewart’s office. She suspected he’d been cultivating the knack ever since.

Steeling herself, she began to speak. She made her points, and he agreed. After the introductory meeting tomorrow, she’d begin scheduled meetings with the ten members of the Ashton varsity basketball team, as a group and individually. She’d be given access to all material on their academic backgrounds and progress. She would serve as liaison with individual professors if that need arose. She would have the right to declare a player academically ineligible, with the time period subject to Stewart’s final approval.

C.J.’s only contribution was the stipulation that any questions from the media be directed to him. She had no trouble agreeing to that.

She raised one eyebrow when she counted out only nine folders. After checking them, he said he must have missed Frank Gordon’s, and he’d send it to her. There was one final area to clarify. Now she’d find out what he really had in mind. “Mr. Draper, why did you request an academic adviser?”

Deliberately she let her challenge speak louder than the question, and it stilled him. He turned from looking out the window and flipped the blinds closed. “I don’t have anything against academics.” She accepted that with a slight nod; that was what Stewart said of him. “Not like you have against basketball,” he added. Then his usual drawl became less pronounced. “I’ve been meaning to ask, Professor Trent, just what do you have against basketball? Or is it me?”

At the last words, she looked up and saw anger in his eyes . . . and some other element behind it. “I have nothing against basketball, Mr. Draper. When the team played under Dolph Reems at the lower level of competition, I had no objection at all—”

“Gracious of you,” he murmured.

She ignored him. “What I do object to is Ashton becoming one of those schools where academic standards are subordinated to the athletic program.”

“And that’s where I come in?”

She let her silence answer.

“What makes you think I’d do that?”

“Are you an ambitious man, Mr. Draper?”

“Yes.” The flat neutrality of the word carried more weight than passion would have.

“Your ambition, I’m certain, extends beyond Ashton. So this is only a stepping-stone to you. Somewhere to win at all costs, make a name for yourself and move on. How many schools has that happened to? How many schools are better known for athletic scandals than academic achievement? I won’t have that happen to Ashton, Mr. Draper.”

“So you want to get rid of this program—and me—at any cost? Without giving it a chance, without giving me—” He broke off abruptly. He seemed to sweep all emotion away except an amusement that gently mocked them both. “Maybe that’s why I asked for an academic adviser.

The drawl had returned. She could almost imagine it had never lapsed.

“Maybe I figure the best way to keep the academic community happy is to let one of their own right inside where she could keep us in line. Like one of those treaty inspectors who get in there to make sure the Russians really are destroying their missiles.” He moved slowly to the door. “Maybe that’s the way I figured it. Maybe...” He touched the doorknob, but made no move to turn it as his gaze took in her office once more.

“Mr. Draper.
Mr. Draper
,” she repeated with emphasis to reclaim his wandering attention. “Is there something wrong with my office? I have the impression you don’t approve.”

She meant him to be nonplussed. This time she wouldn’t be the one off balance.

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t approve, exactly.” He seemed willing to clarify his thoughts, if only he were sure of them himself. “It’s just, it’s so...” He shrugged. Whatever anger he’d felt before seemed gone.

He swung the door open and crossed the threshold into the hall before producing a resounding snap of his fingers. It took only one long stride to bring him back into the office and half a second to close the door behind him.

“Monochromatic. That’s the word I wanted. Your office is monochromatic. I bet you thought I wouldn’t know a word like that, didn’t you, Professor? Nothing more complicated in this head than pick-and-roll, right?”

She couldn’t have said, since she had no idea what pick-and-roll meant, but he seemed to have followed the drift of her thoughts.

“Monochromatic. That’s just what your office is.” He looked around with seeming satisfaction, then down at her again. “Just like you.”

“Like me?” The words were out before she could stop them.

“Uh-huh.” He leaned over her desk and gently lifted a lock of her hair across two fingers. “Your hair’s the exact same color as your eyes. And that outfit’s nearly the same color again. Monochromatic.”

She twisted away from his hand, and he let the hair slip across his fingertips.

“It’s a nice enough color,” he continued, his eyes on the lock of hair, swinging along the side of her neck. “But you know what they say about too much of a good thing. You ought to wear colors. Red. Green. Blue. Let ’em see you, instead of blending in.”

“Mr. Draper—” His gaze lifted from her throat to her lips, then to her eyes, and Carolyn suddenly couldn’t remember the stinging rebuke she’d intended to deliver.

“I know. I shouldn’t say things like that, Professor. I just got so caught up with everything about you being the same color—what do you call that color, anyway?”

“Mr. Draper—” she tried again, but this time his words instead of his eyes stopped her.

“Now don’t tell me it’s brown, because dead leaves are brown, and that’s not it. No, I’ll bet all those European men have been telling you all sorts of things. You know, I lived in Italy a couple of years, and I know some of the things they’re likely to say.” The sparkle in his blue eyes contradicted the earnestness of his tone. “I’ll bet they’ve been calling it polished oak, or old brandy, or fine leather. And they’d all come close, but none of  ’em is quite right.” He studied her closely, his head slightly tilted.

She pulled in a breath to stop this silliness, but he was off again, opening the door wide before turning. “Nope, I just don’t have it. But I’ll come up with it, Professor. And when I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

* * * *

Carolyn stopped outside her front door and turned to look back. Her apartment occupied the second floor of a forty-year-old house that sat on a rise above the campus. The small covered porch at the top of the exterior stairway provided a wonderful view of the university, a view shared by the living room and bedroom. That was why she had chosen the apartment.

She could clearly see the rectangular Meadow. Three sides of it were enclosed by the Administration Building, the original classroom building and the chapel. The fourth side sloped away to Lake Ashton, which glinted in late-afternoon sun. Beyond this core, the campus expanded in concentric rings of buildings, each ring older than the larger one beyond it.

Despite the university’s growth, huge trees and large, open areas remained. The grass had faded, but the trees displayed their pre-winter bravura of color. Yellows skittered away down pathways and roads, while the oranges and reds would time their flaming peak perfectly for Homecoming.

She needed no such dramatics to make her own homecoming pleasant, Carolyn thought as she stepped inside. No signs of disorder betrayed her return from a five-month trip. She’d unpacked immediately. Clothes had gone back to their accustomed spots. Presents waited on the dining table to be distributed to friends. Only books presented a problem.

She eyed the shelves that covered one wall of the living room and dining area, interrupted by the generously cushioned couch and the door to her bedroom. More shelves lined a tiny bedroom office she’d created from a walk-in closet. All the shelves were full. She’d have to juggle her collection to accommodate her European purchases, with the spillover going to her campus office.

Carolyn arranged her suit jacket on a padded hanger in the closet across from the front door. With a steadying hand on the small table next to the door, she slipped her shoes off, then padded across the soft nap of the buff carpeting.

The beige cotton-covered couch, matched by two overstuffed chairs facing it across a bleached pine coffee table, tempted her. What luxury to curl up and enjoy the panorama of Ashton through the picture window. But she should change first.