Impulsive (11 page)

"That, or they'll come to resent you for interfering in what
they consider their male domain," Tom warned. "Crumrine, at least, is
not going to like it one bit. Come to think of it, neither is your mother. Have
you told her about it yet?"

Jess wrinkled her nose at the thought of the phone conversation
she'd had with her mother the previous evening. "Yes. I figured I'd better
do it before you did, or before the news leaked out by some other means. She
had a hissy fit at first. Her baby daughter, working around all those sweaty,
spit-and-curse men! As if I were still sixteen and she had to protect my
virtue, for heaven's sake!"

"She worries about you, Jessie. So do I."

Jess grinned at him. "That's why I told her good old Tommy
was right there to watch out for me and see that I didn't come to any harm.
Then I reminded her that being surrounded by all these men might be a blessing
in disguise, if she's still holding out hopes of me getting married and
providing her with grandchildren one day. It does better my odds, considering
I'm such an odd duck, after all, and can't afford to be too picky."

Tom shook his head in mock dismay. "Jessie, Jessie. What are
we going to do with you, girl? Oh, well, I hope you sent your mother greetings
from me. Are you going to be seeing her soon? If she's coming to Columbus in
the near future, I'd love to take you both out to lunch."

"I wouldn't count on it. She's awfully busy right now,
getting Halloween and holiday molds set up for the fall circuit of craft
shows."

"Still tinkering with those ceramics, is she?" Tom
commented. "What about that husband of hers? Can't he support her
properly, so she doesn't have to mess with it?"

"Now, Tommy. You know she loves John dearly, and he earns
darned good money. Mom just likes puttering around with her ceramics. She's
even bought a pottery wheel, and is turning out bowls and vases of her own
design now. It's very creative and satisfying for her."

"I suppose she needs a hobby, an outlet of her own," Tom
conceded, not too graciously. "Living with a shrink could drive a person
nuts, otherwise. What is it with Claudia, anyway? Married first to a dentist
and now to a psychiatrist?"

"Guess she has a 'thing' for doctors who work on some part of
the head," Jess commented lamely.

Jess was well aware of the crush Tom had had on her mother for
years. Honoring Claudia's bereavement and the memory of his best friend, he'd
waited a year after Mike Myers' death, and then proposed to her. But Claudia
had declined the bank executive's offer of marriage, telling him that she did,
indeed, love him, but only as a dear friend, not in any passionate way.

Tom had pursued Claudia for the next seven years, trying to change
her mind, but to no avail. Six months after Claudia had married John Derry, Tom
wed another widow. Anita was bright, funny, outgoing, a thoroughly wonderful
lady. Jess adored her, and so did Tom. It seemed a match made in heaven, and
for a while, he and Anita had been very happy. Then, a year and a half ago,
Anita had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Much to everyone's heartbreak, she'd
been rapidly declining ever since.

"How's Anita doing?" Jess asked now. "I've been
meaning to stop by and visit with her, but I don't want to intrude at an
inopportune time."

Tom gave a sad sigh. "She has her good spells and her bad,
but the bad seem to be winning out more often. That's why we've hired a
full-time companion for her, though there will come a day when we'll have to
place her in a nursing home, I suppose. It's so damned pathetic, and confusing
as hell. Some days she doesn't seem to know her own name. Then, she'll
turn
around and relate verbatim a conversation that took place years ago. You know
how she loves her music, playing her piano?"

Jess nodded.

Tom went on. "She could play anything, from pop to Bach. Now
there are times she can't play chopsticks, let alone Chopin."

Jess walked over and gave him a huge hug. "I'm sorry, Tommy.
I'm so sorry."

"So am I, honey-girl. So am I."

Alan Crumrine did not welcome his new kicking tutor with open
arms. Overall, he was sullen, sulky, and uncooperative, projecting a typically
superior male attitude, despite the fact that his "teacher" was more
skilled than he. After two days of this, Jess was done with being nice. She
walked up to him, faced him squarely, nose-to-nose, and laid it on the line.

"Look, Crumrine, I've had it with you. Either you want to
better your kicking ability, or you don't. If you do, then I'm the person to
help you. If not, you're more stupid than you look, because your teammates are
sick and tired of having you lose games for them. They're busting their butts
out there, and you're dragging them down. For my money, the next butt stomped
into the mud is likely to be yours, and frankly I wouldn't blame them one bit.
Now, are you willing to take on half a dozen hefty guards and linebackers and
come out looking like a crash victim? Or are you ready to buckle down and learn
something that just might save your hide from a royal beating? Think about it.
It's your health, buddy."

Prudently, Alan decided to at least give Jess the benefit of the
doubt. They set to work, both skeptical of the results.

Every day, Jess arrived dressed in ragged denim cut-offs or
running
shorts, an old-but-clean T-shirt, socks, soccer shoes, and wearing her short
ponytail tucked through the slot at the back of her favorite red baseball cap.
Not exactly stylish. In fact, with his semilong brown hair sticking out of his
cap in a like fashion and their similar height, from a distance she and Alan
probably looked like twins. But her old clothes served the purpose, and her hat
was definitely one of a kind. On the front of it, in big white block letters,
was the word "WAGARA."

Like Ty, Alan was curious to know what it meant. Jess told him
that the day he made ten field goals in a row, she'd let him in on the secret,
on the condition he didn't tell Ty. In the meantime, he was free to try and
guess.

Upon spying Jess's cap, Ty renewed his own efforts to uncover its
meaning. It became a ritual between them that each day began with Ty making a
new, and usually outrageous, suggestion as to what the letters represented.

"I've got it. Women And Girls, American Revolutionary
Activists."

Jess shook her head and laughed. "Pitiful attempt, James.
Really pitiful. Keep trying." Her attention then returned to her
recalcitrant pupil. "You, too, Crumrine. I know you can do better than
that."

She drilled the kicker hard, giving him plenty of praise when he
did well, but no slack when she felt he wasn't applying himself. She pushed
herself equally as hard. This kid was going to learn if it killed them both!

Jess taught him her warm-up exercises, which meant the pair of
them took a lot of flack from the other guys on the team. At least at
first—until Danvers decided they could all benefit from more dexterity. Soon
the entire team, Ty included, was on the field at the beginning of each
practice, prancing around like a bunch of burly, bilious munchkins. It was a
sight to behold!

When it came to the mechanics of Alan's kicking, Jess found that
he had a tendency to kick to the right. To compensate, the ball was angled to
the left, which seemed to do the trick for the time being. Eventually, Jess
hoped that Alan would be able
to straighten it out,
because his holder wouldn't always have time to tilt the ball.

Other problems were dealt with differently, and Jess wasn't always
congenial when Alan failed to heed her advice. "How many times do I have
to tell you? If you hit the ball too high, it's going to roll. You've got to
get your toes under it. Now do it again, correctly this time!"

And—"Alan, you're not following through with your kick like I
showed you. You've got to follow through or the ball is not going to have the
proper momentum."

Or—"You're wasting valuable seconds, not to mention energy,
by pulling your foot back so far before swinging it forward for the kick. Your
opponents are going to have you flat on your back before you know what hit
you." She demonstrated, for the thousandth time, the proper method.
"Snap, place, step, kick. One, two, three, kick. Got that? Now you do it.
Get some rhythm going."

"I'm a kicker, not a dancer," Alan complained.

She'd only worked with Alan for five days, two since he'd begun to
cooperate, when the team headed to Indianapolis for their final preseason game
against the Colts. Alan had improved minimally, and Jess wasn't holding out
much hope as yet. However, as his new coach, she more or less had to go along,
if only to bolster his morale and lend last-minute advice. Additionally, she
would gather more material for her article, and would have a free front-row
seat on the team bench. All in all, she figured it was a pretty good deal.

Rather than fly such a short distance, the team manager had rented
buses for the drive to Indianapolis. Some of the guys opted to go in their own
cars, as did Ty. His ex-wife and son lived there, and he intended to spend some
extra time with the child. Everyone naturally assumed Jess would be traveling
with Ty. Not that she minded. She hadn't been looking forward to
a
cramped three-hour bus ride, listening to off-color jokes and off-key singing.
Nor had she wanted to drive the distance herself, or get stuck riding with the
cheerleading squad.

To accommodate Ty's desire to spend as much of the weekend with
his son as possible, he and Jess were driving over on Saturday, hours ahead of
most of the team. When Ty stopped by early that morning, Jess was set to go,
her bag packed and stowed in the trunk of his car, which she was still driving
as per their wager.

She answered the door to find Ty decked out in well-worn jeans and
a cobalt blue shirt, a color that made his intriguing indigo eyes seem all the
more mesmerizing. Perhaps that was why the lyrics of an old song popped
immediately into her mind, and why a fiery tongue of desire skipped up her
spine at the mere sight of him. Yes, the handsome devil knocking at her door
did, indeed, have blue eyes and blue jeans! Not to mention shaggy sun-blond
hair that simply begged a woman to run her fingers through it. Now, if he
started whispering sweet nothings, she was going to flip out!

"Ready?" he asked. "I'm really looking forward to
this. Something tells me we're going to have a devil of a good time this
weekend."

At his words, Jess's eyes went wide and her mouth dry. His
phrasing was close enough to the lyrics in that song, that it was downright
eerie! As if he'd read her mind, or somehow had the very same tune running
through his brain. She shook her head. No, that was impossible—wasn't it? If
not, she was a goner for sure, because this man was tempting enough, without
their subconscious minds trying to get in on the act and weaken her already
flagging resistance to him. He was Seduction with a capital
S,
or to
coin another expression, "to-die-for," and Jess knew she was
teetering on the edge of disaster, one step away from falling for him like the
proverbial rock.

"Hey! Are you okay?" he questioned with concern.
"You look a little pale, like you've seen a ghost or something."

"Or something," she murmured, trying to get her senses
back under control before she made an absolute fool of herself. "It's
nothing, really," she assured him. "Let's get going."

Ty held out his hand for his keys. "I'll drive, if you don't
mind, especially since we're taking my car."

She turned the keys over to him. "Okay, but you owe me an
extra two days to make up the difference."

He chuckled. "Oh, so you like my gas-hog after all,
huh?"

"As long as you're footing the fuel bill, I do."

"Do you want to go for broke and put the top down?" he
suggested. "Or are you afraid of getting your hair all messed up?"

They arrived in Indianapolis too early to check into their hotel.
The rooms reserved for the team would not be free and cleaned until
mid-afternoon. Instead, Ty drove directly to his ex-wife's house, to pick up
his son.

"Josh is going to love meeting you," he predicted.
"His school doesn't have a football team for his age group, but they do
have a soccer team." Here, he shrugged. "Guess they think the kids
are less likely to get hurt. Anyway, he'll be starting kindergarten in a few
days and is considering joining the soccer team if his chicken-livered mom will
let him. If you could give him a few pointers, sort of give him a leg up on the
other players, you'll be his friend for life."

"I'd be glad to, but I wouldn't want to encourage him at something
his mother is dead set against, either."

Ty gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Oh, she'll come around in
the end. Josh can talk anybody into just about anything. Barb's just not very
sports oriented, that's all."