Impulsive (23 page)

"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!" Maggie declared.
"Turn around. Let me get a closer look." She inspected Jess's hairdo
with a critical eye, then announced, "He did a right decent job of it, if
I do say so myself."

"Thanks to you, and spending so much time in your shop, so he
claims," Jess told her.

Maggie beamed. "I always hoped one of my offspring would
inherit my talent, but God knows I never thought it would be Ty," she
quipped with a chuckle. "Wes is going to have a bloomin' fit! His son, the
quarterback accountant hairdresser!"

By the time their visit came to an end, everyone was on a
first-name basis, and Jess felt as if she'd been adopted into the family. She
felt so comfortable and welcome with them, she actually hated to leave.

"You bring Jess back real soon, Ty," Maggie told her son
as they packed their bags in the car. "And don't stay away so long
yourself."

"I will, Mom," he promised. "Maybe for
Thanksgiving."

"Don't forget our date, Jess," Wes reminded jokingly.
"Come February, I'll give you that tour of the mortuary."

Memphis was a disaster from beginning to end. After spending the
weekend in separate bedrooms at Ty's parents, Jess now found herself sharing
quarters with the cheerleaders again, while Ty roomed with Gabe. Which might
not have been so bad if Bambi hadn't been one of Jess's roommates this time
around.

"We alternate now and then," Pepper explained.
"This week, we've got Bambi and Shasta, while Destiny and Jazz are bunking
in with Starr and Heidi. Eventually, you'll
get
Tawna, Desiree, and Candy as roomies, or some combination thereof."

Shasta's given name was Daisy, which she deplored, so she'd taken
a variety of the flower and adopted it, instead. "Daisy was my
great-grandmother's name, and I've always hated it," Shasta said.
"It's so old-fashioned sounding. Maybe when I'm eighty, I won't mind, but
for right now I'd rather be Shasta, even if some people do think I got it from
a soft drink."

Shasta was one of the younger members of the cheerleading squad,
having never cheered for a pro team before, as some of the other girls had.
Fresh out of high school, she hadn't set her sights on any other occupation as
yet. This was Shasta's way to save money for her college tuition while she
decided what she wanted to study when she got there. Destiny, on the other
hand, was saving to open a boutique of her own someday, and Jazz wanted to
start her own dance studio when her days as a cheerleader were done. Pepper,
the squad leader, was already certified as a dental hygienist, and was merely
biding her time until her dental student fiancé got his doctorate degree and
the two of them set up shop together.

Jess found it quite enlightening that many of the girls did not
intend for this to be their ultimate career. Mistakenly, she'd been under the
impression that they were all fairly well stuck on themselves and out to bag a
wealthy hubby, be it a football star or otherwise. Not that she was completely
off-base in her prejudicial thinking. Case in point—Bambi, who made no bones
about admitting that she was angling for a man who could keep her in the high
style she felt she deserved, and to which she would like to become lazily
accustomed. Just now, with no one better or richer on the horizon, she had her
sights set on Ty. It mattered little to her that he was currently unavailable.

"You won't hold his interest for long," she informed
Jess in a snide, superior tone. "He's only dating you to get some good
press, and to make me jealous. But any day now he's going to see that you're
nothing but bad news—the way you were for poor old Ervin. Then you'll be
history and he'll be mine. So go ahead, change your hair, get a nose job,
spruce yourself up all you want. You'll only be wasting your money."

"Now, Bambi, be nice," Pepper told her, "or I'll be
forced to tell Jess your real name, so she can use it in her article and reveal
it to the whole world."

Bambi wheeled on Pepper. "You don't even know it," she
sneered.

Pepper's grin was wicked. "Want to bet? Remember Seattle, at
the beginning of the season? Who answered the phone when your mother called the
hotel room looking for you? She sure didn't ask for Bambi, I guarantee
you."

"Ha! You're bluffing. Just a big bag of hot air!"

"Keep pushing me, and you're bound to regret it," Pepper
warned.

"Oh, you think you're such hot stuff!" Bambi declared.
"Just because you're the squad leader, when everyone knows you only got
the position by sucking up to the coaches. Tell me, Pep. Did you have to screw
them all, or just a few of them?"

If looks could kill, Pepper's would have. "Actually, I didn't
have to do anything with any of them... Bernice."

"Bernice?" Jess and Shasta echoed the word as one.

"That's as bad as Daisy," Shasta added, wrinkling her
nose.

"Pepper! You're going to pay for this!" Bambi exclaimed
angrily. "I don't know how or when, but you'll pay!"

"Yeah, I'm shaking in my shoes."

In turn, Bambi shook a threatening finger at Jess. "If you
dare disclose that name to anyone, I'll sue you for every penny you have."

A while later, Jess retold the tale to Ty. "That woman really
despises me, Ty. I have a feeling I'll be sleeping with one eye open tonight,
if I sleep at all."

"Waiting for her to creep up on you and try to smother you
with
a pillow?" he joked. "You could always room in with Gabe and me, I
suppose. Of course, we'd have to blindfold him, stuff cotton in his ears, and
tie him to his bed."

As it turned out, even that rumor would have been preferable to
the one Bambi began circulating the next morning. For some reason, Shasta had
chosen to switch bedrooms and bunk in with three of the other girls, leaving
Bambi, Jess, and Pepper to themselves. Now, Jess wondered if Bambi had talked
Shasta into it, and if it had all been a part of Bambi's scheme to get back at
her and Pepper, without another witness to refute her claim.

Jazz was the first to approach them with the news early the next
day. "Good God!" she exclaimed to Jess and Pepper, as she burst into
their room. "What did you do to set Bambi off? She's running around
telling everyone with ears that you're a couple of lesbians!"

"What!" Jess was aghast.

"Why, that lying-ass bitch! I suppose this is what she meant
about paying me back for blabbing her real name," Pepper railed. "And
everyone already knows she hates Jess's guts."

"Whatever," Jazz said. "She's really making an
Oscar-winning act of it, too. She claims she woke up in the night, looked over,
and saw you two making love in the next bed. According to her, she was so
disgusted she ran for the bathroom, locked herself in, and vomited."

Jess groaned. "I can't believe this! It's too outrageous! But
I'll bet there are plenty of other people who will. Damn that witch,
anyway!" Then, as the thought occurred to her, "Oh, Lord! I've got to
talk to Ty before anyone else does!"

Jess all but flew through the halls to reach Ty's room. He and
Gabe were just stepping into the hall as she rounded the
corner.
In the process of pulling the door shut, Ty turned toward her.

Jess skidded breathlessly to a stop a few feet shy of him, her
heart thudding triple time as she saw the anger reflected on his face. The
question loomed in her mind—was his wrath directed at her or at Bambi? She
stood silently—watching, hoping, praying. Then Ty held his arms out to her,
open wide, and Jess rushed into his welcoming embrace.

"Oh, Ty! It's not true! Please, believe me!"

He hugged her tightly. "Sweetheart, if anyone knows that, I
do. Hey, don't cry. It's not the end of the world. It's going to be all right,
Jess."

"But... but..." she blubbered. "There are bound to
be people who will believe it. How's this going to look for you? What if your
family gets wind of it? Or Barb? What about Josh? And the team, the coaches,
and..."

"Your friends will stand by you," Gabe assured her
gruffly. "I, for one, would love to rip Bambi's tongue out and feed it to
her."

Ty gently kissed a teardrop from Jess's eyelashes. "We'll
handle it, babe," he promised. "Together."

After all that had gone before, Jess could almost have predicted
that the Knights would lose the game against the Oilers that evening. Not that
they didn't make a good stab at winning, but it was as if they were playing
under some infernal cloud of doom—predestined for defeat, no matter how hard
they tried. It didn't help that they had several key players missing; that they
were playing a night game (in Oiler territory, no less) when they were used to
day games, which may have thrown their timing off a bit; or that, due to a
vicious thunder storm, the officials stopped the game early, with ten minutes
left on the clock and the Knights behind by only two touchdowns. All in all, it
would have been a miracle if they had won.

"Well, you win some and you lose some," Ty
philosophized. "I suppose we should be grateful that none of us got struck
by lightning."

Jess nodded miserably. "That wouldn't have surprised me,
either, at this point."

"I don't know about you all, but I could use a beer right
about now," Gabe put in. "Care to join me? We can drown our sorrows
together."

"Why not?" Ty agreed. "Maybe we can even find a
country-
western band playing an appropriate tune or two to match our
mood."

"Great!" Jess mused sarcastically. "Just what I
need, to hear about somebody whose life is worse than mine. The lover ran off,
the dog died, the truck won't start, and the spittoon runneth over. Meanwhile,
back at the ranch, I've got to figure out where the devil I'm sleeping tonight,
because it sure as heck won't be with Bambi, and I don't think it would be wise
to share a room alone with Pepper at this point, either."

As it happened, the rumor Bambi had initiated was soon put to
rest. Several of the cheerleaders rallied to Pepper and Jess's defense, loudly
refuting Bambi's claim. Destiny, bless her ditsy soul, had been the one to
recall that Bambi couldn't see three inches in front of her without her contact
lenses, which she removed each and every night. Therefore, if she had awakened
in the night, she wouldn't have been able to see a herd of elephants trooping
past her bed, let alone discern what was happening on the other side of the
room.

Furthermore, all of the girls knew that Bambi complained she
always had trouble falling asleep in any hotel room, especially if she had to
share it with two or three other women. The light, the noise, everything
bothered her—unless she took a sleeping pill, which she invariably did. Then,
she slept like the dead until morning.

Though they had lost the game, Alan had done well, earning the
Knights several points by his efforts. His kicking had improved tremendously in
the past few weeks. Jess was proud of him, as was the entire team.

"You keep this up, and I'm going to be out of a job,"
Jess told him by way of a compliment.

At practice on Wednesday, Alan exceeded her expectations. He made
ten successive field goals from thirty yards or beyond. Following the last one,
he leapt into the air, his fist punching the sky. "Yes!" he yelled.
"Finally!" He swaggered up to Jess with a wide, self-satisfied grin.
"Okay, Coach. Pay-up time."

Jess stared at him, at a loss.

"You said that on the day I made ten goals in a row you'd
tell me what WAGARA means," he elaborated.

"Oh, I'd forgotten about that."

"Well?"

"You promise not to tell Ty, or anyone else who might tell
him? It's driving him nuts, and I want to keep him guessing."