It Had to Be You (26 page)

Dan gave a snort of disgust “That’s tellin’ her, Ronald. You sure do know how to crack the old whip.”

Ron seemed not to have heard. “Unfortunately, you can’t continue to snub the press without looking as if you have something to hide.”

“I don’t think there’s much left that everybody hasn’t already seen,” Dan sneered.

Phoebe caught her breath. Ron rose slowly from the table and turned to face the coach. “Your comments are uncalled for. You owe Phoebe an apology.”

Dan’s expression was rigid with anger. “She’s not going to get one.”

“You’re hardly innocent in all this. There were apparently two people in that hotel room. And if you hadn’t lost so many games, we wouldn’t be under attack. Instead of insulting Phoebe, perhaps you should consider doing something about all those turnovers.”

Dan seemed to be having trouble believing what he was hearing. “Are you criticizing my coaching?”

Ron’s Adam’s apple bobbled as he swallowed hard before he spoke. “I believe I’ve made my point. You’re being rude, belligerent, and insulting to Phoebe. Not only is she the owner of this team and your employer, but she is also a person deserving of respect.”

Phoebe didn’t have time to feel grateful for Ron’s gallant defense. She was too alarmed by the vicious lines that had formed on each side of Dan’s mouth. Too late, she remembered that this was a man who had been trained to meet all attacks with fierce counteraggression.

“Now listen here, you little pip-squeak. How I treat Phoebe isn’t any of your business, and you know what you can do with your fucking etiquette lessons!”

“Stop right there,” Ron warned.

But Dan was running on adrenaline and emotions he had no way to express except through anger. “I’ll stop when I decide to stop! Unless you want to bring down an outhouse full of shit on your head, remember that I’m the one coaching this team. Looks to me like you’ve got more than you can handle just taking care of bimbo control!”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

All the blood drained from Phoebe’s head. She felt sick and humiliated.

Dan’s eyes dropped. His hand moved to his side in an ineffectual, almost helpless, gesture.

“I’m suspending you for one week,” Ron said quietly.

Dan’s head shot up and his lips tightened into a sneer. “You can’t suspend me. I’m the coach, not one of the players.”

“Nevertheless, you’re suspended.”

Alarmed, Phoebe took a quick step forward. “Ron . . .”

He put up his hand and said softly, “Please don’t involve yourself in this, Phoebe. I have a job to do, and I need to do it my own way.”

Dan closed the distance between them, hovering over the general manager in a manner that was so physically menacing Phoebe cringed. He spoke in a low, venomous drawl.

“I’m going to have your ass.”

Ron’s skin had assumed a faint greenish tone, but he kept his voice almost steady. “I want you to leave the building immediately. You’re not to contact any of the other coaches or players until your suspension is up after the game next Sunday.”

“I’ll leave the building when I damn well please!”

“For Phoebe’s sake, please don’t make this any worse.”

Seconds ticked by as Dan regarded him with tight-lipped fury. “You’re going to regret this.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Nevertheless, I have to do what I think is best.”

Dan gave him a long, hard glare and stalked from the room.

Phoebe pressed her hand to her mouth. Ron gave her arm a gentle squeeze.

“The press conference will take place on the practice field at one o’clock. I’ll come to your office to get you.”

“Ron, I really don’t—”

“Excuse me, Phoebe, but I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.”

Releasing her arm, he dashed from the room, while she stared after him in dismay.

Dan’s feet slammed the stair treads as he stormed down to the first floor. When he hit the landing, he drew back his foot and kicked the metal door open. Once he was outside, the bright Indian summer day did nothing to soothe his rage.

As he stalked toward his car, he plotted what he would do next. He was going to snap that little weasel’s neck. Kick his weasel ass inside out. Any kind of suspension was in direct violation of his contract, and his lawyers were going to make mincemeat out of Phoebe and her GM. He didn’t have to take shit like that. He was going to . . . He was going to . . .

He was going to stop acting like an ass.

He braced one hand on the roof of his car and took a deep, unsteady breath. He was embarrassed and furious, not at Phoebe but at himself. How could he have insulted her like that? He’d never in his life treated a woman so badly, not even Valerie. And Phoebe hadn’t deserved it. She made him crazy, but she didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was funny and sexy and sweet in her own particular way.

He hated losing control like this, but when he’d heard that smug reporter telling the world that Phoebe had been in his hotel room, he’d been so full of rage at the violation of their privacy that he’d wanted to kick in the television screen. He knew enough about the press to realize that Phoebe would end up taking the heat for something that had been his fault. If only he’d talked to her about it instead of insulting her.

He knew he would have handled the whole thing a lot better if it hadn’t been for those photographs. The idea of strangers looking at her body infuriated him. His reaction was completely illogical, considering the fact that her body had been on display in most of the major museums of the world, but he couldn’t help it. Besides, abstract paintings were different from brightly lit photographs. The photographs he’d seen in
Beau Monde
were works of art, but the world was filled with millions of horny assholes who weren’t going to know that. Thinking about the way they would be drooling over those pages had made his temper snap.

His damned temper. When was he going to grow up and get it under control? It didn’t take a degree in psychology to understand why he had such a hard time with it. Even when he was a little kid—four or five years old—his old man had beaten him up if he cried or complained because he was hurt or scared.

He could still hear his old man’s drunken abuse.
Fetch my belt so I can give you something real to cry about, little girly
.

As he grew up, he’d discovered that the one emotion he could safely express around his old man was anger, whether on the football field or with his fists. Hell of a thing. A man thirty-seven years old still behaving like a playground bully. Except this time the bully had gotten what was coming to him. This time the bully had been cut down to size by the short little kid who couldn’t even make the team.

Once again the anger came back to him, but now he was honest enough to admit it was a camouflage for shame. Shame that Ronald was the one who’d defended Phoebe. Shame that Ronald had been defending her against him.

If he hadn’t been so mad at himself, he might have been able to enjoy the fact that Ronald McDermitt had finally shown some gumption. If he hadn’t been so mad at himself, he might have believed there was actually some hope for the team after all.

“Is it true that the commissioner has privately warned her about her behavior?” a female reporter asked.

“That is not true,” Ron replied. “She hasn’t spoken with the commissioner.”

Only because she hadn’t returned his phone calls, Phoebe thought unhappily as she sat in silence between Ron and Wally Hampton, the Stars’ public relations director. The press conference was going even worse than she had anticipated. Not only had the local media shown up, but the national as well, hot on the trail of a terrific human interest story.

So many reporters had wanted to take part in the press conference that they had been forced to use the empty practice field. She, Ron, and Wally were seated near the fifty yard line behind a small table draped with a blue cloth bearing the Stars’ logo. Some of the press members stood, while others had taken seats on wooden benches that had been set up for them.

At first all the questions had been centered around Bert’s will, but it hadn’t taken them long to move on. So far, they had questioned Ron’s management skills, Dan’s coaching, and Phoebe’s morals. Ron and Wally Hampton were answering all of the questions, even those addressed directly to her.

An overweight male reporter with bad skin and a scraggly beard stood. Wally Hampton whispered to her that he represented a sleazy tabloid. “Phoebe, are you going to do any more nudie shots?”

Wally interceded. “Ms. Somerville is much too busy with the Stars for any other outside activities.”

The man scratched his chin beneath his beard. “This isn’t the first time you’ve taken off your clothes for the public, is it?”

“Ms. Somerville’s work for the great artist Arturo Flores is well-known,” Ron said stiffly.

The tabloid reporter was interrupted by a local sports columnist. “There’s been a lot of criticism of Coach Calebow recently, especially with so many turnovers every game. Some people think he’s juggling his starters around too much. The players are starting to complain that they’re being overworked and that he’s taking the fun out of the game. For whatever reason, the team hasn’t looked good yet this season. Any plans for changes?”

“None at all,” Ron said. “It’s still early and we’re making adjustments.” He went on to praise Dan’s coaching abilities, and she wondered what would happen when the press learned that Dan had been suspended. Ron seemed to believe they could pass it off as a bad case of the flu, but she didn’t think it would be that easy. What Ron had done was definitely illegal, and Dan was probably already on the phone to his lawyers.

She told herself not to think of his sneers and insults, but it was hard to put them out of her mind. Maybe it was all for the best that he had shown her so clearly what kind of person he was. Now she was forced to face the fact that she had been letting herself fall in love with the wrong man.

The obnoxious tabloid reporter was speaking again, an unpleasant leer on his face. “What about Coach Calebow’s performance off the field, Phoebe? How’s that?”

The other reporters shot him disgusted glances, but Phoebe wasn’t fooled. Sooner or later they would have gotten around to asking the same thing. They would just have been more polite in their phrasing.

“Coach Calebow has a fine record—”

Phoebe couldn’t take any more, and she put her hand on Ron’s sleeve to stop him. “I’ll answer this one.” She leaned into the microphone. “Are you asking me to rate Coach Calebow’s performance as a lover? Is that what your question means?”

For a moment the reporter looked taken aback by the directness of her attack, but then he gave an unctuous grin. “Sure, Phoebe. Tell it like it is.”

“All right then. For the record, he’s a terrific lover.” She paused while the astonished reporters stared at her. “So is Coach Tally Archer, Bobby Tom Denton, Jim Biederot, Webster Greer, all of the running backs, and most of the offensive and defensive line. Now does that cover everyone in the organization I’m rumored to be sleeping with? I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out.”

The press corps laughed, but she wasn’t done yet. Although she was shaking inside, she gazed directly at the obnoxious reporter and smiled. “By the way. If I remember correctly, you, sir, were a
small
disappointment.”

The members of the press roared. If Phoebe hadn’t won them over, she had at least proved that she wasn’t quite as dumb as they thought.

The condominium Bert had kept for his mistresses was one of twenty luxury units set into a wooded area on the fringes of Naperville, which was located on the western edge of DuPage County. The attractive two-story beige brick unit was topped by a wood-shingled mansard roof. A pair of graceful Palladian windows sat on each side of an impressive set of double front doors inset with long ovals of leaded glass. Brass coach lamps glimmered in the six o’clock sun as Phoebe parked the car in the garage and walked into the house.

The interior was pleasantly decorated in soft shades of aqua, pearl gray, and white, giving the rooms a light, tropical feel. The kitchen opened out onto a sun room for informal eating, and a cathedral ceiling made the small living room seem spacious.

“Molly? Peg?” Phoebe crouched down to pet Pooh, who was delirious with joy at her return. When there was no answer, she and the poodle went upstairs.

Her aqua and white bedroom held bleached oak furniture and a wide expanse of windows. She had been uncomfortable sleeping in the king-sized bed that dominated the room and had replaced it with a queen from the guest room at the estate. After tossing her linen jacket down on the puffy spread, she walked into the closet, where she changed into a pair of jeans and a Stars’ T-shirt.

Neither Molly nor Peg had returned by the time Phoebe carried the whole wheat roll and pasta salad she found in the refrigerator out to the sun room. She padded across the pearl gray tiles in her sweat socks and sat on one of the white filigreed iron chairs that rested in front of a matching glass-topped table. A comfortable love seat upholstered in aqua and white peonies provided a cozy seating area at the end of the room.

She rubbed her toes along Pooh’s back as she toyed with her salad. For once in her life she wasn’t having any difficulty keeping off the extra five pounds that wanted to settle on her hips. Maybe because the blues were getting a firmer grip on her every day. She missed Viktor and her friends. She missed the gallery openings. She wanted a flat chest and a different childhood. She wanted a nice husband and a baby. She wanted Dan Calebow. Not the real man who had verbally attacked her that morning, but the funny, tender man she had imagined him to be the night they had made love.

Her uncharacteristic plunge into self-pity was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and closing. Pooh yipped and rushed out to investigate. Phoebe heard the rustle of packages, a soft greeting to Pooh, and then the sound of footsteps going upstairs. Pushing aside her salad, she made her way to the foyer in time to look through the sidelights and see Peg Kowalski’s white Toyota pulling out of the drive.