It Had to Be You (33 page)

“You owe me, Phoebe. I was trying to show a little respect for you.”

“Respect? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called that.”

The sarcasm in her voice didn’t quite hide her hurt, so he kept pressing. “That’s exactly what it is. And as far as I’m concerned, you just now threw that respect right back in my face. Which means you owe me what I didn’t get in here, and I plan to collect.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“I’ll tell you how. One day— Any day I happen to choose. Any hour. Any time. Any place. I’m going to look at you, and I’m going to say one word.”

“One word?”

“I’m going to say
now.
Just that one word.
Now.
And when you hear that word, it means you stop doing whatever you’re doing, and you follow me to wherever I choose to take you. And when we get there, that body of yours becomes my own personal playpen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He waited for her to explode, but he should have known she wouldn’t let him off so easily. Phoebe knew almost as much about playing games as he did.

“I think so,” she said thoughtfully. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re telling me that, because you didn’t make it to the mountaintop, so to speak, I owe you a debt. When you look at me and you say
now,
I’m supposed to turn into your love slave. Do I have it right?”

“Yep.” The sadness had faded from his eyes, and he was definitely beginning to enjoy himself.

“No matter what I’m doing.”

“No matter what.”

“No matter where you choose to take me.”

“A broom closet, if I’ve a mind to. It’s completely up to me.” He was playing with fire and actually anticipating the moment it would flame out of control.

“If I’m at work?” she inquired with remarkable calm.

“There’s a fifty-fifty chance that’s exactly where you’ll be.”

“In a meeting?”

“You lift that curvy little butt of yours right out of the chair and follow me.”

“In a meeting with the commissioner?”

“You say, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Commissioner, but I believe I have a case of the stomach flu coming on, so will you excuse me. And Coach Calebow, could you come with me just in case I happen to faint in the hall and need somebody to pick me up?’ “

“I see.” She looked thoughtful. “What if I’m doing an interview with—oh, let’s say, Frank Gifford?”

“Frank’s a good guy. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

The explosion was going to come any second now. He knew it.

She crinkled her forehead. “I just want to make absolutely certain I’ve got this right. You say
now,
and I’m supposed to turn into your— How was it you put it? Your personal playpen?”

“That’s what I said.” He braced himself.

“Playpen.”

“Yep.”

She took a deep breath and smiled. “Cool.”

Stunned, he watched her slip through the door. When it shut, he threw back his head and laughed. She’d done it. She’d gotten him again.

“Hi there, Miz Molly. It’s Dan Calebow.”

She smiled. “Hello, Coach Calebow.”

“Say, I’ve got a little problem here, and I thought you might like to help me out.”

“If I can.”

“Now that’s exactly what I like about you, Miz Molly. You have a cooperative nature, in contrast with another woman I could name, whose entire mission in life seems to be making things tough for a guy.”

Molly decided he was talking about Phoebe.

“I was thinking about dropping by your house for an hour or so tonight with a couple of gen-u-ine Chicago pizzas. But you know how Phoebe is. She’d probably refuse to let me in the door if I asked her straight out, and even if she said it was okay, you’ve seen how she likes to pick fights with me. So I figure things would go a lot better if you’d invite me over. That way Phoebe’d have to be polite.”

“Well, I don’t know. Phoebe and I . . .”

“Is she still smackin’ you? ’cause if she is, I’m gonna have some words with her.”

Molly caught her bottom lip between her teeth and murmured, “She doesn’t hit me anymore.”

“You don’t say.”

There was a long pause. Molly picked at the corner of a lavender spiral notebook that had fallen out of her book bag. “You know I wasn’t telling the truth about that, don’t you?”

“You weren’t?”

“She wouldn’t— Phoebe wouldn’t ever hit anybody.”

The coach murmured something that sounded like, “Don’t count on it.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. You go on with what you were saying.”

Molly wasn’t ready to comment further about her relationship with Phoebe. It was too confusing. Sometimes Phoebe acted as if she really liked her, but how could that be when Molly wasn’t even nice to her? More and more lately she’d wanted to be nice, but then she’d remember that her father had loved only Phoebe, and any good feelings she had toward her older sister evaporated. She did like Coach Calebow, however. He was funny and nice, and he’d made the kids at school notice her. She and Jeff talked every day at their lockers.

“I’d like it if you’d stop by tonight,” she said. “But I don’t want to be in the way.”

“Now how could a sweet young lady like you be in the way?”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I certainly am. When Phoebe gets home, tell her that I’ll be dropping by whenever I can get away. Will that be okay?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“And if she says she’s not letting me in the door, you tell her you invited me and she can’t weasel out. See you tonight, Miz Molly.”

“See you.”

Dan hung up Phoebe’s telephone. He grinned down at her from his comfortable perch on the corner of her desk. “I’m coming over with pizza tonight. Your sister invited me.”

Phoebe concealed her amusement. “Is it possible for you to do anything in a straightforward fashion? When you walked in my office less than three minutes ago, did it occur to you to simply ask me directly if you could stop by instead of telephoning Molly?”

“As a matter of fact, it didn’t occur to me.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see you.”

“Of course you do. Everybody knows I’m irresistible to women.”

“In your dreams, Tonto.”

“What are you so grouchy about?”

“You know what time the plane landed. I had to be here for an eight o’clock meeting, and I’ve only had a couple of hours of sleep.”

“Sleep is highly overrated.”

“For you, maybe, but not for those of us who are real human beings instead of cleverly designed androids programmed to stay awake all the time.”

He chuckled, and she dug in her drawer for the bottle of aspirin she kept there. She still couldn’t believe what had happened between them last night in the plane. When he’d issued that silly ultimatum at the end, she hadn’t been able to resist sparring with him, despite the fact that she should know enough by now not to fall into his games, let alone try to beat him at them. Still, she couldn’t suppress the hope that last night had changed things between them.

He would never know what a precious gift he had given her. She was no longer afraid of sexual intimacy, at least not with him. Somehow this good-looking, cocky, Alabama bruiser had helped her reclaim her womanhood. If only she weren’t so afraid that he was also going to break her heart into a million pieces.

He transferred himself from the corner of her desk to the nearest chair. “We’ve got some unfinished business to take care of. If you’ll remember, we got distracted last night before we completed our discussion.”

She busied herself with the cap of the aspirin bottle. “Damn. I can never get these things off. I hate safety caps.”

“Don’t look at me. I can bench press 290, but I can’t budge those suckers.”

She fiddled with the cap and finally gave up. Dan was right. They needed to talk. Setting aside the bottle, she folded her hands on the desk in front of her. “Do you want to go first?”

“All right.” He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “It’s pretty simple, I guess. I’m the head coach, and you’re the owner. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell me how to do my job, just like I don’t tell you how to do yours.”

Phoebe stared at him. “In case it’s slipped your mind, you’ve been telling me how to do my job since you broke into my apartment in August.”

He looked injured. “I thought we were going to have a discussion, not an argument. Just once, Phoebe, make a little effort to hold on to that quick temper of yours.”

Her hand crept toward the aspirin bottle. She spoke slowly, softly. “Go on, Coach Calebow.”

Her formal mode of address didn’t deter him. “I don’t want you to interfere with the team again before the game.”

“What do you consider interference?”

“Well, I guess it pretty much goes without saying that showing up in the locker room before the game would be at the top of my list. If you have something you want communicated to the players, tell me and I’ll pass it on. I’d also appreciate it if you’d stay in the front of the plane when we’re traveling. I guess the only exception to that would be on the flight home if we’ve won. Then it’d probably be appropriate for you to make a quick walk-through to congratulate the men. But I’d want you to do it in a dignified fashion. Shake some hands, and then leave them alone.”

She slipped on her leopard-spot glasses and gazed at him steadily. “I’m afraid you’re operating under the mistaken impression that I was having an attack of female hysteria last night when I reminded you—quite forcefully as I remember—that the Stars are my team and not yours.”

“You’re not going to start that again, are you?”

“Dan, I’ve been doing my homework, and I know that a lot of people with some impressive credentials think you’re on your way to being one of the finest coaches in the NFL. I know that the Stars are lucky to have you.”

Despite the sincerity in her voice, he regarded her warily. “Keep talking.”

“The Stars entered this season with a lot of high expectations from fans and the media, and when you didn’t win the early games, the heat was turned up hard and fast. The stories about me didn’t help, I’ll admit. Everybody from the coaches to the rookies got understandably tense, and in the process, I think you may have forgotten one of the most basic lessons you learned when you were playing. You forgot to have fun.”

“I’m not playing now. I’m coaching! And believe me, if I had a whole squad raising the kind of hell I used to raise, we’d be out of the game fast.”

Judging from the stories she’d heard, that was undoubtedly true. She slipped off her glasses. “You’re a tough disciplinarian, and I’m beginning to realize just how important that is. But I think you need to figure out when to turn up the heat and when to relax a little.”

“Don’t start this again.”

“All right. You tell me why the Stars weren’t able to hold on to the ball until last night’s game.”

“It’s a cycle, that’s all. Those things happen.”

“Dan, the men were too tense. You’ve driven them hard for weeks, beaten up on them for the smallest mistake. You’ve chewed out everybody from the secretarial staff to Tully. You pushed too hard, and it was affecting everyone’s performance.”

She might as well have lit a keg of dynamite because he erupted from his chair. “I don’t fucking believe this! I can’t believe you’re sitting there like John Fucking Madden and telling me how to coach a fucking football team! You don’t know shit about football!”

Profanities exploded like firecrackers over her head, his anger so scorching she half expected the paint on the walls to blister. She was shaken, but at the same time, she had the weird sense he was putting her through some kind of a test, that his ranting and raving were a carefully staged ploy to see what she was made of. Leaning back in her chair, she began inspecting her nail polish for chips.

He went ballistic. The veins in his neck stood out like cords. “Look at you! You barely know the difference between a football and a fucking baseball! And now you think you can tell me how to coach! You think you can tell me my team’s too tense, like you’re some goddamn psychologist or something, when you don’t know shit!” He paused for breath.

“You can shoot off that gutter mouth of yours all you want, Coach,” she said softly, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still the boss. Now why don’t you take yourself to the showers to cool off?”

For a moment she thought he was going to leap right over the desk and come after her. Instead, he gave her a furious look and stalked from her office.

Half an hour later, Ron found Dan behind the building slamming a basketball through the hoop near the outer locker room door. Dark patches of sweat soaked the front of his knit shirt, and he was breathing hard as he dribbled the ball to the center of the concrete slab and spun toward the hoop.

“Tully told me you were out here,” Ron said. “I need some information about Zeke Claxton.”

The hoop vibrated as Dan slammed the ball through. “Phoebe isn’t happy with my coaching!” He spat out the words, then threw the ball at Ron’s chest with so much force that the general manager stumbled backward.

“Take it in,” Dan roared.

Ron looked down at the ball as if it were a grenade with the pin already pulled. He had observed Dan’s murderous games of one-on-one when he was upset over something, and he had no intention of getting involved. Assuming an expression of deep regret, he gestured toward his newest navy suit. “I’m sorry, Dan, but I have a meeting, and I’m not dressed for—”

“Take it in, goddammit!”

Ron took it in.

Dan let him shoot, but Ron was so nervous that the ball bounced off the backboard well above the rim. Dan snatched the rebound and dribbled viciously to center court. Ron stood nervously on the sidelines trying to figure out how to get away.

“Guard me, for chrissake!”

“Actually, I was never too good at basketball.”

“Guard me!”