Not Another Bad Date (3 page)

“What?” She’d been so stunned, she’d actually looked behind her to see whom he was talking to. There hadn’t been anyone but her, and she’d turned back, and asked, “Are you talking to me?” Because jocks like Zach, with beautiful cheerleader girlfriends, didn’t talk to girls like Adele. She was into theater and hung out with people who debated interplanetary teleportation.

Not that she thought she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough, she just didn’t live in the same privileged sphere, where everyone kissed your ass because you could throw a football or execute a perfect back handspring into an equally perfect Herkey jump.

His soft laughter had filled the silence between them. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. Do you get it permed?”

Was he making fun of her? Before the days of Carrie Bradshaw and Shakira, she’d always hated her hair and had never understood why anyone would get a perm when they could have straight hair. “I don’t do anything to it,” she’d answered, waiting for the punch line. Back in junior high, she’d been called pube head. Usually by his cheerleader girlfriend.

“It’s just naturally like that?” His gaze moved across her face and touched her hair.

“Yes.” He had the longest lashes of any guy she’d ever seen, and yet he was the most masculine guy she’d ever seen.

“Hmm. It’s really pretty. I like it.” He looked back into her eyes, and said through a flash of white teeth and perfect smile, “I’m Zach.”

Had he just said her hair was pretty?
Shocking.
“Adele.”

“I know.”

Shock number two. “You do?”

“Sure.”

Then he’d turned back toward the front of the class, tossed a notebook and pencil on the desk in front of him, and she’d been left staring at the back of his football player’s neck and wondering what the hell had just happened.

The next scheduled class day, he’d sat in front of her again. And once again, he’d turned around. This time he asked about her silver cuff bracelet engraved with three Celtic knots.

“This symbolizes the interdependency of nature,” she’d explained, while wondering why he was talking to her again. She didn’t even go to football games. “This, the relationship of man and Earth. This, the unity knot of lovers.”

He looked up from her wrist and grinned. “Unity of lovers, huh?”

She pulled her hand back and shrugged. “That’s what some archaeologists believe. The Celts left very few records, so no one really knows for sure.”

He reached across the desk, grasped her fingers in his warm palm, and lightly tugged her hand toward him. “I’ve never seen a knot of lovers that looked quite like this.”

She tried to pull her hand free, but he’d tightened his grip. “You won’t find it in
Penthouse
or
Hustler.
”

He chuckled deep in his chest and let go. “I guess that explains it.” He looked into her eyes for several long seconds, then turned around as class had begun.

Her fingers still warm from his touch, she’d grabbed her pen and pretended an interest in the professor at the front of room. But in order to see the teacher, she had to look past Zach’s wide shoulders in the T-shirt that hugged his muscles and fit tight around the bulge of his biceps. She gave up and studied the back of his head and his golden hair.

Zach didn’t seem slow, like he’d taken too many hits to the head. He seemed kind of nice, but there had to be something wrong with him. Some
thing.
Some reason why a nice guy would date Devon Hamilton.

She was still wondering about it five hours later when Zach walked into the restaurant where she worked five nights a week serving pizza. He came in with three of his football friends, but he’d hung around until she got off work.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” she’d asked, as he opened the door for her.

“What girlfriend?”

Adele walked out into the crisp night air and shoved an arm into her sweater. “You know what girlfriend.”

He moved behind her and held her sweater while she threaded her other arm inside. “Describe her for me.”

“Blond. Skinny. Jumps around a lot in a cheerleader’s skirt.”

“Oh, that girlfriend.” He pulled her hair from the back of her sweater, and the tips of his warm fingers brushed her neck. “She isn’t my girlfriend.”

Adele looked up into the shadows of his face. “Since when?”

“You ask too many questions.”

It really wasn’t her business anyway. It wasn’t like he was asking
her
out. “Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m like a furnace. I don’t get cold.”

She supposed it had to do with all those muscles. He walked her back to her dorm room and left her at the door with no more than a handshake. But the next night when he walked her to her door, he backed her against the wall and kissed the air from her lungs. He’d told her he couldn’t stop thinking about her, and within two very short months, he’d made her love him so completely that she’d found it hard to breathe around him. Hard to do anything but think about him. She fell so fast and hard and completely, she hadn’t thought twice about giving herself to him, body and soul.

Adele had never planned to save herself for marriage, but she had wanted her first sexual experience to be with someone she loved. She’d thought that person was Zach, but once she’d given him everything she’d had to give, he’d crushed her heart like a can of Lone Star. He’d dumped her flat and returned to Devon, and Adele had been so devastated that she’d left the University of Texas at midterm and moved more than a thousand miles away to live with her grandmother in Boise, Idaho. A few months after she’d moved in with her grandmother, she’d received an invitation in the mail. Cecilia Blackworth Hamilton Taylor-Marks and Charla May and James Zemaitis requested the honor of Adele’s presence at the wedding of their children, Devon Lynn Hamilton and Zachary James Zemaitis. There had been no return address, but Adele had known who’d sent it.

Adele had known that Zach would marry Devon, but apparently it hadn’t been enough for Devon to have Zach. She’d wanted to rub Adele’s face in it.

She’d never told anyone about her relationship with Zach. Not her friends and not her sister. Looking back on it, she wondered how she could have been so foolish. Not only had she given her heart away easily, she’d given it to a jock.

The last she’d heard, Zach was playing pro ball for Denver, not that she kept up on sports. But occasionally she had heard his name mentioned in the sports segment of the nightly news or seen his face selling Gatorade or Right Guard or jock itch cream on television. Okay, so she’d never seen him selling jock itch cream.

She didn’t know if he was still playing for Denver or had been traded. She didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, and she didn’t give a damn. Hopefully, he was still married to Devon, and his wife was making his life hell.

Adele leaned her head back against a cushion and let out a breath. She was getting a little bitter. About her life and men, and she really didn’t want to live that way. She loved her life, mostly, and despite her rash of bad dates and her first heartbreak, she loved men.

Don’t I?

She sat up and looked across the room. What if all the bad dates had more to do with hidden anger and resentment? Adele shook her head. No, she didn’t have hidden anger and resentment. Or at least she didn’t think she did, but…if it was hidden, how would she know?

“Oh God,” she groaned. She
was
crazy.

The telephone rang and saved her more mental torment. She rose and moved to the kitchen to pick up the cordless receiver. She glanced at the area code and groaned. Apparently her mental torment was not over. She really wasn’t in the mood to talk to her older sister, Sherilyn. The responsible one. The one with the perfect life. The one happily married to a dentist and happily raising a perfect teenage daughter in Fort Worth. The perfect sister due to have a perfect baby boy in four months. The one who wasn’t cursed or crazy.

She thought about letting it go to voice mail, but in the end she answered because it might be important.

“Hey, Sheri. How’re things?”

“William left.”

Adele felt her brows go up and her eyes widen. “Where did he go?”

“He’s moved in with his twenty-one-year-old assistant.”

“No.” Adele pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. She’d never liked William, but she’d never suspected he was so low as to abandon his pregnant wife.

“Yes. Her name is Stormy Winter.”

Adele supposed there were more important questions, but the one she asked was, “Is she a stripper?”

“He says no.”

Which meant she’d asked. “How’s Kendra?” Adele asked, referring to her thirteen-year-old niece.

“Mad. At me. At William. At the world. She’s embarrassed that I’m pregnant and that her father’s moved in with somebody eight years older than she is.”

Wow. Sherilyn’s life was more messed up than Adele’s. That was a first.

“My life is a wreck.” Sherilyn’s voice broke, and she started to cry. “I don’t know how this happened. One day everything was per—perfect, then the next William’s run off.”

Adele suspected there’d been signs that Sherilyn had chosen to ignore. “How can I help?” she asked, figuring there was really nothing she could do but listen.

“I’m moving back to Cedar Creek. Come home with me.”

Adele was home.

“I need you, Dele.”

Adele hadn’t been back to Cedar Creek since her father’s funeral seven years ago.

Sherilyn burst into another round of sobbing before she pulled herself together and managed, “I nee-need my family in my time of cris-sis.” By the sounds of it, Sherilyn was beyond crisis and rushing headlong into a breakdown. “Please. I have to go home. I can’t stan-nd it here without William. All our friends kn-ow, and they pity me. My life is falling ap-part.”

Sherilyn was the most capable woman Adele knew, and she knew a lot of very capable women. For that reason and many others, she and Sherilyn had never really gotten along for more than five minutes at a time. “Oh, Sheri…” For the first time ever, Sherilyn needed her, and Adele was the only real family she had left. But…Adele’s life was in Boise. She’d bought a house and planned on painting her office. She was thinking about getting a Pug.

“Just for a little while. Until Kendra and I get settled in our new pl-ace.”

She’d made a life for herself, and she had friends here. Good friends…who were married or getting married and had lives different from hers now. She was quite possibly cursed with bad dates and was very likely crazy. Maybe she needed a break. To get away from her life.

Just for a few weeks.
“When do you need me?”

Sunday belonged to the Lord, and he ruled the pews of the Bible Belt. His word whipped the faithful into a religious frenzy with sermons of sin and redemption and charged the air with the electric buzz of his spirit.

Can I get an Amen?

God could have Sundays. Friday nights were devoted to high-school football. Across the Longhorn State, high-school ball ruled the stands, whipping the faithful into a gridiron frenzy and charging the air with the electric buzz of twenty-five thousand cheering fans.

Can I get a Glory Hallelujah?

As the sun set over the flat plains of Cedar Creek, stacks of fifteen-hundred-watt lights flooded the green turf of Warren P. Bradshaw Stadium. Armed with felt pendants, bright pom-poms, and stadium blankets, half the population of Cedar Creek turned out to watch the Cedar Creek Cougars battle its crosstown rival, the Lincoln Panthers. With a shot at State on the line, the buildup to the game was intense.

From the moment of the kickoff, a bruising back-and-forth brought the fans to their feet and the Panthers’ coach yelling at the refs and throwing his clipboard on the ground. By contrast, the Cougars’ coach stood on the sidelines as cool as a tall glass of sweet tea. Only his intense gaze gave Coach Zach Zemaitis’s turmoil away as he read the opposition’s defensive line, signaled his boys, and adjusted plays. He loved ball. Had played it from as far back as he could remember, but there was no cause to get all uptight and bust something vital. Yeah, he’d been born and raised near Austin, and he knew that high-school football was as serious as a heart attack. He knew that some of these boys’ futures depended on the outcome of the game, but he also knew it was supposed to be fun. Perhaps their last chance at ball in its purest form, before college scouts turned their heads around by attention, money, and the lure of NCAA scholarships.

The two teams continued to hammer at each other until the last few moments of the game, when the Cougars scored a touchdown that brought them within one point of a tie. With three seconds left on the clock, they lined up on the Panthers’ two-yard line. The center snapped the ball and the quarterback handed off to his running back, who dove across the line for the two-point conversion. One side of the stadium went wild as the necessary two points flashed on the board. But unfortunately the same play that had saved the game for the Cougars sent their star running back to the West Central Baptist Hospital. There, fluorescent light washed the emergency rooms in sterile white, and teal-and-maroon curtains separated the beds of patients suffering from assorted illnesses, accidents, and overdoses.

Zach Zemaitis stood with his weight on one foot and his hands on his hips as he gazed at the young man on the gurney before him. Pain etched Don Tate’s thin black face.

Zach turned to the doctor beside him. “How long?” he asked even though he’d played long enough that he pretty much knew the answer.

“After surgery, at least two months,” the doctor answered.

That’s what he’d thought. “Shit.” Still in his junior year, Don was the best damn running back in the history of Cedar Creek High School, maybe in the history of the whole damn state of Texas. So far, he’d rushed for more than fifteen hundred yards for an average of ten. Scouts from Nebraska, Ohio State, and Texas A & M had reviewed Don’s tapes and were impressed with the seventeen-year-old boy. Football was Don’s ticket out of West Texas, and now this. A knee injury that could sideline his career before it even began. Shit.

Don licked his dry lips, and fear pinched his brow. A real fear that Zach understood all too well. “Coach, I can’t be sidelined for two months.”

“You’re going to be just fine,” Zach promised even though he wasn’t at all certain. Don had torn two ligaments in his left knee, and some guys never recovered one hundred percent.

Zach dropped his hands to his side and made another promise he wasn’t sure about, but one he’d try like hell to keep. “No one’s going to take your place on the team.”

“I gotta make All-State.”

“You will. Next year. Shoot, Gerry Palteer tore up his knee in a game against the Gophers in ’89 and went on to make All-State the next year. He wasn’t near as fast as you.” Zach raised his gaze from Don’s eyes to the boy’s mother, standing on the other side of the bed. A green-and-gold purse in the shape of a football with the word “Cougars” sewn into the fake leather hung off one of Rose Tate’s shoulders. The purses had been sold by the boosters that past summer to raise money for new helmets. “How much is the surgery going to cost?” Rose stared at the clipboard in her hands as worry lines creased her dark forehead. “Not that it matters, I suppose. If Don needs it, he needs it, but we lost our insurance when Gorman closed.”

A lot of families had lost good jobs when the software company had closed the year before.

“Don’t worry about that, ma’am.” Zach held out one hand across the bed. “I’ll take care of the paperwork. The school has insurance that will pay for Don’s care.” Rose handed him the clipboard, and he stuck it under one arm. “You just see to your boy. I’ll fill those out for you.” He returned his gaze to his player. In a few hours, Don would be transferred to the surgery center in Lubbock. “I’ll see you when you get home,” he said, and headed toward the foot of the bed. At the part in the curtains, he looked back over his shoulder. “I know you want to get back into the game, but don’t you push yourself faster than your body can heal,” he added and walked out into the hall. He moved to the nurses’ station to fill out the rest of the paperwork.

“Good game tonight, Coach Z,” a nurse said to him as she walked behind the counter.

Zach glanced past a pair of pale blue eyes, flanked by a set of deep crow’s-feet, up to a pile of wispy blond hair. “Thanks, honey. I appreciate it.” The game hadn’t been pretty, but they’d won.

“My grandson played for the Cougars back in ’02. Defensive lineman.”

Zach hadn’t lived in Cedar Creek in ’02. He’d been playing ball in Denver and living a whole other life. Now, six years later, he was living a life that hadn’t been in the game plan.

“I understand Don Tate is heading to the orthopedic center in Lubbock.”

“That’s right.” Zach returned his gaze to the insurance forms. With a population somewhere around fifty thousand, Cedar Creek didn’t have the resources of a bigger city.

“What’s this mean for our rushing game?”

Zach smiled, but he wasn’t surprised by the woman’s question. “It means Tyler Smith is going to get his chance at playing varsity ball,” he answered, referring to the junior varsity running back.

He signed his name and handed the clipboard to the doctor as he approached.

The doctor looked it over. “I take it there is no school insurance.”

“None that’ll cover everything, but Miz Tate doesn’t need to know that.” He shook the doctor’s hand. “Thanks for takin’ care of Don.”

The black soles of Zach’s Pumas smudged the floor in a few places as he walked from the emergency room. The automatic doors opened and closed behind him, and he moved from the harsh light out into the Texas night lit by millions of stars all crammed together in an endless black sky. He zipped up his green jacket with the words Cedar Creek Cougars written in gold across the back. The lot had thinned since he’d arrived a few hours ago with a few circles of light illuminating patches of asphalt. He reached for the cell phone clipped to his belt and powered it up as he moved across the lot toward his silver Escalade. His choice in SUVs had nothing to do with Cadillac Pimpin’ and everything to do with room. At six-four and 220 pounds, Zach liked most things a little roomy. He’d owned a Porsche once, but he’d returned it after three weeks. Driving it had felt like being stuffed inside a soup can.

The cell phone beeped, and he looked down at the lighted screen. Using his thumb, he scrolled the missed calls list and paused on the last number. He hit the call button, and, after a few rings, his thirteen-year-old daughter’s voice filled his ear.

“Where are you?” she asked.

When he was late, Tiffany worried. “Exactly where I told you I’d be.” It was understandable, but it’d been three years since the death of her mother, Devon, and she still freaked out if she couldn’t get ahold of him. “What do you need?”

“We’re out of Coke cola. Can you pick some up?”

Zach glanced at the silver Rolex watch he’d been given the day he’d retired from the NFL. “Tiff, it’s after midnight.”

“We’re thirsty.”

Tiffany had a girlfriend spending the night. Normally, he would have been home long before now, but after the game, he’d driven straight to the hospital.

“And we need some chips,” she added.

He shoved his hands in his front pocket and pulled out his keys. “I’ll stop at the E-Z MART on my way.” He spoiled his daughter. He knew it, but guilt did that to a person. He hadn’t been around a lot for the first ten years of Tiffany’s life. Now, he was both mother and father, and he was fairly certain he was screwing it up. “What kind of chips do y’all want?”

“Lay’s barbecue.”

He glanced over the hood of his vehicle to the maroon Celica, with its front pointed toward his SUV, and his gaze stopped on the long legs and round behind of a woman standing at the open passenger’s side door. One of her hands held the door open as she spoke to someone inside the car. She wore jeans and a white sweater, and she stood just inside the pool of light that shined in her long curly hair.

“Daddy?”

Her thick blond hair reminded Zach of a girl he’d known once. A girl with big turquoise-colored eyes and soft pink lips. A girl whose soft gasps had driven him wild every time he’d kissed the sweet spot just below her ear.

“Daddy?”

One corner of Zach’s mouth lifted into a smile. He hadn’t thought about that girl in a while.

“Daddy, are you there?”

He tore his gaze from the woman and looked down at the keys in his hand. “I’m here. What else do you need?” He unlocked the Escalade and slid inside.

“Nothin’. Just hurry.”

“I’m on my way, baby girl.” He started the SUV and glanced at the woman one last time. She bent forward to help someone out of the car, her sweater slid up her back, and her hair fell over the side of her face. Zach pulled out of the hospital parking lot and flipped on his headlights. As he drove toward the E-Z MART, his mind turned to the game against the Panthers, and he replayed it in his head. With Don out for the rest of the season, the team was going to have to rely more on its passing, which had some problems. The biggest was that the quarterback, Sean McGuire, needed to work on passing quickly against the rush. Sean was shorter than most quarterbacks and had a tendency to hold on to the ball a few seconds too long looking for a lane. Sean’s height disadvantage could be overcome with drills, and there was no doubt in Zach’s mind that the kid would work hard. What the young quarterback lacked in height he made up for in self-discipline, a tough competitive streak, and natural leadership. Those were things that could not be taught. Zach had known a lot of players who’d had talent but lacked discipline. Talent usually got those players into the NFL, but most of them didn’t last long before fame and excess took their toll.

Zach stopped at a red light and hit the window switch. As the glass slid silently down into the door, the cold night breeze brought the smells of autumn into the SUV, of cooling earth, dying leaves, and the Concho River. Three years ago if someone had told him he’d be living in Cedar Creek, Texas, coaching high-school ball, he would have laughed his ass off. If they’d told him he’d be living in Cedar Creek coaching football and
liking
it, he would have laughed his ass off and said they were nuttier than a pan of his momma’s peanut patties.

The light changed, and he drove through the intersection and into the E-Z MART parking lot. Once inside the store, he grabbed a six pack of Coke, a bag of barbecue chips and a box of cornflakes because he knew they were out of cereal. When his wife, Devon, had been alive, she’d let Tiffany eat crap twenty-four/seven. Now, Zach didn’t mind a little junk food; he had a fondness for Ding Dongs that would not be denied, but he tried to limit his and Tiffany’s crap consumption to the weekends. Tiffany because she needed nutritious food to grow, and him because he didn’t need to grow.

“Good game tonight, Coach Z,” the checker said as he placed the Coke and chips in a bag.

“Thanks.” Zach handed over a twenty to the young man, who wore the kind of eyeliner and Mohawk rarely seen in west Texas.

“My twin brother played for the Cougars back in ’04. He’s playin’ for Ohio now.”

“Did you play?”

“Nah.” He gave Zach his change. “I’m an art student at the University of Portland in Oregon.”

Zach chuckled. That explained the Mohawk.

“I’m heading back next semester.”

“Good luck in Oregon,” Zach said, and shoved his change in his front pocket. He grabbed the bag of groceries and headed outside. As he climbed into the Escalade, he thought back on what he’d been doing in ’04.

Four years ago, he’d been living in Denver, while his wife and Tiffany lived in Cedar Creek. He’d visit or they’d visit, but for the most part, they’d lived separate lives. For the last seven years of their ten-year marriage, they’d lived in different states. He and Devon had liked it that way.

In his last year at UT, his touchdown passes led the nation and he’d been picked up by Miami in the first round of the drafts. The summer after graduating from UT, he’d gone off to the Dolphins’ training camp while Devon had stayed in Austin to have Tiffany. After Tiffany was born, the two packed up and moved to Florida.