Maybe he’d taken one too many blows to the head because he sure as hell felt like he was losing his mind. If it had been any groupie other than Rosebud, he would never have let her into his room. The first time he’d had an excuse since he’d been half-drunk, but this time there weren’t any excuses. He’d wanted her, and he’d taken her; it had been as simple as that.
He couldn’t even figure out what her appeal was. One of the perks of being an athlete was picking and choosing, and he’d always chosen the youngest and the most beautiful women. Despite what she’d said, she was at least twenty-eight, and he had no interest in women that old. He liked them fresh and dewy, with high, full breasts, pouty mouths, and the smell of newness about them.
Rosebud smelled like old-fashioned vanilla. Then there were those green eyes of hers. Even when she was lying, she’d looked at him dead on. He wasn’t used to that. He liked flirty, fluttery eyes on women, but Rosebud had no-nonsense eyes, which was ironic considering the fact that nothing about her was honest.
He brooded all the way back to Chicago and kept at it right on into the next week. The fact that he was held out from practice made him even more bad-tempered than usual, and it wasn’t until Friday that his rigid self- discipline finally kicked in, and he blocked out everything except the Denver Broncos.
The Stars were playing in the semifinals for the AFC Championship, and despite his sore shoulder, he managed to perform. Injuries, however, hampered their defense, and they weren’t able to stop the Broncos’ passing attack. Denver won, twenty-two to eighteen.
Cal Bonner’s fifteenth season in the NFL came to an end.
Marie, the secretary Jane shared with two other members of Newberry’s Physics Department, held out several pink message slips as Jane walked into the office.“Dr. Ngyuen at Fermi called; he needs to speak with you before four o’clock, and Dr. Davenport has scheduled a departmental meeting for Wednesday.”
“Thanks, Marie.”
Despite the secretary’s sour face, Jane could barely resist giving her a hug. She wanted to dance, sing, jitterbug on the ceiling, then race through the corridors of Stramingler Hall and tell all her colleagues that she was pregnant.
“I need your DOE reports by five.”
“You’ll have them,” Jane replied. The temptation to share the news was nearly irresistible, but she was only a month along, Marie was a judgmental sourpuss, and it was too early to tell anyone.
One person knew, however, and as Jane collected her mail and walked into her office, a nagging worry burrowed through her happiness. Two nights ago Jodie had dropped by the house and spotted the books on pregnancy that Jane had unthinkingly left stacked on the coffee table. Jane could hardly hide her condition from Jodie forever, and she didn’t try to deny it, but she was uneasy about trusting someone so self-centered to keep quiet regarding the circumstances surrounding her child’s conception.
Although Jodie had promised that she’d carry Jane’s secret to the grave, Jane didn’t have quite that much faith in her integrity. Still, she had seemed genuinely happy and sincere in her desire to keep the secret, so, as Jane closed herself in her office and flipped on her computer, she decided not to waste any more energy worrying about it.
She logged on to the electronic preprint library at Los Alamos to see what new papers on string theory and duality had been posted since yesterday. It was an automatic act, the same one performed daily by every top-level physicist in the world. The general public opened a newspaper first thing in the morning. Physicists connected with the library at Los Alamos.
But this morning, instead of concentrating on the list of new papers, she found herself thinking about Cal Bonner. According to Jodie, he was spending most of February traveling around the country fulfilling his commercial endorsement obligations before he left for North Carolina in early March. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about bumping into him at the corner grocery store.
The knowledge should have been comforting, but she couldn’t quite shake off her uneasiness. She determinedly turned her attention back to her computer screen, but the words wouldn’t come into focus. Instead, she found herself envisioning the nursery she wanted to decorate.
She’d already decided it would be yellow, and she would paint a rainbow running up the walls and across the ceiling. Her mouth curved in a dreamy smile. This precious child of hers was going to grow up surrounded by everything beautiful.
Jodie was pissed. The guys had promised her a night with Kevin Tucker if she came up with the Bomber’s birthday present, but it was the end of February, more than three months later, and they still hadn’t delivered. Watching Kevin flirt with one of her girlfriends didn’t sweeten her mood.
Melvin Thompson had rented Zebras for a party, and all the players who were still in town were there. Although Jodie was officially working, she’d been sipping from everybody’s drinks all night so she was finally ready to confront Junior Duncan when she found him in the back room shooting pool with Germaine Clark shortly after midnight.
“I need to talk to you, Junior.”
“Later, Jodie. Can’t you see me and Germaine have a game going?”
She wanted to pull the cue right out of his hands and bash him over the head with it, but she wasn’t quite that drunk. “You guys made me a promise, but I still don’t have number twelve hanging anywhere near my closet. You might have forgot about Kevin, but I sure haven’t.”
“I told you we’re working on it.” He aimed for the center pocket and missed.“Shit.”
“That’s what you’ve been saying for three months, and I’m not buying it anymore. Every time I try to talk to him, he looks at me like I’m invisible.”
Junior stepped aside so Germaine could take his turn, and she was happy to see that he looked a little uncomfortable. “The thing of it is, Jodie, Kevin’s been givin’us a few problems.”
“Are you sayin’ he doesn’t want to sleep with me?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that he’s been seeing a couple other women, and it’s gotten sort of complicated. Tell you what? How ’bout I fix you up with Roy Rawlins and Matt Truate?”
“Get real. If I’d wanted those two benchwarmers, I could have screwed them months ago.” She crossed her arms. “We had a deal. If I found you a hooker for the Bomber’s birthday present, I got a night with Kevin. I lived up to my part of the bargain.”
“Not exactly.”
The sound of that Carolina drawl coming from directly behind her sent a shiver down her spine, just like somebody’d stomped right over her grave. She turned and looked into the Bomber’s pale gray eyes.
Where had he come from? The last time she’d seen him, a couple of blondes had been trying to make time with him at the bar. What was he doing back here?
“You didn’t come up with a
She licked her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.” She jumped as he curled his long fingers around her arm. “Excuse us, guys. Jodie and me are going to step outside and have ourselves a little chat.”
“You’re crazy! It’s freezing out there.”
“We won’t stay long.” Without giving her a chance to argue, he pulled her away from the pool table and toward the back door.
All day the radio had been warning that temperatures would be dipping into the single digits that night, and as they hit the alley, their breath made vapor clouds in the air. Jodie shivered, and Cal regarded her with grim satisfaction. He was finally going to have his questions answered.
Mysteries had always made him edgy, both on the football field and in real life. In his experience a mystery generally meant somebody was getting ready to run a play that wasn’t in the book, and he didn’t like those kinds of surprises.
He knew he could have pressed the guys for some answers, but he didn’t want them to suspect how much time he’d spent thinking about Rosebud. Until he’d overheard Jodie’s conversation with Junior, it hadn’t occurred to him to talk to her.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to put the matter of Rosebud to rest. He found himself worrying about her at the strangest times. Who could predict how many hotel rooms she’d stumbled into recently, with her
