“I know,” Kate murmured, staring at the scarred tabletop.
Then she lifted her head, tossing back a fall of smooth, chestnut hair that always made Millie think of the sleek, glossy mane on a thoroughbred horse. That’s exactly what her friend was—a thoroughbred. Beautiful but skittish. Born to run like the wind but kept carefully corralled.
The increase in revenues generated by college athletic programs meant the system had become a gilded cage. Deep-pocketed alumni or enthusiastic boosters still mattered, but they weren’t where the big money came in. No, the networks supplied the grease to make the wheels turn. The public had staked a claim on intercollegiate athletics, elevating some of the programs and their players to a level many professional franchises aspired to reach. And a run of bad publicity had brought down more than one legendary program.
Coaching was the one area where the pay for performance was entirely legal. Fail to live up to potential, and the press would take great joy in helping to dismantle a career. It had happened to Danny and a good many football coaches before him.
Now, the spotlight was shining brighter on the hardwood court. The men’s programs, like Ty’s, were destined to take the heat, but high-profile women like Kate were becoming a bigger target. Avery considered this progress, from a detached, feminist point of view. But both Millie and Avery were attached to Kate, and the strongest argument for the advancement of women either of them could make was to help her bargain from a position of power. In all things.
“What’s happening, Mil?” Kate asked, her voice gentle with concern. “For a couple of weeks, you were all coy and enigmatic whenever we talked about Ty—”
“Apparently not too enigmatic,” Millie grumbled.
Avery chuckled, then reached over to pat Millie’s hand. “More the giddy kind of enigmatic. Gives you away every time.”
Kate nodded and tapped the thick handle of her mug. “For the last couple of weeks, you haven’t said anything at all, which leads us to speculate.”
“Right now, the leading theories are Mari had him killed, and someone’s making a hole in the desert,” Avery said, holding up one finger.
“Holes in the desert would be Las Vegas. Ty’s in Reno,” Millie corrected. “Besides, Mari’s getting her divorce. Why would she kill him?”
Avery shrugged. “Quicker?”
“Messy,” Kate interjected.
“I’m pretty sure he’s not dead.” Flicking up a second finger, Avery moved on. “Okay, possibility number two is Ty met one of those chorus girls, and you discovered they’re busy trying to repopulate the earth with freakishly tall children.”
“Wow. Talk about fast work,” Millie commented, raising both brows.
“Personally, I think that’s your long shot,” Kate chimed in. “I think we all know Ty prefers the vertically challenged types to those of us with loftier aspirations.”
“I may not qualify as freakishly tall, but I’m not exactly petite,” Millie reminded her.
Avery sat up taller on her stool, but the adjustment didn’t do much good. “As one of the vertically challenged, I find this line of reasoning offensive.”
“It was Kate’s reasoning,” Millie hurled back.
“And in the absence of any other information.” Avery made a circling motion with her hand, prompting her to be more forthcoming.
Millie inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, savoring the familiar and not-at-all-sexy scents of Calhoun’s—stale beer, industrial cleansers, and postadolescent pheromones run amok. God, she wanted to talk to them. She’d always thought she could tell her best friends anything, but this was hard. How did a woman admit she failed as miserably at long-distance relationships as she did the ones up close and personal?
“No one lives in a vacuum,” Kate whispered sotto voce.
Millie narrowed her eyes at Kate, annoyed her friend had the balls to throw her words back at her, but even more irked she wasn’t big enough to kick Coach Snidely-Snyder in the ass.
“Fine.” She pushed her drink to the center of the table and clasped her hands primly on the sticky surface. “You want to know what happened?”
Avery rolled her eyes so hard, she almost toppled off the stool. “We’re mildly curious.”
“And if you answer with ‘nothing,’ we’ll know you’re lying.” Kate tucked her hair behind her ear and focused her full attention on Millie. “Something happened. We’ve been trying to wait for you to come around to telling us, but you’ve lost the giddy, and now we want to know why and how badly we need to hurt Ty.”
“We had phone sex,” Millie blurted.
Avery gripped the edge of the table as she reared back. “Whoa. So not what I expected.”
Kate barked a laugh, fluttered her eyelashes in disbelief, then knocked her ear against her open palm a couple of times as if to knock some water out. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you clearly.”
“We. Had. Phone. Sex.” Arching her eyebrows, Millie eyed each of them challengingly.
Avery’s bright, inquisitive eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Has to be more than that.”
“Obviously,” Kate said, bobbing her head. “You had phone sex, and his head exploded?”
“As far as I know, Coach Tyrell Ransom was last known to be alive, well, and unexploded in Reno, Nevada.” Millie looked from one woman to the other but found only the bafflement she’d been feeling for the last two weeks written in their expressions.
Kate shook her head. “I’m still processing the leap from phone sex to no phone.”
Swallowing what was left of her pride, Millie gave up the tough-girl act and leaned in close. “Everything was going so well. He kissed me the night he spouted off to Jim Davenport on the phone,” she said in a hushed rush.
“He owed you at least a kiss for shooting his mouth off,” Avery said in an officious tone.
“Before, not after,” Millie clarified.
“Either way, I’m not surprised,” Kate interjected. “You two have been throwing off more sparks than a soldering iron since the day he came here. Of course he kissed you.”
“Again when we went to New
