It Had to Be You Part 5

"I've heard stories about her. What's she like?"

"A high-cla.s.s hooker, except not that smart. To tell you the truth, I can't remember the last time I met a person who struck me as being so completely worthless."

"She was Arturo Flores's mistress for years. She must have some redeeming qualities."

"Other than the obvious ones on her chest, I can't imagine what. Bert talked to me about her a couple of times. It embarra.s.sed the h.e.l.l out of him knowing his daughter's naked body was showing up on the walls of every big museum in the country."

"Flores was a great artist. Don't you think Bert's att.i.tude might have been a bit provincial? Remember that we're talking about a man who wanted to hang gold ta.s.sels from the crotches of the Star Girl cheerleaders."

"None of those girls was his daughter. And ticket sales have been real slow."

She bristled. "That kind of blatant s.e.xism isn't funny."

He sighed. "It was a joke, Val. Loosen up."

"You're disgusting. Everything about s.e.x is one big joke to you, isn't it?"

"I'm disgusting! Now you correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't you the one who's been dreaming up all these kinky little s.e.xual scenarios, including tonight's semi-repulsive dip into kiddie p.o.r.n? And haven't I been warming that b.u.t.t of yours whenever you decide you want it warmed, even though beating up women has never been high on my list of aphrodisiacs?" disgusting! Now you correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't you the one who's been dreaming up all these kinky little s.e.xual scenarios, including tonight's semi-repulsive dip into kiddie p.o.r.n? And haven't I been warming that b.u.t.t of yours whenever you decide you want it warmed, even though beating up women has never been high on my list of aphrodisiacs?"

She stiffened. "That's not what I'm talking about, but as usual, you've chosen to misinterpret. I'm talking about your att.i.tude toward women. You've gotten so much free s.e.x over the years that you've forgotten women are anything more than t.i.ts and a.s.s."

"Now that's real nice talk coming from a representative of the United States government."

"You won't discuss your feelings. You refuse to share your emotions."

It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her that whenever he'd tried to share his emotions with her, she'd turned it into an all-night discussion of everything that was wrong with him.

"And women let you get away with it," she went on. "That's what's really galling. They let you get away with it because-Never mind. I can't talk to you."

"No, Valerie. Go on. Finish what you were saying. If I'm so terrible, why do women let me get away with it?"

"Because you're rich and good-looking," she replied too quickly.

"That's not what you were going to say. You're the one who keeps telling me I need to be more open in my communication. Maybe you should practice what you preach."

"They let you get away with it because you're so confident," she said stiffly. "You don't seem to have the same self-doubts as everybody else in the world. Even successful women like the security of knowing they have a man like that standing behind them."

Although to another man her words might have been flattering, they had the opposite effect on him. He could feel a red-hot coil of rage burning deep inside him, a rage that went all the way back to boyhood when too much emotion had meant a trip to the woodshed and a walloping from his father's belt.

"You women are really something," he sneered. "When are you going to figure out that G.o.d might have made two s.e.xes for a reason? You can't have it both ways. Either a man's a man, or he's not. You can't take somebody whose nature is to be a warrior and then expect him-at your command-to curl up on the couch, spill his guts, and, in general, start acting like a p.u.s.s.y."

"Get out!"

"Gladly." He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his keys and headed toward the door. But before he got there, he threw his final punch. "You know what your problem is, Valerie. Your underwear doesn't fit right, and it's made you mean. So the next time you go to the store, why don't you see if you can buy yourself a bigger-sized jockstrap."

He stormed out of the house and climbed into his car. As soon as he got settled, he jammed Hank Jr. into the tape deck and turned up the volume. When he was feeling this low, the only person he wanted to be around was another h.e.l.l-raiser.

The Sunday afternoon preseason game against the Jets was a disaster. If the Stars had been playing a respectable team, the loss wouldn't have been so humiliating, but getting beaten 25-10 by the candy-a.s.s Jets, even in preseason, was more than Dan could stomach, especially when he imagined his three unsigned players lounging in their hot tubs back in Chicago watching the game on their big screen TVs.

Jim Biederot, the Stars' starting quarterback, had been injured in their last practice and his backup had pulled a groin muscle the week before, so Dan was forced to go with C.J. Brown, a fifteen-year veteran whose knees were held together by airplane glue. If Bobby Tom had been playing, he'd have managed to get free so C.J. could hit him, but Bobby Tom wasn't playing.

To make matters worse, the Stars' new owner had apparently returned from her vacation, but she wasn't taking any calls. Dan kicked a hole in the visitors' locker room wall when Ronald McDermitt delivered that particular piece of information, but it hadn't helped. He'd never imagined he could hate anything more than he hated losing football games, but that was before Phoebe Somerville had come into his life.

All in all, it had been a dismal week. Ray Hardesty, the Stars' former defensive end, whom Dan had cut in early August, had driven drunk one too many times and gone through a guardrail on the Calumet Expressway. He'd been killed instantly, along with his eighteen-year-old female pa.s.senger. All through the funeral, as Dan had watched the faces of Ray's grieving parents, he'd kept asking himself if there had been something more he could have done. Rationally, he knew there wasn't, but it was a tragedy all the same.

The only bright spot in his week had occurred at a DuPage County nursery school where he'd gone to film a public service announcement for United Way. When he'd walked in the door, the first thing he'd noticed was a pixie-faced, redheaded teacher sitting on the floor reading a story to a group of four-year-olds. Something had gone all soft and warm inside him as he'd studied her freckled nose and the spot of green finger paint on her slacks.

When the filming was done, he'd asked her out for a cup of coffee. Her name was Sharon Anderson, and she'd been tongue-tied and shy, a welcome contrast to all the bold-eyed women he was accustomed to. Although it was too early to speculate, he couldn't help but wonder if he might not have found the simple, home-lovin' woman he was searching for.

But the residual glow from his meeting with Sharon had faded by the day of the Jets game, and he continued to seethe over the loss as he endured the postgame activities. It wasn't until he stood on the tarmac waiting to board the charter that would take them back to O'Hare that he snapped.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" b.i.t.c.h!"

He pivoted so abruptly he b.u.mped into Ronald McDermitt, knocking the acting general manager off-balance so that he dropped the book he was carrying. It was what the kid deserved, Dan thought callously, for being born a wimp. Although Ronald was no more than five-foot-eight, he wasn't bad-looking, but he was too neat, too polite, and too young to run the Chicago Stars.

In pro teams the GM directed the entire operation, including hiring and firing of coaches, so that, theoretically, Dan worked for Ronald. But Ronald was so intimidated by him that his authority was purely academic.

The GM picked up his book and looked at him with a wary expression that made Dan crazy. "Sorry, Coach."

"I b.u.mped into you, for chrissake."

"Yes, well ..."

Dan shoved his carry-on bag into Ronald's arms. "Get somebody to drop this off at my house. I'll catch a later flight."

Ronald looked worried. "Where are you going?"

"It's like this, Ronald. I'm going to go do your job for you."

"I-I'm sorry, Coach, but I don't know what you mean by that."

"I mean that I'm going to look up our new owner, and then I'm going to acquaint her with a few facts about life in the big bad NFL."

Ronald swallowed so hard his Adam's apple bobbed. "Uh, Coach, that might not be a good idea. She doesn't seem to want to be bothered with team business."

"Now that's just too bad," Dan drawled as he set off, "because I'm going to bother her real bad."

5.

Pooh got distracted by a Dalmatian as they were crossing Fifth Avenue just above the Metropolitan. Phoebe tugged on the leash.

"Come on, killer. No time for flirting. Viktor's waiting for us."

"Lucky Viktor," the Dalmatian's owner replied with a grin as he approached Phoebe and Pooh from the opposite curb.

Phoebe regarded him through her Annie Sullivan sungla.s.ses and saw that he was a harmless yuppie type. He took in her clingy, lime green dress, and his eyes quickly found their way to the crisscross lacing at the open bodice. His jaw dropped.

"Say? Aren't you Madonna?"

"Not this week."

Phoebe sailed by. Once she reached the opposite curb, she whipped off her sungla.s.ses so no one would make that mistake again. Lord ... Madonna, for Pete's sake. One of these days, she really had to start dressing respectably. But her friend Simone, who had designed this dress, was going to be at the party Viktor was taking her to tonight, and Phoebe wanted to encourage her.

She and Pooh left Fifth Avenue behind for the quieter streets of the upper Eighties. Oversized hoops swung at her ears, gold bangles clattered at both wrists, her chunky-heeled sandals tapped the sidewalk, and men turned to look as she pa.s.sed by. Her curved hips swayed in a sa.s.sy walk that seemed to have a language all its own.

Hot cha cha Hot cha cha Hot hot Cha cha cha cha It was Sat.u.r.day evening, and affluent New Yorkers dressed for dinner and the theater were beginning to emerge from the fashionable brick and brownstone town houses that lined the narrow streets. She neared Madison Avenue and the gray granite building that held the co-op she was subleasing at bargain rates from a friend of Viktor's.

Three days ago, when she'd returned to the city from Montauk, she'd found dozens of phone messages waiting for her. Most of them were from the Stars' office, and she ignored them. None were from Molly saying she'd changed her mind about going directly from camp to boarding school. She frowned as she remembered their strained weekly phone calls. No matter what she said, she couldn't seem to make a dent in her sister's hostility.

"Evening, Miss Somerville. h.e.l.lo, Pooh."

"Hi, Tony." She gave the doorman a dazzling smile as they walked into the apartment building.

He gulped, then quickly leaned down to pat Pooh's pom-pom. "I let your guest in just like you said."

"Thanks. You're a prince." She crossed the lobby, her heels tapping on the rose marble floor, and punched the elevator b.u.t.ton.

"Can't get over what a nice guy he is," the doorman said from behind her. "Somebody like him."

"Of course he's a nice guy."

"It makes me feel bad about the names I used to call him."

Phoebe bristled as she followed Pooh into the elevator. She had always liked Tony, but this was something she couldn't ignore. "You should feel bad. Just because a man is gay doesn't mean he isn't a human being who deserves respect like everyone else."

Tony looked startled. "He's gay?"

The doors slid shut.

She drummed the toe of her sandal on the floor as the elevator rose. Viktor kept telling her not to be such a crusader, but too many of the people she cared about were gay, and she couldn't turn a blind eye to the discrimination so many of them faced.

She thought of Arturo and all he had done for her. Those years with him in Seville had gone a long way toward restoring her belief in the goodness of human beings. She remembered his short pudgy body straightening in front of his easel, a smear of paint streaking his bald pate as he absentmindedly rubbed his hand over the top of his head while he called out to her, "Phoebe, querida, querida, come here and tell me what do you think?" come here and tell me what do you think?"

Arturo had been a man of grace and elegance, an aristocrat of the old school, whose innate sense of privacy rebelled at the idea of letting the world know about his h.o.m.os.e.xuality. Although they'd never discussed it, she knew it comforted him to pa.s.s her off to the public as his mistress, and she loved being able to repay him in some small way for everything he had given her.

The elevator doors slid open. She crossed the carpeted hall and unlocked her own door while Pooh tugged at the leash, yipping with excitement. Bending down, she unfastened the clip. "Brace yourself, Viktor. The Terminator is on the rampage."

As Pooh shot off, she ran her hands through her blond hair to fluff it. She hadn't blown it dry after her shower, deciding to let it curl naturally for the s.e.xy windblown look Simone's deliciously trampy dress demanded.

An unfamiliar male voice with a distinct Southern drawl boomed out from her living room. "Down, dawg! Down, dammit!"

She gasped, then dashed forward, the soles of her sandals slipping on the checkerboard black-and-white marble floor as she whipped around the corner. Hair flying, she lurched to a stop as she saw Dan Calebow standing in the middle of her living room. She recognized him immediately, even though she'd only had a brief conversation with him at her father's funeral. Still, he wasn't the sort of man one forgot easily, and over the past six weeks, his face had unaccountably popped into her memory more than once.

Blond, handsome, and bigger than life, he looked like a born troublemaker. Instead of a knit shirt and chinos, he should have been wearing a rumpled white suit and driving down some Southern dirt road in a big old Cadillac hooking beer cans over the roof. Or standing on the front lawn of an antebellum mansion with his head thrown back to bay at the moon while a young Elizabeth Taylor lay on a curly bra.s.s bed upstairs and waited for him to come home.

She felt the same uneasiness she'd experienced at their first meeting. Although he looked nothing at all like the football player who'd raped her all those years ago, she had a deep-seated fear of physically powerful men. At the funeral she'd managed to hide her disquiet behind flirtatiousness, a protective device she had developed into a fine art years ago. But at the funeral, they hadn't been alone.

Pooh, who regarded rejection as a personal challenge, was circling him, tongue flopping, her pom-pom tail beating out a cadence of lovemelovemelovemeloveme.

He looked from the dog to Phoebe. "If she pees on me, I'm skinnin' her."

Phoebe rushed forward to s.n.a.t.c.h up her pet. "What are you doing here? How did you get in?"

He studied her face rather than her curves, which immediately set him apart from most men. "Your doorman's a big Giants' fan. Heck of a nice guy. He surely enjoyed those stories I told him about my encounters with L.T."

Phoebe had no idea who L.T. was, but she remembered the flippant instructions she'd left with Tony when she'd gone to walk Pooh. "I'm expecting a gentleman caller," she had said. "Let him in, will you?"

The conversation she'd just had with her doorman took on a whole new light.

"Who's L.T.?" she asked, while she tried to calm Pooh, who was struggling to get out of her arms.

Dan looked at her as if she'd just been beamed down from outer s.p.a.ce. Sticking his fingers in the side pockets of his slacks, he said softly, "Ma'am, it's questions like that are gonna get you in a heap of trouble at team owners' meetings."

"I'm not going to any team owners' meetings," she replied with enough saccharine to supply a Weight Watchers convention, "so it won't be a problem."

"Is that so?" His country boy grin was at odds with the chill in his eyes. "Well, then, ma'am, Lawrence Taylor used to be the team chaplain for the New York Giants. A real sweet-tempered gentleman who'd lead us all in prayer sessions, before the game."

She knew she was missing something, but she wasn't going to inquire further. His intrusion into her apartment had shaken her, and she wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. "Mr. Calebow, as much as I adore having uninvited company scare the wits out of me, I'm afraid I don't have time to talk right now."

"This won't take long."

She could see that she wasn't going to budge him until he'd had his say, so she did her best to a.s.sume an air of studied boredom. "Five minutes then, but I'll have to get rid of my critter first." She made her way to the kitchen to deposit Pooh. The poodle looked pitiable as Phoebe shut the door on her.

When she returned to her unwelcome visitor, he was standing in the middle of the room taking in the owner's trendy decorating scheme. Frail, twig-shaped metal chairs were juxtaposed with oversized couches upholstered in charcoal gray canvas. The lacquered walls and slate floor emphasized the room's cool, stark lines. Her own more comfortable, and considerably less expensive, furniture was in storage-everything except the large painting that hung on the room's single unbroken wall.

The languorous nude was the first painting Arturo had done of her, and even though it was quite valuable, she would never part with it. She lay on a simple wood-framed bed in Arturo's cottage, her blond hair spilling over the pillow as she gazed out of the canvas. The sun dappled her bare skin from the light that shone through a single window set high in the white stucco wall.

She hadn't hung the painting in the apartment's most public room out of vanity, but because the natural light from the large windows displayed it best. This portrait had been more realistically executed than his later depictions of her, and looking at the figure's soft curves and gentle shadings gave her a sense of peace. A spot of coral emphasized the slope of her breast, a brilliant patch of lemon illuminated the swell of her hip, and delicate lavender shadows were woven like silk threads through the paleness of her pubic hair. She seldom thought of the figure in the painting as herself, but as someone far better, a woman whose s.e.xuality hadn't been stolen from her.

Dan stood with his back to her, openly studying the painting in a way that reminded her exactly whose body was on display. As he turned to face her, she braced herself for a smarmy remark.

"Real pretty." He walked over to one of the twig chairs. "Will this thing hold me?"

"If it breaks, I'll send you a bill."

As he sat, she saw that he had finally been distracted by the curves Simone's clingy dress so blatantly displayed, and she gave a mental sigh of relief. This, at least, was familiar territory.

She smiled as she uncrossed her arms and let him look his fill. Years ago she had discovered that she could control her relationships with heteros.e.xual men far better by playing the s.e.xy siren than the blushing ingenue. Being the s.e.xual aggressor put her subtly in charge. She was the one who defined the rules of the game instead of the man, and when she sent her suitor on his way, he a.s.sumed it was because he didn't measure up to all the other men in her life. None of them ever figured out there was something wrong with her.