When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9)(14)

“He hates me,” Clint said cheerfully to Olivia when Thad went over to the bar to order another drink. “But he has one of the best football minds in the League, and he’s a great coach.” When she looked confused, he said, “The best backup quarterbacks do everything they can to make the starter a better player.”

“He doesn’t seem to be doing much coaching.”

“He will once training camp starts. Then he’s all business. Dude’ll get me out of bed at six in the morning to watch film. Nobody reads the defense like Thad Owens.”

Olivia toyed with her unopened iced tea bottle. “So . . . if you don’t mind my asking, if he’s so great, why isn’t he the starting quarterback instead of you?”

Clint tugged at his beard. “It’s complicated. He should have been one of the greats, but he has this thing with his peripheral vision. Nothing that’d be a problem in any other job. Just in this one.”

The song choices were as cheesy as the karaoke machine, and “Achy Breaky Heart” began to play. Bigs had the mike, and she winced as he launched into a cruelly off-key version. From there, he tortured Stevie Wonder’s “Part-Time Lover.” Afterward, he took a break to down his beer and approach Olivia. “T-Bo says you’re a big-time opera singer. Let’s hear you.”

“I’m on vocal rest.”

“I heard you doing some kind of singing exercises this morning,” Thad said unhelpfully.

“That’s different.”

Bigs shrugged and took the mike again. His “Build Me Up Buttercup” wasn’t quite as bad as “Part-Time Lover,” but his rendition of “I Want to Know What Love Is” was so ugly the other customers finally rebelled.

“Shut the hell up!”

“Turn that thing off!”

“Sit down, asshole!”

Thad winced. “And now it begins.”

Bigs clenched his ham-hock fists and kept singing, his face flushing red with anger.

Junior looked worried. “If you don’t get that mike away from him, T-Bo, he’ll end up suspended before the season even starts.”

“I’m not singing,” Thad responded. “You do it.”

“Hell, no.”

“Don’t look at me,” Ritchie said. “I’m worse than he is.”

Clint had disappeared, the crowd was getting uglier, and all three men looked at her. “Vocal rest,” she repeated.

The three of them rose in unison. Thad took one arm, Ritchie the other, and they lifted her from her chair. While Junior ran interference, they propelled her to the microphone just as the crowd’s jeers grew louder and “Friends in Low Places” began to play.

Thad gently extracted the mike from Bigs. “Liv changed her mind. This is her favorite song, and she wants to sing.”

“Olivia,” she hissed.

To her dismay, Bigs handed over the microphone.

And there she was, La Belle Tornade, the toast of the Metropolitan, the jewel of La Scala, the pride of the Royal Opera House standing before a roomful of drunks with a sticky microphone in her hand and a Garth Brooks tune ringing in her ears. She gave it her worst. Perfectly pitched, but quiet. No open, rounded vowels. No soaring high notes or resonant lows. Not even a hint of vibrato. As ordinary as she could make it.

“Take it off!” a bully shouted from the end of the bar as she reached the final chorus.

“Let’s see what you got on underneath!” another shouted.

Before she knew it, the entire bar, with the exception of the football players, was shouting, “Take it off! Take it off!”

The temper that had made her give the finger to the odious loggionisti at La Scala got the best of her. She whipped off one of the Crocs, threw it at the nearest culprit, and then hurled the other at the initial offender.

Thad appeared from nowhere, grabbed her by the shoulders, and twisted her toward the door. “And now we get out of here.”

Apparently, she didn’t move fast enough because he swept all five feet ten inches and one hundred and forty pounds of her into his arms and wedged her outside without banging her head on the door.

“Let me go!”

He set her down, pulled her across the one-way street, picked her up again, and carried her into an alley.

“What . . . ?”

“Rats.”

She clutched his neck. “No!”

“We’ll hang here for a while until things settle down.”

She grabbed him tighter. “I hate rodents!” The alley was narrow, with metal fire escapes running up the sides of the brick buildings, and a sentinel of Dumpsters standing guard. “I’m good with bugs, and I had a pet snake when I was a kid, but no rats.”

She felt him shudder. “I’m not a big fan of snakes.”

“Fine. You handle the rodents and I’ll take care of the reptiles.”

“Deal.”

She held herself stiffly, one hand at his chest, wanting and not wanting to rest her head against his dark blue blazer as she searched the area for vermin. “I’m too heavy.”

“I can bench-press three-twenty. You’re at least a hundred and fifty pounds under that.”

By the time she’d done the math, he was already grinning. She withered him with her frostiest voice. “May we go now?”