It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars #1)(17)

She slipped on the pair of half-glasses that were lying on the desk and set her cigarette in a chunky black glass ashtray. “What about Thursday evening before you leave?”

“Meeting. Friday’s all right, though.”

“The vice president’s going to be in town that night, and there’s another reception.”

“Wednesday night if we make it after midnight.”

“That looks like it’ll work. Except—” She slammed the book shut. “I’ll have my period.” Slipping off her glasses, she rubbed the bridge of her nose, took another drag from her cigarette, and said briskly, “We’ll work around it. We have before.”

“We’ve been divorced for nearly a year, Val. Don’t you think it’s time we talked about putting an end to this?”

“There’s no need to end it yet. We agreed this would be the best arrangement until one of us finds someone else.”

“Or until we kill each other, whichever comes first.”

She ignored his crack and showed that rare vulnerability that always got to him. “I just—I just can’t imagine how to go about it. I’m attracted to powerful men. How am I supposed to tell someone like that I won’t sleep with him until I’ve seen a complete workup of his blood chemistry?”

He tossed the banana peel in the sink. “Sex in the nineties. It makes for strange bedfellows.”

“No one should have to screw an ex-spouse just because that ex-spouse happens to be HIV negative.” She stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

“Amen to that.” He disliked the arrangement a lot more than she did, but whenever he tried to break it off, she made him feel like a heel. Once he found his baby-makin’ woman, however, he was putting an end to this.

“We’re both too smart to play sexual roulette,” she said.

“And you’re crazy about my body.”

She didn’t have much of a sense of humor these days, and his wisecrack set her off. Her nostrils began to breathe fire, and before long she was accusing him of gross insensitivity, reckless behavior, a bad disposition, not caring about anything but winning football games, and emotional dishonesty.

Since she was pretty much on target, he tuned her out while he polished off the banana. In all fairness, he knew her problem was worse than his, and the fact that he felt sorry for her was one of the reasons he went along with this sick arrangement. As a female member of the House of Representatives, she was judged by a stricter moral standard than her male colleagues. The voters might forgive some hounding around from their congressman, but they sure wouldn’t forgive it from a woman. For someone who liked sex as much as Valerie, but didn’t have either a husband or a man she cared about, it was a definite problem. Besides, she was one of the few honest legislators in Washington, and he figured it was his patriotic duty.

Not that there weren’t some benefits for him. He’d had so much free sex during his early playing days that he’d lost his appetite for promiscuity. He also wasn’t stupid, and he had no interest in taking chances with groupies. But despite Valerie’s kinky little scenarios, sex hadn’t been much fun for a long time.

He knew now that the two of them had been incompatible from the beginning, but they had generated so much sexual heat that neither of them had noticed until they’d made the mistake of getting married. Valerie had been initially fascinated by his rough edges and fierce aggressiveness, the same qualities that had later driven her crazy. And her breeding and sophistication had been irresistible to a kid who’d grown up dirt-poor in backwoods Alabama. But he had soon discovered that she had no sense of humor and no desire for the family life he craved.

Her latest tirade against him was beginning to wind down, and he remembered that he had a score of his own to settle. “While we’re airing our grievances here, Valerie, I’m going to dish out one of my own. If you give any more interviews like that one last week, your lawyer’s going to get a phone call from mine, and this won’t be a friendly divorce any longer.”

She refused to meet his eyes. “It was a mistake.”

“It’s like I tell the team. There’s no such thing as mistakes—only a lack of foresight.”

He had been intimidating people with his physical size for so long that it had become automatic, and he instinctively moved closer until he was hovering over her. “I don’t appreciate public discussions of our breakup, and I’m not crazy about having anybody but sportswriters call me a borderline psychopath.”

She began to fiddle with the lace on the front of her negligee. “It was an off-the-record remark. The reporter should never have printed it.”

“You shouldn’t have made the remark in the first place. From now on when anybody asks you about our divorce, you restrict yourself to the same two words I always use when I get interviewed. ‘Irreconcilable differences.’ “

“You sound like you’re threatening me.” She was trying to work up a good lather, but she couldn’t quite manage it, so he knew she was feeling guilty.

“I’m just reminding you that a lot of men in this town aren’t going to keep voting for a woman that bad-mouths an ex-husband who once completed twenty-nine passes against the 49ers’ defense in a single afternoon.”

“All right! I’m sorry. I’d just talked to you on the phone, and you’d irritated me.”