It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars #1)(19)

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 passenger. 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 bitch!”

He pivoted so abruptly he bumped 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 bumped 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 sunglasses 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 sunglasses 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 passed by. Her curved hips swayed in a sassy walk that seemed to have a language all its own.



Hot cha cha

Hot cha cha

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