It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars #1)(26)

“Affirmative.” He pulled his eyes away from her breasts and pushed a sheaf of papers toward her. She extracted a pair of reading glasses with leopard-spotted frames from her purse and slipped them on.

The door opened behind her and she tensed. She didn’t need to turn her head to know who had come in; there was something in the air. Perhaps it was the subtle citrus scent she had noticed when he had been in her apartment, perhaps simply the atmospheric turbulence of excessive macho. The idea that she still remembered what he smelled like scared her, and she let her jacket fall open a bit farther.

“Real glad to see you could make it, Miz Somerville.” A distinct edge of sarcasm undercut his Alabama drawl. Until now, she’d never found Southern accents particularly attractive, but she was forced to admit there was definitely something seductive about those elongated vowels.

She kept her eyes on the papers she was studying. “Make nice, Mr. Calebow, or I’ll sic Pooh on you.” Before he could respond, her head shot up from Bobby Tom Denton’s contact. “Eight million dollars? You’re giving this man $8 million dollars to catch a football! I thought this team was in financial trouble?”

Dan leaned against the wall to her left, crossed his arms and tucked his fingers under the armpits of the blue Stars’ polo shirt he wore with a pair of gray slacks. “Good wide-outs don’t come cheap. You’ll notice that’s for four years.”

She was still trying to get her breath back. “This is an obscene amount of money.”

“He’s worth every penny,” Steve Kovak retorted. “Your father approved this contract, by the way.”

“Before or after he died?”

Dan smiled. Instinctively, Phoebe looked over at the only man in the room she trusted for confirmation that her father had, indeed, known about this outrageous contract. Ron nodded.

Kovak’s chair squeaked as he turned toward Dan, effectively shutting her out of the discussion. “Do you know that the Colts only paid Johnny Unitas ten thousand dollars a year? And that was after he’d led them to two championships.”

These men were definitely crazy, and she decided she would be the voice of sanity. “Then why don’t you get rid of Bobby Tom Denton and hire this Unitas person? You could triple the Colts’ offer and still be a few million ahead.”

Dan Calebow laughed. Dipping his head, he kept his arms crossed as his chest began to shake. Steve Kovak stared at her with an expression that fell someplace between shock and abject horror.

Her eyes darted to Ron, who had a gentle smile on his face. “What did I say wrong?” she asked.

Leaning forward, he patted her hand and whispered, “Johnny Unitas is retired now. He’s—uh—about sixty. And he was a quarterback.”

“Oh.”

“But if he were still playing and—uh—younger, that might have been an excellent suggestion.”

“Thank you,” she replied with dignity.

Head still dipped, Dan wiped his eyes with his thumbs. “Johnny Unitas. Jay-zus . . .”

Completely irritated now, she swung her legs toward him while she whipped off her glasses and jabbed them at the unsigned contracts. “Did you make money like this when you were playing?”

He looked over at her, his eyes still moist. “Starting quarterbacks do a little better than that after they’ve been around for awhile.”

“Better than $8 million?”

“Yep.”

She slapped the contracts down on the desk. “Fine. Then why don’t you sign this!” Rising to her feet, she stalked out.

She was halfway down the hall before she realized she had no place to go. An empty office lay off to her left. She stepped inside and shut the door, wishing she’d held her temper. Once again, she’d let her tongue take control of her brain.

Tucking her glasses into the pocket of her jacket, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling bank of windows that ran behind the desk and looked out over two empty practice fields. What did she know about wide-outs and $8 million contracts? She could converse with art lovers in four different languages, but that wasn’t any use to her now.

The door opened behind her.

“Are you all right?” Ron inquired softly.

“I’m fine.” As she turned, she saw the concern in his eyes.

“You have to understand about them. About football.”

“I hate the game. I don’t want to understand.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to if you’re going to be part of this.” He gave her a sad smile. “They take no prisoners. Pro football is the most exclusive boys’ club in the world.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s closed to outsiders. There are secret passwords and elaborate rituals that only they can understand. None of the rules are written down, and if you have to ask what they are, you can’t belong. It’s a closed society. No women allowed. And no men who don’t measure up.”

She walked away from the window to one of the file cabinets and regarded him curiously. “Are you talking about yourself?”

He gave an embarrassed laugh. “It’s painfully obvious, isn’t it? I’m thirty-four years old. I tell everyone I’m five feet ten, but I’m barely five-eight. And I’m still trying to make the team. It’s been that way all my life.”