It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars #1)(67)

He knew he would have handled the whole thing a lot better if it hadn’t been for those photographs. The idea of strangers looking at her body infuriated him. His reaction was completely illogical, considering the fact that her body had been on display in most of the major museums of the world, but he couldn’t help it. Besides, abstract paintings were different from brightly lit photographs. The photographs he’d seen in Beau Monde were works of art, but the world was filled with millions of horny *s who weren’t going to know that. Thinking about the way they would be drooling over those pages had made his temper snap.

His damned temper. When was he going to grow up and get it under control? It didn’t take a degree in psychology to understand why he had such a hard time with it. Even when he was a little kid—four or five years old—his old man had beaten him up if he cried or complained because he was hurt or scared.

He could still hear his old man’s drunken abuse. Fetch my belt so I can give you something real to cry about, little girly.

As he grew up, he’d discovered that the one emotion he could safely express around his old man was anger, whether on the football field or with his fists. Hell of a thing. A man thirty-seven years old still behaving like a playground bully. Except this time the bully had gotten what was coming to him. This time the bully had been cut down to size by the short little kid who couldn’t even make the team.

Once again the anger came back to him, but now he was honest enough to admit it was a camouflage for shame. Shame that Ronald was the one who’d defended Phoebe. Shame that Ronald had been defending her against him.

If he hadn’t been so mad at himself, he might have been able to enjoy the fact that Ronald McDermitt had finally shown some gumption. If he hadn’t been so mad at himself, he might have believed there was actually some hope for the team after all.





14


Ron cleared his throat “Ms. Somerville posed for the Beau Monde photographs before she inherited the Stars. She certainly had no intention of embarrassing either the team or the NFL.”

“Is it true that the commissioner has privately warned her about her behavior?” a female reporter asked.

“That is not true,” Ron replied. “She hasn’t spoken with the commissioner.”

Only because she hadn’t returned his phone calls, Phoebe thought unhappily as she sat in silence between Ron and Wally Hampton, the Stars’ public relations director. The press conference was going even worse than she had anticipated. Not only had the local media shown up, but the national as well, hot on the trail of a terrific human interest story.

So many reporters had wanted to take part in the press conference that they had been forced to use the empty practice field. She, Ron, and Wally were seated near the fifty yard line behind a small table draped with a blue cloth bearing the Stars’ logo. Some of the press members stood, while others had taken seats on wooden benches that had been set up for them.

At first all the questions had been centered around Bert’s will, but it hadn’t taken them long to move on. So far, they had questioned Ron’s management skills, Dan’s coaching, and Phoebe’s morals. Ron and Wally Hampton were answering all of the questions, even those addressed directly to her.

An overweight male reporter with bad skin and a scraggly beard stood. Wally Hampton whispered to her that he represented a sleazy tabloid. “Phoebe, are you going to do any more nudie shots?”

Wally interceded. “Ms. Somerville is much too busy with the Stars for any other outside activities.”

The man scratched his chin beneath his beard. “This isn’t the first time you’ve taken off your clothes for the public, is it?”

“Ms. Somerville’s work for the great artist Arturo Flores is well-known,” Ron said stiffly.

The tabloid reporter was interrupted by a local sports columnist. “There’s been a lot of criticism of Coach Calebow recently, especially with so many turnovers every game. Some people think he’s juggling his starters around too much. The players are starting to complain that they’re being overworked and that he’s taking the fun out of the game. For whatever reason, the team hasn’t looked good yet this season. Any plans for changes?”

“None at all,” Ron said. “It’s still early and we’re making adjustments.” He went on to praise Dan’s coaching abilities, and she wondered what would happen when the press learned that Dan had been suspended. Ron seemed to believe they could pass it off as a bad case of the flu, but she didn’t think it would be that easy. What Ron had done was definitely illegal, and Dan was probably already on the phone to his lawyers.

She told herself not to think of his sneers and insults, but it was hard to put them out of her mind. Maybe it was all for the best that he had shown her so clearly what kind of person he was. Now she was forced to face the fact that she had been letting herself fall in love with the wrong man.

The obnoxious tabloid reporter was speaking again, an unpleasant leer on his face. “What about Coach Calebow’s performance off the field, Phoebe? How’s that?”

The other reporters shot him disgusted glances, but Phoebe wasn’t fooled. Sooner or later they would have gotten around to asking the same thing. They would just have been more polite in their phrasing.

“Coach Calebow has a fine record—”