It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars #1)(89)

As she set plates and napkins on the table, he said, “I hope you ladies didn’t eat so much dinner that you don’t have room for a little bedtime snack.”

“I do,” Molly said.

“Me, too.” Phoebe had already blown her fat intake for the day with a chocolate eclair, so what difference did a few hundred more grams make?

Dan took a seat at one end of the kitchen table, and as they all helped themselves to a gooey slab of the thick pie, he asked Molly about school. Without any more encouragement than that, she chattered on about her new best friend, Lizzie, her classes, and her teachers, effortlessly presenting him with all the information Phoebe had been trying to drag out of her for days.

Molly reached for her second piece of pizza. “And guess what else? Mrs. Genovese, our neighbor next door, hired me to baby-sit her twin boys for a few hours after school on Tuesdays and Fridays. They’re three and a half years old, and they’re so cute, but she says she needs a break sometimes because they wear her out. She’s paying me three dollars an hour.”

Phoebe set down her fork. “You didn’t say anything to me about this.”

Molly’s expression grew mulish. “Peg said I could. Now I suppose you’re going to tell me I can’t.”

“No. I think it will be a good experience for you. I just wish you’d talked to me about it.”

Dan observed the exchange between the two of them, but didn’t comment.

Half an hour later, Phoebe thanked him as she walked with him to the door. As she had suspected, he was returning to the Stars Complex for a late-night session to finalize the week’s game plan against their crosstown rivals, the Bears.

He reached for the knob, but hesitated before he turned it. “Phoebe, I’m not saying you were right about what we discussed today, and I definitely don’t like the way you went about handling the problem, but I’m going to keep an open mind about what you said.”

“Fair enough.”

“In return, I want you to promise me that you’ll tell me right out if you’ve got a problem with my coaching.”

“Should I bring along a bodyguard, or do you think a loaded gun will be enough.”

He sighed and dropped his hand from the knob. “You’re really startin’ to exasperate me. I don’t know where you get this notion that I’m difficult. I’m about the most reasonable man in the world.”

“I’m glad to hear that because there is something else I wanted to discuss with you. I’d like you to put Jim Biederot on the bench next week so his backup can get some playing time.”

He exploded. “What! Of all the stupid, asinine . . .” The expression on Phoebe’s face stopped him.

She lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “Just testing.”

He paid her back by looking her over from head to toe and then speaking in a silky whisper that sent her shivering all the way to her toes. “Little girls who walk too close to the danger zone can find themselves in some real bad trouble.”

He brushed her lips with a quick kiss, opened the door, and disappeared down the sidewalk.

As he climbed into his car and settled behind the wheel, he was already regretting both the kiss and his suggestive words. No more, he promised. He’d finally made up his mind how he was going to handle this relationship, and flirting wasn’t part of it.

He’d spent the final leg of the plane trip home last night trying to figure out how he could have Phoebe in his bed while he was courting Sharon Anderson. He wanted Phoebe so much that he’d tried all kinds of arguments to convince himself it would be possible for them to have a brief affair, but even before they’d landed, he’d known he couldn’t do it. His future with Sharon was too important for him to jeopardize just because he couldn’t get his lust for Phoebe under control.

During a hasty dinner with Sharon last week, he’d become even more convinced that she was the woman he wanted to marry. She’d been a little skittish around him, but that was to be expected, and she’d relaxed some by the time he’d taken her home. He’d given her a quick good-night kiss at the door, but that was all. Somewhere along the line, he’d gotten this old-fashioned notion that he and Sharon wouldn’t make love until their wedding night.

As for Phoebe— He wanted her so much he ached, but he’d dealt with lust before, and he figured time would take care of that. He knew the safest thing for him to do would be to keep their relationship strictly professional, but the idea depressed the hell out of him. He’d grown to like her, dammit! If she’d been a man, she might very well have ended up in his inner circle of friends. Why should he cut her out of his personal life now, he asked himself, when she’d be going back to Manhattan at the end of the year and he’d probably never see her again?

It wasn’t as if he planned to keep leading her on. All he had to do was treat her like a friend. There’d be no more slipups like that little kiss he’d given her tonight, no more sexual challenges issued in airplane johns. Right now, she might be interested in continuing the physical part of their relationship, but in his experience, women like Phoebe were philosophical about things like that. Once he showed her he was changing the rules between them, she’d follow along. She knew that sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn’t. Nobody’d have to spell it out for her.

He smiled to himself as he turned the key in the ignition. Phoebe was a crackerjack, all right. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she had managed to earn his respect. He’d never expected her to work so hard at her responsibilities as the Stars’ owner, and her dedication was even more impressive because she was so far out of her element. She also had a way of standing up to him that he admired. Somehow she managed to hold her ground around him without being a bitch about it, in contrast to Valerie, who tore into him just for the pleasure of the kill.