Hart, Catherine

by Impulsive

  "Now, Cheryl, you know I retired that thing long ago," Maggie objected. "I don't believe it's been put to good use since your dad caught Ty smoking in his bedroom." She made a rueful face and added, "Of course, my azaleas haven't bloomed nearly as well without all the ashes he used to flick out his window, either."

  Maggie was a marvelous cook and had taught her daughters the art as well. She was genuinely surprised when Jess offered to help prepare the meal. "My lands! Don't tell me Tyler has finally hooked up with a girl who knows her way around a kitchen. Why, I don't believe Barb could do more than open a can of soup and heat it in the microwave, and to hear her tell it, you'd swear she'd slaved over a hot stove all day just doing that much."

  "Oh, Jess can cook like a dream," Ty volunteered. "Almost as good as you, Mom."

  Once in the kitchen, surrounded by James women, Jess was bombarded with questions and freely tendered information.

  "Did Ty tell me you're coaching one of the football players?"

  "How serious is it between you and Ty? This is the first time since Barb that he's brought anyone home to meet the family, you know. After the number she did on him, I think he's been a little gun-shy about long-term relationships with women, especially if he suspects they're only interested in him for his fame or fortune."

  "Barb was a real bitch, if you'll pardon my French."

  "French? Cheryl, you can barely speak English."

  "Are you from around Columbus, Jess?"

  "Has Ty met your folks yet?"

  "Wait 'til you meet Grandma Arlyss. She'll be around tomorrow, no doubt, so be prepared to be grilled by the best. She's half deaf, and refuses to wear her hearing aid most of the time, so you'll have to yell some, mind you."

  "Have you met Ty's ex-wife? She's awfully attractive, in a different way from you—or she would be if she wasn't such a money-grubbing shrew."

  "Oh, I don't hold a candle to Barb when it comes to looks," Jess claimed.

  "Don't kid yourself," Lynn told her. "Ty doesn't date homely women. Course, being a quarterback and semifamous and all, he doesn't have to, I suppose. Not with all the pretty ones after him."

  Jess shook her head, a wry smile curling her lips. "You wouldn't say that if you'd met me a few weeks before, or even a few days ago. I have to admit I was a mess."

  "Now, I don't believe a word of it," Karlie said. "Just look at you. Why, if Ty hadn't told us you're a reporter, which by itself was a major surprise since members of the press aren't exactly his favorite people, I'd swear you were a model or something."

  Jess waved that notion aside. "Me? No way. I'm more comfortable behind a camera than I'd ever be in front of one. I'd feel like a female Frankenstein." Out of habit, she rubbed at the small lump on the bridge of her nose.

  "You're certainly tall enough, and thin enough to be a model," Cheryl noted. "And you have those high cheekbones they've all got. And I love the way you've done your hair."

  Jess laughed. "You ought to. Your brother did it for me."

  "Say what?"

  "Ty?"

  Maggie got the last word. "Ty styled your hair for you?"

  "Cut it, highlighted it, the whole works," Jess confirmed with a nod. "Just this past week, in fact."

  "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!" Maggie declared. "Turn around. Let me get a closer look." She inspected Jess's hairdo with a critical eye, then announced, "He did a right decent job of it, if I do say so myself."

  "Thanks to you, and spending so much time in your shop, so he claims," Jess told her.

  Maggie beamed. "I always hoped one of my offspring would inherit my talent, but God knows I never thought it would be Ty," she quipped with a chuckle. "Wes is going to have a bloomin' fit! His son, the quarterback accountant hairdresser!"

  By the time their visit came to an end, everyone was on a first-name basis, and Jess felt as if she'd been adopted into the family. She felt so comfortable and welcome with them, she actually hated to leave.

  "You bring Jess back real soon, Ty," Maggie told her son as they packed their bags in the car. "And don't stay away so long yourself."

  "I will, Mom," he promised. "Maybe for Thanksgiving."

  "Don't forget our date, Jess," Wes reminded jokingly. "Come February, I'll give you that tour of the mortuary."

  As they drove away, Jess looked back. They were all standing in the drive, waving farewell—Josh with both hands flapping wildly. She wondered if she really would be coming back again with Ty. She hoped so. Lord, but she hoped so.

  Memphis was a disaster from beginning to end. After spending the weekend in separate bedrooms at Ty's parents, Jess now found herself sharing quarters with the cheerleaders again, while Ty roomed with Gabe. Which might not have been so bad if Bambi hadn't been one of Jess's roommates this time around.

  "We alternate now and then," Pepper explained. "This week, we've got Bambi and Shasta, while Destiny and Jazz are bunking in with Starr and Heidi. Eventually, you'll get Tawna, Desiree, and Candy as roomies, or some combination thereof."

  Shasta's given name was Daisy, which she deplored, so she'd taken a variety of the flower and adopted it, instead. "Daisy was my great-grandmother's name, and I've always hated it," Shasta said. "It's so old-fashioned sounding. Maybe when I'm eighty, I won't mind, but for right now I'd rather be Shasta, even if some people do think I got it from a soft drink."

  Shasta was one of the younger members of the cheerleading squad, having never cheered for a pro team before, as some of the other girls had. Fresh out of high school, she hadn't set her sights on any other occupation as yet. This was Shasta's way to save money for her college tuition while she decided what she wanted to study when she got there. Destiny, on the other hand, was saving to open a boutique of her own someday, and Jazz wanted to start her own dance studio when her days as a cheerleader were done. Pepper, the squad leader, was already certified as a dental hygienist, and was merely biding her time until her dental student fiancé got his doctorate degree and the two of them set up shop together.

  Jess found it quite enlightening that many of the girls did not intend for this to be their ultimate career. Mistakenly, she'd been under the impression that they were all fairly well stuck on themselves and out to bag a wealthy hubby, be it a football star or otherwise. Not that she was completely off-base in her prejudicial thinking. Case in point—Bambi, who made no bones about admitting that she was angling for a man who could keep her in the high style she felt she deserved, and to which she would like to become lazily accustomed. Just now, with no one better or richer on the horizon, she had her sights set on Ty. It mattered little to her that he was currently unavailable.

  "You won't hold his interest for long," she informed Jess in a snide, superior tone. "He's only dating you to get some good press, and to make me jealous. But any day now he's going to see that you're nothing but bad news—the way you were for poor old Ervin. Then you'll be history and he'll be mine. So go ahead, change your hair, get a nose job, spruce yourself up all you want. You'll only be wasting your money."

  "Now, Bambi, be nice," Pepper told her, "or I'll be forced to tell Jess your real name, so she can use it in her article and reveal it to the whole world."

  Bambi wheeled on Pepper. "You don't even know it," she sneered.

  Pepper's grin was wicked. "Want to bet? Remember Seattle, at the beginning of the season? Who answered the phone when your mother called the hotel room looking for you? She sure didn't ask for Bambi, I guarantee you."

  "Ha! You're bluffing. Just a big bag of hot air!"

  "Keep pushing me, and you're bound to regret it," Pepper warned.

  "Oh, you think you're such hot stuff!" Bambi declared. "Just because you're the squad leader, when everyone knows you only got the position by sucking up to the coaches. Tell me, Pep. Did you have to screw them all, or just a few of them?"

  If looks could kill, Pepper's would have. "Actually, I didn't have to do anything with any of them... Bernice."

  "Bernice?" Jess and Shasta echoed th
e word as one.

  "That's as bad as Daisy," Shasta added, wrinkling her nose.

  "Pepper! You're going to pay for this!" Bambi exclaimed angrily. "I don't know how or when, but you'll pay!"

  "Yeah, I'm shaking in my shoes."

  In turn, Bambi shook a threatening finger at Jess. "If you dare disclose that name to anyone, I'll sue you for every penny you have."

  "You can't sue a person for divulging the truth," Jess advised her blandly. "Besides, there are a lot of Bernice's out there who would probably love to know that a cheerleader of a pro football team shares the same name. Frankly, we're all getting a little tired of the Bambi bit."

  A while later, Jess retold the tale to Ty. "That woman really despises me, Ty. I have a feeling I'll be sleeping with one eye open tonight, if I sleep at all."

  "Waiting for her to creep up on you and try to smother you with a pillow?" he joked. "You could always room in with Gabe and me, I suppose. Of course, we'd have to blindfold him, stuff cotton in his ears, and tie him to his bed."

  "Oh, sure!" she scoffed. "Corey would love that, not to mention setting the old rumor mill grinding at high speed. In no time flat, gossip would be that I was having kinky sex with the entire Knights' roster. Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not that desperate."

  As it turned out, even that rumor would have been preferable to the one Bambi began circulating the next morning. For some reason, Shasta had chosen to switch bedrooms and bunk in with three of the other girls, leaving Bambi, Jess, and Pepper to themselves. Now, Jess wondered if Bambi had talked Shasta into it, and if it had all been a part of Bambi's scheme to get back at her and Pepper, without another witness to refute her claim.

  Jazz was the first to approach them with the news early the next day. "Good God!" she exclaimed to Jess and Pepper, as she burst into their room. "What did you do to set Bambi off? She's running around telling everyone with ears that you're a couple of lesbians!"

  "What!" Jess was aghast.

  "Why, that lying-ass bitch! I suppose this is what she meant about paying me back for blabbing her real name," Pepper railed. "And everyone already knows she hates Jess's guts."

  "Whatever," Jazz said. "She's really making an Oscar-winning act of it, too. She claims she woke up in the night, looked over, and saw you two making love in the next bed. According to her, she was so disgusted she ran for the bathroom, locked herself in, and vomited."

  Jess groaned. "I can't believe this! It's too outrageous! But I'll bet there are plenty of other people who will. Damn that witch, anyway!" Then, as the thought occurred to her, "Oh, Lord! I've got to talk to Ty before anyone else does!"

  Jess all but flew through the halls to reach Ty's room. He and Gabe were just stepping into the hall as she rounded the corner. In the process of pulling the door shut, Ty turned toward her.

  Jess skidded breathlessly to a stop a few feet shy of him, her heart thudding triple time as she saw the anger reflected on his face. The question loomed in her mind—was his wrath directed at her or at Bambi? She stood silently—watching, hoping, praying. Then Ty held his arms out to her, open wide, and Jess rushed into his welcoming embrace.

  "Oh, Ty! It's not true! Please, believe me!"

  He hugged her tightly. "Sweetheart, if anyone knows that, I do. Hey, don't cry. It's not the end of the world. It's going to be all right, Jess."

  "But... but..." she blubbered. "There are bound to be people who will believe it. How's this going to look for you? What if your family gets wind of it? Or Barb? What about Josh? And the team, the coaches, and..."

  "Your friends will stand by you," Gabe assured her gruffly. "I, for one, would love to rip Bambi's tongue out and feed it to her."

  Ty gently kissed a teardrop from Jess's eyelashes. "We'll handle it, babe," he promised. "Together."

  CHAPTER 17

  After all that had gone before, Jess could almost have predicted that the Knights would lose the game against the Oilers that evening. Not that they didn't make a good stab at winning, but it was as if they were playing under some infernal cloud of doom—predestined for defeat, no matter how hard they tried. It didn't help that they had several key players missing; that they were playing a night game (in Oiler territory, no less) when they were used to day games, which may have thrown their timing off a bit; or that, due to a vicious thunder storm, the officials stopped the game early, with ten minutes left on the clock and the Knights behind by only two touchdowns. All in all, it would have been a miracle if they had won.

  "Well, you win some and you lose some," Ty philosophized. "I suppose we should be grateful that none of us got struck by lightning."

  Jess nodded miserably. "That wouldn't have surprised me, either, at this point."

  "I don't know about you all, but I could use a beer right about now," Gabe put in. "Care to join me? We can drown our sorrows together."

  "Why not?" Ty agreed. "Maybe we can even find a country- western band playing an appropriate tune or two to match our mood."

  "Great!" Jess mused sarcastically. "Just what I need, to hear about somebody whose life is worse than mine. The lover ran off, the dog died, the truck won't start, and the spittoon runneth over. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've got to figure out where the devil I'm sleeping tonight, because it sure as heck won't be with Bambi, and I don't think it would be wise to share a room alone with Pepper at this point, either."

  "You're sleeping with Gabe and me," Ty told her, "and to hell with the gossip mongers. Let them have a heyday trying to figure that one out."

  As it happened, the rumor Bambi had initiated was soon put to rest. Several of the cheerleaders rallied to Pepper and Jess's defense, loudly refuting Bambi's claim. Destiny, bless her ditsy soul, had been the one to recall that Bambi couldn't see three inches in front of her without her contact lenses, which she removed each and every night. Therefore, if she had awakened in the night, she wouldn't have been able to see a herd of elephants trooping past her bed, let alone discern what was happening on the other side of the room.

  Furthermore, all of the girls knew that Bambi complained she always had trouble falling asleep in any hotel room, especially if she had to share it with two or three other women. The light, the noise, everything bothered her—unless she took a sleeping pill, which she invariably did. Then, she slept like the dead until morning.

  Once informed of this by Destiny and her friends, nearly everyone concluded that Bambi had fabricated the entire tale out of pure spite. Moreover, it was public knowledge that Pepper was happily engaged—and no one could imagine why Jess would want or need anyone else when she had Ty. Within days, the whole mess had blown over, leaving only residual resentment and mistrust toward Bambi.

  Though they had lost the game, Alan had done well, earning the Knights several points by his efforts. His kicking had improved tremendously in the past few weeks. Jess was proud of him, as was the entire team.

  "You keep this up, and I'm going to be out of a job," Jess told him by way of a compliment.

  At practice on Wednesday, Alan exceeded her expectations. He made ten successive field goals from thirty yards or beyond. Following the last one, he leapt into the air, his fist punching the sky. "Yes!" he yelled. "Finally!" He swaggered up to Jess with a wide, self-satisfied grin. "Okay, Coach. Pay-up time."

  Jess stared at him, at a loss.

  "You said that on the day I made ten goals in a row you'd tell me what WAGARA means," he elaborated.

  "Oh, I'd forgotten about that."

  "Well?"

  "You promise not to tell Ty, or anyone else who might tell him? It's driving him nuts, and I want to keep him guessing."

  "Scout's honor."

  When she told him, Alan whooped. "It figures," he said, "and it fits. I'd have hit on the right answer sooner or later."

  "Maybe," Jess conceded. "You did come close a couple of times."

  Finished with their own practice, she and Alan stayed to watch the rest of the team. After pacing the sidelines for several minutes, Alan loped
back to the bench, where Jess was seated.

  "Can I borrow your car? They shorted us on our delivery of Gatorade this week, and we're running low. Coach Danvers wants me to run down to the warehouse distributor's and pick some up. Trouble is, I rode my motorcycle today."

  Jess dug into her pocket for her keys, handing them out to him. "Don't speed," she warned.

  Alan laughed. "In that tinker toy? You've got to be kidding. I can peddle that fast!"

  "Wisenheimer," she grumbled. Then she tossed him her red WAGARA hat. "It's yours. Wear it in good health."

  His smile was a mile wide as he trotted toward the exit to the parking lot.

  Forty-five minutes later, the rest of the team headed for the lockers, and Danvers approached Jess. "Where's Crumrine?"

  Jess shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, Coach. How far is that warehouse, anyway?"

  "About six blocks away. He should have been back by now. I hope he didn't get into an accident."

  "Me, too," Jess added. "He borrowed my car."

  "Well, there's your answer, then," Danvers replied. "The danged heap probably conked out on him halfway there."

  Jess scowled. "I wish you guys would all stop ragging on my car."

  By the time another quarter-hour had gone by, with no Alan, Jess was really beginning to worry. "Did you give him explicit directions?" she asked Danvers. "Maybe he got lost. Do you think we ought to send someone to look for him?"

  "He's been there before, Jess. He knows where it is. He's probably just out joyriding."

  "In my car?" Jess exclaimed incredulously.

  Danvers just grinned. "Chances are, he's just stuck in traffic. If he's not back soon, we'll send out a search party."

  As it was, the search party came to them, in the form of two uniformed patrolmen. Jess took one look at their grim faces and knew the news was not good. She just hoped Alan hadn't gotten himself into anything too serious.