Hoops

by Patricia McLinn

  “So you want to get rid of this program—and me—at any cost? Without giving it a chance, without giving me—” He broke off abruptly. He seemed to sweep all emotion away except an amusement that gently mocked them both. “Maybe that’s why I asked for an academic adviser.

  The drawl had returned. She could almost imagine it had never lapsed.

  “Maybe I figure the best way to keep the academic community happy is to let one of their own right inside where she could keep us in line. Like one of those treaty inspectors who get in there to make sure the Russians really are destroying their missiles.” He moved slowly to the door. “Maybe that’s the way I figured it. Maybe...” He touched the doorknob, but made no move to turn it as his gaze took in her office once more.

  “Mr. Draper. Mr. Draper,” she repeated with emphasis to reclaim his wandering attention. “Is there something wrong with my office? I have the impression you don’t approve.”

  She meant him to be nonplussed. This time she wouldn’t be the one off balance.

  “Oh, it’s not that I don’t approve, exactly.” He seemed willing to clarify his thoughts, if only he were sure of them himself. “It’s just, it’s so...” He shrugged. Whatever anger he’d felt before seemed gone.

  He swung the door open and crossed the threshold into the hall before producing a resounding snap of his fingers. It took only one long stride to bring him back into the office and half a second to close the door behind him.

  “Monochromatic. That’s the word I wanted. Your office is monochromatic. I bet you thought I wouldn’t know a word like that, didn’t you, Professor? Nothing more complicated in this head than pick-and-roll, right?”

  She couldn’t have said, since she had no idea what pick-and-roll meant, but he seemed to have followed the drift of her thoughts.

  “Monochromatic. That’s just what your office is.” He looked around with seeming satisfaction, then down at her again. “Just like you.”

  “Like me?” The words were out before she could stop them.

  “Uh-huh.” He leaned over her desk and gently lifted a lock of her hair across two fingers. “Your hair’s the exact same color as your eyes. And that outfit’s nearly the same color again. Monochromatic.”

  She twisted away from his hand, and he let the hair slip across his fingertips.

  “It’s a nice enough color,” he continued, his eyes on the lock of hair, swinging along the side of her neck. “But you know what they say about too much of a good thing. You ought to wear colors. Red. Green. Blue. Let ’em see you, instead of blending in.”

  “Mr. Draper—” His gaze lifted from her throat to her lips, then to her eyes, and Carolyn suddenly couldn’t remember the stinging rebuke she’d intended to deliver.

  “I know. I shouldn’t say things like that, Professor. I just got so caught up with everything about you being the same color—what do you call that color, anyway?”

  “Mr. Draper—” she tried again, but this time his words instead of his eyes stopped her.

  “Now don’t tell me it’s brown, because dead leaves are brown, and that’s not it. No, I’ll bet all those European men have been telling you all sorts of things. You know, I lived in Italy a couple of years, and I know some of the things they’re likely to say.” The sparkle in his blue eyes contradicted the earnestness of his tone. “I’ll bet they’ve been calling it polished oak, or old brandy, or fine leather. And they’d all come close, but none of ’em is quite right.” He studied her closely, his head slightly tilted.

  She pulled in a breath to stop this silliness, but he was off again, opening the door wide before turning. “Nope, I just don’t have it. But I’ll come up with it, Professor. And when I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  * * * *

  Carolyn stopped outside her front door and turned to look back. Her apartment occupied the second floor of a forty-year-old house that sat on a rise above the campus. The small covered porch at the top of the exterior stairway provided a wonderful view of the university, a view shared by the living room and bedroom. That was why she had chosen the apartment.

  She could clearly see the rectangular Meadow. Three sides of it were enclosed by the Administration Building, the original classroom building and the chapel. The fourth side sloped away to Lake Ashton, which glinted in late-afternoon sun. Beyond this core, the campus expanded in concentric rings of buildings, each ring older than the larger one beyond it.

  Despite the university’s growth, huge trees and large, open areas remained. The grass had faded, but the trees displayed their pre-winter bravura of color. Yellows skittered away down pathways and roads, while the oranges and reds would time their flaming peak perfectly for Homecoming.

  She needed no such dramatics to make her own homecoming pleasant, Carolyn thought as she stepped inside. No signs of disorder betrayed her return from a five-month trip. She’d unpacked immediately. Clothes had gone back to their accustomed spots. Presents waited on the dining table to be distributed to friends. Only books presented a problem.

  She eyed the shelves that covered one wall of the living room and dining area, interrupted by the generously cushioned couch and the door to her bedroom. More shelves lined a tiny bedroom office she’d created from a walk-in closet. All the shelves were full. She’d have to juggle her collection to accommodate her European purchases, with the spillover going to her campus office.

  Carolyn arranged her suit jacket on a padded hanger in the closet across from the front door. With a steadying hand on the small table next to the door, she slipped her shoes off, then padded across the soft nap of the buff carpeting.

  The beige cotton-covered couch, matched by two overstuffed chairs facing it across a bleached pine coffee table, tempted her. What luxury to curl up and enjoy the panorama of Ashton through the picture window. But she should change first.

  To the left of a pine table and chairs that made a dining area of one end of the living room was a compact kitchen with white cabinets and butcher-block countertops. She switched on a burner under the teapot and took a spoon from the drawer.

  Just one, she told herself, scooping a heaping spoonful of Heavenly Hash ice cream directly from the carton in the freezer to her waiting mouth. She murmured with pleasure. If there was one thing she’d missed most in Europe, this was it . . . Five months was a long time without true Wisconsin ice cream, she justified as she took a second spoonful. And a third.

  Resolutely she rinsed the spoon and started toward the bedroom. The ringing phone hurried her back to the kitchen. She caught it on the second ring, barely beating her answering machine. Her breathless hello drew a laughing response.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d just run all the way from Europe. But I hear you’ve already punched in for work—before you’ve even taken the time to tell me about all the fashions from Paris. How are you, Carolyn? Tell me all about the trip. Have you decided what you’re going to wear to the dance Saturday? Did you like that hotel I recommended in Paris? I hope it hasn’t changed too much over the years. One time I went back to a hotel after ten years and discovered it had converted to the hourly trade, if you know what I mean—no luggage necessary. So, how are you? Tell me everything. Oh, how silly, I didn’t tell you who this is. It’s Helene.”

  Who else could it be? Carolyn smiled, switching off the burner. “How are you, Helene?”

  Five months or five years away, no one could mistake Helene Ainsley’s scattergun conversational style. It was as different from Elizabeth Barron’s as the two cousins’ lives had been. A former model and fashion consultant, Helene’s bone structure still gave her a claim to beauty at age fifty.

  When Elizabeth had become ill three years ago, Helene had left New York without a question to nurse her. She’d stayed at Ashton after Elizabeth’s death fourteen months ago, saying that she might as well retire there as New York, especially since the air was a whole lot better in Wisconsin.

  “I’m fine. I always am. I wish I could get Stewart to
take it easier, though. That man works too hard, just like you. What you both need is a good course in having fun.”

  “Taught by Helene Ainsley, I presume.”

  “Could be, could be. Who better?”

  “No one, I’m sure.” The laugh faded from Carolyn’s voice. “How has Stewart been, Helene? Before I left, he seemed so—”

  “I know. When Liz died, I wondered . . . But these past few months I think he’s better. Do you know he even took a vacation up to the lake house? A whole week of just sitting around and fishing. Best thing for him. Now, when are you going to do what’s good for you?”

  “Helene—” Carolyn tried to ward off the imminent lecture with little hope of success.

  “What you need is someone to show you a good time, someone to light you up, make you glow. You’re too . . . I don’t know, steady, I guess. You think too much. Everything neatly ordered, including your love life. I don’t suppose you did any high living over in England, did you?” Helene sighed deeply into the brief silence—silences were always brief with Helene. “No, I knew you wouldn’t. Probably not even in Paris, heaven help you. What am I going to do with you?”

  “Well, you could start by going shopping with me,” Carolyn offered as a diversion from the you-need-a-man-in-your-life theme she knew would follow. “I need something for the dinner-dance Saturday.”

  Perhaps a new belt or scarf to complement her black sheath. But she’d wait to tell Helene that. It would only start a lecture about her boring clothes.

  C.J. Draper’s drawl floated into her head. You ought to wear colors. Red. Green. Blue. Let ’em see you, instead of blending in.

  She shook her head, and the voice was once more Helene’s.

  “Done. Though why you didn’t buy some marvelous dresses while you were in Paris, I can’t understand. But I did see a few things at that new boutique at the mall that just might do. Pick you up in half an hour.”

  * * * *

  From the foot of her bed Carolyn contemplated the shopping bags cluttering its surface. What had possessed her?

  Helene, of course. She’d been caught up in a shopping tornado that had accumulated the most unlikely objects in its funnel cloud of fashion and deposited them here on her bed. And if she wanted to go to sleep, she’d have to clear away the debris.

  The first bag held a silky undergarment unlike any Carolyn had ever owned. She needed it because of the nearly backless teal dress Helene had convinced her to buy.

  Carolyn gave a little sigh of pleasure at the crackle of the taffeta skirt as she pulled the dress out of its wrapping and carefully placed it on a padded hanger. The maneuver required care, because with no back, the tight-fitting bodice tended to fall off the hanger. At least she’d had the sense to withstand Helene’s first choice: a red silk dress cut so low that it was nearly front-less.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have given in to the teal dress, either. She could always return it. She’d think about it tomorrow, decide rationally and reasonably whether the dress was too, well, too something, for a professor at Ashton. And then she could always wear her black sheath.

  She frowned as she folded a soft new royal blue sweater into the drawer. But perhaps some changes in style were in order, she thought as she hung up a red blazer. She didn’t want to become stagnant.

  Maybe that explained her twinge of dissatisfaction when she’d surveyed her living room while waiting for Helene. The beige of her upholstery, drapes and carpet usually soothed her, but today it seemed bland.

  She pulled three vibrantly colored pillows—red, yellow and blue—out of their bags and headed for the living room.

  These ought to fix that.

  She tried multiple combinations before settling on the red pillow on one armchair and the yellow and blue pillows layered in the far corner of the couch. She ran her hand over the texture of the blue pillow.

  Monet blue. The blue of the sky sharing the canvas with a sun-bright field of Monet tulips. The blue of a lake caressing serene water lilies... like C.J. Draper’s eyes.

  Carolyn snatched her hand away and stood up. Where had that come from? She hadn’t thought about him since he’d walked out of her office that afternoon.

  At least she’d tried not to. But Helene extolling his virtues practically the whole evening had made it rather difficult. She’d heard how C.J. Draper had charmed the alumni; how he’d formed a team under difficult circumstances; how he’d won allies on the faculty; how he’d convinced Stewart to spend a week fishing.

  Carolyn knew very well the purpose of that exercise. Helene meant to remind her, none too subtly, that C.J. Draper possessed charms her usual escorts lacked.

  Helene had unstintingly described the visiting sociology lecturer Carolyn had dated before leaving for Europe as boring with a capital B. “And that anthropology professor before him wouldn’t cause a tremor on any Richter scale of excitement, either,” she’d told Carolyn after an unsuccessful dinner. “Come to think of it, the last one worth mentioning was the redhead who hung around Liz and Stewart’s house that summer I spent here. Whatever happened to him?”

  “Tony Reilly?” Laughter and exasperation had warred in Carolyn. “I was fourteen that summer and Tony Reilly was fifteen.”

  “So? Now you’re twenty-eight and he’s twenty-nine.”

  “Yes, he’s also married with a child or two and selling insurance, I believe.”

  “He could be selling cemetery plots and he’d be more exciting than these poker faces you’ve been seeing,” Helene had insisted.

  To herself, Carolyn had admitted Helene might have had a point. Especially when it came to lovemaking. Either she couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about, or her few ventures were far below standard.

  But the men she dated were long on academic credentials. She had concluded that if their company left her rather dissatisfied, then she must have failed, not them. Being reminded of that failing counted as one more item to chalk up against Ashton’s new basketball coach.

  What he represented was bad enough. But to call her too young! He’d tried to rile her on purpose, too. And worse, he’d succeeded. But then there had been that easy friendliness when he’d told her about the photographs and, nearly as surprising, the moment she’d sensed another person half revealed in that flash of anger in her office.

  She snapped the light off in the living room with unnecessary force. It was probably all an effort to keep her at a disadvantage. Sure, that was it. He knew she disapproved of the basketball program, and he wanted to keep her from watching him too closely.

  Well, she wouldn’t fall for it.

  And the reason she was haunted by vibrant blue eyes, a set of broad shoulders and that crazy, lopsided grin? Jet lag. That was all. Simple jet lag.

  * * * *

  Carolyn looked across the Meadow toward Lake Ashton from the window of the small classroom in Ripon Hall. Waiting to meet the basketball team elicited an odd mixture of assurance and uncertainty that she always felt before the first session of a class. But she was ready.

  She’d gone over their files and noted points to cover. She’d carefully chosen her suit of russet brown gabardine and effectively disposed of the box of toffee that she’d found on her desk this morning, along with a note from C.J. Draper saying he hoped he’d found the right color.

  She’d thrown the note out and contributed the toffee to the English department secretary’s sweet tooth. She would just as efficiently ignore any lingering thoughts about the donor.

  The pen she held between her index and middle fingers tapped rapidly against the window ledge. She knew her ability; she knew she was a good teacher. That represented the known in this equation. The unknown consisted of ten young men who would walk through that door in the next few minutes. She’d already done her homework, she thought with an inner smile. Now it was their turn.

  Their files had been a pleasant surprise. Six of the players were upperclassmen, juniors or seniors who had chosen Ashton well before the return of big-
time basketball there. They had solid academic credentials. That left the four players recruited by C.J. Draper.

  One had a strong academic background. A smile tugged at her lips. Thomas Abbott III might play basketball, but his admission essay made it quite clear he’d set his sights on law school and politics. He wouldn’t jeopardize that with poor grades.

  Ellis Manfred was another situation. He’d graduated from a strict parochial school in a poor section of St. Louis. Though unspectacular, his grades and test scores showed steady ability. Steadiness from a student in that kind of neighborhood said a lot.

  She wished Ellis Manfred could share some of that stability with Brad Spencer. Roller-coaster grades linked with test scores that widened her eyes meant getting Brad Spencer to produce could rank as a full-time project by itself.

  That left Frank Gordon. She knew only two things about him: he was a junior transfer from a two-year school in Pennsylvania, and it was his file that C.J. Draper had somehow overlooked. That in itself roused suspicion. She could just imagine Frank Gordon—he’d probably be closer to twenty-five than eighteen, he’d be overgrown—body and ego—and his knowledge would be limited to street smarts and basketball courts. Probably a troublemaker. Just the sort of player she’d expect C.J. Draper to bring in. Setting Frank Gordon straight would be her first priority.

  The door swung open and two players came in. With a surge of adrenaline and nerves, she moved to her customary position in front of the teacher’s desk to start matching faces with names and backgrounds.

  She also made a mental note to find somewhere else to meet. From the players’ expressions, classroom desks took the leap from discomfort to torture when you were over six feet.

  C.J. Draper’s four recruits were last. Ellis Manfred was the composed, polite black with intelligent eyes that didn’t miss a thing. Thomas Abbott III wore faded designer jeans, a faded blue work shirt and a white cashmere sweater, which Carolyn guessed cost as much as her suit. Brad Spencer, his blond hair casually styled, walked with a hint of a bounce on the toes of bright red high-tops that jammed up the bottoms of his black jeans. He needed the bounce to keep an arm hooked around the white-shirted shoulders of the player he came in with.