It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. It mattered quite a lot. And she didn’t really know why. There was just so much more to him than a hot looking rugby player. Even more than being able to kick a ball. There was patience and kindness and humor and a sharp intelligence that he hid very well under the cover of his charm. Why wasn’t he offering something that would capitalize on those skills?
“No,” Judith said, realizing that protesting too much was going to give something away. “I suppose not.”
“I heard you two were suddenly getting friendly with each other.” Christie’s brow wrinkled. “What happened to the hate?”
Mercifully at that moment Judith’s phone beeped. Hoping it didn’t look too much like a drowning woman clutching a life preserver, Judith grabbed it. A text, from Caleb. Her heart gave a happy leap.
Hey BC. Are you thinking of me?
A tendril of warmth unwound inside her. He’d had a product launch to attend and she wasn’t expecting to hear from him.
Of course.
What are you thinking?
Judith fought to keep the smile off her face.
I’m thinking about you coming back to my place and ripping all my clothes off.
Then what?
Then bending me over the back of the couch.
I’m in awe of your ability to read the future.
Judith bit her lip.
Aren’t you supposed to be product launching?
I am. But I’m going to ditch it.
The little tendril became a flower beginning to bloom. She quickly texted a reply.
Why? I thought it was vital?
There was a short pause then she received his reply.
Not as vital as seeing you. Where are you?
Judith’s heart missed a beat. He’d told her the event was something he had to attend because it was apparently vital to his future career. She hadn’t argued because it wasn’t her business. But now he’d ditched it. Because he wanted to see her. She swallowed, a strange ache in the back of her throat.
At the Corner Bar. Why?
His response was cryptic.
You’ll find out.
“You’re looking particularly sphinx-like, Jude,” Marisa said slyly. “Got a sexy text?”
She tried not to blush, she really did, but knew she’d failed as her cheeks started to burn like hot plates. “No, of course not.”
“Ha! Liar.” Christie gave her a knowing look. “You’ve got something going on with someone, haven’t you?”
“I do not!”
“Mosquito bite, my arse,” Marisa scoffed. “Don’t be coy, dear Judith. You’ve got a fancy-man.”
“A fancy-man?” Judith couldn’t help it, she smoothed her black velvet dress and adjusted her fantail necklace. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Marisa sipped her Cosmopolitan, eyeing Judith with more speculation than Judith would have liked. “What do you think, St. John? Is she faking it?”
“Ahem,” Christie muttered.
“No, I’m sorry, but I just can’t get used to calling you Ashton instead. You’ll always be St. John to me.”
Christie rolled her eyes. “Fine. And yes, she’s so faking it.”
Judith opened her mouth, another excuse at the ready, when a deep, smooth voice said from behind her, “Evening, ladies.”
The protests died in her throat as an intense pulse of excitement went through her.
“Caleb,” Christie said happily. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothing much. Just in the area. Thought I’d come check out the action.”
She couldn’t stop staring at him. God, he looked hot. He was in a tux, tie undone to reveal the smooth brown skin of his throat, his black hair spiked, dark eyes glittering in the dim light of the bar. Tall, dark, and dangerous, all right.
Uncomfortably aware of Marisa’s interested gaze on her, Judith tried for cool. “Hi, Caleb.”
His gaze settled on her, beautiful mouth curving in a smile that made her feel breathless. “Hey, babycakes. Joseph told me you needed a lift home.”
“Joseph what? Oh… A lift home. Yes, that’s right. I do.” She grabbed her bag.
Marisa frowned. “Going already? I thought you were going to—”
“No, sorry, can’t.” Judith found herself babbling. “School night. Work tomorrow. You know. Call you. Bye.”
Ignoring her friends’ astonished looks, she turned and began pushing her way through the crowded bar, aware of nothing but Caleb following her. He’d surreptitiously put a hand on her lower back, the heat of his palm glowing there like a hot coal and, oh boy, she was going to go up in flames any minute now.
Outside, there were still too many people around so she kept her grip on her bag to keep from sliding her arms around him.
“My car,” he said shortly, his hand staying on her back, guiding her along the footpath.
“Sure.” She liked his car. It was new and had a very comfortable back seat. Very comfortable indeed.
“Nice excuse about Joseph,” she said as he unlocked it.
He grinned. “I thought so.”
Inside the car, once the doors were closed, he reached for her, pulling her into his arms, his mouth hot and hungry on hers. “God, this—you—was all I could think about all evening,” he murmured as he kissed along her jaw, down her neck.
She sighed, her fingers tangling in his black hair. “Me, too. Are you sure you’re not missing anything important leaving early?
“No.” He kissed her again, hard, before gradually releasing her. “Not a bloody thing. What about you? Did I tear you away from anything vital?”
Judith absently put a hand to her hair and smiled at him. “No. The girls were just expressing their appreciation of the calendar. Especially that pic of you.”
“Well, of course. It’s the best in the whole damn calendar.” He sat back in the driver’s seat, his gaze sliding away from hers unexpectedly.
She frowned. Something about the way he’d said it was slightly off, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” He flashed her a grin. His Abs of Steele grin. “What makes you say that?”
“That smile is what makes me say that. You always give it to me when you’re covering something up.”
“You’re seeing things, babycakes.” Caleb put the key in the ignition. “Come on, let’s go back to your place.”
But his answer left her feeling oddly frustrated. Evading her, definitely evading her. Well, two could play at that game. She smoothed down the velvet of her dress. “I don’t know if I want to go home right away.”
This time it was his turn to frown. “What? You were just hot for me.”
“I don’t want to go home and just have sex. I want to do…I don’t know. I want to do something else first.”
His frown deepened. “Something else? Like what?”
“Drinks? Dinner, maybe?”
“Are we talking a date here? In public?”
Instantly a small knot of fear gathered in her chest. Go out on a date with Caleb in public? No, she couldn’t. Not yet. God, she couldn’t even tell her friends yet let alone the world at large. Or even Joseph.
“Uh no, maybe not,” she said quickly. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we should just go home.”
Caleb stared at her. “You don’t want to be seen with me?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what? Because I’m ready for the world to know, Jude.”
Her mouth went dry. “Yeah but I’m not, okay?”
The look on Caleb’s face became opaque and for a minute she wondered why on earth she was protesting. Caleb Steele, ready to go public and commit himself to her? If that wasn’t a show of how far he was willing to go to prove himself to her then she didn’t know what was. And yet the little kernel of fear wouldn’t go away.
“We could do something else,” she said, wanting to show him she was willing to at least take another step. “Like…” An idea began to
form in her mind. “Maybe a training session for example?”
A look of surprise crossed his face. “A training session? What kind of training session?”
“I don’t know. A rugby training session?”
“You hate rugby.”
“So? If anyone could make me change my mind about it, you could.”
“Darling, I’m not sure—”
“Why not, Cal? Anyone can wine and dine me. But not just anyone could teach me to kick a goal.”
He began to say something then, clearly changing his mind, shut his mouth and studied her instead. “You really want to know how to kick a goal?”
Judith lifted her chin. This suddenly felt important. “Yes. I do.”
“And you know I’m not very patient with teaching, right?”
“No, I don’t know. In fact, there are a lot of things I don’t know about you, Caleb Steele. Perhaps it’s time you showed me.”
Chapter Ten
The last thing Caleb had expected to be doing that evening was standing on an empty rugby field, teaching a small, beautiful woman in a black velvet dress how to kick a goal. No, he’d expected to be peeling that dress off said small, beautiful woman, and running his hands all over her body, not setting the rugby ball he’d found in the back of his car onto the tee he’d pushed into the grass. Or promising to give said ball, properly autographed, to the groundsman as a bribe so they would be allowed onto the aforementioned rugby field.
Judith was frowning down at her shoes, a pair of black platform ankle boots now sporting a sprinkle of mud across the toes. She bent, brushing the dirt off them. “This is harder than I thought,” she muttered. “Perhaps it’s the shoes.”
She’d been trying for ten minutes to kick the ball but kept missing. Not unsurprising when her run up was slow and her kick more like a tentative poke with her toe.
“If you want to kick a goal, you can’t worry about mud,” Caleb pointed out, finishing adjusting the ball and straightening up. “You need to sight up the ball, get up a faster run, and use more power in your kick. Glaring at it won’t help, either.”
Judith glared at him instead of the ball. “You show me then.”
“Sure.”
She stood back while he demonstrated, sighting up the goal, spending a couple of seconds deep breathing to calm himself, then the side-step, the run and the power of the kick, sending the ball right between the posts. Kicking had always been his forte and he was good at it.
“Wow,” she said softly as she watched the ball go. “That’s amazing.”
He shrugged. “Practice, sweetheart. That’s what it takes. Practice and dedication.” He turned and walked down the field to the goal to collect the ball, with Judith falling into step beside him.
“I guess you have to be dedicated to play at your level. Did you always want to be a rugby player?”
“No.” He gave her the grin. “I wanted to be a doctor. I thought you knew that.”
“I didn’t actually. We never talked about that kind of stuff.”
Hadn’t they? She’d told him about her dreams of being a photographer, of going to art school, and he’d listened. But he’d never told her about himself. There hadn’t been anything that interesting to share. Unless you counted sitting in the A&E department of the hospital most weekends as interesting.
“Oh, well, yeah, I wanted to be a doctor. After Mum died, I thought it would be a good thing to want to be.”
“So why didn’t you? Why rugby?”
“Dad needed looking after so I ended up missing a lot of school. He liked rugby and came to my games, though. At least in the early years.”
“You did a lot for him.”
“Yeah, I did.” And what had he gotten in return? Nothing but grief. “Pity he didn’t seem to see it that way.”
Judith stopped. “Why? What did he do?”
“Not sure I want to talk about this, darling.” Hell, he hated talking about his dad full stop. That period of his life wasn’t something he wanted to revisit. “It’s got nothing to do with the training session.”
She didn’t reply, but as he went to retrieve the ball, he could feel her gaze boring into his back.
“It’s very hard, having to look after people when you’re on your own,” she said after a moment. “Especially when they don’t seem to care about what you do for them.”
Slowly Caleb bent to pick up the ball, the leather cool under his fingertips. He’d tried, back in the car, to talk both her and himself out of her so-called date, training session, or whatever she wanted to call it. It felt too revealing somehow. But he’d changed his mind. If she wanted it where was the harm?
He didn’t think it would involve sharing confidences, though. Then again, he knew what she’d said meant something. That it hadn’t been casually offered. He couldn’t just ignore it, no matter how much he wanted to.
He turned around. She stood just under the crossbar of the goal, the floodlights highlighting the contrast between her black hair, white skin, and black dress. Her arms were folded, her chin lifted. As if daring him. She often looked like that, he realized with a sudden shock. Challenging and defiant, the way some people did when they were expecting to be smacked down.
“Why did you say that?” Caleb asked.
“Because looking after your father must have been really difficult. Especially after your mum died.”
His fingers pressed into the leather, holding on hard, anger knotting in his chest. “It was years ago. And he’s dead now, too.”
“You’re still angry.” It wasn’t a question.
He tried to grin. “I’m not angry.”
“Then why don’t you want to talk about it?”
“Why don’t you talk about your mother?”
An expression of pain crossed Judith’s face and guilt wound up like a spring inside him. “Aw, shit, Jude. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“I don’t talk about my mother because it hurts,” she said. “Because I’m still really, really angry with her for leaving me. For leaving me alone to cope with Joseph and Dad. For being so damn selfish with her own pain. For leaving me when I needed her.”
His chest tightened at the sharp edge of anguish in her voice. In her eyes. In the way she said the words, letting him see it. Letting him see her. And he found himself wanting to offer something of himself in return, because after all, wasn’t being himself what he wanted tonight?
“I don’t talk about Dad for the same reasons. I spent years taking him to the hospital, cleaning him up, trying to get him well. He didn’t give a shit about any of that. He didn’t want to be a father. All he wanted to do was drink.”
“He left you, didn’t he? Not physically, but in spirit.”
Caleb looked down at the ball in his hands. Mainly so he didn’t have to look into her eyes and see the understanding in them. “I guess he did. Mum, at least, didn’t want to be sick. But Dad…he had a choice.
“And he didn’t choose you,” she said softly.
The tightness in his chest got even worse. Caleb began to walk back up the field, holding the ball. The shape of it was as familiar to him as a part of his own body, but for some reason he didn’t feel comforted. He just felt exposed. “Come on, let’s try this kick again.”
“Caleb,” Judith said in a low voice. “Don’t shut me out. Please.”
He stopped, the ball clutched in his fingers. Judith stood not far away, a small, still figure in black, staring at him from underneath her fringe. And he wanted to tell her that he couldn’t do this. He didn’t want to share secrets with her, or give pieces of himself away.
But the words came out before he could stop them. “No,” he said hoarsely. “He didn’t choose me. You want to know the details? The day I got my first sponsorship deal I was rapt because finally I could afford to send him to this US clinic I’d been researching. It had great results with getting people off the booze and I thought…” Purposefully he didn’t look at her, didn’t meet her gaze. “I thought I’d
get my dad back finally. When I came home to tell him, he wouldn’t look at me. Told me that he didn’t want my help. That he’d never wanted my help.
“I thought it was just the booze talking, thought he was giving me his usual alcoholic bullshit. But no, he was as sober as he could get. I asked him if he’d rather drink himself to death and he said yes. So I thought, ‘go for it, you old bastard’. All those years I spent cleaning him up, getting him sober, saving his bloody life, and he didn’t care. Not about any of it.”
There was a silence and he could almost feel her sympathy and hurt on his behalf. Blessedly she didn’t voice it. Almost like she knew that sometimes it was easier to talk about this kind of stuff when there was silence.
Then she said quietly, “I tried to track Mum down once, a couple of years ago. Even got a phone number that was supposed to be hers. I just wanted to ask her why she left, and if she ever thought about us. If she ever cared. Though…I didn’t call her in the end. I think I was afraid that her answer would be no, she never cared.”
Oh Christ, he knew how that felt. Intellectually he knew his father’s alcoholism was an illness, an addiction that caused people to say all sorts of stuff and behave in ways that perhaps they didn’t mean. But the boy he’d once been was all emotion, not intellect, and that boy had been hurt. Terribly. And he hurt still.
Caleb met her gaze. She understood. She was the only one who did. “No one will ever make you feel that way again, Jude,” he said, putting every ounce of determination he possessed into his voice. “Do you understand? Or else they’ll have me to deal with.”
A ghost of a smile curved her mouth. “Thanks, Cal.”
For a long moment they said nothing because nothing needed to be said, only looked at each other.
Then he said, “You want to kick this ball or what?”
Her smile deepened. “I think I want to kick this ball.”
…
Judith could have sworn that Caleb kept moving the ball, because every time she went to kick it, she kept missing. It was starting to get frustrating.
Yet Caleb—much to her surprise—seemed to have an endless supply of patience. Setting up the ball with careful hands for what seemed like the umpteenth time, he said, “Stop trying to stay in control of everything. You’re too busy thinking about that and not thinking enough about kicking the ball.” He glanced down at her feet. “Your shoes, for example. Quit worrying about the mud.”
Talking Dirty With the Player Page 15
