Scanlon capped his pen and put it aside. He had a restless look to him that was new, and Gianfracco wondered if his inability to move freely was the cause.
"Scouting trip?"
"Yeah, for a head coach." Pete leaned forward. "Your name is on the top of a very short list."
Mitch ignored the thud in his belly. Trading his helmet and cleats for a coaching job after his playing days were over had always been a secret dream. It had died a long, lingering death, but it had died. He'd built a new life for himself now, and there was no room in it for football.
"Don't waste your time, Pete, I'm not your man."
Gianfracco waved that aside impatiently. "I think you are. In fact, of all the players I've coached, you were the one I always figured would end up bossing me around. You were that savvy."
Mitch shifted. These days, sitting for any length of time was almost as taxing as walking. "It's been too long, Coach. I don't have the belly for it anymore."
Gianfracco rattled off a string of profanity that had Mitch shaking his head. "I've heard some creative swearing in my time, Coach, but you're the best of the best."
"Hell, in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn that kind of talk wouldn't even have rated notice." Gianfracco chuckled. "Nothing compared to what I'll say if you don't agree to take a look-see at what we've got to offer."
"I'm not a coach."
"How do you know that when you've never tried? Besides, coaching isn't much different from quarterbacking. In both jobs you have to be a father figure, big bad brother and kick-ass psychologist all rolled into one. Seems to me you did a good job at all three of those things."
"That doesn't mean I can teach someone else to do what I did. Or teach anything, for that matter."
Coach snorted. "That's bull, and you know it. Every rookie that joined the club while you were running the offense ended up praising you up one side and down the other for the things you taught 'em." He narrowed his eyes. "Tell me something, Mitch. Do you still have that notebook of plays you used to carry around with you? The one you were always scribbling in when the rest of the guys were swapping lies and discussing women?"
Mitch resisted a glance at the bottom drawer of his desk. "It's around somewhere," he hedged.
"Give me a few days of your time, Mitch. Let me show you around my part of the country, introduce you to a few people, maybe talk some football. Seems to me you owe your old coach that much, at least."
Mitch stared at the desk without really seeing it. Coach was right. He did owe the man. But how much? Enough to rip open old wounds that had finally healed?
He drew a breath, absently running his hand over the hard ridge of leather encircling his thigh. When he'd first gotten out of rehab, the need to return to football had been like a hot barb in his belly. Swallowing his pride, which he could admit now had been considerable, he'd approached a half dozen clubs about coaching. The owners who'd once tried to coax him away from the Raiders suddenly didn't want to know him. Without the use of his legs, Mitch Scanlon had been just another has-been. Coach had been one of the few who had kept in touch over the years.
"Tell you what," he said, looking up. "I'll take a look at your program for you and see if I can come up with some ideas for improvements. But I'm not promising anything more than that. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough. In the meantime, I'll buy you dinner, and you can tell me all about this place you've put together here."
* * *
Central Oregon was awash in another late April storm when Gianfracco returned to campus the next morning. He had three days to prepare for Scanlon's visit, seventy-two hours to put together an irresistible dog and pony show for a man who'd never been easy to talk into something he didn't think was right for him, even when he'd been a green as they come backup QB.
Arranging VIP treatment was first on the list. Grinning to himself, Coach picked up the phone and dialed the number of Bradenton's official hostess. Felicity Alderson was the widow of Bradenton's former president and the mother of the present one. A real Southern belle, she was dripping with class. If anyone could make Mitch feel special, it was Felicity.
After punching out the number, Coach swiveled his chair and glared at the team photos on the wall behind his desk. The Timber Wolves had gone through coaches like disposable tissues, four in as many years—good men, all, but still, Bradenton hadn't won a game in three seasons.
"Alderson House, this is Tilly speaking."
Coach pictured the round Irish countenance and all-seeing blue eyes of the Alderson housekeeper and grinned. "How're you doing, Tilly, me darlin'? This is Pete Gianfracco, and I sure would love to speak with Felicity if she's around."
"Mrs. Alderson's in the rose garden," Tilly replied with the clipped accent of her Irish birth. "I'll fetch her."
"Thanks."
Closing his eyes, Coach sent a fast prayer toward the heavens that everything would fall into place. The fate of seven thousand students and five hundred staff members and faculty, not to mention a goodly number of small businesses supplying the needs of those students, depended on these next few days. As President Caroline "Carly" Alderson had told him in her usual succinct manner, Bradenton was standing on the gallows, trussed and hooded and ready for the trap door to be sprung.
The problem was money, as it was these days for many private colleges. In eighteen months, the bank that held the mortgages on several buildings was expecting a six-figure balloon payment. If Bradenton defaulted, the bank had declared an intention to foreclose.
Project Cinderella Team had been Dr. Alderson's idea, born out of desperation, she'd said when she'd outlined his role in her plan. Bradenton was known for two things—an innovative admissions program and the longest losing streak in the history of the Northwest Central Conference. Area sportscasters made jokes about the hapless Wolves on the air, and students and graduates alike were soon ashamed to be seen at the games. Worse, a significant number of alumni had stopped donating to the general fund. Not that Coach blamed them. No one, him most of all, wanted to be labeled a loser, even by association. Which was what had given President Alderson an ingenious idea—turn a bunch of ragtag losers into a scrapping, give-'em-hell underdog. Get the students and alumni fired up, spur them to support the team.
Dr. Alderson had used words like collective consciousness and crowd dynamics, stuff a social anthropologist like her would know about. Him, he knew football and football fans. Give 'em a team of fighting, spitting underdogs determined to win and a couple hours of hoopla and excitement, and they'd flock through the stadium gates in droves, their hands already reaching in their pockets for the money to buy beer and hot dogs and souvenirs.
Dr. Alderson's friend, Professor Kenworthy, said the same thing, only in that Madison Avenue lingo she'd brought with her from New York. Words like star quality and charisma and media blitz.
A single-minded guy, Coach focused on the one thing all three could agree on—everything depended on finding the right man for the coaching job. Someone with a "name," someone who could generate excitement just by breathing, someone who knew football strategy and football psychology.
For the past three months Gianfracco had done things by the book—logging innumerable hours on airplanes flying all over the country in an attempt to recruit some of the game's best coaches. He'd been laughed out of more locker rooms that he wanted to remember. It was then that he'd thought of Mitch.
Maybe Scanlon hadn't coached, but the man knew football. For a decade his name had been written in stardust, his reputation as one of the greats growing year by year, a reputation that Coach considered well-deserved. After all, Mitch's work ethic had always been exemplary, his dedication to the team unquestioned. And best of all, he had the kind of guts and mental toughness it took to ignore the odds. Hadn't he proved the doctors wrong when they'd told him he'd spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair? Maybe he didn't walk like most folks, but he managed to get around pretty darn good, and as long as they kept the sob-sister stuff i
n check, Bradenton was bound to get a lot of publicity from the fact that a paraplegic was coaching at the college level.
Coach grinned to himself as he added up the pluses. Caroline Alderson had been in Chicago, attending a conference of college presidents, when he'd had his brainstorm. Normally a team player, he was all alone in this. His idea, his initiative.
According to Dr. Alderson's assistant, Sandy Brudinsky, the boss was due home on the same day Scanlon arrived. Coach couldn't wait to see the look on her face when he told her what he'd done. Hot damn, but she'd be pleased. He was sure of it.
"Hello?"
Coach felt a fast little jolt at the sound of Felicity's soft drawl. "Haul out the good silver, Felicity," he ordered, sitting up straighter. "You and I have important work to do."
* * *
Alderson House had the same Gothic turrets and stark granite construction as the rest of the buildings Mitch had seen as he'd driven through the campus to Coach's office. All it needed was a moat and it could pass as a medieval castle suddenly transported to a swath of green rolling hills and towering trees.
Mitch leaned his aching back against the heavy stone porch railing and watched Coach jam an impatient thumb against the doorbell. Beyond the huge carved door, the sound of chimes could be heard, echoing the same series of notes he'd heard earlier from the fortresslike carillon in the main quad.
"This place may have a lousy football team, but it sure has atmosphere," he told Coach with a grin.
"Around here we call that class, and Bradenton's got more'n its share," Coach retorted with a grin of his own. "But you'll find that out for yourself when you meet the Alderson ladies."
Mitch wasn't all that eager to meet anyone. Never knowing how his disability would be received was one of the reasons. But even before his injury, he'd struggled with a shyness so profound he'd stuttered like Porky Pig as a kid. Letting his athletic skill speak for him had helped, but even in the glory days, he'd thrown up every time he'd had to appear on TV.
"Felicity said seven, damn it," Gianfracco muttered as he scowled at his watch. "It's seven sharp, so how come we're still cooling our heels out here?"
Mitch eyed Coach speculatively. Pete's wife had been dead eight—or was it nine?—years now, time enough to blunt Pete's grief. "Felicity?" he asked blandly.
Coach grunted. "Carleton Alderson's widow. He was the man who hired me for this job."
"How long has Mrs. Alderson been a widow?"
"Three years. Around here the Aldersons are like royalty, which sort of makes Felicity the Queen Mother. Since old Artemus Alderson founded this place in the 1880s, no one but an Alderson has ever sat in the president's chair."
"Apparently Carleton didn't produce a son, or was he one of those enlightened males Jeannie keeps trying to make me into?"
Coach's raisin brown eyes twinkled. "One thing Carleton wasn't, and that's enlightened."
"Sounds like you've gotten to know his widow pretty well."
Coach grinned. "Not as well as I'd like. We're still stuck someplace between the first kiss and her bedroom." He took another stab at the bell, while Mitch studied the vista spread out below.
The entire campus seemed visible from here, looking for all the world like an ageless English village plopped down among distinctively American firs and pines. Only the stadium seemed out of place. Like him, he thought, flexing his tired shoulders.
"Say, Pete, are you sure you've got the right night?" he asked when Coach leaned sideways to peer through the closest window.
"Hell, yes. Confirmed it yesterday when I got your call saying you'd be here by five. Felicity's—"
The door swung open suddenly to reveal a rotund woman wearing a spotless white apron and a cheery smile. Mitch figured her for midfifties, with more salt than pepper in her short curly hair. Her lively blue eyes made short work of assessing him, then shifted back to Coach.
"Good evening, gentlemen," she said, retreating a step so they might enter.
"Evening, Tilly," Coach said warmly. "Meet Mitchell Scanlon," he added as he stepped across the threshold. "He's going to be visiting the campus for a few days. Tilly keeps this place humming, or so she reminds me every time I bump into her."
"And don't you be forgettin' it," Tilly said, shaking her finger in Coach's face before turning to greet Mitch pleasantly. "Won't you please follow me? President Alderson's plane was delayed in Chicago by bad weather, but she should be arriving shortly. In the meantime, Mrs. Alderson is in the small parlor."
Coach glanced at his watch, then shrugged. "Lead on, Tilly me girl. I feel a yen for some of Felicity's favorite sherry."
Mitch caught the look Coach sent his way and grinned. "Sherry?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows.
"Don't knock it till you've tried it, old son. There's a lot to be said for class."
Mitch took a tighter grip on his crutches and wondered what he'd gotten himself into.
* * *
Carly Alderson dropped her bags just inside the back door and turned to pull it closed. "Remind me to refuse any invitation that requires flying," she said to Tilly as the housekeeper came bustling into the kitchen.
"Bad trip?" Tilly asked as they exchanged hugs.
"My plane didn't crash. That's the good news." Carly managed a grin, but it took some effort. She was exhausted, and her head was still aching from the recycled air in the 737.
"I assume our guests have already arrived, or is that your silver Jaguar parked in front?" she teased as she filched a cherry tomato from the colander where Tilly had set them to drain.
"It is not, and yes, the gentlemen are in the small parlor with your ma."
"Darn. I was hoping to sneak in a shower and a nap before I had to go into VIP welcoming mode."
"Go ahead. I'll put off dinner for another half hour."
"Thanks, but I'll survive. I always do." Carly slipped her purse from her shoulder and set it on the counter. She'd been thrilled when Sandy had called her at the hotel in Chicago with the news that Coach had found a promising prospect and invited him to the campus for a visit. Though Sandy hadn't known the candidate's name, Carly trusted Coach's judgment and had been looking forward to meeting the man she'd privately dubbed Bradenton's answer to Rocky Balboa. Unfortunately, she was also suffering from jet lag and six days of exhausting meetings.
Wearily she removed her small makeup bag from her purse and zipped it open. Bending slightly, she used the microwave door as a mirror, touching her lashes with a hint of mascara and applying gloss to her lips. She returned the makeup to her purse before extracting a brush.
"Is Tracy in her room?" she asked Tilly, smiling at the prospect of seeing her daughter again.
"No, she's having dinner at Karen's."
Carly sighed in disappointment. "How'd she do on her chemistry test?"
"An A, what else?" Tilly grinned. "She and Karen have been practicing their cartwheels in the upstairs hall for three nights straight—and driving your ma crazy."
Carly grinned. Her beautiful, bubbly daughter was captain of her high school cheerleading squad and determined to make the junior varsity next year as a Bradenton freshman. "Poor Mother," she murmured, picturing her mother's disapproval. Felicity meant well, but she was horrified by her granddaughter's rebellious need to embrace life, just as she'd once been horrified at Carly's.
"Mrs. A is afraid they'll loosen the chandelier in the foyer and it'll come crashing down on some poor soul's head some day," Tilly amplified.
"I sincerely hope not. The last thing Bradenton can afford right now is a law suit."
Tilly chuckled. "Not to worry. Just to make sure, I called McNabb from maintenance, and he checked it out. Said a herd of elephants could tap-dance on that ceiling and that big old fixture wouldn't so much as sway."
Carly grinned. "That's a relief."
Tilly nodded. "McNabb also mentioned that Bessie is out of order again. Said he'd called the elevator repair people, and they're sendin' someone out on Friday, but told me to tell
you to wear your sneakers to the office till then."
Carly groaned. She loved the old elevator that had been installed in the administration building in the early part of the century, and she didn't want to see it replaced by something made of chrome and plastic. Preserving Bradenton's unique character was akin to a sacred trust with her, though at the moment she was more concerned with just keeping the doors open.
"First the water main breaks in the science hall, and then the fire marshal finds frayed wiring in the library, and now this." Just thinking about trudging up three flights of stairs to her tower office every day made her more exhausted than ever. "Remind me to buy a lottery ticket next time I'm in Bradenton Falls."
Tilly took the lid from a large pot and inhaled the rich aroma before stirring. It was lobster bisque, Carly's favorite, and her mouth watered. She hadn't eaten since the end-of-conference brunch.
"Needs more garlic," Tilly muttered before replacing the lid and opening the door to the spice cabinet.
"Is Tracy planning to spend the night at Karen's?"
"No, she'll be home later."
Carly ran her brush through her chin-length Dutch bob and felt the electricity crackle. Her hair was a medium brown, as thick and glossy as a mink's winter coat, and poker straight. After several disastrous perms, she'd resigned herself to the simplest of styles.
"I just hope I can stay awake long enough to see her." Carly dropped her brush into her purse and adjusted the collar of her silk dress. It was her favorite, a deep rich purple that made her feel calm and competent.
"So what's your read on Coach's latest prospect?" she asked, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin.
"He has a strong face and sad eyes and a nice, steady way about him, like he's wrestled the Devil himself and won." Tilly added a nod of approval for good measure, and Carly let out a low whistle.
"That's praise indeed," she said before filching another tomato. "And I fervently hope that you are one hundred percent right, because spring practice starts in six weeks and two days."
"I still say football is a barbaric sport," Tilly muttered, giving the bisque an extra-vigorous stir. "I've never been able to understand why you love it so."
Her Secret, His Child Page 2
