Her Secret, His Child

by Paula Detmer Riggs

  "You're up front, I'll give you that." He leaned a bit on his crutches and studied her with deceptively lazy eyes. Like a big cat who knows his own power, she thought, he was taking his time coming in for the kill.

  "Does Coach know about this scheme of yours?"

  Carly swallowed. "Yes, he knows, but that wasn't why he suggested you for the job. He really thinks you'll make a terrific coach."

  "And if he thought I'd make a lousy one, would you still have wanted me?"

  It was on the tip of her tongue to offer a quick "no," but she knew him well enough to realize he wasn't the type to be easily misled. She settled for telling a half truth. "Our long-term goals require that we hire an excellent coach. Bradenton's Wolves need to win, Mr. Scanlon, and they won't accomplish that with lousy coaching."

  He conceded the point with a nod. "But coaching skill alone isn't all you're looking for, is it?"

  Carly swallowed again, this time around a lump of guilt. "No, not all," she admitted. "We need a big name, as well. I just said as much."

  Scanlon's gaze held hers for a long, tense moment before he smiled coolly. "Were you going to tell me about this news conference you have planned, or just let me walk in cold with the cameras already rolling?" His voice was that same rough purr she would always associate with him, but this time it sent chills skipping along her vertebrae.

  "It's traditional to announce the hiring of a new football coach at a press conference—once the contract has been signed and witnessed." She refused to make excuses. He might not like what they had planned, but there was nothing illegal or immoral about it. Quite the reverse, in fact. What they were doing would benefit more than a few individuals.

  "You're saying that Duncan was just blowing smoke? That this is just local, no national coverage, no big-name sports reporters? Nothing that would make a guy like me feel he's being put on display?"

  Carly took a deep breath. It pained her to accept the brutal directness of his gaze, but she forced herself. "We need publicity to fill the stadium. I haven't lied to you about that, or about anything else. Bradenton's in serious financial trouble. I won't bore you with the details. Just believe me when I tell you our situation is critical."

  He looked disgusted. "Maybe what you need is an accountant, not a coach."

  "What I need, what Bradenton needs, is a way to make a lot of money fast. Traditional ways of raising capital take too much time, time we don't have. Marca and I were brainstorming one night, and then all of a sudden, it came to us. For four years every school in this part of the country has been ridiculing the Wolves. Everyone expects us to lose, even the players. What if we hired a high-profile coach, then snapped that losing streak and started winning? Wouldn't that cause a lot of talk? Wouldn't that arouse interest in football circles and in the press?"

  He flexed his tired shoulders and wondered why he'd suckered himself into thinking this evening might have had a different ending.

  "I've seen your team's stats, Carly. Knute Rockne himself couldn't work that kind of miracle, not even with Vince Lombardi and Iron Mike Ditka helping out."

  "No, but a lot of people would pay just to see Rockne or Lombardi on the sidelines." She paused to lend her next words emphasis. "Or Mitch Scanlon. And if we make enough on gate receipts and concession stand sales, we can buy the time we need to come up with a viable plan to restructure our debt." She needed a breath and took it. "If we can generate enough excitement, we might even have a shot at TV revenues."

  Mitch went icy inside at the very thought of TV cameras following his every move.

  "If you want excitement, you'll have to look someplace else," he told her coldly. "I'm not in that business anymore."

  Carly felt her heart pounding. She didn't want to see the raw pain in his eyes. She didn't want to feel the terrible frustration eating at him. Right now, she had to think of Bradenton. Next to Tracy's safety and happiness, it had always been her number one priority. And Bradenton needed this man.

  "Remember how Ian reacted to meeting you?" When he didn't answer, she laid a hand on his arm. "Didn't you see the respect in his eyes? You heard what Tracy said. The players are excited at the idea of Mitch Scanlon becoming their coach. That team needs someone like you to make them want to win."

  For a moment he wanted desperately to believe her. No one had needed him in a long time. Not on the field. As rewarding as he found his work with the handicapped, it couldn't negate his love of football. No matter how many years he spent away from the sport, there would always be a side of him that yearned to be a part of it again.

  Afraid to let himself want something that badly, Mitch straightened his shoulders and forced himself to think rationally. Dreams were fine for those who had some hope of attaining them. He didn't. Football was a part of his past. He had long since accepted that it could not be a part of his future. Why was he allowing this woman to make him start wishing differently? He shook off her hand. If she touched him again, he wanted it to be with affection, not because she wanted something from him.

  "I'm not a coach. I'm just a guy who used to play football."

  She drew a breath. "If you want more money—"

  "I've got money." Though his voice was controlled, his hands were white where they gripped the crutches, and she realized that he had a far greater capacity for violence than she'd wanted to acknowledge.

  "The challenge, then."

  "Getting my pants on over these braces every morning, then off every night, is a challenge. Carrying a cup of coffee from the counter to the table without scalding myself is a challenge. And stairs, now there's a real fun challenge for you. In fact, I'm full up on challenges. One more doesn't hold much appeal."

  Carly winced at the cold, factual tone. "Name your terms, then," she said, with as much composure as she could summon.

  His slow grin mocked her. "Now that has possibilities. Let me give it some thought and get back to you."

  Her eyes, usually so calm, blazed suddenly. "You do that," she shot back, her control finally stretched beyond all limits. "And while you're thinking, think about this. You have no coaching experience. Zilch. And you've been away from the game for almost six years. How many other offers have you had to coach lately?"

  "You play dirty. I'll remember that."

  "When I have to." She curled her hands into fists again, ignoring the stinging sensation of her nails scoring her flesh. "Time is short, Mr. Scanlon. You have until nine fifty-nine tomorrow morning to accept our offer. After that, I intend to tell Chad Duncan that you are no longer under consideration for the coaching position."

  Without waiting for a response, she walked past him and out the door.

  Chapter 7

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  Carly was exhausted, as emotionally spent as an accident victim after the blessed numbness of shock had worn off. Yet she couldn't sleep. No matter how tightly she tried to weld her eyes shut, they kept popping open.

  Giving up, she switched on the light by the bed and picked up a book. If she couldn't relax herself into sleep, she would read until her eyes crossed and her mind shut down. Five minutes later, she closed the book and returned it to the night stand. Instead of words and phrases, she'd seen sorrow shimmering in a pair of golden brown eyes. Eyes with lines of pain and suffering etched into the corners, eyes that rarely smiled and never really lost their shadows even when they did.

  And such sorrow, so deep, so raw, for a boy he'd known, sorrow for a boy he would never know, both of whom had somehow touched his heart.

  As Mitch had touched hers.

  It was such a little thing, really, just a much-handled scrap of cheap yellow paper with a name penned on one side. A boy's priceless treasure and, she suspected, as precious to the man that boy had become.

  Why he'd kept it all those years didn't matter, though she was far more curious than she should be. What did matter was the unselfish generosity he'd displayed in giving it away.

  Rubbing her stinging eyes with tired fingers, she tried to merg
e the image of the caring, sensitive man she'd glimpsed tonight with the picture of a soulless, unfeeling rapist, but the images refused to mesh.

  Still, he had raped her. Hadn't she been helpless, trapped beneath his hard, massive body, pinned to the mattress by tough sinew and heavy muscle? And hadn't there been pain and blood? And a terrible feeling of humiliation?

  It had taken long and tortuous months of therapy before she'd been able to let anyone touch her again. More months before she could date again. And still, there had been nights when she'd lain awake, rivers of tears flooding her eyes until they were swollen and stinging.

  Hugging her knees, she drew a shaky breath and, for the first time in seventeen years, let her mind run freely over that night in the desert.

  Yes, he'd been drunk, but he'd also been solicitous, even though he'd thought her far more experienced. Yes, his eyes had glittered with sexual hunger, yet his smile had had a shy curl when he'd asked her gruffly to go with him to his room. She'd been the eager one, the one to agree without hesitation, the one to lift her face to his for that first frantic kiss. A kiss that he'd quickly gentled as though he didn't want to rush her. And when he'd framed her face with those large powerful hands, she'd been astonished to feel them tremble.

  It was only when she'd actually felt the insistent prodding of his hot, rigid body against her virginal flesh that she'd tried to push him away.

  Of course, it had been too late.

  Carly rested her chin on her knees and stared at the framed lithograph of a mother and child hanging on the wall. How could she have been so blind? So stubbornly sure she'd been the only victim in that steamy room?

  She was a social anthropologist, for pity's sake. A woman who had studied the history of social customs and mores. A woman who had refused to see the truth when it was right in front of her.

  Mother Nature had given the male primate more than a strong, willing body with which to woo the female of his choice. She'd also given him a blind, unthinking drive to consummate the sexual act no matter what. At eighteen, Carly had been hopelessly naive to think a young and virile man caught in those last, frenzied agonies of sexual excitement would even hear her anguished cries, let alone find the strength to stop, while millions of years of instinct were urging him on.

  Carly cringed inwardly and, sitting straight and stiff, rubbed her hand over her suddenly hot cheeks. All those years, she'd thought him vile and disgusting, the worst sort of man. A monster.

  "Oh no, no," she whispered, her voice raw. Such a simple little word, but she'd said it too late. Too late for Mitch, too late for herself—and too late for Tracy.

  "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry," she whispered, turning to gaze at her favorite picture of Tracy when she'd been a toddler, wearing most of the chocolate cake Carly had made for her second birthday and grinning with pure joy into the camera. Tracy had been only a few months old when Carly had first seen reminders of Mitch on that tiny face. When Tracy had smiled for the first time, really smiled, Carly had seen echoes of Mitch's carefree grin, and she'd cried.

  She cringed to remember how sorry she'd felt for herself, how she'd castigated him to her therapist in that oh, so self-righteous tone. It had been his fault, she'd cried, his selfishness. His insensitivity.

  Of course he didn't deserve to know he'd become a father. Of course he didn't deserve to be a part of his daughter's life. The other women in her therapy group had wholeheartedly agreed.

  "Dear God, what have I done?" she whispered, her voice raw.

  Two seconds later she was up and out of bed, too wrought up to rest. Crossing the room, she slipped out of her nightshirt as she went, letting it fall to the carpet in a heap. She would swim until she was too tired to lift her arms. Perhaps then she could lose her guilt in the oblivion of sleep.

  Since her tank suit was still in the downstairs bathroom, she would make do with her ratty old bikini, the one with the frayed straps.

  She went down the back stairs and through the kitchen, her bare feet as silent as Tabitha's on the tile. The French doors were unlocked. Passing through, she left them ajar. Inside, the windows were steamy, turning the area around the pool into her own private haven.

  She thought briefly of switching on the underwater lights, then decided that the gothic atmosphere of the outside lamps shining through the fogged windows suited her mood.

  Dropping her towel on the table, she padded to the pool's lip. Crouching, she scooped water into her cupped hand and let it dribble through her fingers. The water was bathtub warm, its slight odor of chlorine oddly comforting. She'd worked out a lot of demons in that pool.

  "Having trouble sleeping?"

  She gasped, her gaze wildly searching the shadows at the far end. She saw him then, chest high in the water, arms stretched wide along the lip, half standing, half reclining. His crutches and braces were lying nearby, next to a blue robe.

  "I didn't see you," she said, easing into a sitting position with her feet dangling over the side.

  "Or you wouldn't have come in?" The flat, slick surface of the water gave his voice a vaguely hollow quality.

  "I'm not afraid to face you, Mitch." She kicked at the water and watched ripples spread toward him. "Contrary to what you may think, I've been up front with you from the start." She let that hang there a moment, then decided that now probably wasn't the time to take up where they'd left off. He didn't seem so inclined, and she felt too emotionally battered to press. "What about you? How come you're not asleep?"

  "Needed the exercise." His tone didn't invite comment. Relieved, she took a deep breath and slipped into the water. She clung for a moment to the lip, then pushed into a crawl. It took her almost half the pool before she found a rhythm she liked. Even then, her muscles were too tense to allow her to relax into it.

  Usually she swam mindlessly, picturing herself as pure fluid energy. But tonight she was hard-pressed to do more than cut her way through the warm water. Because the six-foot wide pool was enough to accommodate only two lanes, she soon realized that Mitch was swimming laps along with her. She was faster, of course, but then, he had only those steely arms and strong chest muscles to pull himself through the water.

  Finally winded beyond her lungs' ability to compensate, she stopped, gasping for air, her fingers splayed against the tile while her feet settled to the bottom.

  The pool was designed for exercise, not play, and the depth was a uniform four and a half feet. When she stood erect, the water lapped at the swell of her breasts, and she shivered as the cooler air hit her bare shoulders.

  Gradually the burning in her chest stopped, allowing her to breathe normally. Lifting her head, she saw that he had also stopped and was sitting on the steps in the corner, looking dangerously appealing with his hair slicked down and water beading on his wide, tanned chest.

  He'd been lean in his playing days, his muscles sharply defined, his chest wide, his belly flat. Since then, he'd packed more bulk onto his large frame, especially in the shoulders and upper arms. Imagining herself wrapped in those big arms had her growing warm inside before she locked down the thought.

  "I owe you an apology."

  Carly could only stare at him, the quiet slap-slap of the small waves the only sound in the enclosure.

  "Apology for what?" she asked warily.

  "For blowing up at you earlier. I acted like a spoiled kid who got mad because Santa only brought half the goodies he asked for." He moved closer, the water, stirred by his body, washing over her breasts.

  She held on to the side and let her body float. "It seems to me we both want the same thing. You want to coach, and we want you to coach."

  He acknowledged that with a nod. "This place must mean a lot to you."

  "With the exception of my daughter, it's the most important thing in the world to me."

  "Because it was founded by your family?"

  "Partly. And partly because it's a very special place. People really care about each other here. They always have, which is one of the reasons
we don't have oodles of money in the bank. We had a day-care center for faculty and students before any of the big colleges. And we had wheelchair ramps and special accommodations for the blind way back when I was a student here. It's not just the tangible things, either, but the sense of community we have." She drew a long breath. "If I could coach the team myself, I would. I'd even put on pads and play, if that would fill up all those empty seats, but it won't."

  "I'd come." His grin was restrained, scarcely more than a brief curving of those hard lips, and yet it had butterflies taking flight just below her sternum.

  For an instant she felt as young and giddy as Sarah—until she reminded herself that Sarah had existed only in her imagination. Carly, the person she actually was, didn't indulge in flights of fancy.

  "I had a phys ed teacher once tell me that I had the worst case of left-footitis she'd ever seen." She wiped the water from her face and ran her fingers through her dripping hair. "Swimming's the only thing I can do sportswise that doesn't cause people to fall down laughing."

  His mouth moved. "Life can be a bitch when you're a kid."

  "It wasn't fair, that's for sure. I was trying as hard as I could, and still I never once got above a C in P.E. Kept me from getting a 4.0 and the sports car my father promised me."

  Mitch watched her eyes cloud and wondered why. "So you bought your own."

  "Eventually—after I paid back all my student loans."

  He glanced around pointedly. "Cash flow problems?"

  "No, Father and I had a difference in priorities."

  He took a chance and guessed. "Tracy?"

  She glanced down, smoothing the water with a quick nervous movement of her hand. "He wanted to hide me away someplace until I had the baby, then give her up for adoption."

  Following her example, he stretched his arms along the lip of the pool and let himself float. Since he'd been at Bradenton, he'd missed his twice-daily swims in the spa pool. It felt good to get out of the braces and still be able to move around.