The Thrill of Victory

by Sandra Brown

  He scanned the label on the small bottle.

  "These are pain pills."

  "That's right."

  "Toothache?"

  She bared her front teeth, exposing them for his examination. "Want to see my molars?"

  "Your molars look fine from here," he drawled, his eyelids lowering a fraction.

  Stevie gave him a contemptuous glance. "The pills?"

  "Muscular injury? Tennis elbow? Sprained shoulder? Stress fracture?"

  "None of the above. Will you please give me the medicine now and stop behaving like a jerk?"

  With a shrug, he set the bottle on the bar and slid it across to her. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. You look like you need them."

  "How can you tell?"

  "Tension around your mouth." He touched one corner of her lips, then the other.

  Stevie yanked her head away and quickly turned her back. She filled a small juice glass with tap water and swallowed two tablets. Retrieving her cup of tea, she sat down on the bar stool next to his.

  She drank most of her tea in silence. He studied her every move. Obviously the adage that "if you ignored something long enough it would go away" didn't apply to him.

  "What are you doing here, Mackie?" she asked wearily.

  "I'm on assignment."

  "Isn't there a ball game of some sort you could be writing about this afternoon? A golf tournament?

  Other matches at Lobo Blanco?"

  "You're the big sports story of the day, like it or not."

  She averted her eyes and muttered beneath her breath, "I don't like it."

  Judd set his elbow on the bar and propped his cheek in his hand. "Why did you collapse out there this morning? It couldn't have been the heat. It wasn't that hot."

  "No. It was a perfect day for tennis."

  "Stay up past your bedtime last night?"

  She gave his dishevelment a critical glance, her disapproval coming through loud and clear. "I never carouse the night before a match."

  "Might do your game some good if you did," he said with a crooked smile.

  Wryly she shook her head. "You're hopeless, Mackie."

  "So I've been told."

  "Look, I'm very tired. I was on my way to bed when you showed up the first time. Now that I've taken the medication, I'd like to get some rest.

  Doctor's orders."

  "Your doctor recommended bed rest?"

  "Yes."

  "Hmm," he said, taking a sip of his drink.

  "That could mean anything. But I guess if you were drying out or going through drug rehab, you'd be hospitalized."

  "You think I've been on alcohol or drugs?" she demanded indignantly, her sagging posture improving dramatically.

  He leaned closer and, pulling down her lower eyelids, examined her eyes. "Guess not. No dilation.

  I doubt you're chemically dependent.

  You've got good skin tones, no needle tracks, clear eyes."

  She angled her head away from his touch.

  "Yours certainly wouldn't stand up to close scrutiny."

  Undaunted, he gave the rest of her an appraisal.

  "No, come to think of it, you look too healthy to be dependent on anything except low cholesterol, high-fiber foods. Get hold of a bad batch of bean curd?"

  She dropped her forehead into her palm.

  "Would you please just go away?" She was disheartened on several counts. Chief among them was that she needed to be with someone right now, anyone, and Judd Mackie was the only one around. As much as it cost her to admit it, his obnoxious presence was preferable to solitude.

  "That narrows down the possibilities considerably," he remarked.

  "To what?" In spite of herself she was curious to hear his hypothesis.

  "Publicity."

  "Give me a break," she moaned. "I don't need it."

  "Right," he admitted grudgingly, "you're already hyping enough products to keep your face smiling out of magazines and TV screens for years."

  Narrowing his eyes, he assessed her through a screen of thick, spiky lashes. "Are you sure you didn't just fake a fainting spell to get out of playing that match?"

  "Why would I do something like that?"

  "That Italian broad is supposed to be good."

  "But I'm better," Stevie staunchly exclaimed.

  "You've been good," he conceded reluctantly,

  "but you're getting up there in age. What is it now, thirty-one?"

  He had struck a sore spot and she lashed out,

  "This has been my best year. You know that,

  Mackie. I'm on my way to getting a Grand Slam."

  "You've still got to win Wimbledon."

  "I won it last year."

  "But your younger competition is breathing down your neck, players with a hundred times more talent and stamina."

  "I'm noted for my stamina."

  "Yeah, yeah, along with your saucy braid.

  You're not an athlete."

  "As much as any football player in the NFL."

  "You don't look like an athlete. You're not even built like one."

  Stevie, angered over his sneering accusation, followed the direction of his gaze down to her chest. Her robe was gaping open, revealing the smooth, pale slope of one breast. She hurriedly gathered the fabric together in her fist and stood up. "It's past time for me to throw you out."

  Unperturbed, he continued smoothly. "Maybe your collapse was brought on by anxiety, pure and simple."

  Stevie was seething, but said nothing. She wouldn't honor his ridiculous theories with a response.

  Her expression remained impassive.

  "You've always known, deep down, that you don't have what it takes to be a real champion.

  You're one bowl of Wheaties short," he said tauntingly. "You're a flash in the pan."

  "Hardly that, Mackie. I've been on the pro tour for twelve years."

  "But you didn't do anything significant until about five years ago."

  "So, I'm improving, not declining, with age."

  "Not according to what happened this morning."

  "My age has nothing to do with why I-"

  He sprang to his feet and bore down on her.

  "Come on, give, Stevie. Why did you faint?" ' 'None of your damn business!" she shouted.

  "Cramps? Hmm? Is all this hullabaloo over a case of cramps?"

  "No! Definitely not cramps."

  "Ah." Judd released the word slowly. Tilting his head to one side, he let his eyes slide down her body again, searching for a telltale sign he might have previously missed. "Is there any particular reason why it's 'definitely not cramps'?" he asked in a lilting voice. "Like a b-a-b-y perhaps?" a 'And you're pregnant," he concluded bluntly.

  Drawing his face into a stern frown, he demanded,

  "Whose is it? That Scandinavian cobbler who designed your special tennis shoes?"

  "I'm not pregnant."

  "Or is the happy father that polo player from Bermuda?"

  "It's Brazil!"

  "Brazil, then. The guy with all those chains on his chest and at least four dozen teeth."

  "Stop right there."

  "Or don't you know whose it is?"

  "Stop it!" she screamed, folding her arms across her abdomen. "There is no baby!" She repeated it more softly, more tearfully. "There is no baby."

  Tears began to roll down her pale cheeks.

  "And before long there probably won't be anything else there, either. Because when they take out the tumors, they'll probably have to take out everything.'

  Her outcry took Judd completely by surprise.

  He made a little hiccuping sound when he sharply sucked in his breath. It was a reaction foreign to his character, as he was usually indifferent to even the most appalling pieces of information.

  This was one time he couldn't shrug and go on his uncaring way.

  Stevie turned her back on him. The long blond braid hanging down her back no longer looked saucy, as it did swishing behind her o
n a tennis court. It looked heavy and burdensome. Or was it that she suddenly seemed so small and defenseless? strangling sounds that penetrated his cynicism and prompted him to touch her.

  "Shh, shh." He took those shuddering shoulders between his hands and turned her to face him. Disregarding her resistance, he pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her.

  "I'm sorry. If I'd known it was anything that serious, I wouldn't have badgered you."

  He doubted that she would believe him. He could hardly believe himself. He rarely apologized for anything. Almost never to a woman.

  For a woman sobbing her heart out, all he usually felt was contempt and impatience to escape her clutching hands. But when Stevie Corbett's fingers curled inward toward his chest in a silent plea for help and support, it didn't occur to him to get the hell out before coming involved.

  Instead he drew her closer and turned his head, resting his cheek on the crown of her blond hair.

  He held her while she cried. That in itself was an oddity. When he held a woman, it was strictly for prurient purposes. When he held one wearing a short kimono that did great things for her bare legs, they were as good as in bed. When he held one wearing a short kimono with nothing underneath it except panties, his hands were usually inside it, not stroking her back consolingly.

  Those comparisons no doubt accounted for how differently this embrace felt from any other in his recent, or even distant, memory.

  His trained eye would have had to go blind to miss the details of her bralessness, the attraction of her smooth thighs, the delightful faint outline of bikini panties beneath the robe, but he didn't follow through on any sexual impulses.

  To do so would have made him a real heel. He was a heel, but so far, he hadn't stooped that low.

  Or maybe guilt was keeping his caresses platonic and circumspect. After all, he'd unwittingly induced this emotional breakdown. Unlike the other women he had reduced to tears during his career as a bastard, Stevie Corbett had a helluva good reason for needing to cry.

  Eventually her sobs turned into soft, catchy, moist little breaths that he felt through the cloth of his shirt. "Shouldn't you be in bed?" he asked softly.

  She nodded and stepped away from him, making ineffectual swipes at her eyes. They were still leaking tears and leaving muddy mascara trails down her cheeks.

  He had a hot broad waiting to feed him a cold lunch. Mentally he kissed them both goodbye.

  Surprising himself even more than he surprised Stevie, he bent slightly at the knees and lifted her into his arms.

  "This isn't necessary, Mackie. I can walk."

  "Which way?"

  She hesitated, then raised her arm and pointed.

  She had great muscle tone, which at any other time would have warranted leisurely exploration with fingertips and lips. On the other hand, she was so light that he could carry her for a hundred miles and not break a sweat, at least not from exertion. Holding her against him for any extended period of time without doing anything about it might make him perspire.

  "In there."

  He carried her into a spacious bedroom filled with natural light and an overabundance of potted plants. "Didn't they film a Tarzan movie here once?" he wisecracked.

  "These plants are my pets. It's cheaper to have them taken care of while I'm away than it is to board a dog or cat. Besides, they can't miss me."

  He deposited her on the edge of the bed. "Lie down."

  "I'll bet you say that to all the girls," she remarked drolly.

  "I'm not kidding around. And neither should you be. Lie down."

  She reclined on the heap of eyelet-covered pillows.

  By her expression, Judd knew it felt good to her, though she'd probably never admit it.

  "Sorry about your shirt."

  "Huh?" He glanced down and noticed that it was damp and smudged with makeup. "It'll wash," he said negligently.

  He shook out a light, puffy, quilted comforter, which was folded at the foot of the bed, and covered her with it. He then sat down on the edge of the mattress, his hips even with hers.

  "Talk."

  "Not to you, Mackie " 'Not to you, Mackie.'

  'My name is Judd.' "I know that. I've seen it on your byline.' "Forget the column for a minute, will you?"

  "Have you?" she shot up at him.

  "Yes!"

  During the ensuing silence, he watched tears fill her eyes again-light brown eyes the color of very expensive scotch. "Stevie," he said gently,

  "this is off-the-record. I think you need to talk to someone."

  "Yes, I do, but…" She sniffed wetly; he popped a Kleenex out of the box on the night-stand and held it to her nose.

  "Blow." She did. He tossed that Kleenex in the wastebasket and used a fresh one to dab at her eyes. "You need a sounding board, right?"

  "I just don't feel natural talking to you like this."

  "Well," he said, shaking his head ruefully,

  "this is a highly unnatural situation for me, too.

  Usually when I'm on a bed with a half-naked broad, the last thing on my mind is conversation.

  And she would be using her mouth for something besides spilling out her problems."

  "Mackie!"

  "Judd. Now talk. When did you find out about these tumors?"

  "This morning," she said huskily.

  "Before your match?" She nodded. "Whose bright idea was it to tell you before a match?"

  "Mine."

  "Figures."

  She frowned up at him. "I'd had some tests done. I wanted to know the results. Had to know."

  Her gaze drifted to the window where a box of paperwhites were blooming on the sill. "I guess I wasn't really expecting the worst, though. I'd told myself I was prepared to hear it, but…" She looked back at him. "You were right. I collapsed from anxiety."

  "Justifiably so."

  He rubbed his hands together, studying them intently, as though he'd never noticed his blunt nails, the sprinkling of hair across the backs of his knuckles, the thick wrists that should have belonged to a professional baseball player and didn't.

  "These tumors, they're, uh…"

  "On my female organs," she told him, glancing away again. "I'd been having some pain, more than ordinary."

  He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He was learning that where the female body was concerned, he had a teenage boy's mentality. He liked to look and touch and have sex with it. He thought the variations among individual women were intriguing and considered himself a con noisseur of the finest. He had never been faithful to one in particular. He had enjoyed more than his fair share of them, more than he was proud to admit in this age of safe sex.

  Yet, this was the first time he'd ever thought of a female body from an objective standpoint.

  He considered what it meant to the owner instead of what it meant to him. It contained a person. It wasn't just a soft, beautiful instrument of pleasure.

  He didn't like himself very much at that moment and would have found it hard to meet his own eyes in a mirror.

  "So they're going to operate and take them out," she was telling him softly.

  "It'll take months for me to recover and regain my strength, the tumors are benign."

  "You mean they might not be?"

  "No, they might not be." They shared a long stare, a heavy, ponderous stare full of implication.

  "But there's a good chance they are," Stevie continued briskly. "If that's the case, the surgery can be delayed until a more convenient time.

  Either way, they'll probably have to do a complete hysterectomy.'

  Judd came to his feet and began pacing the length of the bed. He glanced down at her angrily.

  "Why in hell are you lying on your butt here? Why aren't you in the hospital and on your way to the operating room?"

  "I can't have surgery now," she exclaimed.

  "Wimbledon is barely a month away."

  "So?"

  Her lips narrowed with vexation over his obtuseness.
r />   "So I've got to play."

  "It's not going anywhere. There's always next year."

  "As you so unkindly pointed out earlier, I'm not getting any younger. I'm playing better than ever, but for how long?"

  Shaking her head adamantly, she continued.

  "This is my year. My time. If I don't get that Grand Slam now, I'll never have another opportunity, no matter what the surgeons find when they operate. Maybe, if I were ten years younger, I could come back. As it is, it would take months, possibly longer. Even then, I'd never be as strong as I am now."

  "What if those tumors are malignant?"

  "Naturally that makes things more complicated," she replied evasively.

  "How complicated?" She refused to answer.

  Testily he repeated, "How complicated?"

  "If they're malignant, delaying surgery for several weeks could be fatal."

  Judd propped his fists on his hips and looked down at her with consternation. "You're crazy, lady."

  "You can't judge me because you don't know what you'd do in this situation."

  "Does your gynecologist have an opinion?"

  "He wants to do the surgery immediately, but he says two weeks won't make much difference." ' 'Immediately gets my vote."

  "You don't get a vote."

  "What about your manager?"

  "He sees both sides and has left the decision strictly up to me. But he says if I play Wimbledon, I can only have two weeks to make up my mind."

  "Meanwhile, you're in pain."

  "It's not constant. It comes and goes. Naturally he wants what's best for me."

  "He wants what's best for his business interests in you."

  "That's unfair."

  "What about your parents?"

  "They're deceased."

  "Lovers?"

  "There's no one else to consult." She glared up at him. "Not the 'Scandinavian cobbler' who, by the way, happens to be approaching seventy and has countless grandchildren."

  "What about the bare-chested Brazilian with the Ipana smile?"

  "I loathe that lecher. Whoever leaked the story of our so-called affair must have graduated from the same school of yellow journalism that you did."

  He ignored the gibe. "So you're all alone in this."

  "Until you splash it across the sports page.