Fast Courting

by Barbara Delinsky

  Suddenly they had reached the bottom line, the end goal of this passion-play. With shock, Nia realized that she wanted Daniel to make love to her. Without a thought for his job or hers, his history or hers, the propriety of any of it—she wanted his total possession. Nothing less would satisfy the deep ache of tension that had gathered and built within her.

  The awareness of what had to follow came to Daniel simultaneously. As he raised his head to meet her wide-eyed gaze her hand fell from the thickness of his hair to his broad shoulders, then to the upper arms whose brawn could easily sustain him over her…should they go with the flow of passion.

  But he was the coach, calling the plays. With trembling hands and a regretful cast of his fathomless brown eyes, he eased her sweater back over her breasts and further down to her waist. If Nia felt the loss of his touch she had only to listen to the ragged scratch of his voice to imagine what his restraint had cost him.

  “I’m sorry, Nia. I can’t do this to you.” A cold trickle of apprehension worked its way around her insides. What was he saying? And why that self-righteous note? “Much as I want you, it wouldn’t be good for either of us. You’re the media—I’m into basketball. You hate basketball—I distrust the media. It would never work.”

  Her own perplexity held her motionless. What would never work? she wondered—one night in bed…or more? He had singled out the one point that had to be considered. What puzzled her was why he had done so before taking his pleasure with her. His arousal had been clear; he had just admitted his desire. Why had he stopped? On principle alone?

  They had been playing on Nia’s home court, but suddenly the initiative was stolen from them. With ten times the force of the referee’s whistle the blast of a car horn shattered the night, its continued blare boding ill for its driver.

  Daniel stiffened. “What in the devil is that? Do you have teenagers around?”

  As he shifted to allow her passage, Nia bolted up. All thought of passion vanished beneath a sweep of personal concern and proprietorial responsibility. “My God, it must be Dr. Max…!”

  Five

  Nia raced to the door, leaving it ajar as she tore downstairs and outside, Daniel close on her heels. When they retraced their steps at a more leisurely pace several moments later, they were purged of carnal cravings.

  “Does he do that often?” Daniel asked. His amusement tempered the air as he crossed the living room to retrieve the trenchcoat he’d dropped there earlier.

  He intended to leave, and although Nia believed it to be for the best, she still had mixed feelings. In a nonchalant gesture she tossed her head back to dislodge any moistness lingering from the pale drizzle outside. The chill that touched her was only partly due to that cold night air; the rest was in anticipation of the soul-searching she knew lay ahead.

  “He’s never done that before!” she exclaimed with affection. “There have been any number of other quirks—lights left on, phone fallen off the hook, kitchen timer ringing for hours, outgoing mail, even bills dropped on the driveway—but never,” her eyes registered belated humor, “a book carton jammed against the steering wheel.”

  “Against the horn,” Daniel corrected, grinning. “Well, if nothing else, it was guaranteed to get help…and quickly.”

  In response to his meaningful gaze, Nia lowered her eyes. She, too, recalled what Dr. Max’s mini-calamity had interrupted. “Thanks for giving him a hand, Dan,” she murmured self-consciously. “It just didn’t occur to him to walk around the car and take the carton out from the passenger’s side. It was good of you to carry it in for him.”

  Daniel scoffed off any effort. “It was nothing.”

  “He’s such a sweet man…and he does try so hard to function on his own.”

  “Is he alone? Does he have family nearby?”

  “Oh, yes. He has a daughter living in Belmont, only ten minutes from here. But he refuses to move. He claims he’d be in the way of her husband and the kids. But the kids are in college and there’s a perfect little suite he could have, off at an end of the house and on his own. But he’s a stubborn one.” She shrugged. “Crotchety in his old age, I guess.”

  Daniel chuckled sadly. “I know the type.”

  Something in his tone brought her quickly alert. It was a quiet, faraway quality, suggesting that his knowledge stemmed from personal experience. But before Nia could find the words to ask him about it, he had put on his coat.

  “Thanks for dinner, Nia.” He smiled gently. “It was a nice change.”

  “Home-cooked?” she teased, fighting her disappointment.

  “Yes.” He stood about an arm’s reach—an easy arm’s reach, given the length of his limbs—from her, yet made no move to close the distance. Though there was no sign of the intense desire she had seen earlier, his expression bore a gratifying warmth. Slowly it spread through her, bringing with it a return of the comfortable feeling she had known for so much of the evening. She liked Daniel Strahan.

  “You’re sure I can’t tempt you with coffee?” she asked softly.

  His dark head shook slowly from side to side, his eyes holding hers, his lips twitching at the corners. “Poor choice of words, babe. You tempt me far too much as it is.”

  “The offer was made in good faith,” she chided, refusing to blush at the innuendo.

  “Thanks…but no. I’ve got to get home to watch a game.”

  Nia couldn’t help but grimace. “I might’ve known.” She feigned dismay, then frowned in puzzlement. “A game? At this hour?”

  “Actually, it’s a rerun of the game we played last night. I have one of those machines on my set—”

  “A video recorder?”

  “Right. It’s very handy. If I set it on a timer, it tapes the game. I can rerun it at my own convenience, in the comfort—as they say in the ads—of my own home.”

  “Where’s that?” she asked, eyes innocently rounded. She had been hoping to take advantage of his relaxed smile, but he was too quick to turn over any information by accident.

  He eyed her knowingly, with an air of smugness. “Not far from the arena.” He was purposely vague. “There are several portions of the game I’ve got to study.” His features grew more pensive. “I’m not sure about the effectiveness of several of our moves. And I’ve got to decide before practice tomorrow whether to go with them again or chuck them.”

  Nia conceded defeat gracefully. “Is there a game tomorrow?”

  “We’re playing Houston.”

  “Tough game?”

  “Every game’s tough.”

  “Think you can win?”

  “That’s why we play.”

  Nia shot him a look of mock astonishment. “I was wondering about that…”

  Daniel stepped closer in playful warning. “Smart. …Will you watch?” It came on her so quickly that she was unprepared.

  “Watch?”

  “The game.”

  “It’s going to be televised?” she asked in a bid for time, as she groped for an answer.

  “You know it is,” he growled. “Will you watch?”

  She nodded too quickly. “I’ll try.”

  His voice dropped, weighed down by skepticism. “I’ll …bet…”

  “I will…try.”

  He narrowed one eye. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  All playfulness seemed to suddenly fall away. “I’d like that,” he stated with such soft sincerity that she almost believed it might mean something to him. Once more she was thrown into a web of confusion woven loosely around her alternatives. What did she want to do? But again Daniel called the shots. In this case, it was the final play of the night.

  Lifting his hand to her neck, he curved his fingers around to her nape and let the firm pad of his thumb trace the softness of her lips. “Thanks, again,” he murmured, then was gone.

  Reeling in the wake of the abrupt shift from sensuality to departure, Nia voiced the first thought she could find in her muddled brain. “What about my article?” she called
down the stairs at his fast-descending back.

  “I’ll give you a call,” was his parting shout, instants before the front door slammed behind him.

  Bewildered, Nia stared at the empty hallway. “You’ll give me a call,” she murmured. “That’s just great. And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Damn it, I’m right back to square one!”

  But she wasn’t. Not by a long shot. As she lay in her bed that night it seemed infinitely lonely. Her thoughts were filled with sweet memories, visions of long arms and seductively strong fingers, touching and caressing, stoking fires that had been banked for years.

  It was only in theory that the Eastern Edge feature remained up in the air. Nia knew, without a doubt, that she would never use Daniel as one of the five eligible easterners Bill had chosen for her half of the story. She had known it from the start. Was there, then, any point to the pretense that she would? Shouldn’t she simply tell Daniel she’d dropped the idea? Shouldn’t she simply announce her failure to Bill and let him take the steps necessary in finding a replacement? Let Bill talk to Daniel if he wanted to test the coach’s determination! At the very thought, she laughed. Daniel Strahan would no more grant that interview to Bill Austen than she would sit through a Breakers’ game. …Or would she?

  “Chris! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

  “Hi, Nia!” Sandy hair tousled, cheeks unusually ruddy, Christopher Daly had just blown in from the windy plains of State Street. “Sorry about that. I had an errand to run down by the waterfront. Uh…have you got a special problem?”

  They came together from opposite ends of the corridor, meeting by the doorway to Chris’ office. Nia cut a properly sophisticated figure in her fitted suit of soft blue tweed. Chris was far more irreverent in an elbow-patched blazer and jeans. Mercifully, Bruce McHale was liberal on that score.

  “Ah,” she gave him a good-natured once-over, “so this is a sexy professor day?”

  “Now, now,” her friend drew himself up and hooked his thumbs in his back pockets, “can I help it if I understand comfort?”

  “Anything new with Tricia?” Nia asked, changing the subject and whispering conspiratorially.

  “Jennifer,” he murmured with a smug smile.

  “Tricia is seeing Jennifer?”

  “I’m seeing Jennifer.” He thumped his chest for emphasis.

  “What about Tricia?”

  His sheepish shrug said it all.

  “Over?” Nia asked, ever-astonished at the turnover. For a thirty-seven-year-old bachelor, Chris Daly showed no signs of slowing down.

  “Guess so. But you’d like Jennifer, Nia. She’s a sweetheart—a psychologist. Great to talk to!”

  “Is she?” Funny he should make the connection. Daniel’s interest was also psychology, and he, too, was great to talk to. Perhaps it went with the field…which brought Nia to her immediate concern. “Listen, Chris, can you do me a favor?”

  With a paternal arm about her shoulders, Chris ushered her into his office. The slot of senior editor carried with it its own private space. Though similar in decor to the room shared by Nia and Priscilla, Chris’ was less than neat.

  “Name it,” he ordered, granting her a gallant carte-blanche.

  She did. Without hesitancy. “Daniel Strahan. I want to know everything you do about the man.”

  “You’re going forward on that assignment?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t a total lie. She was meeting that afternoon with Wallis-Wright of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

  Chris’ gaze narrowed. “And you want to know about Strahan?”

  “You were there at that meeting. You heard his name on the list. As I recall,” she grinned in gentle accusation, “you were one of his most vocal supporters.”

  “And you were totally against the assignment. Changed your mind?”

  She sighed, sliding into one of three chairs in the room, the only one free of debris. “What can I say? It’s an assignment. Bill made that very clear—in front of all of you. I can’t deny that the thought of this feature still goes against my grain, but I’m trying. Believe me, I am.”

  Chris had no way of knowing that those particular efforts were limited to the other four and excluded Strahan entirely.

  “I believe you, Nia. OK,” he rubbed his hands together, then perched before her on the corner of his desk. “Daniel Strahan. Everything I know about him?”

  “Everything.”

  “What do you know already?”

  She knew that he loved lobster and steak, medium-rare, that he was great for scrubbing broiler pans and dislodging jammed book cartons from behind the steering wheels of Volvos, that he drove a sporty maroon Datsun and liked to read—and that when he touched her she melted.

  “I know that he coaches the New England Breakers, that he’s six feet four and weighs somewhere around one hundred ninety.” All bone and sinew, she elaborated from personal examination. But, of course, she couldn’t tell Chris that.

  “OK. We start from scratch.” Folding his arms across his chest, Chris frowned. “You know something? I’m not sure I know all that much.”

  “Give me what you’ve got.” Anything would be better than nothing, she mused, particularly as she was beginning to feel incredibly guilty at the deception.

  “I think he must be close to forty. No. Not quite. Thirty-eight or thirty-nine.” He made the mental calculations, working forward from Daniel’s playing years. “Bachelor, obviously.”

  “Obviously.” She pinched in her lips with wry humor.

  “He’s coached the Breakers for four seasons now, the last two winning ones.”

  “What did he do before he coached? He didn’t go right up from the bench, did he?”

  Chris shook his head. “There were several years in between there when he scouted for the team.” His brow furrowed as he dug into his memory. “I think I recall reading that he went back to school.”

  “Really?” Daniel had mentioned this. An occasional course—that was what he’d said. Was he possibly working toward a more formal postgraduate degree in psychology? “But you don’t know any of the details.”

  Again, Chris defaulted. “Sorry, Nia. There must be some bio that appeared in the papers at the time he was named head coach. Have you checked?”

  “The microfilm room is my next stop.” She grinned. “I’m trying the shortcuts first. Do you think there would be anything in the Breakers’ yearbook? Have you got the new one?”

  “At home,” he acknowledged apologetically. “I’ll bring it in tomorrow. I’ve also got a copy of the team schedule and, hey, if you’d like, I’ll go through my old sports magazines. They’ve got to have stuff on Strahan.”

  “Would you, Chris?” She brightened. “That would be great!”

  “Sure thing, love.” He paused to study her closely, then eyed her askance. “Say, this is strictly business, isn’t it? You’re not about to be turned on by six feet of well-toned muscle, are you?”

  Her brittle laugh was a poor denial of his low-growled suggestion. “Don’t be absurd, Chris! You know how I feel about anything to do with basketball.”

  “I know that your ex was involved with the Breakers, so it might be fair to say that you’ve got it in for the game. Still…there was a ring of excitement in your voice a minute ago. And, if it’s not to do with the old hoop and ball, it must have to do with—”

  “Wrong, friend,” she laughed, gaining better control of herself. “Try again.” Her grin was a challenge to occupy him while she engaged in a minute of self-reproach. She’d simply have to do something about her tone of voice, that tone of voice inspired solely by Daniel Strahan. Twice, now, it had nearly betrayed the emotion that nagged at her.

  “I know!” Chris put on a scowl. “You’re trying to make me jealous.”

  “You?” She stood, prepared to leave at the first appropriate moment. Chris had come far too close to the truth for comfort.

  “Yeah,” he drawled. “You know how I love basketball and you’re just
dying to dangle those free tickets he gives you right under my nose.”

  Nia drew alongside him and put her arm around his shoulder. “Now, would I do that to you?” she asked. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you bring in that material you’ve promised tomorrow, I’ll give you those free tickets…if he hands them out.”

  “Pretty lady,” Chris lit up, “you’ve got yourself a deal!”

  If only other things could be resolved as easily, she mused later. With Daniel Strahan monopolizing the back of her mind all day, nothing seemed to work out smoothly.

  The microfilm room, with its single viewer, had been appropriated by a young staffer whose plea that she was already far behind schedule fell on Nia’s sympathetic ear. After all, Nia reasoned, her own research wasn’t exactly an emergency. In fact, she doubted she should even be doing it on company time…since she would not be using it for official purposes.

  And therein lay a world of guilt. She had, despite any stretch of the imagination, led Chris on. When she should have been appealing to him for a suitable replacement for Daniel in the Eastern Edge feature, she had knowingly let Chris believe her inquiries to be on the up-and-up. Oh, they were on the up-and-up, all right, but it was a very personal high she courted.

  She wanted to know Daniel, to understand him as he claimed to want to understand her. The difference was principally in his willingness to be known. While she had talked to him with a remarkable lack of inhibition, he had revealed very little of a truly personal nature to her. So, reporter-at-heart that she was, she would seek out the information on her own.

  It was, unfortunately, hard to come by. After striking out at the microfilm department, she raced to a nearby bookstore, where she spent a full hour browsing through any and every publication, first downstairs in hardback, then up in paper, that dealt in any form or fashion with basketball. There was no shortage of life stories on some of the current big stars of the game. But on Daniel Strahan? Nothing.

  She returned to her office after stopping to pick up a fast chicken salad sandwich to go, then munched on it at her desk and reviewed what she had learned. Daniel Strahan had originally come from Oregon, had made his mark at Stanford and been the Breakers’ first-round draft pick in his senior year. He’d moved directly to Boston and had remained with the team until his retirement after ten years of frontline basketball. In his later playing years, he had been bothered by a troublesome knee, but, otherwise, he had been regarded as one of the Breakers’ outstanding forwards. Period. Nothing more recent, save passing references to the success of the New England Breakers “under Head Coach Daniel Strahan.” No details on Daniel. No personal dirt. Nothing. Nia’s violet gaze grew darker in frustration. For this she had wasted the better part of the morning?