A Winning Season

by Rochelle Alers

  “I got here as soon as I could.”

  “Thank you.”

  He buried his face in her hair. Zoey was thanking him when he should’ve been the one thanking her for providing him a second chance to fall in love with someone who allowed him a modicum of normalcy for the first time in a very long time. Sutton peered over Zoey’s shoulder at the minivan. “How did you get two flats at the same time?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do want to know,” he retorted. Sutton dropped his arms and walked to Zoey’s vehicle and ran his fingers over what was obviously a slash in the rubber. “Someone cut your tires. Do you have an idea who did this?” Zoey stared at the middle of his chest rather than meet his eyes. “You know, don’t you?”

  She blinked once. “I have a suspicion, but I can’t prove it.”

  “Who, Zoey?”

  “I think it was my client’s grandson.”

  Sutton didn’t want to believe what he was hearing when Zoey revealed her client’s grandson’s hostility toward her. It was obvious the kid was jerk. “Where is he?”

  Zoey caught his arm. “Don’t, Sutton.”

  He flung off her hand. “Don’t what, Zoey? Don’t give the cretin a throat punch? Or maybe I should break his fingers so he’ll think twice about slashing someone else’s tires?”

  “Please, Sutton. There’s no need for violence. This is my last day here and I’ll never see him again.”

  Sutton stared at Zoey, seeing her fear and feeling her vulnerability. He cradled her face in his hands. “Sweetheart, what happened to the woman who said he must love me unconditionally? And I’ll need to know and believe that he will support and protect me. I’m here with you because you need me to protect you. I’m just going to talk to the man, and not give him the ass-kicking he deserves.”

  Her fingers curled around his wrists. “You promise?”

  Smiling, Sutton brushed a kiss over her lips. “Yes, babe, I promise.”

  * * *

  Zoey watched Sutton walk to the front door and ring the bell. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath when the door opened, and Sutton motioned for Billy to step outside. She wasn’t close enough to hear their conversation, but she could see the younger man’s expression change from shock to uncertainty as Sutton leaned in and said something in his ear.

  She chewed her lip as Billy went back into the house and returned minutes later, handing Sutton an envelope. The two men shook hands and Billy went back into the house and closed the door.

  Zoey stared at Sutton as he approached. He wore a pale blue tailored shirt, navy-and-white-striped silk tie, gray linen slacks and brown oxfords, and she wondered where he’d been when he took her call.

  Sutton handed her the envelope. “There’s enough in there for you to buy four new tires and cover the tow.”

  “You shook him down for money?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “What else is it, Sutton?”

  “I made the creep pay for what he did to you. Would you have preferred that I bitch slap him?”

  “No! I don’t like violence.”

  “And I don’t like some dude who can’t understand when no means no. He admitted it made him mad when you ignored him, because, let me see if I can remember his direct quote. ‘I always get any bitch I want because I can pay for whatever they want.’ The spoiled little snot is spending his inheritance even before his grandmother passes away.”

  Sutton was right about Billy being spoiled. He drove a top-of-the-line BMW and always flashed a fistful of dollars, which he probably assumed would impress her. “I suppose I ruined his record of getting what he wants, so he decided to punish me by slashing my tires.”

  “Guys like your Billy are more common than you realize. They drive luxury cars and flash wads of money and women flock to them like bees to honey.”

  Zoey recalled Georgina referring to Sutton’s ex-wife as a gold-digging wannabe model and wondered if she’d used Sutton’s success to elevate her own. “Thank you for being my knight in shining armor.”

  Throwing back his head, Sutton laughed. “My armor is a little rusty, but I don’t want you to forget that I’ll always be here for you.”

  Her eyelids fluttered when she heard the passion in his voice. “Do you love me, Sutton Reed?”

  Sutton took a step. “Yes, Zoey Allen. I love you unconditionally.”

  She gave him a direct stare. “Why?”

  “I’m surprised you have to ask me why. You embody everything I want and need. Let’s start with family. There is nothing more precious to me than family. They’re constant in good and bad times. I grew up with a single mother that sacrificed a lot to give me what I needed to become who I am today and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. And when I look at what you’ve sacrificed for your brothers, I see the same strength in you that I see in my mother. Your beauty notwithstanding, you’re smart, sensible and feisty.”

  Zoey smiled. “You think I’m feisty?” He nodded. “I’m actually rather passive.”

  “You were anything but passive when I brought Harper to your door after I found him vandalizing my car. You were more like a lioness protecting her cub. All fangs and claws.”

  “That’s because you had my brother in a headlock. And no one, I mean no one, will hurt my brothers without me coming for them.”

  “It wasn’t a headlock, sweetheart. I was holding him by the back of his shirt.”

  “Same difference because he couldn’t get away.”

  “Now, back to why I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “Oh, there’s more?” Zoey teased.

  “Yup. Sharing Sunday dinner with you and Harper is a reminder of what I’d been missing for more years than I can count. Mom and I didn’t have much, but the highlight of my week was Sunday dinner. We’d attend early church services, and then she would come home and cook so the house was filled with incredibly mouthwatering aromas. My mother was very proud, and she refused to take a handout from my aunt Evelyn, who’d married Bruce Powell, who at the time was one of the wealthiest men in Wickham Falls.”

  Zoey blinked as if coming out of a trance. “You’re in love with me because I remind you of your mother?”

  “No, babe. You have the same qualities I admire in my mother. You’re proud, Zoey. Almost to a fault. You refused to let me pay for your nursing school tuition. And you were upset when I bought the Jordans for Harper and let him drive the Jeep. When it comes to Harper because there are times when I relate to him as an older brother and other times when I see him as my son. Meeting and hanging out with you and Harper has allowed me a modicum of normalcy for the first time in a very long time.

  “Playing pro ball opened up a whole new world that took some getting used to. I was paid an obscene amount of money to hit a ball with a wooden bat, and I was so traumatized that I put a copy of my first multimillion-dollar contract in a drawer and it was three weeks before I was able to take it out and count the number of zeros. I didn’t want to be like some young men who’d grown up not having much and that overcompensated by going on spending sprees. One career-ending injury and everything they had disappeared like a puff of smoke.”

  “You were lucky, Sutton.”

  “I’m not judging them, Zoey, but I wanted something to show for the years of working with trainers and coaches to keep me at the top of my game. There were days when I played healthy and others when I played hurt. And I was realistic enough to know when the curtain would come down and I would have to take my final bow. What I didn’t know when Georgi asked me to come back to Wickham Falls was that I would rent a house next to a most amazing woman that makes me fantasize about sharing a future with her.”

  Zoey slowly shook her head. “Sutton, don’t.”

  “Don’t what, Zoey? Don’t love you? Don’t take care of and protect you and Harpe
r?”

  “Aren’t we moving too fast?”

  “We, babe?”

  She realized she’d said we rather than you. However, Zoey knew she had to stop denying what was so obvious. She had fallen in love with her neighbor. Sutton was so confident, something in his manner so soothing, that whenever they occupied the same space her whole being seemed to be filled with a waiting that needed to be assuaged. And that waiting was sexual fulfillment. Sutton was no boy about to embark on his first sexual encounter, but a mature man who’d dated women and had been married to a woman. He wanted a wife and a family, and if she married him, then he would get two for the price of one.

  Zoey moved closer and wound her arms around Sutton’s waist. “What if we take it nice and slow because I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

  Sutton kissed her forehead. “Deal. I want to tell you that my mother has invited you and Harper to come to dinner this Sunday with the rest of the family. She claims she wants to meet the young woman everyone’s talking about that was locking lips with her son in public.”

  “Did you tell her that you kissed me and not the other way around?”

  “I did, but she still would like to meet you.”

  “Sutton, I’m not really ready to meet your mother. There are some issues we need to discuss and resolve before I meet her.”

  “Like what?”

  Zoey eased back. “Why are you wearing a shirt and tie?”

  * * *

  Sutton laced their fingers together and led her over to the Jeep, opened the passenger-side door, helped her up and then rounded the vehicle and got in next to her. “We can wait here and talk in here until the tow truck driver gets here. When you called me, I was just leaving an interview.”

  “Where and who interviewed you?”

  “Johnson County Public Schools. I got a call from an assistant superintendent that they need a permanent substitute history teacher at the high school.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “They hired you?”

  “I’ll know in a week. I have to email the bursars at my colleges to request they send official transcripts.”

  “I can’t believe it. It’s like you’ve come full circle. Teaching at the same high school where you’d graduated.”

  “Weird, isn’t it?”

  “No, Sutton. It’s wonderful.”

  He felt Zoey’s enthusiasm as surely as if it was his own. The call had caught him completely by surprise; it had been only two weeks since he’d sent out his résumé, and he assumed it would take months before he’d hear back, because most schools were fully staffed before the start of the school year. A teacher in the history department requested and was approved for an extended family leave to care for her husband, who’d sustained serious injuries when he’d fallen mountain climbing.

  “I felt as if I was in a machine that took me back in time when I saw kids running down the halls to get to their classroom before the late bell rang, and at that instant I’d become one of them. I had a chemistry teacher that was a stickler for lateness, and he didn’t want to hear that you’d come from PE and had to change before making it to his class on time. He was so rigid that I told myself when I become a teacher I would never threaten or intimidate my students.”

  Leaning to her left, Zoey kissed his jaw. “You’re going to be a wonderful teacher.”

  Sutton hoped he would. It had taken years for him to earn a graduate degree taking online courses. During off-seasons when he didn’t play winter ball, he could be found in front of a computer listening to lectures, taking exams and completing papers. He’d spent a couple of years researching the growth, expansion and destruction of every all-black town in the United States following the end of the Civil War for what would become his thesis.

  Everything he’d always wanted was coming together, while his life had come full circle. He had secured a teaching position and fallen in love with a woman in his hometown. Zoey was asking for time and he would give her all that she needed to love him as much as he’d come to love her.

  * * *

  “You look nice, sis.”

  Zoey spun around on the toes of a pair of strappy black satin stilettos, the skirt of the dress flaring out around her bare legs. She had gone online to search for restaurants in the Charleston area and came up with three choices. Sutton had also come up with three choices, with two matching hers, and they finally decided on an Italian restaurant six miles outside the capital city.

  “Thank you, Harper.”

  “Do you guys have a curfew?”

  She narrowed her eyes at her brother as he flopped down on a chair in the living room. “Very funny.”

  “I’ll try to wait up for you.”

  Zoey ruffled his hair. “Don’t even try it.”

  “Would you mind if I stayed over at Triple Jay’s? We’ve been talking about putting together a gaming club at the school.”

  Zoey saw an expression of expectation on Harper’s face. It was apparent his friendship with Jabari had survived the summer, and that meant he was maturing socially. He could get and keep friends. Whenever Jabari came over to shoot hoops, he’d asked if Harper could spend the night at his house, and so far she hadn’t given her consent. But she knew if Harper was going to have a sleepover with anyone, then it would be with the Johnsons. Jabari’s father’s edict of no smoking, drinking or having kids over when the adults weren’t there was strictly adhered to.

  “Okay.”

  The sound of the doorbell echoed throughout the house and Harper jumped up, racing to the door. “I’ll get it.”

  Zoey, reaching for a black silk shawl and evening bag, followed him. Sutton said he would pick her up at six. It would take them an hour to drive to Charleston, and he had made their reservation for seven thirty.

  “Yo, man!” Harper shouted. “You’re taking the Aston Martin!”

  Zoey bit her lip to keep from laughing when she saw an expression of shock freeze Sutton’s features. She had decided their first official date called for special attention to her appearance. She had an appointment with Bessie Daniels, the proprietress of Perfect Tresses salon, for her hair, hands and feet. The stylist had worked her magic by touching up the new growth in her hair and applying an avocado conditioner that left her hair soft and shiny. After sitting under the dryer for the better part of an hour for her roller sets to dry, she’d nearly fallen asleep. A mani-pedi was next before Bessie blew out the curls and pinned her shoulder-length hair up in an elaborate twist off the nape of her neck.

  Zoey hadn’t forgotten the makeup lesson Charmaine had taught her to accentuate her best features when she applied a smoky eye shadow, concealer and two coats of mascara and feathered her naturally arched eyebrows that were dark enough for her to forgo using a pencil. She’d tried several shades of lipstick before choosing an orangey-red that set off the orange undertones in her dark brown complexion.

  When she’d visited the boutique, Zoey hadn’t had to try on several garments once she spied a royal blue silk off-the-shoulder dress with an attached black slip. The dress was nipped and banded at the waist and the skirt flared out around her hips and ended at her knees. A pair of four-inch stilettos put her five-nine frame over the six-foot mark. It felt good not to crane her neck to look up at Sutton.

  Her gaze slowly moved from his neatly barbered hair and clean-shaven face down to his tailored royal blue suit, white shirt and platinum tie, and black slip-ons.

  * * *

  “Wow!” The single word slipped unbidden from Sutton as he stared at Zoey’s transformation. She was truly beautiful.

  Zoey pressed her mouth close to his ear. “You did say no flops or booty shorts,” she whispered.

  He cupped her elbow. “I’ve seen you in shorts and you’re a lot sexier in a dress.”

  Sutton hadn’t thought Zoey could improve on perfection, but she had. Even without makeup, her sk
in glowed with the appearance of good health, and her slender, curvy body never failed to send his libido into overdrive when he would inadvertently touch her breast or hip.

  They were going out to enjoy a leisurely meal in a restaurant touted for its intimate ambience, extensive wine list and delicious authentic Northern Italian cuisine. If they were friends with benefits, he would’ve reserved a hotel suite and ordered room service, but he was more than ready to let her take the lead in their relationship; it would be up to Zoey to make the first overture as to when she wanted him to make love to her.

  Sutton opened the door to the two-door, dark gray coupe and seated Zoey, and then rounded the sports car, got in and fastened his seat belt. He and Zoey shared a smile as he shifted into gear. The powerful car accelerated quickly, and he eased off the gas pedal. He didn’t want to get stopped for speeding. The car was capable of going from zero to sixty miles per hour in three point five seconds.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Zoey as she stared out the windshield.

  “Yes, but I can’t give you permission to let Harper drive this car. It’s much too powerful for an inexperienced driver.”

  “You’re right. If I take him out in it I’ll do the driving.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sutton didn’t tell Zoey that he would agree to anything she wanted within reason if only to keep her happy. He was beginning to love her just that much.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “How’s your chicken Milanese?”

  Zoey’s head popped up and she smiled at Sutton across the small round table in the restaurant reminiscent of an Italian grotto. The only illumination came from strategically placed sconces and flickering candles on each table. Diffused lighting, prerecorded soft jazz and the sexy man seated close enough for her to feel his warmth and inhale the sensual fragrance of his cologne had created a spell from which she did not want to escape.