Troy Barrington was probably waiting for her outside already, so they could go have that drink. But after she ditched her white lab coat and threw it into the machine, too, she grabbed her tote bag and ran for the bathroom. Peggy splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth and fixed her hair.
She cast a last dissatisfied look into the mirror, pinched her stupid pug nose in a futile attempt to make it narrower—why had he kissed it?—and slung the tote over her shoulder. She took a deep breath and marched out of the bathroom, hoping Shirlie would be gone.
She was, but Marly pounced on her before she could get out the door. “What’s going on, Peggo? Troy Barrington left two hours ago, but he’s now waiting for you outside.”
Peggy became fascinated with the array of nail polishes on the wall behind Marly. “I’m, uh, going to have a drink with him.”
Her coworker stared at her. “What happened to inner balance and a year alone and Peggy Power?”
“It’s just a drink.”
“Uh-huh.” Marly smirked. “Then bottoms up, hon! But I want to hear all about it tomorrow.”
“Just do me a favor, will you? Don’t tell Shirlie.”
“Shirl has a nose like a bloodhound. She’ll sniff it out within seconds.”
“Well, try to keep it from her as long as possible, okay? I think she has a crush on Troy.”
Marly nodded.
“And it’s just a drink.”
“Right.”
“It’s not even dinner.”
“I hear you.”
“I coach his nieces, so we’ll probably just talk about them and how I can help improve their game.”
“Peggy, just shut up already and go meet the guy? He’s right outside the door.”
And he was. With her heart sitting on her tonsils, Peg opened it, walked out tentatively and said, “Hi.”
He seemed amused. “Hi.” Then he reached out and took her hand. “Do you want to go to a bar?”
“We could. Or we could just go to my place or yours and get this out of our systems.”
7
TROY’S JAW DROPPED OPEN. This woman was nothing if not direct. “Get it out of our systems?”
“You know,” Peggy said, “this lust thing. We both want to act on it. So we should just get it out of the way and move on, don’t you agree?”
Troy stared at her. “No, I don’t agree. I’d like to get to know you.” The words surprised him as much as they seemed to surprise her.
She stared back at him, seeming perplexed, while he felt the same way. This obviously wasn’t the answer she’d expected—and quite frankly it wasn’t the answer he normally would have given. Wasn’t no-strings-attached sex every guy’s fantasy?
“But it’s easier this way,” she argued. “You don’t have to struggle with the first, second, third and fourth down. You just score.”
Troy said, “Where’s the fun in that? It’s like the opposite team handing you the ball and inviting you over the goal line. There’s no game. That sucks.”
“You didn’t seem to object to scoring a couple of hours ago.”
“I certainly did not, but that was a surprise outcome. I didn’t expect that you’d—”
“Be that easy?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Peggy. I don’t think you were easy at all. I sensed there was a real struggle going on inside you. It made me want you even more.”
“Oh, but now that I say I’m ready to jump you, you lose interest. See, it’s all a game. A mind game.”
“I’m not here to play a mind game, and who said I’ve lost interest? You’re being extremely difficult. In fact, most guys would take off at this point.”
“No, they wouldn’t.” Peggy stuck out her chin. “Most guys would take me up on the invitation to my apartment.”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, you have a point,” he conceded. “But consider the possibility that I might see more in you than a one-night stand, okay?”
Her eyes flashed provocatively. “What if I don’t see the same potential in you?”
Troy stopped and pulled her to him so that their bodies touched. He felt her heartbeat accelerate and smiled. “Then I’ll just have to change your mind, won’t I?” He angled his head toward hers and noted that she raised her mouth for his kiss. Instead of delivering on her expectations, he left her wanting and walked in silence to his car, where he opened the door and turned to hand her in.
She’d stopped, and now she stared from the car to him. She put a hand over her mouth. “You’re the stalker!” She backed away.
Oh, hell. Not this.
“I recognize the car now. I couldn’t figure out why you looked familiar….”
“I’m not a stalker. I was sitting in the parking lot because I’d just come out of Benito’s,” he lied. “And I got a call on my cell phone. Then I saw you notice me, and I was afraid you’d think just what you thought. So I ducked down.”
“Why am I not believing this?”
“Because you have a suspicious nature?” He stared her straight in the eye. “Look, if I were some kind of perverted creep, don’t you think I’d have been more aggressive with you before?”
She chewed her lip. “Well, I did make it pretty easy for you.”
Troy sighed. “Fine. I’m a weirdo and a stalker. I have piano wire, a shovel and a bag of cement in the trunk.” He popped it for her, and she could see that there was nothing there.
“Why did you leave when I told you I’d called the cops?”
“Because I really didn’t want to get into a conversation with them, or be written up for something I wasn’t doing!”
“Oh.”
“Would you like to have that drink now?” He patted the door. “The salon has my name and number, remember.”
She clearly felt foolish now, but still she struggled for the upper hand, like the scrapper she was. “You don’t have to do that,” she told him, finally getting in. “Open doors and put on the gentleman show for me.”
It’s just a stalker thing, honey. She didn’t know it yet, but she was going to lose. “I want to do it. And it’s not a show.” Troy shut the door and walked around the front of the Lotus.
He opened the driver’s-side door and slid in next to her. Peggy’s hair smelled sweet, like jasmine and honey—in marked contrast to her sharp, cynical words. It was yet another contradiction about her that intrigued him.
“Okay, so now that we’ve established that I’m not a stalker,” he said, “why are you trying to sabotage this thing between us before it even gets off the ground?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to cut through the dating bullshit, you know? I’m so sick of it.”
He shook his head at her. “The ‘dating bullshit,’ as you call it, can be fertilizer. Something extraordinary might bloom from spreading it around.”
She laughed. “You have a refreshing perspective on all this, don’t you, Troy?”
“Your own perspective is certainly unique—though I won’t call it refreshing. I call it downright cynical.”
“C’mon, I’m just brave enough to verbalize what we’re all thinking. How many times have you sat opposite a woman and thought, Christ. I already know I can’t stand her but I have to sit through two more hours of this and then pay for her dinner and drive her ass home.”
Troy couldn’t help but laugh.
Peggy continued in a parody of a man’s voice, “And I probably won’t even get a good-night kiss for my trouble, much less get laid.”
This went so far as to get a pig snort out of him while he tried to catch his breath. Finally he said, “You are not a nice woman.”
“I agree. But am I accurate?”
“Maybe.”
“So why don’t we have that drink at either your place or mine and not play the games?”
“All right, all right. We’ll go to yours. Mine is a wreck, since I’m in the middle of remodeling.”
“Great. Take a left up here, and then an immediate right….
By the way, I’m not a slut. It’s just that you’re…different.”
He hooted. “If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that line from a woman.”
Peggy seemed nonplussed.
“What, no caustic comment? As long as we’re being up-front and not playing games, darlin’, I’m fully aware that it was my wallet and my job that were ‘different,’ not me.” But those days are gone, Troy thought gloomily. Now I’m chopped liver.
“I’m not impressed by money,” she said stiffly. “And I’m not impressed by your former football stardom, either. I made my college team and started, too.”
Silence fell in the car.
“You what?” Troy asked. “Was it a women’s college?”
“No,” she said icily, “it was not. It was Bryce University.”
After a stunned moment he said slowly, “I remember reading about it. How a girl fought her way onto the team, a placekicker. That was you?”
“That was me.”
He looked at her with new respect. “I’ll be damned. What was it like for you? To be the only woman in that sea of testosterone?”
She avoided his eyes. “Let’s just say that I had my highest highs and my lowest lows during the season I played.”
“Why didn’t you go back?” Troy pulled the Lotus into the parking lot behind an apartment building. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that question. The guys would have made it miserable for her, and even male placekickers weren’t viewed with respect. They weren’t considered “real” players, didn’t go through the same drills or practice plays.
She avoided the question by getting out of the car before he’d cut the engine, not waiting for him to open her door. Her hair fell down her back like a coppery waterfall, ending just above a neat little waist and a spectacular ass. Those legs were solid with muscle, only the inner thighs soft and welcoming.
Troy liked the way the moonlight softened her, bathed her in a gentle glow. He tried to divert himself from the thought that she was bare to the air under her black cotton miniskirt. He’d ripped the panties off her, after all. She couldn’t possibly have salvaged them.
Peggy tossed him an impatient glance over her shoulder, unaware that despite his words about getting to know her he’d have loved nothing better than to bend her over the hood of the Lotus, soft and willing and even begging for the release he could bring her.
He groaned inwardly as he imagined her spread-eagled on the car, lush breasts flattened against the warm metal, hair tumbled over her naked back and that sweet ass, among other things, bare to his gaze. He’d wanted to do all kinds of dirty things with her, ever since he’d seen her from the parking lot that first night.
Obviously, something about her just brought out the pervert, if not the stalker, in him. He’d better get a handle on his fantasies.
He caught up with her in three long strides and reminded himself that he couldn’t get involved with this girl. What was he thinking? Hadn’t he been delivered a four-inch stack of city regulations? Didn’t he, right at this very moment, have notes in his pocket on possible violations After Hours had committed?
He felt sleazy. Yeah, you’re some gentleman, big guy. No doubt! You seduce her on her own massage table while you’re planning to kick her off the premises. Nice.
But he fixated on her miniskirt again. He wanted to chew it off like a goat.
PEGGY UNLOCKED her apartment door with difficulty, since Troy’s mouth was doing incredibly sexy things to the back of her neck and her ears, while his hands were unashamedly roaming over her breasts, peeling back her bra to cup them and teasing her nipples exquisitely.
In fact, he flattened her body against the door, pinning it with his while his cock nudged the cleft of her buttocks through the thin skirt she wore. He was seeking entry much as she sought the lock with her key.
“The neighbors,” she whispered, feeling his fingers lift her hem. She managed to turn the key, and they almost fell through the door to the beige carpet inside.
Troy kicked the door closed, turned her in his arms and tossed her handbag aside. He lifted her and set her on the seat of the fat, overstuffed sofa she’d bought secondhand. Then he dropped to his knees in front of her and slowly pushed her skirt up her thighs.
He bent his head and kissed each of her knees while she fell back against the pillows, her breathing fast and shallow. He spread her legs and gently, expertly touched his tongue to her, his breath warm and intimate and whispering over her heated flesh.
The sensation was indescribable, and she lost herself to it, their surroundings dropping away until nothing existed except for his mouth and her pleasure.
He slicked over her folds, separated them, licked into her until a thousand nerve endings screamed and begged for more. Any shyness she may have felt was lost to ecstasy and became unimportant.
Troy grabbed her bottom and tugged her forward as she squirmed with the intensity of it, unintelligible sounds finding their way out of her mouth. She was completely at his mercy and she knew it—didn’t like it as an abstract concept, but adored it as a woman.
He left her outer folds to circle inward, closer and closer to her clitoris. And when he found it and sucked hard, she lost control, a cry ripping from her throat as she exploded in his mouth.
She tried to get away from the exquisite torture then, but he gripped her firmly and kept teasing the nub with his tongue until she screamed again and utterly disintegrated into nothing but waves of delicious pleasure—pleasure so intense that it bordered on pain.
“Stop,” she begged him, fisting her hands in his hair. “You have to stop.”
Disbelief filled her as he left his mouth where it was, waiting for her to quiet before he initiated her desire yet again, with slow, patient, featherlike touches at the very edges of her sex. He bit and sucked at the innermost parts of her thighs, the curve of her cheeks. He blew on her clitoris, cooling it in the most erotic way possible. He didn’t touch it, seeming to understand that would be too much.
He began her journey again by focusing on her outer labia, tickling and teasing until the rest of her developed a sensual envy. Exhausted, she arched her back and met him anyway, melted under his touch as he brought her to the peak of climax yet one more time.
Impossible, she realized, but she’d orgasmed three times without him inside her, and they were both still wearing their clothes. She wanted to feel the fullness of his cock, stretching her to capacity and stroking her where his tongue simply couldn’t reach.
She stripped off his shirt—he didn’t exactly protest—and unbuckled his belt. She unbuttoned his fly and shoved his jeans down his hips, freeing his engorged penis. As she took it into her hands he groaned, encouraging her to move her palms against the smooth skin and slide them up and down.
Somehow she wriggled out of her own clothes while he found a condom and rolled it on. She straddled him, rubbing herself against his shaft until he grabbed her hips, forcing them down while he thrust roughly upward. She gasped as he entered her, throwing back her head and experiencing slick, dark, powerful pleasure.
He set a fast tempo that excited her all over again, driving into her with a fierce possessiveness that was purely masculine, primal and urgent.
Troy pulled her shoulders down as he thrust, bringing her breasts within range of his mouth. His bristle scraped the aureoles of her left nipple, painful but erotic. Then it was in his mouth and he was sucking, pulling electricity through her hot spots again and filling her veins with a roar of heat.
He mastered the other breast and then rolled her under him, her wrists pinned over her head, while he thrust again and again. His face flushed dark and his eyes glazed with pleasure, he stole her lips again in a deep, intimate kiss. His tongue in her mouth echoed his cock between her legs, until finally he climaxed in a single mighty stroke and spilled himself inside her, moaning her name into her hair.
She ground herself against the root of him and his aftershocks set her off again, too,
melting her in a rush of warm, sweet honey. She had a sinking feeling, as she floated back to the surface of reality, that Troy Barrington had ruined her for any other man.
8
THE NEXT DAY Troy stood in the baking afternoon heat and listened to Joe Vargas give him the rundown on Pop Warner football. The man’s wedding ring gleamed in the sun, accentuating his wholesomeness and making Troy feel like even more of a drinkin’, fornicatin’ bottom-feeder.
He had been up all night having sex with a woman he needed to betray for his own ends. He was a complete shit-heel. What business did he have trying to be a role model for a group of kids?
Worse, he wanted to see Peggy again in the worst way. And he couldn’t do that. He really, really couldn’t.
“So the secret is,” declared Joe, “you’ve got to find the fine line between tough and supportive. You can’t push them too hard—they’re only eleven years old. It’s a lot more important at this stage that they learn good sportsmanship than that they win the game.”
Troy nodded as if he were absorbing pearls of wisdom. Surely this was just common sense?
The kids on the field were scrimmaging in an enervated formation, wilting in an early burst of summer.
The air was hot, stagnant vapor without a single breeze. It hung over them like a vast, wet cloth, smothering anyone who tried to suck oxygen from it.
Vargas had gone into the politics of the team, specifically what the parents were like and how that affected their children’s attitudes and behavior. Troy tried to focus and retain what he said.
“Bobby Pitkin, now, his dad’s a real problem. Wants his kid to be the star no matter what, even if another kid gets hurt. You gotta watch him and step carefully. On the other hand, Aaron Tate’s parents don’t want him playing football at all—it’s his grandpa who signed him up. The father is a musician and worries about Aaron’s hands….”
By the time the boys were through with their warm-up, Troy had the goods on everyone. He and Vargas took them through some simple running plays together, and then had them play a nine-on-nine game: shirts against skins.
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