“It’s Cass,” Tyler called back to her, his voice muffled by her closed bedroom door. “I’ll just see what he wants.”
Shit, shit, shit, she thought.
A moment later there was a knock on the door. “He wants to talk to you,” Tyler said. “Just crack the door and I’ll pass it through.”
“No,” she said, backing away so her voice was coming from the bathroom doorway. “I’m in the bathroom. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Tell him that. Tomorrow.” She was probably talking too fast, but Tyler wouldn’t notice. He was a fast talker anyway.
“Oookay,” he said, and Marian would have kicked the wall if she had her shoes on. He’d definitely noticed. She heard his muted voice fade away as he told Cass something.
She yanked on some wedge sandals and raced to the bedroom door. She stood there listening before she opened it, trying to tell if Tyler was still on the phone.
“I hung up,” he said through the door. She jumped because his voice sounded so close. Cautiously she opened the door to see him standing there giving her an odd look. She gave him a sheepish smile. “Not asking,” he said. “Let’s go.”
—
Beau’s head was messed up. He wanted Cass. And he wanted Marian. What did that mean? And now Marian was at a club with the team and Cass was pacing the house like a caged tiger. Beau was just as wound up, but hiding it better. He was pretending to watch the NHL classic from January on ESPN Classic. Was Marian giving them the brush-off? Was she just interested in doing the players, and she didn’t care which ones? Even the thought felt wrong. He hadn’t gotten that vibe from her at all. She was usually nervous when she was around too many of them at once.
“What the hell is going on with her?” Cass shouted, stopping directly in front of the large screen. “She has sex with us and then she refuses to speak to me, and blows us off for a club with the team?” He ran his hands through his hair in a movement Beau was very familiar with, and began pacing again.
“Technically, we didn’t have sex,” Beau told him, though it had sure felt like it.
“We all came. We got her off, she got us off. It was sex,” Cass said flatly.
“Maybe it was just sex,” Beau said, trying out his theory. Still felt wrong.
“No fucking way,” Cass said loudly. “Marian Treadwell is not a woman who just has sex on the spur of the moment. It meant something. You were there. You know it did.”
He was there, all right. “Yeah,” he agreed. “It meant something. I’m just not sure what. I don’t know what is going on with her.” He sighed and turned off the TV. “She told me when I came in that I was the only sane thing in her world. I don’t know what that means. But she also said she has feelings for you, Cass. It didn’t mean anything that she came on to me first.”
Cass flapped his hand at Beau as he continued to pace. “I know that. I wasn’t upset. I get that you’re less threatening.”
“What does that mean?” Beau asked, getting a little pissed. “She was not using me as a fucking substitute for you, you know. She told me that.”
Cass stopped and frowned at him. “You two did a hell of a lot of talking before I arrived. And I wasn’t suggesting that. I was simply saying that women find you more approachable and easier to talk to. And that’s my fault. I’m impatient; I have a short fuse; I’m not touchy-feely. I know all that. I’ve learned to live with it.”
“I am not touchy-feely,” Beau said indignantly. “Who said I was touchy-feely? Was it Tyler? I’ll kick his ass.”
“I said it. You want to kick my ass?” Cass said with a grin. “Give it a shot.”
Kicking was not what Beau wanted to do to Cass’s ass. When the thought slammed into him from left field, Beau nearly toppled off the couch as he scrambled to get up. They hadn’t talked at all about what had happened between them in Marian’s office. That was something new with them. You didn’t just casually rub dicks with your best friend. But Beau wasn’t ready to bring it up. He figured it was up to Cass to start that conversation, since it had been his idea. When he jumped up from the couch, Cass backed away, looking surprised.
“Um, no, not gonna kick your ass,” Beau told him. “Just, maybe we should go to the club and find out what’s going on.”
“An hour ago you said we shouldn’t,” Cass argued, hands on hips. “You said she needed space.” He put air quotes around the last word, as if it weren’t a real word or something. He was so lame, he cracked Beau up sometimes.
“Well, I’ve been sitting here thinking, and now I think we should,” he said, walking out of the room to go change out of his workout clothes. Cass followed on his heels.
“Are you sure?” Cass asked. His tone of voice made Beau stop and turn.
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused. “I just said so.”
Cass looked away and got that serious look on his face, as he worried his bottom lip. The look usually meant he was going say something he didn’t want to, and chances were it was going to piss Beau off.
“The team will be there, and there’s going to be a lot of drinking, and who knows what else,” Cass said. He looked right at Beau then. “Can you handle that? We haven’t really put ourselves in that kind of situation for a few years.”
Beau was taken aback. “I hadn’t even thought about it,” he admitted. He considered what Cass said. He wasn’t the same fool who did shit without thinking, who ran for trouble instead of away from it. He was smarter now. And just that, the fact that he stopped and really thought about what Cass was asking, gave him the answer. “Yeah, I can handle it. I can’t hide from it for the rest of my life.”
“Then let’s go and see what the hell is wrong with our woman,” Cass told him, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Don’t go all caveman on her,” Beau begged.
“I am a caveman,” Cass said. “She better learn to live with it now.”
—
Marian sat at a back table in the bar with Tyler and Tom. She giggled as she thought about their names. “Can’t say that fast five times in a row,” she said out loud.
Jo Jo Jones stood beside the table and peered down at her. “Man, she is drunk.”
“More karaoke!” she shouted at the empty stage.
“Not you, sweetheart,” Tyler said, a hand on her arm. He wasn’t holding her back so much as anchoring her to her chair. She’d already tumbled out once. Tequila was a wonderful thing.
“Tom,” she said with a sexy little pout. Tom just gave her a raised eyebrow and sipped his beer. She turned to Jo Jo. “Jo Jo,” she said.
He backed away from the table with his hands in the air. “No, ma’am. Don’t come crying to me. Quarterback called it.”
Tom pushed back his chair. “I’ll go again. I love karaoke.” The last was said with a big, white-toothed grin. He looked like a toothpaste ad. Marian giggled again, then she slapped her hand over her mouth. She did not giggle. Assistant coaches did not giggle.
“Where are Cass and Beau?” Sam Franklin asked from beside the table with a frown in her direction. She didn’t really know the linebacker well. He was a vet, had gone straight into the army after playing college ball, just after 9/11. He’d been drafted by the Cowboys, way back when. He’d also been injured in the line of duty. Rather than pay him off when he got out of rehab, they’d traded him to the Rebels for future prospects. Shannon needed to fill the lineup and the salary cap was low—they blew the budget on Danny—so he needed guys who would take a garbage deal just to play. Sam was one of them. He was fighting for a place on the team during mini-camp, and so far she was impressed with his drive and work ethic. She thought he treated mini-camp like a military mission he was determined to win. But he tended to be dark and brooding and solitary. She’d been surprised to see him here tonight. But the big Samoan nose tackle, King Ulupoka, had taken Sam under his wing and was dragging him around these days.
His question was met with dead silence around the table, so Marian answered him. “They are not here.” She nodded. �
��Nope. Wouldn’t let them come.” She giggled. “Well, I did. But not here.” She giggled again. “They make me do stupid things.”
“And getting shit-faced on tequila at a karaoke bar with the team is smart?” Jo Jo asked sarcastically.
She pointed at him. “Jo Jo, shut up.” She’d momentarily forgotten that something like twenty of the players were here. He mimed locking his lips closed and throwing the key over his shoulder.
“Going to sing now,” Tom said. “I like ‘Young Volcanoes.’ Who else likes that one?”
“Me,” Marian said. “I like it.” She had no idea what it was.
“I ain’t never even heard of it,” Jo Jo said. “That sounds like white-boy music.”
Marian laughed so hard she nearly fell out of her chair again. Tyler straightened her up.
Tom was really good. This was his third song. He didn’t have a great voice, but his enthusiasm made up for it. The ladies loved it. They screamed and shouted for him, and at one point he stood on a table and had the whole bar singing with him. Marian wanted to enjoy it, but she just sat there sad-faced, and sighing.
“I can call them,” Tyler offered quietly, leaning on the table toward her.
She shook her head. “No. Not a good idea.”
“Why?” he asked, looking genuinely confused.
“Me,” she said, pointing to her chest, “coach. Them”—she pointed out toward the dance floor and waved her finger around—“players. Get it?”
“So you think there should be no fraternizing between coaching staff and players?” he asked.
It took her a moment to focus on the big words. She nodded. “Right.”
“But you do know that sitting around getting drunk with us is fraternizing, right?” Tyler asked. She glared at his flawed logic.
“Not the kind of fraternizing I was doing with Cass and Beau this afternoon in my office,” she told him. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth again in horror at what she’d confessed.
Tyler copied Jo Jo, miming locking his lips and throwing away the key. She sighed and flipped her tequila glass over so it couldn’t be refilled.
“I just need a little time,” she whispered. “It’s been…it’s hard for me, this relationship stuff. The sex stuff.”
It was Tyler’s turn to sigh. “Does this have anything to do with why you won’t come into the locker room? Why I scared you so badly the other day?”
Marian shook her head frantically. How had Tyler figured it out? She knew he was smart, very smart, like most quarterbacks. You didn’t get that position unless you could read people and situations with a glance. Tyler had had more than one glance. But she’d deny it to her dying day.
“Okay, okay,” Tyler said, rubbing her back. “I’m not asking again.”
Tom’s song had ended and the bar had barely settled down when there was a commotion from the dance floor. Marian looked over and right into Cass’s heated stare. When she glanced beside him, Beau smiled and winked at her.
Chapter 13
“This place is packed,” Cass shouted over his shoulder to Beau. They’d texted Tyler before coming to make sure they were still at this bar. It was a new place for the team to gather and word had gotten out. Somehow he smelled Tom Kelly all over it. The kid was goofy enough to love this shit. The owner must be a Rebels fan by now.
The current song and singer finished and the crowd cheered and yelled. Things settled a bit as some techno-pop came on and the dancing kicked in. Cass saw her then. Marian was at a back table sitting with Tyler. They were talking, their heads close together and as he watched Tyler rubbed her back. Cass took a deep breath and tried not to jump to conclusions. There were a bunch of other players around them. Nothing intimate going on. Now that his target was in sight, he headed right for her, straight across the dance floor.
“Hey, Cass!” He turned to see Tom Kelly jump off the stage and wade through the dancers toward him. “Come on,” he shouted. “Karaoke!” He shoved a microphone at Cass and Cass automatically took the handoff. Then he shook his head, but it was too late. The crowd had heard and they started chanting his name. Tom was grinning like an idiot, clearly not realizing that he was poking a bull.
“I don’t sing,” he shouted over the music.
“No one here does, man,” some guy shouted back, and a bunch of people laughed. “Go on,” he told Cass, motioning him toward the stage. “Don’t be chicken.”
Cass turned to Beau, who backed away slowly, his hands in the air, preventing the microphone pass. “Go on,” he told Cass with a grin. “Sing something. The boys are watching.”
That made Cass pause. He looked around and saw that Beau was right. The whole team was watching him. The way camp had been going, this was the first time he’d had everyone’s attention. The team was not jelling. Cass had blamed Danny Smith’s no-show for it, but the truth was that he’d been so focused on Smith he hadn’t tried to connect with anyone else. Maybe this was the time to do it. Maybe singing some stupid-ass song and making a fool of himself was the way to bring these boys together. Marian was smiling at him challengingly. She didn’t think he’d do it.
“All right,” he said, and Beau’s eyes grew wide right before he started laughing.
“You? Are going to sing?” he asked. “This I’ve got to see.”
“You can stand in the front row,” Cass told him. He blew into the microphone. “Is this thing on?” His voice came through the speakers on the last word and he jumped as people laughed. “How does this work?” he asked into the microphone. People were pushing him toward the stage, shouting out directions, but it was Tom who jumped up there with him and showed him how the machine worked.
“Pick a song,” he told him, running his finger down a long list.
“That one,” Cass said, jabbing his finger at the list. It was the first one he recognized. They didn’t have enough country music on that list.
“All right,” Tom said with a grin. “That’s a good one.”
By now, most of the players had pushed their way up to the front of the crowd and were cheering him on. He grinned down at them as the first guitar riff and piano notes of “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon came on. Cass knew this song like the back of his hand. He’d listened to it a million times, even learned to play it on the guitar when he was a kid. Before he’d even gotten through the first verse, Beau climbed up onstage with him, and the two of them howled out the chorus. That seemed to be some kind of sign, as the rest of the team howled from the floor and then climbed up on the stage.
Somehow all the guys ended up in a line behind him, doing a stupid, simple little dance move that Tom taught them. The kid could move. Cass cracked up at King rocking out up there, and Beau took up the second verse of the song. By the next chorus, they were howling like mad in the bar. Cass was laughing so hard he could barely sing. Tyler jumped up and began to play air guitar on the solo, and girls screamed like he was playing the real thing.
Jo Jo leaned into the mic and sang the line “I’d like to meet his tailor” while he ran his fingers down the lapel of his obviously expensive jacket. The man did love to dress well. After that, the players took turns jumping in front of the mic for a line or two of the song.
Cass could see Marian in the back, laughing so hard she was wiping her eyes. Sam Franklin sat with her. Cass wasn’t surprised the vet hadn’t joined them, but it was good to see him smiling with Marian, and laughing at them all.
The end of the song came up, and when Warren sang about the werewolves’ perfect hair, almost everyone up onstage ran his hand along the side of his head, like they were all checking their hair. Cass had been doing that for years whenever he heard that line, and he’d seen Beau do it, too. He guessed everyone did. It was classic when they all did it at the same time. They howled at the end of the song like crazy fools, and the bar howled with them, and then the crowd started chanting “Rebels,” and for the first time, Cass felt like he was part of something, something that just needed a little polish
to really shine.
They jumped down off the stage and half the guys joined the crowd, but Cass and Beau had one destination, which they approached with single-minded determination. Tyler waved them in front of him with a laugh, and followed behind as they approached Marian.
“That…” She paused and shook her head, laughing. “I have no words. It was perfect.”
Cass grinned back. This was not a woman on the run. “I sang it from the heart,” he told her, trying to be serious. “All for you, sugar.”
Sam put his hand over his face and shook his head as Marian laughed again. “That is so sweet,” she said breathlessly. “A song about murderous, well-dressed werewolves. Definitely a first for me.”
“He’s a romantic at heart,” Beau said, sliding into the empty chair next to Marian. Cass gave Sam a pointed look and the linebacker slid out of the seat on her other side.
“Just keeping it warm for you,” he told Cass. “I’m, uh, gonna go over there.” He pointed in the general direction of the wall, about five feet away.
Cass swung his hand out and Sam clapped his to it in a rough shake. “Good idea,” Cass told him good-naturedly, and gave him a shove after they let go of the handshake. He threw himself into the vacated chair. “So you liked my serenade?” he asked Marian.
“Yep,” she said. “Take me, I’m yours.” She got up abruptly and awkwardly turned and stood straddling his lap. Cass was so surprised he nearly tipped his chair over. His heart was pounding and he wasn’t sure if it was leftover adrenaline from the song, Marian’s words, or the way she was straddling him. She chose that moment to plop down in his lap and he caught her around the waist. She turned and frowned at Beau. “Too far away,” she told him. “Scoot over.” She imperiously pointed to the chair she’d recently been sitting in. With a grin, Beau slid from one seat to the next. Marian smiled. “Good boy.” Then, with one hand on Cass’s shoulder while she sat on his lap, she reached out and pulled Beau over for a kiss.
Broken Play Page 9
