The Name of the Game

by Nora Roberts

  “Sam doesn’t think I saw him snitch them.”

  “They were lovely.” Despite all her resolutions, Johanna felt herself soften. “I hope you didn’t mind.”

  “Plenty more where they came from. I figure flowers should be enjoyed, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. Mrs. Block—”

  “Mae. Just Mae, honey.”

  “Mae, if you could tell Sam I called.” Coward, her mind said all too clearly. Johanna closed herself off from it and continued. “And that—”

  “Well, you can tell him yourself, honey, ’cause he just this minute walked in. Hold on now.”

  Before Johanna could babble an excuse, she heard Mae yelling. “Sam, that lady you’ve been mooning about’s on the phone. And I’d like to know what you’re thinking of wearing a white shirt when you’re wrestling with horses. How you expect me to get out those stains is more than I can understand. Did you wipe your feet? I just washed that kitchen floor.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s an old shirt,” he added in a half apology Johanna recognized even over the wire.

  “Old or not, it’s a dust rag now. A boy your age oughta know better. Don’t keep your lady waiting all day. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  “Thanks. Hello, Johanna.”

  Mae hadn’t mentioned her name. The lady you’ve been mooning about. That was something Johanna would have to think about later. “I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of the day. You must be busy.”

  “Having my wrist slapped.” He pulled out a bandanna and wiped the line of sweat from his temple. “I’m glad you called. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Yes, well . . .” Where were all the neat excuses she’d thought up? “About tonight.”

  “Yes?”

  Very carefully she unwrapped the cord from around her fingers. “We’d left things a bit unstructured, and as it turns out, I have a late meeting. I can’t be sure what time I’ll wrap things up, so—”

  “So why don’t you drive out here when you’re finished?” He recognized a lie when he heard one. “You should know the way by now.”

  “Yes, but it might run late. I don’t want to mess up your evening.”

  “The only way you’d mess it up is not to come.”

  She hadn’t a clue as to how to respond to that. “I never actually agreed to come.” Her conscience insisted on reminding her she hadn’t stuck by a refusal, either. “Why don’t we make it some other time?”

  “Johanna,” he said, very patiently, “you don’t want me to camp on your doorstep, do you?”

  “I just think it would be better—”

  “Safer.”

  Yes. “Better,” she insisted.

  “Whatever. If you don’t show up by eight I’m coming after you. Take your choice.”

  Bristling wasn’t nearly as effective over the phone. “I don’t like ultimatums.”

  “That’s a pity. I’ll see you when you get here. Don’t work too hard.”

  Johanna scowled at the dial tone, then dropped the phone on the hook. She wouldn’t go. She would be damned if she did.

  Of course, she went.

  Only to prove that she wasn’t a coward, Johanna assured herself. In any case, avoiding a situation didn’t solve anything, it only postponed things. Loose ends were something she invariably tied up.

  It was true that she enjoyed his company, so there was no reason to be out of sorts. Except for the fact that she’d been maneuvered again. No, he hadn’t done the maneuvering, she corrected. She’d done that all by herself, thank you very much. If she hadn’t wanted to go, she would never have called him to say she wasn’t going to. Deep down she’d wanted to keep the engagement because she’d always had a need to face up to whatever could be faced.

  She could certainly face Sam Weaver.

  A simple dinner, she decided. Between friends. They could, cautiously, be called friends by this time. A little conversation never hurt, particularly between two people who were in the same business. Game shows or movies, it all came down to entertainment. She picked up speed a bit, and the plastic bags over this week’s dry cleaning snapped and rustled on their hangers behind her.

  At least this time she had her own transportation. She would leave when she was ready to leave. There was some security in that.

  When she passed through the gates leading to the ranch, she promised herself that she would enjoy the evening for what it was. A simple dinner with a friend. She stopped her car in front of his house and stepped out, refusing to glance in the visor mirror. She wouldn’t fuss with or freshen her makeup any more than she had fussed with her outfit. Her gray suit was stylish but certainly businesslike, as were the three hanging in the car. Her low-heeled pumps were comfortable, purchased as much for that as for fashion.

  She glanced at her watch and was pleased with the time. Seven-thirty. Not so early that it would appear that she’d been cowed, nor so late that it made her look spiteful.

  She looked as she had on that first day, Sam thought. Composed, coolheaded, subtly sexy. His reaction to her now was exactly the same as it had been then. Instant fascination. Stepping out on the porch, he smiled at her.

  “Hi.”

  “Hello.” She didn’t want to be unnerved, not again, not the way she seemed to be every time she saw him. She answered his smile, though cautiously, and started up the steps. His next move was so unexpected that she had no chance to block it.

  He cupped a hand around the base of her neck and kissed her, not passionately, not urgently, but with a casual intimacy that shot straight through her. Welcome home, it seemed to say, and left her speechless.

  “I love the way you wear a suit, Johanna.”

  “I didn’t have time to change.”

  “I’m glad.” He glanced beyond her at the sound of a truck. With a half smile, he shaded his eyes. “You forgot to blow your horn,” he told her.

  “Everything all right here, Sam?” In the cab of a pickup was a man of about fifty with shoulders like cinder blocks.

  “Everything’s fine.” Sam slipped an arm around Johanna’s waist.

  The man in the truck chuckled, then spun the wheel and made a U-turn. “I can see that. Night.”

  “That was Joe,” Sam explained as they watched the truck cruise down the hard-packed road. “He and Mae keep an eye on the place. And me.”

  “So I see.” It was entirely too easy, standing on the porch, his arm around her, as the sun lowered. Johanna didn’t deliberately step away. The move was automatic. “Your housekeeper told me she watches Trivia.”

  She also said you were mooning over me. Johanna kept the fact that she’d overheard that little piece of information to herself. It was ridiculous, of course. Men like Sam Weaver didn’t moon over anyone.

  “Religiously,” he murmured, studying her. She was nervous. He’d thought they’d passed that point, and he wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or frustrated to discover otherwise. “In fact, Mae considers my, ah . . . performance so far this week the height of my career.”

  The smile came quickly. Her fingers relaxed their grip on the railing. “Emmy material, I’m sure.”

  “Is that a smirk?”

  “I never smirk, and especially not about my show. I suppose I’ll have to risk inflating your ego, but we’ve already gotten a tremendous amount of mail. ‘Sam Weaver is the cutest thing on two legs,’” Johanna quoted, and was amused when he grimaced. “That was from a seventy-five-year-old woman in Tucson.”

  “Yeah.” He took her hand and drew her inside. “When you’ve finished smirking—”

  “I told you, I never smirk.”

  “Right, and when you’re finished we’ll see about dinner. I figured we’d barbecue, since I wasn’t sure when you’d wind up that meeting.”

  “Meeting?” The lie had slipped away from her. Remembering, Johanna did something else she couldn’t remember having done before. She blushed. Just a little, but enough. “Oh, well, it moved along faster than I’d expected.”
>
  “Lucky for both of us.” He could have pinned her on it, Sam mused, but decided to let her escape. If he understood Johanna as well as he believed he was coming to understand her, she was already berating herself for the excuse, and for botching it. “I’ve got some swordfish. Why don’t you pour yourself some wine and I’ll heat up the grill?”

  “All right.” The bottle was already open. Johanna filled the two glasses he’d set on the kitchen counter as he breezed through the back door.

  He’d known the meeting was nothing more than a weak excuse. She couldn’t remember ever having been quite so transparent. Johanna sighed, sipped, then sighed again. He was letting it go so that she wouldn’t be embarrassed. That only made it worse. The least she could do, she thought as she picked up his glass, was to be pleasant company for the rest of the evening.

  The pool looked cool and delightfully inviting. Swimming had been a daily habit when she’d lived in her father’s house. Now she couldn’t seem to find time for the health club she’d conscientiously joined. She skirted around the pool to where Sam stood by the stone barbecue pit with two fish steaks on a platter, but she did glance at the water rather wistfully.

  “You want to take a quick swim before dinner?” he asked.

  It was tempting. Johanna found herself tempted too often when around him. “No, thanks.”

  “There’s always after.” He set the steaks on the grill, where they sizzled. Taking his glass from her, he clinked it lightly against hers, then drank. “Go ahead and sit down. These won’t take long.”

  Instead, she wandered a short distance away, looking at his land, the tidy outbuildings, the isolation. He seemed so comfortable here, she thought, so much at home. He could be anybody, an ordinary person. But she remembered that she’d read about him just that morning.

  “There’s a very hot write-up in this week’s TV Guide about No Roses for Sarah.”

  “I saw it.” He saw, too, how the sun bounced off the water of the pool and onto her skin, making her seem like an illusion. The trim gray suit didn’t make him think of offices or board meetings, but of quiet evenings after the day was over.

  “Variety was equally enthusiastic. ‘Gripping, not to be missed,’ and so on.” She smiled a little as she turned to him again. “What was the adjective used to describe you . . .” She trailed off as if she couldn’t quite remember, though the exact quote had engraved itself on her brain. “‘Weaver executes a’— Was it ‘sterling performance’?”

  Sam flipped the steaks, and they hissed. Smoke rose up, hot and sultry. “‘Sizzling,’” he corrected, knowing when he was being strung along.

  “Yes, sizzling.” She paused to touch her tongue to her upper lip. “‘A sizzling performance as a down-on-his-luck drifter who seduces Sarah and the audience with equal panache.’ Panache,” she repeated. “That one rolls around on the tongue, doesn’t it?”

  “I didn’t realize you were such a smart aleck, Johanna.”

  She laughed and crossed over to him. “I’m also human. Nothing could drag me away from my set on Sunday night when the first part’s aired.”

  “And Monday?”

  “That’ll depend, won’t it?” She sipped her drink and sniffed appreciatively at the mesquite smoke. “On how sizzling you were on Sunday.”

  The grin was fast and crooked, as if he had no doubt where she would be at nine o’clock Monday night. “Keep an eye on these, will you? I’ll be right back.”

  She’d keep an eye on them, but she hoped the steaks didn’t do anything they weren’t supposed to do until he got back. Alone, she stretched her arms and worked the muscles in her back. The late meeting had been a lie, but the long day hadn’t. Wistfully she glanced at the pool again. It really was tempting.

  If she were just anyone—if he were just anyone—she could share this meal with him, laugh a little over something that had happened during the day. Afterward, while the wine was still cool and the air still hot, they could slide into the water and relax together. Just two people who enjoyed each other and a quiet evening.

  Later, when the moon came out, they might stay in the water, talking quietly, touching, easing gently into a more intimate form of relaxation. He would have music on again, and the candles on the table would burn down and drown in their own melted wax.

  When something brushed against her legs, she jolted, sloshing wine over her hand. The fantasy had come through a bit too clearly, too compellingly, and that wasn’t like her. Johanna turned away from the pool and the ideas it had had stirring inside her. With a hand to her heart, she looked down at a fat gray cat. He rubbed up against her calf again, sent her a long, shrewd look, then settled down to wash.

  “Where did you come from?” Johanna wondered as she bent to scratch his ears.

  “The barn,” Sam told her, coming up from behind her. “Silas is one of the barn cats, and I’d guess he got a whiff of the fish and came down to see if he could charm any out of us.”

  She didn’t look at Sam right away, concentrating on the cat instead. The daydream was still a bit too real. “I thought barn cats were fast and skinny.”

  Not when someone was always taking them down scraps, Sam thought ruefully as he set the bowl of pasta salad on the table and flipped the fish onto a platter. “Silas can be pretty charming,” he said, and pulled out a chair for Johanna.

  “Silas is pretty huge.”

  “You don’t like cats?”

  “No, actually, I do. I’ve even thought of getting one myself. Why Silas?”

  “Marner,” Sam explained easily as he served her. “You know how he hoarded gold. Well, this Silas hoards mice.”

  “Oh.”

  He laughed at her expression and topped off her wine. “You wanted to know. I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, thinking she deserved a change of subject, “when you go on nighttime.”

  “Two weeks.” Johanna told herself she wasn’t nervous, not nervous at all. “We tape in two weeks, actually, and go on in four.”

  “Adding more crew?”

  “Some. For the most part it just means that we’ll be taping two days a week instead of one. Interested in making another appearance?”

  “I’m going to be a bit tied up for a while.”

  “The new movie.” She relaxed a few more degrees. This was how her practical mind had imagined the evening. Shoptalk, nothing more. “When do you start?”

  “Any day, theoretically. Realistically, in a week or two. After some preproduction and studio work here, we’ll head east. They figure about three weeks on location in Maryland, in and around Baltimore.”

  “You must be anxious to begin.”

  “I always get lazy between pictures. Nothing like a few 6:00 a.m. calls to get you back in gear. How’s your fish?”

  “It’s wonderful.” And once again, she’d all but cleared her plate without realizing it. “I bought a grill a few months ago, but I burned everything I put on it.”

  “A low flame,” he said, and something in his voice made her skin tingle. “A careful eye.” He took her hand, linking their fingers. “And patience.”

  “I—” He brought her hand to his lips, watching her over it as he kissed her fingers. “I’ll have to give it another try.”

  “Your skin always smells as though you’ve walked through the rain. Even when you’re not here I can’t help thinking about that.”

  “We should—” Stop pretending, she thought. Acquiesce. Take what we want. “Go for a walk,” she managed. “I’d like to see your pond again.”

  “All right.” Patience, Sam reminded himself. But the flame wasn’t as low as it had been. “Hold on a minute.” He tossed a few scraps onto the grass before gathering up the dishes. She knew she should have offered her help, but she wanted, needed—badly needed—a moment alone.

  She watched the cat saunter over to the fish with an arrogance that told her he’d been certain all along he’d get what he’d come for. Sam walked like that, Johanna thought, and suddenly cold, she rub
bed her hands over her arms.

  She wasn’t afraid of him. She reminded herself of that to boost her confidence. But it was no less than the truth. She wasn’t afraid of Sam: fear of herself, however, was another matter.

  She was here because she wanted to be here. Wasn’t it time to face that one fact? She’d already admitted that she hadn’t come because he’d maneuvered her. She’d maneuvered herself, or that part of herself that was still determined to stand apart.

  There was another part of herself, a part that was slowly taking charge, that knew exactly what she wanted. Who she wanted.