Bounty Hunter

by Donna Kauffman

  He pushed her hands away as she rubbed the already soaked napkins to shreds. People around them were laughing and cheering, half for the batter jogging around the bases and half for the entertainment she had just provided. Her three female companions were roaring with laughter. Even her son was giggling.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said to the man. Her face was burning now. “I feel awful. I’ll go with you to the rest room, where I can sponge the soda off.”

  “You don’t put water on an Italian silk suit, you stupid idiot!” the younger man yelped, waving his hands. “I can’t believe you ignoramuses here. They ought to charge more for seats so we get a better class of people at the games.”

  “Shut up!” Anthony burst out, stepping in front of Elaine as if to protect her. “That’s my mother and it was an accident!”

  Tears sprang to Elaine’s eyes at her son’s action. She forced them away, knowing he’d be humiliated if she started to cry because she was proud of him.

  “The boy’s right, it was an accident,” the older man said. To Anthony he added, “I’m sorry for what Ed said. Don’t worry about what happened.”

  Ed looked about ready to swallow his teeth, every pearly one of them. “But, Graham …” He stopped and turned to Elaine, a look of disgust on his face. “I’m sorry.”

  Elaine said nothing to him, wishing she could crawl into a hole, Anthony, too, had been made to look childlike with the adult interference.

  “Thanks, Anthony.” She squeezed his shoulders gratefully. Her son was her height now, a fact that brought itself home to her in a poignant way even in this weird situation.

  An usher showed up at the commotion, and the man Graham explained that some soda had been spilled, no problem. The usher left and people began to sit down again.

  “Please,” she said to the man before he turned away. “At least let me have your suit dry-cleaned for you.”

  “No. That’s all right.” He sat down, his back to her.

  She couldn’t blame him. Cleo sniffed, while Jean made a face. Mary’s rosary clacked. Elaine took a deep breath and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, staring at her.

  “Really, I want to make amends,” she said. “Let me take care of this for you.”

  He shook his head and turned back.

  She reached into her hip pack and took out a twenty. She tapped the man on the shoulder again. He whipped around. She waved the money in his face. “Here. This should cover it.”

  The younger man snorted, clearly indicating that what she offered was far short of the price the cleaning would cost. Elaine wondered just how much one paid for an Italian silk suit to be cleaned. Did the silk from Italy have some special property that defied normal dry-cleaning methods?

  “Thanks for the offer,” Graham said, “but I can take care of my own dry cleaning.”

  His voice wasn’t unpleasant, she mused. In fact, it sent a slight chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the April night air.

  “No. I insist.”

  “Lady, look, it’s not necessary.”

  “It is.” But short of stuffing the money into his pocket—and that thought made her fingers tremble—she didn’t know what else to do. Then an idea occurred to her. She dug into her hip pack again, while saying, “I have a friend who owns a dry cleaners in Malvern. She can handle your suit, I’m sure. She does a lot of executives out that way. Here’s her address.” She finally dug out one of the business cards she carried for her friend’s establishment. Taking the pen Jean was using to keep score and ignoring her squawks at being robbed, Elaine scribbled on the back of the card before holding it out to him. “Nancy owes me a favor, so she’ll be glad to do your suit for you. I’ll call her tomorrow and let her know. The address and phone number are on the card, and I put my address and phone number on the back in case you have a problem, but you shouldn’t. Really, I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t take care of your suit for you. Please let me do this.”

  The man stared at her for the longest moment. Elaine had an awful feeling she’d just grown a second head. He had a great ability to skewer people with his gaze, she thought. So had Dracula. And just like Dracula, he exuded a subtle sensuality. She could feel it swirling through her, as if he were actually undressing her. More years than she cared to count had passed since the last time she’d felt this way with a man. Other women could handle themselves sexually, but after fourteen years of marriage she was out of practice. Way out. And the game was so different at thirty-seven than it had been at twenty.

  She shoved the card at him to break the trance. He took it reluctantly.

  She smiled in relief. “Nancy does nice work. You won’t be sorry, I promise.”

  He turned forward at last. Elaine slumped in her chair, feeling as if she’d just been let out of prison. She resisted the urge to fan herself. Poise was a better defense.

  Opening day was full of surprises, she thought, and not all of them with the team.

  Graham Reed sat in misery. Cold soda had wormed its way under his jacket and shirt, chilling his skin. The cool night air didn’t help. Worse, the liquid left a sticky feeling on his scalp and neck He, a basketball man, was at a baseball game, a sport for the unskilled as far as he was concerned. Ed Tarksas squeezed him in on his right, and a complete stranger continually rubbed against him on the left.

  And behind him sat a beautiful maniac.

  Maybe “beautiful” wasn’t the right word, he thought. He had been aware of the woman sitting behind him ever since he’d taken his seat, but hadn’t bothered to turn around until her screaming outburst. And then he hadn’t been able to look away.

  She wore a Phillies baseball cap low on her forehead, and the way her ponytail swept along her shoulders, curling just at the ends, so dark in color it was almost black, reminded him of a young girl’s. His fingers had ached to touch it, to feel it twine around his hand with its own vitality. Large hoop earrings of thin gold hung elegantly from her ears, combining with the cap for an incongruous look that somehow worked on her. Her face wasn’t model thin, yet her cheekbones were noticeable and her skin was smooth, creamy, with a touch of color from the night’s chill. Her lips were full, intriguing, and he’d found himself wanting to taste them, to see if they would meld perfectly with his. Her figure was covered up in a sweatshirt jacket and jeans, but he could tell it was an attractive one. He judged her to be in her mid-thirties, a time in life that gave her maturity and experience … and a latent sensuality. He could sense it, he could see it, and he felt as if he’d been walloped by a two-by-four just from looking at her.

  The boy alongside her was enough like her in coloring and features to mark him as her son. And although he didn’t need anyone to pay for his dry cleaning, he had to admit he liked her insistence on making amends. That said a lot about her as a person. And he liked the way the boy had come to her defense. She had stared him down, and stared down Ed, so she was hardly in need of any defending, but the child’s gesture said a lot about her as a parent.

  Still, a child. He and children didn’t mix well, so he avoided women who had them. Of course, it didn’t matter in this case; she had to be married.

  A trickle of melted ice made its way under his shirt and trailed along his shoulder. Graham adjusted his shirt collar and pushed at the wetness, trying in vain to shift it off his body. The wet stickiness around his neck was suddenly unbearable, so he got up and went to the men’s room on the concourse below.

  The room’s cleanliness surprised him, and nobody did more than glance at him as he stripped off his suit jacket and shirt, then rinsed off his hair and shoulders as best he could in one of the sinks. The air was cool inside the building, swirling around his bare arms and chest and raising goosebumps. He toweled off with paper towels, then pushed the electric hand dryer on and held his wet clothes under its already hot nozzle. He frowned as the dark stain grew more pronounced as the clothes dried. His maniac had nailed him good.…

  “Excuse me.”

  Men sta
nding in front of the open urinals yelped at the female voice coming from the doorway and began frantically adjusting clothing. Graham started and whirled around. His maniac was standing in the open doorway as if he’d conjured her up. The two-by-four hit again, with even more force.

  She was half turned away, averting her gaze, but that didn’t stop the consternation caused by a woman on the edge of invading the last of male refuges on the planet. Neither did it stop Graham from suddenly feeling too warm and too conscious of her presence. She looked even better standing up than she did sitting down. Way better …

  “If you dry it without washing the stain out first, it may set,” she advised.

  He found his voice—and his reason. “Are you crazy? This is the men’s room!”

  Men bleated in horror behind him, like a Greek chorus, and that seemed to move her finally. She dipped out of sight behind the outer modesty wall. The men subsided, but they glared at him as if he were at fault for the near breach.

  “I’m sorry,” she called out. It seemed her voice wasn’t disappearing. “But I got worried when you were picking at your collar and then left. I thought I better check and see if I could help. Do you want me to take it and wash it in the laches’ room?”

  “No thanks,” he said quickly, having a vision of himself standing outside the ladies’ room half naked. He shoved his clothes under the still-running dryer, muttering, “Come on, come on …”

  “I forgot that getting silk wet was bad. Are you drying it again? You shouldn’t.”

  “Ill take my chances,” he said, wondering what she’d thought when she’d looked in and caught him topless. Probably that he ought to be ten pounds thinner and work out regularly, he decided, then wondered what the hell he was doing wondering. His chest was acquiring a gray hair or two, as well, among the dark brown …

  “I’m Elaine Sampson, by the way. You’re Graham, right?”

  He blinked in confusion and answered automatically, “Yes. Graham Reed.”

  “Nice name.”

  There was a long silence. Graham could think of nothing to say, so he said, “Thanks.”

  “I hope you’ll take me up on my offer, especially now if the stain’s set. You’ll really need a good dry cleaner. I’m a widow, and I have a young son. You saw him …”

  Her voice trailed away and he realized he needed to answer. “Yes, I did.”

  “With his father gone, it’s doubly important for me to set a good example for him. Are you a parent?”

  Heads turned. Graham swallowed and said to no one in particular, “She spilled soda on my suit.”

  “What did you say?”

  “No, I’m not a parent, not even married,” he called out. “Could we have this conversation later?”

  “Yeah,” a guy in a stall yelled, “Could we have this conversation later?”

  “Oh. Yes, of course, but if I don’t fix your suit, then he’ll think it’s okay not to fix things he’s damaged.”

  “Lady, I do understand and admire that,” Graham began, shaking his jacket and shirt to quicken the drying process. The dryer turned off in a complete lack of cooperation. He slapped the start button, then realized he might have better luck if he put the shirt outside the jacket, rather than have it tucked inside because it was easier to hold. He switched it around, cursing himself for being seduced into accepting Ed Tarksas’s invitation to the ball game, just so he could listen to the man’s advertising campaign pitch for Graham’s chain of pizzerias. Cove Pizzerias couldn’t afford the slick TV, radio, and print ads Ed wanted to blanket over the Delaware Valley. Graham only owned twenty places in the state of Delaware, the most profitable in the coastal resort towns, so he wasn’t sure a huge campaign would be cost-effective, despite Ed’s intense sales pitch all during the game.

  Now Graham wasn’t thinking about anything other than this woman who wouldn’t leave him to set his soda stain in peace. If she wanted to talk, he could think of better, more intimate places …

  “Then you’ll go to have your suit cleaned?”

  “If I don’t hang myself first,” he muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing!” he shouted, wondering if she could read thoughts. Now, that was scary.

  He heard a commotion outside, a boy shrieking and a woman’s voice raised in annoyance. Now what was she doing? Mugging kids?

  “What are you doing?” he called out, feeling his shirt. It was definitely drying.

  “Just a minute. We have a rebellion going on out here …” To someone else, she said, “I don’t know this man who’s in there at all, really, but I spilled soda on him and he was nice about it. Maybe he can watch your son. Mr. Reed?” Her voice rose again. “There’s a little boy coming in to use the rest room. Could you keep an eye on him for his mother?”

  Graham looked down at his bare chest, looked at the men milling around and who were looking at him as if he’d been swallowing flaming swords. He felt as if he were in a nightmare that would never end. Face it, Reed, he thought, it couldn’t get any more bizarre.

  “Uhh … send him in.”

  A boy of about five or six walked into the bathroom, too young for the men’s room alone but too old for the ladies’ room with Mom. The kid looked sullen and Graham couldn’t blame him. He smiled at the boy encouragingly, saying, “Moms are right to be concerned, but they don’t understand, do they?”

  The boy didn’t answer, just went about his business with quick efficiency while the other men grinned at him, Graham sighed, seeing the usual result of whenever he tried to be friendly with a child. Kids didn’t like him. He was uncomfortable around them, he always had been. On the rare occasions he had familial and paternal stirrings, he put them aside, knowing his business took all his time and knowing he wouldn’t be a very good parent.

  The boy headed for the exit door on the opposite side of the rest room, and Graham called out dutifully, “Okay, he’s coming out now.”

  The boy turned and stuck his tongue out at Graham. Several of the men chuckled. Compounded evidence on his incompetency with kids, Graham thought.

  He put on his shirt, not caring that it still had a damp spot or two. After buttoning it, he finally left the men’s room. The jacket he’d live with. It was only damp now, at least, rather than soaked.

  Elaine was still waiting for him out on the busy concourse. She smiled at him, and although the mother and the boy were gone, she said, “Thanks. That was nice of you. The boy refused to go into the ladies’ room with his mother and threw a tantrum about it.”

  “I don’t think he was too happy with the compromise,” Graham said, smiling ruefully. “He stuck his tongue out at me.”

  She shook her head. “Kids. Still, public rest rooms are a problem when you’re a mom out alone with your son. Anthony was about the same age when he insisted he was old enough to use the men’s room. How’s the shirt and jacket?”

  “Dry enough.”

  “I feel really bad about spilling soda on you.”

  “Don’t.” He grinned. “Actually, it was an adventure.”

  As she smiled back, he had an odd urge to reach for her and kiss her. Her smile faded, as if she sensed the attraction he felt for her.

  “This is trouble,” she said in a low voice.

  “I’m not trouble,” he assured her, feeling suddenly dangerous and impulsive, two sensations he never had.

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “You have eyes like a little deer I raised when I was a kid and lived in upstate Pennsylvania. But yours are …”

  “Are what?” He had to know. He was thirty-seven years old, and he had to know.

  “Are more intense,” she finished.

  She didn’t know what intense was, he thought. The way she was looking at him shook him down to his feet. That was intense.

  Someone bumped into him, and he realized they were standing in the concourse, traffic traveling around them. The physical attraction snapped off as if by a switch, and he immediately felt awkward, like a
schoolboy talking with a girl for the first time.

  “Ah, I better get back up there,” Elaine said.

  He nodded. “Me too.”

  “I’ll get fries to cover my tracks.” She smiled slightly as she began walking over to the nearest concession stand.

  He followed her. “Why do you have to cover your tracks?”

  “Because my friends are nosy and my son usually is mortified by me. He’s thirteen. Kids embarrass easily at that age.”

  “Oh.”

  She got her fries in a large cup. She offered them to him, and because they smelled good and salty, he took one. It was fat and long—and hot.

  “There goes the cholesterol, right through the roof,” she quipped, before taking a bite of one herself.

  The fry tasted as good as it smelled, the salt melting in his mouth. He grinned at her. “They’re good.”

  “The best.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe you want to go up ahead of me. Otherwise they’ll think I’ve been nagging you and will tease me.”

  “And your son will be mortified.”

  “Because he thinks I’m a nag too. I’m actually a worrier. Really, though, use my friend for your suit. She’ll do a good job, and I’ll feel better.”

  “I suppose if I don’t, you’ll spill french fries down it.” The card she’d given him was burning a hole in his jacket pocket. That he wasn’t wearing the jacket at the moment didn’t matter. He knew the card was there, like a lure.

  She laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a woman laugh. He liked the sound of hers. He liked the nagging. Or worrying. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had worried over him, either. It was nice.

  He left her on the concourse, reluctantly, but with a small smile as he entered the stadium proper. He slipped on his slightly damp jacket and climbed the concrete steps to his seat. The small contingent above him, he saw, noticed him immediately. He realized he still had no idea who these three older women were and what their relationship was to Elaine Sampson. Nice name, he thought. Her son glanced at him, then looked back to the action taking place on the diamond. She was setting a fine example, he thought, because the boy seemed well mannered. He wondered what the father had been like.