by Beverly Bird
“You want to make damn sure it ain’t just six years’ worth of randy you’re feeling there, boy. So go take the edge off with someone else first.”
“We’ll see.” Danny looked at the butcher-block table again, but something in his chest moved in a shifting, uncomfortable way. The cowboy might have a point. He was just feeling six years’ worth of randy, nothing more. “Are we having company tonight?” he asked him to change the subject.
“Yessiree, we are. Men from the shelter down the street. Welcome to join us, if you want. Think you’d be better off with a woman, though.”
“Me, too.” Danny laughed again.
He went upstairs and dropped the basketball on his living room/kitchen floor and grabbed the phone book from the top of the refrigerator. Then he sat on the sofa and reached for the telephone to find out if any local watering holes had live entertainment tonight.
He didn’t have a private line. His phone was the center’s phone, and he remembered that there was an extension downstairs in Ron’s office. Molly’s voice came through the line, soft and convincing. And cunning, he thought. He definitely heard cunning in there underneath the sugar. She could probably talk a monk into doing a drunk tango with her, he thought.
“Come on,” she said. “Word has it that you’d give five hundred bucks for the right shade of lipstick.”
Danny cracked up. Luckily, a lilting laugh from the other party on the line covered the sound.
“I’ve been known to,” the woman on the other end of the line agreed unabashedly.
“I’m asking you for half that,” Molly said. “Your dad won’t talk to me, so I’m calling you.”
Definitely a Carson or a Wainwright, Danny decided. She was a little too plucky to be any of the Wainwrights he knew of, so he decided it might be Fiona Carson. And he continued to listen without shame.
“Do I get my name anywhere for this?” the woman asked.
“I’ll emblazon it on the roof in lights if you’ll pay the electric bill, too,” Molly offered.
Danny almost laughed aloud again, but he choked on the reflex this time.
“What was that?” the other woman asked.
“That was our coach,” Molly said. “He’s listening in upstairs. But don’t worry, I’ll see to it that not a dime of your money goes to his paycheck.”
Danny raised a brow.
“Is he cute?”
“Well…he thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then he snapped it shut again.
“I like that type,” the woman said, sounding delighted. “For a shot at him, I’ll give you five hundred. I’ll just get the money back from Dad, anyway.”
“Thanks. Let me give you the address.”
She’d gotten five hundred dollars in one call. Danny hung up the phone gently, feeling mildly stunned.
She was good. But then, he was coming to know that.
By 11:30 that night, Danny had had his fill of women. This was what he had hungered for, craved, lusted after for six long years? He stood at the bar in the Saddlebag—Mission Creek’s answer to nightlife for those who weren’t members of the country club or who wanted to see how the other half lived. He scowled around at the crowd.
A woman who reminded him a great deal of Cia left the pool table at the back of the bar and bore down on him. She didn’t wear leather, but she had on a lot of animal skin. Her skirt inched provocatively up her long, really incredible legs with every stride she took. He’d seen bras that had more fabric to them than whatever she wore on top.
She stopped in front of him and ran a manicured finger across his chest. “Hi, there, cowboy. That scary look on your face doesn’t bother me at all.”
“It should,” he murmured.
“What?” She frowned, obviously not anticipating the response.
Whatever else could be said for Molly, Danny thought, at least she got his retorts. And she reacted. Damn, did she react.
“Buy me a drink, anyway,” the woman cooed.
“Well, here’s the thing.” Danny leaned an elbow back on the bar. “I’m not drinking.”
“I am.” She smiled. The reflex reminded him of a shark. “Help me along with a beer or two and I’ll bet you could have me in bed before you know it.” She leaned closer to him, enough for him to catch a great deal of beer already on her breath.
“But do I really want to spend that kind of money if that’s the only way I can get you there?”
Her eyes narrowed as she apparently tried to decide if she was angry or just confused.
“I like my women sober…and to be just a little bit of a challenge. It adds spice.” Danny downed the last of his soft drink. “And with all due respect, ma’am, you’re tipsy and too easy.”
She’d had enough. Her eyes glinted. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”
“So much I’d probably bore you with the recital.” Danny turned away. What had happened to women while he had been in jail? He thought maybe they’d started crossbreeding them with piranhas. He gave a gusty sigh and headed out the door.
The no-parking sign was still in front of the rec center when he returned there just before midnight, and it ballooned his blood pressure all over again. That was a cop for you, he thought. High-handed, autocratic, arrogant. He parked down the block and moved a couple of trash cans into the street in front of and behind his Dodge. It wouldn’t do any good but it made him feel better. She’d just move them tomorrow—or the trash collectors or owners would—but with any luck they’d still be there when she arrived at the center. She’d know what he thought about this parking business.
He headed inside, pleased with himself, then he realized he was grinning for the first time all night. Because of thoughts of Molly French. “Damn her.”
He was relaxed in his lumpy sofa bed, alone after all and nearly asleep, when his eyes flew back open. Thump-THUMP-thump. Th-th-th-thump-THUMP. Someone was downstairs playing basketball in the middle of the night. Someone who couldn’t dribble.
Danny flung himself out of bed, made it to the stairs, then looked down at himself. Not cool to go stalking into the gym in boxer shorts.
He was pretty sure there was a law against that, too. He backtracked for a pair of sweats and glanced at the clock beside his sofa-turned-bed. It was 12:43. Either there was a kid down there who felt really strongly about the game or…He trotted down the steps to the lower gym door. It was her.
She looked like some kind of cross between a ballerina and Magic Johnson. He figured she wanted to be Magic Johnson but if she had suddenly spun into a pirouette, it wouldn’t have surprised him. She had that kind of grace…even if she couldn’t hit the net to save her life. He watched her try once, twice, three times, to no avail.
And what was she wearing this time?
He recognized the trousers quickly enough—cop uniform—and the sight of them chilled his blood. But then his gaze traveled upward to what appeared to be some kind of lavender bra.
Her cop shirt was tossed on the floor in one corner of the court. Most of the lights were out in the gym, but the few that remained had her dancing in and out of shadows, all those pretty girl-muscles fluid and stretching. She did a dance step here, a turn there…then there was another missed basket.
“Hey.” Danny stepped through the door.
He had the satisfaction of startling her. She gave a small, aborted scream as the basketball thudded to the floor a good six inches from the hoop.
“I’m practicing.” She pressed a hand to the freckles on her chest. “So I can help out with your drills when you have less than six kids. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Hard to do when someone is making a racket down here.”
“I was being quiet!”
Danny walked onto the court. “You know, not even I think basketball is so important that I’d shoot hoops in the middle of the night, and I’m a pretty big fan.”
As he approached, Molly backpedaled. She reached her shirt and snatched it
up off the gym floor, but then she only used it to wipe her brow. “You’re superjock. You don’t have to practice.”
“That’s right, but it’s beside the point.”
She grinned fast. Then she pursed her lips together. “Well, your ego is healthy, at any rate.”
“Do I have to tell you what else is healthy so you’ll get rattled and run out of my gym again so I can get some sleep?” Then it hit him—like a thunderbolt—that he had enjoyed himself more in the last two minutes than in the entire evening he’d spent at the Saddlebag warding off women he didn’t need to keep clear of.
He wasn’t going to entertain that insidious thought, Danny decided, not even for a moment.
“What?” she asked at his expression. “Is something wrong?”
“You woke me up. I’m cranky. Give me that ball. I’ll put it back where it belongs.”
He watched that chin of hers come up, and it irritated him. The way she did that really got to him. She was so sure of herself and of her authority. Her femininity. Then it got worse. She planted her hands on those hips again, the basketball tucked under one arm.
“Nope,” she said calmly.
Danny lunged at her suddenly. He punched the ball so that it shot out from beneath her arm. Then he jogged after it and swiped it up, dancing out of reach. “You were saying?”
“That you’re an arrogant, know-it-all, high-handed male.” She turned to glare at him.
“You got that last part right.” He grinned. “Wanna play?”
She crossed her arms coolly over her breasts, but he heard her catch her breath. “No.”
“Ah, come on. Please.”
“You’re just going to try to make me look ungainly and stupid.”
“Honey, those are the last things you are.”
She gave him a bemused, startled half smile. He had the satisfaction of watching her hand flutter up to her throat then drop again. Her gaze cut to the side, then back to him. He was rattling her again. But this time something skittered inside him in response.
That bothered him, too, so he shot the ball to her, hard and fast. He gave it the best of himself and was surprised when she caught it. She had good reflexes.
Then again, she was a cop. He was pretty sure they trained them for that.
“Okay, hotshot, you’re on,” she said from between clenched teeth.
He wasn’t sure what she thought she was doing, but he liked it. She rushed at him, dead on. At the last second she jogged to her left and caught him off guard. He shot one arm out, trying to snag her around the waist but she spun. And then damned if she didn’t shoot and finally make a basket.
“Where’d you learn that?” he demanded.
“My basketball book. Molly, two, superjock…zero.”
“You were right underneath the basket. How hard is that?”
“Hold on, I’ll show you again.”
She dove for the ball. He did, too. Their shoulders connected, and she went sprawling. Danny was instantly contrite. He’d never hurt a woman in his life. “Hey, are you all right?” He gave her a hand to help her sit up.
She used his moment of discomfiture to twist away, grab the ball with both hands and leap back to her feet. She shot another basket. “Oh, I love it, I love it!” She laughed. “Four-nothing.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.” The ball bounced once beneath the net and he snagged it. He dribbled to midcourt and went to his toes, lofting the ball. It made the net. “Four-three.”
“Where do you get three from? Are you cheating?”
“That’s a three-point throw from way back here. It’s harder to do.”
“The hell it is. Baskets are two points.”
“Not always.” He jogged for the ball again, grabbed it and made another basket from beneath the net. “Oh, look at that. The arrogant, know-it-all, high-handed male takes the lead. You’re down five-four, honey.”
“You’re making these rules up as we go along!”
“I am not. Go read your book again.” He pulled off a rim shot. “Seven-four. You’re going down.”
“Like bloody hell I am.” She rushed at him again.
Her eyes were emerald fire, he thought, catching the dim light. That froze him for a second and she hit him with both palms in the upper chest. When he dropped the ball in surprise, she grabbed it on its first rebound. “That’s a foul,” he said, catching his breath back, “but I’ll beat you, anyway.”
He defended her from behind, one arm loose around each of her shoulders, intent on smacking the basketball free the second it came back up into her hands. Then he caught her scent.
He wouldn’t have taken her for the spicy type—would have thought she’d go for something more floral and prissy given the way she blushed—but that wasn’t what lifted from her skin. It was cinnamon and something hot and unfettered. It damned near drove him to his knees.
Molly made another basket. “Seven-five. By your rules. I can win that way, too.”
She went for the basketball again. Okay, Danny thought. No more rules. He ran after her and as soon as she picked it up, he wrapped both arms around her from behind again. He caught the quick little intake of her breath as their skin connected. And realized he couldn’t stay close to her because in another second she’d feel what she did to him, right there against the back of those pressed, starched cop pants. He shot the ball out of her hands with his fist, then their feet got tangled up. They went down together this time.
What had he told Cia? Boys think basketball is a contact sport. This boy sure did, Danny thought.
She stared up at him as he lay half on top of her. The warmth of her skin against his hit him like a punch. Then she licked her lips, a quick little flick of her tongue. He felt something start to unravel inside him.
“Move,” she said hoarsely. “This isn’t in the rules.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking that it raises all sorts of interesting possibilities for new ones.”
“You wouldn’t.” Her eyes went straight to his mouth.
“Correction,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t. But damned if I’m not thinking about it.”
He watched her throat move as she swallowed deep and hard. “I don’t like you.”
“I don’t think much of you, either.” And that, he thought, was maybe the first outright lie he’d told her. “But you feel very, very good beneath me.” He had to move, Danny thought. Now.
If he didn’t, she’d probably punch him again. Instead he felt her hands move, sliding tentatively up his chest.
Danny slid off her fast.
He wondered if that was disappointment that skittered across her features, over those delicate cheekbones and the spattering of freckles on her nose. He wondered if that was hurt that made her green eyes go darker for a second or if maybe it was just a trick of the light. He sat up and took a deep breath, driving both hands into his hair. He was still about as turned on as he had been in…well, a long time. Something told him it went back even further than six years.
“You’ve really got a thing about winning, don’t you?” he muttered, just to change the subject, to drag it back to somewhere safe.
Molly sat up, as well, shoving chocolate curls out of her eyes. “Yes.”
Her honesty surprised him. “Is that what this is all about?” When something in her eyes flared, he waved a hand at the hoop. “I meant the basketball stuff, practicing in the middle of the night, not us.”
“There isn’t an us. We agreed on that,” she said quickly.
“We agreed we weren’t going to do anything about it. I keep thinking about changing my mind.”
Her breath fell short again. He heard her pulling for it. He couldn’t look at her, because if those breasts were rising and falling with the effort of it, he didn’t want to know. Danny cut his gaze to the far basket. “Don’t do that,” he said finally.
“What?”
He sucked in breath the way she had just done. “That.”
“You imagined it.”
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“Not likely.” Safe subject, he thought. He had to find a safe harbor. Hadn’t he had one just a minute ago? “Why do you always have to win?”
“Because when I lose, I lose big-time. So I just don’t risk it anymore.”
Another honest answer—it had the almost metallic ring of baldness to it, he thought. It made him look at her again. They were sitting side by side now, both of their knees drawn up and the basketball was…well, he didn’t know where it had gone to. “What do you mean?”
He watched her shrug and for the first time one of her movements seemed a little brittle. “I promised myself a long time ago that I was going to go at everything full throttle from then on.”
“Why?”
“Because going at things in a nice, deliberate, polite, thought-out way just…just destroys people sometimes.”
He was confused, but Danny knew that what he was watching was a window opening on her soul. “What people? You seem pretty healthy to me.”
“I am. But my brother is dead.”
Molly felt shock punch through her when she heard her own words. No one in Mission Creek knew about Mickey. No one. But she shoved hair out of her eyes again and heard herself keep talking. “I was going to be a lawyer, you know. I had it all planned out, step by step, how I was going to drag my mom and my little brother out of poverty. My dad was gone. My mother was exhausted by the time I turned thirteen. I figured it was all up to me, so I made this nice, long-term plan. Straight As in high school, a scholarship to college, finally law school. But then something went wrong. On my seventeenth birthday, right before I graduated from high school, Mickey was shot.” She waved a tense hand. “A drug deal had gone bad. They said he was trying to steal the money, but he’d promised me he was going to get out of that scene. I think maybe he was just trying to get free. Anyway, the details don’t matter now. My point is, I should have worked faster. I didn’t help to get him out. I was too busy planning.”
“Well, how the hell could you have moved your family out of that neighborhood when you were only seventeen?” He was angry, Danny realized. Why was he angry with her? Because too much of what she said reminded him of his own youth and the bad choices he had made. He had gone for the quick route out instead of planning, had made his move at sixteen…and it had ended up nearly as disastrous.
