Heather Graham (4 page)

She smiled, hedging. “Aren’t you guys still in training? Next week is a big game—and if you take that one, the following game will be even bigger. The Superbowl. You can’t go any higher than that.”

Sam Loper laughed, flushing a little. “Yeah, well, we’re supposed to be lying low, but we’re only human, you know.”

Yes, you are, Katie thought, but I wonder if you really know that yourself.

“Actually,” Sam continued, “the party is a little bit illegal. I mean, the coaches sure won’t be invited. But there’s this guy who’s a Forty-Niner now who used to be a Saxon. He’s got a beautiful place a little south of San Francisco. We just kind of all decided to get together. We’ve got tonight and tomorrow, then it’s back to the grind, so we might as well get in a little R and R.”

“Yes, I guess you might as well,” Katie agreed pleasantly. Wine, women, and song for the conquering heroes, she thought ruefully.

“Will you come? We’re really not a wild crowd. Not half so wild as the papers make us out to be.”

She hesitated again. She had been to just such a party last week in New York, one that hadn’t actually caused her to break off a relationship—that decision had been made before the party—but the atmosphere of the party had certainly added to the chaos and strain of the situation.

And long before New York—long before she had even been an adult—she had been an out-of-sight witness to a few such parties. She had seen one destroy her parents’ marriage.

Ancient history … But was it? The years changed, but did anything else?

“Please? Say you’ll come. You—we—can always leave if you aren’t enjoying yourself.”

It was either the party or dinner alone with a lot of introspective wandering that she didn’t really feel like enduring. And, she reminded herself, she still did have a chance of getting the interview with Kent Hart that was so important to her boss.

Who would have thought, she wondered a little bitterly, that she would have come to crawling—no! She wasn’t crawling! Yes, sorry kid, you’re crawling—to the college kid her father had patronized all those years ago just to make a go of her own career?

“Well?”

“Sure, I’ll come. Thanks for the invitation. What time?”

“Now.”

“Oh, I can’t come like this. I got drenched during the game.”

“I’ll take you back to your hotel, wait, and we’ll go whenever you’re ready.”

“Well …”

“Really, it will be easier that way. I know the area, and I’ve got a car.” He grimaced. “The car dealers don’t mind a little publicity—whether the quarterback is their own or not! And we can stop and grab dinner along the way and …”

“And what?” Katie asked sweetly.

“Get to know one another a little.”

She had to turn away from him before he saw her smile. This was one quarterback who had learned to make all the right moves.

“Hmm,” she murmured with her back to him. “Well, all right, if you don’t mind all the running around …” She turned to face him again, curiously. “I would have thought, though, that you would have been inundated with fans and friends by now.”

He smiled, and she thought again that even if he was a little bit of a self-assured Don Juan, he was a nice enough guy with his heart in the right place.

“I told the others to go on ahead. I didn’t think that Kent would agree to company tonight too easily, so I stayed behind to convince him that he wasn’t too worn out to party.”

“Oh. Well”—Katie shrugged—“I guess we’re ready, then. Where’s this car of yours?”

“Out front, but we’ll slip around the back way, just in case. You are a fan, Kathleen … aren’t you?”

She smiled, feeling ancient even though they were about the same age and Sam Loper was probably worlds ahead of her in certain kinds of experience.

“Katie,” she told him lightly. “And I—of course I’m a fan. Football has always been part of my life.”

The last was stated with a very dry undercurrent, but it was unlikely that Sam Loper caught that note or could even begin to understand it.

Kent Hart would have understood, though, she mused as she linked an arm with Sam and followed him back through the stadium.

Perhaps he would have understood all too clearly.

S
AM LOPER WAS AN
amiable companion. During the drive from the stadium to Katie’s hotel, he touched lightly upon a number of subjects—the weather in California, what living in Florida was like, politics, and his involvement with a nuclear freeze group. Katie enjoyed him, yet she was still amused by him. He drove with one hand, at first stretching his free arm behind her on the seat, then around her shoulder. She caught his hand, lifted it, and set it on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, “but I’m a big believer in two-handed drivers.”

He grinned, clutched the wheel with both hands, then cast her a quick and covert glance that was very astute. “You’re really not after the quarterback, are you?”

“No.” Katie laughed.

Sam shrugged good-naturedly. “They’re usually after the quarterback,” he said with a rueful shake of his head.

“Sam”—Katie felt compelled to shift in her seat and look at him—“I do like you. You’re a nice guy. I just try not to make it a habit to ‘go after’ anyone for what they do.”

“Aha! A ‘for what you are’ woman, eh?”

“Something like that,” Katie agreed.

“But you are after Kent,” Sam added wisely, and Katie sighed.

“I have an editor who really wants an article on Kent Hart,” Katie told him.

“Well,” Sam told her, flashing a pleasant smile, “I’m going to harass the old Cougar until he decides to give it to you. That seems to be the only way I’ll get him off your mind and me on it.”

Katie smiled. This didn’t seem to be a good time to tell him that she would just as soon not have
any
football player on her mind. After her father’s life, she should have learned. She
had
learned. But then she’d decided that it wasn’t fair to judge a man by his profession, and she’d gotten involved with a football player. And then there had been last week’s horrendous and embarrassing breakup.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Katie murmured, “I think you take a left at the next corner for the hotel.”

She received another of Sam Loper’s quick glances. There seemed to be a secretive little glimmer to his eyes.

“You are going to ask me up, aren’t you?”

“No,” Katie replied with a laugh.

“But if there are any fans in the lobby, I’ll be swamped!” Sam complained woefully.

“Hide out at the newsstand,” Katie suggested.

Sam’s smile fell, and he muttered something, but he took her rejection well. And the quaint Victorian lobby was almost empty, so Katie couldn’t feel too much guilt for her blunt refusal. Not that she felt he would press himself where he wasn’t wanted; she just wanted to keep a distance.

“Fifteen minutes. Please!” Sam begged. “You wouldn’t want anyone to see me walking around alone—and waiting!—would you?”

“Certainly not!” Katie responded, and then they both laughed. Katie hurried to the elevators. She noted that Sam did walk hurriedly into the newsstand and hide his face with a paper.

She wasn’t in the least concerned about making a fifteen-minute time limit; the little traveling she had done so far had taught her to change in a matter of minutes. But once she reached her room, she hesitated uncharacteristically, wondering what to wear. She wanted to look her best.

Why? Because she wanted to try to charm Kent Hart when she saw him again? No, he had already caught her at that act once, and he hadn’t liked it one bit. But still …

Well, if she wasn’t going to charm him into acquiescence, she had to somehow do it with dignity. And to do that, she wanted to feel as confident as possible.

Katie hurried to her closet, chewing nervously on the rim of her thumbnail. What had she brought? A short, white cocktail dress, but with the weather having turned so cold, she would look absurd. She hadn’t really come prepared … That wasn’t true. She had come prepared for a business trip. She was just learning that there was more than one way to go about business.

Katie hesitated a minute longer, then spun around, grabbing her purse. She had seen it—the perfect dress for this type of occasion—at the second-floor hotel boutique. It was overpriced and beyond her budget, but she hastily assured herself that being in debt to the credit card companies was an American way of life. She was going to take more than fifteen minutes to get ready, but she promised herself that she would make it up to Sam Loper by talking about quarterbacks in general and Sam Loper in particular all through dinner.

The elevators moved quickly; there were no other customers in the boutique. Katie swallowed back her last minute mental warnings that she was being an idiot and pulled out her charge card. She was back in her room with the dress in seven minutes.

She took her shower in less than three, muttered out a multitude of oaths as she tripped into pantyhose, then slipped into the new dress with two minutes to spare for the hairdryer and a touch of makeup.

She obviously wasn’t going to make it in two minutes, but she wasn’t going to be more than five minutes late. And stepping back from the floor-length mirror on the closet door, Katie tried a little dubiously to convince herself that the time and money had been spent wisely.

The dress was a simple knit, but it was indigo-blue and floor-length. It had long sleeves and a vee neck, and it managed to be sexy while still perfect for a chilly night. With her hair dry and no longer plastered against her face, it spilled out against the deep navy with a pale gold shimmer, and her eyes reflected the deep blue of the dress. It wasn’t really dressy, just wintry, and it emphasized all the right things.

Katie turned away from the mirror, more than a little irritated with herself. She shouldn’t have to be playing games—with Kent Hart or herself. If he’d any decency at all, Kent would be more than willing to help her. Not only that, but he should be battling for a public image. After all, how many more years could he expect to play before his knees gave way or his body became so battered that it could no longer fly across a field? He should want the exposure so that he could retire from the game and sell some macho product on television.

And he should simply be willing to help Dante Hudson’s daughter, no matter how much Dante Hudson’s daughter hated coming to him for help.

Katie sighed. It was her own fault. She should just forget the interview. It just seemed so incredibly stupid to give up on what could prove to be the turning point of her career. A career she had begun late because, at the end, she had been the only person left to care for Dante Hudson …

Tears stung her eyes; he’d been dead for almost four years now, but it still hurt. The emptiness, pain, and loneliness were still with her. He had been dependent on her in the end; she hadn’t realized until he died just how dependent she had been on him.

Katie gave herself a shake and glanced at her watch, wailing out an “Oh no!” She’d left Sam Loper downstairs with his nose in a newspaper for almost half an hour.

Spilling items all over the place, she transferred her things to a small purse from her larger leather bag and grabbed her waist-length jacket of white rabbit’s fur. Without another backward glance she hurried out of the room.

Sam Loper did still have his nose in a newspaper. She had to touch his shoulder twice to get him to turn around.

“Katie!” he exclaimed. “How could you do this to me? Leaving me here all this time with the shopkeeper certain that I’m a—Whoa! Never mind. Look at you … it was worth it!”

Katie laughed and turned around in the aisle between the magazines and the paperback books. “Like it?” Her voice sounded a little more eager than she wanted. Maybe it was good, since she had chastised herself with a reminder that Sam was being decent enough to deserve a certain amount of flattery.

He gave her a soft whistle, refolded the newspaper, placed it back on the stack, then hurriedly gripped her elbow. “Let’s get out of here,” he told her. “I don’t want to be swamped by fans, but if they were so dazzled by you that they didn’t recognize me, I’m afraid my ego would suffer quite a blow.”

Katie chuckled. “Sam Loper, I don’t believe that for a minute. Your fans would never look past you.”

“Let’s get going anyway—I’m anxious to share an intimate dinner with a beautiful woman of ever-increasing mystique!”

Katie kept quiet, smiling as they hurried back through the lobby and out to the hotel’s portico, waiting there only moments while the valet brought up the car. Sam was smooth with his lines, but even aware of it, Katie couldn’t be insulted. He might have said the same flattering thing a thousand times, but he still said it with warmth.

She kept her promise to herself and asked Sam all kinds of questions as they began their ride south along the coast. It wasn’t until they had stopped at a small, intimate oyster house and their drinks had been served that he decided to query her.

“I’ve known a lot of women into football,” he said, sipping at his beer, “but you have an uncanny understanding of the game. How come?”

Katie froze. There really wasn’t any reason not to tell him—and yet there was. She didn’t want to be introduced that evening as Dante’s daughter. Not that she wasn’t very proud of the fact, but she would be questioned about her father, and the questions would hurt.

She lifted her beer glass to touch his nonchalantly. “Goes with the territory, I suppose. If I’m going to report on sports figures, it pays to know something about the sport.”

“Yeah, but you really know what I’m talking about.”

“I’ve watched a lot of football. Sam”—she hesitated, assuring herself that she had repaid him for her tardiness several times over—“why is Kent such a pain in the rear about interviews? I don’t get it. What’s the big deal?”

Sam shrugged. “Back to Kent, huh? Well, remember, I’m persistent.”

Katie smiled.

Sam continued. “I can’t really answer that—not completely at any rate. It happened about twelve years ago … before I knew him.”

“What happened?”

Sam looked a little uncomfortable, as if he really hated discussing a friend even in the pursuit of a woman. “No big thing,” he said at last, then reflected, “and no
one
thing, at that. He just kind of got rolled up in the news. A photographer took a picture of him coming out of a restaurant with a woman and threw it all over the front pages of one of those sensationalist magazines. Kent’s wife didn’t appreciate it. From what I understand, she’d been getting edgy to begin with. He hadn’t really been doing anything to begin with, just opening the door for one of the cheerleaders. But you know how the press can be. They had him involved in a half-dozen affairs before he ever got home. His marriage went downhill fast, and the press stayed with it until the end. As I said, I don’t know the details. He just told me once that the press is going to write what it wants anyway—why tell them anything?”