Tennessee Touch, Sisters of Spirit #6 (30 page)

He couldn’t believe his luck. Edward had insisted he put out his resume, but he hadn’t expected to get a job. His whole attitude had changed. He was happy and excited to think he’d be able to be productive. Alison could hardly believe the change in him.

At least Logan had been good for something. She didn’t doubt but that he’d pulled some strings.

Leslie, a junior in high school, had acquired a boyfriend and talked about him all the time; asking Alison for advice, yet not listening when Alison told her the most important thing to watch out for—that things were not always as they seemed, to be careful of believing everything the young man told her.

"A man named Logan called while you were in Florida," Leslie informed her Saturday night when Alison had finished her daily ride on Jinx. The gelding was getting older, but seemed to enjoy the outings as much as she did.

“Oh?”

"I told him you and Chantal had gone to Miami for a football game and stayed afterwards."

"What did he say?"

"Just to tell you he called. He called again, two days ago and I said you weren't back yet."

"How did he react, the first time he called?"

"He sounded sort of surprised."

I'll bet he did,
Alison thought. At least that should tell him why I won't have anything more to do with him. It would save her the trouble of explaining things to him. "He's getting to be sort of a pest," she told Leslie. "I arranged for an unlisted number...I'll call you when it comes through."

She gave her stepdad and brother each a cool shirt from Miami, her mother a sun dress, and Leslie a full cotton skirt of patterned sunlight.

Her dad had been busy in his shop and had turned out three cedar chests, one for each of his ladies. They put Alison's in the trunk of her car, filled with the wool sweaters she had mothballed last spring. Later, placed in her apartment bedroom, the aromatic cedar made the room smell like a woodsy cedar cottage. She returned the last day of December.

Ross had asked her out New Year's evening, to a party with some of his colleagues from the department store where he worked as an appliance salesman. She had accepted as a chance to throw off the last of the black cloud that had been hovering over her. If Logan could dally with someone else, so could she.

Consequently she was more encouraging that she would normally have been, forcing her innate reserve aside to try her skill flirting with the young men who gravitated to her and Ross. It was very ego satisfying and she was having a super time until, coming back from the ladies room, she saw Ross facing her across the room. His lips were moving, he was talking to a friend, and she saw her name, and then: "It's taken some time, but I think I've landed her. She's a cold fish, but that body's worth it."

Instantly a chill fell across her and her steps faltered. Where had he gotten that idea? She surely hadn't given him that much encouragement. She turned and walked over to the food area and picked up some smoked salmon to nibble on. Did she really want to spend the rest of the evening with him? Was she ever going to find a man who could see beyond his own desires?

Of course, now she knew where she stood with him, she was prepared. And he must have wondered later about his boast of landing her, for the ‘cold fish’ refused him a New Year's kiss and shut the door in his face with a quick, "Thanks and good night."

Men! She was going to end up an old maid after all.

New Year's day she went to Chantal's, saw the football games already in progress and almost left. The Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and whatever other bowls were all vying for coverage and Chantal was trying to watch as many as possible. "These are all college games," she informed Alison. "Green Bay already played, Sunday."

"Did they win?" she asked, curious in spite of herself.

"Yes."

Alison really didn't care one way or the other. She was proud of the way she was handling Logan's betrayal of their love and would have gone right on with her life—except he didn't let her. That night he showed up at her apartment door just as she started supper. She was dressed in old jeans and a rose pink sweatshirt, not up to company standards, but decent. At his knock she opened it slightly to peer out and see who was there.

"Go away" she yelled, trying to shut it again.

She flew into a temper, her emotional cool deserting her as she screamed at him, her hands wildly following her words. She was angry at him, she was angry at Ross, she was just plain boiling mad at all men.

Logan was on the receiving end and she let fly.

"Say? There's nothing you can say! I saw you...hanging onto that floozy like you couldn't let go!"

He stared at her, his eyes hard and purposeful, legs spread, head thrown back. "Now there's a word I haven't heard in a long time. But it's true. I couldn't let go and neither—"

"Ha! Couldn't let go?" she screamed sarcastically. "Now I've heard everything. Were you glued together?"

He raised his voice over her rude interruption. "—and neither could she. We were handcuffed together."

"What?" The impossibility made her shout the denying question.

"Darling," he said, in total exasperation, emphasizing each word as if speaking to a little child, "it was a...practical...joke."

She looked at him blankly, mouth open, his words slamming like a wet towel across her anger and successfully stopping her tirade. "Huh?"

"The team's idea of a little fun."

"Fun?" She was repeating him but couldn't help it. She was confused. What was he talking about? Somebody having fun? The team?
What kind of fun was that?

He was completely put out at her mental slowness by now, his hands clenching and unclenching as he stood before her, dressed in a two piece suit of charcoal gray. White shirt and a pink and gray striped tie. Black shoes polished. "If you'd have asked Jake, he would've told you. I'd never seen that woman before. You caught the tail end of a practical joke."

"But I saw...." She stopped, fingers over her mouth, remembering. What had she seen? The images flashed back: Logan and the woman running past, both under the tan raincoat, the other players gathered around laughing at them. The short skirt, the bright blouse, low cut and suggestive. A practical joke? The handcuffs didn't sound so impossible, put like that. What had happened?

"You saw two people handcuffed together with a raincoat thrown over them." His words were making her see it anew...through his eyes. Was he telling her the truth? "The raincoat alone should have cued you. A raincoat on a sunny day in Miami?"

Her mind still refused so simple an explanation. She had seen people handcuffed together in movies; they could run quite fast. "You were holding her so tight it looked like you were half carrying her."

"I was. It was the only way we could move fast." The skepticism must have registered on her face, for he said with a frown of disgust, "They didn't handcuff my left hand to her right one. She either walked backward or I had to hold her. Like this." He grabbed her left hand with his left, and took six steps, demonstrating. His grasp was rough, hurting her wrist, but she was pulled forward before she had time to protest and had to duck under his muscular arm and move in close to keep upright.When he turned her loose again, she nearly fell.

"Oh."

He spun her around facing him again, his hands heavy on her shoulders, holding her grimly while he continued, his voice bitter and hard. "Things aren't always as they seem. Ed Lacy, our worst prankster, came up with this one. Are you ready to listen?"

She nodded.

"He asked to borrow my after-shave and when I looked back into my locker, he slapped handcuffs on my wrist. I spun around, but the "floozy" as you call her had materialized from wherever they'd hidden her. She stuck out her left hand and he put the cuff on her before I could pull away. She was hired, of course, for the joke."

Alison shook her head in stunned silence.

A practical joke. Was that all it was?

Yet how about what she had seen at the hotel?

He was still explaining. "All I had on was my shorts. I had to get dressed; pants, shoes and socks but couldn't manage a shirt. I begged the raincoat from one of the coaches to cover us till we reached the cab. With our left hands joined, I had to hold her that way or we'd never have made it. I sent Jake out to scout for me. I wanted the cab ready and no photographers nearby."

"You went to the hotel," she pointed out, doubt still clouding her face. They could've climbed into one of the chartered buses with the rest of the players. Why hadn't they? What had taken place at the hotel that had pleased the woman so much?

His hands tightened angrily on her shoulders; she was going to have bruises there. He understood the reasoning behind her question and wasn't pleased. "Ed said he'd left the keys at the hotel. I got Jake to promise to bring him over...mainly by reminding Jake that if he wanted to fly out to Seattle with me, he'd better get Ed to the hotel.

“We couldn't get Ed to unlock me until we were in danger of missing the plane—and until I threatened him with dismemberment if he didn't turn me loose. We barely made it; they weren't going to wait much longer." He released her with a backward shove as if he couldn't stand to touch her any longer.

"A joke," she repeated, face white, sinking down onto the couch. She was beginning to believe it was true.

"You knew the team plays practical jokes." He was the one accusing her now. "Both Jake and I warned you."

"Yes," she remembered, confused. She hadn't linked the stories with the actuality in her mind. "But I'd never seen one actually take place."

His agitation increased along with his anger, his face deepening into a scowl, thick brows furrowed to almost touch. "I suppose you never thought of asking me for an explanation, or giving me a chance to defend myself. You saw and decided and that was it."

She had. Hurt beyond despair. She had believed herself betrayed by the one man she had come to love. "I saw you later in the parking garage at the hotel, kissing her," she declared, defending her actions while wondering what answer he could give her about that.

That had been no joke.

He scowled deeper. "No, she was kissing me...and Jake and Ed Lacy. After all, she'd just earned good money to act a part. The whole team chipped in twenty dollars each; even Jake." He stamped his foot impatiently as if he could stamp some sense into her.

Jake was in on it too? Her mind whirled in uncertain confusion.

"You're suspicious of every man you meet. I bend over backward to prove to you I'm different and you don't trust me any more than the first day I saw you." There was hurt, anger, bitterness over her treatment of him...and he had good reason to feel that way. After all, the man had asked her to marry him.

Still, she felt somewhat justified in her reaction. Hadn't Chantal been taken in by the joke, too? "But it looked so real. Chantal didn't guess either. If we'd known it was a joke, it would've been funny. You trying to slip away, unnoticed, with that overcoat and everyone looking on and yelling. And afterwards, trying to get someone to take the cuffs off—"

The extreme heaviness of sorrow lifted its weight from her back and she suddenly began to realize what he was doing there—in her apartment—explaining to her.

"It wasn't funny. It was embarrassing."

He was still angry at the reception she'd given him. She'd better make him understand why she'd been so certain of what she'd seen. "But, Logan, if I'd known, if someone had told me, then I’d—"

"That's the point, isn't it?" he retorted, his anger reflecting the deep wound she'd given him. The hurt lay clear in his eyes, easier for her to see now that she was looking directly at him. "You didn't know and so you suspected the worse. What happens the next practical joke you see?"