It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars Book 1)

Molly had just walked in the door from school the next afternoon when the phone rang. She heard Peg moving about in the laundry room as she set her book bag on the kitchen counter and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Hi there, Miz Molly. It’s Dan Calebow.”

She smiled. “Hello, Coach Calebow.”

“Say, I’ve got a little problem here, and I thought you might like to help me out.”

“If I can.”

“Now that’s exactly what I like about you, Miz Molly. You have a cooperative nature, in contrast with another woman I could name, whose entire mission in life seems to be making things tough for a guy.”

Molly decided he was talking about Phoebe.

“I was thinking about dropping by your house for an hour or so tonight with a couple of gen-u-ine Chicago pizzas. But you know how Phoebe is. She’d probably refuse to let me in the door if I asked her straight out, and even if she said it was okay, you’ve seen how she likes to pick fights with me. So I figure things would go a lot better if you’d invite me over. That way Phoebe’d have to be polite.”

“Well, I don’t know. Phoebe and I . . .”

“Is she still smackin’ you? ’cause if she is, I’m gonna have some words with her.”

Molly caught her bottom lip between her teeth and murmured, “She doesn’t hit me anymore.”

“You don’t say.”

There was a long pause. Molly picked at the corner of a lavender spiral notebook that had fallen out of her book bag. “You know I wasn’t telling the truth about that, don’t you?”

“You weren’t?”

“She wouldn’t— Phoebe wouldn’t ever hit anybody.”

The coach murmured something that sounded like, “Don’t count on it.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. You go on with what you were saying.”

Molly wasn’t ready to comment further about her relationship with Phoebe. It was too confusing. Sometimes Phoebe acted as if she really liked her, but how could that be when Molly wasn’t even nice to her? More and more lately she’d wanted to be nice, but then she’d remember that her father had loved only Phoebe, and any good feelings she had toward her older sister evaporated. She did like Coach Calebow, however. He was funny and nice, and he’d made the kids at school notice her. She and Jeff talked every day at their lockers.

“I’d like it if you’d stop by tonight,” she said. “But I don’t want to be in the way.”

“Now how could a sweet young lady like you be in the way?”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I certainly am. When Phoebe gets home, tell her that I’ll be dropping by whenever I can get away. Will that be okay?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“And if she says she’s not letting me in the door, you tell her you invited me and she can’t weasel out. See you tonight, Miz Molly.”

“See you.”

Dan hung up Phoebe’s telephone. He grinned down at her from his comfortable perch on the corner of her desk. “I’m coming over with pizza tonight. Your sister invited me.”

Phoebe concealed her amusement. “Is it possible for you to do anything in a straightforward fashion? When you walked in my office less than three minutes ago, did it occur to you to simply ask me directly if you could stop by instead of telephoning Molly?”

“As a matter of fact, it didn’t occur to me.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see you.”

“Of course you do. Everybody knows I’m irresistible to women.”

“In your dreams, Tonto.”

“What are you so grouchy about?”

“You know what time the plane landed. I had to be here for an eight o’clock meeting, and I’ve only had a couple of hours of sleep.”

“Sleep is highly overrated.”

“For you, maybe, but not for those of us who are real human beings instead of cleverly designed androids programmed to stay awake all the time.”

He chuckled, and she dug in her drawer for the bottle of aspirin she kept there. She still couldn’t believe what had happened between them last night in the plane. When he’d issued that silly ultimatum at the end, she hadn’t been able to resist sparring with him, despite the fact that she should know enough by now not to fall into his games, let alone try to beat him at them. Still, she couldn’t suppress the hope that last night had changed things between them.

He would never know what a precious gift he had given her. She was no longer afraid of sexual intimacy, at least not with him. Somehow this good-looking, cocky, Alabama bruiser had helped her reclaim her womanhood. If only she weren’t so afraid that he was also going to break her heart into a million pieces.

He transferred himself from the corner of her desk to the nearest chair. “We’ve got some unfinished business to take care of. If you’ll remember, we got distracted last night before we completed our discussion.”

She busied herself with the cap of the aspirin bottle. “Damn. I can never get these things off. I hate safety caps.”

“Don’t look at me. I can bench press 290, but I can’t budge those suckers.”

She fiddled with the cap and finally gave up. Dan was right. They needed to talk. Setting aside the bottle, she folded her hands on the desk in front of her. “Do you want to go first?”

“All right.” He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “It’s pretty simple, I guess. I’m the head coach, and you’re the owner. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell me how to do my job, just like I don’t tell you how to do yours.”

Phoebe stared at him. “In case it’s slipped your mind, you’ve been telling me how to do my job since you broke into my apartment in August.”

He looked injured. “I thought we were going to have a discussion, not an argument. Just once, Phoebe, make a little effort to hold on to that quick temper of yours.”

Her hand crept toward the aspirin bottle. She spoke slowly, softly. “Go on, Coach Calebow.”

Her formal mode of address didn’t deter him. “I don’t want you to interfere with the team again before the game.”

“What do you consider interference?”

“Well, I guess it pretty much goes without saying that showing up in the locker room before the game would be at the top of my list. If you have something you want communicated to the players, tell me and I’ll pass it on. I’d also appreciate it if you’d stay in the front of the plane when we’re traveling. I guess the only exception to that would be on the flight home if we’ve won. Then it’d probably be appropriate for you to make a quick walk-through to congratulate the men. But I’d want you to do it in a dignified fashion. Shake some hands, and then leave them alone.”

She slipped on her leopard-spot glasses and gazed at him steadily. “I’m afraid you’re operating under the mistaken impression that I was having an attack of female hysteria last night when I reminded you—quite forcefully as I remember—that the Stars are my team and not yours.”

“You’re not going to start that again, are you?”

“Dan, I’ve been doing my homework, and I know that a lot of people with some impressive credentials think you’re on your way to being one of the finest coaches in the NFL. I know that the Stars are lucky to have you.”

Despite the sincerity in her voice, he regarded her warily. “Keep talking.”

“The Stars entered this season with a lot of high expectations from fans and the media, and when you didn’t win the early games, the heat was turned up hard and fast. The stories about me didn’t help, I’ll admit. Everybody from the coaches to the rookies got understandably tense, and in the process, I think you may have forgotten one of the most basic lessons you learned when you were playing. You forgot to have fun.”

“I’m not playing now. I’m coaching! And believe me, if I had a whole squad raising the kind of hell I used to raise, we’d be out of the game fast.”

Judging from the stories she’d heard, that was undoubtedly true. She slipped off her glasses. “You’re a tough disciplinarian, and I’m beginning to realize just how important that is. But I think you need to figure out when to turn up the heat and when to relax a little.”

“Don’t start this again.”

“All right. You tell me why the Stars weren’t able to hold on to the ball until last night’s game.”

“It’s a cycle, that’s all. Those things happen.”

“Dan, the men were too tense. You’ve driven them hard for weeks, beaten up on them for the smallest mistake. You’ve chewed out everybody from the secretarial staff to Tully. You pushed too hard, and it was affecting everyone’s performance.”

She might as well have lit a keg of dynamite because he erupted from his chair. “I don’t fucking believe this! I can’t believe you’re sitting there like John Fucking Madden and telling me how to coach a fucking football team! You don’t know shit about football!”

Profanities exploded like firecrackers over her head, his anger so scorching she half expected the paint on the walls to blister. She was shaken, but at the same time, she had the weird sense he was putting her through some kind of a test, that his ranting and raving were a carefully staged ploy to see what she was made of. Leaning back in her chair, she began inspecting her nail polish for chips.

He went ballistic. The veins in his neck stood out like cords. “Look at you! You barely know the difference between a football and a fucking baseball! And now you think you can tell me how to coach! You think you can tell me my team’s too tense, like you’re some goddamn psychologist or something, when you don’t know shit!” He paused for breath.

“You can shoot off that gutter mouth of yours all you want, Coach,” she said softly, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still the boss. Now why don’t you take yourself to the showers to cool off?”

For a moment she thought he was going to leap right over the desk and come after her. Instead, he gave her a furious look and stalked from her office.

Half an hour later, Ron found Dan behind the building slamming a basketball through the hoop near the outer locker room door. Dark patches of sweat soaked the front of his knit shirt, and he was breathing hard as he dribbled the ball to the center of the concrete slab and spun toward the hoop.

“Tully told me you were out here,” Ron said. “I need some information about Zeke Claxton.”

The hoop vibrated as Dan slammed the ball through. “Phoebe isn’t happy with my coaching!” He spat out the words, then threw the ball at Ron’s chest with so much force that the general manager stumbled backward.

“Take it in,” Dan roared.

Ron looked down at the ball as if it were a grenade with the pin already pulled. He had observed Dan’s murderous games of one-on-one when he was upset over something, and he had no intention of getting involved. Assuming an expression of deep regret, he gestured toward his newest navy suit. “I’m sorry, Dan, but I have a meeting, and I’m not dressed for—”

“Take it in, goddammit!”

Ron took it in.

Dan let him shoot, but Ron was so nervous that the ball bounced off the backboard well above the rim. Dan snatched the rebound and dribbled viciously to center court. Ron stood nervously on the sidelines trying to figure out how to get away.

“Guard me, for chrissake!”

“Actually, I was never too good at basketball.”

“Guard me!”

Ron did his best, but Dan was nearly a foot taller and forty pounds heavier, as well as being a professional athlete instead of a born klutz.

“Move in closer! Use your elbows, for chrissake! Do what you friggin’ have to to get the friggin’ ball!”

“Uh— Elbows are illegal, Dan, and I—”

Dan stuck out his foot and deliberately tripped him.

As Ron sprawled to the concrete, he heard the knee of his new navy trousers rip. He felt the sting in the heels of his hands and looked up in outrage. “You did that on purpose!”

Dan’s lip curled. “So what are you going to do about it, pussy?”

Furious, Ron scrambled to his feet and threw off his suit coat. “I’m going to shove that ball down your throat, you smug son of a bitch.”

“Not if you play by the rules.” Dan held the ball out, deliberately taunting him.

Ron went after him. He slammed his elbow into Dan’s gut and punched the ball free with his opposite fist. It shot across the court. He raced after it, but Dan beat him there and snatched it up. As the coach spun toward him with the ball, Ron punched him hard in the ribs then kicked at the back of his bad knee, knocking him off-balance. Before Dan could recover, Ron had the ball and drove to the basket, making a perfect shot.

“Now you’re getting the idea.” Dan grabbed the ball.

Ron moved in. Unfortunately, his violent bump didn’t keep Dan from making his next shot. Ron took the ball, butted Dan with his head, and dribbled to the edge of the court, where he just missed.

The ensuing battle was vicious, fought with flying fists, jabbing elbows, illegal trips, and teeth. Dan, however, played clean.

When it was over, Ron examined the damage. He had destroyed his suit, bruised his hand, and only lost by three baskets. It was the proudest moment of his life.

The watery autumn sun came out from behind a cloud as the two of them collapsed on the grass next to the court to catch their breath. Ron propped his forearms on his bent knees, sucked in air, and gazed with deep satisfaction at the goose egg puffing up Dan’s left eyebrow.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have quite a shiner there.” He tried, but couldn’t quite hold back his glee.

Dan laughed and swiped at his dripping forehead with the sleeve of his knit shirt. “Once you stopped playing like a debutante, you came on strong. We’ll have to do it again.”

Yes! Ron wanted to throw his arms in the air like Rocky on the museum steps but contented himself with a macho grunt.

Dan stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles as he leaned back on the heels of his hands. “Tell me something, Ron. Do you think I’ve been pushing the men too hard?”

Ron pulled off his ruined necktie. “Physically, no.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“If you want to know whether or not I approve of what Phoebe did in the locker room, I don’t. She should have talked to you about her concerns first.”

“She says I can’t handle criticism.”

He looked so outraged that Ron laughed.

“I don’t see what’s so damned funny.”

“You can’t handle criticism, and the fact is, you deserved some. Phoebe’s right. You have been driving the men too hard, and it was affecting their mental attitude.”

Ron probably wouldn’t have been so blunt if he still weren’t on an adrenaline high. To his amazement, Dan didn’t explode. Instead, he managed to look injured.

“It seems to me that as the Stars’ general manager, you might have worked up enough gumption to talk to me about the problem yourself instead of sending a woman who doesn’t know a thing about football to do the job.”

“That’s exactly what she said to me this morning.”

“She go after you, too, huh?”

“I don’t think she’s too crazy about either one of us right now.”

The men stared at the empty basketball court. Dan shifted his weight and the dry leaves rustled beneath him. “That was some sweet win last night.”

“It really was.”

“Her locker room speech is gonna go down in football history.”

“I’ll never forget it.”

“She sure doesn’t know much about football.”

“In the third quarter she cheered when we went offside.”

Dan chuckled, then gave a long contented sigh. “I guess, all in all, Phoebe’s working out better than either of us could’ve expected.”

“Dan!” After their argument that afternoon, Phoebe was stunned to see the Stars’ coach standing on her doorstep holding a deep-dish pizza box. It was nearly ten o’clock, and her makeup had long ago worn off. She was dressed for comfort in a faded pair of fake-Pucci leggings with a baggy purple sweater that barely covered her rear.

“I wasn’t expecting you.” She pushed her reading glasses to the top of her head and stepped aside to let him in.

“I can’t imagine why not. I told you I’d be here.”

“That was before our altercation.”

“Altercation?” He looked annoyed. “That was nothing more than a business discussion, is what it was. You get riled about the strangest things.” He shut the door.

Phoebe was spared a response by Pooh, who scampered into the foyer, yapping and shivering with bliss when she saw who had come to call. Phoebe took the pizza box and watched with amusement as the dog circled Dan’s legs so rapidly that she skidded on the floor.

He regarded the poodle warily. “She’s not going to pee, is she?”

“Not if you kiss her and call her ‘sugar pie’.”

He chuckled and leaned down to give the dog a macho knuckle rub on her topknot. Pooh immediately flopped to her back so he could get to her tummy.

“Don’t push it, dawg.”

The poodle took his rejection good-naturedly and followed them through the living room to the kitchen.

“What happened to your eye?”

“What eye? Oh, this? Basketball game. Your GM plays dirty ball.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Ron did that to you?”

“That boy’s got a mean streak a mile wide. I’d advise you to stay clear of him when he gets riled.”

She didn’t believe for a minute that Ron had done that to him, but she knew from the glimmer in his eye that she wouldn’t get any more out of him.

Molly’s face lit up as they came into the kitchen, and she rose from the table where she had just been gathering up her homework. “Dan! Phoebe said you weren’t coming.”

“Well now, Phoebe doesn’t know everything, does she? Sorry for arriving so late, but Mondays are long days for coaches.”

Phoebe knew that Dan and his assistants generally worked till midnight on Mondays and she suspected that he would return to the Stars Complex as soon as he left here. She appreciated the fact that he was keeping his promise to Molly.

As she set plates and napkins on the table, he said, “I hope you ladies didn’t eat so much dinner that you don’t have room for a little bedtime snack.”

“I do,” Molly said.

“Me, too.” Phoebe had already blown her fat intake for the day with a chocolate eclair, so what difference did a few hundred more grams make?

Dan took a seat at one end of the kitchen table, and as they all helped themselves to a gooey slab of the thick pie, he asked Molly about school. Without any more encouragement than that, she chattered on about her new best friend, Lizzie, her classes, and her teachers, effortlessly presenting him with all the information Phoebe had been trying to drag out of her for days.

Molly reached for her second piece of pizza. “And guess what else? Mrs. Genovese, our neighbor next door, hired me to baby-sit her twin boys for a few hours after school on Tuesdays and Fridays. They’re three and a half years old, and they’re so cute, but she says she needs a break sometimes because they wear her out. She’s paying me three dollars an hour.”

Phoebe set down her fork. “You didn’t say anything to me about this.”

Molly’s expression grew mulish. “Peg said I could. Now I suppose you’re going to tell me I can’t.”

“No. I think it will be a good experience for you. I just wish you’d talked to me about it.”

Dan observed the exchange between the two of them, but didn’t comment.

Half an hour later, Phoebe thanked him as she walked with him to the door. As she had suspected, he was returning to the Stars Complex for a late-night session to finalize the week’s game plan against their crosstown rivals, the Bears.

He reached for the knob, but hesitated before he turned it. “Phoebe, I’m not saying you were right about what we discussed today, and I definitely don’t like the way you went about handling the problem, but I’m going to keep an open mind about what you said.”

“Fair enough.”

“In return, I want you to promise me that you’ll tell me right out if you’ve got a problem with my coaching.”

“Should I bring along a bodyguard, or do you think a loaded gun will be enough.”

He sighed and dropped his hand from the knob. “You’re really startin’ to exasperate me. I don’t know where you get this notion that I’m difficult. I’m about the most reasonable man in the world.”

“I’m glad to hear that because there is something else I wanted to discuss with you. I’d like you to put Jim Biederot on the bench next week so his backup can get some playing time.”

He exploded. “What! Of all the stupid, asinine . . .” The expression on Phoebe’s face stopped him.

She lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “Just testing.”

He paid her back by looking her over from head to toe and then speaking in a silky whisper that sent her shivering all the way to her toes. “Little girls who walk too close to the danger zone can find themselves in some real bad trouble.”

He brushed her lips with a quick kiss, opened the door, and disappeared down the sidewalk.

As he climbed into his car and settled behind the wheel, he was already regretting both the kiss and his suggestive words. No more, he promised. He’d finally made up his mind how he was going to handle this relationship, and flirting wasn’t part of it.

He’d spent the final leg of the plane trip home last night trying to figure out how he could have Phoebe in his bed while he was courting Sharon Anderson. He wanted Phoebe so much that he’d tried all kinds of arguments to convince himself it would be possible for them to have a brief affair, but even before they’d landed, he’d known he couldn’t do it. His future with Sharon was too important for him to jeopardize just because he couldn’t get his lust for Phoebe under control.

During a hasty dinner with Sharon last week, he’d become even more convinced that she was the woman he wanted to marry. She’d been a little skittish around him, but that was to be expected, and she’d relaxed some by the time he’d taken her home. He’d given her a quick good-night kiss at the door, but that was all. Somewhere along the line, he’d gotten this old-fashioned notion that he and Sharon wouldn’t make love until their wedding night.

As for Phoebe— He wanted her so much he ached, but he’d dealt with lust before, and he figured time would take care of that. He knew the safest thing for him to do would be to keep their relationship strictly professional, but the idea depressed the hell out of him. He’d grown to like her, dammit! If she’d been a man, she might very well have ended up in his inner circle of friends. Why should he cut her out of his personal life now, he asked himself, when she’d be going back to Manhattan at the end of the year and he’d probably never see her again?

It wasn’t as if he planned to keep leading her on. All he had to do was treat her like a friend. There’d be no more slipups like that little kiss he’d given her tonight, no more sexual challenges issued in airplane johns. Right now, she might be interested in continuing the physical part of their relationship, but in his experience, women like Phoebe were philosophical about things like that. Once he showed her he was changing the rules between them, she’d follow along. She knew that sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn’t. Nobody’d have to spell it out for her.

He smiled to himself as he turned the key in the ignition. Phoebe was a crackerjack, all right. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she had managed to earn his respect. He’d never expected her to work so hard at her responsibilities as the Stars’ owner, and her dedication was even more impressive because she was so far out of her element. She also had a way of standing up to him that he admired. Somehow she managed to hold her ground around him without being a bitch about it, in contrast to Valerie, who tore into him just for the pleasure of the kill.

His relationship with Phoebe had become important to him, and as long as he didn’t give in to the powerful, but inconvenient, physical attraction between them, he didn’t see what the harm was in enjoying each other as friends. Not that keeping his hands off her would be easy. It was a good thing he’d been sitting down most of the time he was with her tonight because watching her sashay around in those fancy tights with that sweater that barely made it over her rear had kept him in a constant state of arousal.

He grinned as he pulled away from the curb. If the Russians had been smart, they’d have taken Phoebe’s radioactive body into account before they’d signed off on that nuclear proliferation agreement with the United States.

Which was all the more reason he needed to marry Sharon. He knew from painful experience that long-term relationships weren’t built on lust. They were built on mutual values, and that was what he and Sharon had in common.

So by the time the plane had landed, he had made up his mind. When Phoebe left town at the end of the year, he would pop the question to Sharon, but for the present, he was going to enjoy being with both women. As long as he kept his pants zipped, he wouldn’t have a bit of trouble living with himself, and the fact that never again making love with Phoebe depressed the hell out of him was all the more reason to keep their relationship platonic. No matter what, he wasn’t going to repeat the mistakes of his first marriage.

His thoughts were interrupted by a glimpse of a gray van parked on a narrow side street not three blocks from Phoebe’s condo. Cursing, he shifted the Ferrari into reverse. The tires squealed as the car fishtailed. He shifted again. The powerful motor responded instantly and the car shot down the side street, reaching the van just as the driver began to pull forward. Dan spun the wheel so the van was trapped between the Ferrari and the parked car behind it.

He flung himself out of his car. In four long strides he had whipped open the driver’s door and dragged the man out by the front of his jacket. “Why are you following me, you sorry son of a bitch?”

The man was heavy and he stumbled, barely righting himself before he fell. He drew back his arm to take a swing, but Dan slammed him against the side of the van. “Tell me!”

“Let me go, you bastard!”

“Not until—” He broke off as he realized there was something familiar about this man. Overweight, florid complexion, big nose, grizzled hair. At that moment he recognized him.

“Hardesty?”

“Yeah,” he sneered. “So what’s it to you, cocksucker?”

Dan wanted to slam his fist into the older man’s gut, but he remembered Ray Senior’s grief at the funeral and restrained himself. Instead, he eased the pressure he was keeping on his chest, although he didn’t let him go.

“You’ve been following me for weeks. What’s this all about?”

“It’s a free country. I can drive wherever I want.”

“The law has a different view. What you’re doing is called stalking.”

“So what? You got a guilty conscience about me tailing you?”

“Why should I have a guilty conscience?”

“Because you killed my son, you bastard! Ray Junior died because of you. If you hadn’t cut him from the Stars, he’d be alive now.”

Dan felt as if he’d been punched. He’d never quite buried his guilt, and he immediately released the man. “I didn’t have a choice, Mr. Hardesty. We kept him on the squad as long as we could.”

But he could see by the crazed expression in Hardesty’s eyes that he was past reason. “You need him, you bastard! It was only luck that you won the Giants game without him. The Stars can’t win for long without my boy. Without Ray Junior, you’re a bunch of losers!”

Dan felt a wave of pity. Ray had been an only child, and his death must have pushed his father over the edge. “Ray was a great player,” he said, trying to calm him.

“You’re goddamn right he was. Because of him, I used to be able to walk anyplace in this town with my head high. Everybody knew who I was. Everybody wanted to talk to me. But now nobody knows my name, and it’s all because of you. If you hadn’t cut my son, people would still treat me with respect.”

Bubbles of saliva had gathered at the corners of Hardesty’s mouth, and Dan’s pity faded. Hardesty didn’t miss his son; he missed living in Ray’s reflected limelight. His own father had been dead for fifteen years, but as he looked into Hardesty’s small, mean eyes, he felt as if he were once again standing in front of Harry Calebow.

Harry had also used his son to pump up his own consequence. In high school Dan had squirmed under Harry’s constant public bragging, all the more ironic since he never received anything but criticism in private. He remembered his sophomore year of high school when Harry had hit him with a bottle because he’d fumbled in the final thirty seconds of a game against Talladega.

He stepped back before he punished this man for something that had been another’s fault. “Stay away from me, Hardesty. If I see that van of yours tailing me again, you’re going to regret it.”

“Big man,” Hardesty sneered as Dan walked away. “Big fucking man! Let’s see how big you are when your team loses again this week. Let’s see how big you are when you finish in the bucket for this season. The Stars are nothing without my boy! They’re nothin’!”

Dan slammed the car door against Hardesty’s malice. As he drove away, it occurred to him that this might be why he wanted so much to be a father. Maybe he needed to prove to himself that he could do the job right.