Hoops (6 page)

“Nope. No guest,” he contradicted cheerfully.

“There. It’s all settled.” Satisfaction suffused Helene’s face.

“No, it’s not settled,” Carolyn said. “I think I should go with you and Stewart as planned.”

“If you’re concerned about driving with C.J. up those roads, Carolyn, I can assure you, I’ve ridden with him, and he’s an excellent driver,” Stewart said.

Carolyn opened her mouth for another attempt at escape, but C.J.’s drawl intruded. “I don’t think it’s the driving that’s worrying the professor. I think it’s the arriving. You see,” he explained, “if we arrive together, people might think we’re together and that could be awkward for the professor.”

Stewart and Helene turned questioning eyes to her, and Carolyn felt her shoulders sink under the hopelessness of extricating herself.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want people to think they were together; she was just uncomfortable with him. She hadn’t worked out yet in her own mind why—an oddity in itself. But she knew she definitely didn’t want it brought up now. How he’d stumbled so close to the truth, she didn’t know. But since he had, she could only deny it.

“Not at all, Mr. Draper,” she said, looking away quickly from the laughter in his blue eyes before she lost her temper. “Of course I’ll drive with you. Heaven knows we wouldn’t want to risk our new basketball coach driving off a cliff, would we?”

* * * *

Graciousness and stoicism are the keys to getting through this with dignity, Carolyn told herself as she smoothed the taffeta skirt of her new dress. She’d put the black sheath on first. But she’d seen herself looking staid and boring in too many mirrors. In the end she’d flung the sheath on the bed and pulled on the teal dress with a tingling—and unaccustomed—sense of daring.

The color added glow to her hair and heightened the natural pink blush of her fair skin. The tight bodice molded to the curves of her breasts and the narrowness of her waist. The skirt crackled around her with whispering touches against her silk-hosed legs. She felt the headiness of a woman who knew she looked good. But it didn’t prevent a surge of nerves at the sound of her doorbell.

The porch light glinted on the fair strands of C.J.’s hair, and a smile barely pulled up the corners of his mouth. His double-breasted navy blue topcoat kept the perfect line of his squared shoulders and dropped without a wrinkle or fold. Beneath it the sharp crease of charcoal-gray slacks showed. The coat’s V opening displayed a crisp white shirt and rich burgundy silk tie.

Wordlessly she stepped back as he entered.

“This is for you.” He handed her a brown paper bag as he closed the door behind them. He shrugged out of his coat and laid it over the back of a chair. His suit jacket was as trim as the topcoat. The precise fit across the shoulders and down his long arms and torso proclaimed it tailored for him by a master.

“I can understand your surprise, Professor,” he said with only the brightness of his eyes betraying his sympathetic expression. “But you really ought to do something about that—” he nodded toward the bag she still held “—before it drips on your dress.”

Abruptly the cold penetrating her hands registered in Carolyn’s mind. “What is it?”

“Ice cream. And I think it’s melting.”

“Ice cream! What on earth possessed you to bring ice cream?” For a moment she had an eerie feeling this man could see inside her. How had he divined her vice?

“The color. You better put it in the freezer first and ask questions later, Professor.”

The bag was suspiciously limp. Carefully holding it away from her, she carried it to the kitchen, fully aware that C.J. was following her. Blocking his view of the Heavenly Hash carton already there and giving silent thanks that at least he wasn’t a mind reader, she closed the freezer door on the ice cream, bag and all, then moved to the sink to wash her hands.

“That’s quite a dress, Professor.” His low voice came from right behind her.

She twisted around to hide her bare back and found herself no more than four inches away from him, and her eyes roughly on a level with his collar despite the three-inch heels she wore. His nearness startled her into a backward step, which was abruptly halted by the counter’s edge.

His light grasp helped restore her balance, and her hands rested on his forearms for a moment as she steadied herself. Under her fingertips she felt the smooth warmth of his fine wool sleeve. Beneath it, the solid bulk of a muscular arm.

Carolyn resolutely ignored a thrumming in her veins to concentrate on the knot in his silk tie. He was so big. Standing like this, his body seemed a wall against the outside world. Cutting her off or protecting her?

She pushed the question aside and concentrated on her heartfelt gratitude that she hadn’t let Helene talk her into the red dress. With that plunge front and from his vantage point... She glanced up quickly at his blue eyes sparkling with something she couldn’t quite describe as mischief, and just as quickly looked down again. She didn’t want to think of what he would have seen.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly as she stepped around him. “Now, would you like to explain the ice cream?”

“It’s mocha chip.”

She waited, but that, apparently, was the extent of his explanation. “Is that supposed to have some significance?”

He nodded. “I saw the mocha chip in the ice cream store after the game, and I thought for sure I’d got something the exact color of your hair and eyes.” He shook his head forlornly. “But now I see that’s not it, either.”

Impatiently Carolyn headed toward the front hall. “Really, Mr. Draper, don’t you think this is rather silly?”

Scooping up his coat as he passed the chair where he’d laid it, he started to follow. “Yeah, I should have known it was too light. Guess I’ll have to try something else.”

In the mirror over the small hall table she watched his reflection as he smoothly pulled on his coat. Something on the bookshelf next to the bedroom door caught his interest, and he changed direction with an easy economy of motion.

He held it in one large hand before she realized what he’d seen: the photograph of her as a little girl with her parents, the last one taken of them. Their eyes met in the mirror, and she saw his question. “My parents,” she jerked out. She remembered how easily he’d told her of his family.

“I’ve heard about them. Both professors here, weren’t they?”

She nodded.

“What happened?”

There was something in his voice. It couldn’t be pity. Pity never would have made her answer.

“They were killed in a car accident. Up north. Trying to avoid a deer in the road. I was five.” She turned away from the mirror. “I lived with my grandparents until Stewart and Elizabeth Barron brought me back to Ashton.”

None of it was a secret. He probably knew it already; anybody at Ashton could tell him the story. But she didn’t tell people. Why was she telling him?

And why was she feeling the urge now to tell him it had been the end of being sure? The end of the security known by that happy little girl holding hands with the two laughing adults.

“Everybody says how proud they’d be of you.”

There it was in his voice again. Perhaps an echo of understanding? But why should his understanding mean anything to her? It didn’t.

She turned to watch his gaze roam the living room, taking in the details the way he had in her office. “Monochromatic,” she said with a snap. “Like me.”

Confused by her own sharpness, she turned away to open the closet door, reaching for her coat to give herself time. She wished, for an irrational moment, that she could close the closet door behind her and hide in the dark awhile.

One large hand pushed her fingers aside as she fumbled with the hanger, deftly removing the coat. His other hand ran down the smooth slipperiness of the dress’s tight-fitting sleeve to her wrist, then turned her so that she faced the mirror with her back to him.

She couldn’t move; her muscles refused to heed her orders. She could only watch him survey the smooth, bare flesh of her back and feel herself become unaccountably heated by the look.

His eyes rose to meet hers in the mirror as he held her coat for her. “No room’s monochromatic as long as you’re there in this dress.”

Stoicism and graciousness, Carolyn reminded herself as they headed down the stairs toward his car. Ignore him.

What about your reactions to him?
asked a sneaky little voice from the back of her mind.
How are you going to ignore yourself?

* * * *

They reached the drive to Mrs. Dawton’s estate and drew into the slowly advancing line of cars headed into the long, curving drive.

“Still worried about people thinking we’re together?” C.J.’s voice was soft and sympathetic.

Carolyn looked over at him quickly; just as she thought, the grin lurked just beneath the surface. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Draper?” Detached and calm, her own tone pleased her. Surely her coolness would penetrate eventually—if not to him, at least to herself.

“I guess I can see your point. You being a professor of literature and all.” He eased the car forward, moving around a curve to the front of the sprawling stone mansion. At the door each car in turn discharged its passengers and a young man in an Ashton jacket took it away to leave room for the next. “And I hear this meeting thing you attended in England is pretty exclusive. Only for the best. Sort of an all-star game for literature professors.”

She didn’t bother to reply to that, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal, Professor. We’ll call it a bet, as long as you don’t tell the guys—it wouldn’t set a good example for them.”

They were next in line. Once inside, she decided she’d convince Stewart and Helene to drive her to the dinner-dance.

“Now what should the bet be, Professor? How about if you can say something nice about basketball?”

“No.” No need to answer more. Carolyn’s door opened as C.J. stopped the car, and a gentlemanly hand extended to help her out.

“Professor Trent!” Frank Gordon’s eyes widened.

She smiled at him and headed up the stairs. Knowing C.J. was close behind still didn’t prepare her for the warmth of his big hand slipping under her elbow.

She turned to frost him with a look, but he seemed immune. She could have pulled away from the light grasp; it wasn’t until much later that she came up with the explanation that it would have appeared blatantly rude.

“Okay, you pick the bet,” he said. “And to make it interesting, we’ll have a little something riding on it. How’s that?”

For a moment Carolyn considered the satisfying temptation of telling him exactly what she thought of his idea. But parting to hand their coats to attendants gave her time to reconsider. C.J. immediately returned to her side. His palm cupped her elbow once more, guiding her to the end of the reception line.

He bent his head so that his low voice reached only her.

“If you win, you’ll be spared my company the rest of the evening. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

His words surprised Carolyn even more than the rasp of his drawl and the tightening of his fingers. She looked up quickly to find his blue eyes disconcertingly close, and even more disconcerting in their directness. Once more he’d come closer to reading her feelings than she liked. She did want to be spared his company. She only hoped he didn’t realize that the reason was the peculiarly unsettling effect he seemed to have on her.

His customary lightness replaced the slight harshness of his previous question, but his grip remained firm. “And if I win the bet, I continue to be your escort for the evening. And you dance with me—at least twice. Agreed?”

She opened her mouth to deny it, to end this immediately. But the pressure of his hand on her elbow turned her face-to-face with Mrs. Dawton. C.J. Draper had timed it perfectly.

Mrs. Dawton said a polite welcome to Carolyn, then gushed over C.J. There was no other word to describe it, Carolyn decided. And Mrs. Dawton wasn’t the only one. In fact, the press of people trying to meet him ultimately succeeded in loosening his hold on her arm.

Just before she moved away, though, some impulse that took her by surprise pushed her up on her toes to bring her mouth closer to his ear, so only he could hear.

“You have to make a literary allusion before we leave for the club. An allusion that impresses a professor of literature. How’s that, Mr. Draper?”

She caught a flicker of his surprise before she slipped past the encircling people eager to talk to the new basketball coach, and gave a short sigh of accomplishment. Maybe it indicated a weakness in her character, but turning his “bet” on him brought a certain satisfaction.

Glancing back through the thicket of shoulders to the shining head that topped all the others, her eyes caught C.J.’s. For an instant she thought a forlorn shadow crossed his face, and she felt an odd echo in her own heart.

“Carolyn, how nice to see you. And you look lovely. That’s a wonderful color for you.”

Shaking off the strange sensation, she turned to Mary Rollins, a longtime friend from the registrar’s office.

There were so many people she hadn’t seen since the spring, so many eager to hear about her travels and studies that she found herself postponing the moment when she would seek out Stewart and ask to join his party.

* * * *

C.J. spent an hour talking basketball and wondering what had gotten into him. He listened to a board member’s analysis of a top national team with flattering interest while watching Carolyn’s progress through the room. Just remembering the urge he’d wrestled with earlier to stroke her ivory back made his fingertips tingle.

Why did he try to goad her that way? Sure, she hid behind a mask of chilly dignity. So what? People wore masks all the time.

Take this alum. He downplayed his position as a chief executive officer with carefully cultivated modesty. Behind that an ego drove him to succeed—and to retell glories of his athletic days.

Why did Carolyn’s retreat behind her marble facade make C.J. want to shake her? Smiling, he answered a professor of mathematics’ question about a famous former teammate.