Hoops (7 page)

Was it because he wasn’t really sure what was behind her pose as the distant academic? Or because he hoped the warmth and vulnerability he thought he’d seen were real? If he didn’t know himself better, he’d say this thorn in his side might well become a full-blown infection.

With a mental sigh, C.J. wondered how much longer he needed to charm the influential guests. Better get used to it, Draper, he told himself. Coaching doesn’t start on the court, and it doesn’t end in the locker room.

He’d do his Homecoming duty, then he’d finish up a certain bet with Professor Carolyn Trent. And he’d beat her.

Masks, thorns and all.

C.J. smiled broadly at the bragging alum.

* * * *

“The seminar sounds like quite an outing, Carolyn,” commented Edgar Humbert, a colleague from the English Department, as he lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he’d just finished. “And I hear they were quite impressed by you. You’re going to make department head before you’re thirty.”

“Edgar, I’m honored,” she teased. “That my name should be included on your academic grapevine—surely the most extensive one in the free world—is an honor indeed.”

His slight bow acknowledged the compliment, and the truth of it. A wink, though, pricked any pomposity in his self-congratulations. “I’d like to have you in to lecture to my grads. Let’s talk about a date.” His eyes darted over her shoulder, and a smile flicked on his thin lips. “That is if you can spare time from your basketball players.”

So the faculty grapevine already hummed with word of her new assignment.

“Hi, Ed,” came C.J.’s near-drawl from behind her. He moved around to join them. It was the first time she’d seen him free of a crowd since their arrival. “ 'Fraid Caro’s going to be busy with my guys. They’ll take a lot of time. Isn’t that right, Caro?”

“Caro?” Carolyn and Edgar chorused the name, Carolyn indignantly and Edgar questioningly.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Carolyn called that before,” said Professor Humbert with avid curiosity and a distinct expression of puzzlement as he looked at C.J.

“Oh?” C.J.’s blue eyes looked with innocence from Carolyn to Edgar Humbert. “It just seemed to suit her. You know, sort of poetic?”

“Poetic?”

Edgar kept supplying C.J. with exactly the leads he wanted, and Carolyn wished she could have warned him— better yet, ordered him—to be quiet.

“Wasn’t there a poem written to a Caro once? ‘Remember thee! Remember thee! Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream . .. ’ ”

Edgar Humbert spluttered over his cigarette. “Byron, of course! But, C.J., do you know the rest?” Humbert didn’t wait for an answer, but continued the quote:

“
Remorse and Shame shall cling to thee,

And haunt thee like a feverish dream!

Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.

Thy husband too shall think of thee:

By neither shalt thou be forgot,

Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

“Byron wrote it about Lady Caroline Lamb when he’d ended the affair and she kept after him,” Humbert offered, darting a look from Carolyn’s stony stillness to C.J.’s dancing eyes. “Not very flattering to our Carolyn.”

“No, indeed,” said C.J. with exaggerated repentance. “I beg your pardon, Professor Trent. Now I know why no one calls you Caro!”

“See you at the club, Edgar.” Carolyn spun on her heel and headed out, too angry to trust herself to say more.

A setup. She’d been set up. One way or another she’d been set up. She’d picked the test, but he’d been lying. All that drawling unsophisticated talk, all that nonsense of trying to find the right “color” for her, all that supposed friendly openness. All the while he was playing her for a fool by pretending to be an ill-educated jock.

She took four strides before she felt C.J.’s strong fingers grip her elbow.

“You’re right. It’s time we left for the club.” His voice dropped to a laughing growl in her ear. “How’d you like that, Professor? Impressed two literature professors for the price of one.” Then he said louder, “I was just coming to get you when we got into that very interesting literary discussion with Professor Humbert.”

She ignored him, carefully avoiding his eyes as he escorted her to his car.

Why she even allowed that tacit acknowledgment that he’d won his silly bet, she couldn’t imagine. The only possible reason was to use the trip to the Ashton Club to find out how much of a fool she’d made of herself.

“How much do you know about Byron?” She put the question to him when she could speak with the calm she expected of herself.

“Not much. You know, the affair with Caroline Lamb, rumors about him and his half sister, sleeping with pistols under his pillow during his honeymoon. When Professor Eggers got to the dissolute life-style, that’s when I listened up.”

“George Eggers?” His “Uh-huh” confirmed he meant the man who’d been a fixture at the state university for decades. “George Eggers doesn’t teach large lecture classes. Only seminars.”

C.J.’s murmur was noncommittal.

“You took a Byron seminar from George Eggers?”

He shrugged almost apologetically. “I needed one more English class to graduate. The one on Byron was the only one that fit into my schedule. Coach finagled me in.”

“George Eggers wouldn’t—” She bit off the words.

“Wouldn’t what?” He was deceptively cordial. “Wouldn’t take a jock in his class? Or wouldn’t doctor a grade to pass me?”

“I didn’t mean . . .” She couldn’t finish. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t meant just that.

“Rest easy, Professor.” She thought she heard an edge to his voice, one so thin that it barely existed. “George Eggers’s integrity is intact. I was no scholar, but I passed that course. Legitimately.”

Twisting in her seat, she looked at the large hands curled competently around the steering wheel and the profile resolutely faced forward, and came to a conclusion—she wasn’t truly surprised he’d taken the course. Or that he’d passed. “Mr. Draper, you’re a fraud.”

He turned to her, and she saw a trace of uncertainty in his eyes. Then the grin slid into place. “I guess I am a bit of a fraud. Aren’t we all?”

She ignored that. “Why don’t you tell people?”

“Tell them what? That I’m not stupid? The ones that want to see that, see it. Stewart saw it. He asked about my academic background, and I told him. Most of the people here at Ashton, like Edgar Humbert, got to know me before forming any conclusions. The rest of them? Well, you notice I’m not always asked for my opinions on art or literature or politics. It can make people real uncomfortable if you don’t meet their expectations.”

She deserved that. She’d jumped to her conclusions and she was wrong. No wonder Edgar had looked so puzzled by C.J.’s behavior. Still . . . “But to let people think you only know basketball—”

“Look, Professor—” his mouth held a grim line, his eyes narrowed and the title never sounded so like an insult “—basketball is what I do. And do damn well. There’s nothing ‘only’ about it. It gave me the chance for that education you value so highly. It gave me enough money to buy my family a decent life. And now it’s given me a job—a challenging job.”

Carolyn turned away. He’d misled her, apparently on purpose. But she’d fully cooperated. He’d only made sure to meet her expectations.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Draper.”

C.J. stretched his fingers until he steered only with his palms. “I liked it better when you said it the other way.”

“Said what what other way?”

“When you’d say, ‘I beg your pardon?’ as if you were Queen Victoria and I were a chimney sweep.”

Queen Victoria? He saw her as that strait-laced, sad-faced monarch? Carolyn bristled at the notion. Then she contemplated his half of the image. Vividly and ludicrously she envisioned C.J. Draper trying to get his long limbs and wide shoulders up a chimney. She tried to stifle the laugh, but the effort only added a gurgle to it.

She saw the undiluted blue of his eyes open wide on her for a second, then narrow with the now-familiar grin. “Anyone less like a chimney sweep I find it hard to imagine,” she said, laughter still filtering through her voice.

* * * *

Anyone less like a marble statue,
he silently replied some time later,
I find it hard to imagine.

Holding her in his arms on the dance floor at the Ashton Club, he could feel her body move to the slow rhythm of the music. No marble there.

For the first two dances he’d carefully kept his hand at her waist. But this was the third dance, one past the terms of their agreement.

He slid his hand along the smooth material of her dress to where nothing covered the bare flesh at the small of her back. Cool and soft, the contact of her skin with his warm palm lit a fuse of dynamite that ran up his arm, tightening every muscle along the way.

She felt it, too. He knew she did, because for an instant she arched toward him, as if her body craved more of the contact, as if she would meet his body all along their lengths. He imagined her thighs moving against his, her hips touching his, her breasts pressing against his chest. With more self-control than he knew he possessed, C.J. resisted the urge to accomplish that union.

What had possessed him to spout off like that to her in the car? When had he ever expected people to treat him like a rocket scientist? For that matter, what had possessed him to play the dumb jock as much as he had from their first meeting?

Why hadn’t he just told her he’d worked like a dog in George Eggers’s class, spurred by his own pride and the old man’s rigid standards. And, amazingly, he’d found he’d liked it. Found he remembered it. Even found himself, every now and again over the years, picking up that tattered paperback volume of poetry for the pleasure of it.

So what if two days ago this woman had smiled at him the way someone dressed in white smiles at a muddy dog? So what if she wore masks piled one on top of the other a foot thick? So what if her marble-smooth skin pulsed with a life no statue knew? So what if her eyes glowed with an ember he longed to bring to a blaze? He thought he’d outgrown this sort of thing a long time ago.

And look where it had gotten him now. What was he supposed to do with a contrite Carolyn Trent?

His body knew just what it wanted to do.

If he said something to her, anything, she’d raise her face to look up at him and, as close as they were now, her mouth would be right there, just below his. That wide mouth with the full lower lip.

The song ended and they stepped apart as the final chord swallowed his sigh. C.J. wasn’t sure if he was sighing from frustration or relief at a temptation withstood. Maybe both.

Chapter Four

Ten minutes. Then fifteen. At twenty minutes past the time Brad, Frank, Ellis and the other players should have checked in, Carolyn pulled on coat and gloves and marched up the cinder-strewn path through melting evidence of the season’s first snow to the Physical Education Center.

Just because C.J. Draper wasn’t the buffoon he’d chosen to pretend to be didn’t mean she could be charmed out of doing her job.

She’d been friendly—maybe too friendly—at the Homecoming dinner-dance. Lulled by his easygoing manner and perhaps a little embarrassed by her unfair assumptions about him, she’d remained in his company most of the evening.

They’d danced five times. He’d held her closer after the first few dances, but not so close that she’d felt obligated to protest. She’d wondered if he might try to tighten his hold, or perhaps even kiss her, say, at the door when they returned to the apartment. Not that she would have permitted it. Still, she’d felt a trace of surprise when he had simply pressed her hand and said good-night, not even asking to come in. She was not disappointed. She’d simply felt a moment of surprise that he’d seemed so willing to cut short what had turned out to be, after all, quite an enjoyable evening.

Then some slyly teasing comments at the alumni brunch the next morning had brought her up short. She’d never been teased about her other escorts. She’d liked dancing with C.J., and he did make her laugh. But it had all been misunderstood.

On Sunday night she had eaten the entire quart of mocha chip ice cream and come to a few conclusions. She’d determined a long time ago to live by her mind, and the decision had worked well for her. She thought things out, assessed them rationally. Then, and only then, did she act.

Rational assessment had told her that her colleagues had seen her being cordial to C.J. and interpreted it as much more than it was. Which, of course, was ridiculous. Even if he did make her laugh, even if he wasn’t the dumb jock she’d presumed, even if she was aware how his crooked grin and blue eyes could charm some women, he was still the leading proponent of top-level basketball at Ashton. As long as she dealt with him on that basis, there would be no misunderstanding, she’d decided that Sunday night.

Nearly three weeks of peace had passed under that regimen. Three weeks when her only communication with him dealt with the ten players and their academic progress. Three weeks when her only contacts with him were brief, businesslike phone calls and even more businesslike memos.

But no phone call or memo would serve this time. Those players were twenty minutes late for the mandatory study period.

In the otherwise quiet PE Center she heard the muffled squeak of sneakers and the sharp tones of one voice coming from the gym. Her fast-clicking heels snapped across the foyer with echoing emphasis, but didn’t drown out the noises from inside. She swung the door open wide, and the momentum of her anger carried her a third of the way down the length of the gym.

The players were all gathered in a tableau under the basket at the other end of the court, moving to C.J.’s directions, or trying to. He had his back to her, but she could see—all too clearly—the taut cords running down his neck to the broad, squared shoulders and disappearing into the ragged opening of an armless sweatshirt cropped just above his waist. His practice shorts revealed every inch of his long, muscular thighs. Sweat darkened the hair at the nape of his neck and glinted on his arms and legs. The moisture helped mold the thin material to his narrow hips when no help was needed at all.