Natural Born Charmer (36 page)

“You made your feelings more than clear the last time we talked.”

“And you let a little thing like that stop you?” Her voice caught.

“Why are you here, Blue?” He sounded tired. “You want to drive the knife in a little deeper?”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“I guess you did what you had to. Now I’m doing the same.”

She pulled her legs tight against the rocker. “It’s hardly surprising that I have a few minor trust issues.”

“You have trust issues. Artistic issues. Fake-toughness issues. Then there are the fashion issues.” His lip curled. “No, wait, that’s part of the fake-toughness thing.”

“I was getting ready to turn around when Chief Wesley pulled me over!” she exclaimed.

“Sure you were.”

“It’s true.” It hadn’t occurred to her that he might not believe her. “You’re right. What you said in the alley.” She drew a deep breath. “I do love you.”

“Uh-huh.” Ice cubes clinked as he drained his glass.

“I do. Really.”

“Then why do you sound like you’re getting ready to puke?”

“I’m still sort of getting used to the idea.” She loved Dean Robillard, and she knew she had to take this one terrifying leap. “I’ve—I’ve had a lot of time to think lately, and…” Her mouth was so dry she had to push out the words. “I’ll go to Chicago with you. We’ll live together for a while. See how things work out.”

Stony silence followed. She started to get nervous.

“That deal is no longer on the table,” he said quietly.

“It’s only been four days!”

“You’re not the only one who’s had time to think.”

“I knew this would happen! It’s exactly what I said all along.” She came to her feet. “I haven’t been anything more to you than a novelty.”

“You’ve just proven my point. Exactly why I don’t trust you.”

She wanted to take a swing at him. “How could you not trust me? I’m the most trustworthy person in the world! Just ask my friends.”

“The friends you only talk to on the phone because you never stay in the same city with them for more than a few months?”

“I just said I’d go to Chicago with you, didn’t I?”

“You’re not the only one who needs security. I waited a long time to fall in love. Why it had to be with you, I don’t know. God’s big joke, I guess. But I’ll tell you this. I’m not waking up every morning wondering if you’re still around.”

She felt sick. “Then what?”

He regarded her stubbornly. “You tell me.”

“I already did. We start with Chicago.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He practically sneered at her. “You thrive in new places. It’s growing roots that gives you trouble.”

He’d nailed her.

He rose. “Let’s say we went to Chicago. I introduce you to my friends. We have a great time. We laugh. We argue. We make love. One month goes by. Another. And then…” He shrugged.

“And then you wake up one morning, and I’m gone.”

“I’m away a lot during the season. Imagine how that’ll wear on you. And the women. They throw themselves at anyone with a uniform. What are you going to do when you find lipstick on my shirt collar?”

“As long as it’s not on your End Zone briefs, I think I can handle it.”

He didn’t break a smile. “You don’t get it, Blue. Women are after me all the time, and it’s not in my nature to walk away without at least giving them a smile and telling them I like their hair or their eyes or some other fucking nice thing about them because it makes them feel good, and that makes me feel good, and that’s the way I’m made.”

A natural born charmer.
She loved this man.

“I’d never screw around on you.” He gazed down at her. “That’s also the way I’m made. But how can you believe that, when you’ll be waiting for proof that I don’t love you—that I’m like all the others
who rejected you? I can’t watch everything I do, censor every word I say because I’m afraid you’ll walk away. You aren’t the only one carrying a few scars around.”

His irrefutable logic scared her. “I’m supposed to
earn
a spot on Team Robillard? Is that it?”

She expected him to back off, but he didn’t. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

She’d spent her childhood trying to prove herself worthy of other people’s love, and she’d always failed. Now he was asking her to do the same thing. Resentment choked her. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but something in his expression stopped her. A bone-deep vulnerability from the man who had everything. In that moment she understood what she needed to do. Maybe it would work, or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe she was about to take heartbreak to a whole new level. “I’m staying here.”

He tilted his head, as if he hadn’t heard her right.

“Team Bailey is staying right here,” she said. “At the farm. Alone.” Her thoughts raced. “You don’t even get to visit. We won’t see each other until”—she searched for some significant point in time—“until Thanksgiving.”
If I’m still around. If you still want me.
She swallowed hard. “I’ll watch the trees change color, I’ll paint, I’ll definitely torture Nita for what she’s done to me. I might help Syl set up her new gift shop, or—” Her voice broke. “Let’s be honest…I may get panicky and drive away.”

“You’re going to stay at the farm?”

Was she?
She managed a jerky nod. She had to do this for them, but mainly she had to do it for herself. She was tired of her aimlessness, scared of the person she might become if she kept on like this—a woman with a life so small it could fit into the trunk of a car. “I’ll try.”

“Try?” His voice sliced through her.

“What do you want from me?” she cried.

The man of steel thrust out his jaw. “I want you to be just as tough as you pretend.”

“You think this won’t be tough?”

His mouth tightened. An ominous foreboding crept through her. “Not tough enough,” he said. “Let’s raise the stakes.” He loomed above her. “Team Robillard won’t visit the farm, but Team Robillard also won’t call you, won’t even send a fricking e-mail. Team Bailey will have to live every day on faith.” He dug them in deeper, daring her to fold. “You won’t know where I am or who I’m with. You won’t know whether I’m missing you, or screwing around on you, or trying to figure out how to break it off.” For a moment, he was silent. When he spoke again, his aggression had faded, and his words brushed across her skin. “It’ll feel like I’m walking away from you, just like everyone else.”

She heard his tenderness, but she was too fragile to accept it. “I have to get back to jail.” She turned away.

“Blue…” He touched her shoulder.

She hurried to the door and out into the night. Then she began to run, stumbling through the grass until she got to the chief’s car. Dean wanted everything from her, and he was giving her nothing in return. Nothing except his heart, which was just as fragile as hers.

First Blue painted a series of gypsy caravans,
some tucked into secret coves, others traveling down country roads toward distant arrays of minarets and gilded onion domes. Then she moved on to bird’s-eye views of magical villages with crooked streets, prancing white horses, and an occasional fairy perched on a chimney pot. She painted like a madwoman, barely finishing one canvas before she began another. She stopped sleeping, barely ate. As she completed each piece, she tucked it away.

“You’re hiding your light under a bushel just like Riley was doing,” Nita declared to Blue over the noise in the Barn Grill on a Sunday morning in mid-September two months after Dean had gone back to Chicago. “Until you’ve got the courage to let people see your work, you’ve lost my respect.”

“That’ll keep me up at night,” Blue retorted. “And don’t act like no one’s seen them. I know you sent Dean copies of those digital photos you made me take.”

“I still can’t believe him and those parents of his sold their private story to that filthy tabloid. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that
headline. ‘Football Star Is Jack Patriot’s Love Child.’ They should have had more dignity.”

“That filthy tabloid was the highest bidder,” Blue pointed out. “And you’ve subscribed to it for years.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nita sniffed.

The print story had broken the second week of August with Dean, Jack, and April’s sole television interview not long after. April told Blue that Dean had decided to give up his secrets the day of Nita’s birthday party. Jack had gotten so choked up he’d barely been able to talk. They’d decided to sell the story to the highest bidder, using the money they received to set up a family foundation supporting organizations that helped hard-to-place children find permanent families. Riley alone had protested. She’d wanted to give the money to puppies.

Blue talked to all of them on the phone—everyone except Dean. April didn’t volunteer much information about him, and Blue couldn’t ask.

Nita tugged on a ruby earring. “The whole world’s gone crazy, you ask me. There were
four
RVs hogging up the parking spaces in front of that new bookstore yesterday. Next thing you know, we’ll have a McDonald’s on every corner. And why you told the Garrison Women’s Club they could meet at my house from now on, I’ll never know.”

“And I’ll never know why you and that awful Gladys Prader—a woman you used to hate—have struck up a friendship. Although some might call it a coven.”

Nita sucked on her teeth so hard Blue was afraid she’d swallow an incisor.

Tim Taylor popped up next to them. “The game’s starting. Let’s see if the Stars can finally pull one out.” He pointed toward the big-screen TV that the Barn Grill had added so everyone could follow the Stars on Sunday afternoons. “This time try to stop closing your eyes every time Dean takes the snap, Blue. You look like a sissy.”

“You mind your own business,” Nita shot back.

Blue sighed and dropped her head to Nita’s shoulder. She stayed like that for a while. Finally, she said, so only Nita could hear, “I can’t do this much longer.”

Nita patted her hand, brushed her cheek with a gnarled knuckle, then poked her in the ribs. “Sit up straight or you’ll get a hump.”

By October, Dean’s game had improved, but not his mood. The snippets of information he wormed out of Nita weren’t reassuring. Blue was still in Garrison, but no one knew for how long, and those brilliant, magical paintings of gypsy caravans and faraway places he’d seen in the photos Nita forwarded weren’t encouraging. The initial firestorm of publicity over Jack and Dean’s relationship had begun to die down. At least one member of his family attended every game, depending on their work and school schedules. Still, as much as he loved them all, the hole inside him kept growing larger. Every day Blue seemed to be slipping further away from him. A dozen times he picked up the phone to call her, but he always set it back down. Blue had his number, and she was the one with something to prove, not him. She had to do this on her own.

And then, on a rainy Monday morning at the end of October, he opened the
Chicago Sun-Times
, and all the blood drained from his head. A big color photograph showed him at Waterworks, his favorite dance club, with a model he’d dated last year. He had a beer bottle in one hand and the other wrapped tightly around her waist as they engaged in an intimate kiss.

Dean heard a roaring in his ears. This was exactly what Blue had been waiting for. He knocked over his morning coffee grabbing for the phone, all his resolutions to give her space forgotten. But Blue didn’t answer. He started leaving messages. Still no response. He called Nita. She subscribed to every Chicago paper, so he knew Blue would see the photo, but Nita didn’t answer, either. He was due at Stars headquarters in an hour for the required Monday-morning meeting. He jumped in his car and drove to O’Hare instead. On the way, he finally faced the truth about himself.

Blue wasn’t the only screwed-up person in this partnership. While she used her pugnacity to keep people at a distance, he used his amiability just as effectively. He’d said he didn’t trust her, but now that felt like a cop-out. He might be fearless on the football field, but he was a coward in real life. He always held back, so afraid of coming out a loser that he voluntarily put himself on the bench instead of playing the game to the end. He should have brought her to Chicago. Better to risk having it all fall apart than to cop out the way he had. It was long past time he grew up.

An ice storm in Tennessee canceled his original flight, and by the time he reached Nashville, it was late afternoon, cold and drizzly. He rented a car and took off for Garrison. On the way, he saw fallen tree limbs and utility trucks repairing downed power lines. Finally, he turned in to the muddy lane that led to the farm. Despite the bare trees, wet brown pastures, and his churning stomach, he felt as if he’d come home. When he saw the light shining through the living room windows, he drew his first clean breath since he’d opened the morning paper.

He left the car near the barn and made a dash through the rain for the side door. It was locked, and he had to let himself in with his key. “Blue?” He kicked off his wet shoes but kept his coat on as he moved into the chilly house.

No dirty dishes sat next to the sink, no cracker boxes lay open on
the countertops. Everything was spotless. A chill trickled through him. The house felt hollow.

“Blue!” He headed toward the living room, but the light he’d seen through the windows came from a lamp plugged into a timer. “Blue!” He took the stairs two at a time, but even before he reached his bedroom, he knew what he’d see.

She was gone. Her clothes were missing from his closet. The dresser drawers where she’d stored her underwear and T-shirts were empty. A cake of soap, still in its wrapper, sat on the shelf in his unused shower, and the only toiletries in the medicine chest belonged to him. His legs felt heavy as he entered Jack’s old bedroom. Nita had mentioned that Blue worked in here to take advantage of the light coming through the corner windows, but not even a tube of paint remained.

He made his way back downstairs. In her haste to leave, she’d forgotten her sweatshirt, and she’d left a book in the living room, but even the cherry yogurt she always kept in the refrigerator had vanished. He ended up in the living room, staring at the flickering light of the television but seeing nothing. He’d thrown the dice and lost.

His cell rang. He hadn’t gotten around to taking off his coat, and he pulled the phone from his pocket. It was April, calling to check up on him, and as he heard the concern in her voice, he dropped his forehead into his hand.

“She’s not here, Mom,” he said unsteadily. “She ran.”

Eventually, he fell asleep on the couch with QVC droning in the background. He awakened late the next morning with a stiff neck and an acid stomach. The house was still cold, and rain pummeled the roof. He stumbled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. It burned all the way down.

The rest of his life stretched in front of him. He dreaded the drive
back to the airport. All those miles with nothing to do but count the missteps he’d made. The Stars were playing the Steelers on Sunday. He had film to study, a strategy to plan, and he didn’t care about any of it.

He forced himself into the shower, but he couldn’t summon the will to shave. His empty eyes stared back at him from the mirror. This summer he’d found his family, but now he’d lost his soul mate. He wrapped the towel around his waist and drifted blindly into the bedroom.

Blue sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed.

He faltered.

“Hey, you,” she said softly.

His knees went weak. It had been so long since he’d seen her that he’d forgotten how beautiful she was. A few curls from that short, inky fracas brushed the corners of her grapesicle eyes. She wore a petite green wrap sweater and neatly fitted jeans that hugged her small hips. A pair of darker green ballet flats lay on the rug next to the bed. Instead of looking devastated, she seemed to be drinking him in, and her smile was almost shy. It hit him like a thunderbolt. After all the agony he’d put himself through,
she hadn’t seen the photo!
Maybe the ice storm had screwed up paper delivery. But then, why had she moved out?

“Did you let me know you were coming?” she said.

“I—uh—left a couple of messages.” About a dozen.

“I forgot my cell.” She regarded him searchingly.

He wanted to kiss her until neither of them could breathe, but he couldn’t do that. Not yet. Maybe never. “Where’s—where’s your stuff?”

She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“Where are your clothes? Your paints?” He raised his voice without meaning to. “Where’s that lotion you use? Your damn yogurt?
Where is it?
”

She looked at him like he was crazy. “All over the place.”

“No, it’s not!”

She unfolded her legs, the motion awkward. “I’ve been painting at the cottage. I’m working with oils now instead of acrylics. If I paint over there, I don’t have to sleep with the fumes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Oh, God, he was screaming. He tried to calm himself down. “There’s
no food here
!”

“I eat at the cottage so I don’t have to run back every time I get hungry.”

He pulled in some air to get his adrenaline rush under control. “What about your clothes? They’re missing.”

“No, they’re not,” she replied, still looking confused. “I moved my stuff into Riley’s room. I hated sleeping in here without you. Go ahead and laugh.”

He eased his hands off his hips. “Trust me. I don’t have a laugh anywhere in me right now.” He needed to be sure. “Have you given up bathing, too? You’re not using my shower.”

She dropped her legs over the edge of the bed, her brow knitting. “The other bathroom’s closer. Are you feeling all right? You’re starting to scare me.”

It hadn’t occurred to him to check the other bathrooms or walk over to the cottage. He’d let himself see only what he’d expected to find, a woman he couldn’t depend on. But he’d been the undependable one, not willing to put his heart on the line. He tried to regroup. “Where have you been?”

“I drove to Atlanta. Nita kept nagging me about my paintings, and there’s this incredible dealer there who—” She stopped herself. “I’ll tell you later. Did they bench you? Is that what this is about?” Her indignation flared. “How could they? So what if you weren’t on your game in September? You’ve played brilliantly ever since.”

“They didn’t bench me.” He pushed his hand through his damp hair. The bedroom was cold as hell, and he had goose bumps everywhere, and nothing was settled. “I need to tell you about something, and you have to promise to hear me out before you get crazy.”

She gasped. “Oh, God, you have a brain tumor! All this time, while I’ve been holed up here—”

“I don’t have a brain tumor!” He plunged in. “There was a picture of me in yesterday’s paper. Taken at a benefit for cancer research I went to last week.”

She nodded. “Nita showed it to me when I stopped to check on her.”

“You’ve already seen it?”

“Yes.” Blue continued looking at him as if he were demented.

He moved closer. “You saw the picture in yesterday’s
Sun-Times
? The one where I’m kissing another woman?”

Her expression finally clouded. “Who was that anyway? I should kick her ass.”

Maybe he’d suffered one too many concussions because he got light-headed and had to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Nita was in a snit, believe me.” Blue waved her hand and began to pace. “Despite the fact that she’s started to like you, she still believes all men are scum.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not all men, but don’t get me started on Monty the Loser. Do you know he had the nerve to call me and—”

“I don’t care about Monty!” He jumped back up. “I want to tell you about that picture!”

She looked vaguely annoyed. “Go ahead then.”

He did not understand this. Wasn’t Blue the woman who woke up every morning afraid of being abandoned? He tightened the knot on his towel, which was in danger of falling off. “I was standing at the bar when she came up to me. We’d dated a couple of times last year, but it never amounted to anything. She was drunk and she threw herself at me. Literally. I grabbed her so she didn’t fall.”

“You should have let her. People don’t have enough respect for your personal boundaries.”

Now her attitude was starting to piss him off. “I
let
her kiss me. I didn’t push her away.”

“I understand. You didn’t want to embarrass her. There were people standing all around, and—”