The Surprise Princess (6 page)

Brad’s hand at the small of her back urged Katie forward at the same time the woman gripped her hand in something between a shake and a tug, drawing her inside.

“Ah, Katie,” she said as if she’d had a suspicion confirmed. “Come in, come in before all the cold air in Chicago rushes in.”

“Let me take your coat,” Brad said. His attempt to follow through had them bumping and brushing in the small entry. “Andy, back up. You’ve got us hemmed in here and your grand entry hall would make most elevators seem spacious.”

“Oh, dear, I am sorry. I had no intention…”

As she twisted out of her coat, Katie caught Brad regarding his grandmother with an arrested – and slightly wary – expression.

The older woman stepped back, the coats were removed and hung up and they stepped into a small living room. A mantel over a decorative fireplace glittered with a closely-packed assemblage of trophies, framed photos, and plaques.

“A few of Brad’s awards,” Andrea Spencer said with a would-be casual gesture.

“The shrine,” Brad muttered behind her.

“Most are packed away, of course, since there’s no room for even a significant portion of them.”

He groaned.

“These come from his playing days at Ashton, just as he predicted. So he was right about going there. I was wrong. There. I said it. I was wrong.”

“Once, according to you,” he said with a grin, then added quickly, “How about some of your cake, Andy? I’m starving.”

“If you came here only to eat me out of house and home, you can turn around and leave.” The fond smile lighting her face belied the words. “You did enough of that as a teenager.”

“Of course I did. Why else would I come?”

“Ignore him, Katie.” The woman led them through a compact dining room to a pentagon-shaped space with open doors revealing a bedroom, a smaller room that appeared to be another shrine to Brad, an old-fashioned bathroom, and, finally, a kitchen to their right. “I do, however, happen to have a ring cake—”

“Vanilla with almonds and lots of icing?”

“—and I can offer you some tea.”

“Milk,” Brad said, opening the fridge. “As cold as you can make it.” “That sounds wonderful, Mrs. Spencer,” Katie said.

“Please, call me Andy. All of Brad’s friends do. Come through to the porch. There’s still some sun. Can’t miss any opportunity for sun during our winters.”

She settled them at a small table centered on windows at the end of the addition. She and Katie sat beside the windows facing each other, with Brad pulling up a chair at right angles. His grandmother poured Brad’s milk into a tall white pitcher and the tea steeped in a deep blue pot. The cake had pride of place on a raised dish in the center of the table.

Talk ranged from Andy’s garden waiting for spring under the snow to Brad’s youthful weeding assignments to the delicious cake to Brad’s teenage appetite to the current season to Brad’s playing days to the future prospects of this year’s players to the accomplishments of Brad’s teammates. Brad introduced the topics about current affairs, his grandmother segued to his past, then he would switch to a new discussion.

With a second wedge of cake on his plate, Brad reached for the milk pitcher. Under the table, Katie felt his leg shift. She’d kept her legs tucked back, but her caution did no good now as the side of his leg brushed against her knees.

“Sorry, Katie.” With his right hand around the pitcher, he reached his left under the table and spanned her leg above her knee, holding it in place when she would have retracted it. “You have position. Call that foul on me.”

“Foul?” His grandmother asked.

“Basketball talk,” he said easily.

At some level Katie noted the older woman had known – she’d shown a thorough familiarity with basketball. But that level was way, way, way back. Most of her was occupied with sparks along her nerves
whooshing
to wildfire status under his touch.

“No, uh, no problem.”

“There.” He leaned back, pitcher in hand. His leg moved away. More slowly, he removed his hand. “All set.”

“Have another slice,” Andy urged her as Brad dug into his.

“It’s delicious, but no thank you.”

“Katie’s got to save her appetite for the swank restaurant we’re going to,” he said.

His grandmother cocked her head. “The concession stand?”

“No.” His mock indignation was perfect. “A burger joint near the school. Best burgers in the Chicago metro area.”

“Bradford—” His grandmother’s grin undermined her remonstration.

Katie said, “To know if it’s the best, I’d have to test all the other burgers.”

Apparently delighted, he said, “That’s my plan. Got to admit it’s good for the budget.”

“But not the arteries.”

As their chuckles faded, Andy said, “Brad, I need you to do something for me.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Shoveling.”

His eyes narrowed. “The service did the walk and it looked fine.”

“They don’t do the back.”

“That’s because you said you didn’t need the back shoveled, refused to let me pay for it, and insisted it be removed from the contract.”

“No need for it in the contract. But the walk to the garage needs to be shoveled today. You go on now. I’m going to pour Katie more tea and we’re going to talk.”

“You don’t have anything in the garage. Not since you rented it to Ferdy down the street.”

“Nevertheless, the walk needs to be shoveled.”

The standoff lasted another fifteen seconds. “Fine. I’ll shovel the walk.” He retrieved his jacket, opened the back door a sliver, then turned to her. “Do not believe a word this woman says, Katie.”

“Bradford, that is no way to talk about your grandmother. In addition, you are letting all the cold air in. Go.”

He went.

A
ndy was smiling as she got up for the teapot. She poured, fussed a bit, then sat back down across from Katie.

“He’s a good boy. He was going to shovel as soon as I asked him, but he has to have something to say. Does it the same with the garden come summer. Stakes the tomatoes, puts the mulch down so there’s not much weeding. I raised a good boy. C.J. Draper coached a good man.”

Katie blinked. She’d met Brad’s mother and stepfather several times when they came by the office. So why did Brad’s grandmother say
she
had raised a good boy?

“Brad was an unsteady student in high school, with excellent test scores but erratic grades.”

“That’s—”

She debated if her next words should be “none of my business” or the more neutral, yet dampening “interesting.” Andrea Spencer talked right past her hesitation.

“His basketball performance was the same. He’d play brilliantly in close games or against superior teams. In easy games he was … unpredictable. Still, colleges recruited him, hoping for the brilliance. He had decided to accept an offer from a large state school. I had concerns that such a large program might leave him too much to his own devices. But Brad was determined. Only as a favor to me did he postpone making the commitment.

“Then Coach Draper came to see me. Do you know about that first group of young men Coach Draper signed to scholarships at Ashton University?”

She did. It was basketball lore, especially at Ashton. A well-known coach had been hired to guide the team’s move up to Division I. Then a bigger program hired him away. With no coach, no recruits, and a Division I schedule ahead, the school had gambled and hired untested C.J. Draper. He had recruited four unlikely players – three freshmen and a junior college transfer. They became the core of the team that reached the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight that first season, and even better in later seasons.

Brad’s grandmother didn’t wait for her response, however.

“Coach Draper had quite the uphill battle that first season. The top prospects had long signed with other schools. He needed to find players who had been overlooked. A friend of his knew Brad’s high school coach. Coach Draper came to see him play. He talked with Brad, his coaches, his teachers, and then he came to see me. Other coaches who had recruited Brad had heaped praise on him. Coach Draper said Brad was a project he was willing to take on if I would commit to – as he put it – holding his feet to the fire on the home front. I was more than willing.”

Andrea Spencer smiled, and her quirk of deviltry was so like Brad that Katie smiled back.

“Brad, however, was not.”

Katie blinked. “He wasn’t? He didn’t want to go to Ashton?” She couldn’t imagine Ashton without Brad.

“Not at all. He was set on that large school with a reputation as a party school.”

“Then how…?”Andrea’s smile was satisfied and wise without losing any of the deviltry. “I preyed on my grandson’s overriding weakness for underdogs.”

“Weakness for underdogs?”

“Oh, yes. From the time he was a toddler, he’d stand up for anybody being picked on, even if he didn’t like them. If he brought home a puppy, it was the runt. Why do you think he kept Spencer as his last name? His mother was the underdog after the divorce. She’d returned to her maiden name, so he did, too. When she remarried and Phillip would have adopted Brad, he wouldn’t hear of it, because the Spencer name was still the underdog. Not always tactful, our Brad. That was part of the trouble that led to his living here. Wasn’t until Brad’s sisters — half-sisters – started growing up and he saw what they put their father through that he connected with Phillip.”

She leaned forward and said confidingly, “Sometimes the poor boy gets confused and thinks
I’m
an underdog he needs to champion.” She sat back, satisfaction strong in her face. “Why do you think he’s out shoveling a walk he knows I won’t use. Yes, sometimes I use his weakness for underdogs – but only for his own good. Like about Ashton.”

“What did you do?” Katie asked, mesmerized by the image of Brad being manipulated by his tiny grandmother. She probably should stop her from sharing personal details of Brad’s life … but she was only human.

“I told him Ashton and Coach Draper didn’t have a chance. They’d be chewed up and spit out by Division I basketball. Any players who signed with the Aces were destined for abject failure. There was a moment there when I thought I’d laid it on too thick. But, no. Two days later, Brad announced – with great defiance – he was signing with Ashton. As you heard, I’ve let him go on thinking he was right and I was wrong.” Andy cocked her head. “You don’t approve?”

“Me? It’s not my place to approve or disapprove, Mrs. Spencer.”

“Ah, gave yourself away there, dear, calling me Mrs. But I don’t regret it. Not for a minute. Coach Draper sat in that chair you occupy now and promised Brad would receive an education, in and out of the classroom, and he kept his promise. You know Brad was held out of four games his sophomore year because his grades were too low?” The woman sounded oddly proud. “That was the action of an honorable man, keeping his word, and that is when Brad truly began to become a man.”

Katie happened to know Carolyn, then the team’s academic advisor, had a share in that suspension, but no sense pointing that out. No time, either, because Andrea Spencer was going on.

“If my husband had lived longer, Brad would have learned that here at home. I did my best, but… Well, as I said, Brad got into some trouble. Caused tension at home, what with his mom and Phillip starting a second family. Brad was a champion of throwing gasoline on every fire. Sometimes he reminds me so much of his grandfather…”

Andy tapped the edge of her teacup decisively. “First time I met Ted Spencer, I tingled. Felt that way more often than not through our married life and that’s saying something for fifty-six years together.” She looked out the window. “Not that they can’t make you crazy mad in a heartbeat. I suppose you know that about Brad.”

“Oh, no. You misunderstood. We’re colleagues,
professional
colleagues.”

“Pretty girl like you shouldn’t tell fibs.” The older woman clicked her tongue, then sighed. “Professional. That’s my one disappointment. Not that I don’t respect a man like Coach Draper… But I had hoped Brad might become a lawyer, like his friend Ellis. Or a teacher like Frank – such a sweet boy. Or, even, like Thomas Abbott, a businessman.”

“He does all those things as a coach,” Katie said. “And he does them extremely well.”

Andrea Spencer looked at her. “Does he?”

“Absolutely. He has to know the laws and rules to protect his players and the school. Coaches are advocates for their players, too. And then they have to turn around and be good businessmen, keeping an eye on the budget. Not to mention knowing business to deal with supporters and alumni. And of course they’re teaching all the time. About the game, but also like you said about C.J., about being adults and living in the world.”

“C.J. said you were a very sharp young lady.”

“C.J.?”

“That recruiting trip was not the last time he sat in that chair. He often stops by when he’s in Chicago. He speaks highly of you. Now I’ve met you, I see what he means. I have high hopes for you. Very high hopes.”

There was something about the way Brad’s grandmother said those words that unsettled her. The door opening left no time to consider it, however.

“The walk is shoveled, and I’m guessing the dirt’s been dished, so give me another piece of that cake fast. We have a game to get to.”

They registered, dropped their things at the hotel, stopped for burgers as promised, and were climbing the bleachers, looking for seats, as starting lineups were announced.

As they climbed over a gray-haired man who’d staked out the aisle seat and wasn’t giving it up, two men about Brad’s age greeted him by name from two rows up. Both looked at her curiously.

They were assistant coaches from two rival teams, and she’d met them when their teams played at Ashton. Clearly they didn’t recognize her.

Brad had told her he was primarily here to connect with a senior forward who’d already committed to Ashton – a courtesy call. But it was also an opportunity to watch a hot young guard named Eric Bridge.

There’d be no contact with Bridge, since he was a sophomore. But it was good to let him see Ashton’s interest, preparing for when they could communicate with him this summer.