Susan Phillips - It Had To Be You

All in all, it had been a dismal week. Ray Hardesty, the Stars' former defensive end, whom Dan had cut in early August, had driven drunk one too many times and gone through a guardrail on the Calumet Expressway. He'd been killed instantly, along with his eighteen-year-old female passenger. All through the funeral, as Dan had watched the faces of Ray's grieving parents, he'd kept asking himself if there had been something more he could have done. Rationally, he knew there wasn't, but it was a tragedy all the same.

The only bright spot in his week had occurred at a DuPage County nursery school where he'd gone to film a public service announcement for United Way. When he'd walked in the door, the first thing he'd noticed was a pixie-faced, redheaded teacher sitting on the floor reading a story to a group of four-year-olds. Something had gone ' all soft and warm inside him as he'd studied her freckled nose and the spot of green finger paint on her slacks.

When the filming was done, he'd asked her out for a cup of coffee. Her name was Sharon Anderson, and she'd been tongue-tied and shy, a welcome contrast to all the bold-eyed women he was accustomed to. Although it was too early to speculate, he couldn't help but wonder if he might not have found the simple, home-lovin' woman he was searching for.

But the residual glow from his meeting with Sharon had faded by the day of the Jets game, and he continued to seethe over the loss as he endured the postgame activities. It wasn't until he stood on the tarmac waiting to board the charter that would take them back to O'Hare that he snapped.

"Son of a bitch!"

He pivoted so abruptly he bumped into Ronald McDermitt, knocking the acting general manager off-balance so that he dropped the book he was carrying. It was what the kid deserved, Dan thought callously, for being born a wimp. Although Ronald was no more than five-foot-eight, he wasn't bad-looking, but he was too neat, too polite, and too young to run the Chicago Stars.

In pro teams the GM directed the entire operation, including hiring and firing of coaches, so that, theoretically, Dan worked for Ronald. But Ronald was so intimidated by him that his authority was purely academic.

The GM picked up his book and looked at him with a wary expression that made Dan crazy. "Sorry, Coach."

"I bumped into you, for chrissake."

"Yes, well…"

Dan shoved his carry-on bag into Ronald's arms. "Get somebody to drop this off at my house. I'll catch a later flight."

Ronald looked worried. "Where are you going?"

"It's like this, Ronald. I'm going to go do your job for you."

"I-I'm sorry, Coach, but I don't know what you mean by that."

"I mean that I'm going to look up our new owner, and then I'm going to acquaint her with a few facts about life in the big bad NFL."

Ronald swallowed so hard his Adam's apple bobbed. "Uh, Coach, that might not be a good idea. She doesn't seem to want to be bothered with team business."

"Now that's just too bad," Dan drawled as he set off, "because I'm going to bother her real bad."

Pooh got distracted by a Dalmatian as they were crossing Fifth Avenue just above the Metropolitan. Phoebe tugged on the leash.

"Come on, killer. No time for flirting. Viktor's waiting for us."

"Lucky Viktor," the Dalmatian's owner replied with a grin as he approached Phoebe and Pooh from the opposite curb.

Phoebe regarded him through her Annie Sullivan sunglasses and saw that he was a harmless yuppie type. He took in her clingy, lime green dress, and his eyes quickly found their way to the crisscross lacing at the open bodice. His jaw dropped.

"Say? Aren't you Madonna?"

"Not this week."

Phoebe sailed by. Once she reached the opposite curb, she whipped off her sunglasses so no one would make that mistake again. Lord… Madonna, for Pete's sake. One of these days, she really had to start dressing respectably. But her friend Simone, who had designed this dress, was going to be at the party Viktor was taking her to tonight, and Phoebe wanted to encourage her.

She and Pooh left Fifth Avenue behind for the quieter streets of the upper Eighties. Oversized hoops swung at her ears, gold bangles clattered at both wrists, her chunky-heeled sandals tapped the sidewalk, and men turned to look as she passed by. Her curved hips swayed in a sassy walk that seemed to have a language all its own.

Hot cha cha

Hot cha cha

Hot hot

Cha cha cha cha

It was Saturday evening, and affluent New Yorkers dressed for dinner and the theater were beginning to emerge from the fashionable brick and brownstone town houses that lined the narrow streets. She neared Madison Avenue and the gray granite building that held the co-op she was subleasing at bargain rates from a friend of Viktor's.

Three days ago, when she'd returned to the city from Montauk, she'd found dozens of phone messages waiting for her. Most of them were from the Stars' office, and she ignored them. None were from Molly saying she'd changed her mind about going directly from camp to boarding school. She frowned as she remembered their strained weekly phone calls. No matter what she said, she couldn't seem to make a dent in her sister's hostility.

"Evening, Miss Somerville. Hello, Pooh."

"Hi, Tony." She gave the doorman a dazzling smile as they walked into the apartment building.

He gulped, then quickly leaned down to pat Pooh's pom-pom. "I let your guest in just like you said."

"Thanks. You're a prince." She crossed the lobby, her heels tapping on the rose marble floor, and punched the elevator button.

"Can't get over what a nice guy he is," the doorman said from behind her. "Somebody like him."

"Of course he's a nice guy."

"It makes me feel bad about the names I used to call him."

Phoebe bristled as she followed Pooh into the elevator. She had always liked Tony, but this was something she couldn't ignore. "You should feel bad. Just because a man is gay doesn't mean he isn't a human being who deserves respect like everyone else."

Tony looked startled. "He's gay?"

The doors slid shut.

She drummed the toe of her sandal on the floor as the elevator rose. Viktor kept telling her not to be such a crusader, but too many of the people she cared about were gay, and she couldn't turn a blind eye to the discrimination so many of them faced.

She thought of Arturo and all he had done for her. Those years with him in Seville had gone a long way toward restoring her belief in the goodness of human beings. She remembered his short pudgy body straightening in front of his easel, a smear of paint streaking his bald pate as he absentmindedly rubbed his hand over the top of his head while he called out to her, "Phoebe, querida, come here and tell me what do you think?"

Arturo had been a man of grace and elegance, an aristocrat of the old school, whose innate sense of privacy rebelled at the idea of letting the world know about his homosexuality. Although they'd never discussed it, she knew it comforted him to pass her off to the public as his mistress, and she loved being able to repay him in some small way for everything he had given her.

The elevator doors slid open. She crossed the carpeted hall and unlocked her own door while Pooh tugged at the leash, yipping with excitement. Bending down, she unfastened the clip. "Brace yourself, Viktor. The Terminator is on the rampage."

As Pooh shot off, she ran her hands through her blond hair to fluff it. She hadn't blown it dry after her shower, deciding to let it curl naturally for the sexy windblown look Simone's deliciously trampy dress demanded.

An unfamiliar male voice with a distinct Southern drawl boomed out from her living room. "Down, dawg! Down, dammit!"

She gasped, then dashed forward, the soles of her sandals slipping on the checkerboard black-and-white marble floor as she whipped around the corner. Hair flying, she lurched to a stop as she saw Dan Calebow standing in the middle of her living room. She recognized him immediately, even though she'd only had a brief conversation with him at her father's funeral. Still, he wasn't the sort of man one forgot easily, and over the past six weeks, his face had unaccountably popped into her memory more than once.

Blond, handsome, and bigger than life, he looked like a born troublemaker. Instead of a knit shirt and chinos, he should have been wearing a rumpled white suit and driving down some Southern dirt road in a big old Cadillac hooking beer cans over the roof. Or standing on the front lawn of an antebellum mansion with his head thrown back to bay at the moon while a young Elizabeth Taylor lay on a curly brass bed upstairs and waited for him to come home.

She felt the same uneasiness she'd experienced at their first meeting. Although he looked nothing at all like the football player who'd raped her all those years ago, she had a deep-seated fear of physically powerful men. At the funeral she'd managed to hide her disquiet behind flirtatiousness, a protective device she had developed into a fine art years ago. But at the funeral, they hadn't been alone.

Pooh, who regarded rejection as a personal challenge, was circling him, tongue flopping, her pom-pom tail beating out a cadence of lovemelovemelovemeloveme.

He looked from the dog to Phoebe. "If she pees on me, I'm skinnin' her."

Phoebe rushed forward to snatch up her pet. "What are you doing here? How did you get in?"

He studied her face rather than her curves, which immediately set him apart from most men. "Your doorman's a big Giants' fan. Heck of a nice guy. He surely enjoyed those stories I told him about my encounters with L.T."

Phoebe had no idea who L.T. was, but she remembered the flippant instructions she'd left with Tony when she'd gone to walk Pooh. "I'm expecting a gentleman caller," she had said. "Let him in, will you?"

The conversation she'd just had with her doorman took on a whole new light.

"Who's L.T.?" she asked, while she tried to calm Pooh, who was straggling to get out of her arms.

Dan looked at her as if she'd just been beamed down from outer space. Sticking his fingers in the side pockets of his slacks, he said softly, "Ma'am, it's questions like that are gonna get you in a heap of trouble at team owners' meetings."

"I'm not going to any team owners' meetings," she replied with enough saccharine to supply a Weight Watchers convention, "so it won't be a problem."

"Is that so?" His country boy grin was at odds with the chill in his eyes. "Well, then, ma'am, Lawrence Taylor used to be the team chaplain for the New York Giants. A real sweet-tempered gentleman who'd lead us all in prayer sessions before the game."

She knew she was missing something, but she wasn't going to inquire further. His intrusion into her apartment had shaken her, and she wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. "Mr. Calebow, as much as I adore having uninvited company scare the wits out of me, I'm afraid I don't have time to talk right now."

"This won't take long."

She could see that she wasn't going to budge him until he'd had his say, so she did her best to assume an air of studied boredom. "Five minutes then, but I'll have to get rid of my critter first." She made her way to the kitchen to deposit Pooh. The poodle looked pitiable as Phoebe shut the door on her.

When she returned to her unwelcome visitor, he was standing in the middle of the room taking in the owner's trendy decorating scheme. Frail, twig-shaped metal chairs were juxtaposed with oversized couches upholstered in charcoal gray canvas. The lacquered walls and slate floor emphasized the room's cool, stark lines. Her own more comfortable, and considerably less expensive, furniture was in storage-everything except the large painting that hung on the room's single unbroken wall.

The languorous nude was the first painting Arturo had done of her, and even though it was quite valuable, she would never part with it. She lay on a simple wood-framed bed in Arturo's cottage, her blond hair spilling over the pillow as she gazed out of the canvas. The sun dappled her bare skin from the light that shone through a single window set high in the white stucco wall.

She hadn't hung the painting in the apartment's most public room out of vanity, but because the natural light from the large windows displayed it best. This portrait had been more realistically executed than his later depictions of her, and looking at the figure's soft curves and gentle shadings gave her a sense of peace. A spot of coral emphasized the slope of her breast, a brilliant patch of lemon illuminated the swell of her hip, and delicate lavender shadows were woven like silk threads through the paleness of her pubic hair. She seldom thought of the figure in the painting as herself, but as someone far better, a woman whose sexuality hadn't been stolen from her.