Her curly red hair had flour in it, and a streak of blue food coloring decorated her cheek. If he owned Cosmopolitan magazine, he'd have put her on the cover, just like that. In his mind, Sharon, with her pixie's face and freckled nose, was a lot more alluring than those big-breasted blondes in sequins and Spandex.
An image of Phoebe Somerville flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away. He wasn't going to let lust interfere with a search for his children's mother.
Sharon fumbled for the wooden spoon she had dropped. "Oh, uh-Hi. Come in."
Her nervousness appealed to him. It was nice being with a woman who wasn't used to being with a man like him. "I just stopped by for a minute to see how my pal Robert was doing with his broken arm."
"Robert, somebody's here to see you."
A cute little black kid in shorts and a T-shirt came rushing over to show off his cast. Dan admired the signatures on it, including his own, which was somewhat the worse for wear.
"Do you know Michael?" the child finally said.
In a town like Chicago, there was no doubt which Michael he meant, not even when the question came from a four-year-old.
"Sure. He lets me play basketball with him at his house sometimes."
"I bet he beats you real bad."
"Naw. He's afraid of me."
"Michael's not afraid of anybody," the child said solemnly.
So much for trying to make jokes about Jordan, even after his retirement. "You're right. He beats me real bad."
Robert led Dan over to the table to admire his cookies, and before long some of the other children had claimed his attention. They were so cute he couldn't get enough of them. Kids tickled him, maybe because he liked a lot of the same things they did: eating cookies, watching cartoons on TV, generally messin' around. Even though he was running late, he couldn't bring himself to leave.
Sharon, in the meantime, had spilled a measuring cup of sugar and just dropped an egg. He grabbed a paper towel to help her clean it up and saw that she was blushing again. He liked that curly red hair of hers and the way it was always flying all over the place.
"I seem to have the dropsies today," she stammered.
"That's one of those words you're not supposed to use around quarterbacks. Even retired ones."
It took her a few seconds to get the point, but then she smiled.
"You've got food coloring on your cheek."
"I'm such a mess." She dipped her head and rubbed her cheek with her shoulder, so that she ended up with food coloring in two places instead of one. "Honestly, I don't look like this all the time."
"Don't apologize. You look great."
"Ethan took my sprinkles," a little girl wailed.
Sharon immediately turned her attention to the child who was tugging on her slacks with messy fingers. This was something else he liked about her. Even when she was talking to an adult, the children were her first priority. He watched with admiration as she negotiated a settlement that would have done a diplomat proud.
"They could use you in the Middle East."
She smiled. "I think I'd better stick to sprinkles."
He glanced down at his watch. "I've got to go. I'm making a speech five minutes ago. My schedule's pretty crazy right now, but when things loosen up, let's go out to dinner. You like Italian?"
She had turned red again. "I-Yes, Italian's fine."
"Good. I'll call you."
"Okay." She seemed vaguely stunned.
Impulsively, he leaned forward and brushed her mouth with a quick kiss. On the way out to the parking lot, he smiled and licked his lips.
Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he tasted vanilla.
Chapter 12
Phoebe ran into Bobby Tom Denton in the hotel lobby at eight-thirty on Saturday evening. Although she had just arrived in Portland on a commercial flight from O'Hare, the Stars had been there since noon because NFL rules stated that visiting teams had to be in the city in which they were playing twenty-four hours before kick-off. She knew from an earlier glance at the schedule that the players had been in a meeting until 8:00 p.m. and were now free until their eleven o'clock curfew.
"Hey there, Miz Somerville." Her $8-million man gave her a grin that was nearly as wide as the black Stetson on his head. His stylishly frayed and faded jeans molded to his runner's legs, and his snakeskin cowboy boots had been perfectly broken in so that they were neither too new nor too run-down. Viktor would have been impressed.
Bobby Tom said, "I was worried you might not be here."
"I told you I'd come."
He pushed the brim of his hat back with his thumb. "You're going to be on the sidelines during the first quarter tomorrow, aren't you?"
She nibbled the corner of her lip. "Actually, Bobby Tom, I'm having some second thoughts."
"Hold on, now. I can see you and me need to have a serious conversation." One of his nimble, receiver's hands clasped her arm and gently steered her toward the bar. She could have protested, but she wasn't looking forward to an evening in a strange hotel room without even Pooh to keep her company.
The hotel bar was quiet and dark, and they settled in a small banquette in the corner, where Bobby Tom ordered a beer. "You look like the white wine type," he said. "How 'bout one of those fancy chardonnays."
Phoebe would have loved a chardonnay but she wasn't sure she liked being classified as a "white wine type," so she requested a margarita. The waitress, who'd been gazing at Bobby Tom with hungry eyes, went off to fill their orders.
"Are you allowed to drink the night before a game?"
"We're allowed to do just about anything as long as we give the team all we've got the next day. Drinkin' and curfew are the only two things the coach isn't real strict about. We're supposed to be in our rooms by eleven, but Coach was pretty much a hell-raiser in his playing days, and he knows we all have our own ways of blowin' off steam." Bobby Tom chuckled. "He's sort of a legend."
Phoebe told herself not to ask, but when it came to Dan Calebow, her curiosity seemed to have no bounds. "What do you mean? What kind of legend?"
"Well, some of the stories about him aren't fit for female ears, but I guess everybody knows how much he hated curfews. See, the coach only needs a couple of hours sleep at night, and when he was playin', he couldn't stand the idea of being cooped up in his room at eleven o'clock. Said it wound him up too tight for the game. So what he mostly did was slide in his room for bed check and then sneak out afterward for some serious partying. The coaches found out about it, of course. They fined him, benched him; none of it did any good, because he'd still be out closing down the bars. Finally, he told them if they didn't like it, they'd could either shoot him or trade him, but he wasn't gonna change. The only bad game he had his entire first season was when they put a guard outside his room. The next day, he threw five interceptions. After that, the coaches stopped bothering him about it. 'Course he settled down a little bit when he got older."
"Not much, I'll bet," she muttered as their drinks arrived.
Bobby Tom lifted his frosty mug. "Here's to whippin' some Saber butt."
"To butt whipping." She touched her glass to his, then licked a small space in the salty rim and took a sip of her margarita.
"Miz Somerville-"
"Phoebe's fine." She took another sip. Later, she would regret the calories, but not now.
"I guess when it's just the two of us first names are okay, but since you're the owner and all, I won't do it when we're in public."
"After those pictures in the newspaper, I don't think I have to worry too much about maintaining respectability."
"Weren't they great! Even got my best side." His grin faded. "You weren't serious when you said you wouldn't be on the sidelines tomorrow, were you?"
"I'm not sure it's a good idea. Not unless we can come up with a new good luck ritual."
"Oh, no. We can't do that. Even though we lost, I had one of the best games of my career against the Broncos last week. I've been playing football for a lot of years, and when something's working for me, I stick with it. See, as soon as I start making changes, then I'm thinking about the change instead of how the zone is lined up and whether or not I can get open. You understand what I'm saying?"