"'Famous Tennis Pro Screws Famous Sportswriter to Death.'"
"Will you behave? This is serious. I don't think you realize how badly your nasty articles have wounded me."
His soft laughter subsided. "Why didn't you just consider the source and blow them off?"
"Because almost everything you've written about me is true."
His hand ceased strumming her spine. He eased her off him, placed her on her back, and rolled to his side. Propped on one elbow and leaning over her, he asked, "What are you talking about?"
"Off-the-record?"
"In journalistic circles, when the interviewer is in bed with the interviews in a state of undress and sexual repletion, it's generally understood that whatever is said is unprintable."
"Oh. Thank you for clarifying that."
"You're welcome. Now quit stalling and run that by me again. What do you mean, everything I've written about you is the truth?"
"A lot of it was. You've often said that I don't belong on a tennis court. In a way, you're right, Judd. From the very beginning my father discouraged me from playing because tennis was 'a rich kid's sport.' I played anyway, but what he had said stuck with me. It gave me a complex. I wasn't like the other players. I wasn't as… as privileged.11 "That's nonsense."
"Maybe, but that sense of inferiority compelled me to prove myself. I had to work harder at it than anyone else, always playing catch-up. I was accepted into most clubs because of my ability on the court, not my pedigree.
"I always had to be better," she stressed, making an appeal for his understanding, "because acceptance depended on it. That's why, when I was financially able, I always dressed well and played up to the spectators. Don't you see, Judd? I was saying, 'Hey, look at me. I'm worthy of your attention.' I was desperate to win approval.
And, yes, sometimes I even resorted to being cute just to ensure that I wouldn't be ignored.
"You saw through all my machinations," she told him in a voice husky with emotion. "You had me pegged from the very beginning. Your columns struck terror in me because they were so incisive. I feared that if my insecurities were visible to you, they must be to everyone else. I'm the classic sufferer of the impostor syndrome.
You were my worst nightmare, the person who would expose me."
His eyes were fixed on her lower lip, but he wasn't contemplating its sexiness so much as he was arranging his own thoughts.
"If all that is true, Stevie, it was an accident.
If I tapped into your insecurities, it was by chance and had nothing to do with incisiveness.
Fact is, I took digs at you because I resented that a cute, young thing like you could do what you did so well and reach the pinnacle of your sport, when I'd had to fall back on writing about how others were doing what I wanted to do myself.
Hacking out that dumb column is a far cry from a career in professional baseball."
"It is not dumb," she said, laying a sympathetic hand along his cheek. "I only said it showed no talent or finesse because I was angry.
You've cultivated a faithful reading audience that wouldn't miss a single acerbic word. No writer can do that for any length of time unless there's substance behind his writing. Your readers aren't fools, you know."
"Thanks for the compliment." He finally surrendered to the temptation and kissed her lower lip. "But I know, deep down, that I haven't done a single worthwhile thing since I had that water-skiing accident."
His hazel eyes became dark and intent. "Not until I brought you here. Maybe I've redeemed myself for all the jealousy I've harbored against you." 'Jealousy?" 'Of you and every other pro who made it. I've been lashing out at all of you to some extent, but you were the easiest one to single out."
"Why?"
"Because you were atypical. You weren't muscle-bound and unattractive, which was my chauvinistic, narrow-minded opinion of what a professional woman athlete should look like.
"And," he added around a deep breath, "as long as I'm baring my soul, I might just as well go all the way. I was still miffed about Stockholm.
I wanted to go to bed with you, didn't get to, so I was sulking like the little boy who didn't get his candy. Maliciously I disparaged the very thing I desired. Pretty juvenile, huh?"
"Pretty human."
"You're being generous."
"I'm in a generous mood." She smiled up at him and drew a line down his nose with her fingertip.
"To prove just how generous, I'll forgive you every nasty word you've ever written about me on one condition."
"What?" he asked suspiciously.
She whisked a kiss across his lips. "Make love to me again."
"Stevie, we really shouldn't."
"Why not?"
He hesitated, which was a mistake. She took advantage of his indecision by sliding her hand down his middle and cupping the full heaviness of his manhood.
"We shouldn't because it might…uh-" he became hard beneath her rhythmic stroking "-might not be good for you," he finished lamely.
"I'll be the judge of that." Her lips nibbled at his chin, her teeth making scratching sounds against his stubble. Her hand became even more persuasive, her thumb lazily inquisitive. "Please, Judd," she breathed against his lips.
Moaning, he clasped her around the waist and pulled her on top of him. "Well, since you asked so nicely '
Insects gave up their lives against the windshield of Judd's stolen car. The gooey smudges they created made little difference to the thief who could barely see the markings on the interstate highway through her tears.
Stevie wiped her nose on her sleeve. After seventy-five miles she would have thought her supply of fresh tears would be exhausted, but it wasn't. Each time she thought of what she had left behind and the ordeal that she was facing, another hot, salty batch filled her red, swollen eyes.
She had left him and he'd been furious.
Even now, her heartache was overshadowed by the fear that Judd might somehow catch up with her. Glancing once over her shoulder as she had sped away from the farmhouse, she had glimpsed him, wearing only his underwear, running down the porch steps. His fist had been raised. He was cursing her and the rock that had gouged his bare heel.
It could have been a comic sight; it hadn't been. It had broken her heart, and it was still broken. She rather imagined that it would remain broken for a long time.
The skyline of Dallas was glittering and glitzy against the western horizon, deep indigo now in the waning dusk. In an hour she would be at her condominium, she calculated mentally. Allow an hour to make necessary phone calls and pack.
Then…
She refused to think beyond that. The only way she would get through this alone, without jeopardizing her sanity, would be to take it one step at a time. First things first. Getting home was first.
As she took the exit in the concrete labyrinth that connected one expressway to another, she permitted herself to reflect on their afternoon of lovemaking.
Judd, speaking softly and sexily. Judd, his hands instructive and sensuous, guiding her hips down over him. Judd, hard and full and smooth, filling her. Judd, his lips hungry, yet tender, on her breasts. Judd, Judd, Judd.
She dashed tears out of her eyes as she switched lanes cautiously, unaccustomed to driving a sports car with an engine powerful enough to fly an airplane. He would never forgive her for "borrowing" it without his permission.
He would never forgive her for leaving him stranded, either.
The farmhouse's old-fashioned bathtub had become a shrine in which they'd worshiped each other's bodies. Hands covered with soapy lather were the sexiest instruments ever employed to give carnal pleasure. Or was it that Judd just knew how to use them?
It had been a delight to discover that the undersides of her upper arms were particularly susceptible to open-mouthed kisses and that kisses to the backs of her knees left her weak.