Judd read the one-page, single-spaced, typed letter, then balled it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his shorts. "How long before that coffee is ready?"
"A few more minutes. What did your editor say?"
"Nothing of importance."
"Then why are you looking so surly?"
"Because I haven't had my coffee yet." He sounded testy even to his own ears. But it wasn't Stevie he was aggravated with. It was Ramsey, the situation, his aroused body that refused to relax. "There are other more…pressing reasons for my crankiness, but I don't think you really want to hear the details, do you?"
She gave a quick, negative shake of her head.
'I didn't think so," he said in an undertone.
'Is Mr. Ramsey begging now? Is he as low as a slug and groveling?"
"No."
"Then what does he have to say?"
"Not much."
"What's in the letter?"
Her outcry took him by surprise. Shifting his attention from his straining sex to her, he saw that she was drawn up as tight as a high-octave piano wire and obviously none too pleased with his reticence. "Alright, you guessed. The letter was about you."
The instant he confirmed it, she dropped into the chair opposite his. "What did he say?"
"He informed me that you are missing," he said with a wry smile. "He told me that I was losing out on the hottest sports story so far this year. All any sports fan is talking about these days is Stevie Corbett's mysterious disappearance following her collapse at Lobo Blanco."
The light on the percolator blinked on, indicating that the coffee was ready. Stevie hadn't noticed it, so he got up. Returning to the table with two steaming mugs, he set one down in front of her and sipped at his own before continuing.
"Mike urged, strongly urged, that I stop pouting and come back to work immediately. He says that with my network of sources, I should be able to track you down before anybody else gets warm." Smiling into his steaming mug, he added, "He seems to have conveniently forgotten that he fired me."
"What are they saying?"
"Who?"
"All the sportswriters. Surely there've been theories on my disappearance."
"Ah, let's see, Mike mentioned something about suicide and-"
"Suicide?"
"That's one rumor, yes, but since your body hasn't been found…" He shrugged. "Another hypothesis is that you're secretly hospitalized somewhere. And there's been mention of an exclusive and revolutionary cancer treatment center in the Bahamas. I've been instructed to forget my novel for the moment and find out which guess about the 'Corbett broad'-and that's a quote-is right."
"He knows about your novel?"
"I've mentioned it off and on."
She had hit the nail on the head during their shouting match the night before. For years he had been telling anybody who would listen about this terrific sports novel he was going to write someday. But someday had just never got around to happening.
Until now. It was here. After many false starts over the years, he was finally into the novel and loving every minute of it. It was gut-wrenching, head-splitting, nerve-racking, ego-deflating work, but the prospect of having to set it aside indefinitely was unappealing.
On the other hand, he had financial obligations – like his expensive European car-that his checking account could cover for about another two weeks, and that was stretching it. He had to make a living to support his writing habit.
The solution to his problem was sitting across his grandma's oak table.
He was right on top of a hot sports story that he could sell to the highest bidder. With that nice, fat nest egg to fall back on, he could kiss Ramsey and the Tribune column goodbye, at least temporarily, and work full-time on the book he had to expunge from his system whether or not it was ever published.
"What are you going to do?"
Inadvertently Stevie had voiced the question he was wrestling with himself. She had the sense to look worried. She knew the importance of his decision and the impact it would have on her. She realized how valuable her story would be to the journalist who had an exclusive.
Judd ran his hand down his face. He felt terrible for a variety of reasons. His lower body was persistent in its reminders that it was as yet unappeased.
A queasiness had seized his stomach, which he attributed to drinking his coffee too fast, although he knew better. It was the thought of another golden opportunity slipping through his fingers that made him ill.
He answered the only way he could, the only way that felt right. "I'm going back to work."
He saw her swallow hard, but watched with admiration as she lifted her chin a notch. "In Dallas?"
She had guts, alright. He wondered how he'd missed seeing that during all these years that he'd been poking fun at her in his column.
'No. In the dining room." 'You won't… won't tell anybody where I am?"
"It'll remain our little secret for as long as you want it that way."
Her relief was visible. She relaxed her rigid posture. Still, she didn't gush gratitude. She didn't genuflect. "Good," she said simply.
"That will make my life easier, and I'm glad you're not forsaking your novel."
"Last night you said it sounded self-indulgent, boring and… what was the other word, disgusting?"
She had the grace to look chagrined. "You provoked me to speak unkindly."
"Speaking of provocative," Judd said, slowly leaving his chair and rounding the table, "this morning was-"
"Judd." She popped out of her chair as though her bottom had discovered a splinter in the smooth wood. "I wanted to explain about that."
He actually felt his face muscles forming his frown. "What's to explain?"
"Why it happened."
"I know why it happened. It's called lust, which according to Webster's is a noun meaning a desire to gratify the senses, bodily appetite, sexual desire, especially as seeking unrestrained gratification."
If the venomous look she shot him was any indication, she didn't think that was cute. "I was disoriented. Those pills are strong. I wasn't thinking clearly.'
She was backing away from him, staying just beyond his reach. That angered him as much as her excuse for her passion, which he knew damned good and well had been as all-encompassing as his.
"Oh, I see," he said. "You couldn't desire me unless you were under the influence of a controlled substance. Is that what you're saying?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what? Exactly." ' 'I don't want to make love with you," she declared curtly.
He barked a short laugh. "Like hell you don't."
That steamed her; he could tell. By now he knew the signs: a suffusion of color in her cheeks, a darkening of her eyes, which were the warm, soft color of expensive scotch but a hell of a lot more intoxicating, a determined lift of her chin.
"My life is in crisis," she said in a tight voice.
' 'So is yours. Neither of us needs a romance right now with anybody, but especially not with each other. Maybe we should have taken our cue from Stockholm and--"
"I did. You were hot and ready for me then, too."
Stevie closed her hands into fists and took a deep breath. "We've only got a few days left before I promised to give my manager an answer.
During that time, I think we should keep our friendship strictly platonic."
He drew close and sneered, "Tell that to your glands, baby."
She gasped with outrage, then whirled out of the room and up the stairs. He tore after her and got as far as the staircase before he stopped.
The Judd Mackie who hung out with the guys in bars after ball games and boxing matches was urging him not to be a nerd, to go after her. One kiss, one well-placed caress, and she'd be putty in his hands again, begging for it.