“I’ll be fine.”
“I mean it.”
“Thanks for dinner, even if I embarrassed you by falling off the bench.”
He gave her a tired grin. “Hey, I could care less. It’s not me who showed my blue panties to Benito.”
She winced.
“I had a great time earlier tonight. I want to see you again…. There’s something we should talk about, though.” He passed a hand over his eyes, rubbing at them with the heel of it.
“Troy. You deal with your family situation and don’t worry about anything else for the time being. You know where to find me once things are more settled. After Hours isn’t going anywhere.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Yeah.”
The cab pulled up and Troy handed her into the backseat, passing some cash to the driver once she was settled. “Troy, I can pay my own cab fare….”
He ignored her, gave the cabbie the address and then dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. “See you soon, Peggy-Sue. Don’t run off and get married.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fat chance of that. I’ve seen all I want of domestic bliss tonight.”
PEGGY DIDN’T EVEN TRY to go into her bedroom when she got home, since she knew she couldn’t sleep. Her apartment seemed particularly sterile, after the ugly but somewhat endearing geezer furnishings of Troy’s place. Peggy sat cross-legged on the pristine taupe carpet and stared at Marly’s painting on her wall. The girl on the faux television screen stared back at her, midkick. Her red hair flew in the breeze, her jersey slid askew against her body and her athletic pants were dirtied with smudges. The ultimate tomboy, she didn’t look like the kind of girl who’d ever work in a salon and day spa.
Peg twisted her mouth wryly, dug her bare toes into the carpet and started going through the mail she’d grabbed on her way in.
She discarded a flyer encouraging her to buy a house from a man with a smarmy smile, a notification for the previous resident that her cat was due for shots and a department store catalogue filled with all sorts of things she didn’t need and couldn’t afford.
She did open a couple of bills and a letter from the school where she coached. She scanned it, her disbelief turning to anger.
Dear Ms. Underwood,
We regret to inform you that the school’s athletic field will be undergoing improvements in the next few months, since we can expect relatively dry weather at this time of the year and must finish the process before the rainy season.
The school board has made the decision to move all of Woodward’s athletic activities—practice and games—to the fields at the Coral Gables Youth Center. Since there are hundreds of teams utilizing these facilities, we have been given specific time slots in which to hold our activities, and there are not enough to go around.
For this reason, we must regretfully inform you that the girls’ football program has been eliminated for the season. We realize that this may cause disappointment to both you and the young ladies affected by the decision. We look forward to the program resuming at some point next year, when the work on the athletic fields has been completed….
“What?” Peggy shouted aloud to the absent principal. “I don’t see anything about the boys’ program being eliminated!” It was the perfect ending to an already miserable evening: her pet project, meant to empower girls and teach them that there were no limits to what they could do, was being flushed.
12
TROY MADE SURE that Samantha’s attorney filed a restraining order in the morning. He tried to get her to take the day off, but she insisted on going to work while he dropped the kids off at school.
Then he coolly took Mr. Creep’s Dodge Ram to Home Depot and purchased another door, since the Lotus wasn’t much use for hauling supplies. He figured the jerk was still sleeping off his hangover somewhere, and would never know. When he got back, he left a window down and the keys in the ignition. It wasn’t his problem if the truck got stolen, and he didn’t want his brother-in-law breaking into the house to find them.
He had popped the original door off its hinges and was hauling it around the side of the house when a bright blue Mini Cooper zoomed up, red hair flying out the driver’s-side window. Peggy popped out of the munchkin-mobile like a cork from a champagne bottle—but her mood was anything but celebratory.
“Bastards!” she spat. “Chauvinist pigs from hell! Stupid assholes!” She waved a crumpled piece of paper at him, and then her eyes fell on the new door.
“Did Derek and the twins get any sleep? Sam? They doing better? The jerk didn’t try to come back, did he?”
Troy absorbed the change of focus and emotion with calm amusement. “Derek slept. So did Sam. Danni and Laura not so well. But I’ll make them take naps this afternoon and go to bed early. No, the jerk did not come back. Did you sleep? Judging from the purple bags under your eyes and the yawn that’s pulling your mouth over your head at this moment, I’d say no. Now, what has you in such a lather?”
“I didn’t sleep because I got this!” She waved the paper again, and he took it from her hand while she continued to rant. “You haven’t received the notice from the school? That they’re moving all the athletic teams to the youth center for practice and games?”
“I never opened my mail yesterday. Why are they doing this?” Troy started to read.
“They have canceled the girls’ football league for the season! Because there aren’t enough time slots at the center to go around! But do they eliminate the boys’ program? Oh, no. Just the girls’!” Peggy was beside herself, practically hyperventilating. “It’s just powder-puff, so it has no significance. It’s expendable!”
Oh, boy. He finished scanning the letter and gave it back to her, frowning.
“They can’t do this!” she said.
“Unfortunately, they can. A private school gets no state or federal funding, so they’re not subject to the same rules that public schools are. What other teams got cut? Girls’ softball? Any boys’ activities?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet.”
“Well, do me a favor. Help me get this door lined up so I can drop the pins into the hinges and then lock it. Then we’ll go back to my place and make some calls.”
“What about the back door?” she asked. “Does the creep have a key to that?
“He doesn’t have a key to anything anymore. Sam had the locks changed. I’ll drop off a set of these to her on the way over to Coral Gables.”
Peggy helped him line up the hinges on the new door, and dropped in the bottom pins while he got the top one in. Troy had to plane the wood slightly so that it would open and close easily.
She watched him as he worked, muscles in his arms flexing and sweat trickling down his back, disappearing into the waistband of his low-slung jeans. She traded in some of her anger for pure female appreciation and lust.
Troy’s hair was still mussed from the previous night and he hadn’t shaved: sawdust particles clung to some of his beard bristle, and even in his eyelashes. She resisted the urge to wipe his face for him—he probably wouldn’t appreciate it.
He finished planing the door, opened and closed it with satisfaction, and then grabbed a broom to clean up the mess. She took it from him. “Let me do that, and you