Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance) Read online

  She let him guide her down the street. He slowed down, though whether it was in deference to her high heels or because of his bad knee, she couldn’t say.

  Chapter Two

  Nathan jerked the truck door open, picked up a playbook and knee brace from the passenger side, and threw them behind the seat. It was a long way to the running board and Tolly was not a tall woman. She pulled up her pencil skirt and started to climb. After she slipped twice, Nathan scowled at her and picked her up and threw her in. He wasn’t rough about it but he was resolved.

  He launched himself behind the wheel and turned on her all in one furious motion.

  “Keep your hands off my QB-One,” he said.

  What? Tolly literally felt her eyes glaze over. She was expecting a rant on her past sins but what was this?

  Nathan must have noted her perplexed expression. “Don’t even try that with me, Townshend. You can pretend to be stupid with everyone else. For reasons I cannot fathom, even Harris seems to believe you have no knowledge of football terminology. But just in case you have had a lobotomy that I am unaware of, I will be clear. Keep your hands off my first string quarterback. Seven. Kirby Lawson. Do not touch him. Ever again.”

  Now she was really confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nathan.”

  “Do not touch him. If you still need for somebody to think you’re the cutest little thing north of a bow on a pig’s tail, go sell yourself somewhere else. I’m sure you’d have plenty of buyers. But it’s not going to be my quarterback.”

  As comprehension finally set in, heat and ice formed in her stomach and radiated outward to her heart, her hands, and finally her tongue. The ice that she always depended on to keep her emotions in check abandoned her.

  “Oh, my God! Kirby is a boy. A child. He works for me. What kind of person do you think I am?”

  Nathan raised his shaking hands in front of him and closed his eyes. “I think,” he said between clenched teeth as he gripped the steering wheel. “I think you are the kind of person who will lie, deceive, and pretend. I think you are the kind of person who will do whatever it takes to get attention. I think you play with people. I think they don’t come much lower than you, Townshend Harris Lee, of the Calhoun County Harrises and Lees.”

  Calm. Cool. She lived by it. “You do know,” she said slowly, giving the ice time to chase the fire away, “that lie, deceive, and pretend, all mean basically the same thing. You have, therefore, been redundant in your speech.”

  Nathan hit the steering wheel with his fist. “You know plenty about all three.”

  “I was not flirting with that child.”

  “I saw you. I saw you holding his hand, hugging him, and smiling like he was the best thing on Earth — doing whatever it took to make him think you are the most amazing thing to ever priss her expensive ass across a courtroom floor.” Nathan’s voice then turned to a mocking falsetto that might have been funny under different circumstances. “‘Kirby, honey, call me if you need anything. Or if you just want to talk. I mean it.’”

  There was anger beneath the frozen calm but Tolly no longer felt it. “What you saw, was me — an adult woman — offering comfort to a devastated boy who has lost the only stable person in his life.”

  “Adult, huh? Is that what you are these days?”

  “You know very well I was not flirting with Kirby.”

  “I am an authority, maybe even the authority on what Townshend Lee will and will not do. If there was a journal called Townshend Harris Lee and her Lying Cheating Scheming Debutante Ways, they would hire me to be the editor. I would be the keynote speaker at every conference. I would lead panel discussions.”

  “Nathan, I was sixteen years old.” Tolly’s voice was quiet.

  “And therein was the problem, wasn’t it?”

  Tolly picked up her bag from the floorboard. “I’m getting out of this truck, Nathan, and I am going to get in my car and go back to work.” Just to show she was in control, she removed a lipstick from her purse and took her time reapplying it. Then she carefully blotted her mouth with a tissue. “You know very well I have no unsavory intentions toward Kirby. If he thinks well of me, it’s not because of my scheming ways, as you so eloquently put it. It’s because I’ve been good to him. It’s because I pay him more than it’s worth to put up my Christmas decorations and because I invented a dozen odd jobs last spring so he’d have money for the prom. Your implications are not only insulting but preposterous. Though I wouldn’t expect you to care about either one. If you ever feel the need to have a reasonable conversation with me about our past, I will do that. But I will never again sit still and let you accuse me of something like this.”

  “Stay away from my quarterback. I’ll be watching you.”

  Without acknowledging that Nathan had spoken again, Tolly hiked up her skirt, jumped down from the monstrous truck, and clicked on her high heels all the way back to her Mercedes. She never looked back once.

  And that was hard.

  • • •

  Nathan parked his truck in his reserved space between the stadium and the field house. Before getting out, he picked up the vanilla milkshake he’d bought at Dari-Delish and fished his knee brace from behind the seat. He was going to need both. After that spectacular row, he didn’t feel like eating but he knew better than to take ibuprofen on an empty stomach — and he definitely needed that. As he unlocked his office door, he couldn’t decide which throbbed more, his head or his knee. After changing into his Merritt High Bobcat shorts, he strapped on the brace and settled into his chair. The Coke can sized bottle of ibuprofen was in his bottom desk drawer. Four ought to do it.

  He had some prescription pain killers, but they made him sleepy so he seldom used them. In fact, he hadn’t taken any since last June after that wedding where Luke Avery’s mother had walked Townshend up to him and told them to go dance. No one, least of all Gail Avery, knew of their history and it had been impossible to say no without publically humiliating Townshend and drawing attention to them both. He had known when he walked on that dance floor that he would pay for it, but his pride wouldn’t let him take it easy. He had to prove to Townshend that he was the same man he’d been the few times they’d danced before. And he’d done that. He hadn’t spoken to her, but he had danced. Then he’d swallowed those pills and slept sixteen hours.

  He didn’t live in constant pain, but close enough. The doctor had warned him of that the morning after his first surgery thirteen years ago. He could still remember how he couldn’t look at the doctor because he knew what he was going to say. Instead, he had focused on the wall of balloons, flowers, and signs, arranged under a huge crimson banner that said, Fly Back To Us Soon, Angel!

  The Angel. A female sideline reporter had christened him that during his freshman season because, according to her, he had the face of an angel, and no one without wings should have been able to leap so high with such precision. The name had stuck, but he had never liked it or what came with it — the fans in the stands wearing halos and wings, the jersey clad Christmas tree toppers in his likeness, the band playing Aerosmith’s “Angel” when he ran on the field. But never had he hated it more than the morning after his career ending injury when all the sports headlines read, Fallen Angel. Of course, by then he hated everything.

  He’d learned that day how to master his emotions. The key was absolute control. And damn it all to hell, he’d forgotten that today and had all but accused Townshend of being a child molester. He was ashamed of that. Truth be told, watching her with Kirby had reminded him of how sweet she’d been to him before he found out what a lying scheming spoiled brat she was. And there was no doubt she was those things, but that didn’t make her a child molester.

  And what had made him threaten Townshend with the thing he hated more than anything else — a scene? Dear God, there was nothing worse. He’d learned a long
time ago to keep private things private. Don’t give a sports reporter anything to punish you with. Don’t let an irate parent rattle you. Don’t respond to smack talk.

  Don’t get into a pubic argument with Townshend Lee. Yet he had — or close enough — and he’d threatened her with worse. The look on her pretty little face told the tale of just how much she didn’t want that. They were apparently alike in that regard. Might be the only way.

  What scared him was it had not been a threat. If she had not gone willingly to his truck, he would have said everything he had to say to her right there on that sidewalk in front of everybody who had come to mourn Seven’s grandmother — not to mention the boy himself.

  Real classy, Coach.

  It had been a shock to return to his hometown and find Harris Bragg and Townshend practicing law on Main Street. Though they had not been close, Harris had been his teammate at the University of Alabama and Nathan was glad to reconnect with him.

  Townshend was a different matter. If he’d known she was here, he’d have stayed at West Texas High School, where he was offensive co-coordinator, and waited for the head coach to retire. He probably should have anyway. It was a big school with a long winning tradition and he’d been all but promised the big office. They’d won seven state championships in the nine years he was there, due in no small part to his coaching ability — an ability he didn’t even know he had when he took the job that had been offered to him on the strength of his name. He’d been content there, and never thought about Townshend anymore.

  But when the call came from the mayor of Merritt, he’d felt compelled to return to his alma mater. He’d even likened himself to the legendary Bear Bryant who left a winning team at Texas A&M to return to a disastrous program in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he’d played his own college ball. When asked why, the Bear had only replied, “Mama called.”

  For Nathan, too, “Mama” had called. The people of Merritt recognized a winner when they saw one. “Watch that Scott kid. He’s got what it takes.” People had said that from the time he played peewee ball all the way through his high school years. The day he had turned down five other major offers to sign his full ride scholarship with the University of Alabama, there had been a celebration on the town square.

  During his college years, he achieved celebrity status and as it became more and more clear that he was going to the NFL, they became more and more proud. He had often come back to town, not only to see his father, but to speak at sports banquets, sign autographs at charity events, and ride on floats in Christmas and Homecoming parades.

  But then, two games away from the end of his college career, six months away from NFL draft day, he’d let himself go on the field distracted — by Townshend. He zigged when he should have zagged and five hundred pounds of Mississippi State Bulldog took him down from two different directions.

  He’d never known that kind of pain. As he was taken off the field on the stretcher, if he’d been able to think of anything other than his knee and his heart, he might have imagined the stunned sick disappointed silence in the streets of Merritt.

  He owed them. In a way, he had cost them twice, though it wasn’t precisely his fault that his father had celebrated with the wrong girl after winning the state championship his senior year of high school and the end result had been Nathan. The town had expected Richard Scott to accept one of the many full ride football scholarships he’d been offered and go on to do great things. No doubt, though he never said a word about it to Nathan, Richard had expected that too. Instead, he’d gotten married and gone to work for the utility company, only to find himself abandoned with a five-month-old baby at the age of nineteen.

  His father was dead now, had died from falling off a ladder while clearing he gutters in the spring of Nathan’s junior year at Alabama. It was up to Nathan to atone for the both of them.

  Scott men weren’t the best at succeeding, but if he could turn the Merritt Bobcats into winners again, the town might see him as a success, even if he never saw himself that way. But he could not do it if he didn’t stay focused.

  He would never again allow Townshend Lee to distract him. She wasn’t worth it.

  • • •

  “I cannot in good conscience draw up another divorce agreement for you, Mary Nell,” Tolly said to the woman sitting across from her desk. Mary Nell had been waiting for her when she got back from the showdown with Nathan. Tolly was in no mood for this.

  “I don’t know why not.” Mary Nell examined her impossibly long nails. They were French manicured; they would be. She patted her platinum hair.

  “You’ve had papers served on Frank twice in the last eighteen months — papers that I drew up. You have no intention of divorcing him. This is a tactic to keep him in line.”

  “What if it is?” Mary Nell crossed her legs and her short skirt crept to mid-thigh. “Frank shapes up; you get paid. Everybody’s happy.”

  “See a marriage counselor and leave me out of it.”

  “You can’t refuse to represent me.” Mary Nell’s cotton candy pink lipsticked mouth landed in a pout. “It’s in the Constitution. I am entitled to counsel.”

  “All that is so untrue that I am not even going to dignify it with an answer.”

  “Come on, Tolly. Just spit one of those other sets of papers out of your computer and send it over. Charge me like you started from scratch. Frank deserves to have to pay for it. It’ll be like free money for you.”

  “No.”

  “Why?” Mary Nell’s voice had the whine of a child who had accepted the inevitable but didn’t want to admit it.

  “Because it’s one step on the wrong side of ambulance chasing.”

  Mary Nell uncrossed her legs and her pout deflated. “Maybe I ought to really divorce him. Maybe I ought to take out after Nathan Scott now that he’s back. We dated some in high school, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” Tolly felt a pang of jealously, an emotion that was as inappropriate as it was irrational.

  “We didn’t go out many times. Nathan liked cheerleaders and I was a majorette.” Would this woman never leave? “I’ll bet you were a cheerleader.”

  “No,” Tolly said. “I went to Mason-Harper Academy. We didn’t have cheerleaders.”

  “Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it. What kind of school doesn’t have cheerleaders?”

  “It’s a girls’ boarding school in Montgomery.”

  “I wouldn’t have liked that. Boys were the whole point of high school.”

  And that has changed how, for you? “Well, as your attorney,” Tolly said crisply, “I counsel you to do the divorcing first and the ‘taking out after’ second.”

  “I can’t do it anyway, yummy as Nathan is. A coach’s salary wouldn’t keep me in manicures. Plus there’s Frank, Jr.’s music lessons and Tiffany’s dancing. Now, if Nathan had gone on to play pro ball like he was supposed to — ”

  That, always that.

  “He likely wouldn’t be here coaching at Merritt High,” Tolly pointed out.

  “Do you know they said he would probably get a fifty million dollar contract?”

  “Well, they can certainly be depended on for accuracy.” But it was true. She’d read every word written about Nathan from the time she met him until months after his injury when the news finally dwindled away. And she hadn’t forgotten one word of it.

  “If only he hadn’t gotten hurt.”

  If only.

  “To this day, nobody understands why it happened. Nathan just didn’t make mistakes like that that.”

  Tolly stood up. “Mary Nell, I hate to end this delightful speculation, but I’ve got a client coming in five minutes.”

  “I’m a client. I’m supposed to have a whole hour.”

  “You were supposed to have a whole hour tomorrow. I canceled because I’m going
to Eula Lawson’s funeral.”

  Mary Nell stood up. “That is really too bad about Miss Eula.”

  “Yes, it is.” Maybe Mary Nell wasn’t so bad. There was true regret on her face.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about a cake for Tiffany’s birthday next week.”

  Chapter Three

  With their thick corn silk white blond hair and blue gray eyes, Tolly Lee and Harris Bragg looked more like siblings than cousins and for good reason. Their mothers were identical twins. Whether it was the shared DNA or because they grew up in houses separated only by their grandparents’ 1854 plantation house, Tolly and Harris were also remarkably alike in their mannerisms and expressions.

  So when, after sitting down in the chair across from Tolly’s desk, Harris closed his eyes and shook his head, Tolly knew exactly what it meant. He was beyond frustrated — and she was probably about to be.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “You aren’t going to like it.” He tossed a legal document in her direction.

  “I got that.” She picked up the file. “What is this?”

  “Eula Lawson’s last will and testament.” Harris laced his hands together behind his head and looked at the ceiling.

  “I know she didn’t have a lot, but please tell me she provided for Kirby.” Tolly flipped though the document. It had been written on a typewriter. Never good. “You could not have written this.”

  “No. I was probably writing book reports and algebra problems about the time Coleman Gilliam wrote that will. Eula had it drawn up when Kirby was two, right after his parents were killed. It came with the practice.”

  Tolly laid the document aside. “Bottom line?”