After Hours. Karen Kendall
“You didn’t seem to object to scoring a couple of hours ago.”
“I certainly did not, but that was a surprise outcome. I didn’t expect that you’d—”
“Be that easy?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Peggy. I don’t think you were easy at all. I sensed there was a real struggle going on inside you. It made me want you even more.”
“Oh, but now that I say I’m ready to jump you, you lose interest. See, it’s all a game. A mind game.”
“I’m not here to play a mind game, and who said I’ve lost interest? You’re being extremely difficult. In fact, most guys would take off at this point.”
“No, they wouldn’t.” Peggy stuck out her chin. “Most guys would take me up on the invitation to my apartment.”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, you have a point,” he conceded. “But consider the possibility that I might see more in you than a one-night stand, okay?”
Her eyes flashed provocatively. “What if I don’t see the same potential in you?”
Troy stopped and pulled her to him so that their bodies touched. He felt her heartbeat accelerate and smiled. “Then I’ll just have to change your mind, won’t I?” He angled his head toward hers and noted that she raised her mouth for his kiss. Instead of delivering on her expectations, he left her wanting and walked in silence to his car, where he opened the door and turned to hand her in.
She’d stopped, and now she stared from the car to him. She put a hand over her mouth. “You’re the stalker!” She backed away.
Oh, hell. Not this.
“I recognize the car now. I couldn’t figure out why you looked familiar….”
“I’m not a stalker. I was sitting in the parking lot because I’d just come out of Benito’s,” he lied. “And I got a call on my cell phone. Then I saw you notice me, and I was afraid you’d think just what you thought. So I ducked down.”
“Why am I not believing this?”
“Because you have a suspicious nature?” He stared her straight in the eye. “Look, if I were some kind of perverted creep, don’t you think I’d have been more aggressive with you before?”
She chewed her lip. “Well, I did make it pretty easy for you.”
Troy sighed. “Fine. I’m a weirdo and a stalker. I have piano wire, a shovel and a bag of cement in the trunk.” He popped it for her, and she could see that there was nothing there.
“Why did you leave when I told you I’d called the cops?”
“Because I really didn’t want to get into a conversation with them, or be written up for something I wasn’t doing!”
“Oh.”
“Would you like to have that drink now?” He patted the door. “The salon has my name and number, remember.”
She clearly felt foolish now, but still she struggled for the upper hand, like the scrapper she was. “You don’t have to do that,” she told him, finally getting in. “Open doors and put on the gentleman show for me.”
It’s just a stalker thing, honey. She didn’t know it yet, but she was going to lose. “I want to do it. And it’s not a show.” Troy shut the door and walked around the front of the Lotus.
He opened the driver’s-side door and slid in next to her. Peggy’s hair smelled sweet, like jasmine and honey—in marked contrast to her sharp, cynical words. It was yet another contradiction about her that intrigued him.
“Okay, so now that we’ve established that I’m not a stalker,” he said, “why are you trying to sabotage this thing between us before it even gets off the ground?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to cut through the dating bullshit, you know? I’m so sick of it.”
He shook his head at her. “The ‘dating bullshit,’ as you call it, can be fertilizer. Something extraordinary might bloom from spreading it around.”
She laughed. “You have a refreshing perspective on all this, don’t you, Troy?”
“Your own perspective is certainly unique—though I won’t call it refreshing. I call it downright cynical.”
“C’mon, I’m just brave enough to verbalize what we’re all thinking. How many times have you sat opposite a woman and thought, Christ. I already know I can’t stand her but I have to sit through two more hours of this and then pay for her dinner and drive her ass home.”
Troy couldn’t help but laugh.
Peggy continued in a parody of a man’s voice, “And I probably won’t even get a good-night kiss for my trouble, much less get laid.”
This went so far as to get a pig snort out of him while he tried to catch his breath. Finally he said, “You are not a nice woman.”
“I agree. But am I accurate?”
“Maybe.”
“So why don’t we have that drink at either your place or mine and not play the games?”
“All right, all right. We’ll go to yours. Mine is a wreck, since I’m in the middle of remodeling.”
“Great. Take a left up here, and then an immediate right…. By the way, I’m not a slut. It’s just that you’re…different.”
He hooted. “If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that line from a woman.”
Peggy seemed nonplussed.
“What, no caustic comment? As long as we’re being up-front and not playing games, darlin’, I’m fully aware that it was my wallet and my job that were ‘different,’ not me.” But those days are gone, Troy thought gloomily. Now I’m chopped liver.
“I’m not impressed by money,” she said stiffly. “And I’m not impressed by your former football stardom, either. I made my college team and started, too.”
Silence fell in the car.
“You what?” Troy asked. “Was it a women’s college?”
“No,” she said icily, “it was not. It was Bryce University.”
After a stunned moment he said slowly, “I remember reading about it. How a girl fought her way onto the team, a placekicker. That was you?”
“That was me.”
He looked at her with new respect. “I’ll be damned. What was it like for you? To be the only woman in that sea of testosterone?”
She avoided his eyes. “Let’s just say that I had my highest highs and my lowest lows during the season I played.”
“Why didn’t you go back?” Troy pulled the Lotus into the parking lot behind an apartment building. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that question. The guys would have made it miserable for her, and even male placekickers weren’t viewed with respect. They weren’t considered “real” players, didn’t go through the same drills or practice plays.
She avoided the question by getting out of the car before he’d cut the engine, not waiting for him to open her door. Her hair fell down her back like a coppery waterfall, ending just above a neat little waist and a spectacular ass. Those legs were solid with muscle, only the inner thighs soft and welcoming.
Troy liked the way the moonlight softened her, bathed her in a gentle glow. He tried to divert himself from the thought that she was bare to the air under her black cotton miniskirt. He’d ripped the panties off her, after all. She couldn’t possibly have salvaged them.
Peggy tossed him an impatient glance over her