"Should I bring along a bodyguard, or do you think a loaded gun will be enough."

He sighed and dropped his hand from the knob. "You're really startin' to exasperate me. I don't know where you get this notion that I'm difficult. I'm about the most reasonable man in the world."

"I'm glad to hear that because there is something else I wanted to discuss with you. I'd like you to put Jim Biederot on the bench next week so his backup can get some playing time."

He exploded. "What! Of all the stupid, asinine…" The expression on Phoebe's face stopped him.

She lifted an eyebrow and grinned. "Just testing."

He paid her back by looking her over from head to toe and then speaking in a silky whisper that sent her shivering all the way to her toes. "Little girls who walk too close to the danger zone can find themselves in some real bad trouble."

He brushed her lips with a quick kiss, opened the door, and disappeared down the sidewalk.

As he climbed into his car and settled behind the wheel, he was already regretting both the kiss and his suggestive words. No more, he promised. He'd finally made up his mind how he was going to handle this relationship, and flirting wasn't part of it.

He'd spent the final leg of the plane trip home last night trying to figure out how he could have Phoebe in his bed while he was courting Sharon Anderson. He wanted Phoebe so much that he'd tried all kinds of arguments to convince himself it would be possible for them to have a brief affair, but even before they'd landed, he'd known he couldn't do it. His future with Sharon was too important for him to jeopardize just because he couldn't get his lust for Phoebe under control.

During a hasty dinner with Sharon last week, he'd become even more convinced that she was the woman he wanted to marry. She'd been a little skittish around him, but that was to be expected, and she'd relaxed some by the time he'd taken her home. He'd given her a quick goodnight kiss at the door, but that was all. Somewhere along the line, he'd gotten this old-fashioned notion that he and Sharon wouldn't make love until their wedding night.

As for Phoebe-He wanted her so much he ached, but he'd dealt with lust before, and he figured time would take care of that. He knew the safest thing for him to do would be to keep their relationship strictly professional, but the idea depressed the hell out of him. He'd grown to like her, dammit! If she'd been a man, she might very well have ended up in his inner circle of friends. Why should he cut her out of his personal life now, he asked himself, when she'd be going back to Manhattan at the end of the year and he'd probably never see her again?

It wasn't as if he planned to keep leading her on. All he had to do was treat her like a friend. There'd be no more slipups like that little kiss he'd given her tonight, no more sexual challenges issued in airplane Johns. Right now, she might be interested in continuing the physical part of their relationship, but in his experience, women like Phoebe were philosophical about things like that. Once he showed her he was changing the rules between them, she'd follow along. She knew that sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn't. Nobody'd have to spell it out for her.

He smiled to himself as he turned the key in the ignition. Phoebe was a crackerjack, all right. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she had managed to earn his respect. He'd never expected her to work so hard at her responsibilities as the Stars' owner, and her dedication was even more impressive because she was so far out of her element. She also had a way of standing up to him that he admired. Somehow she managed to hold her ground around him without being a bitch about it, in contrast to Valerie, who tore into him just for the pleasure of the kill.

His relationship with Phoebe had become important to him, and as long as he didn't give in to the powerful, but inconvenient, physical attraction between them, he didn't see what the harm was in enjoying each other as friends. Not that keeping his hands off her would be easy. It was a good thing he'd been sitting down most of the time he was with her tonight because watching her sashay around in those fancy tights with that sweater that barely made it over her rear had kept him in a constant state of arousal.

He grinned as he pulled away from the curb. If the Russians had been smart, they'd have taken Phoebe's radioactive body into account before they'd signed off on that nuclear proliferation agreement with the United States.

Which was all the more reason he needed to marry Sharon. He knew from painful experience that long-term relationships weren't built on lust. They were built on mutual values, and that was what he and Sharon had in common.

So by the time the plane had landed, he had made up his mind. When Phoebe left town at the end of the year, he would pop the question to Sharon, but for the present, he was going to enjoy being with both women. As long as he kept his pants zipped, he wouldn't have a bit of trouble living with himself, and the fact that never again making love with Phoebe depressed the hell out of him was all the more reason to keep their relationship platonic. No matter what, he wasn't going to repeat the mistakes of his first marriage.

His thoughts were interrupted by a glimpse of a gray van parked on a narrow side street not three blocks from Phoebe's condo. Cursing, he shifted the Ferrari into reverse. The tires squealed as the car fishtailed. He shifted again. The powerful motor responded instantly and the car shot down the side street, reaching the van just as the driver began to pull forward. Dan spun the wheel so the van was trapped between the Ferrari and the parked car behind it.

He flung himself out of his car. In four long strides he had whipped open the driver's door and dragged the man out by the front of his jacket. "Why are you following me, you sorry son of a bitch?"

The man was heavy and he stumbled, barely righting himself before he fell. He drew back his arm to take a swing, but Dan slammed him against the side of the van. "Tell me!"

"Let me go, you bastard!"

"Not until-" He broke off as he realized there was something familiar about this man. Overweight, florid complexion, big nose, grizzled hair. At that moment he recognized him.

"Hardesty?"

"Yeah," he sneered. "So what's it to you, cocksucker?"

Dan wanted to slam his fist into the older man's gut, but he remembered Ray Senior's grief at the funeral and restrained himself. Instead, he eased the pressure he was keeping on his chest, although he didn't let him go.

"You've been following me for weeks. What's this all about?"

"It's a free country. I can drive wherever I want."

"The law has a different view. What you're doing is called stalking."

"So what? You got a guilty conscience about me tailing you?"

"Why should I have a guilty conscience?"

"Because you killed my son, you bastard! Ray Junior died because of you. If you hadn't cut him from the Stars, he'd be alive now."

Dan felt as if he'd been punched. He'd never quite buried his guilt, and he immediately released the man. "I didn't have a choice, Mr. Hardesty. We kept him on the squad as long as we could."

But he could see by the crazed expression in Hardesty's eyes that he was past reason. "You need him, you bastard! It was only luck that you won the Giants game without him. The Stars can't win for long without my boy. Without Ray Junior, you're a bunch of losers!"

Dan felt a wave of pity. Ray had been an only child, and his death must have pushed his father over the edge. "Ray was a great player," he said, trying to calm him.

"You're goddamn right he was. Because of him, I used to be able to walk anyplace in this town with my head high. Everybody knew who I was. Everybody wanted to talk to me. But now nobody knows my name, and it's all because of you. If you hadn't cut my son, people would still treat me with respect."

Bubbles of saliva had gathered at the corners of Hardesty's mouth, and Dan's pity faded. Hardesty didn't miss his son; he missed living in Ray's reflected limelight. His own father had been dead for fifteen years, but as he looked into Hardesty's small, mean eyes, he felt as if he were once again standing in front of Harry Calebow.

Harry had also used his son to pump up his own consequence. In high school Dan had squirmed under Harry's constant public bragging, all the more ironic since he never received anything but criticism in private. He remembered his sophomore year of high school when Harry had hit him with a bottle because he'd fumbled in the final thirty seconds of a game against Talladega.

He stepped back before he punished this man for something that had been another's fault. "Stay away from me, Hardesty. If I see that van of yours tailing me again, you're going to regret it."

"Big man," Hardesty sneered as Dan walked away. "Big fucking man! Let's see how big you are when your team loses again this week. Let's see how big you are when you finish in the bucket for this season. The Stars are nothing without my boy! They're nothin'!"

Dan slammed the car door against Hardesty's malice. As he drove away, it occurred to him that this might be why he wanted so much to be a father. Maybe he needed to prove to himself that he could do the job right.

Chapter 19

Phoebe studied her reflection in the long, narrow mirror that occupied the end wall of the only ladies' rest room in the Stars Complex. The loose-fitting, gray cowl-necked sweater she had chosen to wear to work today covered her from neck to thigh. Below the sweater, a matching wool skirt fell in soft folds to mid-calf, where gray opaque hose and conservative pumps covered up the rest of her. She'd brushed her hair into a neat page boy held back from her face with a gray velvet headband, and only her enormous free-form silver earrings and wide cuff bracelets kept her from looking like the president of a suburban bridge club.