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Phoebe understood.
Unfortunately, Dan didn't.
"Denton!" His voice shot through the quiet of the bar like a Confederate cannon over a smoldering battlefield. "Doesn't that high-priced wristwatch of yours tell you you've got exactly three and half minutes to haul your butt up to your room or miss curfew?" He loomed over their table in his jeans and a denim shirt that was open at the throat.
"Howdy, Coach. You want to hear the funniest doggone thing? I was just explaining to Phoebe here how you've always been a little bit flexible about curfew. And then you show up. If that isn't—"
"Two minutes, forty-five seconds! And I'm fining you five hundred dollars for every minute you're not in your room."
Looking hurt, Bobby Tom got to his feet. "Dang, Coach, what's got you so riled?"
"You ran three bad patterns on Friday. How 'bout that for starters?"
Bobby Tom peeled some bills from a wad in his pocket and slapped them on the table. Then he gave Dan a long, shrewd gaze. "I don't think this has anything to do with bad patterns." He tipped the brim of his Stetson toward Phoebe. "See you on the sidelines tomorrow, Miss Somerville."
"See you, Bobby Tom."
As he disappeared, Dan barked at her like a drill sergeant. "My room! Now."
"Uh—I don't think so."
"When you start playing games with the best wide-out in the AFC, you've stepped clean over the line. Now unless you want our dirty linen aired in public, I suggest you start moving."
Phoebe reluctantly followed him out of the bar and into the lobby. She knew she should remind him that she was the boss, but as they stepped inside the elevator and began to travel in weighted silence up to the seventh floor, she found that she couldn't work up any steam.
He'd certainly worked up a full head, however, and the heat from it was burning right through her short, turquoise knit shift. Luckily for her, she didn't care. The two margaritas had left her with a cozy sense of well-being that made her want to puff out her lower lip and tell him not to be such an old fuddy-duddy.
She hadn't known their suites were so close until he stopped in front of the door across from her own. He unlocked it and gave her a none-too-gentle push inside. Then he shoved his fist, index finger extended, toward the brocade-covered sofa.
"Sit."
Although her brain had begun to issue the most alarming warnings, the warm tequila haze enveloping her made it impossible to take them seriously, so she gave him a mock salute as she followed orders.
"Yes, sir."
"Don't you get cute with me!" He splayed one big hand on his hip. "You stay away from my players, you hear me? These men are here to win football games; they're not your personal love toys, and I don't ever again want to see anything like I saw tonight!"
And that was just the beginning. He ranted and raved, turning red in the face just as he did on the sidelines when he was yelling at a ref. Finally, he paused for breath.
She gave him a lopsided smile and slipped the tip of her index finger into her mouth. "What's the matter, puddin'? Didn't you ever kiss a girl in a bar?"
He seemed stunned, as if he'd never before been sassed by a woman. God, he was cute. Cute and sexy and hunky and mean. Uhmm. Grrr.… It would take a lot of woman to tame a man like him.
She uncrossed her legs.
It would take a bed, too. And the smell of jasmine drifting in through the open window. And the soft nighttime creak of a paddle wheel fan turning in the ceiling of the old plantation house.
She stood.
Young Elizabeth could tame him with her smoldering violet eyes, and her white breasts spilling like vanilla pudding over the lacy cups of her slip.
Yowl! He had come home to her, this moon-howling man. Drunk again. Dissolute. Smelling of whiskey and cheap perfume from a slut named Lulabelle. But he still wasn't sated, this hot-blooded, hot-cocked man. Only one woman could satisfy him.
Come to me, baby; I'll make you feel so good. I'm all woman, and I know how to tame my man.
She sauntered toward him, lips wet and parted, a lock of blond hair playing peek-a-boo with her lashes, every pore of her skin feeling his heat and getting ready to scorch him with her own. Why had she ever been afraid of him, a hot, dangerous cat like her? Let him see what kind of woman she was. Let him feel her sizzle.
"Phoebe?"
