After Hours: Midnight Oil / Midnight Madness / Midnight Touch

Who else would spend so much money, make an overblown statement like that? Did she have a real stalker?

At three-thirty, when she had to leave for her coaching gig, she wrestled the Amazonian flower arrangement off of the kitchen table and struggled down the hallway with it, narrowly escaping being poked in the eye by a particularly vicious bird of paradise “beak.”

She emerged at the reception area and told Shirlie that she’d be back.

“What, you can’t bear to be separated from your flowers? You’re going to drive them to the middle school and then the take-out window at Taco Bell?”

“Turns out they’re not from Troy. I don’t know who they’re from, and I don’t like it. So I’m dropping them at the hospital.”

Shirlie blanched in horror. “You can’t just…get rid of those gorgeous flowers!”

“Yes, I can. Some sick person will enjoy them a lot more than I do.”

Ignoring Shirlie’s outrage, Peg hauled them outside and set them on the hood of her Mini Cooper while she hunted for her keys. She found them, unlocked the passenger-side door and wrestled the arrangement into the front seat of the tiny car, dislodging a foam rock and some moss in the process. Then, after a couple of delightful jabs in the ear with another bird’s beak, she zoomed off.

A hospital volunteer gladly took the mini rain forest to cheer up patients in the oncology ward, and Peg tried to put her secret admirer out of her mind.

But even on the middle-school’s practice field, she found herself eyeing a lanky maintenance man and a stoop-shouldered stay-at-home dad as the potential culprits.

Why, she asked herself as she put the girls through a series of sprints and agility exercises, am I so cynical that I automatically assume the flowers are from a weirdo? Why can’t I believe they’re from a nice person who just wanted to brighten my day?

Because there are too many not-so-nice people out there.

She looked out at the girls on the field, her heart softening at the gangly limbs, the braces, the beginnings of some adolescent acne. A few of them had training bras and wore cosmetics and even got periods, while others were freshly scrubbed, wide-eyed and still forbidden to get their ears pierced.

All of them would eventually develop into young women, encounter men and confusing relationships. She couldn’t protect them, couldn’t live their lives for them. But she could give them the gift of athletic competence and foster their self-esteem—so that they had the tools to do battle in what was still so often a man’s world.

No one had prepared her for the nastiness and resentment that occurred when, for example, a woman dared to usurp a man’s position on a college football team.

While most of her teammates had been outwardly polite, if not warmly welcoming, she’d sensed an underlying current of contempt. And that was before the really ugly incident…the one she couldn’t ignore. The reason she’d walked away for good.

Peggy shoved the past out of her mind, blew her whistle and gathered the girls around her. “Okay, ladies, good job on the sprints! Let’s work on some skills training for about ten minutes now, and then we’ll scrimmage. Brianna, Cathy and Dara—I want you focused on blocking.

“Jody, Liz and Kimmie, pay attention to footwork and tip skills. Laura, you work on getting clear so that Danni can pass to you, and Danni, whatever you do, don’t get sacked. How’s that knee, Jen? You holding up okay? I don’t want you to overextend it again.”

She had no time to think about Troy, or their awkwardness on the phone, or his feeble invitation to dinner. But later, on the drive back to the salon and in the blessed coolness of the showers there, she did mull over things.

If she hadn’t called him first, would Troy have called her at all?

Why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free? Her aunt Thelma’s old-fashioned saying popped into her head. Ridiculous in this day and age…but Peggy couldn’t help thinking about her sex-to-football analogy.

It’s easier this way—you don’t have to worry about the downs—you just score.

And Troy’s answer:

It’s like the other team handing you the ball and inviting you over the goal line. That sucks.

She’d definitely invited him over her goal line, and he’d scored multiple orgasms. So perhaps the thrill of the chase was gone. Perhaps he didn’t respect her, now that it was morning.

But why did it always boil down to the woman losing the guy’s respect? What about her respect for the man? Why were women seen as giving something up, rather than receiving something that they wanted? She liked the modern-day response to the free-milk adage: Why buy the whole pig when all you want is a little sausage?

Peggy decided she was a freewheeling woman in charge of her own sexuality and her own life…and her very atypical mother would be proud.

Speaking of her mother, she hadn’t talked to her at all lately. She wondered what kind of crazy poem or performance art piece Mom was working on now.

She only spoke in rhyme and she only wore green, varying shades of green ranging from chartreuse to hunter. The last time Peg had seen her, she’d been in an olive phase. But who knew? She might have moved on to teal or emerald by now.

Mom had been divorced for years, ever since Peggy and Hal’s father had shacked up with a dolphin trainer from Sea World. It was then that her mother had lapsed into rhyme as a way of expressing herself…. Peggy understood her, but everyone else just assumed she’d had a mental breakdown.

Of course, everyone who knew their family had always thought Peg’s brother, Hal, teetered on a fine line between genius and madness, too. So she’d looked like the normal one, even if she’d pursued an all-male sport with an intensity their community didn’t understand.

Peg pulled her cell phone out of her bag and dialed her mother’s number, wanting advice, but her mom didn’t answer. She didn’t bother leaving a message.

Suddenly she decided that what she really needed was a male point of view. Where was Alejandro? She tracked him down in the small, windowless office that he used for doing paperwork.

“Alejandro?”

“Yes, chica?”

“Give me the male point of view on this situation. I spent last night with a guy—”

“You slut,” he teased.

She ignored that. “The guy and I had a great time. This morning that arrangement of flowers came. But when I called to thank him, he said he didn’t send them. Then, to make it worse, he asked me out, but almost as if he didn’t want to, as if he was just being polite. What does it mean?”

Alejandro pursed his lips. “Is he married?”

Horrible thought. Had she spent all last night having wild monkey sex with somebody’s husband? No. Somehow she just knew he wasn’t married.

“I don’t think there’s a wife anywhere in the picture.”

“Then maybe you just caught him at a bad time.”

“No, I think it was more than that.”

“Maybe you sprained his Mr. Happy and he’s in pain.”

“Alejandro, be serious!”

“Okay, okay. Maybe he’s just shy.”

Peggy reminisced about some of the things Troy had done to her last night. “He’s definitely not shy.”

“Well then, I’d say he was just a jerk who got some of your aunt Thelma’s free milk and isn’t thirsty anymore, but he did ask you out again. So, what’s to worry about, except who did send the flowers?”

“Alejandro, listen to me. His tone of voice was weird. He was kind of cool toward me.”

“Peggy, you women overanalyze these things to death. This could be as simple as he doesn’t like taking personal calls at work. What does he do?”

It was a damn good question. Peggy couldn’t believe she didn’t know the answer to that. She’d have to ask him.

By the time she left Alejandro’s office, she felt better. But she still didn’t know who’d sent her the damn flowers.

“SO, WHAT DO YOU DO, Troy?” Peggy asked him as they sat at a table at Benito’s. The place was dark and simply furnished with long wooden picnic tables and benches; squat green candles set at two-foot intervals along them. You didn’t want to come to Benito’s in a tight skirt, since sitting down required a bit of climbing. Luckily, Peg had worn a loose-fitting jean skirt today. It was short, but she could maneuver in it.

Benito’s was slightly cheesy, but cheesy in a charming way. Plastic pizza-wedge lighting blinked on and off around a large open window to the kitchen, where Benny’s high-school-age son would occasionally amuse kids and himself by juggling meatballs or twirling pizza dough. If his mother, Claudia, caught him with the meatballs, she’d whack him in the butt with whatever came to hand: a cooking spoon, a rolling pin, a box of spaghetti.

Peggy rested her elbows on the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth, looking up surreptitiously every once in a while. Benito and Claudia had hung Chianti bottles over all the tables, intertwined with fake grape vines. She couldn’t get rid of the fear that one of the bottles would fall on her head and knock her unconscious. She might even pitch forward into the candle in the center of the table, catching her hair on fire.

Troy repeated her question. “What do I do?” He looked vaguely uncomfortable. “I, um…well, I’m retired from the Jaguars and I decided to quit coaching after I left Gainesville, which was only a month ago. So I’m kind of…taking a break to work on my house in the Gables. And I’m planning to open a sporting goods store.”

The awkwardness that had pervaded their phone conversation was still present. Peggy took a sip of the Cabernet she’d ordered.

“A sporting goods store! How cool. So will it be here in Miami? Have you found a location yet?”

His own glass at his lips, Troy had started to nod at the first question and then began to cough.

“You okay? Need me to pound on your back?”

He nodded, then shook his head, continuing to hack and wheeze. Finally he gasped, “Wine down the wrong pipe.”

She wrinkled her nose in sympathy. “Oooh, don’t you hate that?”

He nodded, still recovering.

“So when are you going to open this sporting goods store?”

“Oh, you know. I’m hoping by next year. There’s a lot of, uh, legwork to be done. And a lot of numbers to crunch.”

“Will you specialize in anything?” Peggy asked. “You could sponsor some of the kids’ teams around here—you know, donate the uniforms. It would be good PR for you, and I happen to know of a certain powder-puff team that could use some new stuff, especially helmets. I can’t wait to ask you to price pink helmets by the dozen, Barrington.” She grinned at him, but he didn’t grin back.

Finally he did muster a smile. “Yeah. Well, we’ll have to see how it goes. Of course, since I’m the coach of my nephew’s team, they’ll get first dibs.” He winked.

Peggy put her hands on her hips. “Oh, really? But you have two nieces on my team. I’d think that their equipment would be equally important to you.”

Troy raised his brows. “Pink helmets? Are those really necessary? Besides, what’s wrong with their existing ones? I can’t supply the equipment for every youth team in Miami, and let’s face it, the boys are a little more rough-and-tumble than the girls.”

Peggy’s temples started throbbing. “That is so untrue. My girls are every bit as aggressive—and talented, I might add—as your boys! I’d put the ladies on the field any day and they’d kick your butts.”

“Is that so.” His body language became cocky and competitive: shoulders back and chin up.

“Yeah, that is so.” Her chin came up, too.

“Uh-huh.” Troy smirked. “Well, I think your strength lies more in color coordination. That’s why Danni and Laura and the rest of the puff team painted their nails before their last game—because matching team polish really brings out the beast in them.”

Peggy narrowed her eyes on him. “That was a team spirit thing, and I can’t believe you’d be so snarky about your own nieces. You obviously don’t take them or their talent seriously.”

“Yes, I do,” Troy protested. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that the guys are rougher. They’ll need the helmets more, especially as they get a little older and things get serious for them. Let’s face it, most of the girls won’t go on to play in high school.”

Peggy gritted her teeth. “Because nobody takes them seriously and nobody encourages them to play in high school. They’re pushed to try out for cheerleader instead.”

Troy put his hands up, palm out. “Hey, don’t get all mad at me. I know that you were different, okay, and I admire you for that. But the majority of girls have no interest in doing what you did.”

Peg took a deep breath and counted to three. “Let’s just change the subject. Because if we don’t, I might be tempted to shove those bread sticks where the sun don’t shine, buddy.”

“God, I love it when women threaten me with violence. It makes me all horny,” Troy teased her. “What bread sticks?”

She glared at him. “The ones Benito’s bringing to us right now. Hi, Benny!” She turned to the restaurateur with a sunny smile. “How are you?”

“Very well, grazie. You?” Benito placed a large napkin-covered basket in the center of their table. The aroma of hot bread wafted out, hot bread liberally spread with garlic butter. Peggy’s mouth watered, and Benito beamed at her. He gestured toward Troy.

“I see you have dinner with our so-handsome landlord! Should help with the rent, eh?” He winked and laughed. “Ciao, Mr. Barrington. You like-a more wine?”

“Landlord?” Peggy stared at Troy.

Troy shrugged and looked sheepish.

“He no tell you? He inherit whole strip mall from his uncle, Newton Baines. When, one month ago, you say?”

Troy nodded.

Peggy felt like an idiot. She’d called the cops on their landlord? “Why…”

“Benito, I’d sure love to take you up on that second glass of wine. How about one for the lady, too?”

“Right away, Signor B.!”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Troy said quickly, after Benito left. “About the whole stalking thing, or like you had to go out with me since I owned the place.”

She shoved her embarrassment away. “I wouldn’t have. I already told you, your money doesn’t intimidate me.”

His mouth twisted. “Trust me, there’s not as much money anymore. Three college funds, my sister’s retirement fund and a bunch of property, and it takes a mint to maintain that.”

“Well,” she said coolly, finishing her glass of Cabernet, “After Hours must be quite the cash cow for you.” Oh, hell. How had she gotten back to cows and milk again?

Troy crunched down on a bread stick and didn’t answer. She supposed her comment had been tacky. This evening was going all wrong, and she didn’t know how to salvage it. Didn’t know if she even wanted to, after his comments about girls and football.

She knew Troy spoke the truth about how many girls went on to play high school or college ball, but it irritated her that he saw no need to change the status quo. That he was fine with girls being cheerleaders, supporting their male football teams. It made her want to scream.

“Tell you what, Mr. Landlord,” she said. “We’re gonna challenge you guys to a game toward the end of the season. And you are going to eat your words. Then you’re gonna owe us the helmets and new uniforms. Not to mention pink cleats for the whole team.”

“Deal,” he said. “But can I ask you something? If you’re so eager for your ladies to be taken seriously, why not lighten up on the pink?”

“Because I’m making a point. You’re about to suggest that they shave their heads, maybe get nose rings and tattoos just to look tough, aren’t you?”

“No.”

She ignored him. “Well, they’re not going to do that. My girls are going to look as feminine as they please while kicking ass. They’re going to pulverize the opposition after touching up their lipstick! I’m so sick of these stereotypes—that if women are good at sports, they’ve gotta look butch. Not true.”

“Okay, calm down,” Troy said, pulling the napkin-covered basket toward him. “I’d offer you a bread stick, but I’m afraid of what you might do with it.”

That got a smile out of her, but she nodded. “Damn straight.”

“You’re a tough one, Peggy-Sue. I have a feeling that any moment now you’ll challenge me to swords, pistols or bread sticks at dawn.” He grinned that irresistible grin of his, the one where both dimples flashed.

“On guard,” she said. “Watch out for the garlic.”

Benito appeared with their second glasses of wine and took their orders, chicken cacciatore for her and manicotti for Troy. They both chose the Caesar salad.

“A good thing if there’s any kissing later,” Troy pointed out. “We’ll both have the breath of camels.”

“Kissing?” She raised her glass to her lips and flooded her mouth with the tart Cabernet. “Aren’t you presuming a lot?”

He avoided her gaze. “Yeah, I guess I am. And I shouldn’t.”

She set her glass down. “Why did you ask me to dinner, Troy? Because I could swear that you had no intention of doing it. All that stuff about how you wanted to get to know me, and then when I called, you didn’t seem pleased to hear from me.”

He swore under his breath and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Peggy, it’s not that. Believe it or not, I was thrilled when you called.”

“Yeah, you were turning cartwheels. Come on, Troy!” Encouraged by the wine, she leaned forward and said in low tones, “Just go ahead and give me the speech about how it’s not me, it’s you, or tell the truth and say that since we had our sex-a-thon, you don’t respect me anymore. Because I must be loose, and while you might screw that kind of woman, you sure don’t want to date her—”

“Peggy—”

“You already got a bucket of free milk, so why tow around the cow—”

“Hey! That is complete bullshit—”

“Right, of course it is. Then give me your version.”

“Damn, woman! Look, I like you a lot. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re challenging and you turn me on like you wouldn’t believe. But the thing is that you’re also my nieces’ coach. And when you called I was just thinking that it’s not a good idea to take this any further. That’s all.”

“Then why did you ask me to dinner?”

“Because I wanted to anyway, even though it’s probably not smart. You’re an amazing woman, Peggy. I like to look at you, I like to talk with you, and I damn sure like to touch you….”

Heat blossomed all over her skin, and she felt foolish. She’d just behaved like a raving lunatic, but Troy still sat opposite her instead of storming out. He had a perfectly reasonable explanation for his hesitance on the phone.

A waiter, not Benito this time, appeared at the table. “Cacciatore?”

She nodded, and he placed the dish before her.

“And manicotti for signor.”

Troy thanked him.

Dinner was served, and Peggy was intensely grateful to be able to concentrate on her food. What were she and Troy going to talk about next? They’d already covered sex. Might as well move on to the other taboo subjects: politics and religion.

Then he turned the tables on her. “So, Peggy-Sue. If you didn’t think I really wanted to ask you out to dinner, then why did you accept my invitation?”

10

TROY ASKED THE QUESTION partly to make her squirm after her tirade, and partly because he really wanted to know the answer.

Peggy avoided his gaze, finished chewing her bite of chicken cacciatore and pushed a piece of zucchini around her plate before she answered. “Because I wanted to see you again.”

He smiled. “And why would you want to see me?”

“Well, you’re not the ugliest guy I’ve ever taken back to my apartment.”

“Thank you,” he said, hugely entertained. “And?”

“You left your lips at my place and I wanted to return them to you.”

“That’s so generous. A man with no lips is a tragic sight. He’d never be able to kiss another woman.”

“Yeah, and I was worried about that.”

“So when are you going to give my lips back? Where are they, in your tote bag?”

“Nope.”

“Tucked in your bra?”

“Nope, not there, either.”

His smile widened. “Oh, lower down, then?”

Her white teeth flashed. “Yup. They’re all puckered up and I’m sitting on them.”

Troy choked. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m kissing your freckled little ass?”

“It’s the natural order of things, dude.”

“I am so going to enjoy punishing you for this later.”

She laughed. “Promises, promises. Maybe you’ll get the chance, and maybe not. My aunt Thelma would say you got way too much free milk last night.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I figure you’d get upset if I tried to pay you for it.”

Peggy threw her napkin at him.

“So that’s not what Aunt Thelma is suggesting?”

“Not exactly.”

Benito came over to ask if their food was okay, and they assured him that it was delicious. He brought them each another glass of wine without asking.

“You trying to get us drunk, Benny?” Peggy asked.

“Sì, so you can take advantage of him.”

Troy could think of nothing he’d like better. His appetite right now was not for food, it was for Peggy. Forget scruples and ethics and all that…he wanted to reach across the table and pull her into his arms. He wanted her ripe, soft mouth; he wanted her full breasts filling his hands, her pink nipples thrusting against his palms.

He wanted her lips on his cock and her sweet ass riding him, urgency filling her as much as he did. He wanted to be sliding into her hot, wet body, smell her desire and hear her gasps and whimpers in his ear as he sent her into a frenzy.

Jesus. He had to get a hold of himself—they were sitting in a public restaurant, and he was so hard he could knock a plank off the table.

Opposite him, Peggy picked up a bread stick and met his eyes as she brought it to her mouth. Christ, she was reading him like a book. Her eyes slanted like a cat’s, she darted out the tip of her tongue and licked at the end of the bread. She wrapped her lips around it and pulled gently. Then she slid it halfway into her mouth, caressing the bottom of the stick with her tongue.

“I’m so gonna make you pay for this,” Troy said hoarsely.

Peggy bit the end off the bread stick. “Mmm.”

That was when he felt something sliding against his crotch. Troy grabbed it and found that it was her small renegade foot.

Her eyes on his, her hand still wrapped around the bread stick, she flashed him a wicked smile. “Sporting wood, are we? Naughty, naughty.” She nudged his balls with her toe, and that was the last straw.

Troy gripped her ankle, forced her foot up and searched for some kind of revenge that was acceptable in the middle of a restaurant. He began to tickle the bottom of Peggy’s foot.

She had just the reaction he was looking for. She pulled hard to get away from him, banging her knee on the underside of the table and making the candles jump.

Troy smiled blandly and kept tickling.

She squeaked and yanked again, unable to get away. “Let go!” she snapped, dropping the bread stick.

“Why, little Miss Perv, are you ticklish? What a shame for you…should have thought of that before you started this, huh?”

“I hate you!”

“I know. It bothers me a lot, as you can see.” He trailed his index finger from big toe to arch and then down to her heel, and she went nuts.

Peggy thrashed and gave a final mighty yank, just as he let go. She tumbled backward off the bench and onto the ceramic-tiled floor, still wearing only one shoe. He could see her blue satin underwear under the short jean skirt.

The other guests eyed her curiously, while Troy laughed so hard he almost blew the manicotti off his plate. “You okay?”

Peggy sat up just as Benito rushed over. “I’m fine, Benny. Thanks.” She pushed the hair out of her face and sent Troy a Death Stare. “Our landlord just seems to have this effect on women.”