White Picket Fences

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Tory said, her tone reflecting the manners she’d learned as the wife of one of the richest men on the East Coast. Zack half expected to see her curtsy.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, dear. Better than nice. The Parsons have told me about you, and I’m thrilled to welcome you into the family. I only wish we could’ve been here for your wedding.” Zack was impressed by how deftly the older woman put Tory at ease. His friend’s wife had lived a hard life and rarely relaxed.

“We more or less eloped,” Ben threw in.

“We should give them a proper reception, Carol. The old house could use some livening up.”

“What a great idea!” Carol exclaimed. “We’ll let you kids get settled back into school and then plan something.” She looked beyond the adults to the empty room behind them. “Is little Alex here?” she asked wistfully. “It’s been so long since we had a child in the family.”

“She’s in the bedroom playing a video game she got for Christmas,” Tory answered. “I’ll go get her.”

As Tory left the room, Zack took the opportunity to excuse himself. Ben had been without family virtually his entire life. He deserved these moments alone with the couple who seemed completely ready to become the parents he’d never had.

There were times when life actually turned out right.

SHE COULDN’T GO. Someone would have to call him and tell him she wasn’t going.

Randi paced from her closet to the full-length mirror in her bathroom, looking at herself in her standard gym shorts and T-shirt, her white socks and tennis shoes. She wasn’t date material. She was too strong, too aggressive.

She didn’t know how to be sweet and gushy and girlish.

She couldn’t go.

She’d barely slept the night before, tossing and turning. She couldn’t relax, couldn’t get Zack Foster off her mind. He’d caused sensations in her that she didn’t recognize. Had made her think about things she didn’t usually bother with. Sex, for instance.

She’d never obsessed about a man in her life.

And when she had drifted off, she’d had a horrible dream about sitting in a restaurant, being herself, enjoying herself, and glancing up to see a look of revulsion on Zack Foster’s face. Which alternated with indifference.

She couldn’t go.

Her hair was okay. She had to keep it short so it didn’t get in the way, but there was style to it. Bounce and casual curl. And the streaks of light blond mixed in with the darker blond were all natural. Her eyes were probably her best feature. Chocolate-brown—they were her older brother Will’s eyes. She was proud to have them.

With one last look at herself, Randi turned her back on her reflection and grabbed the phone from the nightstand in her bedroom.

“Becca?” she said as soon as her sister-in-law picked up the phone.

“Randi, I just called you, but you didn’t answer.”

“I’m not at school.”

“Where are you?” Will’s wife asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Randi said automatically. Then she remembered the day, almost a year before, when Becca had shown up on her doorstep, desperate, unsure, frightened. Of everyone she knew in Shelter Valley, she’d come to Randi.

“Well… I’m home, not sick or anything, but I’m not exactly fine,” she clarified.

“What’s up?”

“First, you have to promise me that you won’t say anything to Will. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“You know you can trust me.”

She did know that. Which was one reason she was on the phone at all. Becca was the epitome of discretion. It was Becca’s mother, Rose, who was the town gossip.

Of course, Rose was harmless, since much of her gossip bore only a minute resemblance to the truth, and everyone knew that.

“I’ve got a date tonight.”

“You do?” Becca couldn’t quite keep the excitement out of her voice, but Randi gave her full marks for effort.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, you have my permission to go. Just be home by midnight.”

“It’s with Zack Foster. He’s the new partner Cassie took on at the clinic last spring.”

“Oh?”

Randi almost smiled at the eagerness Becca was trying hard to conceal. Except that she felt so miserable smiling wasn’t currently an option.

“I can’t go,” she muttered.

“Why not?” There was curiosity and concern in Becca’s tone, though no condemnation.

Randi relaxed enough to sit down on the side of her bed.

“I don’t know, Bec,” she admitted. “I’ve only met the man once and he…he scares me.”

“Zack? I’ve seen him a couple of times and he’s big, I’ll grant you. But a teddy bear. Besides, since when have you ever let a man frighten you? I can remember when you were barely five years old and challenging your teenage brothers, fully believing you could take them on.”

“I could.” She did smile this time.

“Yeah, because you had them wrapped around your sweet little finger.”

“I could still take them on,” Randi asserted. She had learned a long time ago that the mind was a far more effective weapon than physical strength. When she’d been on the professional golf tour, before the accident that had squelched that particular dream, it hadn’t been the strength of her swing that had made her a winner. It had been the mental control and finesse that went along with her swing.

“It’s not that Zack scares me, exactly,” she said now to Becca, staring down at the logo on her shoe.

“When I was sitting in his office yesterday, it was almost like I’d been hypnotized. I was practically ready to agree to whatever he said. It was the oddest sensation.”

“You like him.”

“I like you, too, but I don’t lose my ability to think when I’m with you.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“THAT’S DIFFERENT. I’m a woman.”

“Yeah?” Randi replied. “No kidding.”

Becca ignored her sarcasm. “Did your stomach flutter, too?” she asked knowingly.

“Yeah,” Randi answered a little more slowly. The logo on her shoe was dirty. Dirty shoes always bothered her. “But that might’ve been because I skipped breakfast.” She carried the phone with her as she went into the bathroom to take a wet washcloth to her shoe.

“And you couldn’t stop looking at him?”

“Maybe.” The smudge wouldn’t come off. Damn.

“You’ve got the hots for him.”

That was precisely what scared Randi. She didn’t know how to have the hots. And she was a little old to be finding out.

“I’ve been attracted to a man before.” She told Becca the same thing she’d told herself at least a hundred times since she’d awoken that morning.

“You’re speaking of Sean?”

“Yes, mainly.”

“Sweetie, you didn’t give a damn if you were with Sean or not. You went out with him for so long because it was convenient.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with a man without feeling something for him,” Randi defended herself, walking to her closet for another pair of athletic shoes.

“I’m not saying you weren’t fond of him, but there was no spark between the two of you. Will and I saw that right off the bat.”

Which might explain why sex with Sean had been so terrible she’d only tried it with him twice. Once he’d made the initial move to her bedroom, she’d had to initiate everything else. And had found the experience more embarrassing than arousing.

Grabbing one of the nine other pairs of athletic shoes lined up in front of her, she slipped out of the ones she had on and put them aside for bleaching.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Randi whispered. She didn’t usually allow herself to think that way, but sometimes, in the dark of the night, she was unable to keep her fears at bay.

“No!” Becca’s answer was emphatic. “You’ve just led an unusual life. You were an athlete from the day you were born. What choice did you have with four older brothers? You had to join in or be left in the dust. And you were good at everything you tried. You started training before you got to high school, and when most girls were experimenting with their sexuality, with boys, you were traveling on the junior professional golf circuit. You were hardly home enough to be able to graduate from high school, let alone do any dating.”

All of what her sister-in-law was saying Randi had already told herself. But it sounded so much more reasonable coming from Becca.

“And by the time I’d reached my twentieth birthday, I was on the LPGA tour and most men were too intimidated by me to see me as a woman. I usually knew more about sports than they did, and if a man happened to know as much, it was because he was an athlete himself, and then the fact that I might be able to beat him at his own game became a problem.”

“Tanner Snow?” Becca named the golfer Randi had brought home for Christmas one year.

Randi tied the laces on the shoe she’d just put on. “Yeah.”

“And it hasn’t gotten any easier, has it, since you won the position at Montford?”

“Probably not.” Randi hadn’t really noticed. Had she? She liked her life. Had more friends than she knew what to do with, enjoyed the time she spent with them.

Not everyone had a strong sex drive—which was surely why she hadn’t had a better experience with Sean.

Randi expended her physical energy on the basketball and tennis courts. And occasionally on the golf course, when she could bring herself to play a round with a rotator cuff that would never be what it was, thanks to the car accident nine years ago.

“Will and I have always said that when you got hit, you’d get hit hard,” Becca said.

“Got hit?” She studied the logos on her shoes. They were clearly legible.

“Fell for a man.”

“I’ve just met him, Becca! I haven’t fallen anywhere.”

“Have it your way.” Randi couldn’t tell if her brother’s wife was humoring her or not.

“So will you call him and tell him I can’t go? Say I have the flu or something?” She lay back on the end of her bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Why can’t you call him?”

“Because I might do something stupid, like let him talk me into going.”

“And that would be so horrible?”

“I think so.”

“Why?”

Randi swallowed. “Because it matters.” The admission was hard. “I don’t know why. I can’t understand it. But it matters.”

“So how will not going to dinner with him help that?”

“I won’t have to sit there and know things aren’t going to work out.” Randi sat up and bounced her feet on the floor.

“How do you know it won’t?”

“It never does.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

Yesterday was certainly a case in point. “He’s a total pet freak.”

“He’s a vet.”

“I hate pets.”

“You’ve never had one.”

“I’m trying to sabotage the pet-therapy club assignment.”

“How are you going to do that?” Becca asked, chuckling.

“I don’t know.” Randi planted her feet solidly on the floor. “Plan A was yesterday and something went drastically wrong. I haven’t figured out Plan B yet, but rest assured, I will.”

“Go to dinner and maybe it’ll come to you.”

She’d never thought of that. Dinner would be an excellent opportunity to talk Zack Foster out of using college students for his little service project this semester. She had to get this settled before the students were back in session the following week; this might be her last opportunity.

And when Zack saw the benefits to his schedule, he’d be thanking her for it.

“DO YOU REALIZE what time it is?”

Zack looked at his watch. Holy hell, somehow it had jumped from eight-thirty to almost midnight without his even noticing. “I’m sorry,” he said, signaling for their bill. “You probably have to work in the morning, don’t you?”

Randi shrugged. Her shoulders, snug in the tight spandex jumpsuit she was wearing, attracted his attention. Everything about Randi’s body was tight.

It made Zack tight, too.

“Classes don’t start until next week, so while I have to go in, it doesn’t have to be too early.”

He had a surgery scheduled at seven-thirty the next morning.

“This place was great,” Randi said, pushing through the front door of the five-star Scottsdale hotel he’d chosen—before she remembered that he would probably have opened it for her. “You were right—not only was the duck à l’orange superb, but that guitar player was fabulous.”

He hadn’t heard much of the music. He’d been too focused on hearing about Randi’s job as athletic director at a class-one university. He’d learned the inside scoop on recruiting and eligibility rules, about Title Nine’s effect on the world of sports and found out which sports brought in money at the gate. He’d guessed right on basketball, but missed volleyball by a long shot. He’d told Randi about his job, too, when she’d asked. For someone who had no fondness for pets, she certainly had a lot of questions.

And a load of sassy comebacks, too. Zack couldn’t remember when he’d laughed so hard. Or just plain enjoyed himself so much.

What they hadn’t talked about was the pet-therapy club.

“So did you go immediately to Montford after you graduated from high school?” he asked Randi as he reluctantly turned his Explorer back toward Shelter Valley. Despite the lateness of the hour, he wasn’t ready for the evening to end.

Randi shook her head. Her blond hair reminded him of Meg Ryan’s in that movie French Kiss—all flyaway and sexy as hell.

“Actually, I wasn’t planning to attend college at all.”

He turned to look at her. “You’re kidding, right? Your brother’s president of the local university.”

“When I graduated from high school, I was already turning pro. There was hardly time to think about more education. Besides, I thought I had all the education I needed in order to get where I was going.”

Something prickled the back of his neck. “Turning pro?”

She grinned at him. “I forget you’re relatively new to town. Nobody talks about it much anymore, probably out of kindness to me, but you’re riding with Shelter Valley’s ex–child star of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.”

Tension shot through him. “Golf?”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly, looking straight ahead at the dark road. “I was good at a lot of sports, but my first love was golf. I was competing—and winning—by the time I was fourteen. By twenty, I was officially on the LPGA tour and slated to break all the records.”

Golf. He swallowed. Adjusted his big frame in the seat. Did that mean she knew Barbara Sharp? Did she know Dawn, too?

“What happened?”

“I was in a car accident in Florida not quite ten years ago. On my way to play the final round in a tournament with a purse of one hundred grand. I was up by five strokes going into the day and some idiot ran a red light and broadsided me two blocks from the golf course.”

Golf. But almost ten years ago. Then she wouldn’t know Dawn. And maybe not Barbara, either.

“You were driving?”

“Nah, I was in a cab. The back passenger door took the brunt of the collision and I was on the other side of that door. My right rotator cuff was crushed. And so was any future I’d hoped to have swinging a golf club.”

“I’m sorry.” He responded to the pain in her voice. And to the sick feeling he had in his own gut. She’d been a golfer.

“You seem so cheerful,” he told her, “like nothing really bad ever came your way.”

Turning to face him as much as she could within the confines of her seat belt, Randi took a moment to answer him. Already he knew that meant she was going to be completely serious. Randi had a tendency to blurt out the first thing that came to her mind. And it was often tempered with a large dose of her dry wit.

“The way I choose to see things, I’m very lucky,” she finally said. There was no doubting that she meant every word. “I have a great family—the best. A job I love, a job many women spend their entire lives aiming for but never get. And I had a chance to live a dream, too. That’s more than most people have. Life on the circuit is tough. Lonely. Still, I would’ve loved every minute of that life… But I love Shelter Valley, too.”

“So you don’t miss golf? Or get frustrated because you can’t play?” Was the woman superhuman?

“Are you crazy? Of course I do,” she said. “Just last week I went into Phoenix to play some rounds with a couple of friends. They’re still on the circuit and wanted me to critique some problems they were having. By the last round, I was in tears. But I played until the bitter end.”

Zack glanced at her. “Your shoulder hurt?”

“Yeah, but not enough to make me cry.”

Not wanting to impinge on her privacy, Zack didn’t ask any more. But he waited, hoping she’d tell him, anyway.

And wondered if the people she’d been playing with knew Barbara Sharp.

“I just got so tired of my head telling my body what to do—and my body not doing what it was told. My game was mediocre at best.”

“Why play, then?” he asked, but he knew the answer. Probably the same reason he still played basketball even after he’d been cut from the college team his senior year. Some was better than none.

“Because I love the game. I love being on the course, smelling the fresh-cut grass, the feel of the club in my hands, the slight sting as the club makes contact with the ball. I love the sound of the ball falling into the cup. I’m still pretty damn good at putting.”

“You could always take up miniature golf,” he offered, throwing her a grin.

“Yeah, but those fake greens…”

They drove in silence for a couple of minutes. Disappointment and warnings rang in his head. He’d had a great time tonight. Far better than he’d expected. But that was all. He couldn’t read more into it than a very pleasant evening.

Zack didn’t do long-term relationships. Not anymore. Short and sweet had become his motto. Long enough for pleasure on both sides. Not long enough for either party to become disenchanted.

And he sure as hell wasn’t ready to take up with a golfer. Even if she’d been out of the game for ten years. A man could only stand so much.

“But she’s a woman.” His own words rang silently in his ears as he recalled the pathetic happiness he’d seen in his wife’s eyes.

He wanted to ask Randi if she knew Barbara, a woman he’d never met. But the words stuck in his throat. Because he didn’t want to know or because he did? He wasn’t sure. He just knew he didn’t want to think about that part of his life. It was over.

THE FIRST WEEK of school came and went before Randi had a chance to stop long enough to acknowledge it. And she didn’t even have any classes to teach. A couple of regional conference meetings, budget requests from disgruntled coaches and the hiring of new game-management personnel were only a few of the tasks that occupied her time.

In spite of its small size, Montford, with its dormitories and full scholarships, was a Division One school. In many respects, this was good. From Randi’s perspective, it meant a lot of extra pressure. Pressure to find the best of the best if she was going to direct winning teams and keep her job.

Having grown up in the world of competitive sports, Randi was not afraid of pressure. She actually thrived on it. But it helped when she could focus one hundred percent of her energies on the task at hand.

She wasn’t focusing that week. Hadn’t focused since Zack Foster had dropped her off at her door without so much as a peck on the cheek a week and a half earlier. Things had been going so well, too. Right up until the part where she’d mentioned her previous pro status.

And why should that surprise me?

Disgruntled, knowing she had to be energetic when she showed her face at the women’s tennis match later that afternoon, Randi gave in to her need for comfort and picked up the phone.

“Hey, it’s Randi,” she said as soon as she recognized the voice on the other end of the phone.

“What’s up, woman? Got another revelation for me? Another good tip to help me improve my swing?”

“No.” Randi grinned. Barbara was slated for the number-one spot on the LPGA tour this year, in spite of all the younger athletes coming up behind her.

“I was planning to send you flowers or something, to thank you again for all your help a couple of weeks ago, but I know you hate to see them die.”

“Putting me up at the Phoenician and feeding me for three days wasn’t payment enough?” Randi asked. Barbara was one of the two friends she’d spent time with the week before school started. On the golf course, using her sharp eye and years’ worth of studying every intricate detail of the game, she’d critiqued their performances. And wept with frustration as she watched others do what she could no longer do herself.

Barbara had been the only one who’d seen her tears on the back nine that last day.

“The hotel was comped, and you know it,” Barbara said. “And seriously, Ran, I really appreciate your help. You hit that slight weight switch perfectly. I haven’t been able to miss since we straightened that out.”

Randi fidgeted with a pencil on her desk. “Glad I could help.”

“So what can I do to return the favor?”

“Remind me why we care about the things we care about.”

“This sounds serious.”

“Have you ever regretted what you gave up to be who you are?” Randi asked before she realized how stupid the question sounded. Barbara was at the top of her career, making more money than Randi had seen in years. Kind of hard to regret.

“Yeah.”

Randi dropped the pencil, leaning back in her chair with one foot propped on the desk in front of her. “Yeah?”

“There are downsides to everything.”

Of course there were. For every mountain climbed, a valley lay on the other side. Randi knew that, counseled her young athletes with such truths at every banquet she attended, every speech she gave. Without the bad, how could one measure the good? With no losers, there could be no winners.

But…

“So what do you regret most?”

“Same thing you do, I imagine,” Barbara said, her no-nonsense voice tinged with the warmth she reserved only for those she considered real friends. “The circuit, the training, the life of a professional athlete, particularly a female professional athlete, exacts its price. You have to have complete focus, keep your mind and heart on one goal—to be the best. And suddenly you aren’t a kid anymore with your whole life stretching before you.”

Her fingers straightening the lace on her tennis shoe, Randi froze.

“You wake up one morning and find yourself all alone in a world of couples,” Barbara continued.

Or you lie awake one night, alone in a bed big enough for two, on a street lined with houses filled with families. In a town of moms and dads and people pulling together.

“And you discover,” Randi said slowly, “that not only are you alone, you don’t have the slightest idea how to change that.”

“Wonder why nobody told us when we were growing up that while we were building one kind of skill, we were missing out on another. All the emotional stuff—the dates, the fumbling first kisses, the hurt feelings. Those were experiences we needed and didn’t get.”

“They didn’t tell us any of that stuff because winning is everything,” Randi told her friend, the knowledge as natural to her as the air she breathed. Competition was a fact of life, and the point of competing was to win.

“We just didn’t know, until it was too late, that when we chose to win physically, we were losing something else just as vital,” Barbara murmured.

“But it’s not necessarily fatal,” Randi said now, barely hiding the question in her statement.

Barbara had managed, somehow, to win on all counts. She and Randi never spoke of the relationship Barbara had embarked on almost a year before. Randi had never even met the woman, but she knew the relationship was stronger than ever.

She’d seen the change in her friend. The easy light in her eyes, the peace that had replaced the nervous tension in Barbara’s every movement.