Page 102 of Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars 6)

Fun, but not serious. Making love with Annabelle had been exciting, crazy, definitely hot, but it hadn’t been important. The only reason he thought about it so often was because he couldn’t repeat the experience, so it had taken on the lure of the forbidden.

He fingered the robin’s egg blue jewelry box in his pocket. He didn’t much care for the ring he’d chosen. It was only a little over a carat because Delaney didn’t like anything ostentatious. But he liked a little ostentation, especially when it came to the ring he’d be putting on his future wife’s finger. Still, he wasn’t the one who’d have to wear the puny son of a bitch, so he’d keep his opinions to himself.

Okay…Time to get to work here. Steer a careful path around the love discussion, give her the fucking ring, and propose. Then take her back to his place and seal the deal.

His cell vibrated in his pocket, right next to the ring box. Annabelle had given him strict orders not to take calls when he was with Delaney, but wouldn’t she have to get used to this if they were going to get married? “Champion.” He shot his future wife an apologetic look.

Annabelle’s voice hissed through the receiver like a leaky radiator. “Get over here right now.”

“I’m kind of in the middle.”

“I don’t care if you’re in Antarctica. Get your sorry ass over here.”

He heard a male voice in the background. Make that male voices. He sat straighter in his chair. “Are you okay?”

“Does it sound like I’m okay?”

“It sounds like you’re pissed.”

But she’d already hung up.

Half an hour later, he and Delaney were rushing up the sidewalk toward Annabelle’s front porch. “It’s not like her to get hysterical,” Delaney said for the second time. “Something must really be wrong.”

He’d already explained that Annabelle had been more enraged than hysterical, but the concept of rage seemed foreign to Delaney, which didn’t bode well for the times when he had to watch the Sox lose another close one.

“It sounds like some kind of party.” She pressed the bell, but nobody was going to hear anything over the hip-hop music blaring from inside, and he reached in front of her to push the door open.

As they stepped inside, he saw Sean Palmer and half a dozen of his Bears teammates draped around Annabelle’s reception room, which wasn’t alarming in itself, but through the door leading to the kitchen, he spotted another batch of players, all of them Chicago Stars. Annabelle’s office seemed to be neutral territory with five or six players not exactly mingling, but scoping one another out from opposite corners while Annabelle stood in the middle of the archway. Heath could see why she might be nervous. Neither team had forgotten last year’s controversial call that had given the Stars a narrow and highly disputed victory over their rivals. He couldn’t help wondering what part of her brain had been on vacation when she’d let all of these guys in at the same time.

“Hey, everybody, Jerry Maguire’s here.”

Heath responded to Sean Palmer’s greeting with a wave. Delaney moved a little closer to his side.

“How come you ain’t got no cable, Annabelle?” Eddie Skinner protested over the top of the music. “You got cable upstairs?”

“No,” Annabelle retorted, pushing her way into the reception room. “And get your big-ass shoes off my sofa cushions this minute.” She did a one-eighty, her finger pointed like a gun at Tremaine Russell, the best running back the Bears had seen in a decade. “Use a freakin’ coaster under your glass, Tremaine!”

Heath stood back and grinned. She looked like a harried Cub Scout den mother, hands on hips, red hair flying, eyes shooting firecrackers.

Tremaine snatched up his glass and wiped the end table with the sleeve of his designer sweater. “Sorry, Annabelle.”

Annabelle caught Heath’s grin and marched forward, pinning her wrath on him. “This is all your fault. You have at least four clients here, none of whom I knew personally a year ago. If it weren’t for you, I’d be just another fan watching them destroy each other from a safe distance.”

Her hissy fit was getting everybody’s attention, and someone turned the music down so they could all listen in. She jerked her head toward the kitchen. “They’ve drunk everything in the house, including a pitcher of African violet plant food I’d just mixed up and was stupid enough to leave on the counter.”

Tremaine punched Eddie in the shoulder. “I told you it tasted weird.”

Eddie shrugged. “Tasted okay to me.”

“They’ve also ordered hundreds of dollars’ worth of Chinese food, which I do not intend to see all over this rug, so everybody is going to…eat in the kitchen.”

“And pizza.” Jason Kent, a Stars second stringer, called out from someplace near the refrigerator. “Don’t forget we ordered pizzas, too.”

“When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois?”

“We like it here,” Jason said. “It reminds us of home.”

“Plus, no women around.” Leandro Collins, the Bears’ first-string tight end emerged from the office munching on a bag of chips. “There’s times when you need a rest from the ladies.”

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