Sandra Brown: The Thrill of Victory

Drawing his face into a stern frown, he demanded,

"Whose is it? That Scandinavian cobbler who designed your special tennis shoes?"

"I'm not pregnant."

"Or is the happy father that polo player from Bermuda?"

"It's Brazil!"

"Brazil, then. The guy with all those chains on his chest and at least four dozen teeth."

"Stop right there."

"Or don't you know whose it is?"

"Stop it!" she screamed, folding her arms across her abdomen. "There is no baby!" She repeated it more softly, more tearfully. "There is no baby."

Tears began to roll down her pale cheeks.

"And before long there probably won't be anything else there, either. Because when they take out the tumors, they'll probably have to take out everything.'

Her outcry took Judd completely by surprise.

He made a little hiccuping sound when he sharply sucked in his breath. It was a reaction foreign to his character, as he was usually indifferent to even the most appalling pieces of information.

This was one time he couldn't shrug and go on his uncaring way.

Stevie turned her back on him. The long blond braid hanging down her back no longer looked saucy, as it did swishing behind her on a tennis court. It looked heavy and burdensome. Or was it that she suddenly seemed so small and defenseless? strangling sounds that penetrated his cynicism and prompted him to touch her.

"Shh, shh." He took those shuddering shoulders between his hands and turned her to face him. Disregarding her resistance, he pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her.

"I'm sorry. If I'd known it was anything that serious, I wouldn't have badgered you."

He doubted that she would believe him. He could hardly believe himself. He rarely apologized for anything. Almost never to a woman.

For a woman sobbing her heart out, all he usually felt was contempt and impatience to escape her clutching hands. But when Stevie Corbett's fingers curled inward toward his chest in a silent plea for help and support, it didn't occur to him to get the hell out before coming involved.

Instead he drew her closer and turned his head, resting his cheek on the crown of her blond hair.

He held her while she cried. That in itself was an oddity. When he held a woman, it was strictly for prurient purposes. When he held one wearing a short kimono that did great things for her bare legs, they were as good as in bed. When he held one wearing a short kimono with nothing underneath it except panties, his hands were usually inside it, not stroking her back consolingly.

Those comparisons no doubt accounted for how differently this embrace felt from any other in his recent, or even distant, memory.

His trained eye would have had to go blind to miss the details of her bralessness, the attraction of her smooth thighs, the delightful faint outline of bikini panties beneath the robe, but he didn't follow through on any sexual impulses.

To do so would have made him a real heel. He was a heel, but so far, he hadn't stooped that low.

Or maybe guilt was keeping his caresses platonic and circumspect. After all, he'd unwittingly induced this emotional breakdown. Unlike the other women he had reduced to tears during his career as a bastard, Stevie Corbett had a helluva good reason for needing to cry.

Eventually her sobs turned into soft, catchy, moist little breaths that he felt through the cloth of his shirt. "Shouldn't you be in bed?" he asked softly.

She nodded and stepped away from him, making ineffectual swipes at her eyes. They were still leaking tears and leaving muddy mascara trails down her cheeks.

He had a hot broad waiting to feed him a cold lunch. Mentally he kissed them both goodbye.

Surprising himself even more than he surprised Stevie, he bent slightly at the knees and lifted her into his arms.

"This isn't necessary, Mackie. I can walk."

"Which way?"

She hesitated, then raised her arm and pointed.

She had great muscle tone, which at any other time would have warranted leisurely exploration with fingertips and lips. On the other hand, she was so light that he could carry her for a hundred miles and not break a sweat, at least not from exertion. Holding her against him for any extended period of time without doing anything about it might make him perspire.

"In there."

He carried her into a spacious bedroom filled with natural light and an overabundance of potted plants. "Didn't they film a Tarzan movie here once?" he wisecracked.

"These plants are my pets. It's cheaper to have them taken care of while I'm away than it is to board a dog or cat. Besides, they can't miss me."

He deposited her on the edge of the bed. "Lie down."

"I'll bet you say that to all the girls," she remarked drolly.

"I'm not kidding around. And neither should you be. Lie down."

She reclined on the heap of eyelet-covered pillows.

By her expression, Judd knew it felt good to her, though she'd probably never admit it.

"Sorry about your shirt."

"Huh?" He glanced down and noticed that it was damp and smudged with makeup. "It'll wash," he said negligently.

He shook out a light, puffy, quilted comforter, which was folded at the foot of the bed, and covered her with it. He then sat down on the edge of the mattress, his hips even with hers.

"Talk."

"Not to you, Mackie " 'Not to you, Mackie.'

'My name is Judd.' "I know that. I've seen it on your byline.' "Forget the column for a minute, will you?"

"Have you?" she shot up at him.

"Yes!"

During the ensuing silence, he watched tears fill her eyes again-light brown eyes the color of very expensive scotch. "Stevie," he said gently,

"this is off-the-record. I think you need to talk to someone."

"Yes, I do, but…" She sniffed wetly; he popped a Kleenex out of the box on the night-stand and held it to her nose.

"Blow." She did. He tossed that Kleenex in the wastebasket and used a fresh one to dab at her eyes. "You need a sounding board, right?"

"I just don't feel natural talking to you like this."

"Well," he said, shaking his head ruefully,

"this is a highly unnatural situation for me, too.

Usually when I'm on a bed with a half-naked broad, the last thing on my mind is conversation.

And she would be using her mouth for something besides spilling out her problems."

"Mackie!"

"Judd. Now talk. When did you find out about these tumors?"

"This morning," she said huskily.

"Before your match?" She nodded. "Whose bright idea was it to tell you before a match?"

"Mine."

"Figures."

She frowned up at him. "I'd had some tests done. I wanted to know the results. Had to know."

Her gaze drifted to the window where a box of paperwhites were blooming on the sill. "I guess I wasn't really expecting the worst, though. I'd told myself I was prepared to hear it, but…" She looked back at him. "You were right. I collapsed from anxiety."

"Justifiably so."

He rubbed his hands together, studying them intently, as though he'd never noticed his blunt nails, the sprinkling of hair across the backs of his knuckles, the thick wrists that should have belonged to a professional baseball player and didn't.

"These tumors, they're, uh…"

"On my female organs," she told him, glancing away again. "I'd been having some pain, more than ordinary."

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He was learning that where the female body was concerned, he had a teenage boy's mentality. He liked to look and touch and have sex with it. He thought the variations among individual women were intriguing and considered himself a con noisseur of the finest. He had never been faithful to one in particular. He had enjoyed more than his fair share of them, more than he was proud to admit in this age of safe sex.