Sandra Brown: The Thrill of Victory

But he wasn't out of mind, and that was galling.

He was very much on her mind. Why? Per haps because she hadn't expected him to treat her so kindly when she started crying. Or maybe because she'd won his promise not to leak her story.

She supposed that when she did make a final decision, she should call him with the story first.

For behaving so honorably today, he deserved that consideration.

She ate a bowl of granola and fresh strawberries -out of spite for his sardonic comment about her healthy diet-and retired again to her bedroom.

Unplaiting her braid, she was again reminded of Judd. He'd touched her hair, the corners of her lips. He'd held her in his arms, apparently in no hurry for her to stop crying.

He had even carried her in his arms. It disturbed her that she could so clearly remember the feel of his sleeve against the backs of her bare thighs and the strength of his chest beneath her rib cage.

He was her mortal enemy who constantly attacked her with his vicious pen. Yet, now that she was alone and no one could read her mind, she confessed that his touch had elicited unexpected physical reactions: a fluttering in her breasts, a tightening in her belly, a sensation of swelling and fever between her thighs.

Slouching on the bar stool in her kitchen, he had looked rumpled and crumpled and comfortable.

His dark brown hair was worn long, not because he consciously chose a longer style but because he neglected to have it cut regularly.

He was attractive in a disheveled, disreputable, range-wolf way. Debonair he was not. But he was sexy. The chip he carried on his shoulder only added to his appeal. So did his arrogance.

To a woman with sensitivity, he would be lethal.

Stevie pitied any who might fall in love with Judd Mackie.

As she brushed out her hair, she chided herself for letting him arouse her temper. She had been foolish to engage in a shouting match with him. No one could understand her dilemma, especially not him. What did he know of denied ambitions? He'd never had aspirations to rise above the level of mediocrity. He was an elegant bum, content with half measures.

One thing he did know was women, Stevie conceded. He had known that his departing line would be a zinger she wouldn't easily forget.

She finished brushing her hair and got into bed. She slept on her side because lying on her back and pulling her stomach taut often caused her discomfort. Stacking her hands beneath her cheek, she stared beyond the hem of her pillowcase into the darkened room and thought about Judd. Involuntarily she recalled the drowsy appraisal he'd given her breasts. Had he noticed that her silk kimono had deliciously abraded her nipples to tautness?

Even as she fell asleep, she was blushing over the possibility that he had.

.Hello," Judd mumbled into his telephone.

"This better be damned important," he added after consulting the digital clock on his night-stand.

"Oh, it is, it is."

"Mike, for godsake, why're you calling so early?"

"To fire you."

Exasperated, Judd blew out a gust of breath and buried his head back into the pillow. "You did that already last week."

"This time it sticks."

"You say that every time."

"You lazy, no-account bastard, I mean it this time. Have you seen the morning papers?"

"I haven't even seen the morning."

"Well, let me be the first to inform you that your competitor got the story you were supposed to get and didn't."

"Huh?"

"While you were clacking out that less-than-inspiring piece about the Rangers' new Mexican rookie catcher, our friends over at the Morning News were scooping you about Stevie Corbett.

She's got cancer."

Judd swung his legs over the side of the bed, cursing the twisted sheets that restrained him, and damning his splintering headache and furry mouth. He and some cronies had gone to a topless joint after the Ranger game the night before.

There'd been a lot of beer and a lot of bare breasts. He had swilled down beer after beer, in the vain hope that out of the plethora of bobbing breasts he would see something as sexily enticing as an angry Stevie Corbett with her robe gaping open. He hadn't, so he'd kept drinking.

"What the hell are you talking about, Mike?

And you don't have to shout."

"I thought you said you talked to Corbett yesterday."

"I did."

"You also said there was no story there."

"In my opinion there wasn't."

"You don't think the fact she's got ovarian cancer is a story?" the editor bellowed.

"She doesn't have cancer!" Judd shouted right back, though it intensified his headache.

"She's got a few tumors that might or might not be malignant. How'd they find out about it over at the News?"

For the span of several seconds there was a taut silence. Judd didn't notice. He had left the bed and carried the cordless phone into the bathroom with him. His reflection in the mirror over the basin confirmed what his headache had already suggested: the night before had been a bitch.

"You knew about this? You knew?" Mike Ramsey roared. "And you gave me tripe for last night's edition?"

Judd didn't have to hold the telephone against his ear to hear the forthcoming tirade. He had it memorized anyway. So he propped the instrument on the edge of his bathroom sink and commenced to shave.

"You're no journalist," Mike shouted over the sound of running water. "You wouldn't even have a column if you didn't carouse in the tav erns where players and fans hang out. You're not a reporter, you're a stenographer. All you do is regurgitate boozy conversations and call it creative journalism."

Judd had finished shaving. He picked up the phone long enough to sputter through a mouthful of toothpaste foam, "The readers eat it like candy, lap it up like ice cream. What would your sports page be without my column? Nothing, Ramsey, and you know it."

"I'm willing to find out what it would be.

You've just written your last column for me. You got that, Mackie?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"I mean it this time. You're fired! I'll have Addison clean out that rat's nest you call a desk.

You can pick up the contents at the receptionist's desk on the first floor. Don't let me see your booze-bloated face in the city room again."

The next sound coming from the telephone was a dial tone. Unperturbed, Judd stepped into the shower. Before he got out, he'd already forgotten Ramsey's call. He got fired half a dozen times a month. It never stuck.

Even if it did, it might be the best thing that could happen to him. Because Ramsey was right in one respect: his column was just transcriptions of what he overheard after sporting events, garnished with a few witticisms that didn't tax his imagination any longer than it took him to type them. For the past year or so, he'd been telling himself that his readers didn't know his column came that easily for him and that it wouldn't matter to them if they did.

But it mattered to him. He knew that what he was writing wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. He was grossly overpaid for the amount of work required of him to produce the daily column.

Fooling his editor, the man who signed his paycheck, and his reading audience no longer gave him any satisfaction. It got harder each day to laugh up his sleeve about it.

That's why he boozed it up and slept with women he didn't care about and let the days of his life tick by without anything to show for them. He had nothing to care about, nothing to work toward, nothing to get up in the morning for. His life was a big fat zero in the productivity department. Even though he was the only one who realized it, the fact was hard to live with.

He needed a creative challenge, but was afraid that whatever literary talent he had once pos sessed had been squandered, never to be regained.