Stephanie Bond - It Takes a Rebel

“I swear, Alex, I’m going to kill her.”

“Gloria?”

“No, Vicki. Do you know what she did?”

“I can’t guess.”

“Guess.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

Alex sighed. “Borrowed your suede coat again?”

“She ruined it. No, worse.”

“Forgot to pay a bill?”

“I had to flash the cable man so he wouldn’t cut us off. But it’s worse.”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“Lana—”

“She’s dating Bill Friar.”

Alex swallowed. “Oh.” Lana was the most popular, outgoing woman she knew, and her looks were extraordinary, if offbeat—classic bone structure and violet-colored eyes allowed her to pull off spiky bleach-white hair. But Lexington men did not stand in line for eccentric-looking women with an I.Q. that put her on the Mensa mailing list. Bill Friar had seemed to be the exception—at first. Then the big phony had broken her friend’s big heart.

“Yeah, ‘oh,’ is right.” Lana shoveled in another huge bite. “She has the nerve to rub it in my face.”

Alex felt a pang for her friend. “Are they getting serious?”

“No, she’s dating a dozen other guys. She only went out with him to get back at me.”

“How did she know you and Bill were once an item?”

Lana stirred the spoon aimlessly, her eyebrows drawn together. “She read my diary.”

Alex sucked on her spoon, her eyes wide. “She didn’t.”

“She did and, just watch, I’m going to get her back.”

“Why don’t you just find another roommate?”

“We both signed the lease, so I’m stuck for another eight months, but after that, I’m outta there. Meanwhile,” Lana said, holding up the ornate spoon, “I’m going to borrow her things for a while. These are her earrings, too.”

Alex leaned forward to get a better look at the copper spheres. “Nice.”

“Aren’t they? So what’s new with you?” Lana asked, fully vented and ready to listen. “I phoned you this morning for lunch, but your secretary said you were out.”

“I was running an errand on the east side.”

“Eww. Why?”

Alex took another slow bite before answering. “Ever hear of a guy named Jack Stillman?”

Her friend blinked. “Sure. Hotshot receiver for UK when we were freshmen. Don’t you remember?”

Alex worked her mouth from side to side. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Great looking, big man on campus, dated the varsity and the junior varsity cheerleading squads.”

“He sounds pretty forgettable.”

Lana laughed. “He had a perfect record his senior year—never once dropped the ball. Of course I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You practically slept at the store back then to impress Daddy, not that things have changed much in fifteen years.” Her smile was teasing. “You really need to get out more, Alex.”

“Heath and I go out.”

“That tree? Please. My blow up doll Harry is more exciting.”

Alex had heard Lana’s lukewarm opinion on Heath too many times to let the comment bother her. So he wasn’t Mr. Excitement—she didn’t mind. “To each her own.”

Lana put away another glob of empty calories. “I suppose. Why the questions about Jack Stillman?”

“He owns an ad agency in town and he’s pitching to us in the morning.”

“Well, I guess he grew up after all.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Alex said dryly. “This morning I dropped in to check out his operation and had the displeasure of meeting the man.”

Lana leaned forward, poised for gossip. “Is he still gorgeous?”

“I couldn’t tell under that heavy layer of male chauvinism.”

Her friend frowned, then her mouth fell open. “He got under your skin, didn’t he?”

Alex squirmed against the suddenly uncomfortable over-stuffed goose down cushions. “Not in the way you’re implying.”

Lana whooped. “Oh, yeah, under like a syringe.”

She sighed, exasperated. “Lana, believe me, the man is no one I would remotely want to work with.”

“So, who’s talking about work?”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Or anything else. He’s a player if I’ve ever seen one, and the man doesn’t exactly scream success, if you know what I mean.”

Lana made a sympathetic sound. “Too bad. He used to be hot.”

“I believe he still operates under that delusion.”

“So you don’t think he’ll get your business?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Well, let me know how it goes,” Lana said, standing and stretching into a yawn.

Alex frowned. “You have to go already?”

“Four-thirty comes mighty early.”

“When are you going to buy that coffee shop?”

“Maybe when I acquire a taste for the dreadful stuff,” her friend said with a grimace. “I still keep a stash of Earl Grey under the counter. I’m busy tomorrow, but let’s have lunch the day after and you can let me know how it goes with Jack the Attack.”

“Jack the Attack?”

Lana nodded toward the wall of bookshelves. “Check your college yearbook, bookworm. Goodnight.”

“Here’s your spoon.”

Lana grinned. “Keep it.”

Alex was still laughing when the door closed behind her friend, but sobered when Jack Stillman’s face rose in her mind to taunt her. The man was shaping up to be more of a potential threat than she’d imagined. She walked over to a laden bookshelf and removed the yearbook for her freshman year of college. Within seconds, she located the sports section and, as Lana had said, it seemed that Jack Stillman had been the man of the hour. Although UK was renowned for all of its team sports programs, Jack the Attack had been heralded for single-handedly taking his football team to a prestigious post-season bowl game, and winning it.

Page after page showed Jack in various midmotion poses: catching the football, running past opponents, crossing into the end zone. The last page featured Jack in his mud-stained uniform, arm in arm with a casually dressed man who was a taller, wider version of himself, behind whose unsuspecting head Jack was holding up two fingers in the universal “jackass” symbol. Twenty-two-year-old Jack had the same killer grin, the same mischievous eyes, with piles of dark, unruly hair in a hopelessly dated style. Alex smirked as she mentally compared the boy in the picture to the man she’d met this morning. Too bad he was such a cliché—a washed-up jock still chasing pom-poms.

Alex snapped the book closed. The ex-football star angle worried her. Her father was already aware of it, she was sure, and the fact that he hadn’t taken the time to enlighten her probably meant he would bend over backward to work with Stillman just to be able to tell the guys at the club about the man’s athletic accomplishments.

Anger burned the walls of her stomach, anger about the old boy’s network, anger toward men who shirked their duties but advanced to high-ranking corporate positions because they had a low golf handicap and could sweat with male executives in the sauna. Subtle discrimination occurred within Tremont’s, although she was working judiciously to address disparity within the sales and marketing division. And subtle discrimination occurred within her own family. Had she been a son, an athlete, she was certain her father would have showered her with attention, would have fostered her career more aggressively. She ached for the closeness that she’d once shared with her mother, but that seemed so out of reach with her father.

She blinked back tears, feeling very alone in the big, high-ceilinged apartment. Fatigue pulled at her shoulders, but the sugar she’d ingested pumped through her system. She needed sleep, but her bed, custom made of copper tubing and covered with a crisp white duvet, looked sterile and cold in the far corner of the rectangular-shaped loft.