Midnight Oil Read online

  Peg parked in a vast garage that seemed to swallow her car the way a whale inhaled plankton. She hiked to the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor. Then she crossed the street to the office tower opposite the garage and took another elevator to the law firm’s floor.

  The mercury globs in her stomach slid back and forth, her palms started sweating and she tamped down a rising hysteria. No! She was not going to lose it.

  She pulled open one of a set of glass doors and introduced herself to a receptionist who looked like a runway model and had twice the attitude of one.

  She was told to sit, like an obedient dog, until Mr. Buckheimer could see her. Fifteen minutes went by, during which Peggy figured she lost half her body’s water content through her palms. At last a large, paunchy, jovial man came into the reception area.

  “Miss Underwood! Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m Jerry Buckheimer. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  Peggy shook his big paw and wondered if he always looked so damn cheerful about evicting people. He radiated amusement, the sadist.

  “Let me show you to the conference room, and then we can get started with the, uh, proceedings.”

  She ratcheted up her jaw, squared her shoulders and followed the man to a polished wooden door with glass panels to either side of it. The panels were hung with blinds, and these were drawn.

  Buckheimer opened the door and ushered her in. A long cherry conference table greeted her, dotted with dozens of lit candles. A huge cut-crystal vase of irises sat in the center of it. And over the back of each chair around the table lay a pink numbered jersey. In each seat rested a pink football helmet and a pair of pink cleats.

  Peggy stood there stupidly, taking it all in. Behind her the door clicked shut and she turned to see Troy, hands in his pockets, leaning casually against it.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She stared at him, her mouth working. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” he said dryly.

  “What, you came in for the kill?”

  “Now, now.”

  She gestured toward the table, her expression a question. “Is there a kill? Or is this part of a sick joke?”

  “I figured since you once thanked me for sending you flowers, that maybe I should give you some.”

  Peggy put a hand to her temple. “You, um, always give women flowers after they’ve played evil pranks on you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, especially when they get me arrested for indecent exposure.”

  Horrified, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “No…please tell me that didn’t happen.”

  He nodded. “You couldn’t have engineered it better, sweetheart. That mineral mud looks exactly like dried blood under a setting sun. Makes a driver very interesting to the cops.”

  He wasn’t kidding. She tried to speak, but he cut her off. “I guess I now know exactly how you felt back in college, after the incident with those guys—the coach seeing you naked.”

  Her eyes flew to his and her mouth went dry. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she swallowed hard. “Troy, I am so sorry. What I did was beyond infantile, and I certainly didn’t mean for—oh, God! No wonder you were so pissed when I showed up at your house.”

  “Let’s just say that if this gets out, nobody’s going to let me coach their little boys on a Pop Warner team.”

  She inhaled sharply; she hadn’t thought of that. She looked at the floor while shame swallowed her. “And you’re not strangling me why?”

  “The thought did cross my mind once or twice,” he admitted. “Okay, even three times. But I decided that was too easy.”

  “Too easy,” she repeated. He was smiling at her. Why?

  And what was up with the flowers and the candles and the pink uniforms?

  “Yeah. I want to torment you over a period of months, even years. Maybe decades, if you’ll hang around that long and develop the right sadomasochistic tendencies.”

  She squinted at him. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

  “I can’t strangle you,” Troy explained, “because I fell for you the first night I saw you.”

  “You did?” Her insides started going gooey. Then she frowned. “That night in the parking lot? Wait a minute. You swore you weren’t stalking me.”

  His mouth twisted and he caught his lip between his teeth. His eyes danced. “I wasn’t stalking, exactly. But I was kind of spying. Playing Peeping Tom because I was convinced you guys at After Hours were giving more than massages in the back.”

  “What?”

  “I was really disappointed when you weren’t, since I could have broken the lease right away.”

  “You—you—”

  “I thought you were real cute for a hooker.” Troy grinned at her, dodging around the end of the table when she came at him, fist raised. “I wondered what you looked like under that lab coat.”

  She dropped the Vuitton bag on the floor, snarled and leaped over it. Then she tackled him.

  Unfortunately, as he’d argued during their discussion about coed football, her 120-pound body was no match for his 230-pound one. He laughed as she head-butted him and tried to knock him off balance. Then he picked her up and held her at arm’s length while she flailed her hands and feet. “Hooker?” she panted.

  “What was I supposed to think, when After Hours was open until midnight and you were serving alcohol? I found it highly suspicious.”

  “You are unbelievable!”

  “If it’s any consolation, you forced me to consider paid sex for the first time in my life.”

  “Oh!” She tried to head-butt him again. “Put me down, you bastard, so I can kill you.”

  He shook his head. “So, you see, I deserved your revenge the other night more than you knew.”

  She hissed at him.

  “I thought that might make you feel better.”

  “Oh, trust me. It does.”

  “Okay. Is it safe to put you down now? You really shouldn’t try to harm the guy who’s bought your entire powder-puff team pink athletic gear. Expensive gear, I might add.”

  She turned her head to look at it.

  “Doesn’t that count for something?”

  Grudgingly, she nodded.

  “Okay.” He set her on her feet.

  “Why did you do that? Get the gear?”

  “Well, it’s along the same lines of why I can’t strangle you. I’m awfully afraid that I’ve developed feelings for you.”

  “You have?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What kind of feelings?” she asked cautiously.

  “Mushy ones. The kind that warp my normally clear logic and bring me to strange conclusions. Like being charmed when a woman puts Crisco in her hair and sprays her T-shirt with Raid in the hopes of not being my girlfriend.”

  “Really? You thought that was charming?”

  “No. I said I was charmed by it. The behavior itself borders on psychotic, but let’s not discuss that right now, okay?”

  She took a step closer and peered up at him. “What would you rather discuss?”

  He cocked his head and smiled down at her, touching her hair. “Breaking and entering.”

  Now she was really confused. “That’s illegal.”

  “Not in this case,” he said, cupping her chin. “You promise not to break my heart, and I promise not to break your lease. We enter into an agreement.”

  She smiled, but he stole it with his lips. They were warm and insistent, parting hers and taking possession of her mouth. He kissed her for long moments before finally lifting his head. “So what do you say?”

  “I say we have a deal—on two conditions.”

  “What’s that?” He nuzzled her neck.

  “First of all, you can’t break my heart, either. Second, you agree to a match between my powder-puff team and your boys. We’re gonna whip your butts, pink helmets and all!”

  “Done,” he said promptly. “Name the time and place. We’ll wi
pe the field with you. Now, are you my girlfriend again?”

  She chewed a fingernail and thought about it. “Do we have to use that word?”

  “Well, you got all upset when I offered alternatives,” Troy said, throwing up his hands. “There’s no pleasing you.”

  “Okay, okay.” Peggy took a deep breath. “I think I’m in love with you. So it sucks…but I am your girlfriend.”

  Epilogue

  TROY SWELLED with satisfaction, opening and closing his fists inside his light-blue Windbreaker. Blue for boys. As opposed to all those pink jerseys running around out there on the playing field over pink cleats.

  Thank God his team wasn’t getting humiliated by Peggy’s girls: it was the one thing he couldn’t handle. She stood on the sidelines opposite him, her little freckled face grim with determination. The score was twenty to fifteen, in the boys’ favor. With difficulty, Troy refrained from inserting his thumbs into his ears and waggling his fingers at her, humming, “Nah, nah-nah-nah nah!” He strove for maturity; he was superior simply by being male and didn’t need to rub it in.

  Twenty-three seconds left on the clock, and his boys had the ball on their own seventeen-yard line. He told Derek to deliver the message when they huddled: “It’s the second down, kids. The other team has no time-outs left, remember? So all you have to do is snap the ball and take a knee. Go get ’em!” He fairly danced in anticipation, grinning like a monkey. Peggy would never live this down, after all her taunts about the girls wiping the field with them. Nah, nah-nah-nah nah! His girlfriend owed him dinner and a bl—

  “No!” he yelled in disbelief. The little peckerheads had muffed the snap! There was a bad exchange between the center and the quarterback; the quarterback fumbled the ball and it hit the ground, with one of the pink jerseys diving on top of it. No! Damn it, that was a turnover.

  Peggy took a turn grinning like a monkey, now. She jumped up and down and screamed, her red ponytail flying through the air. “Yes! Girl Power!”

  Girl Power, my hairy ass. But the damn pinkos had the ball on the fifteen-yard line now. Keep it away from Danni, Troy prayed. She’s the menace. “Defense!” he roared.

  His boys did the best they could; he had to give them that. But the prissy little pink jerseys got the ball to his niece and blocked Derek when he tried to mow his sister down. Danni sneered at him as she threw a perfect twenty-yard spiral right into the end zone. The touchdown was complete, bringing the score to 21-20, girls’ favor.

  Laura added insult to injury when she kicked the final point after touchdown, upping the pink score to twenty-two.

  Peggy ran onto the field, still screaming in excitement, and hugged every single little girl out there as Troy tried to restrain a deep, moody growl. Girls didn’t beat boys. They just didn’t. Not at football. Not when even their flippin’ little toenails were painted pink. Couldn’t they be burly and have budding beards, so he could comfort himself by speculating that they’d had a sex change? But they were just as feminine and cute as they could be.

  He walked out on the field, too, to comfort his kiddos. “We’ll get them next time, but good,” he promised.

  “Yeah, get us burgers, maybe!” Peggy gloated.

  “Coach Underwood,” he warned, “am I going to have to teach you a lesson on good sportsmanship when we get home?”

  “I don’t know, Coach Barrington. Does it still involve—” she leaned forward to whisper in his ear “—handcuffs and hot baby oil?”

  “As I recall, it does indeed.”

  She flashed him a wide, naughty grin and said her next words at full volume. “Well, then, boys, I think you’ll be needing to fetch us some sodas with those burgers—and wash our dirty uniforms, too!”