No Strings Attached

If Eric Haydon wasn’t here, she was going to kill him.

The man had some nerve, refusing to return her phone calls, forcing her to resort to this ridiculous extreme. It was April, a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. So what if it was—as spelled out on the parking lot marquee—the Houston Astros Season Opener, and Haydon’s Half Time was Houston’s Richmond Drive’s hot spot.

She had better things to do with her time than dodge rabid fans, and certainly better places to put her feet than a floor littered with spent peanut shells and cork beer coasters and whatever that sticky stuff was gumming the soles of her shoes to the glossy concrete.

Uncouth. That’s what it was. Ill-mannered and crude. What was wrong with these people?

The fact that their enthusiastic word of mouth had put Haydon’s Half Time on the map, that their patronage provided Eric’s bread and butter, hardly gave them carte blanche to act like they were raised in a barn. Team sports. Ugh. Chloe gave an affected shudder and blew out a loud puff of breath.

The very idea of all that sweaty grabbing and pawing, that tackling and blocking and sliding into base! The silly pants, the silly nicknames, the silly sports drinks colored like kiddie crayons. What a ridiculous waste of spirit, not to mention entertainment dollars.

Men. Honestly. They could be such children, she thought, even as a feminine shriek of excitement cut through the din.

Okay. So the place was coed.

The women were one thing, standing by their men, rooting for his team or often their own alma mater. And, yes. There were women who did the team sports thing for no other reason than the love of the game. The women didn’t factor into Chloe’s aversion for athletic fanaticism.

The women didn’t stir memories of being sidelined for no other reason than being a girl, a girl who in a heartbeat would’ve traded her secret baseball card collection for the chance to strap on shin guards and play a game with the neighborhood boys.

The women didn’t bring back memories of petticoats and patent leather and the punishing discomfort of the cold metal bleachers where she’d sat primly at her father’s side—Daddy’s little girl, pink-cheeked and petite, come to watch her brothers compete on the field.

The women didn’t leave her heart hopelessly hollow, her body crazy-hungry for heat, as did the incredibly clueless males of the species who, in Chloe’s wide world of experience, preferred their women to remain on a pedestal, between the sheets, or three paces behind.

The entire concept of love and romance was going to hell in a handbasket.

“Hey, sexy lady. Wanna beer?” The slurred voice interrupted her thoughts.

Chloe sighed and looked to her left. Ex-jock. Muscles gone to fat. Gaze flicking to three grinning buddies at a nearby table. “I think I’ll pass,” she replied.

“Pass? On a beer? Then how ’bout I give you the best night of your life?”

Puh-leez. “Not interested.”

“Aww, c’mon, baby.” He leered his way down the front of her new football jersey. “If I could see you naked, I’d die a happy man.”

“Yeah, sugar. But if I saw you naked—” she reached out and poked his beer belly “—I’d probably die laughing. Thanks, but no thanks.”

Turning her back on the whoops and sympathetic groans, she headed in search of some breathing room away from the cluster of tables.

Men. All so predictable. At the first sight of breasts, they turned into boobs. Keeping an eye out for Eric, she moved away from the common room back toward the entryway, and searched the bar from that vantage point.

It was obvious that what the modern world needed was another Cary Grant. A real ladies’ man. A true romantic.

Chloe might be only twenty-six years old, but she’d spent years devouring the favorite movies of the mother she’d never known, the mother who’d died before her first birthday.

And Chloe was not too young, too jaded or too cynical to envy Ingrid Bergman those heated looks shared in Indiscreet, Deborah Kerr the courtship of An Affair to Remember, Grace Kelly that spectacular kiss in To Catch a Thief.

Chloe couldn’t help but wonder if her mother, too, had been compelled by those cinematic glimpses into human nature, intriguing snapshots of what love could be. If she had longed for that broader experience, that deeper well.

Was that why she’d so adored romance classics? Or had she simply been a film buff, watching for no other reason than the love of a good story? How Chloe wished she could ask. And listen.

And learn the truth of the relationship her mother had shared with her father, the man who’d enshrined her memory and held her up as an example of the type of woman Chloe would do well to emulate.

Maybe if she better understood what had made her parents’ marriage the heavenly match her father had avowed—a match of the type so often idealized on screen—she wouldn’t feel so driven to find a man who filled her own movie bill.

A man who knew how to make a woman feel as if no woman had existed before her, knew how to make her believe that if he didn’t have her now—right now, here, this moment—he wouldn’t be able to breathe. A man who shared her own intoxication in impatient, restless sex. Sex unplanned and uncontainable, in the moment, on the edge.

Sex Chloe knew about. Sex was easy. Sex was power. It was that crazy little thing called love that she wasn’t certain she’d ever recognize.

“Hey, sweet thing. What’s your name?”

Chloe turned to face her newest accoster. A squat muscle-bound man stood much too close, his frog-eyed gaze aimed straight at her chest.

“Ice Princess,” she said coldly.

The toad only laughed, then moved closer. “So, what do you do for a living? Besides play hard to get, that is.”

“I’m a female impersonator.” Before he could respond, she brushed by him, leaving the bar’s entryway and walking briskly toward the rest rooms.

Men. Duds and bores. Her patience with them had grown Calista Flockhart thin.

Was it so much to ask? To be utterly, completely understood by a man? Had her idea of relationship reality been warped by her movie fantasies as well as by those of her mother? Was it truly impossible to be so attuned to another person that one could finish a sentence the other began?

Because that was what Chloe wanted. That connection, that completion, that bond. That, and the sex.

She paused near the door marked Jocks, shifted direction and entered the door marked Jills. Small, but spotless, she noted with approval, though she wasn’t the least bit surprised the room resembled a mini locker room in design.

Nodding at a tanned, short-haired woman washing her hands, Chloe proceeded to do the same at a second sink. What was she doing here? Tonight, in this bar? What did she hope to accomplish, really? There was no prince waiting out there, ready to fight for her honor, slay her dragons, no questions asked.

What had she been thinking, turning to a man when she had five girlfriends standing by, women who understood her and who she could call on day or night for comfort, career counseling and chocolate?

Men. Who needed ’em, anyway?

“Nice jersey,” a startlingly low voice said.

Chloe’s gaze jerked to the other woman’s, which seemed to be admiring more than the new Houston Texans logo. It was a sad state of affairs when a girl could no longer find refuge in the ladies’ room.

Muttering her thanks, Chloe returned to the bar, where a sudden loud burst of applause and an exuberant apelike, fist-driven echo of “Whup, whup, whup!” reiterated beautifully the reason she was here, and renewed her determination.

He might not be a prince riding to her rescue, but, for all his boisterous behavior and cocky top jock attitude, Eric Haydon often conveyed a hint—admittedly, the barest, the most infinitesimal, the tiniest microscopic hint—of suave sophistication, a sort of cultured finesse that kept her Cary Grant hopes up.

And that played nicely into her plans.

Abandoning what she could of the smoke and the noise, Chloe wove her way through the common room and up three short steps onto the glossy hardwood floor of the bar’s more intimate pub. The place was softly lit by glowing brass lanterns. The rich wood toppers of the red and green padded booths gave her cover to sneak up and blindside her quarry.

Fortunately for Eric and his well-being, Chloe knew she’d find him here. The black Ford Mustang GT she’d seen in the bar’s back lot was his; the personalized plates that read HALF TIME were hard to miss. It was a hotshot car, an extension of his male ego. A show-stopping, attention-grabbing, top-of-the-line boy toy that had accomplished its objective.

Her attention had been grabbed.