“What did you do?”

“I thought about quitting, of course. After all, I was Dylan Lambert, the Goddess! Who was she to tell me I couldn?t play!”

“But you didn?t.”

“No. I didn?t. I realized that I needed some help. Needed someone to turn to who would understand what I had been through, what I was still going through. It turned out to be one of the assistant coaches, who?d been through something similar. And when I finally let out all the anger and the hatred and the fear that had been eating me up for months, god?I felt like the world had been lifted off my guts and I could breath again. I felt?free. Clean. I reclaimed my strength. My true strength, not a strength born of rage. And I never looked back.”

A silence as deep as the bottom of a grave slipped between them, and after a long moment, Dylan chanced to look up. What she saw made her chest tighten again.

Large, silent tears rolled one after the other down Cat?s cheeks. Her expression was that of a lost child desperately looking for a way home.

Quite without her conscious permission, Dylan found herself moving forward and grasping the smaller woman in a gentle embrace. An embrace which Cat accepted willingly, clutching Dylan?s shirt in an iron grip.

“It?s alright,” Dylan soothed, rubbing Cat?s back. “Let it out. I?m here. It?s okay. I won?t let go.”

Several days later, after practice, Cat stood wiping her face with a towel when she felt a presence next to her. Drawing the towel away, she looked up, smiling, into the face of her coach. “What?s up?” she asked, relaxed and happy for the first time in weeks. The impromptu meeting with Dylan had done her more good than even she was willing, or able, to admit.

Dylan returned the smile, blue eyes sparkling in the harsh lighting of the arena.

God you?re beautiful.

It wasn?t the first time that particular thought ran through Cat?s head. In fact, it was becoming more repetitive as the days and weeks passed.

I think this is going beyond the ?I have a crush on my coach? stage, Cat. Better rein it in, girl. You are so not ready for that.

So deep in her own thoughts was she that she almost missed the next words out of Dylan?s mouth.

“If you?re not doing anything after practice, would you like to go for a drive with me? I have something that I?d like you to see.”

In her current state, Cat could have easily mistaken Dylan?s question for a proposition?heck, her body was responding already. Pleasantly, at that. But one look in those clear, magnificent eyes told her it was friendship, not intimacy, that was to be on the agenda for the afternoon.

Her hormones got a kick in the shins as she screwed on her best smile. “Sure! What did you have in mind?”

“It?ll explain itself when you see it.”

“Hmm. Going all mysterious on me, are you?”

Dylan?s smirk was her only answer.

“Wow,” Cat groaned as she sunk into the padded leather luxury of Dylan?s 427SC Cobra. “Maybe I?ll skip playing altogether and move right into coaching, if this is how the other half lives.”

“The ?other half? got this while she was still playing,” Dylan remarked, eyes shifting rapidly from her rearview mirror to the windshield and back again as she maneuvered the sports car into thick, rush hour traffic.

“Oh. Guess that means I?ve gotta stick around a few more years, then, huh?”

Dylan smiled slightly. “That would be best, yes.”

The two settled quickly into a comfortable silence; a silence broken only by the wind as it rushed through their hair, whipping it back in flying streamers of black and gold. Soon, rush hour traffic was a thing of the past as Dylan took an exit off the main freeway and headed north. City congestion dwindled into rural complacency, and greenery began to make a reappearance. Further on, ranches, farmlands, and large estates dotted the landscape here and there; the dark, straight ribbon of highway cutting through like a plumb line.

Cat took in several deep breaths of clean, country air and grinned. A city girl by nature, she?d always loved trips into the country, especially when she was young. Her father would get it into his head that the family “needed air”, and off they?d go, half in the old VW bus they named “Stinky”, and the other half in the wood-paneled station wagon.

God, Cat thought, we were the Brady Bunch come to life!

Shuddering at the thought, she pushed it down and away, instead concentrating on the beautiful scenery passing quickly by.

At last, after almost an hour of travel, Dylan pulled into a long driveway and came to a stop in front of a large ranch house. When Dylan shut the engine off, Cat could hear the barking of dogs and the whinnying of horses. Bemused, she levered herself out of the car and watched as the front door opened and a tall, handsome woman appeared. In her early forties, she wore her long, blonde hair tightly braided. Her eyes, a deep amber, were very intelligent, and her smile was radiant as she spied Dylan unfolding herself from the car.

The two women met midway between the house and the car, and embraced tightly. Watching the reunion from her place by the car, Cat felt a spark of something she refused to identify as jealousy move through her. She shook the feeling off and approached the duo as they broke apart, turning their smiles on her.

“Catherine, I?d like you to meet Tamara, an old friend. Tam, this is Cat.”

The two exchanged warm handshakes. “C?mon then,” Tam said, gesturing with her chin. “Let?s go see what you came for.”

As the tall blonde strode away, Cat was left to look up at Dylan. “Coach?”

“Mm?”

“What did we come for?”

Dylan smirked. “You?ll see.”

The pair walked down a winding brick path that rounded the corner of the large house. A huge, fenced corral became immediately visible, as did several striking horses who frolicked and danced in the warm sun. Tam opened a small gate and a group of large, sleek, black dogs came bolting out, barking wildly.

Cat stiffened in fear, instantly transported back to age seven, when she had been walking home from school and a German Shepherd had chased her down the block, snapping and slathering. She?d been scared to walk home for a week after that incident. It had taken twice that long for the nightmares to go away.

“Shit,” she managed to get out of a suddenly closed throat, before noticing that the dogs weren?t headed for her, but for Dylan, who stood directly in their path. An instinctive reaction broke through her temporary paralysis and she jumped forward, pushing Dylan just as the dogs collided with the tall woman.

The entire group went down in a jumbled heap. Intuitively, Cat brought her arms up around her head, waiting for the sharp white teeth to puncture and rend and tear at her flesh and bone. She could hear Dylan groan and feel her body shake.

No! she silently screamed, trying her hardest to push up from the pile. But Dylan?s body was too heavy, especially with the dogs on top of it. She might as well have been trying to move a mountain.

As she took a deep breath to try again, she was stilled by sounds of?.laughter?

What the?.?

Suddenly, as if a cork had been released from a bottle, the pressure eased and Cat was able to roll away. As she sat up, muscles tense, she realized that she really had heard what she thought she did. Dylan was laughing!

And the dogs, far from attacking her coach, were fighting to lick each and every inch of skin they could find; and on Dylan, that was a lot of skin.

“Anschlag!”

The dogs, six in all, immediately dropped to their bellies, looking guilty as only scolded puppies can. Tamara strode toward them, biting the inside of her cheeks to keep from laughing. Dylan, under no such pretense, was still laughing as she rose to her feet and reached down to haul Cat up as well. She easily caught the towel Tam tossed her way and set to wiping off a gallon of dog drool that covered her face, arms, and hands.

The pack looked on.

Cat looked bewildered.

Dylan rolled her eyes and tossed the towel back to Tam. Then she turned to Cat. “I?d like you to meet Frigga, Odin, Thor, Beowulf, Syn, and Hamlet.”

Cat turned her bemused look from Dylan, to the dogs, to Tamara, and back again.

The dogs whined.

Tamara laughed.

Dylan sighed. “I have two Dobies of my own at home, Brunhilde and Siegfried. They?re brother and sister. Siegfried got snipped, and this is Brunhilde?s first, and only, litter. Tamara trains guard dogs, and that?s what this motley group is supposed to be.”

“Oh, they are, never fear,” Tam replied, smirking. “They just know better than to attack the big chief.”

“They?re beautiful,” Cat said once she found her voice.

And they were. Sleek, shiny and well muscled, each black and tan dog was a model of its breed. Their eyes were intelligent and lively, and their teeth, Cat noticed, were wickedly long, white and sharp.

“Yes, they are,” Dylan agreed. “The sire is over there.”

Cat looked in the direction of Dylan?s pointing finger, easily spying a huge black Doberman sitting just inside the fence, eyeing the scene with proprietary interest.

“I?d like you to have one.”

The bewildered look reappeared on Cat?s face. “Me?”

“Yes, you. I know your complex allows pets, and you look like a dog lover.”

“Oh, I am, but?.”

“They?re well trained,” Tamara interjected, walking over to the group. “Except when Dylan?s around.”

Dylan snorted.

“Completely housebroken,” Tam continued, shooting Dylan a look, “very devoted, and extremely protective of their master.”

“It?s nice to have someone around to talk to who won?t argue with you. And?.” Dylan paused, looking directly at Cat, “they can help make nightmares go away.”