Zach closed the lid on the barbecue and looked up. Through the smoke he watched Adele swirl the wine in her glass. He couldn’t say that he knew her, but he was pretty sure that she wasn’t the type of woman who wouldn’t care what the hell her man did as long as it didn’t hit the news.

Adele glanced up and again he felt like he was back at UT, staring at her from across a classroom. Like there was something about her that he wanted to know better. Something that drew his gaze and attention. Something more than the heavy pull of desire. Back then he’d wondered what her hair would feel like tangled up in his fingers. Tonight he wondered how long it would take him to make those eyes of hers turn a deeper blue. A smile curved his lips as he remembered a night when he’d kissed a little fairy she had tattooed on the right side of her belly just above her panties.

As if she read his thoughts, her cheeks turned pink, and she turned and moved toward the table a few feet away.

“I’m sure you’ll be interested to know that the governor will be attending the benefit,” Genevieve said, interrupting Zach’s thoughts, which he figured needed to be interrupted before he got too carried away and embarrassed himself.

“Really? Huh.” Zach had met a lot of governors and a few presidents, too. He’d been to the Playboy mansion and partied with a lot of famous people. Some he’d liked. Others had been pompous tools. If Genevieve knew him at all, she’d know he wasn’t easily impressed. Especially by stuck-up society women who married old men for their money, then cheated behind the suckers’ backs.

Genevieve had invited herself to the party, and he wasn’t fooled by offers of help. Not that she was trying to fool him. He’d been around women like Genevieve all of his career and most of his life. Women who offered up their bodies, and while he’d sometimes taken what they’d wanted to give, he’d never screwed around with married women nor women he didn’t even like. He wasn’t desperate enough to start now.

“I’ll go check on the girls,” Cindy Ann volunteered, and took off toward the pool house.

“Thanks,” Zach said, and watched her go. Cindy Ann Baker was a perpetual volunteer mother, a former gymnast, and a woman who had it bad for Joe Brunner. Once Cindy Ann had seen Joe’s truck parked out front and noticed Genevieve, she’d quickly volunteered to “stay and help out, too.” Only Joe was so oblivious during football season, that he wouldn’t recognize an attractive woman if she tackled him. And while Cindy Ann wasn’t Zach’s sort of woman, she was cute and perky and athletic.

The barbecue sizzled and sent smoke into Zach’s face as he flipped a few more burgers. He waved the smoke away with one hand and glanced over at his defensive coach standing at the end of the table, chatting it up with Adele. The spatula paused in midflip, and a burger fell on its side on the grill. Maybe he’d been wrong about Joe. He watched Adele smile at his friend, then Joe leaned in and said something that turned her smile into soft, sexy laughter. Adele shook her head and patted Joe on the upper arm. Zach wondered if she’d be so friendly if she knew Joe had been married and divorced twice. If she’d be so touchy-feely?

Zach had invited the defensive coach over to help him out with the barbecue, not hit on women.

A frown pulled Zach’s brows together, and he righted the burger on the grill. Joe was a good guy and a great buddy who had a bad habit of dating and marrying the wrong kind of women. He needed someone who was as much into sports as Joe was. Someone like Cindy Ann. Not a woman like Adele, who could not care less. At least she hadn’t cared fourteen years ago.

Adele was beautiful, with a wonderland of a body, and Zach really couldn’t blame Joe for chatting her up. And really, why should he care who talked to Adele? He shouldn’t, and he didn’t.

Across the lawns, the door to the guesthouse opened, and twelve hungry thirteen-year-olds headed his way. Their hair was dried, and they all seemed subdued, whether from exhaustion or hunger, Zach wasn’t sure but was very grateful. They each grabbed a plate and loaded up on pasta salad, chips, hamburgers, and hot dogs.

“Did you burn mine black?” Tiffany asked as she moved next to the grill.

“You know it.” Zach speared the darkest hot dog on the grill and shoved it in a bun. Once the girls were all seated at tables beneath the heaters, he loaded Joe up with a double burger, Cindy Ann with a hot dog, and Genevieve just took pasta salad. “What’s your pleasure, Adele?” he asked. “Hot dog or hamburger?”

She looked up from the seat she’d taken a few feet away. “Neither thanks. I ate a huge lunch.” She stood and pointed to the side of the house. “Can I get to the driveway through that gate?”

“If I unlock it. Why?”

“I left my cell phone in the car and I have to call my sister and tell her we won’t be able to visit her until after six.”

Zach shoved a black hot dog in a bun and closed the lid to the grill. “Use the phone in my office. It’s closer.” He took a big bite and chewed. “It’s through the room with the big TV,” he continued, and pointed to a set of big glass doors. “Down the hall. Last door on the left.” As he watched her walk toward the house, his gaze moved from the top of her head, down her curly hair, to the angel wings and heart on the nicely rounded ass of her sweatpants.

Just before she disappeared inside, he lifted his gaze to the small of her back. He’d touched a lot of women there. It meant nothing. Just being a polite gentleman like his momma had taught him. But earlier, when he’d touched Adele, his thoughts had been anything but polite.

He took another bite of his hot dog and washed it down with Lone Star. Like Tiffany, he liked his dogs crispy on the outside, but unlike his daughter, he didn’t like ketchup. With his beer in one hand and hot dog in the other, he took a seat next to Joe and the two bullshitted about their Super Bowl picks. Joe was a die-hard Cowboys fan, but Zach liked the look of New England’s offensive line.

“I don’t care if they have Owens,” Zach argued. “You can’t build a team around one player.” He polished off his hot dog. “Especially a pain-in-the-butt whiner.” Most wide receivers complained about not enough ball time, but Owens took it to the media.

“You’re going to have a lot of free time on your hands once football season is over,” Genevieve said as she sat across from Zach and raised her wine to her lips. She looked at him over the brim of the glass, and her lids lowered a fraction. “What will you do?”

Zach recognized the invitation. He’d seen it a thousand times in the eyes of a thousand different women. If it had been anyone but Genevieve Brooks-Marshall staring back at him, he might have given it some thought.

“I’ll figure something out.” He stood and moved to a garbage can behind the grill. He tossed his empty beer bottle and walked into the house. He moved past the leather couches, chairs, and seventy-two-inch high-definition television and into the bathroom. Most of the house was exactly the way Devon had left it, except for the HDTV. Zach wasn’t the kind of guy who had to have the biggest rig or fastest car, but he did like a big TV. With over 2 million pixels, sometimes bigger really was better, he thought as he zipped up his pants.

As he opened the bathroom door and shut off the light, he heard soft laughter from down the hall. He followed it past the weight and sauna room and stopped in the doorway of his office. He shoved one shoulder into the frame and crossed his arms over his chest. Adele sat on one edge of his big desk, talking on the phone. “I didn’t leave him a prank call on his answering machine,” she said, as she looked down at the cord she twisted around one finger. “What a total loser. I called to tell him about what happened today with you and the baby, but at the last minute I decided he didn’t deserve to know. Maybe I should have just hung up, but I didn’t. I told him he should go fuck himself, and you’re right. It felt great.”

Adele had a potty mouth on her. Zach lowered his gaze to her lips. Not that he held that against a beautiful woman.

“Let him.” She made a scoffing sound and shook her head. “What judge is going to care? Compared to a man leaving his pregnant wife for his twentysomething dental assistant, a few messages are nothing.” She glanced up, and her gaze met Zach’s. Her hand stilled, and she stood “Listen, Sheri, I’ve gotta go, but we’ll come by on the way home. I know Kendra wants to tell you about her day.” She pulled her finger from the twisted cord. “I’ll see ya in a while,” she said, then hung up the phone.

“I thought you might’ve gotten lost.” He pushed away from the door and walked into the room.

“No.” She shook her head and brushed her hair from her face.

“How’s your sister?”

“Better.” She sucked in a tired breath and let it out slowly. “After Sheri has her baby, and everything is okay with them, I’m going home to my real life and sleep for about a year.”

“Where’s home?”

She dropped her hands to her sides and looked up at him. “Idaho.”

“Idaho?” He thought Tiffany had said Iowa. “Is that where you disappeared to when you left UT?”

Adele stared up into Zach’s handsome face, past his strong chin and firm mouth and into his eyes the color of warm coffee. She was tired and didn’t want to talk about the past. Especially with the man responsible for so much pain. “I didn’t disappear.” She pulled her gaze from his and moved to a built-in bookcase. “I went to stay with my grandmother in Boise. I liked it and never left.” She picked out an oversized Sport’s Illustrated NFL Football’s All-Time Greatest Quarterbacks and pulled it from the shelf. “Are you in here?” she asked, and looked over her shoulder.

“Somewhere.”