His face was rigid. “Don’t say another word.”

“You’d be the envy of all the coaches in the league.”

“I’m warning you. . . .”

“Will you still be this anxious to marry me if the Stars lose?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “What happens in that game on Sunday doesn’t have anything to do with the two of us.”

“But if you win, I’ll never be sure of that, will I? The only way I’ll know you’re sincere is if you lose and you still want to marry me.” Say you love me, Dan. Say you want to marry me because you love me—not because I excite you in bed or you want me to have your children or you covet my football team. Say you love me, and push all this ugliness away.

“I’m winning this football game.”

“Then we don’t have a chance,” she whispered.

“What are you trying to say?”

She was bleeding inside and she wanted the pain to stop. Her throat had squeezed so tightly shut she could no longer speak.

He regarded her with a flat, cold stare. “I’m not throwing the game.”

At first she didn’t understand what he meant. But as she took in the bleak expression on his face, she felt sick inside.

His voice was hard and furious, and she remembered that he hid all his stronger emotions behind anger. “I’ve played hard all my life, but I’ve always played clean, no matter how much temptation I faced. I’ve been offered money. I’ve been offered drugs and women. But I don’t throw games. Not for anybody. Not even for you.”

“I didn’t mean . . .”

His eyes flicked over her with contempt. Then he stalked out of the room.

She was only dimly aware of the passage of time as she sat on the edge of the bed with her hands clasped in her lap. She heard voices in the hallway when Molly took the twins home and then she heard her return a short time later. Pooh scratched at the door, but went away when she didn’t open it. She sat in the room and tried to put the pieces of herself back together.

At ten o’clock, she heard water running in Molly’s bathroom. She listlessly pulled off her own clothes, then slipped into her oldest bathrobe, finding comfort in its soft, worn fabric. There was a knock at her door.

“Are you all right, Phoebe?”

Under other circumstances, she would have been pleased that Molly had thought to inquire about her welfare, but now she merely felt empty. “I’ve got a headache. I’ll see you tomorrow before you leave for school.”

She wandered over to the window and pushed back the curtains to look down into the woods that ran behind the house. Tears clouded her eyes.

“Phoebe?”

She hadn’t heard Molly come in, and she didn’t want her here. Sooner or later she would have to tell her sister they were leaving Chicago, but she couldn’t do it tonight. “The door was closed.”