Quickly hanging up, she grabbed her makeup mirror with a shaking hand and lifted her pinky to her eyebrow just as Dan exploded into her office. She caught a glimpse of her secretary’s startled face behind him before he slammed the door.

Her office window faced the practice fields, so she should have been used to his aggression by now. She’d seen him throw clipboards and charge onto the field when he didn’t like someone’s performance. She’d watched him hurl his unprotected body at a player in full equipment to demonstrate some mysterious football move. And once, when she’d been in the office late and all the players had left, she’d watched him do laps around the track wearing a sweat-stained T-shirt and a pair of gray athletic shorts that had revealed a set of powerfully muscled legs.

Swallowing hard, she gazed up at him innocently. “Oh, my. The big bad wolf just blew my door down. What did I do now?”

“You win.”

“Goody. What’s the prize?”

“Ronald.” He grit his teeth. “I’ve decided I won’t stand in your way if you want to hire him back.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Not from my viewpoint.”

“Ron isn’t quite the incompetent you seem to think he is.”

“He’s a weenie.”

“Well, you’re a hot dog, so the two of you should get along just fine.”

He scowled, and then he let his eyes roam all over her with an insolence he had never before displayed. “Ronald sure figured out how to get what he wanted from you. But maybe there’s something you should know. Smart businesswomen don’t sleep with the men who work for them.”

Even though she hadn’t done anything wrong, the jab hurt, and she had to force herself to give him a silky smile. “Jealous I chose him instead of you?”

“Nope. I’m just afraid you’ll move on to my players next.”

She clenched her fists, but before she could respond he had stalked from her office.

Ray Hardesty stood in the shadows of the pines outside the cyclone fence and watched Dan Calebow stride back onto the practice field. Ray had to be at work soon, but he made no move to leave. Instead, he coughed and lit another cigarette, disturbing the butts already on the ground as he shifted his feet. Some of them were fresh, but others had disintegrated in last week’s thunderstorms leaving behind only the swollen, yellowed filters.

Every day he told himself he wasn’t going to come here again, but he came back all the same. And every day when his wife asked him where he was going, he said True Value. He never came home with any hardware, but she kept on asking. It had gotten so he could barely stand the sight of her.