Still, trying to nail a friend was a rotten thing to do. Even a sexy friend, although she didn’t seem too clear about that, which made the effect of those mischievous eyes and the swirl of that amazing hair all the more enticing. Still, if he was going to blow his training for marital fidelity, he should have done it with one of the women at Waterworks, not with Annabelle, because she was right. How could she sleep with him then introduce him to other women? She couldn’t, they both knew it, and since he never wasted his time supporting an unsupportable position, he couldn’t imagine why he’d done it tonight. Or maybe he could.

Because he wanted his matchmaker naked …and that definitely wasn’t part of his plan.

Heath slept on the porch that night and awakened the next morning to the sound of the front door closing. He rolled over and squinted at his watch. It was a few minutes before eight, which meant Annabelle was heading off to meet the book club for breakfast. He rose from the mattress he’d dragged out to the porch for the best night’s sleep he’d experienced in weeks, a hell of a lot better than tossing and turning in his empty house.

The men had a round of golf scheduled. As he showered and dressed, he went over the events of the previous night and reminded himself to mind the manners he’d worked so hard to acquire. Annabelle was his friend, and he didn’t screw over friends, figuratively or literally.

He drove to the public course with Kevin but ended up sharing a golf cart with Dan Calebow. Dan kept himself in great shape for a man in his forties. With the exception of a few character lines, he didn’t look all that different from his playing days when his steely eyes and cold-blooded determination on the field had earned him the nickname Ice. Dan and Heath had always gotten along well, but whenever Heath mentioned Phoebe, as he did that morning, Dan always said pretty much the same thing.

“When two hardheaded people get married, they learn to pick their battles.” Dan spoke softly so he didn’t distract Darnell, who was lining up his tee shot. “This one’s all yours, pal.”

Darnell hooked his ball into the left rough, and the discussion returned to golf, but later, as they were riding down the fairway, Heath asked Dan if he missed his head coaching job, which he’d left for the front office.

“Sometimes.” As Dan checked the scorecard, Heath spotted one of those rub-on tattoos on the side of his neck. A baby blue unicorn. Pippi Tucker’s handiwork. “But I have a great consolation prize,” Dan went on. “I get to watch my kids grow up.”

“A lot of coaches have kids.”

“Yeah, and their wives are raising them. Being president of the Stars is a big job, but I can still get the kids off to school in the mornings and be at the dinner table most nights.”