“You’re not in the middle. You’re on his side.” He tilted back in the chair again. “So why didn’t you take advantage of this golden opportunity to make him jealous and ask him in?”

Exactly what she’d been wondering herself except, really, what was the point? She was sick of deception, sick of keeping her guard up. She’d only invented her crush to keep from losing Heath as a client, and she no longer had to worry about that.

“I didn’t feel like it.”

For all his dumb-jock ways, Dean was smart as a whip, and she didn’t like the way he was looking at her, so she frowned at him. “Are you wearing makeup?”

“Tinted sunblock on my chin. I’ve got a zit.”

“It sucks being a teenager.”

“If you’d invited him in, I’d have nibbled on your neck and everything.”

With a sigh, she picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle. “My deal.”

Delaney stayed by Heath’s side as he spent halftime traveling between the skyboxes at the Midwest Sports Dome to press the flesh of the city’s movers and shakers. While he attended the Stars game, text messages were arriving from all over the country updating him on his other clients’ games. He’d been working the phones on and off since early morning, talking to wives, parents, and girlfriends—even Caleb Crenshaw’s grandmother—letting everybody know he was on the job. He glanced at his Black-Berry and saw a message from Bodie, who was at Lambeau Field with Sean. So far, their rookie fullback was having a great year.

Heath had been seeing Delaney for a month, although he’d been traveling so much they’d only gone out five times. Still, they talked nearly every day, and he already knew he’d found the woman he’d been searching for. This afternoon Delaney wore a black V-neck sweater, her great-grandmother’s pearls, and a trendy pair of jeans perfectly cut to fit her tall, thin figure. To his surprise, she broke away from his side and headed for Jerry Pierce, a ruddy-faced man in his early sixties and the head of one of Chicago’s largest brokerage firms.

She greeted Jerry with a hug that spoke of long familiarity. “How’s Mandy doing?”

“In her fifth month. We have our fingers crossed.”

“She’ll make it full term this time, I just know it. You and Carol are going to be the best grandparents.”

Heath and Jerry played in the same charity Pro Am every year, but Heath hadn’t known Jerry had a daughter, let alone that she suffered problem pregnancies. This was the kind of thing Delaney kept on top of, right along with knowing where to find the last remaining bottle of a 2002 Shotfire Ridge cuvée and why it was worth the effort to locate it. Even though he was a beer man, he admired her expertise, and he’d been making an effort to appreciate the vino. Football seemed to be one of the few areas where she wasn’t knowledgeable, preferring more genteel sports, but she’d been making an effort to learn more.