Okay…Time to get to work here. Steer a careful path around the love discussion, give her the fucking ring, and propose. Then take her back to his place and seal the deal.

His cell vibrated in his pocket, right next to the ring box. Annabelle had given him strict orders not to take calls when he was with Delaney, but wouldn’t she have to get used to this if they were going to get married? “Champion.” He shot his future wife an apologetic look.

Annabelle’s voice hissed through the receiver like a leaky radiator. “Get over here right now.”

“I’m kind of in the middle.”

“I don’t care if you’re in Antarctica. Get your sorry ass over here.”

He heard a male voice in the background. Make that male voices. He sat straighter in his chair. “Are you okay?”

“Does it sound like I’m okay?”

“It sounds like you’re pissed.”

But she’d already hung up.

Half an hour later, he and Delaney were rushing up the sidewalk toward Annabelle’s front porch. “It’s not like her to get hysterical,” Delaney said for the second time. “Something must really be wrong.”

He’d already explained that Annabelle had been more enraged than hysterical, but the concept of rage seemed foreign to Delaney, which didn’t bode well for the times when he had to watch the Sox lose another close one.

“It sounds like some kind of party.” She pressed the bell, but nobody was going to hear anything over the hip-hop music blaring from inside, and he reached in front of her to push the door open.

As they stepped inside, he saw Sean Palmer and half a dozen of his Bears teammates draped around Annabelle’s reception room, which wasn’t alarming in itself, but through the door leading to the kitchen, he spotted another batch of players, all of them Chicago Stars. Annabelle’s office seemed to be neutral territory with five or six players not exactly mingling, but scoping one another out from opposite corners while Annabelle stood in the middle of the archway. Heath could see why she might be nervous. Neither team had forgotten last year’s controversial call that had given the Stars a narrow and highly disputed victory over their rivals. He couldn’t help wondering what part of her brain had been on vacation when she’d let all of these guys in at the same time.

“Hey, everybody, Jerry Maguire’s here.”

Heath responded to Sean Palmer’s greeting with a wave. Delaney moved a little closer to his side.

“How come you ain’t got no cable, Annabelle?” Eddie Skinner protested over the top of the music. “You got cable upstairs?”

“No,” Annabelle retorted, pushing her way into the reception room. “And get your big-ass shoes off my sofa cushions this minute.” She did a one-eighty, her finger pointed like a gun at Tremaine Russell, the best running back the Bears had seen in a decade. “Use a freakin’ coaster under your glass, Tremaine!”

Heath stood back and grinned. She looked like a harried Cub Scout den mother, hands on hips, red hair flying, eyes shooting firecrackers.