Even though Cal was his best friend, Kevin enjoyed giving him a hard time. It had been that way since the days he’d been the old man’s resentful backup. Now, however, Cal was retired from football and beginning his residency in internal medicine at a hospital in North Carolina.

Kevin couldn’t resist needling him. “It’s a matter of principle, old man. I need to prove a point.”

“Yeah, well, prove it with your own woman, and leave mine alone.”

Jane had laughed, kissed her husband, given their daughter, Rosie, a napkin, and picked up their new son, Tyler. Kevin smiled as he remembered Cal’s response when he’d asked about the Post-it notes he kept seeing on Ty’s diapers.

“It’s because I won’t let her write on his legs anymore.”

“Still at it, is she?”

“Arms, legs—the poor kid was turning into a walking scientific notebook. But it’s gotten better since I started tucking Post-its in all her pockets.”

Jane’s habit of absentmindedly jotting down complex equations on unorthodox surfaces was well known, and Rosie Bonner piped up.

“Once she wrote on my foot. Didn’t you, Mommy? And another time—”

Dr. Jane pushed a drumstick into her daughter’s mouth.

Kevin smiled at the memory, only to be interrupted as the beautiful Frenchwoman on his right shouted over the music. “Tu es fatigué, chéri?”

Kevin had a facility with languages, but he’d learned to keep it hidden. “Thanks, but I don’t want anything to eat right now. Hey, let me introduce you to Stubs Brady. I think you two might have a lot in common. And—Heather, is it?—my buddy Leon has been watching you with lascivious intent all evening.”

“What kind of tent?”

Definitely time to shed a few females.

He’d never admit to Jane that she was right about his preference in women. But unlike some of his teammates, who paid lip service to the notion of giving all they had to the game, Kevin really did. Not only his body and mind but his heart as well, and you couldn’t do that with a high-maintenance female in your life. Beautiful and undemanding, that’s what he wanted, and foreign women fit the bill.

Playing for the Stars was everything that mattered to him, and he wouldn’t let anybody get in the way of that. He loved wearing the aqua and gold uniform, taking the field in the Midwest Sports Dome, and most of all, working for Phoebe and Dan Calebow. Maybe it was the result of a childhood spent as a preacher’s kid, but there was honor in being a Chicago Star, something that couldn’t be said for every NFL team.

When you played for the Calebows, respect for the game was more important than the bottom line. The Stars weren’t the team for thugs or prima donnas, and during the course of his career Kevin had seen some brilliant talent traded because those players hadn’t measured up to Phoebe and Dan’s standards of character. Kevin couldn’t imagine playing for anyone else, and when he no longer got the job done for the Stars on the field, then he’d retire to coaching.