After Hours: Midnight Oil / Midnight Madness / Midnight Touch. Karen Kendall

in there….” Troy pulled on his own jeans and shoved his hands into his pockets.

      She looked at him miserably. “What I don’t get is why I inspired so much hatred and contempt, when all I wanted to do was play. It wasn’t just those three who were bad—every other player at Bryce University hated my guts. Why?

      “Not because I had no talent. Not because I was a horrible person with a bad attitude. Just because I had tits. I cost a serious player a spot. A guy. I made the players a laughingstock on the college ball circuit, because they were obviously such ‘pussies’ that a girl could make the team.”

      Troy closed his eyes. “The male ego is a complicated thing. Men do incredibly stupid things because of pride.”

      “Oh, it was pride that made them goose me any chance they got? Harass me, come on to me, expose themselves to me? I have another word for it.”

      “Not every guy could have treated you that way.”

      “Nah. There were some who just ignored me.”

      “And maybe on a different campus, in a different group of guys, things would have been different. Not all football players are like that.”

      “Yeah,” she said bitterly. “Whatever.”

      “You got a lot of press as the only woman starting for the team. Were they jealous of that?”

      She shrugged. “Could have been.”

      He nodded. “I think it must have irritated them.”

      They stood in silence for a long moment. Then he touched her arm. “C’mon, it’s hot out here. Let’s go inside. You want something to drink?”

      She was parched. “Yeah. But then I need to go. And I am going to lodge a protest with the school about their decision. It’s just bs.”

      She followed him inside and let him get a glass of ice water for her, which she gulped down without a lot of grace.

      Troy watched her. “Can I ask you something? And don’t get mad. It’s just a question, because I really don’t understand.”

      She nodded.

      “If that was your experience, then why do you want to keep training girls like my nieces, keep encouraging them to think that maybe one day they can be on a high school or college ball team? Why would you want anyone else to go through what you did?”

      Peggy set her cup down with a snap. “Because it’s the only way that the system will be challenged and the only hope that someday it will change!”

      He folded his arms. “Look, you don’t have coed basketball, or coed soccer or anything else. Why should there be coed football? Nobody wants it. The best you could hope for is a women’s team.”

      “Then give us women’s teams. But we’re not going to get them if we’re wiped out at the first scheduling problem or budget cut! I’m asking you to stand with me on this, Troy. Not because you owe me anything, but because you owe your nieces.”

      He gave her a long, hard stare. Then he looked at the floor. Finally he said, “All right.”

      Even though she’d demanded it, he could tell she didn’t expect his cooperation. Somehow, even though she’d told him her story, she’d lumped him in with the rest of the players who’d hurt her: big, male and unfair.

      So Peggy stared at him, a smile of warmth and fond disbelief and gratitude slowly dawning across her freckled face. “Yeah…?”

      Something inside him cracked at the sight. He cupped her face in his hands and leaned forward to kiss her lips. “Yeah.”

      

      TROY WATCHED HER DRIVE AWAY in her ridiculously cute munchkin-mobile. She herself was ridiculously cute. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who had scars or worries; she looked like the all-American girl. Freckles, adorable little upturned nose, big blue eyes.

      He thought about three thugs—her fellow ball players—attacking her in a shower stall and wanted to be sick. Team spirit took on a whole new sinister dimension. They’d gone as a posse to rape the little upstart, show her who was boss.

      Troy threw the contents of his glass into the kitchen sink and stared down the black hole of the disposal. He whirled and splintered the same cabinet door that Peggy had kicked. It didn’t matter, since he’d be gutting the whole damn kitchen within weeks, anyway.

      Fury at three unknown men pulsed through him; he knew a desire to pound their faces into pulp, hear the sickening sounds of their bones cracking. The potential for extreme violence shooting through his body and psyche scared him.

      He’d managed to stay calm when removing Sam’s derelict husband from her house, and that had been tough—but last night’s situation came nowhere near the sheer rage that consumed him right now.

      The creep punched holes in walls and created scary scenes. But as far as Troy knew, he’d never tried to gang rape a defenseless girl.

      Troy began to systematically destroy every cabinet door in his entire kitchen with his bare feet and fists.

      The cheap wood and laminate splintered, screws popping loose and veneers peeling back. The old hinges didn’t stand a chance of holding up under his assault, nor did the thin panels in the middle of the frames.

      When he was done both the room and he were a mess. He got a hold of himself and stared around the shambles, feeling no better than Sam’s ex, who’d only kicked in the bottom of one door.

      Troy rinsed off his bloody knuckles under the tap and grabbed for the roll of paper towels. At least the cabinet doors hid only dated pots and pans, not a frightened woman and her crying children.

      Troy headed for the bathroom off the master bedroom, sat on the edge of the bathtub and poured hydrogen peroxide over his feet. “You are one stupid sonuvabitch,” he said aloud, looking at the scrapes, bruises and abrasions. They were evidence of something even stupider: he’d gone and developed feelings for Peggy Underwood, and they were more than guilt feelings for sneaking around trying to break her business’s lease.

      He told the feelings—whatever the hell they were—to get lost, but he knew it was a losing battle. He thought about the times he’d been a little rough with her sexually, and was deeply ashamed. He weighed twice what she did. How could he have not been gentler?

      And where the hell did he go with her from here? No wonder she’d once told him that she wouldn’t date him. I don’t date football players. Not ever. He recalled her saying that.

      A wave of protectiveness washed over him, and as he sat in the tub and watched the cuts on his feet bleed, he resolved that no matter what happened between him and Peggy in the end, he was going to change her viewpoint on football players. He could help heal some of the wounds of her past.

      14

      PEGGY DROVE HOME half appalled and half relieved that she’d finally told her story to someone. She wasn’t sure why she’d spilled her guts to Troy, but his smug comment about the male culture of football had enraged her. She’d had to make him see that it wasn’t okay, the whole boys-will-be-boys mentality.

      It was fine for boys to be boys—as long as boys being boys didn’t involve them acting like animals.

      She started to cry as she drove and hated herself for it, for being weak. But the tears came faster as she thought about her father’s reaction to her making the college team. He’d congratulated her, but he’d been puzzled, just like everyone else, as to why she’d wanted to play. She was a girl. The question hung in the air between them, never asked by him and never answered by her.

      He’d never connected it to her wanting his attention, never realized that she’d tried to impress him and show him she was just as worthy of his love as that jerk Alan, who had his own dad anyway, and didn’t need to take hers, too.

      Her