Jaclyn went to DeMarcus. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” DeMarcus hugged his father. “See you later, Pop.”
“Drive carefully and congratulations again.” Julian released his son to give Jaclyn a hug and a kiss. “Take care of my boy.”
Jaclyn smiled. “Always.” She turned to kiss Warrick’s cheek. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bright and early.” Warrick hugged her tight. “Thanks.”
Jaclyn returned his embrace. “What are friends for?”
Warrick’s tension was easing. It was as though a pressure had been lifted from his chest and shoulders. He’d felt on the outside for so long—outside his marriage, outside his team. He hadn’t realized the toll that was taking on him, heart and soul.
Julian returned from escorting DeMarcus and Jaclyn to the front door.
Warrick faced him. “Mr. Guinn—Julian—thank you for letting me stay in your home.” For how long was anyone’s guess.
Julian waved a hand. “You’re welcome, Rick. There’s more than enough room for the two of us. Stay as long as you’d like.”
Warrick crossed to the study’s bay window. “I don’t know how long it will take for Mary and me to work things out.”
Or even if we can.
“Marriages go through periods of adjustment.” Julian’s voice carried from across the room. “Being a celebrity, you have a marriage with more to adjust to than most.”
Warrick crossed his arms as he contemplated the quiet Park Slope neighborhood outside. “It shouldn’t matter what other people say or write about us. It’s our marriage—Mary’s and mine. We’re the only people who should matter.”
“That’s true, in a typical marriage. But your marriage isn’t typical, is it?”
Warrick considered the other man’s question. Behind him, he heard Julian moving around.
“Can you cook?”
Warrick wandered away from the view. “A little.”
“How about bake?”
Warrick shook his head. “Sorry.”
Julian’s disappointed expression quickly brightened. “I still have some of Althea’s cookies left. Come on.”
Warrick followed Julian down the hallway toward his kitchen. He’d known DeMarcus’s father was dating Althea Gentry, Jaclyn’s administrative assistant. But he hadn’t realized the older woman could bake.
Julian fished the plastic bowl of homemade cookies from a kitchen cupboard and put it in the center of the table. “Marriage is a union that involves two individuals who are growing and changing. Sometimes, you grow together. But sometimes you grow apart.”
Was that what was happening to him and Marilyn? Were they growing apart?
Warrick chose a cookie from the container. “How do you know which one it is?”
“You don’t, at least not right away. It may feel as though you and Mary are growing apart, but be patient.” Julian paused as he filled two glasses with milk and carried them to the table. “Between the NBA finals, Mary losing her job, and the two of you living in a media storm, emotions are running high.”
Warrick caught and held the older man’s gaze. “I want you to know that I have never and would never cheat on my wife.”
Julian sat across the table from Warrick and offered him one of the glasses. “You don’t need to explain anything to me.”
Warrick took a sip from his glass of milk. The cool drink eased his dry throat. “It’s important to me that you don’t think I’m a womanizer.”
“I don’t.” Julian sipped his milk. “For the most part, the press left Marc alone when he played for the Miami Waves. He was single, but his social life wasn’t interesting enough for them. Still, I know the media can distort a person’s image so much that even their families don’t recognize them.”
Warrick stared into his glass. “I wish my family had realized that.”
“Go easy on them, Rick. This situation is hard on everyone.” Julian washed down a bite of cookie with a swig of milk. “I’ll say this for your Mary, though. There are a lot of women who would have left the minute Jordan Hyatt stepped onto the scene. But your Mary stood beside you. She really does believe in you, Rick.”
Warrick considered Julian’s words. Marilyn had stood by him. She’d even tried to help him discredit the other woman. She’d never doubted him, never questioned him—until Jordan Hyatt told New York about his tattoo. Was he being unfair just because she was asking questions now?
21
Faye Ryland walked into Marilyn’s home and rested her hand on her shoulder. “Girl, you look like shit.”
Peggy and Susan joined the other woman in the entryway. They didn’t echo Faye’s sentiment, but their expressions told Marilyn they agreed. She turned to close her front door, ignoring the lone photographer who slouched against the tree in front of her home, taking pictures. She secured the lock, then led her unexpected guests into her family room.
Peggy lowered herself into one of the two overstuffed coffee-colored armchairs. She smoothed her turquoise and silver maternity dress around her. “Susan told us you’d called to say you couldn’t make today’s meeting, so we brought the meeting to you.”
Marilyn wrapped her arms around her waist. Warrick’s worn black Monarchs T-shirt was soft in her fists. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m not really up to company.”
Susan wandered the room. Her four-inch red stiletto heels tapped the polished maple flooring. In her flowing crimson top and black yoga pants, she was a dramatic figure in front of the white stone fireplace. She paused to study the framed photos arranged on the blond wood mantel.
“You were a pretty bride.” The compliment seemed almost grudging. Susan met Marilyn’s eyes over her shoulder. “How many guests did you have?”
“I don’t remember. A hundred?” What did it matter? Marilyn glanced at the pearl clock mounted above the mantel. Almost six o’clock.
“What’s this? You like
Grease
?” Susan frowned at the compact disc soundtrack that Warrick must have left on top of the CD player.
“Hey, that’s good shit.” Faye sprang from the sofa. She snatched the case from Susan and sang a couple of lines of the movie’s soundtrack.
Marilyn blinked. “You know the words?”
Faye set the case back on the CD player and crossed the room in strappy wedge-heeled sandals. She was wrapped in a figure-hugging minidress. Its jeweled magenta and black patterned cloth matched the highlights in her hair. “Of course. The young John Travolta.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Pretty hot.”
Peggy shifted in her chair. “The old John Travolta’s not too bad, either.”
“Shit, I’m hungry.” Faye rested her hip against the fluffy sofa and rubbed her flat stomach. “You got anything to eat?”
The sudden shift in topic challenged Marilyn’s sluggish mind. She started toward the kitchen. “I’ll check.”
Susan’s stilettos echoed behind her. The sound stopped at the doorway. “This is nice. Do you do a lot of cooking?”
Marilyn faced Susan. The other woman was casting her gaze around the kitchen as though estimating the cost of the state-of-the-art appliances, green and white marble counter, white tiled floors, and blond wood cabinetry.
“Some.” Marilyn pulled two packets of tilapia from the freezer and set them in the microwave to defrost.
“What are you making?” Faye nudged Susan from the doorway, then stepped aside so Peggy could enter the kitchen first.
“Tilapia and salad.”
Marilyn wasn’t hungry, but her guests probably were. The meal wouldn’t come close to the culinary brilliance of the Italian restaurant they frequented, but they wouldn’t starve. She turned on the oven, then pulled vegetables from the fridge and a salad bowl from the cupboard.
Susan traced her fingers across the stainless steel stove top. “Everything’s so clean. Do you have a maid?”
Marilyn nudged the refrigerator closed with her foot and placed the vegetables on the table. “Yes. She comes in twice a week.”
“Tilapia?” Faye wrinkled her nose. “I could order us a pizza.” She settled her hips against the counter and looked at Marilyn with hope in her toffee brown eyes.
Peggy lowered herself into a kitchen chair at the table. “Tilapia sounds great to me.”
The microwave buzzed. Marilyn avoided the other women’s gazes as she made quick work of seasoning the four slices of fish. “I don’t think you’re here for a meal. If that’s what you really wanted, you’d have gone to the restaurant.”
Peggy rubbed her pregnant belly. “We saw the interview with Jordan Hyatt.” There was empathy in the other woman’s words.
“I thought so.” Marilyn put the fish in a pan and set the pan in the oven. She closed the oven door as she straightened, then faced the other women. Her voice was firm. “Rick has never had an affair with Jordan Hyatt or any other woman.”
Peggy, Susan, and Faye exchanged concerned looks. Peggy frowned. “Okay. If you’re sure, then we believe you.”
“But how did she know about his tattoo?” Susan pulled a knife from the butcher’s block. She washed the tomato at the sink before slicing it for the salad.
Marilyn grabbed another knife from the block to chop the lettuce. “She must have seen the pictures that deviant photographer took through our kitchen window.”
Susan nodded toward the window on the far right wall. “That one?”
“Yes.” Marilyn bit the word through her clenched teeth. If she could get her hands on that photographer, she’d break his fingers.
Peggy peeled the cucumbers. “What did Rick say?”
Marilyn avoided Peggy’s eyes. The other woman’s gaze seemed to reach into her mind. “He’s as upset as I am.”
Faye joined the group at the table to cut the carrots. “I didn’t see a tattoo.” She shrugged. “But then I wasn’t looking all that closely. I’ve got a man.”
Susan rolled her eyes. “We all do and they’re all fine.”
The conversation turned to the NBA play-offs, the physical results of a professional athlete’s workout regimen, the sexual benefits, and the restrictions of their healthy diets. Faye’s biggest and most frequently voiced complaint was the moratorium on pizza. Marilyn lost herself in the other women’s energy, their laughter and their irreverent conversation. By the time they’d finished cooking and consuming the meal, Marilyn was more relaxed than she’d felt since Warrick had driven away from her in the Monarchs’ parking lot three days earlier.
Marilyn escorted the other women back to the family room after they’d cleaned the kitchen. “I’m glad you came. I feel much better.”
The admission surprised her. She’d never expected to find genuine friendship with these women. She’d at first believed she had nothing in common with them. Meanwhile the woman she’d known more than a decade longer had become worse than a stranger. Marilyn shook off the sadness before it took hold.
Peggy returned to the armchair. “You look better, too.”
Susan crossed the hardwood flooring to examine the caramel-colored drapes. “Almost back to your old self.”
Faye helped their pregnant friend get comfortable before sprawling onto Marilyn’s sofa. “The tilapia was good. But next time we get pizza. I get enough of that healthy shit with Jarrett.”
“So what are you going to do about Jordan Hyatt?” Susan wandered the room, touching the framed artwork mounted to the walls and fingering the sculptures placed around the room.
“I don’t know yet.” Marilyn settled into the other armchair. “I’ve got to find a way to let people know she’s a liar.”
Faye sat straighter in the sofa. “Why don’t you call your own press conference?”
“That’s one idea.” Susan circled back to the black lacquered entertainment system in the room’s corner. “But it would be even better if you could get her to admit—publicly—that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Peggy combed her fingers through her ash blond hair. “How is she going to do that?”
Faye scowled. “I mean, the pictures were so small, how could she tell what the tattoo was?”
Marilyn had a mental picture of a light coming on. She blinked in its brightness. “She couldn’t.”
Peggy’s grin spread slowly. “That’s right. Now we’ve just got to get her to admit it in public.”
Susan flipped her light brown hair behind her shoulder to get a closer look at the sound system. “I’ve got that covered. A friend of mine has a popular radio talk show. He’s always asking me to convince Darius to go on his show.” She looked at the other women from over her shoulder. “Either he’s lost his mind or he thinks I’ve lost mine. I don’t give up my man like that.”
Faye inclined her head. “I know that’s right.”
“But he’d lose his mind over the opportunity to have Jordan Hyatt as a guest on his show and Mary as a caller.” Susan took another look at the
Grease
CD.
Marilyn gaped. Ice cubes danced in her stomach. “Me? I’ve never called in to a talk show before.”
“Don’t worry, Sandra Dee.” Susan faced Marilyn, waving the CD case. “Once we’re done with you, Barbara Walters will be calling for tips.”
Pandemonium greeted Warrick when he arrived home Sunday afternoon. After his four hours of working out and practicing with the team, he’d showered and changed before coming home.
Warrick locked the back door and followed the raised voices to his family room. His entrance brought an abrupt end to the shouting, allowing him to identify the participants if not the reason for the argument.
“Mom. Dad. I would have come home sooner if I’d known you were visiting.” His sneakers were silent as he walked farther into the room, taking in the sparks shooting from Kerri Evans’s eyes and the tight line of John Evans’s lips.
“Are you sure?”
He ignored his father’s question and offered his in-laws a socially acceptable lie. “Hello, Terrell, Celeste. It’s nice to see you. I didn’t realize you were coming, either.”
Celeste gave him a dispassionate once-over, taking in his tan khakis and black jersey. “Were you at work?”
He ignored Celeste’s biting sarcasm. Warrick knew she didn’t consider his profession legitimate work. Hours of training, film and playbook study, and team meetings all amounted to a hobby as far as Terrell and Celeste Devry were concerned. But for him, they’d all added up to an Eastern Conference Championship and a one-and-one game record against the Denver Nuggets in the NBA finals.
Warrick drew closer to Marilyn. He resisted the allure of her jasmine scent. “Why were you arguing?”