Heather Graham Read Online Free PDF

moves.
    “Hmm,” she murmured with her back to him. “Well, all right, if you don’t mind all the running around …” She turned to face him again, curiously. “I would have thought, though, that you would have been inundated with fans and friends by now.”
    He smiled, and she thought again that even if he was a little bit of a self-assured Don Juan, he was a nice enough guy with his heart in the right place.
    “I told the others to go on ahead. I didn’t think that Kent would agree to company tonight too easily, so I stayed behind to convince him that he wasn’t too worn out to party.”
    “Oh. Well”—Katie shrugged—“I guess we’re ready, then. Where’s this car of yours?”
    “Out front, but we’ll slip around the back way, just in case. You are a fan, Kathleen … aren’t you?”
    She smiled, feeling ancient even though they were about the same age and Sam Loper was probably worlds ahead of her in certain kinds of experience.
    “Katie,” she told him lightly. “And I—of course I’m a fan. Football has always been part of my life.”
    The last was stated with a very dry undercurrent, but it was unlikely that Sam Loper caught that note or could even begin to understand it.
    Kent Hart would have understood, though, she mused as she linked an arm with Sam and followed him back through the stadium.
    Perhaps he would have understood all too clearly.

CHAPTER TWO
    S AM LOPER WAS AN amiable companion. During the drive from the stadium to Katie’s hotel, he touched lightly upon a number of subjects—the weather in California, what living in Florida was like, politics, and his involvement with a nuclear freeze group. Katie enjoyed him, yet she was still amused by him. He drove with one hand, at first stretching his free arm behind her on the seat, then around her shoulder. She caught his hand, lifted it, and set it on the steering wheel.
    “I’m sorry,” she told him, “but I’m a big believer in two-handed drivers.”
    He grinned, clutched the wheel with both hands, then cast her a quick and covert glance that was very astute. “You’re really not after the quarterback, are you?”
    “No.” Katie laughed.
    Sam shrugged good-naturedly. “They’re usually after the quarterback,” he said with a rueful shake of his head.
    “Sam”—Katie felt compelled to shift in her seat and look at him—“I do like you. You’re a nice guy. I just try not to make it a habit to ‘go after’ anyone for what they do.”
    “Aha! A ‘for what you are’ woman, eh?”
    “Something like that,” Katie agreed.
    “But you are after Kent,” Sam added wisely, and Katie sighed.
    “I have an editor who really wants an article on Kent Hart,” Katie told him.
    “Well,” Sam told her, flashing a pleasant smile, “I’m going to harass the old Cougar until he decides to give it to you. That seems to be the only way I’ll get him off your mind and me on it.”
    Katie smiled. This didn’t seem to be a good time to tell him that she would just as soon not have any football player on her mind. After her father’s life, she should have learned. She had learned. But then she’d decided that it wasn’t fair to judge a man by his profession, and she’d gotten involved with a football player. And then there had been last week’s horrendous and embarrassing breakup.
    “If I’m not mistaken,” Katie murmured, “I think you take a left at the next corner for the hotel.”
    She received another of Sam Loper’s quick glances. There seemed to be a secretive little glimmer to his eyes.
    “You are going to ask me up, aren’t you?”
    “No,” Katie replied with a laugh.
    “But if there are any fans in the lobby, I’ll be swamped!” Sam complained woefully.
    “Hide out at the newsstand,” Katie suggested.
    Sam’s smile fell, and he muttered something, but he took her rejection well. And the quaint Victorian lobby was almost empty, so Katie couldn’t feel too much guilt for her blunt refusal. Not that