Kicks for a Sinner S3 Read online

  She did feel some qualms about trying to lure Joe away from Nell, but she could offer the quarterback so much more. Coming from a family with eleven offspring and outstanding fertility, she could give him as many children as he wanted. She’d overheard Nell again today tell Joe she thought they had a big enough family and to shut up about those little frozen babies. The dispute had been going on for some time, the first wedge in their marriage. As a Catholic exactly like Joe, Cassie understood how he felt while Nell obviously did not.

  When she first decided to follow in Nell’s footsteps and become a child psychologist, she gave her reasons as a desire to be closer to Tommy and to help other foolish girls lured into sex with older men, then abandoned as Bijou had done to her in Arizona. Okay, Nell had saved her and lost one of her newly implanted babies in the process, but she’d given Nell her son in reparation. That made them even.

  As she grew up, Joe became the attraction, a perfect match for her with their mutual love of horses. Nell could barely ride no matter how often her husband took her out on long excursions. Sometimes, Cassie watched the children for them until they returned with Nell always looking disheveled as if she’d fallen from her mount a few times. Joe said Cassie sat a horse tighter than a cocklebur.

  Since Bijou and all through college, she’d given herself to no other man, saving herself for Joe, she believed. Nell, she knew from a few frank conversations between only the two of them, had been with at least four men before marrying Joe, maybe more. Of course, Joe probably had been with hundreds of bed partners back when he prided himself on womanizing, but that’s the way God created young men. He’d settled down now and deserved someone younger and fresher than Nell. Once Joe divorced his wife, she and he could take Tommy and Dean, leaving Nell with the girls so she wouldn’t be all alone. They’d all remain friends like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis. She did love reading about situations like that in the tabloids, her secret guilty pleasure.

  “Lookit, Mama Nell! Lookit, Mama Cassie!”

  Tommy dropped his knotted reins over the horn, stood up in his saddle, and raised his arms toward a chilly blue January sky. The patient Boo continued on around the ring at a steady pace. Dean shot by Tom riding his chestnut half-Arabian, Drummer Boy, and obscuring his brother’s feat in a cloud of dust.

  The twins on older ponies cried out, “Mom, make Deanie stop that!” Despite being very young, all the Billodeaux children rode better than their mother.

  “Dean, you come over here at once,” Nell commanded from her seat on a fence rail.

  Cassie uncurled her long legs. Foolishly, she’d worn heels high enough to make Nell seem like a dwarf beside her and skinny jeans so tight the word “comfort” could not have squeezed into them. Now, she hobbled across the rough lawn to the ring where Dean’s chewing out progressed.

  “You saw Tommy showing us his trick. How unkind and dangerous to try to upstage him. What if he had fallen and gotten hurt? Then how would you feel? I think you owe your brother an apology,” Nell chastised.

  Dean hung his head a little and glanced sideways at Tommy who had come to a stop beside him. “Sorry, bro. It’s just Drummer Boy is so much faster and bigger than Boo. He likes to run.”

  “S’okay, Dean. I’m glad I don’t have to ride a girlie horse anymore since you let me have Boo. Besides, I didn’t fall off. Daddy says I’m like a tick on a long-eared dog when it comes to riding.” Tommy’s happy grin squinched all his freckles together and crinkled the corners of his dark brown Billodeaux eyes. Cassie preferred to think his ability to stay on a horse came from her, not Bijou, the former bull rider.

  “Poor Buttercup, you learned your lessons on her,” Nell said with some disapproval.

  “Cowboys don’t ride horses with names like Buttercup, Mama Nell. Do they, Mama Cassie?”

  Cassie’s heart filled with warmth as she answered her natural-born son. “No, they don’t.”

  “Come on, Deanie. Let’s race.” Tommy took an illegal head start on his short-legged pony. Dish-faced Drummer Boy caught up in one stride.

  Nell shouted to the little girls to pull to the side. “Watch out for your brothers!”

  Cassie stayed back from the rails and the dust. She smoothed the pastel blue cashmere sweater over her chest and took a quick peek toward the barbecue pavilion—where Joe manned the grill—to see if he noticed how great she looked in her latest purchase guaranteed to draw the male eye. It fit snugly over a seamless Victoria’s Secret bra that made her breasts look like perfect globes and shoved all she had into a deep cleavage in the v-neck of the garment. A small gold crucifix dangling exactly the right amount above this display pointed the way.

  As a grad student and teaching assistant her income really did not stretch to include such luxuries. Their cost swelled her credit card bills, swamping her with growing interest payments. Oh well, Joe would take care of that someday—if he ever noticed she’d grown up. His eyes stayed on the burgers, hotdogs, and steaks he supervised on the grill. But that guy standing next to Joe, that Howdy they were trying to push on her, did see and went all wide-eyed, a wonder he didn’t have to blot the drool from his lips with a napkin. How could Nell possibly think she would ever go for another cowboy type after Bijou?

  Cassie twisted a strawberry blonde curl around her finger. Toning down her bright red hair at a fancy salon had cost, but the results did please men. Many had told her so, but they didn’t count. She’d let her hair grow long and trained it into smooth curls. She might have been a mixed-up kid when she first met Joe, but she did remember that before Nell he’d preferred busty blondes and redheads who flipped their hair over their shoulders to show off their breasts. The tabloids once featured plenty of pictures of the quarterback with exactly that kind of woman. She kept an album of them. Even without the miracle bra, her boobs were way bigger than Nell’s round little tits. Cassie flipped her hair over her shoulders and inhaled to expand her chest. Joe flipped the hamburgers. Howdy smiled so broadly he could have caught the flies trying to get into the screened pavilion with his grin.

  Freckles gone, hidden under carefully applied makeup, her blue eyes enhanced with long, darkened lashes and dramatic liner, her lips all pouty and glossy, but did Joe Dean Billodeaux notice? Apparently not. He stuck a finger into his special steak sauce, tasted, then added a few more drops of hot sauce. Being too spicy for the children, Nell always made him serve it on the side. Cassie planned to show her appreciation of his culinary skills by slathering the concoction on her meat as soon as they sat down to eat. Joe said something to the new guy who loped from the pavilion and headed her way. He pulled up in front of her nervous as a shying horse.

  “Joe says dinner is about ready, ma’am.”

  She scowled at him. “Ma’am? We’re exactly the same age.”

  He lowered his blue eyes, but his glance skimmed across her tight sweater on the way. “My grandparents raised me, and they were kind of old-timey. They taught me to address all grown women as ma’am until told otherwise.”

  True, when Nell introduced them with such a hopeful look on her pixie face, Cassie had barely given him a once over, let alone told him to call her by her first name. Instead, she’d flounced off to sit under the oaks even though in January, fair-skinned or not, she hardly needed to sit in the shade to watch the children ride. This guy, Howdy, introduced by his real and not much better name of Howard McCoy, took the hint and tamely followed Joe to the grill. So not an alpha male, the Sinners’ rookie kicker lacked any aggressive attitude at all, it seemed. Cassie wondered how he survived on the football field, but then, all he did there was boot field goals and try to stay out of the way of the real players.

  “Fine! Call me Cassie,” she snapped.

  “Yes, ma’am, I mean Cassie. Dinner is served.” In a boyish gesture, he swiped away the hair hanging in his eyes and reset the baseball cap on his head.

  Having done his butler duty by her, he ambled over to the others to deliver his message again. She would say one th
ing for Howdy, he did fill out his dark blue jeans very nicely under that ugly shirt—but not any better than Joe. Nell directed the children to tie up their ponies and wash their hands.

  In the pavilion, the twins asked for someone to boost them up to sink level. Howdy tucked one under each arm and raised them to the faucet. The curly-headed little girls took advantage to engage in a splashing game that left him with wet splotches on the front of his red Sinners T-shirt worn under an open green plaid flannel shirt. He looked like a Christmas tree, a wet and dripping Christmas tree. Joe always wore the black version of the Sinners’ shirt and covered it today with a gray hoodie that stretched across his broad shoulders.

  Still, she could tell the other guy exercised more than his legs as the damp T-shirt clung to a smoothly muscled chest. Cassie shook her own curls and turned to grab the seat at the picnic table closest to Joe, who sat at its head in a folding chair. Dean beat her to the spot. Nell took a seat on Joe’s left and slid down the bench to allow Howdy to deposit their daughters between them in case either girl needed help with their food.

  “You two are like hauling a sack full of giggles,” the cowboy said. Jude and Annie giggled some more.

  “You’re very good with children, Howard,” Nell said as she distributed plastic plates, cheerful with a sunflower pattern, on the table covered with a dark green cloth, weighted down with pitchers of iced tea and lemonade. Purposefully, she placed the extra plate on Cassie’s side of the table leaving the kicker no choice but to sit next to her as Tommy had already slipped into the end place. As he slung his long legs over the bench, Cassie lifted Dean and plopped him between them.

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to your daddy all day, Dean. Why don’t you sit next to nice Mr. Howdy.”

  “Okay.” Dean reached for a burger already enrobed in a whole wheat bun and put a splotch of ketchup from a squeeze bottle under its lid before digging into his meal.

  Nell, slightly pursing her lips, appeared displeased by the change in sitting arrangements, but that was just too bad. Ever plucky, she continued to pimp for Howard, pointing out again what a way he had with children.

  “Did you come from a large family? Cassie belongs to an enormous family of eleven children.” Nell squeezed a line of mustard onto Jude’s hotdog and tucked some relish into the side of the bun.

  “Don’t you remember, I told you Howdy doesn’t have any family.” Joe drew a frustrated sigh from his wife and shrugged, puzzled. Impaling a thick, grilled t-bone from a platter, he asked, “Who wants one of these babies?”

  Cassie immediately held out her plate. Howdy sent his up to be filled by red meat, and Nell asked her husband to cut off half a portion for her. “Some of my special steak sauce?” Joe asked, passing around a yellow ceramic bowl brimming with the stuff.

  Cassie ladled it over her steak until the t-bone swam in sauce. “Dean, do you want some on your burger?”

  “No, Dad makes it too hot. Pass the chips, please.”

  Howard McCoy accepted the bowl from Cassie’s hands and cautiously spooned some on the side. “How about you, Tommy?”

  “Little bit.” The kicker applied a dab to the boy’s burger and handed the bowl across to Nell who sent it straight back to Joe.

  Nell offered a plate of foil-wrapped baked potatoes and her own homemade yogurt topping flecked with fresh chopped chives as well as little dishes of bacon bits and grated cheese, a concession to her husband’s tastes. Since the children ignored the vegetable platter, she piled grape tomatoes, baby carrots, and celery sticks on their plates, along with some of the yogurt and nodded to Joe to do the same. He took a big handful of veggies and bathed his potato in all the toppings.

  Nell tried to jump-start the conversation again. “Now that everyone is settled, Howard tell me how you know so much about children if you have no brothers and sisters.”

  “Well, ma’am, I used to babysit for pocket money when I went to middle school. But after I got involved in football, I didn’t have the time. I do like kids.” He carved off a portion of tender pink steak, dipped it cautiously in the sauce and chewed.

  “Please call me Nell. Ma’am makes me feel so old.”

  “See?” Cassie hissed.

  “Sure, Nell. Joe, this is a fine steak sauce.” He cut and dipped another piece.

  Cassie sawed a chunk from her t-bone and shoved it into her mouth. Her eyes began to water, making her liner run a bit. She blotted the tears carefully with her napkin and chewed gamely until she could swallow. A coughing fit followed the swallow. Howdy reached over Dean and walloped her on the back a few times making her breasts wobble like a gelatin mold.

  “Need the Heimlich?” he asked.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” she gasped. It should have been Joe who patted her back. After all, she gagged on his sauce.

  “Try the yogurt. It will kill the burn,” the cowboy suggested with a cheesy ear-to-ear grin. “Joe, I am enjoying your recipe. Next time I pass through Albuquerque I’ll bring you some fresh red and green chili powder to try. My grandpa cooked a lot of Mexican dishes.”

  “I’d like that. Sorry we couldn’t take a Super Bowl while he was still alive,” Joe said.

  “He got to see the field goal that got us into the playoffs. I’m glad he wasn’t around to watch me miss the one that lost the division title.” He set down his utensils as if his appetite suddenly failed.

  “I saw that one. You blew it,” Cassie said, knowing how heartless and unfair she sounded.

  Joe’s black brows snapped together. He chastised her like one of his children. “He missed an impossible sixty-three yard field goal by a whisper in Green Bay with the snow coming down during the last five seconds of the game because I asked him to give it a try. If I had played a better game that field goal wouldn’t have been necessary. Next year, we’ll get them, Howdy.”

  “Yes, sir.” Howard picked up his fork and delved into the baked potato. Silence thick as a sour cream topping enveloped the table.

  “Maybe after lunch, you could show the boys how to kick a football,” Nell said with all the brightness she could bring to the suggestion.

  “Not me,” Dean replied. “I’m gonna be a quarterback like Dad.”

  Even knowing her face still burned from Joe’s reprimand and how badly in the wrong she was, Cassie blurted out, “That’s right, Dean. Kickers are just glorified soccer players.”

  “We used to call her Sassy Cassie not so very long ago,” Joe answered, scowling her way. “Her mouth isn’t as cute now.”

  “That’s okay. Lots of folks feel that way, like kickers aren’t real football players. I did start out as a soccer player in high school. The football coach saw one of my kicks and before I knew it, I’d made the team and had a special trainer. Oh, and I think your mouth is cute, very cute, ma’am.” He continued eating his steak while Cassie’s cheeks burned even brighter.

  “This kid is cool as ice on the field, and we did have some in Green Bay,” Joe told Nell while disregarding Cassie. “You wouldn’t know it to look at him. He has that boy-next-door kind of face, you see.”

  “Takes a lot to rile me, Grandpa always said.” Howdy glanced at Tommy who tugged on the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “What can I do for you little man? Need more lemonade?”

  “Nope. I play soccer ’cause Mama Nell says we’re too young for football. Daddy says I might grow up tall and skinny like Mama Cassie and not be able to play pro, but I could be a kicker, couldn’t I?”

  Before Howdy answered, Cassie spewed again as if Joe’s steak sauce had set her on fire. Oh, why couldn’t she stop herself? “I am not skinny! I was thin and sickly as a child, but now I’m very well built.”

  The cowboy’s big, blue eyes, all wide and innocent looking, swept across her bosom. “Yes, I’d say you are—ma’am.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I told you to call me Cassie.”

  “I call friends by their first name, but you don’t seem to want to be friends—ma’am. It doesn’t matter if your mama
likes me, buddy. I want to teach you how to kick.”

  Tommy’s small forehead wrinkled under a shock of red hair. “Maybe not if Mama Cassie doesn’t want me to learn.”

  “Oh, Tommy, no. I didn’t mean that at all. You go play with Mr. Howdy after dinner.” Cassie blotted her eyes again.

  Nell sat up straight very suddenly as if someone’s long leg had prodded her thigh. Joe leaned over the twins and whispered to his wife loud enough for Cassie to hear every single word. “Ice, baby, ice.”

  THREE

  Howard McCoy sat cross-legged in the grass beside the barn. Cassie watched him from a deep shadow cast by the late afternoon sun. Surrounded by childish objects—a box of chalk, a kid-sized soccer ball, a small football with a plastic tee—he tore off a long strip of adhesive tape Nell had provided and wrapped it lengthwise around the football. A smaller piece went around the swollen middle of the ball. Then, he quartered the space with more tape. Satisfied with his work, he tossed the football into the air and caught it, a small object swallowed by large hands.

  All four children raced from the barn where they’d been rubbing down their ponies as Joe expected them to do after riding. They left a whiff of horsey sweat in the air as they blew past her. Ordinarily, she would have helped with the chore, would have been riding herself, but she had dressed for seduction, not a trail ride, and could ill afford to soil the expensive cashmere sweater.

  Nell came along carrying a lawn chair from the pavilion. “Grab a seat, Cassie. Let’s watch the kicking lesson.”

  “No thanks, I’ll stand.” After forcing down all that meat to show Joe she wasn’t a prissy eater like Nell, she doubted if she could sit without popping the snap on her jeans. How embarrassing would that be, especially since she’d tucked in the sweater to show she possessed a flatter belly than Nell?