Five's A Crowd (10 page)

HOLDEN NOT ONLY “MASTERS” HIS
NEW “ANGEL” HAS PLAYED
byline Rich “The Nose” Newsome

Working with Nancy Marsh, sometime AP reporter and a talented researcher who doesn’t just dig clams as she works the news along the Jersey Shore, we have learned that Taylor Angel, Holden Masters’s new squeeze, is not exactly an amateur when it comes to knowing her way around the sports scene. Or, at the very least, the locker room.

A bit of a “player” herself, the beauteous Ms. Angel was, a few years back, briefly linked romantically w’ith that superstud of the links, Geoff Hamilton, runner-up in last year’s Masters Tournament, and acknowledged international playboy bachelor.

Hamilton, when contacted after his disappointing three-over-par round the first day of play in the Hartford Open, refused to comment on his association with Angel, except to say that he could have used her that night because “she
gives a hell of a sweet back rub.” When pressed, he added that he and Angel had been “just good friends.”

Sound familiar, folks? Holden Masters has been “just good friends” with half the female population, and it appears Taylor Angel is no exception. Somebody must be rubbing somebody the right way, huh?

Wonder if she’ll try baseball next and become a “three letter” sports groupie? Or is this really it, and has Masters been hooked, as his agent, Sidney Feldon, swears in near-constant press releases?

Or, if we dig a little deeper, is this whole thing nothing but a charade, and Holden Masters is really injured? His right cross sure leaves a lot to be desired.

And I oughta know.

Watch this space, sports fans, for further developments. And maybe let your wives take a peek at it now and then. This story seems to have something for everybody!

“W
ELL, AT LEAST
he called you beauteous,” Thelma Helper said, peering over Taylor’s shoulder as the younger woman sat slumped at the dining room table, reading Rich “The Nose” Newsome’s latest attempt at purple journalism.

“He also came within an inch of calling me a celebrity-hungry groupie. Know my way around a locker room, do I? And it sounds like he’s onto us and has figured out that this is nothing but a sham engagement. Damn.” Taylor laid the paper down, then covered Newsome’s column with the style section. “I had to oversleep, didn’t I? I suppose Holden has already seen this?” she asked the housekeeper.

“Missed a good breakfast up on the boardwalk, the two of you” Thelma said, picking up all of the newspaper, then wiping the tabletop with a damp cloth. “He started reading the newspaper before our coffee even came—and then hightailed it out of the restaurant, leaving me alone with that pair of young idiots. Woody emptied two full pitchers of syrup over his pancakes. Of course, he did eat blessed near a dozen of the things. Never does that with my pancakes!” She slapped the rag on the tabletop. “So, what are you going to do now?”

Taylor took a sip of hot coffee, then carefully replaced the cup in the saucer. “Do? Why should I
do
anything? You, of all people, shouldn’t even ask me what I’m going to do. You know the engagement is all a cover-up, just a story Uncle Sid trumped up so nobody knows Holden was injured.”

Thelma sniffed. “I also know how many beds I made up this morning. Now, you want to talk—or are you going to just sit there looking like Sam did when
I had to tell him I shrank his bowling shirt? Anyone would think you just lost your last friend.”

Taylor looked at the older woman for a long moment, then dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, Thelma, I’m such a
jerk!
”

The housekeeper gave her a few solid thumps on the back—probably to reassure her, but with whacks strong enough to dislodge a Buick that might have gotten caught in her esophagus. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not a jerk, Taylor. With the track record Mr. Masters has in the romance department, he certainly can forgive you one puny little golf pro.”

Still resting her forehead in her hands and trying to catch her breath, Taylor slowly twisted her head to the side to smile weakly up at the housekeeper. “You’re such a comfort to me, Thelma,” she said, then giggled in spite of herself.

“Thank you, child. That’s what Sam always said,” Thelma chirped as the timer went off, then went back into the kitchen to take a batch of Woody’s favorite double-Dutch chocolate brownies out of the oven.

Taylor slumped back in the chair, spreading out her legs beneath the table as she rested her weight on her spine. “I’d better go call Uncle Sid,” she reminded herself, grimacing. “He’s going to want to know the whole story. And I don’t even want to
think
about what I’m going to say to my parents. Thank God I told them all about that fiasco with Geoff when it happened.”

“Talking to yourself?” Woody asked, sliding into the seat across from her, his hair still damp from his swim in the ocean and standing up all over his head as if he’d just gotten through toweling it. “Have you seen Holden? I want to ask him if I can invite this girl to dinner here tonight. Name’s Tiffany, if you can believe it. Good kid, but sort of a nervous type, so I’ve got to be sure it’s okay. You know, make sure the coast is clear before I bring her in here. Or haven’t you read the paper yet?”

“I’ve read it, Woody,” Taylor said dully, wishing Woody didn’t look so damn young, so damn carefree. “Holden was pretty angry, huh?”

Woody reached up and began tugging on his earlobe. “Well…I don’t like to say anything,” he began slowly, “but you know how that one vein on his neck can sorta
stand out
when Tiff pulls one of her stupider stunts? Well…when he started reading The Nose’s column—”

“Never mind, Woody,” Taylor said, sighing. “I think I get the picture. Maybe I should just start packing. What do you think?”

“I think you don’t know Holden,” Woody responded, his tone suddenly cool, as if the blond beachboy with the toothpaste grin did, indeed, have a solemn side. A side that was somehow disappointed in his new friend, the woman he thought was going to marry his stepbrother. “I was talking about how mad Holden will be at The Nose, not you. Jeez,
Taylor, I thought you knew that. Well, see ya. I’m going back to the beach.”

Taylor waited until Woody was gone, and the sound of Thelma running water in the kitchen told her the woman was otherwise occupied, and then dragged herself down the half flight of stairs to the upper living room. She looked at the phone for a full minute, willing herself to pick it up, or willing Sidney Feldon to call her and put her out of her misery, then sat down at the table to work on the jigsaw puzzle she had begun the other day.

Could Woody be right? Could Holden’s anger be directed against the reporter—and that miserable Nancy Marsh, who had certainly lived up to Holden’s opinion of her—or was he angry with her?

He had every right to be. After all, she had given him no indication that she had ever been in the limelight before, or even within spitting distance of it—as she had been with Geoff Hamilton during the few months they’d been “an item.”

To Holden, Taylor was just a simple girl—a working girl—a girl who still worried about what her parents might think of her—unexpectedly thrust as she was into the spotlight of his fame and not much liking it.

Which had been true enough once. She hadn’t enjoyed being in public with Geoff when his fans recognized him. Probably because Geoff’s way of dealing with his fans was either to snub them, insult
them, or offer great, smacking kisses to the pretty women.

So unlike the way Holden dealt with his fans, which was up-front, congenial and understanding. In fact, everything about Geoff and Holden was different.

Geoff not only loved the spotlight, he craved it. When she got right down to it, really thought about it,
she
had been the Amanda Price of the moment in Geoff Hamilton’s life. An attractive woman he could hang on his arm, make love to in his bed and then walk away from without a backward look when a younger, more attractive, gushing young idiot came along and threw herself at him.

But Taylor had
not
been another Amanda Price, which was probably why Geoff had dumped her. She had actually believed she loved Geoff Hamilton. Really, really loved him—so much so that she had fallen in bed with him without so much as a promise of love in return. Only after the fact had she thought to discuss marriage and babies and her idea of “happily ever after,” stupidly believing that going to bed with a man and marriage to a man were like the chicken and the egg—it didn’t much matter which came first as long as you could still make a good omelet.

Oh, yes, she’d thought she had loved Geoffrey Hamilton—before she had met Holden Masters and learned that true love is worlds apart from anything she had felt for the golf pro.

And this time you can’t even say you were naive—you already knew the score. You were just plain dumb,
she told herself.
You’re building up a great track record, Angel. In fact, maybe your next “letter” should be in track—somone like a long-distance runner. At least maybe he’d stay the course for a while.

H
OLDEN HAD WALKED
the empty beach from Twenty-fifth Street all the way down to Third and back again. He had climbed to the boardwalk for blocks at a time to stay clear of the beach-erosion teams building up the beaches with sand dredged from the ocean floor—and if anyone had called out his name, asked for his autograph as he walked by, well, he simply hadn’t heard them.

He had been much too busy mentally beating himself up royally for the mistakes he’d been making these past weeks, these past years—maybe even for eleven long years, ever since he had signed his first multimillion-dollar professional contract.

He never should have
met
Amanda Price, let alone the dozens of other ambitious young women he’d used, and been used by, this past decade and more.

He never should have gone along with Sid’s stupid plan to use the shoulder injury as a contract-fattening device.

He never should have agreed to come to Ocean City, to hide from the press; hide his injury and the
fact that he needed physical and massage therapy in order to regain full use of the injured muscles of his shoulder.

He shouldn’t have opened his mouth to Amanda before thinking through the media stir his “engagement” to Taylor Angel would make of the whole affair.

He shouldn’t have popped the widely acknowledged, vindictive Rich “The Nose” Newsome in the eye.

And mostly, he should never have taken Taylor Angel to bed!

“Bad mistake, Masters,” he told himself for about the thousandth time as he opened the door to the condo at precisely 10:30 a.m. and stepped into the coolness of the ground-floor foyer. “Bad, bad mistake.”

“Holden? Is that you?”

He turned to his right and saw Taylor standing in the living room cum workout center, busily wiping at the doughnut-shaped headrest with rubbing alcohol. She was dressed all in white this morning. A cropped sweater barely reached her waist, letting him see her flat stomach, the stretch of muscles in the small of her back as she put a prodigious amount of effort into the simple act of wiping the headrest.

Her shorts were very short. Cotton duck, he supposed the fashion designers called the heavy white fabric that, when she walked around the table, walked
with her, became a part of her—and caused a lump to lodge in his throat that would probably remain there until the day he died and could no longer remember the sight of those damn, damn shorts.

And the legs under them.

And the honey blond hair knotted in a ponytail at her nape, the white terry-cloth sweatband encircling her smooth, golden tan forehead.

And the memory of her as she had been last night—warm and alive and perfect in every way.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me,” he forced out at last as he walked toward the living room the way a condemned man might drag his feet on his way to the gas chamber, realizing that it was time for his daily massage and cruelty-to-Holden session—one he’d rather forgo this morning. “You’re ready for me?”

Dumb question, Masters,
he berated himself, barely keeping from slapping himself on the forehead with the flat of his hand.
She’s not
ready
for you. She’s hating your guts, having given herself to you last night, only to find herself the butt of Rich Newsome’s jokes in this morning’s newspaper. She’s about as ready for you as she is for another jellyfish on the beach. But she’s a professional, and a responsible person, and she’s going to keep doing her job, no matter how much she wants to cut and run.

He stripped off his shirt as he crossed to the table, then lay down on the burgundy surface without looking at Taylor again. She had been getting more

aggressive in her therapies—still taking about tcn minutes to warm his muscles, make them easier to work with. But last week she had added even more deep muscle massage, mixed with some stretching and molding that had not yet ceased to surprise him with the occasional discovery of yet another sore spot, yet another small knot in the muscles he could have sworn were fully recovered.

He stared at the carpet—he was really beginning to harbor a lot of animosity over brown carpeting—then closed his eyes as her fingers first made contact with his back. Her fingers were cold, almost icy, although it was only comfortably cool in the condo, and her touch seemed more tentative than assured.

As if she was afraid.

As if she was nervous.

As if she was fighting a nearly uncontrollable urge to choke him?

“I’m sorry about that article.”

He relaxed as he realized they had both said the same thing at the same time. “No fair, Taylor. This is my apology, not yours. Wait your turn.”

She rushed into speech before he could say another word. “But I should have told you about Geoff. The moment you warned me that Nancy Marsh would find a way to get back at me after I did everything but tell her to take a hike. I was Geoff’s therapist, and it certainly was no secret that we had been together. I should have realized that somebody would
find out about Geoff, put two and two together and figure out that you really
are
injured. And relax, would you, please—I’m going to break my fingers trying to work your deltoid.”