“You’re bullshitting me, Jodie, and I don’t like it when people do that.” He let go of her arm, but, at the same time, he moved a few inches closer, trapping her between himself and the brick wall.
Her eyes darted to the side. “She’s somebody I met, okay?”
“I want a name.”
“I can’t— Look, I can’t do that. I promised.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
She started rubbing her arms, and her teeth began to chatter. “Jesus, Cal, it’s colder than hell out here.”
“I don’t even feel it.”
“She’s . . . Her name is Jane. That’s all I know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“This is bullshit!” She jerked to the side, trying to push past him, but he shifted his weight, blocking her way. He knew he was scaring her, and that was just fine with him. He wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
“Jane what?”
“I forget.” She clutched her arms tighter and hunched her shoulders.
Her defiance annoyed him. “Hanging around the guys means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
She regarded him warily. “It’s okay.”
“I think it’s a lot more than okay. I think it’s the most important thing in your sad little life. And I know you’d be real upset if none of the players came in to Zebras anymore. If none of them wanted to hang out with you, not even the backups.”
He knew he had her, but she made one last stab at defying him. “She’s a nice lady having a hard time, and I’m not going to hurt her.”
“Name!”
She hesitated, then gave in. “Jane Darlington.”
“Keep talking.”
“That’s all I know,” she said sullenly.
He lowered his voice until it was barely more than a whisper. “This is your last warning. Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll make you off-limits to every player on the team.”
“You’re a real shit.”
He didn’t say a thing. He just stood there and waited.
She rubbed her arms for warmth and regarded him with belligerence. “She’s a physics professor at Newberry.”
Of all the things he had expected to hear, that one wasn’t even on the list. “A professor?”
“Yeah. And she works at one of those labs, too. I don’t know which one. She’s a geek—real smart—but she doesn’t have a lot of guys, and . . . She didn’t mean any harm.”
The more answers he got, the more the skin on the back of his neck tightened. “Why me? And don’t try to tell me she’s a Stars’ groupie because I know that’s not true.”
She was shaking with the cold. “I promised her, okay. This is like her whole life and everything.”
“I’ve just run out of patience.”
He could see her trying to figure out whether she was going to protect her own hide or rat on her friend. He knew the answer even before she spoke.
“She wanted to have a kid, all right! And she doesn’t want you to know about it.”
A chill shot through him that had nothing to do with the temperature.
She regarded him uneasily. “It’s not like she’s going to show up when the kid’s born and ask for money. She’s got a good job, and she’s smart, so why don’t you just forget about the whole thing.”
He was having a hard time dragging enough air into his lungs. “Are you telling me she’s pregnant? That she used me to get herself pregnant?”
“Yeah, but it’s not like it’s really your kid. It’s like you’re just a sperm donor. That’s the way she thinks about it.”
“A sperm donor?” He felt as if he were going to explode—as if the top of his head was about to blow right off. He hated any kind of permanence—he wouldn’t even live in the same place for very long—yet now he’d fathered a child. He had to fight to stay in control. “Why me? Tell me why she choose me?”
A thread of fear reappeared beneath her hostility. “You’re not going to like this part.”
“I’ll just bet you’re right.”
“She’s this genius. And being so much smarter than everybody else made her feel like a freak when she was growing up. Naturally she didn’t want that for her kid, so it was important for her to find somebody who wasn’t like her to be the sperm donor.”
“Wasn’t like her? What do you mean?”
“Somebody who . . . Well, who wasn’t exactly a genius.”
He wanted to shake her until every one of her chattering teeth hit the ground. “What the hell are you trying to say? Why did she choose me?”