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players who worked so damn hard to bring the Badgers out of near last place and put them in the playoffs. She knew that without her as a buffer a lot of

women on the team would be having huge problems with the owner.

Horace knew that not all women who played professional basketball were lesbians, but that didn’t stop him from assuming that deep down they really

wanted to be. The only one he had confirmation on was Cat and he already wanted to make her life miserable. The more she thought about him the

madder she got and by the time she actually made it to the reception area it was all she could do to keep from shaking.

She did manage to smirk just a bit about the middle-aged secretary sitting behind the desk. It seemed that Horace’s wife wasn’t the wilting flower she

pretended to be. The bimbo from the plane crash was fired about a week after they had returned and she had been replaced by this lovely woman who was

married, and well aware of what a prick her new boss was, but she was damn good at her job and Dylan liked her a lot.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Garrison.”

“Good afternoon Ms. Lambert. Mr. Johnson is expecting you.”

“Oh goody for me.” Dylan offered sarcastically. The secretary chuckled and nodded her understanding. “Could you take that pen and jab it in my eye?”

“Sorry,” she apologized with a smile. “You have lovely eyes and it would be a shame to mar them because of him.”

Dylan sighed, nodding as she walked toward the office door. “Things I’d rather do than go into his office. Root canal. Bamboo shoots under my fingernails.

Frontal lobotomy.”

With a deep drawn breath she turned the knob and opened the good.

She smiled to herself when a quiet ‘Good luck’ floated in behind her.

Horace was sitting behind his massive desk flipping through a file folder. There was cigar smoldering in the ashtray and a glass about half full of what

Dylan figure was some cheap whiskey.

“Horace?”

He looked up at her, grunted what she assumed was supposed to be acknowledgment of her presence and he gestured to one of the chairs facing his desk.

Taking a seat, she waited until he was ready to talk. This was one of his tactics that he used to control someone he felt was uncontrollable. Finally he

looked up and sneered, “I should fire your ass.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me the first time. So you thought you could fuck the blonde and I wouldn’t find out.”

If Horace’s words in any way shocked Dylan she didn’t let it show. She just continued to watch him, hoping in a perverse sort of way he’d just have a heart

attack right there in that chair.

“Not even gonna deny it, huh?”

“Why should I? You obviously seem to think you know what’s going on.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, glaring at her. “I know what’s going on. I know you’re banging the little bitch.”

“Oh really.”

His smirk was truly insufferable. “Oh yeah.” With a flick of his fingers, he sent a sheet of paper sliding across the desk to stop in front of her. As she

scanned the page, anger burned in the pit of her belly, causing her jaw to set and her eyes to blaze.

It was a mock-up of the front page of the Weekly World Ledger, a national gossip rag that hung out with the others of its smutty genre in the checkout

aisles of most grocery chains, drugstores, and airport lounges. In lurid block letters, its headline screamed out “TEMPTATION IN THE TROPICS! BIKINICLAD BASKETBALL BEAUTIES IN LESBIAN LIP LOCK!!!”

Beneath the headline was a grainy, fuzzy picture of two figures—unfortunately all too recognizable despite the poor quality of the photography. The shorter

of the two had her hands familiarly on the hips of the taller, and was standing on her toes in the sand, head tilted up for a kiss.

“So,” she remarked as casually as she could manage, “is this what I have to look forward to when I go to pick up my groceries tomorrow?”

Johnson’s smirk broadened. “Well, I’d say that was entirely up to you.”

“Oh?”

Chuckling, Horace clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, lifting his legs and placing his feet on his expansive desk. “Either way,

the dyke is fired. You, however….”

“Fire her, and I walk, Horace.”

“Do that, and I can assure you that you and the little skank you’re screwing won’t even be able to get a job coaching preschoolers, much less—.”

The rest of his words were cut off as Dylan came over the desk at him. Pushing his legs off the desk, she grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and

yanked forward so that they were nose to nose. “She’s not ‘bitch’, she’s not ‘whore’, she’s not ‘skank’. Her name is Catherine. Use it!”

“That’s it. I hope you like bulldagger givin’ it to you up the ass, Lambert, because that’s all you’re gonna be getting once I have that ass thrown in jail.”

“Go ahead, you bigoted little bastard. Try it. And maybe while the cops are here, we can chat about how you set Cat up to be beaten bloody in the parking

lot of your arena, hmm?”

It was only a suspicion, never spoken aloud, but the guess was more than confirmed by the sudden paleness of Johnson’s jowly face. “I don’t know what