Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (7 page)

"Go, Ted!" a voice a few benches below Erika cried. Craning
her neck, she spotted Ted's girlfriend Kate, blond and beautiful
and leaning forward, her arms wrapped around her knees and
her head tilted to one side so her hair spilled delicately over her
shoulder.

Ted ignored her.

Erika watched. There was something almost erotic about the
way Ted and the other boy came together, their bodies so close,
their arms wrapped around each other, their legs intertwined.
Erotic yet ferocious. The other boy looked strong enough to pick
Ted up and slam him to the mat, but Ted was sly. He was quick.
He broke out of the other boy's embrace, stretched, reached, and
suddenly the other boy was down. They tangled together at the
center of the circle, Ted straddling the other boy, the other boy
trying to writhe free, Ted scissoring his legs, winding his hand
around the other boy's shoulder.

He was sweaty and supple and sinewy. And surprisingly strong
for such a lanky guy.

The referee got down on his hands and knees next to the two wrestlers. He angled his head, he leaned in and out. He gauged
the other boy's shoulders, measured with his eyes how close they
were to the mat, and counted to three. He blew his whistle; the
buzzer sounded. Ted released the boy, stood, and backed away,
breathing hard.

"That was a pin," Allyson unnecessarily informed Erika.

"I figured that out."

"The earlier bouts were decided on points. It's cool when you
get a real pin. Ted is so good."

Erika had figured that out, too.

The meet continued, but none of the other bouts held Erika's
attention the way Ted's had. The bigger boys made louder thumps
when they hit the mats. They grunted more, perspired more,
shook the gym more. But they lacked Ted's grace. He'd looked like
a dancer on the mat. A calculating dancer, one who seemed to rely
on his brain as much as his arms and legs to best his opponent.

She could relate to that. Some sports were pure instinct, but
she had always found riding as intellectual as it was physical.
Riding was a dance between her and her mount. Whatever the
horse did, she had to adjust, rethink, strategize.

She'd sensed Ted's mind churning the entire time he'd been
wrestling. He'd been fierce, aggressive, but never out of control,
never acting reflexively. At least that was how he'd appeared to
her. He'd stepped onto the mat, appraised his opponent as if the
guy were a problem he had to solve, and then he'd solved the
problem.

Then he'd sat down, not even acknowledging the applause of
the people in the stands. He'd removed his headgear and
wrapped a towel around his neck. He'd rubbed the towel over his
face and through his hair, then twisted to reach for a water bottle
on the floor behind the team bench.

His face was still intense and unsmiling, she observed. Even
after his match was finished and he'd vanquished his opponent,
he still had some fight in his eyes. He shut them as he guzzled
water from the bottle, the bone in his neck bobbing with each
swallow. Finally rehydrated, he closed the bottle and his gaze met
hers.

His eyebrows rose slightly, and the corners of his mouth
twitched upward. And then, in less than an instant, his game face
returned and he swiveled back to face the mat, shouting encouragement to his teammate who was currently out in the circle,
grappling with a guy whose long arms reminded Erika of a
gorilla's.

Maybe the reason she found the remaining bouts less interesting wasn't that the other wrestlers weren't as skilled or as clever
as Ted. Maybe it was that a part of her mind had wrapped itself
around him, the way he'd looked at her for that fraction of a second. She could no longer concentrate fully on the wrestlers on
the mat, not when she was distracted by Ted's back, the ridge of
his spine visible as he hunched forward and rested his forearms
on his knees. The breadth of his shoulders. The tendrils of his
hair curling at the nape of his neck as the sweat dried from them.

She'd always thought Ted was a fun, easygoing guy-and he
was, most of the time. She gathered that he was a decent artist.
She enjoyed being around him, talking to him, laughing with
him.

But there was more to him, much more. There was determination. Calculation. Strength. Aggression. The hunger to win.

After watching him wrestle, she would never be able to think
of him the same way.

And-even more unsettling-she would think of him. Ted
Skala had lodged himself in her mind, and she wasn't sure he would ever leave.

Whoa. Erika Fredell had come to a wrestling meet.

Ted wasn't delusional enough to think she'd come specifically
to see him wrestle. She'd probably come because she was suffering from an unexpected spasm of school spirit, or because her
friends had dragged her with them. Or because she had nothing
better to do.

Except he knew she did have something better to do. She had
her horseback riding. She did that every afternoon after school.
Why had she taken today off?

Not to see you, asshole.

He took another deep slug of water from his bottle, ran the
towel over his still sweaty face, and watched the one-sixty-sevens
go at it. The heavier the weight class, the less finesse. They didn't
need finesse. They had brute strength. As one of the skinnier guys
on the team, Ted was all about finesse.

He was used to being the smallest guy. The youngest boy in his
family, he'd been an easy target for his three older brothers. He'd
learned how to run fast, and when he couldn't run fast enough
he'd fought back as best he could. But how could a squirt like him
fight back against guys like his brothers, who were all so much
larger than him?

His dad must have detected his talent for fighting, or else
simply wanted to improve his odds of not getting flattened
beneath George's or Adam's or josh's big, fat fists, because when
he was five, his father enrolled him in a wrestling program. His
oldest brother, George, was already a wrestler, and Ted had
always enjoyed watching the sport. It wasn't just self-defense; it
wasn't just a puny kid trying to stay alive in a family of big, domineering older brothers. Wrestling was fighting with rules, fight ing with dignity. And fighting someone your own size, which
really appealed to Ted.

So he'd started working with a coach and taking lessons, and
after a few years he'd gotten good. It no longer mattered that he
was small and skinny. By the time he was eight, he could take
down pretty much anyone. Well, not his brother George, but
anyone who challenged him, the bullies and turds whose sole
reason for existence was to make life hard for everyone in Ted's
primary school.

When he was out on the mat, the universe was reduced to just
the space within the circle. Him, his opponent, and the referee.
There was something pure about it, something both profoundly
physical and surprisingly intellectual. Wrestling was like playing
chess, except your body was all the pieces rolled into one. You had
to see three moves into the future, you had to know what your
opponent was going to try before he tried it-and sometimes you
had to resort to unadulterated force. Wrestling demanded unwavering concentration. Nothing distracted Ted when he was on the
mat. Nothing existed but the moment.

If he'd known Erika was in the stands, would that have
changed? Hell, he knew Kate was there. She was his girlfriend, and
yet he hadn't given her a thought. If she'd been cheering for him,
if she'd been fluffing her hair and smiling beguilingly at him, he
hadn't known and he hadn't cared.

Now ... now he was aware of Erika a good ten rows behind and
above him. She was undoubtedly watching the one-hundredsixty-seven-pound guys tussling. Ted's match was done and she'd
probably deleted it from her memory bank. There were more
interesting things for her to focus on.

But he could hardly focus on his own teammates. He drank
some more water and told himself the heat in his body was a residue from his match, not a reaction to her. It couldn't be a reaction to her. She was just a girl, a classmate.

Forget about her, Skala. She is so out of your league.

He did his best to tune into the rest of the meet, slapping each
teammate's hand as he came off the mat, regardless of whether
he'd won or lost. Wrestling was individual combat, but it was also
a team sport. Every member of the team had to be there for his
teammates. And despite his knowledge that Erika was in the gym,
an awareness that hummed inside his brain like white noise, Ted
was a team guy. He was there for his wrestling brothers.

Mendham wound up winning the meet. After the battle of the
heavyweights, his team shook hands with the other team-false
courtesy, but the coaches made their wrestlers pretend that once
they left the mat, they and their rivals were all one big, happy
family-and then Ted and the rest of the Mendham team retired
to the locker room. They listened as the coach lectured them on
where they'd done well, where they'd fallen short, when their
next meet would be, and what school they'd be wrestling. Ted
took it all in as best he could, but his brain was still humming.

Once the coach was done with his speech, Ted headed for the
shower room. As he stood beneath the shower's hot spray, he
noticed a red welt on his upper arm and recalled the way his opponent had pulled at his skin. Ted had suffered his share of broken
fingers and strained muscles from wrestling. A welt was nothing.

Kate would be waiting for him outside the locker room, and he
tried to lock onto that thought as he dried off and got dressed.
Maybe they could drive down to Village Pizza and buy a couple
of slices. His mother would give him hell for eating pizza so close
to dinnertime, but Ted was starving. A wedge of pizza wouldn't
put a dent in his appetite. Whatever Mom placed before him at
the dinner table, he'd wolf it down. She knew the only time he didn't eat was when he was upset about something, and he wasn't
upset now. He was kind of jazzed, actually.

Erika Fredell had watched him wrestle. Yeah, definitely jazzed.

He rubbed a towel through his wet hair, then tossed the towel
into the hamper outside the shower room, ran a comb through
the tangled locks, grabbed his jacket and backpack and shouted a
good-bye to the teammates who were still getting dressed. Then
he stepped out into the hall.

Kate was there-but so was Erika. And Allyson, and a few
other girls. They stood in a cozy little group, chattering, their
voices blending and colliding and rippling over each other. How
a bunch of girls could talk simultaneously-and manage to hear
what everyone was saying, even as they were talking-was a mystery to him.

Another mystery was why, when Kate was practically in front
of him, his gaze locked onto Erika like a laser sight on a rifle.

Kate immediately latched onto him, and he slung his arm
around her. But his gaze met Erika's and he returned her smile.
"That was really interesting," she said.

"Interesting?" Of all the words he could think of to describe
wrestling-hard, aggressive, primitive, sweaty-interesting wouldn't
make his top ten. For someone who'd never seen a meet before,
though, he supposed it would work. "I hope you're impressed."

"He's so macho," Kate teased, giving his biceps a squeeze.
"Ooh. All man," she said dryly.

"See? She's impressed," he said to Erika. "You should be
impressed, too."

"I'm impressed." Her smile softened. "Really."

"Anyone up for pizza?" he asked.

His friend Will, who wrestled heavyweight, chose that moment
to barrel out of the locker room. "I am!" he shouted.

Fifteen minutes later, six of them were crowded around a table
at Village Pizza, divvying up a Sicilian pie. The girls amused Ted
as they requested knives and carefully cut the gooey rectangular
slabs into smaller pieces for themselves. It took them more time
to figure out who would get which fraction of which slice than for
him to devour an entire piece by himself.

"So," Kate said after taking a dainty bite of her sliver, "I think
we should all share a limo for the prom."

Ted grimaced. The prom was a couple of months off. No one
wanted to think about it. At least, he didn't want to. Every time
he contemplated how much it would cost, he broke out in a cold
sweat. He'd have to spend an awful lot of Saturday mornings
caddying at the golf club to pay for the tickets, rent a tux, buy
flowers, and-crap, cough up big bucks for a limousine. And all
for what? To impress Kate? To give her a night she'd never forget?

For all that money, shouldn't he go to the prom with the girl
who held center stage in his imagination?

That particular girl had no interest in going with him, though,
he thought as he glanced across the table at Erika, who was plucking at a long, droopy string of melted mozzarella that had oozed
off her portion of pizza. "Do you have to have a boyfriend to go
to the prom?" she asked.

"You don't even have to have a date," Allyson assured her.

"Because right now, the only guy in my life is Five Star." She
grinned in Ted's direction. "That's the horse I ride."

"Would he fit in a limo?" Will asked.

"We could hitch a trailer to the rear bumper," she said, still
grinning. "I've dated a few horses' asses in my life. I don't see why
I can't go to the prom with a horse."

"Kind of a Catherine the Great thing," Ted ventured.

Erika eyed him curiously.

Damn. She didn't know what they said about Catherine the
Great? "The Tsarina of Russia. She was supposedly insatiable.
Rumor had it she had sex with a horse."

"She was hot to trot, literally," Will punned as he reached for
another slice of pizza.

"That's about all I remember from European history," Ted
said, shrugging apologetically. "Not that it was part of the curriculum. I just heard about it when we were studying Russia."