The Player Gets Coached Read online

  And while Marina had always been more than a little on the fragile and emotional side, she looked increasingly sad and could frequently be found with tears in her eyes. She had always been fashionably slim, but now her slight frame had become almost emaciated. Pride had dictated that she continued to dress fashionably, make sure that her hair and makeup and accessories were perfect, but there was a hollowness in her gaze, an emptiness in her expression that had alarmed Delilah, even though at her young age she had no real idea of what was wrong with her mother.

  Desiree, however, had always been the more perceptive of the two sisters, and certainly the bossier and more controlling of the two. At the age of eleven, she had been well aware of the reasons behind both Daniel’s increased absences and Marina’s deepening despair and bouts of depression. And despite her own tender age, Desiree’s maternal instincts had obliged her to shield her younger sister from what was really going on in their previously happy home, as well as tend to their mother, soothing Marina as best as she could.

  But Delilah had been persistent, wanting to know what was going on, and annoyed that her older sister was keeping secrets from her, was overprotecting her and pretending that everything was fine - when even an innocent eight-year-old like Delilah knew better. It wasn’t until Delilah was nearly ten years old, however, that an exasperated Desiree finally told her the truth - a truth that had broken her heart, and forever altered her previous impression of her father.

  Daniel had apparently been a serial cheater - a man who loved women just a little too much, women other than his wife, and who found it far too easy to attract as many willing women as he desired. He’d slept with both employees and clients of his law firm, with women in their neighborhood and members of the country club, and likely with whomever he met on his increasingly frequent business trips. Early on in his marriage, and while the girls were very young, he’d been more discreet, though Marina had always suspected he’d been unfaithful.

  But as the years had gone by, as his daughters had grown older, and his disenchantment with his fragile wife increased, Daniel had become bolder, more brazen, and hadn’t seemed to care who knew about his numerous infidelities. It was as though he was living a separate life now from his wife and daughters, coming and going exactly as he pleased, and not seeming to care that he was a married man.

  Of course, at the innocent age of ten, Delilah wouldn’t have been able to understand much of the truth about her philandering father, wasn’t quite ready for any sort of formal sex education. Desiree, therefore, had couched the truth quite a bit, merely telling her little sister that Mama was sad because she had found out that Daddy was kissing and hugging other women, and spending time with them instead of Mama. Delilah had asked her sister if this meant their parents were going to get a divorce, like several of their friends’ parents had done, but Desiree had simply told her not to worry about it.

  Delilah would learn later that the main reason Daniel had never seriously pursued divorcing Marina was because of the financial implications involved. In a community property state like California, a divorce would have meant handing over half of his assets to his wife, as well as continuing to pay her alimony and child support since she had never worked.

  And when Delilah did learn more about sex, she realized that her father was doing far more than simply kissing other women or taking them out to dinner - he was sleeping with them, having affairs, and consequently putting more and more of a distance between himself and what had once been his happy family of girls. Desiree still tried to shield her from the worst of it, but Delilah was both intelligent and resourceful, and by the time she’d turned fifteen she was as revolted by their father’s actions as her older sister had been for quite some time.

  And her fifteenth year was also the one when everything finally came to a head - when everything had begun to spiral downwards at an alarmingly fast pace, so fast that Delilah’s head had spun from the cruelty of fate. Daniel had fallen in love with his most recent mistress - this one a twenty-four-year-old blonde who also happened to be pregnant with his child. The young woman had set her foot down, insisting that he divorce Marina and marry her, and Daniel had shockingly capitulated – willing to give up half of his wealth for the sake of his mistress and unborn child. Marina had been in hysterics at the rather casual announcement, while the girls had cried and pleaded with their father not to break up their family.

  But it had been to no avail, and Daniel had taken very little time to pack up his belongings and move into the condo he’d bought for his mistress in San Francisco. Marina had been inconsolable, vacillating between bouts of depression so deep that she hadn’t emerged from her bed for a week at a time, and crying jags that went on and on until she literally made herself ill. Desiree and Delilah were at a loss as to how to help their mother, while at the same time dealing with their own sadness at their father’s betrayal.

  And then their lives had gone from bad to worse in the space of a few hours. Delilah had been the one to find her mother’s cold, lifeless body, sprawled facedown on the bed her soon-to-be ex-husband no longer shared with her. The bottle of sedatives that the doctor had prescribed to help calm her down had been empty, and even while Delilah had called 9-1-1 with a trembling hand she had already known her mother was dead.

  Their aunt Meredith, Marina’s younger sister, had come to stay with her nieces for a couple of months, helping them to get through the worst of their grief and shock. Daniel had been too caught up in settling in with his mistress and preparing for the arrival of their baby to be of much help to his daughters, and since they had blamed him for Marina’s death anyway, relations between them were strained at best. He had rather grudgingly permitted them to remain in the big house in Orinda rather than selling it outright, given that it was Desiree’s senior year of high school. But that had been only a temporary arrangement, given that Meredith’s career as an artist wouldn’t allow her to stay away from her studio in Laguna Beach indefinitely.

  It was Desiree who had taken charge at that point, who had declared that rather than attend college at one of her top choices - Columbia, Georgetown, or Duke - she would remain local and enroll at St. Mary’s College in nearby Moraga instead. That way, she’d reasoned, Delilah could continue at the same high school, and wouldn’t have to be separated from all of her friends. Plus, she had pointed out, she and her sister could continue to support each other as they learned to cope with their new living arrangements.

  Delilah had fought her sister tooth and nail on the matter, insisting that Desiree shouldn’t have to sacrifice her hopes and dreams, that it wasn’t fair for her to settle for something less. Meredith had agreed at first, offering to let Delilah live with her until she, too, was ready to head off to college. But the girls had spent enough time visiting their aunt in southern California to know that Meredith simply wasn’t suited to be a surrogate parent, kind and well-meaning as she was. Her life was her art, and she could lose herself in a project for days at a time, barely remembering to sleep and eat on a regular basis. Despite her assurances to the contrary, she wouldn’t have the time to devote to Delilah, and would likely end up resenting the intrusion into her carefully ordered life before too long.

  Daniel had rather cold-heartedly talked about sending Delilah to some fancy boarding school back East, where she would not know a single person, but would at least be in closer proximity to wherever Desiree was attending college. Holidays and summers hadn’t been discussed, but Delilah knew there was no possible way she would ever consent to spending them with her father and homewrecker of a stepmother. Desiree, too, balked at the very idea of shipping her little sister off like unwanted baggage to a strange town in a part of the country where she had never lived, and had calmly taken matters into her own hands.

  With Meredith’s support, Desiree had set out her demands to her father with a cold, no-nonsense precision that had belied her eighteen years - not only would he pay every penny of college and graduate school tui
tion for both herself and Delilah, as well as all of their other living expenses, but he would buy them a smaller house in Orinda where they could live, at least until Delilah turned eighteen. Neither of the girls had any desire to remain in the big house, where bad memories haunted them at every turn.

  Daniel had agreed to his older daughter’s demands with a reluctant admiration, telling her that she should really consider a career in law instead of investment banking, given her skill at negotiation. Desiree had coldly retorted that she had zero desire to be anything like him, and that she’d rather clean toilets than ever share his profession. He’d had the good graces to look properly shamefaced at her reproach, and had mumbled over and over about how sorry he was that everything had turned out this way.

  So despite Delilah’s continued protests that she wasn’t going to allow Desiree to give up her dreams for the sole purpose of looking after her little sister, that was exactly what happened. Desiree enrolled at St. Mary’s College, a truly beautiful campus with a fine academic ranking, but admittedly not in the same league as a Georgetown or a Columbia. Desiree brushed aside her sister’s worries and concerns, insisting that Delilah not feel even one ounce of guilt or remorse, and reminding her on a regular basis that the only person who should feel responsible for the situation they found themselves in was their father.

  A father whom they gradually began to see less and less of as the months and years passed. He was far too wrapped up, it seemed, settling in with his new wife - whom he’d hastily married a scant month before she gave birth - and their baby boy. Since he lived in San Francisco now, he seldom made the half hour drive east to see his daughters, and they in turn felt unwelcomed by their stepmother - a woman who was less than a decade older than Desiree. The sisters preferred to spend holidays with Meredith, and by the time Delilah graduated from high school they were only seeing their father a handful of times a year at most.

  Delilah’s guilt over Desiree’s change in college plans surfaced anew when it was time to choose a college of her own three years later. She’d known for more than two years that she wanted to study fashion design, and had initially decided to remain in the Bay Area to attend school. But it had been Desiree who’d pushed her to go to New York instead, insisting that the Fashion Institute of Technology was consistently ranked as one of the top schools in that field. Her ultimate decision to attend school on the East coast had been helped along by the facts that in doing so she would finally free Desiree from any obligation she felt to take care of her, and that Desiree herself - after finishing her undergraduate degree in only three years - would finally achieve her own dreams by attending graduate school at Columbia.

  The house they’d occupied in Orinda since their mother’s death had been sold, and the bulk of their furnishings and other belongings put in storage as they had headed to the East coast. Even though both sisters were attending schools in New York City, they had agreed to live separately, especially since Delilah would be residing in on-campus housing for her freshman year. But they made it a point to meet up for dinner or brunch at least twice a week, and having her older sister just a short subway ride away had made leaving home and getting used to life in a new city much easier for Delilah.

  Two years later, however, when Desiree had completed her masters degree, she made the decision to return to the San Francisco Bay Area where she’d received a job offer too lucrative to pass up. She’d worried and fretted over leaving Delilah on her own in New York, even after Delilah had dryly pointed out numerous times that she was twenty now, not fifteen, and had been living here for two years. Secretly, she’d been all too glad for the separation, having found her sister’s intense overprotectiveness more than she could handle, and had heaved a sigh of relief to finally be on her own. Living on separate coasts, however, hadn’t stopped Desiree from checking up on her younger sister on a daily basis - at least until Delilah had firmly set her foot down. They’d had something of a blow-up, their first really big fight, but Desiree had somewhat reluctantly backed off and agreed that Delilah didn’t need a keeper any longer.

  Delilah had remained in New York for about a year after completing her degree, working first at a small fashion design firm, and then at a high-end boutique specializing in petite attire, before making the decision to return to California. She missed her sister and her aunt, and wasn’t sure she could handle even one more East coast winter, not to mention the hot, humid summers. Delilah had used the money left to her in trust from her mother’s family to start her own design firm, and to buy a tiny one-bedroom condo, having gently but firmly refused Desiree’s offer to room with her or buy a place together. As much as Delilah loved her sister, and as grateful as she would always be for everything Desiree had sacrificed after the breakup of their parents’ marriage and their mother’s suicide, she had come to cherish her privacy these past couple of years, and living under her older sister’s too-watchful eye wasn’t something that appealed in the least.

  Maintaining separate residences, however, hadn’t prevented Desiree from continuing to overprotect or give unwanted advice to her little sister even to this day. And that advice more frequently than not involved the men in Delilah’s life. She couldn’t count how many times Desiree had drilled it into her to be careful who she trusted, to really get to know a man before she let him get too close, and, of course, to never, ever date someone who was too much like their notorious womanizer of a father.

  This, of course, was all advice that Delilah had never needed to be given, not by her sister or by anyone else. She’d learned those painful lessons all on her own, having observed first hand the anguish her mother had suffered because of her father’s constant cheating, had lived through the breakup of their family and the destruction of their once-happy home. Since she had begun dating back in high school, she had always been careful, always been discriminating about the men in her life, never letting any of them too close, and certainly not permitting any of them to control her in any way. And, sadly, she had never allowed herself to fall in love with any of them, because it was her firm belief that doing so would only leave her vulnerable and exposed, the risk of having her heart broken or her love betrayed too high to consider.

  And up until now, she had been extremely selective about the type of men she dated - preferring well-educated, well-mannered, well-groomed men who were neither too aggressive, talkative, or flirtatious, and who seemed more than content to let her lay down the ground rules in their all-too-brief relationships. Delilah had admittedly broken more than a few hearts over the past several years, had probably even earned - at least to a degree - the “maneater” moniker that her sassy PA had bestowed upon her. But at least her own heart had remained protected, her own emotions intact, and she had kept good on the promise she and Desiree had made to each other more than thirteen years ago - to never, ever let themselves fall so deeply under a man’s spell that they would be left vulnerable and needy, the way their mother had been during her marriage to Daniel Ferris, and how she had been so completely devastated when he had finally ended things. It was the main reason that - up until now, at least - Delilah had never given the time of day to any man who reminded her even a little of her philandering father.

  And it was the reason why she should really, really send that text to Finn McManus and cancel their upcoming date. Because she’d known the moment their eyes had first met that he had the potential of breaking her heart into even tinier pieces than her father had once done.

  Chapter Eight

  Desiree Ferris stared in horrified reaction at what her younger sister had just told her. “You can’t possibly be serious, Della. Please, please tell me that you’re joking.”

  Delilah shook her head. “Nope. Not joking. Though I should probably be having my head examined right about now for agreeing to this date in the first place.”

  “You think?” retorted Desiree scathingly. “Not only should you be seeing a therapist to figure out why in the world you would even consider d
ating someone like this guy, but you should cancel that stupid date immediately. From everything I’ve read about Finn McManus since you first mentioned him to me, he is so not the kind of guy you should be associating with, Della. He’s bad news every which way you look at it.”

  “I think you might be exaggerating just a bit, Desi,” soothed Delilah. “I mean, can you really believe everything that’s written in the tabloids? You’ve never even met Finn or had a conversation with him. Lately I’m beginning to think - well, that there’s a whole different side of him than the one portrayed in the media.”

  Desiree rolled her eyes. “Tell you what I think, little sis. I think that you’ve been working way too hard lately, haven’t taken a break - much less a real vacation - in God knows how long, and that the pressure is starting to make you crack. The other possibility is that you’re running a high fever, and you’re too delirious to be thinking straight. Here, let me see.”

  Irritably, Delilah brushed away her sister’s hand as she tried to feel her forehead. “I’m not running a fever,” she grumbled. “Nor am I overtired or stressed. And while I might not have taken a vacation in, well, at least two years, that is not the reason I agreed to go out with Finn tomorrow night. And I shouldn’t even be calling it a date, not really. I told him this was more like a get to know your neighbor thing, just casual, you know?”

  Desiree smirked. “Yeah, I’ll bet your neighbor wants to get to know you really, really well, Della. And here I thought you stopped being naïve about men and what they really want when you were a junior in high school. I still remember how upset you were when that guy you had a big crush on - what was his name, again? - asked someone else to the junior prom when you wouldn’t put out for the horny little bastard.”