"Justifiably so."

He rubbed his hands together, studying them intently, as though he'd never noticed his blunt nails, the sprinkling of hair across the backs of his knuckles, the thick wrists that should have belonged to a professional baseball player and didn't.

"These tumors, they're, uh…"

"On my female organs," she told him, glancing away again. "I'd been having some pain, more than ordinary."

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He was learning that where the female body was concerned, he had a teenage boy's mentality. He liked to look and touch and have sex with it. He thought the variations among individual women were intriguing and considered himself a con noisseur of the finest. He had never been faithful to one in particular. He had enjoyed more than his fair share of them, more than he was proud to admit in this age of safe sex.

Yet, this was the first time he'd ever thought of a female body from an objective standpoint.

He considered what it meant to the owner instead of what it meant to him. It contained a person. It wasn't just a soft, beautiful instrument of pleasure.

He didn't like himself very much at that moment and would have found it hard to meet his own eyes in a mirror.

"So they're going to operate and take them out," she was telling him softly.

"It'll take months for me to recover and regain my strength, the tumors are benign."

"You mean they might not be?"

"No, they might not be." They shared a long stare, a heavy, ponderous stare full of implication.

"But there's a good chance they are," Stevie continued briskly. "If that's the case, the surgery can be delayed until a more convenient time.

Either way, they'll probably have to do a complete hysterectomy.'

Judd came to his feet and began pacing the length of the bed. He glanced down at her angrily.

"Why in hell are you lying on your butt here? Why aren't you in the hospital and on your way to the operating room?"

"I can't have surgery now," she exclaimed.

"Wimbledon is barely a month away."

"So?"

Her lips narrowed with vexation over his obtuseness.

"So I've got to play."

"It's not going anywhere. There's always next year."

"As you so unkindly pointed out earlier, I'm not getting any younger. I'm playing better than ever, but for how long?"

Shaking her head adamantly, she continued.

"This is my year. My time. If I don't get that Grand Slam now, I'll never have another opportunity, no matter what the surgeons find when they operate. Maybe, if I were ten years younger, I could come back. As it is, it would take months, possibly longer. Even then, I'd never be as strong as I am now."

"What if those tumors are malignant?"

"Naturally that makes things more complicated," she replied evasively.

"How complicated?" She refused to answer.

Testily he repeated, "How complicated?"

"If they're malignant, delaying surgery for several weeks could be fatal."

Judd propped his fists on his hips and looked down at her with consternation. "You're crazy, lady."

"You can't judge me because you don't know what you'd do in this situation."

"Does your gynecologist have an opinion?"

"He wants to do the surgery immediately, but he says two weeks won't make much difference." ' 'Immediately gets my vote."

"You don't get a vote."

"What about your manager?"

"He sees both sides and has left the decision strictly up to me. But he says if I play Wimbledon, I can only have two weeks to make up my mind."

"Meanwhile, you're in pain."

"It's not constant. It comes and goes. Naturally he wants what's best for me."

"He wants what's best for his business interests in you."

"That's unfair."

"What about your parents?"

"They're deceased."

"Lovers?"

"There's no one else to consult." She glared up at him. "Not the 'Scandinavian cobbler' who, by the way, happens to be approaching seventy and has countless grandchildren."

"What about the bare-chested Brazilian with the Ipana smile?"

"I loathe that lecher. Whoever leaked the story of our so-called affair must have graduated from the same school of yellow journalism that you did."

He ignored the gibe. "So you're all alone in this."

"Until you splash it across the sports page.

Then everybody will know and have an opinion."

"This conversation is off-the-record, remember?"

"I just wondered if you did."

"I won't print the story, but it'll get out the minute you check into the hospital."

"I'm not sure when that will be."

"Yeah? Well I think you're nuts for not having this taken care of pronto.'

'Have you ever had surgery, Mr. Mackie?"

He hesitated before answering. "Not abdominal surgery."

"Then who are you to be giving me advice?

Unsolicited advice, I might add."

"Look," he said impatiently, "you're not just screwing around with a career here. We're talking about your life*' "Tennis is my life."

"Now who's being trite?"

She tossed her head and gave him a lofty glance. "I've got a lot to think about, Mr.

Mackie, and you're a disruptive element. Now that you've got the sensational story you came after, kindly leave.'' "Okay. Maybe I'll go back to my office and start working on your obit."

She sprang into a sitting position. The comforter slid to her waist. "You can't possibly understand how difficult a decision this is for me.'' "Life and death? That's a difficult decision?"

"It's hardly that simple. I don't know that the tumors are malignant. I don't know that delaying the surgery will be fatal. What I do know is that if I have an operation now, my career will be over. That's the only certainty I've got right now and the only one I can base my decision on."

She pulled in a deep breath, a reloading procedure as it were. "You can't judge me, Mackie, because you've never had to sacrifice your life's dream. Your dreams don't extend beyond the next easy woman and double highball."

He couldn't argue with her observation since it so accurately described the life he was currently leading, but it made him mad as hell that she'd pegged him correctly. Intentionally or not, she had vocalized his secret opinion of himself.

He couldn't deny her allegations. He wasn't about to leave, however, without getting in a parting shot.

"Before I go, there's something you probably should know, Miss Corbett."

"Well?" she demanded.

"Your robe is open.'

'Yes, I'm feeling much better, thank you."

It was hours later and Stevie was speaking with her gynecologist by telephone. "The medication helped relax me. I took a long nap."

Her sleep had been interrupted only by dreams of Judd Mackie's handsome, leering face, looking exactly as it had when he had nodded down at her chest and called attention to her exposed breasts. He was despicable and she rightfully despised him.

"It was just a silly fainting spell, brought on by anxiety over the test results."

The doctor took issue with her blase attitude and urged her to let him schedule surgery right away.

"You agreed, doctor, that two weeks wouldn't be critical one way or another," she reminded him. "I need that much time to weigh my options and think this through."

She hung up moments later. He had urged her to seek a second opinion. She didn't tell him she already had. And a third. The tumors were definitely there on her uterus and ovaries. Whether or not they were malignant could only be determined by surgery.

On that dismal thought, Stevie padded into the living room and switched on the television. She was just in time to catch the sportscast on the local evening news. There she was, sprawled on the green tennis court like a rag doll while the hushed crowd looked on.