by Nora Roberts
Rome was noise, fruit stands, traffic, outdoor cafés. Rome was serenity, cathedrals, antiquity. For the athletes it was days of grueling competition and nights of celebration or commiseration. The next match was a persistent shadow over the thoughts of the winners and the losers. As the music blared and the drinks were poured, they discussed every serve, every smash and error and every bad call. Rome was blissfully indolent over its reputation for bad calls.
“Long!” A dark, lanky Australian brooded into his wine. “That ball was inside by two inches. Two bloody inches.”
“You won the game, Michael,” Madge reminded him philosophically. “And in the second game of the fifth set, you had a wide ball that wasn’t called.”
The Australian grinned and shrugged. “It was only a little wide.” He brought his thumb and forefinger close together at the good-natured razzing of his peers. “What about this one?” His gesture was necessarily shortened by the close quarters as he lifted a drink toward Asher. “She beats an Italian in the Foro Italico, and the crowd still cheers her.”
“Breeding,” Asher returned with a mild smile. “The fans always recognize good breeding.”
Michael snorted before he swallowed the heavy red wine. “Since when does a bloody steamroller need breeding?” he countered. “You flattened her.” To emphasize his point he slammed a palm down on the table and ground it in.
“Yeah.” Her smile widened in reminiscent pleasure. “I did, didn’t I?” She sipped her dry, cool wine. The match had been longer and more demanding than her first with Kingston, but her body had rebelled a bit less afterward. Asher considered it a double victory.
“Tia Conway will go for your jugular,” he said pleasantly, then called to his countrywoman at a nearby table. “Hey, Tia, you gonna beat this nasty American?”
A dark, compact woman with striking black eyes glanced over. The two women measured each other slowly before Tia lifted her glass in salute. Asher responded in kind before the group fell back to its individual conversations. With the music at high volume, they shouted to be heard, but words carried only a foot.
“A nice woman,” Michael began, “off the court. On it, she’s a devil. Off, she grows petunias and rosemary. Her husband sells swimming pools.”
Madge chuckled. “You make that sound like a misdemeanor.”
“I bought one,” he said ruefully, then looked back at Asher. She was listening with half an ear to the differing opinions on either side of her of a match by two players. “Still, if I played mixed doubles, I’d want Face for a partner.” Asher acknowledged this with a curious lift of a brow. “Tia plays like a demon, but you have better court sense. And,” he added as he downed more wine, “better legs.”
For this Madge punched him in the shoulder. “What about me?”
“You have perhaps the best court sense of any female world-class player,” Michael decided slowly. “But,” he continued as Madge accepted her due with a regal nod, “you have legs like a shot-putter.”
A roar of laughter rose up over Madge’s indignation. Asher leaned back in her chair, enjoying the loosening freedom of mirth as Madge challenged Michael to show his own and be judged. At that moment Asher’s eyes locked with Ty’s. Her laughter died unnoticed by her companions.
He’d come in late and alone. His hair was unruly, as though he had ridden in a fast car with the top down. Even completely relaxed, dressed in jeans, his hands in his pockets, some aura of excitement swirled around him. In the dim light his face was shadowed, all hollows and planes, with his eyes dark and knowing. No woman could be immune to him. A former lover was helpless not to remember what magic his mouth could perform.
Asher sat still as a stone—marble, pale and elegant in the rowdy, smoke-curtained bar. She couldn’t forget any more than she could stop wanting. All she could do was refuse, as she had three years before.
Without taking his eyes from hers Ty crossed the room, skirted crowded tables. He had Asher by the arm, drawing her to her feet before the rest of the group had greeted him.
“We’ll dance.” It was a command formed in the most casual tones. As on court, Asher’s decision had to be made in a tenth of a second. To refuse would have incited speculative gossip. To agree meant she had her own demons to deal with.
“I’d love to,” she said coolly, and went with him.
The band played a slow ballad at ear-splitting volume. The vocalist was flat, and tried to make up for it by being loud. Someone knocked a glass off a table with a splintering crash. There was a pungent scent of spilled wine. A bricklayer argued with a Mexican tennis champion on the proper way to handle a topspin lob. Someone was smoking a pipe filled with richly sweet cherry tobacco. The floorboards were slightly warped.
Ty gathered her into his arms as though she had never been away. “The last time we were here,” he murmured in her ear, “we sat at that corner table and drank a bottle of Valpolicella.”
“I remember.”
“You wore the same perfume you’re wearing now.” His lips grazed her temple as he drew her closer. Asher felt the bones in her legs liquefy, the muscles in her thighs loosen. “Like sun-warmed petals.” Her heartbeat was a light, uncertain flutter against his. “Do you remember what we did afterward?”
“We walked.”
The two hoarsely spoken words seemed to shiver along his skin. It was impossible to keep his mouth from seeking small tastes of her. “Until sunrise.” His breath feathered intimately at her ear. “The city was all rose and gold, and I wanted you so badly, I nearly exploded. You wouldn’t let me love you then.”
“I don’t want to go back.” Asher tried to push away, but his arms kept her pressed tight against him. It seemed every line of his body knew every curve of hers.
“Why? Because you might remember how good we were together?”
“Ty, stop it.” She jerked her head back—a mistake as his lips cruised lazily over hers.
“We’ll be together again, Asher.” He spoke quietly. The words seemed to sear into the tender flesh of her lips. “Even if it’s only once . . . for old times’ sake.”
“It’s over, Ty.” The claim was a whisper, the whisper unsteady.
“Is it?” His eyes darkened as he pressed her against him almost painfully. “Remember, Asher, I know you, inside out. Did your husband ever find out who you really are? Did he know how to make you laugh? How,” he added in a low murmur, “to make you moan?”
She stiffened. The music whirled around them, fast now with an insistent bass beat. Ty held her firmly against him, barely swaying at all. “I won’t discuss my marriage with you.”
“I damn well don’t want to know about your marriage.” He said the word as if it were an obscenity as his fingers dug into the small of her back. Fury was taking over though he’d sworn he wouldn’t let it. He could still get to her. Yes, yes, that was a fact, he knew, but no more than she could still get to him. “Why did you come back?” he demanded. “Why the hell did you come back?”
“To play tennis.” Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. “To win.” Anger was growing in her as well. It appeared he was the only man who could make her forget herself enough to relinquish control. “I have every right to be here, every right to do what I was trained to do. I don’t owe you explanations.”
“You owe me a hell of a lot more.” It gave him a certain grim satisfaction to see the fury in her eyes. He wanted to push. Wanted to see her anger. “You’re going to pay for the three years you played lady of the manor.”
“You don’t know anything about it.” Her breath came short and fast. Her eyes were nearly cobalt. “I paid, Starbuck, I paid more than you can imagine. Now I’ve finished, do you understand?” To his surprise, her voice broke on a sob. Quickly she shook her head and fought back tears. “I’ve finished paying for my mistakes.”
“What mistakes?” he demanded. Frustrated, he took her by the shoulders. “What mistakes, Asher?”
“You.” She drew in her breath sharply, as if stepping b
ack from a steep edge. “Oh, God, you.”
Turning, she fought her way through the swarm of enthusiastic dancers. Even as she sprang out into the sultry night Ty whirled her around. “Let me go!” She struck out blindly, but he grabbed her wrist.
“You’re not going to walk out on me again.” His voice was dangerously low. “Not ever again.”
“Did it hurt your pride, Ty?” Emotion erupted from her, blazing as it could only from one who constantly denied it. “Did it hurt your ego that a woman could turn her back on you and choose someone else?”
Pain ripped through him and took over. “I never had your kind of pride, Asher.” He dragged her against him, needing to prove he had some kind of power over her, even if it was only physical. “The kind you wear so that no one can see you’re human. Did you run because I knew you? Because in bed I could make you forget to be the perfect lady?”
“I left because I didn’t want you!” Completely unstrung, she shouted, pounding with her free hand. “I didn’t want—”
He cut her off with a furious kiss. Their tempers soared with vivid passion. Anger sizzled in two pairs of lips that clung because they were helpless to do otherwise. There was never any choice when they were together. It had been so almost from the first, and the years had changed nothing. She could resist him, resist herself, for only so long. The outcome was inevitable.
Suddenly greedy, Asher pressed against him. Here was the sound and the speed. Here was the storm. Here was home. His hair was thick and soft between her questing fingers, his body rock-hard against the firmness of hers. His scent was his “off-court” fragrance—something sharp and bracing that she’d always liked.
The first taste was never enough to satisfy her, so she probed deeper into his mouth, tongue demanding, teeth nipping in the way he himself had taught her. A loud crash of brass from the band rattled the windows behind them. Asher heard only Ty’s moan of desperation. Between the shadows and the moonlight they clung, passion building, old needs merging with new.
Her breath trembled into the night as he took a crazed journey of her face. His hands slid up until his thumbs hooked gently under her chin. It was a familiar habit, one of his more disarming. Asher whispered his name half in plea, half in acceptance before his mouth found hers again. He drew her into him, slowly, inevitably, while his fingers skimmed along her cheekbones. The more tempestuous the kiss, the more tender his touch. Asher fretted for the strong, sure stroke of his hands on her body.
Full circle, she thought dizzily. She had come full circle. But if once before in Rome she had been frightened when his kisses had drained and exhilarated her, now she was terrified.
“Please, Ty.” Asher turned her head until her brow rested on his shoulder. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I didn’t do it alone,” he muttered.
Slowly she lifted her head. “I know.”
It was the vulnerability in her eyes that kept him from dragging her back to him. Just as it had been her vulnerability all those years before that had prevented him taking her. He had waited for her to come to him. The same would hold true this time, he realized. Cursing potently under his breath, Ty released her.
“You’ve always known how to hold me off, haven’t you, Asher?”
Knowing the danger had passed, she let out an unsteady breath. “Self-preservation.”
Ty gave an unexpected laugh as his hands dove for his pockets. “It might have been easier if you’d managed to get fat and ugly over the last three years. I wanted to think you had.”
A hint of a smile played on her mouth. So his moods could change, she thought, just as quickly as ever. “Should I apologize for not accommodating you?”
“Probably wouldn’t have made any difference if you had.” His eyes met hers again, then roamed her face. “Just looking at you—it still takes my breath away.” His hands itched to touch. He balled them into fists inside his pockets. “You haven’t even changed your hair.”
This time the smile bloomed. “Neither have you. You still need a trim.”
He grinned. “You were always conservative.”
“You were always unconventional.”
He gave a low appreciative laugh, one she hadn’t heard in much too long. “You’ve mellowed,” he decided. “You used to say radical.”
“You’ve mellowed,” Asher corrected him. “It used to be true.”
With a shrug he glanced off into the night. “I used to be twenty.”
“Age, Starbuck?” Sensing a disturbance, Asher automatically sought to soothe it.
“Inevitably.” He brought his eyes back to hers. “It’s a young game.”
“Ready for your rocking chair?” Asher laughed, forgetting caution as she reached up to touch his cheek. Though she snatched her hand away instantly, his eyes had darkened. “I—” She searched for a way to ease the fresh tension. “You didn’t seem to have any problem smashing Bigelow in the semifinals. He’s what, twenty-four?”
“It went to seven sets.” His hand came out of his pocket. Casually he ran the back of it up her throat.
“You like it best that way.”
He felt her swallow quickly, nervously, though her eyes remained level. “Come back with me, Asher,” he murmured. “Come with me now.” It cost him to ask, but only he was aware of how much.
“I can’t.”
“Won’t,” he countered.
From down the street came a high-pitched stream of Italian followed by a bellow of laughter. Inside the club the band murdered a popular American tune. She could smell the heat-soaked fragrance of the window-box geraniums above their heads. And she could remember, remember too well, the sweetness that could be hers if she crossed the line. And the pain.
“Ty.” Asher hesitated, then reached up to grasp the hand that lingered at her throat. “A truce, please. For our mutual benefit,” she added when his fingers interlaced possessively with hers. “With us both going into the finals, we don’t need this kind of tension right now.”
“Save it for later?” He brought her reluctant hand to his lips, watching her over it. “Then we pick this up in Paris.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“We deal now or later, Face, but we deal.” He grinned again, tasting challenge, tasting victory. “Take it or leave it.”
“You’re just as infuriating as ever.”
“Yeah.” The grin only widened. “That’s what keeps me number one.”
On an exasperated laugh, Asher let her hand relax in his. “Truce, Starbuck?”
He let his thumb glide back and forth over her knuckles. “Agreed, on one condition.” Sensing her withdrawal, he continued. “One question, Asher. Answer one question.”
She tried to wrest her hand away and failed. “What question?” she demanded impatiently.
“Were you happy?”
She became very still as quick flashes of the past raced through her head. “You have no right—”
“I have every right,” he interrupted. “I’m going to know that, Asher. The truth.”
She stared at him, wanting to pit her will against his. Abruptly she found she had no energy for it. “No,” she said wearily. “No.”
He should have felt triumph, and instead felt misery. Releasing her hand, he stared out at the street. “I’ll get you a cab.”
“No. No, I’ll walk. I want to walk.”
Ty watched her move into the flood of a streetlight and back into the dark. Then she was a shadow, disappearing.
The streets were far from empty. Traffic whizzed by at the pace that seemed the pride of European cities. Small, fast cars and daredevil taxis. People scattered on the sidewalks, rushing toward some oasis of nightlife. Still, Ty thought he could hear the echo of his own footsteps.
Perhaps it was because so many feet had walked the Roman streets for so many centuries. Ty didn’t care much for history or tradition. Tennis history perhaps—Gonzales, Gibson, Perry, these names meant more to him than Caesar, Cicero or Caligula. He rarely tho
ught of his own past, much less of antiquity. Ty was a man who focused on the present. Until Asher had come back into his life, he had thought little about tomorrow.
In his youth he had concentrated fiercely on the future, and what he would do if . . . Now that he had done it, Ty had come to savor each day at a time. Still, the future was closing in on him, and the past was never far behind.
At ten he had been a hustler. Skinny and streetwise, he had talked his way out of trouble when it was possible, and slugged his way out when it wasn’t. Growing up in the tough South Side of Chicago, Ty had been introduced to the seamier side of life early. He’d tasted his first beer when he should have been studying rudimentary math. What had saved him from succumbing to the streets was his dislike and distrust of organized groups. Gangs had held no appeal for Ty. He had no desire to lead or to follow. Still, he might have chosen a less honorable road had it not been for his unquestioning love for his family.
His mother, a quiet, determined woman who worked nights cleaning office buildings, was precious to him. His sister, four years his junior, was his pride and self-assumed responsibility. There was no father, and even the memory of him had faded before Ty reached midchildhood. Always, he had considered himself the head of the family, with all the duties and rights that it entailed. No one corrected him. It was for his family that he studied and kept on the right side of the law—though he brushed the line occasionally. It was for them that he promised himself, when he was still too young to realize the full extent of his vow, to succeed. One day he would move them out, buy them a house, bring his mother up off her knees. The picture of how hadn’t been clear, only the final result. The answer had been a ball and racket.