by Nora Roberts
Ada Starbuck had given her son a cheap, nylon-stringed racket for his tenth birthday. The gift had been an impulse. She had been determined to give the boy something other than the necessary socks and underwear. The racket, such as it was, had been a gesture of hope. She could see too many of her neighbors’ children falling into packs. Ty, she knew, was different. A loner. With the racket he could entertain himself. A baseball or football required someone to catch or pass. Now Ty could use a concrete wall as his partner. And so he did—at first for lack of something better to do. In the alley between apartment buildings he would smash the ball against a wall scrawled with spray paint. DIDI LOVES FRANK and other less romantic statements littered his playing field.
He enjoyed setting his own rhythm, enjoyed the steady thud, thump, smash he could make. When he became bored with the wall, he began haunting the neighborhood playground courts. There, he could watch teenagers or middle-aged weekenders scramble around the courts. He hustled pennies retrieving balls. Deciding he could do better than the people he watched, Ty badgered an older boy into a game.
His first experience on a court was a revelation. A human forced you to run, sent balls over your head or lined them at you with a speed a stationary wall couldn’t match. Though he lost handily, Ty had discovered the challenge of competition. And the thirst to win.
He continued to haunt the courts, paying more attention to details. He began to select the players who took the game seriously. Possessing quite a bit of charm even at that age, Ty talked himself into more games. If someone took the time to teach, he listened and adjusted the advice to suit his own style. And he was developing a style. It was rough and untutored, with the flash the sportwriters would later rave about as just a spark. His serve was a far cry from a grown Starbuck’s, but it was strong and uncannily accurate. He was still awkward, as growing boys are, but his speed was excellent. More than anything else, his fierce desire to win had his game was progressing.
When the cheap racket simply disintegrated under constant use, Ada raided the household budget and bought Ty another. Of the hundreds of rackets he had used in his career, some costing more than his mother had made in a week, Ty had never forgotten that first one. He had kept it, initially from childhood sentiment, then as a symbol.
He carved out a name for himself in the neighborhood. By the time he was thirteen it was a rare thing for anyone, child or adult, to beat Ty Starbuck on the courts. He knew his game. He had read everything he could get his hands on—tennis as a sport, its history, its great players. When his contemporaries were immersed in the progress of the White Sox or the Cubs, Ty watched the Wimbledon matches on the flickering black-and-white TV in his apartment. He had already made up his mind to be there one day. And to win. Again, it was Ada who helped the hand of fate.
One of the offices she cleaned belonged to Martin Derick, a lawyer and tennis enthusiast who patronized a local country club. He was an offhandedly friendly man whose late hours brought him in contact with the woman who scrubbed the hall outside his door. He called her Mrs. Starbuck because her dignity demanded it, and would exchange a word of greeting on his way in or out. Ada was careful to mention her son and his tennis abilities often enough to intrigue but not often enough to bore. Ty had come by his shrewdness naturally.
When Martin casually mentioned he would be interested in seeing the boy play, Ada told him there was an informal tournament set for that Saturday. Then she hurriedly arranged one. Whether curiosity or interest prompted Martin to drive to the battered South Side court, the results were exactly as Ada hoped.
Ty’s style was still rough, but it was aggressive. His temper added to the spark, and his speed was phenomenal. At the end of a set, Martin was leaning against the chain-link fence. At the end of the match, he was openly cheering. Two hours on the manicured courts of his club had never brought him quite this degree of excitement. Ideas humming in his brain, he walked over to the sweaty, gangly teenager.
“You want to play tennis, kid?”
Ty spun the racket as he eyed the lawyer’s pricey suit. “You ain’t dressed for it.” He gave the smooth leather shoes a mild sneer.
Martin caught the insolent grin, but focused on the intensity of the boy’s eyes. Some instinct told him they were champion’s eyes. The ideas solidified into a goal. “You want to play for pay?”
Ty kept spinning the racket, wary of a hustle, but the question had his pulse leaping. “Yeah. So?”
This time Martin smiled at the deliberate rudeness. He was going to like this kid, God knew why. “So, you need lessons and a decent court.” He glanced at Ty’s worn racket. “And equipment. What kind of power can you get out of plastic strings?”
Defensive, Ty tossed up a ball and smashed it into the opposing service court.
“Not bad,” Martin decided mildly. “You’d do better with sheep gut.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Martin drew out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Ty. He refused with a shake of his head. Taking his time, Martin lit one, then took a long drag.
“Those things’ll mess up your lungs,” Ty stated idly.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” the lawyer countered. “Think you can play on grass?”
Ty answered with a quick, crude expletive, then sliced another ball over the net.
“Pretty sure of yourself.”
“I’m going to play Wimbledon,” Ty told him matter-of-factly. “And I’m going to win.”
Martin didn’t smile, but reached into his pocket. He held out a discreet, expensively printed business card. “Call me Monday,” he said simply, and walked away.
Ty had a patron.
The marriage wasn’t made in heaven. Over the next seven years there were bitter arguments, bursts of temper and dashes of love. Ty worked hard because he understood that work and discipline were the means to the end. He remained in school and studied only because his mother and Martin had a conspiracy against him. Unless he completed high school with decent grades, the patronage would be removed. As to the patronage itself, Ty accepted it only because his needs demanded it. But he was never comfortable with it. The lessons polished his craft. Good equipment tightened his game. He played on manicured grass, well-tended clay and wood, learning the idiosyncrasies of each surface.
Every morning before school he practiced. Afternoons and weekends were dedicated to tennis. Summers, he worked part time in the pro shop at Martin’s club, then used the courts to hone his skill. By the time he was sixteen the club’s tennis pro could beat him only if Ty had an off day.
His temper was accepted. It was a game of histrionics. Women found a certain appeal in his lawlessness. Ty learned of female pleasures young, and molded his talent there as carefully as he did his game.
The only break in his routine came when he injured his hand coming to the defense of his sister. Ty considered the two-week enforced vacation worth it, as the boy Jess had been struggling with had a broken nose.
He traveled to his first tournament unknown and unseeded. In a lengthy, gritty match heralded in the sports pages, he found his first professional victory. When he lost, Ty was rude, argumentative and brooding. When he won, he was precisely the same. The press tolerated him because he was young, brilliant and colorful. His rise from obscurity was appreciated in a world where champions were bred in the affluent, select atmosphere of country clubs.
Before his nineteenth birthday Ty put a down payment on a three-bedroom house in a Chicago suburb. He moved his family out. When he was twenty he won his first Wimbledon title. The dream was realized, but his intensity never slackened.
Now, walking along the dark streets of Rome, he thought of his roots. Asher made him think of them, perhaps because hers were so markedly different. There had been no back alleys or street gangs in her life. Her childhood had been sheltered, privileged and rich. With James Wolfe as a father, her introduction to tennis had come much earlier and much easier than Ty’s. At four she had a custom-made
racket and had hit balls on her father’s private courts. Her mother had hired maids to scrub floors, not been hired out to scrub them.
At times Ty wondered if it was that very difference that had attracted him to her. Then he would remember the way she felt in his arms. Backgrounds were blown to hell. Yet there was something about her reserve that had drawn him. That and the passion he had sensed lay beneath.
The challenge. Yes, Ty admitted with a frown, he was a man who couldn’t resist a challenge. Something about the cool, distant Asher Wolfe had stirred his blood even when she had been little more than a child. He’d waited for her to grow up. And to thaw out, he reminded himself ruefully. Turning a corner without direction, Ty found himself approaching one of Rome’s many fountains. The water twinkled with light gaiety while he watched, wishing his blood were as cool.
God, how he wanted her still. The need grated against pride, infuriating and arousing him. He would have taken her back that night even knowing she had been another man’s wife, shared another man’s bed. It would have been less difficult to have thought about her with many lovers than with one husband—that damn titled Englishman whose arms she had run to straight from his own. Why? The question pounded at him.
How many times in those first few months had he relived their last few days together, looking for the key? Then he’d layered over the hurt and the fury. The wound had healed jaggedly then callused. Ty had gone on because he was a survivor. He’d survived poverty, and the streets, and the odds. With an unsteady laugh he raked a hand through his thick mop of hair. But had he really survived Asher?
He knew he had taken more than one woman to bed because her hair was nearly the same shade, her voice nearly the same tone. Nearly, always nearly. Now, when he had all but convinced himself that what he remembered was an illusion, she was back. And free. Again, Ty laughed. Her divorce meant nothing to him. If she had still been legally tied to another man, it would have made no difference. He would still have taken her.
This time, he determined, he’d call the shots. He was out of patience. He would have her again, until he decided to walk away. Challenge, strategy, action. It was a course he had followed for half his life. Taking out a coin, he flipped it insolently into the rippling waters of a fountain, as if daring luck to evade him. It drifted down slowly until it nestled with a hundred other wishes.
His eyes skimmed the streets until he found the neon lights of a tiny bar. He wanted a drink.
Chapter 4
Asher had time to savor her title as Italian Women’s Champion on the flight between Rome and Paris. After the match she had been too exhausted from nearly two hours of unrelenting competition to react. She could remember Madge hugging her, the crowd cheering for her. She could remember the glare of flashbulbs in her face and the barrage of questions she had forced herself to answer before she all but collapsed on the massage table. Then the celebrations had run together in a blur of color and sound, interviews and champagne. Too many faces and handshakes and hugs. Too many reporters. Now, as the plane leveled, reaction set in. She’d done it.
For all of her professional career, the Italian clay had beaten her. Now—now her comeback was viable. She had proven herself. Every hour of strain, every moment of physical pain during the last six months of training had been worth it. At last Asher could rid herself of all the lingering doubts that she had made the right decision.
Though there had been no doubts about her choice to leave Eric, she mused, feeling little emotion at the dissolution of her marriage—a marriage, Asher remembered, that had been no more than a polite play after the first two months. If she had ever made a truly unforgivable mistake, it had been in marrying Lord Eric Wickerton.
All the wrong reasons, Asher reflected as she leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed. Even with her bitter thoughts of Eric, she could never remove the feeling of responsibility for taking the step that had legally bound them. He had known she hadn’t loved him. It hadn’t mattered to him. She had known he wanted her to fit the title of lady. She hadn’t cared. At the time the need to escape had been too overpowering. Asher had given Eric what he had wanted—a groomed, attractive wife and hostess. She had thought he would give her what she needed in return. Love and understanding. The reality had been much, much different, and almost as painful as what she had sought to escape. Arguments were more difficult, she had discovered, when two people had no mutual ground. And when one felt the other had sinned . . .
She wouldn’t think of it, wouldn’t think of the time in her life that had brought such pain and disillusionment. Instead, she would think of victory.
Michael had been right in his assessment of Tia on the court. She was a small, vibrant demon, who played hard and never seemed to tire. Her skill was in picking holes in her opponent’s game, then ruthlessly exploiting them. On court she wore gold—a thin chain around her neck, swinging hoops at her ears and a thick clip to tame her raven hair. Her dress was pastel and frilled. She played like an enraged tigress. Both women had run miles during the match, taking it to a full five sets. The last one had consisted of ten long, volatile games with the lead shooting back and forth as quickly as the ball. Never had it been more true that the match wasn’t over until it was over.
And when it was over, both women had limped off the court, sweaty, aching and exhausted. But Asher had limped off with a title. Nothing else mattered.
Looking back at it, Asher found herself pleased that the match had been hard won. She wanted something the press would chatter about, something they would remember for more than a day or two. It was always news when an unseeded player won a world title—even considering Asher’s record. As it was, her past only made her hotter copy. She needed that now to help keep the momentum going.
With Italy behind her, Paris was next. The first leg of the Grand Slam. She had won there before, on clay, the year she had been Starbuck’s lady. As she had with Eric, Asher tried to block Ty out of her mind. Characteristically he wasn’t cooperative.
We pick this up in Paris.
The words echoed softly in her head, part threat, part promise. Asher knew him too well to believe either was idle. She would have to deal with him when the time came. But she wasn’t naïve or innocent any longer. Life had taught her there weren’t any easy answers or fairy-tale endings. She’d lost too much to believe happy-ever-after waited at the end of every love affair—as she had once believed it had waited for her and Ty. They were no longer the prince and princess of the courts, but older, and, Asher fervently hoped, wiser.
She was certain he would seek to soothe his ego by trying to win her again—her body if not her heart. Remembering the verve and depth of his lovemaking, Asher knew it wouldn’t be easy to resist him. If she could have done so without risking her emotions, Asher would have given Ty what he wanted. For three colorless years she had endured without the passion he had brought to her life. For three empty years she had wondered and wanted and denied.
But her emotions weren’t safe. On a sigh, Asher allowed herself to feel. She still cared. Not a woman to lie to herself, Asher admitted she loved Ty, had never once stopped loving him. It had never been over for her, and deep within she carried the memory of that love. It brought guilt.
What if he had known? she thought with the familiar stir of panic. How could she have told him? Asher opened her eyes and stared blindly through the sunlight. It was as harsh and unforgiving as the emotions that raged through her. Would he have believed? Would he have accepted? Before the questions were fully formed, Asher shook her head in denial. He could never know that she had unwittingly married another man while she carried Ty’s child. Or that through her own grief and despair she had lost that precious reminder of her love for him.
Closing her eyes, Asher willed herself to sleep. Paris was much too close.
***
Ty! Ty!
Pausing in the act of zipping the cover on his racket, Ty turned. Pleasure shot into his eyes. In a quick move he dropped his racket and g
rabbed the woman who had run to him. Holding her up, he whirled her in three dizzying circles before he crushed her against him. Her laughter bounced off the air in breathless gasps.
“You’re breaking me!” she cried, but hugged him tighter.
Ty cut off her protest with a resounding kiss, then held her at arm’s length. She was a small woman, nearly a foot shorter than he, nicely rounded without being plump. Her gray-green eyes were sparkling, her generous mouth curved in a dazzling smile. She was a beauty, he thought—had always been a beauty. Love surrounded him. He tousled her hair, dark as his own, but cut in a loose swinging style that brushed her shoulders. “Jess, what are you doing here?”
Grinning, she gave his ear a sisterly tug. “Being mauled by the world’s top tennis player.”
Ty slipped an arm around her shoulders, only then noticing the man who stood back watching them. “Mac.” Keeping his arm around Jess, Ty extended a hand.
“Ty, how are you?”
“Fine. Just fine.”
Mac accepted the handshake and careful greeting with light amusement. He knew how Ty felt about his little sister—the little sister who was now twenty-seven and the mother of Mac’s child. When he had married Jess, more than two years before, Mac had understood that there was a bond between brother and sister that would not be severed. An only child, he both respected and envied it. Two years of being in-laws had lessened Ty’s caution with him but hadn’t alleviated it. Of course, Mac mused ruefully, it hadn’t helped that he was fifteen years Jess’s senior, or that he had moved her across the country to California, where he headed a successful research and development firm. And then, he preferred chess to tennis. He’d never have gotten within ten yards of Jessica Starbuck if he hadn’t been Martin Derick’s nephew.
Bless Uncle Martin, Mac thought with a glance at his lovely, adored wife. Ty caught the look and relaxed his grip on his sister. “Where’s Pete?” he asked, making the overture by addressing Mac rather than his sister.
Mac acknowledged the gesture with a smile. “With Grandma. They’re both pretty pleased with themselves.”
Jess gave the bubbling laugh that both men loved. “Hardly more than a year old and he can move like lightning. Mom’s thrilled to chase him around for a few weeks. She sends her love,” she told Ty. “You know how she feels about long plane flights.”
“Yeah.” He released his sister to retrieve his bag and racket. “I talked to her just last night; she didn’t say anything about your coming.”