Midnight Play

by Lisa Marie Perry

  Veda set down her glass. “Thanks, Danica.”

  A burst of laughter collided with a blast of music.

  “Oh, no,” Veda groaned. Kensie had hooked up her tablet to the sound system. Bouncing off the walls was a familiar disco song about a destructive relationship.

  Embarrassment hit Danica like a blow to the gut. It shocked her, that the song’s lyrics could affect her and that a friend could find humor in her failed marriage. The sheepish expression on Kensie’s face told Danica that she’d pegged her right. It was a joke, and Danica was the butt of it.

  “Kensie,” Veda admonished. “Change songs. Right. Now.”

  “Sorry, Danica,” Kensie offered, obeying Veda’s sharp order. “I was just goofing around—trying to get you to stop being so serious.”

  Veda made a slicing motion across her throat to shut up her cousin. She placed a hand on Danica’s arm. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s cool,” Danica insisted. “The world’s still turnin’. I just wonder how anyone can stand to take their clothes off to this song.”

  A moment later came the sharp, sexy opening notes of a Def Leppard hit.

  “This is better,” Danica said with a sip of champagne.

  “Much.” Veda paused, her head cocked in thought. “Actually, I think I’ve taken my clothes off to this song.”

  The guests leered, and Danica finished her drink. Time to go. It took a few minutes to convince the group that work beckoned and she wasn’t going home to wallow in self-pity.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she told Veda, hugging her goodbye in the foyer. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the rehearsal dinner. In the meantime, please go easy on the drinks. You don’t want to be hungover during the rehearsal. It won’t look good.”

  “Whatever you say, Miss Perfect. Oh! Wait right there.” Veda held up a finger, dashed off and returned with a pink goody bag that she promptly stuffed into Danica’s oversized purse. “Party favors. Night!”

  There was something mischievous about the wink her friend added as she shut the double doors, but Danica was already switching to full work mode, shoving handsome strippers out of her thoughts. There was only one man on her mind: Dex Harper.

  Chapter 2

  “A meeting with Dex Harper. Can you make that happen?” Danica sat in her Porsche, the top down and the balmy breeze licking her skin as she tapped the steering wheel and willed the rush-hour Vegas traffic to unclog.

  She adjusted her Bluetooth as her assistant vowed to get on it right away and text message her an update. “Thank you, Lil. I want to see him in my office before he meets with the owners at noon tomorrow. He needs to know that jumping over the chain of command is something that’s not done inside our organization.” Marshall and Temperance Blue had given her direct orders to relieve the starting quarterback of his duties with the Las Vegas Slayers. The man had maintained a noteworthy record until two seasons prior when he’d started getting sacked and picked off, showing slipshod leadership and trashing his stats. Danica had agreed with her parents’ decision to cut him from the team. So she’d signed up Brock Corday, a quarterback with commendable talent and an excellent off-field reputation.

  Good thing Marshall and Tem had trusted their gut, and trusted their daughter. Just recently it had hit the NFL and the media that the former owner had bribed players to manipulate the outcome of games. Dex had claimed that he was getting screwed over in a conspiracy, but no one could prove it yet, and until they could, no team would stick their neck out for him. The man was a liability that not even the most desperate of franchises wanted to touch.

  Dex was mourning the loss of his career. He couldn’t seem to comprehend that his time with the Slayers was over, and he was no longer the face of the team. He was no longer Sin City’s devilishly handsome quarterback with a new girlfriend every month and a rebellious attitude that excited some and annoyed others. He’d lived by his own rules—rules that didn’t always coincide with the National Football League’s code of conduct.

  The man was trouble.

  Letting him go had just been good business. Danica had been pleased that her parents approved of her pick of a replacement quarterback. Yet now apparently they’d gone ahead and agreed to meet with Dex. They had undermined her.

  As soon as she got settled in her office, she would get them on the phone and find out why.

  As nine o’clock approached, she finally made it to the administration complex, located southwest of the stadium. The franchise was undergoing a face-lift, which included everything from brand-new turf on the field to building renovations to personnel changes.

  Danica let her body relax as she took an elevator to the ninth floor and navigated the hushed halls to the managers’ wing. Her office and Lilith’s shared a corridor that was vibrant with the vintage-meets-bohemian-Gothic décor that the women had agreed on the day Danica had treated Lilith to a shopping day.

  As Danica had expected, Lilith had left for the night. Her door was shut and there were no signs of life coming from inside her office. Danica often worked deep into the night, like so many upper-level stragglers, and never asked her assistant to hang around for company.

  What Danica hadn’t expected was to find a man waiting in an armchair in the corridor. And for damn sure she hadn’t expected that man to be Dex Harper.

  Startled, Danica dropped her purse. It hit the floor with a thud, and slid across the polished surface. Even as the contents of her purse tumbled out, her eyes remained centered on Dex.

  “Why are you in my office?” She was more annoyed than afraid. Besides, her parents retained a team of highly paid, highly skilled security experts who were always present, alert and knew how to make themselves invisible.

  “You called the meeting. All I did was show up, like I told Lily I would.”

  Lily. He was on a nickname basis with her. It surprised Danica even when she knew it shouldn’t have. Lilith Laurence was a free spirit with the kind of bedazzling personality that made strangers feel as if they were lifelong friends.

  Danica spun to locate her phone and felt the skirt of her dress sway about her thighs. Then she knelt, found the phone still secure within her purse and checked the screen. There was the text from Lilith, informing her that Dex had agreed to meet with her and would be at the office in a half hour. Danica hadn’t guessed that Dex would be willing to drop any evening plans to get face time with the exec who’d fired him.

  She certainly hadn’t been prepared for him. And when you were dealing with a man like Dex, preparation meant everything.

  With an involuntary cringe she imagined how she must’ve looked marching into the corridor, with her hair windblown from drive. And now she was flustered and snatching random items off the floor to shove back into her purse.

  Oh, boy. Dex rose from the chair, which practically sighed to be relieved of his six-five, two-hundred-twelve-pound frame. Danica had reviewed his file so many times that she knew it by heart, and she could tell by the way his body filled his dark pants and gray shirt that he was all lean muscle.

  He had height and strength and control—physically he was any team’s dream come true. But she suspected that he had let greed get the best of him. Though he insisted he was no longer under investigation in connection with the former franchise owner’s alleged corruption, until the NFL commissioner’s office made a formal announcement confirming that fact, he would be little more than eye candy.

  Eye candy, all right. Dex had mussed dark hair, a light scruff over a strong jaw and those arresting Paul Newman–blue eyes with touches of gunmetal—as if he wasn’t beautiful enough. In a fluid motion he lowered to his haunches. His tanned skin contrasted with her own sun-kissed brown complexion as he tried to press something into her hand.

  At her hesitation, he urged, “Here. Your, uh, personal items scattered when you dropped your purse.”

  Danica took the tiny item, and finding it unfamiliar, twisted it to read the label. Travel-size massage oil. Cherry flavored.


  A gasp almost slipped out, but she pressed her lips together and watched for his reaction. But he was diligently scooping the other runaway items—a silky blindfold, a pair of mini “sex dice,” a strip of condoms—into the pink goody bag Veda had jammed into her purse.

  Crap. Blunders like this didn’t happen to her. What could she say to kill both the awkwardness and the electric current of tension that ping-ponged between them? “These are gifts.”

  Dex looked her in the eyes, handing her the bag. His fingers swept her palm, and he straightened, distancing himself. Too late. His touch, despite how brief and innocent, had sparked a sensation that penetrated her flesh and was working its way into her bloodstream.

  Count on a few strippers to make her overly aware of a good-looking man.

  “Your…gifts…are no business of mine.” But the heat that danced in his gaze as it flicked from the pink bag to her eyes told her that maybe he’d like them to be his business. Dex retreated to a striped chair but didn’t sit. “I’m meeting with Marshall and Temperance tomorrow. I know that you know, and that you don’t like it.”

  Danica got to her feet. “So why interrupt your evening to come here?”

  “To hear what you have to say. It’s what I’ve been asking for since you cut me from the team—the chance to talk and have somebody listen.”

  Anyone would think he’d be all talked out by now. NFL investigators were on his ass. The feds were more interested in determining the extent of the former owner’s wrongdoing than redeeming Dex’s name in the league and media. The corruption had run deep, and once connected the dots showed a picture of crime so clever and so veiled that it’d gone on for two years without the public being the wiser. The revelation had caught national attention and even the slightest development in the investigations was the topic of ESPN breaking news.

  It didn’t help that her sister Charlotte was involved with Nate Franco, a son of the former owner. Nate had been the one to tip off the commissioner’s office and had refused to be caught up in his father’s criminal activities.

  Dex may have said that he’d never known about Alessandro Franco’s scheme, but his past on-and off-field antics had earned him a reputation as a troublemaker, and that worked against him. A popular sports-channel poll showed that only 37 percent of respondents believed he was innocent.

  As difficult as it was for the world to believe that nearly an entire team could be paid off to turn on its quarterback, Dex was sticking with his story.

  But according to the media, he was a flop and just looking for someone else to blame.

  Danica had encountered many situations throughout law school and her years as a practicing attorney that weren’t black or white, but some shade of gray. There were exceptions and extenuating circumstances to consider, and there were hard lessons to be learned—one of which was that sometimes law came down to nothing but a kick-ass argument, people skills and some good publicity.

  From what Danica could tell, if Dex were ever going to rehabilitate his image, he was in need of all three.

  What could he tell her today that he hadn’t already told investigators? Nevertheless, he was here and ready to talk. Danica saw no reason to send him on his way—yet.

  Besides, the guy had chivalrously ignored that a sex-survival kit had fallen out of her purse. For that alone he deserved a few minutes of a listening ear.

  “All right.” Danica moved past him to unlock her office door. She swiped a panel of light switches, illuminating the comfortable space that was always visitor-ready.

  He stepped in behind her. The room suddenly felt as close and airless as an elevator. At her gesture to have a seat, he chose the chair directly in front of her desk, his assessing stare not breaking for a moment. Her power and personality didn’t seem to faze him. She didn’t know whether that made him reckless or sincere or both. “You be ‘talk,’ Dex. And I’ll be ‘listen.’”

  *

  Dex saw the flicker of challenge in Danica Blue’s eyes. He’d looked nowhere else as he’d lowered onto a striped oval-backed chair that made him think of the movie Beetlejuice.

  I’ll be damned. This is her space? It was almost funny that this office, with its moon lamp shades and dark miscellaneous furnishings, belonged to the woman in front of him. She was too tempting with her messy hair, taut body, smooth brown skin and that up-to-something little smirk. Covered from breasts to calves in a sexy green dress with a black bow, she looked like a present he wanted to unwrap. God only knew whatever else she was packing in that purse of hers, but already his brain and body were in overdrive at the idea of the two of them putting all those sex gifts to use.

  His pants suddenly felt too tight over his crotch, and he hunched, steering his thoughts to the fact that he was unemployed. It wasn’t easy, though. She was mesmerizing. Jarring. Kind of dangerous.

  Which was probably exactly what she was going for.

  Here was a woman who probably got a thrill watching others squirm. Well, he wasn’t here to amuse her. He stared her down until she took a step back and bumped against the edge of her desk.

  Playing it off, she rested her butt on the desk and set her purse down at her feet. “Uh. I offer water to every guest. Would you like one?”

  Guest? That was an odd way to put it. As if she were entertaining, playing the gracious hostess—not diving into a meeting with a man she’d fired. Then again, this was her M.O. Manage a football team, chat it up with the press, terminate and replace a roomful of employees, all while wearing a pretty smile.

  Pretty wasn’t the word for it. More like disarming.

  “No, thanks.” He jabbed a thumb toward the open door. “Shouldn’t this conversation be private?”

  “This floor is management. I don’t keep secrets from the people I work closely with.”

  Dex let his gaze drop to her purse, specifically the bit of pink that poked from the top. Danica nudged the purse under her desk with her foot. Yeah, that was subtle.

  What she had in that bag of tricks had nothing to do with him finding his way back into a Las Vegas Slayers uniform. Dex could feel it all slipping from him—celebrity endorsements, the fame, the glory, the essence of who he’d become. At the age of eighteen he’d had to start over, reset his existence…a boy with no past and nobody to come home to. He was a self-made man, and the only place he belonged was on the football field.

  Cool under pressure, man. Dex Harper had mastered the art of projecting calmness, even as his world continued to crash and blaze around him. And when it all turned to ashes, he’d survive.

  “Bold move—going over my head to get a meeting with the team owners, Dex.”

  “I want my life back.” The sting of truth stunned him.

  “You mean your job with this team,” Danica said.

  “My job with this team is my life.”

  “Let’s be honest—” Danica swept a retractable pen off the desk and began clicking it “—about what our objectives are here.”

  “You want a winning team. I want to help you get what you want.”

  “No, no, don’t do that. Don’t twist the situation—it’s counterproductive. Two seasons straight the Slayers didn’t make it to the play-offs. Your role in that? Last season in the first eight of ten games you were sacked multiple times. Over sixteen sacks in ten games!” At his furrowed brow she continued. “Wait, did you think I fired you without watching your films? I did my homework, Dex. I know you. I know you’re from a small town, you’re involved with Habitat for Humanity and you made it to pro with unquestionable skill in this game. I know you’re not a quarterback who dallies around knowing there’s a blitz coming. And the interceptions? You don’t throw interceptions on second and goal. At least you didn’t three seasons ago.”

  “I thought I was supposed to be ‘talk.’”

  Danica gave a short nod but continued to press the top of the pen. Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Was there a cadence to everything about this woman? He’d heard the rh
ythmic strike of her high heels on the floor before she’d found him waiting outside her office. Then there was the swish of her dress that twirled every time she turned her body. Now the soft click as she toyed with that pen.

  She was hypnotic. Maybe that explained how she could wipe out half of the administration and still be deemed an American sweetheart in the eyes of the media.

  “Go ahead, then, Dex. I’m giving you the floor.”

  “No quarterback can carry an entire team. Passing and reception? That’s a two-person task. When I give my boys a play, I don’t expect to go out there and be left hanging. It was deliberate, something my team planned behind my back. And all of you fell for it.” The unaffected expression on her face told him that his words weren’t taking hold. “If you watched my films, you saw my accuracy, my leadership, how I perform outside the pocket. I brought my team to the Super Bowl my rookie season. I brought the Slayers my first season with the team.”

  “You had some incredible years. I’m not pretending you didn’t.”

  “I’m thirty-one years old, in top physical condition. Danica, I can give you more.”

  She dropped the pen. It landed near her purse, and while he would ordinarily have made a move to retrieve it for her, he didn’t know how his body might react to another encounter with that purse.

  Interesting, though. He could emerge from an onslaught of aggressive defensive linemen with a pigskin treasure secure in his grip, but she couldn’t seem to hold on to an ink pen. Was there a klutz underneath her perfect exterior?

  Better question, why the hell did the possibility intrigue him?

  “Place an inquiry with the league, and you’ll know that I’m cooperating. I didn’t know why my team turned on me or why upper management didn’t step in. I didn’t know what it really meant when some of the guys said ‘payday’ after a hard hit. I didn’t ask.”

  “Why not?”

  “You ask why and why not a lot.”

  “Yes-or-no questions rarely give me the info I’m fishing for.” She shrugged, the overhead lights glowing over her bare shoulders, the top of her dress drawing tight across a pair of high-set breasts that his large hands could palm with ease….