Play for Keeps

by Maggie Wells

  “Right. And you’re great at your job. You did a good job with those kids at Eastern, and now you’re doing amazing things with the program here at Wolcott. We’ve never had a first-round draft pick out of our men’s program before.”

  The bit of bragging was out of her mouth before she even realized what she was saying. It was true. Ty had produced his program’s first star by coaching Dante to play up his potential. And Dante had repaid him by ditching school for the draft and stealing his coach’s wife.

  She bared her teeth in a quick grimace. “Probably not the best pep talk ever,” she admitted as she met his gaze again. “Sorry. Now you know why I’m not allowed in locker rooms.”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “Women like you aren’t allowed in locker rooms because you’d incite riots.”

  Suddenly, the air was thick and ripe with things unspoken. The nagging hyperawareness was back. Unleashed desire crept up her spine one vertebra at a time. His breath was hot and moist. And heavily scented with scotch. Ignoring the tingle of arousal racing through her blood, Millie laughed and let go.

  “See? It’d be a damn shame to let a sweet talker like you hole up here in the dark like some kind of wounded animal.”

  She tried to disengage, to step back out of the humming force field surrounding them, but he caught her hands before she could escape. She stared down at them, struck by how tiny and delicate her fingers looked compared to his. The contrast between the paleness of her skin and the tawny palms of his oversized hands made her breath catch in her throat.

  Words. She needed words. Something to break the spell. “Make sure you’re sweet when the reporters start calling,” she added tartly. But Ty didn’t take the bait. He just stared down at her, searching her eyes, reaching into her.

  Something was about to happen. Something bad, mad, and completely inappropriate. She should stop—she had to stop whatever this was—before they started. “Ty—”

  She managed to get the syllable out before he dipped his head and gave her a taste of the smoky scotch he’d downed.

  Good God, his mouth was hot. Those full lips, soft but firm. The kiss was everything she’d ever thought locking lips with him would be. More, if you counted the contact buzz from the booze.

  From his first day on campus, she’d entertained a few harmless, certainly never to be acted upon, fantasies about Wolcott’s most imposing Warrior. They were only something to give quality time with her vibrator some extra va-va-va-voom! She wasn’t supposed to be letting him rev her engines for real. The second he came up for air, she’d put a stop to the madness. He was vulnerable. These situations had rules, right? The problem was, this opportunity, this man, was too delicious to pass up.

  He shifted but didn’t break the kiss. She caught his low groan as he angled his head, and she gasped when his tongue touched hers. A cannonball sailing across the bow. The second she weakened, he drove for the goal. She should have been repulsed by what she was doing. He was still technically a married man. But one masterful swipe of his tongue wiped the thought from her mind. She surely shouldn’t have clung to him, her fingers pressing dents into his biceps, her own arms shaking as she fought to stand her ground.

  Despite having spent years as the spokeswoman for a Division I athletic program and claiming the nation’s premiere women’s basketball coach as one of her best friends, Millie hadn’t understood the power of a full-court press until his arms came around her. But now she did. Oh, sweet Jesus, did she ever.

  The pressure was every bit as relentless as it was compelling. She tried to step up her game, take a bit of her composure back, but Ty refused to give an inch. He wound his arms around her, taking her hands with his and pinning them to the small of her back. She should have found the position uncomfortable at best, but the whole clinch was incredibly hot. Incendiary. She had to stop. And she would. Soon.

  The velvet slide of his tongue over hers made her moan. Or maybe it was the way he drew lightly on her lower lip, then kissed her lingeringly. Like she was the one with the mouth dreams were made of, not him. She arched her back, pressing as much of her against as much of him as she could reach, but their heights were too damn disproportionate.

  If we were horizontal, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  Millie banished the thought as soon as it popped into her head. This was kissing, nothing more. He was a man whose wife had just left him. His ego needed redemption, and she happened to be the nearest female. She needed to remember where she was and what was happening. If she had any sense, she’d be offended even. Employ the SING method Sandra Bullock touted in Miss Congeniality. But she had no desire to jab him in the solar plexus or stomp his instep. His nose was long and straight and beautiful. And the last thing she wanted to do was cause any damage to this gorgeous man’s groin.

  He drew back enough to press a lingering, little kiss to the corner of her mouth. She knew what the tiny, tender peck meant. Though his hold on her didn’t loosen one millimeter, he was waiting for her to give him the green light. And oh, she wanted to. More than anything, she wanted to let her knees buckle and drag him down to the floor. Horizontal, she could reach every bit of him, map ever muscle, kiss every—and she meant every—inch of him.

  But she wouldn’t, damn her ever-practical nature.

  She wasn’t the kind of woman to allow herself to be swept along by romance, or even plain old down-and-dirty lust. No, she was the type to go in eyes open and head engaged long before she let her heart even consider entering the field of battle. She’d spent years building a reputation as the woman who could fix anything. The last thing she needed was to blow her hard work sky-high by getting entangled with a married man. No matter how much he needed her.

  Ducking her chin, she dodged the next kiss. “Ty,” she whispered as his too, too tempting mouth landed below her cheekbone. But neither her admonishment nor her misdirection stopped him. He chuckled softly and started trailing sweet, somewhat sloppy, but still sensuous kisses along her jawline.

  “I’ve thought about this for so long,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Thought about you.”

  Bad. This was the bad part. He was saying exactly what anyone with half a brain cell wanted to hear. And she had whole brain cells, and though they’d taken a short sabbatical, her synapses were starting to fire again. Wriggling her hands free from his grip, she locked her knees and came at him from underneath. She refused to take note of exactly how firm his abs felt as she slipped both hands between their bodies. She didn’t even want to register the fact that his pecs were every bit as hard as the rest of him. His nipples were like chips of diamond beneath the smooth knit of his shirt—but she’d think about all these details later.

  Much later.

  After she’d done her job and he’d secured a divorce. Those had to be her priorities.

  With a groan as heartfelt as his protest, she pushed away. They stood staring at one another, his gaze steady if a tad unfocused. His lips were wet and wonderful, but his thick, dark brows drew together in a V of confusion. Ty took several seconds to catch up, but she saw when reality clicked for him. She also saw the flash of hurt in those beautiful, golden-brown eyes.

  “We can’t do this now,” she said, forcing a note of quiet calm she wasn’t anywhere close to feeling into her voice. She wasn’t rejecting him. Needing to make him understand, she risked taking one of his big hands between both of hers. “We can’t, Ty. I have work to do. You have things to sort out.”

  He closed his eyes and blew out a breath. The force of the exhalation made him sway.

  “Go home, Millie. I’m fine.”

  Knowing one minute could mean the difference between repair and ruin, she nodded once, then headed for the sliding door. “I wanted to check on you.” The lock clicked as she released the latch. She eyed the wavering shadow in the darkness warily. “Answer your phone when I call, okay? I’m not cut out to be a cat burglar. But on
ly answer for me,” she added. “No reporters.”

  “Only for you.”

  Not knowing exactly how to respond to that or to any of the events of the previous five minutes, Millie decided to let him have the last word. She slipped out the door and slid the heavy pane of glass closed behind her. Avoiding the patio furniture, she hustled past the dimly lit swimming pool and into the safety of the darkness beyond the skirting. She waited until her Jimmy Choos touched the plush, green lawn before allowing her steps to slow. Lifting her hand to her mouth, she pressed her fingertips to her lips, trying to seal those heady kisses in.

  He had a career to salvage, and it was her job to help him. A public and possibly ugly divorce was in the offing, and she had to make sure he came out smelling like a champion and not a chump. And once all her job was done, when he was stone sober and seeing her in the harsh light of day, if he still wanted a woman six years his senior as the antidote for being burned by his much younger bride, well, then, they could talk about the possibility of acting on their urges. Reasonably. Rationally. And without any crazy expectations of romance.

  Because Millie Jensen didn’t do romance. She didn’t believe in happily ever after. Hadn’t for the last twenty years, and she saw absolutely no reason to start now.

  Chapter 2

  The sound of the Marching Warriors blaring the school’s fight song, “War Cry,” filled the air, and Ty’s entire body went rigid. Instinctively, he reached into his pocket for his cell, but he came up empty. He groped blindly at the area around him. Nothing. Then, mercifully, the phone fell silent.

  Ty felt the light pouring through the wall of glass before he even dared to crack an eyelid. It wasn’t the good kind of light, the sort that welcomed and warmed a guy. No, this was diabolical light. Light determined to leech the last of his life force right out of him. He could feel his liver shriveling. The roar of his own blood in his ears. The persistent throbbing of a brain counting down the seconds to implosion. His eyes remained glued shut. If he wasn’t mistaken, someone had cut out his tongue and replaced it with a swatch of suede.

  The phone chirped to indicate a missed call, and he groaned. He wasn’t dead.

  Damn.

  He winced as he peeled his cheek off the cushion. A dark patch marked the spot where he’d drooled in his sleep. Stupor, he corrected, pushing up on shaky arms. He hadn’t been asleep; he’d been sleeping off an epic bender. One that started the minute Millie walked out his door.

  Tired of women leaving him high and dry, he’d decided to get wet. Soused.

  Ty swung his feet to the floor. His knees popped and creaked, as usual. His head thumped like a subwoofer. His vision swam and his stomach lurched. The second he felt the bile rise, he slammed his eyes shut again.

  Funny, he’d always considered the floor-to-ceiling windows in the great room an asset. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. The massive panes of reflective glass allowed an obscene amount of light into the room. Sliding his parched tongue over cracked lips, he grunted and forced himself to sit up straighter. This injury was self-inflicted. “Man up,” he whispered.

  Shuffling across the room, he marveled at the fact that he’d managed the distance to the wet bar. The bottles marked vodka and scotch stood empty. Only the bourbon survived, but it had taken a hit as well.

  Millie hadn’t been far off in her assessment on how much it would take to get him drunk. No surprise. Millie was rarely wrong.

  Ignoring the mini fridge stocked with bottles of imported water, he flipped on the tap, held a glass under the faucet, then guzzled all he managed to capture in three big gulps. Two glasses later, he started to feel reconstituted. He filled the tumbler one more time, then hazarded a look around. The television remote sat squarely on the arm of the chair. Other than the spotted sofa and the empty liquor bottles, the room didn’t appear to be any worse for wear. But his phone was missing.

  He stood still and listened for the chirp again. He wasn’t sure if the noise was a notification or the sound of the battery’s death throes. A true man of the millennium, he’d never allowed his phone to run all the way down. God forbid he risk missing something. Until this week, he might have counted his phone among his favorite possessions, and he had a lot of possessions.

  But ever since a tip from one of his assistant coaches pointed him toward his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s PicturSpam account, his precious phone had slipped down a few notches in the rankings. Incriminating photos. She hadn’t only made a fool of him with the man she was now calling her “soul mate.” Oh, no. Once people got to talking, it came out that she’d had inappropriate relationships with at least three of his former players and the assistant who’d taken a job with their biggest rival.

  Mari had been restless and unhappy with his lack of high-profile success; he knew that. He just didn’t know how far afield she’d strayed in the two short years they’d been at Wolcott until he saw that picture.

  The phone bleeped again.

  Narrowing his eyes at the oversized armchair, he approached with caution. His cell wasn’t on the arm or under the cushion. He ran his fingers along the crevice between the seat and the arms and back. Nothing. Frustrated and aching, he dropped into the chair and stared up at the dark television screen. If he waited, the damn thing would beep again, and he’d get a better bead on its whereabouts. Propping his elbow on the armrest, he cradled his aching head. Two fingers pressed into his temple helped alleviate the worst of the pounding. He leaned into the relief.

  He’d almost dozed off when “War Cry” blasted once more.

  Hurling himself from the chair, Ty let loose with a cry of his own as his reconstructed knee hit the floor. Bionic man my ass, he thought as he swung his head around, desperate to find the source. He blinked as a beam of sunlight bounced off the glass screen. He lunged for the screaming device, swiping his hand across the glass as if he were a grizzly set to tear the damn thing to shreds in order to make the ringtone stop.

  “Hello,” he growled.

  “Good morning, friend.”

  The husky rasp combined with the intimate greeting did a myriad of things to him. A flush burned deep beneath his skin. His sluggish thoughts slowed to a near halt, then jumped into hyperdrive as a series of images and remembered sensations rocketed through his brain. Millie Jensen slipping through his back door. Cherry-cola-red hair. Bright-eyed determination. Long, lithe arms. Bare but not naked. No, he hadn’t gotten her naked. A realization that filled him with relief and disappointment.

  Millie’d popped up at his patio door wearing some kind of silky black tank top over skinny black pants. A cat burglar in zebra-print shoes.

  Cigarette pants. That’s what Mari had called them. The term suited Millie. The deep, throaty timbre of her voice would lead anyone to believe the woman chain-smoked Marlboros all day. But she didn’t. Millie was a distance runner. Had been since her high school days, she’d told him. Each year, she entered and completed one of the big marathons. Boston. New York. Chicago. She’d pounded the pavement in all those cities and more. And finished with impressive if not news-making time.

  He wasn’t surprised she would make a good showing. Everything about Wolcott’s public relations guru was sleek, streamlined, and ruthlessly vetted. The lines of her clothing suited her to perfection. As did the flamboyant animal prints and outrageous colors she chose. Millie didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do, and what she did do, she did breathtakingly well.

  Even kissing.

  And Ty certainly remembered laying one on his good friend Millie the night before. Mortification mixed with a smidge of pride as he tried to figure out exactly how to respond to her greeting. As always, he did what he did best—pressed until he was forced to fall back. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

  “Sleep well?”

  Ty didn’t know how it was possible for a woman who sounded like a veteran truck-stop waitress to coo, but somehow, Mil
lie pulled it off. “Like a baby,” he grumbled.

  “I bet.”

  Every word left unspoken sizzled and popped in the silence that followed. Weakened by dehydration and the harsh sunlight, Ty closed his eyes, then covered them with his hand for added protection. “I had the strangest dream…”

  The opening hung like a buzzer beater hurled from the half-court line. He counted three full seconds off the clock before she took mercy on him and went up for the alley-oop. “Did you? Was I in it?”

  “You were the star.”

  Millie laughed. As expected, she had few girlish giggles or glass-shattering squeals in her repertoire. Only a low, gravelly chuckle that let him know she knew exactly what had gone on in his dream. Because his fantasies had actually come to life. After nearly two years of keeping his hands shoved firmly in his pockets, he’d given in to the impulse that had seized him the first time he’d laid eyes on Millie. He’d seized her. Kissed her. Finally. But the scene hadn’t played out in any of the millions of ways he’d imagined.

  “I’m always the star, Ty.”

  Her cocky retort jolted him out of the potential pity party. Confidence. Her self-assurance was one of Millie’s most attractive qualities. And that was saying a lot. The woman had assets in abundance. Even if they were the obvious ones. “I have no doubt.”

  Running his hand down his face, he rubbed his fingers over two-day’s growth of beard. Did she leave his house with beard burn? Did she like the way he kissed?

  But of all the questions bouncing around in his head, he only needed answers to one. “Do I owe you an apology?”

  “Do you think you do?” she countered.

  Ty grimaced and shielded his eyes again as he lay back. If he stretched out on the hard, unforgiving floor like some kind of religious martyr, would she let him off the hook? Did he want to be let off?

  Millie was a master at playing games. She’d keep dodging and deflecting until she forced him to come straight at her. He knew it. She knew it. This was a dance they’d perfected over countless months of fruitless flirting. But soon, he’d be free. He was pretty sure she was free too. If they wanted to, they could see if the attraction between them continued to blossom, even after the fruit wasn’t forbidden anymore.