Playing it Cool (Sydney Smoke Rugby)

by Amy Andrews

  Did that mean something?

  “Are you going to this fundraiser thingy on Friday night? For the City Central kid’s hospital?” she asked.

  “Mmm,” he said.

  Harper’s lips curved. She didn’t have to look at him to know his eyes would be closed. She knew that sleepy mmm. He sounded like that just before he fell asleep, his voice low and rumbly as he drifted in a semi-conscious state.

  She rolled onto her side and he shifted, lifting his arm to accommodate her as she snuggled her head in the crook of his shoulder and closed her eyes. She shivered as his fingers trailed sensuously up and down her arms.

  “I’m going as well,” she murmured. “Why don’t you swing by here, and we can go together.”

  His fingers stopped abruptly, and her eyes opened, aware of the sudden firming of his pectoral beneath her cheek. “You’re going?”

  His voice was sharper, less rumbly, and Harper could tell he was wide-awake now. She blinked into the warm red glow around her as a wave of goose bumps crawled up her nape. “Yes. They’re doing a segment on my murals.”

  “Oh.” His whole body seemed to grow tense beneath her. Had he not been toasty warm he could have given marble a run for its money. “You never said.”

  Well, no…she hadn’t said. But she hadn’t been deliberately withholding it from him, either. They just didn’t really…talk about things. They kissed and fucked and slept, then he left and they started all over again. When they did talk, it was about the mural she was working on or the last game he’d played or the game he was about to play. Sometimes the twins.

  Then they kissed and fucked and slept…

  “It slipped my mind.”

  Silence enveloped them. And not the drowsy, postcoital, heavy with bone-deep satisfaction one of a minute ago. No. This was chock full of tension. She could almost hear his brain cranking over.

  Harper frowned, not sure what his problem was. He may not want to hear the L word, or commit to a forever kind of relationship with her, but they were still hanging out, right? And they had been out in public together before.

  “But as we are both going,” she said, her voice as light and quivery as her confidence, “I thought it might be nice to go together.”

  He shifted his arm out from underneath her, displacing her as he sat and swung his legs out of the bed. “I wasn’t going to go with anybody,” he said as he reached for his discarded shirt and threw it on over his head.

  Harper stared at his back as he slid his legs into his snug boxer briefs. A cold fist squeezed around her heart. “Are you worried I might make inappropriate jokes about rucking?”

  He stood as he pulled the underwear up, and she caught a brief glimpse of taut ass before it was encased in snug black cotton. He turned to look at her, his eyes roaming over her with his usual thoroughness. “I’m just not ready to go… public with us yet.”

  “Okay…” What the fuck did that mean? It wasn’t like whatever the hell they were doing was a secret. “But we’ve been out to a wine and paint restaurant and to Luna Park. You asked me out in front of a handful of your teammates at a rugby game. Hell, I’ve been in the Smoke’s corporate box at Henley stadium.”

  “Yes, but…everyone will be there.” His eyes drifted to her breasts before returning to her face. “Sponsors, the media, the WAGS…”

  He looked at her helplessly, and the hand squeezed a little harder.

  Was he…worried how it would look rocking up to a glamorous event with someone who wasn’t a size six on his arm? Was he trying to tell her that she couldn’t possibly play in the same sandbox as the glamorous creatures she’d spent a fun few hours with at that home game?

  Christ. Did he think she didn’t know that?

  The thought cut hard—harder than any insult her stepbrother or mother had handed out over the years—and she reached for the sheet, pulling it up her body, tucking it in under her arms as all the old feelings of inadequacy crashed in.

  “And I’m not quite the image they have of a rugby union star’s girlfriend, right?” Her heart beat with a sick, heavy heat, like molten rock in her chest.

  He looked at her blankly. “What?”

  Harper sucked in a breath, trying to stem the hurt haemorrhaging in her chest. “You’re embarrassed to be seen with me,” she stated, proud of how calm she sounded when she was dying inside.

  It sure as hell explained why he was so keen to always stay in. Harper had loved that he’d felt at home in her home, but she’d thought that was about privacy, not secrecy.

  When all along he’d been ashamed to take her anywhere.

  They’d joked in the beginning about her being his dirty little secret, but it looked like she actually was.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he growled, dismissing the statement with an impatient wave of his hand. “You should know by now that I can’t get enough of you. Why on earth would you think that?”

  Was he joking? Was he seriously kidding her now?

  “Maybe because I have no fucking clue what the hell we’re doing here, or how you feel about me.”

  “God, Harper, please,” he said, shoving an exasperated hand through his hair. “You know I think you’re awesome.”

  Awesome?

  Harper snorted. Loud. It was that or burst into tears. “Awesome?” Hot tears scalded the backs of her eyes, but she blinked them back. “What are you, like, five?”

  She thrust back the sheet and scooped up her discarded gown from the floor, sliding into it as she stood.

  “You didn’t seem to mind the compliment a few weeks ago.”

  He was right. She’d been happy when he’d told her she was awesome. But she’d moved on. And awesome was wholly fucking inadequate.

  She was in love with him for fuck’s sake. Awesome was an insult.

  She tied the belt of the gown tight. “And just why am I so gosh-darned awesome?” she demanded, tossing her hair over her shoulder, glaring at him. “Because I’m no serious threat to your career? Because I don’t make any demands? Because I’m a pushover? You knock on the door and I open my goddamn legs for you?”

  “No!” Dex shook his head vehemently.

  But Harper was on a roll, the hard ball of hurt inside her morphing into simmering rage. “Because I don’t expect anything from you, don’t pressure you for anything? Because you’ve got the best of both worlds—a steady supply of sex with absolutely no commitment. And I’m just good old Harper who’s been stupid enough to go along with it. Well, guess what, Dex, I’m not going to be your dirty little secret anymore.”

  He took a step toward her. “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh really?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Okay, then. Take me to the gala on Friday night.”

  He hesitated. It was barely perceptible, barely ruffled the air, and yet it hit her in the centre of the chest like a punch. Harper steeled herself to stand upright despite the winding force. She would not crumple in front of him.

  He shook his head. “No. But please let me explain—”

  “No?” Harper swallowed at the second blow, trying to tamp down a tide of rising hysteria.

  This was her fault. All her fault.

  What the hell had she been thinking tacitly agreeing to this half-life with him? She deserved this punch in the gut right now because she’d let him take her for granted.

  “Harper…” His earnest green gaze begged her to understand. “I just need more time to wrap my head around all this. I just want to enjoy what we have for the moment.”

  She snorted. “I bet you do.”

  “No, I mean…I don’t want to share you with anybody. I want to keep it private and personal while we can. You have no idea how crazy the speculation gets with the media, and God, if the WAGS get wind of anything between the two of us they’ll never leave me alone. It’s a distraction I don’t need.”

  And there was the third blow. Nothing and nobody could be a distraction from his precious career. She understood the demons that drove him, and the las
t thing Harper wanted was to stand between him and rugby. But why in hell couldn’t he have both?

  Plenty did.

  Dex may have talked himself into thinking he could drop out from the human race. Become some rugby bot with tunnel vision. But…you don’t always get what you want.

  And if he wanted her—if this truly wasn’t about her being more Xena than Tinkerbell—then it was going to be on her terms.

  “Well, that’s too bad, Dex. Because I love you and I want the whole messy, distracting enchilada. I want a relationship with all the expectations and pressure that brings. I’m not going to be happy to just sit by and let it all be about you and your career. Not anymore. If you want me, then you have to be in all the way, Dex. This is a two-way street and I’m not settling for some half existence in your shadow. I don’t care how good the sex is.”

  He shoved his hands on his hips. “You love me?” His face blanched, his complexion looking washed out in the eerie red glow of her bedside lamp. “You told me that was just something you said in your sleep.”

  “I lied,” she snapped.

  “Christ.” He snatched up his jeans off the floor and yanked them on. “Why do you want it all?” he demanded, more incredulous than angry, the bed between them about as wide as the Grand freaking Canyon. “You think it’s easy being the partner of someone who plays team sport at an elite level? Because it’s bloody hard. Riding all the ups and downs with them. Early mornings and club demands, worrying about injury and sickness, and whether I’m picked for a world cup team, and dealing with me when I’m not. Then there’s money and salary caps and contract negotiations, and the pressure to retire, and travelling a lot of the year, and the bloody vultures in the media who’ll skew anything at the merest whiff of a scandal. Is that what you want your life to be?” he yelled across the bed at her.

  Harper almost cried at the question. Of course she fucking did. “Yes,” she yelled back. “That’s what happens when you decide to be with someone. You’re there for each other. Halving the burden. You know, for better for worse.”

  He looked at her startled, his eyes going all big and crazy as Harper realised what she said. “Oh, take a breath, Dex. I’m not about to start humming the wedding march at you. I just want to be with you.”

  “You are with me,” he insisted.

  “Yeah. I am.” She shook her head. “But you’re not with me.”

  It was no use. She could tell how freaked out he was with just one glance. She’d never met anyone who could compartmentalise his life so succinctly. And no matter how much she loved him, she wasn’t going to settle for less. The way Dex had loved her body had taught her she didn’t need to take any man’s scraps.

  She was damned if she was going to take his.

  She lowered herself to the bed, her back to him. “I think it’s time you left,” she said, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. She needed to be alone, to give into the crushing grief in her heart and the hot, insistent prick of tears.

  She sat for a beat or two, holding her breath, conscious of him standing behind her, willing him to go, yearning for him to stay. The pressure in her chest and behind her eyes built and built until she didn’t think she could stand it any longer.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And then he was gone. She heard the front door open and shut and it was only then she let the first tear fall.

  …

  Em, who had somehow miraculously deciphered Harper’s distressed phone call, made it over in twelve minutes. Normally, it took her a good fifteen to twenty, but it was one o’clock in the morning.

  “I’m sorry,” Harper said, eyes streaming and nose running as her bestie appeared in the doorway. She’d never been so grateful to see those wild caramel curls in her life, even if she did look like a rumpled angel next to Harper’s dishevelled hag.

  But when didn’t Em look gorgeous? She should be a WAG. Harper hiccupped at the thought, more tears threatening.

  “A white or something stronger?” Em asked, producing a bottle of wine and a bottle of her old faithful—butterscotch schnapps—from behind her back.

  White wine was usually Harper’s drink of choice, but tonight she finally understood Em’s attraction to something stronger when matters of the heart were concerned. “Schnapps.”

  There was nothing like a friend with an apartment key who came to you at one in the morning, no questions asked, and brought good booze. Yes, Harper had done it countless time for Em, but the reciprocation was still appreciated.

  Em left the bedroom and Harper could hear her clinking around, obviously grabbing shot glasses. She was back in under a minute, kicking off her shoes and climbing into the bed. She handed Harper the shot glasses and filled them almost to the top.

  They tapped them together and threw it back. “Dear God,” Harper rasped as it clawed at her throat and ripped out every hair from her nostrils to her nether regions. She may never need to pay for a Brazilian ever again.

  “I told you.” Em grinned. “Exactly what you need to forget a guy.”

  “Forget a guy?” Harper blinked, trying to clear the splotches in front of her eyes. “I think I’ve forgotten my own bloody name.”

  “Another?”

  “Fuck yes,” she said, holding up her glass.

  They sipped this time, settling back against the headboard, Harper resting her head on Em’s shoulder.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Harper blurted it all out in a tumble of tears and sniffling and schnapps. Em had known that Harper and Dex had parted ways and that Harper was in love with him, but not that Harper had started sleeping with him again. She felt mildly guilty about not telling her—they did, after all, tell each other everything—but Em waved Harper’s blubbered apologies aside.

  “So you’ve been having sex with the ex,” Em said, cutting to the heart of it when Harper had finally run out of words. And tears.

  Harper shook her head, depressed at the question. “How can I have? He can’t be an ex if we were never a thing in the first place.”

  Em seemed to consider that as she poured a third schnapps for them. “So you two have just been a series of booty calls for him?”

  Harper’s face crumpled at the thought. Apparently there were more tears to be had.

  Yeah, that’s what she’d been. Willingly, too. Being Dex’s booty call had been exciting in the beginning. Now she couldn’t believe she’d demanded so little from him.

  From herself.

  “I’ve been his dirty little secret,” she said, miserably.

  “Oh, baby.” Em put her arm around Harper’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head. “So, what are we going to do about it?”

  Harper looked at her friend warily—she’d heard that note before. “No voodoo dolls. Or re-virginising.”

  “Spoil sport.” Em laughed. “No. I have a better idea. You wear that sexy red dress you bought and have never worn to the fundraising gala, and you flirt and dance with every guy there.”

  Harper pulled away, settling herself farther back against the headboard. “Oh no.” The last thing she wanted was to go and mingle with the glamorous people. Dex might have denied her curvy figure was the reason for his reluctance to go public, but her confidence had taken an almighty wallop. “I’m not going.”

  “What?” Em blinked. “You have to. Your murals are being featured. You’re giving a speech about them.”

  Harper shook her head. She couldn’t stand the thought of having what she couldn’t be a part of rubbed in her face. “They can still showcase the murals. They don’t need me to speak.”

  Em tsked. “You know your problem, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Three dress sizes.”

  “You don’t think you’re worthy,” Em said, ignoring Harper’s belligerent reply. “Deep down, you’ve been okay with this dating in your house thing because you’re still buying into the stepdouche’s taunts and don’t think you’re worthy of being loved by a good-looking man who can have his pi
ck of women. And you are, Harper. You’re the most worthy person I know.”

  Em was glaring at her now. God, she even looked cute when she was angry. “Stop hiding your light under a bushel.”

  Harper blinked. A bushel? Apparently she was cute and biblical when angry.

  “And don’t let Dex hide your light, either. You need to go to that gala without him and flaunt that ass and every single curve right in his face. Let him see you’re just fine without him. Let him know what he’s missing out on. Hell, I’m going to come with you just to make sure you do it right.”

  “You are?”

  “Fucking A,” Em confirmed.

  “It sounds kinda high school, don’t you think?” Even though Harper had done the same thing that day she’d dropped her gown on him. But at least it had been in private, with no chance of public humiliation if it backfired.

  “There are times to be adult and times to make douchebags pay.” Em clinked her shot glass against Harper’s. “Now, drink up, you have a dress to try on.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Linc whistled under his breath as he and Dex waited for the other Smoke players to walk the red carpet. “Well hellooo, mumma.” He nudged Dex. “Isn’t that Harper Nugent? No wonder you’ve been fumbling the ball.”

  Dex turned, following Linc’s gaze, and almost swallowed his tongue. It was Harper. She was in a stunning red dress that hugged her figure like a glove. It also featured a diamond cutout over her chest, exposing most of a bra that consisted of a red satin half-cup and red satin ribboning that followed the rounded proportions of her upper breasts. To cap it off, there was a tantalising strip of ribbon running horizontally across the bared swells of her cleavage at about nipple level, dividing the exposed flesh into fascinating segments.

  Her dark brown hair shone under the lights and swung loose and wavy over her shoulders and down her back. She was tall and curvy and stunning—Xena, red-carpet princess—and Dex stared unblinking for long moments.

  Hell, every male with a pulse stared.

  He wanted to kill them all.