Randi leaned back in her chair, determined to meet the challenge she’d just been thrown.
“Okay, but sports provide our economy with a huge chunk of revenue.”
“Ditto.”
“How do you figure?” She sat forward, forearms on her desk. “Season tickets to one sports event are surely more than the cost of a dog. And how often does someone buy a dog? Every fifteen years?”
“Buying a pet is the least of the expenses. There are vet’s bills—”
“Surely you aren’t charging your patients several hundred dollars for vaccinations!”
His brow creased. “I do far more than just give vaccinations.”
Okay, so that had been a cheap shot. “But most people aren’t spending hundreds of dollars a year on animal surgeries, are they?”
“No, but they do, easily, on pet food.”
Oh, right. Food.
He was meeting her point for point with a straight face, but his sharp blue eyes sparkled with challenge. “And then there are pet supplies,” he continued. “That’s a billion-dollar industry.”
“Just like we have uniforms and shoes,” she said, nodding. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“And trainers,” he added with a grin.
Her stomach flopping again, Randi slumped back in her chair. “How did we get started on this ridiculous conversation, anyway?”
“You were wondering about the economic importance of what I do. And I think we were just getting to the part where you were going to have to admit defeat.”
She stood up. He sounded just a bit too pleased with himself.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said suddenly, half-desperate.
He cocked his head, the crease back between his brows. “What kind of deal?”
“You meet me on the basketball court in five minutes. We play ten minutes of one-on-one. I win, no pet therapy this semester.”
“And if you don’t win, you’ll take on the club wholeheartedly and participate willingly?”
She paused, trying to imagine herself ever willingly getting close enough to a dog to be its partner, and then shook her head. She wasn’t going to lose. Randi was almost as good at basketball as she’d been at golf. Rotator cuffs weren’t essential to basketball the way they were to golf.
“Okay,” she finally said.
“I’m not dressed for the court.” He looked down at his jeans.
Her gaze followed his. And she took a shaky breath.
“You’re wearing running shoes,” she said.
“You’re wearing gym shorts.”
“You’re taller than I am by a foot, which more than makes up for the shorts advantage.”
“Ten minutes, huh?” he asked, studying her.
“I’ll set the clock.”
“You’re on.”
Her heart began to pound. “You’re serious?” She was finally going to get somewhere? Get him and his pet-therapy club off her back? Out of her life?
Because surely, when she demonstrated her prowess on the court, showed him that she could defeat him, the appreciation she saw in his eyes would fade—just as it had when she’d told him about her time with the LPGA.
If there was one fact Randi had learned growing up with four brothers, it was that the male ego was a fragile thing. And there were some blows it couldn’t take.
Unable to completely ignore her conscience, Randi said, “I have to warn you, I’m pretty good.”
“Trying to get out of it already?” he asked.
“What’s the matter, afraid you can’t beat me?”
“On the contrary.” She pinned him with the gaze that had been intimidating opponents all her life. “I know I can.”
He wasn’t fazed. “Then lead the way.”
He stood back, waiting for her to pass him. Meeting his glance, Randi did. And held her breath until she was safely in front of him, away from the danger of his tantalizing male scent—and the compelling look in his eyes.
CHAPTER SIX
HE’D NEVER GOTTEN a hard-on during a basketball game before. Jumping up to sink a three-pointer that would give him a one-point lead, Zack braced himself for the pain of the landing. His jeans were squeezing the life out of him.
In all the years he’d been married to Dawn, he’d never hurt so bad.
Just as the ball sailed off his fingertips, Randi slammed into him, her hand catching the elbow of his shooting arm.
“That’s a foul,” he said, wincing as he landed back on the floor and his jeans pulled taut across his thighs.
“Nonshooting foul.” Her ragged breathing, echoing in the deserted gym, sent another wave of heat through him.
She passed the ball to him, he went for a quick two, sank the ball, tied the game and stayed right with her as they chased to the other end of the court. They spent the next couple of minutes trading defensive moves that would have made the NBA proud.
It kept them from scoring baskets. It didn’t help Zack’s pain at all.
What was it with this woman? he wondered as he stole the ball from her. Sure she was great-looking, but so were most of the women he’d dated—before and after his marriage.
Never had a woman affected him the way this one did.
“My ball,” she called when he reached in for another steal, making the steal, but fouling her, as well.
He bounced the ball to her with a little more energy than necessary.
She turned to head back up the court and he adjusted his jeans as he ran after her.
He caught her mid-court, reaching around her to grab the ball, and grazed her breast. He felt more than heard her rushed intake of breath. Good. She wasn’t immune to the energy charging the room.
Though why it mattered, Zack wasn’t sure. Unless maybe he had a score to settle. She was an ex-golfer. An athlete. There was something horribly satisfying about the thought of being able to turn her on. To make her burn.
As he hadn’t been able to do with Dawn.
She got past him and sank a beautiful hook shot.
Zack glanced at the clock. Thirty seconds left and she was up by two. He didn’t miss the grin on her flushed face as she paralleled him up the court, arms flailing.
“Give it up, Foster,” she said, her voice cocky even in its breathlessness.
“Forget it,” he grunted. Planting himself on the court, he raised his arms—and the ball—over his head where she couldn’t reach them. She jumped, knocking into him, but he was immovable.
This woman was not going to get the better of him.
It wasn’t about pet therapy anymore. It wasn’t even about basketball. It was about a man and a woman who had something to settle.
He sank the shot just before the clock rang out.
“It’s a draw,” Randi said, breathing heavily. She sounded so disappointed he almost felt sorry for her.
“You’ve got some pamphlets to read.” They were standing in center court.
“You didn’t win,” she stated, her gaze penetrating.
Trying to regulate his breathing, to pretend he wasn’t as winded as she was, Zack shook his head. “I didn’t have to,” he told her triumphantly. “The deal was that if you win, we call off pet therapy for the semester. And if—”
“You win, I participate willingly,” she interrupted.
“Uh-uh.” He couldn’t resist the smile pulling at his lips. “And if you don’t win, you participate willingly.”
He waited while she thought back to what they’d said, and he knew the instant she realized he was right.
“How many pamphlets do I have to read?” she asked. He had to hand it to her. She took it on the chin.
“Just the four I gave you. And the book, too.”
“Don’t expect me to like your dogs.” She stood, feet apart, facing him in the middle of the deserted court.
Zack had to forcibly restrain himself from yanking her into his arms.
“I won’t,” he assured her. Though he had a lot of faith in Sammie and Bear.
Right then, however, it wasn’t his dogs he wanted her to like.
“I’ll have them read in a couple of days,” she said, her eyes still meeting his.
Zack’s respect for her grew.
“Have dinner with me again, and we can go over things.”
For the first time since she’d issued her challenge, her eyes dropped.
“My treat,” he said, anxious to pin her down to another meeting—to a time when he could explore the effect he seemed to have on her.
“When?” She lifted her chin.
“Thursday at seven?”
“Fine.”
Zack left her then, whistling as he made his way out to his Explorer. Feeling quite satisfied with the morning’s events, he ignored the little voice inside him that warned of the dangerous effect she had on him, too.
He knew the score. He wasn’t looking for long-term. He wasn’t looking for anything but a mutual exchange of pleasure.
There was no danger here. She was an athlete. He’d never be stupid enough to fall for an athlete. All he had to do was think of Dawn.
And her lover.
He’d been living with a lesbian. Sleeping with her, making love to her, and he hadn’t even known. Not only had he not suspected that Dawn wasn’t completely satisfied with the physical side of their relationship, he’d honestly believed they’d had a good marriage, that they were a team, complementing each other, meant to be together. He’d had complete faith in forever. She’d had another lover.
He wasn’t going to be stupid enough to fall for anyone again. Period.
HE TOOK HER into Phoenix, not to the same hotel, but to a restaurant that was equally nice. Randi wasn’t sure whether he was purposely keeping their association hidden from the people back home in Shelter Valley or if he just wanted to take her to places nicer than Shelter Valley had to offer. But she was glad of the anonymity just the same.
Randi Parsons on a date would create quite a stir. Randi Parsons dating the most eligible bachelor in town would probably make the front page of Shelter Valley’s weekly paper.
If the gossips found out this was her second date with the most eligible bachelor in town, the paper might even announce her engagement. Not that she really cared what the paper said, but…
“Rumor has it you and Cassie could end up together,” she blurted over dessert Thursday night. Things were going entirely too well that evening, and she had to find some way to slow things down.
She wasn’t interested in having her entire life disrupted by a potentially cataclysmic and definitely short-lived relationship. A fling, an affair, was all it would be, not that she wanted anything permanent. Her life was settled. Content. Or it would be as soon as spring break arrived and she got her white picket fence.
“Rumor being the old gossips in town?” he asked, grinning lazily at her across the candle-lit table.
She shrugged, taking a long sip of wine. “Probably.”
Finishing off his crème brûlé, he pushed the bowl aside and sat back, his eyes serious as he met her gaze. “The only passion there’s ever been between Cassie and me is a shared passion for the work we do.”
You have no reason to feel relief here, Randi told herself.
On the contrary, she should be feeling sorry for Cassie. The woman deserved some happiness.
“Have you known her long?” Randi asked.
Considering how much he loved his work, Cassie would be a perfect soul mate. And she was gorgeous, too.
“We met in college,” he said, pausing for a sip from the wineglass he held as he sat comfortably in his chair. “And we’ve kept in touch ever since. She’s a good friend, but there’s never been anything more than that, for either of us.”
Randi couldn’t believe that. She couldn’t imagine there was a woman alive who’d be impervious to Zack’s appeal.
“You sure about that?” she asked him, eyes half-lowered as she watched for his reaction.
“Absolutely. When I met Cassie, the doors to her heart were already firmly shut.”
Randi nodded, understanding, but also truly sad for the woman she’d grown up with yet hardly knew. At one time, Cassie Tate had the perfect life. the oldest of four girls, she’d grown up in a close-knit family, had had lots of friends. And in the space of a day, or so it seemed, it was all over. Her marriage to the town heir, Sam Montford. And more. There’d been some story about a baby, but everything had been kept very quiet, which meant it must have really been bad if the Shelter Valley gossips had been convinced to hold their tongues.
Not that Randi knew for sure; she’d been away a lot then, on the LPGA tour…
It took her a second to realize that she and Zack were simply staring at each other. Neither saying a word.
But once she’d noticed, she got nervous and cast down her eyes.
“Did you read the stuff I left for you?” His question brought things back to safety again.
“Yes.” Randi had read every word in the book and the brochures he’d given her. She’d read the stuff she’d printed off the Internet, too.
“And?”
If knowledge was all it took to supervise, she was ready. But if it was a case of being able to put that knowledge into action, she might never be ready.
Her opinion of dogs had been formed at a very early age. Dogs were unpredictable. And they could hurt you.
“There were some pretty impressive statistics,” she murmured.
He didn’t actually say I told you so, unless you counted the grin that tilted those lips she couldn’t get out of her mind.
“Pet therapy is a rapidly growing discipline,” she went on. “And I could even see how, in some instances, the animals might be able to succeed where modern medicine can’t.” She was shocked by how badly she wanted to please him.
“Then you’re ready to go to work.”
Wrong.
“I’m not working. I’m supervising.”
“I have enough dogs lined up for you to take one.”
He was going to be disappointed in her if she didn’t at least make an effort here. But…
“I’d, uh, feel more comfortable if I were free to, uh, walk around and, you know, supervise—at least the first time out.” She’d sure stumbled through that one. Not quite her style.
But then not a lot about her association with Zack Foster was happening with her usual assured style.
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding when he nodded. “If any of your students runs into a problem, you’ll want to be available to take over.”
Okay. Yeah. That was it.
She couldn’t actually lie to him—having grown up in Shelter Valley and working at Montford, where values were everything—so Randi let her silence do the lying for her. And tried to ignore the guilt.
They finished their wine, talked about their families. He knew about her four brothers, of course, since he’d lived in Shelter Valley for almost a year. He’d heard about her parents, too, but he’d only seen them from a distance at one of her basketball games.
But she knew nothing about his father, the lawyer, or his mother, the homemaker. Was intrigued to hear that he was an only child. Something that wasn’t common in Shelter Valley, where big families were the rule. His folks lived in Colorado.
“Do you get to see them often?” Randi asked. As much as she liked to pretend her family was a pain in the ass, she’d hate to live permanently apart from any of them.
“I go there a couple of times a year,” he said. “And they’ve been here twice. I’m hoping to convince them to move here.”
“Did you grow up in Colorado?”
He nodded.
“So what brought you here?”
“I won a partial basketball scholarship to Arizona State my freshman year.”
She frowned. “I don’t remember seeing you—”
“I was cut from the team before my senior year. Never really played much…”
He’d won a college basketball scholarship and
here she’d been feeling sorry for him when she’d issued that challenge on Tuesday. If she hadn’t gone into that little match with a stacked deck herself, she’d call him on his duplicity.
The bill was paid and finally there was no reason to linger. Randi stood, disappointed that the evening was at an end. She knew this night was a time out of time—it had no relevance to her real life—but she’d never enjoyed herself so much on a date. Not that she’d been on all that many. She’d just never felt so…so completely comfortable. As if she and Zack existed on the same little patch of solid ground in a scattered and shaky universe.
And yet, she’d never felt so completely uncomfortable either. Her nerves were more ragged than they’d ever been—even before the most important golf championship game she’d played in the LPGA.
They didn’t improve when he took her hand on the way to his Explorer.
He opened her door and Randi’s heart expanded another little bit. Not many people understood that being an athlete didn’t mean she didn’t want to be pampered like any other woman now and then. Although she hadn’t really known that herself until he’d shown her how it felt…
How had he known?
Just outside of town, when they hit the dark desert highway that led home, he took her hand again. And kept on holding it. They didn’t say much. Just sat there, watching the road, feeling the night.
And that was okay, too.
Their silence left time for awareness—of physical sensation and realms of feeling she’d never experienced before.
She couldn’t speak for Zack, but her body had never been more aware of another’s. It was as though the hand holding hers was connecting her to some unfamiliar network, sending heated messages through her veins.
Coded messages that her mind couldn’t understand, but that her body was answering, anyway.
It meant nothing. She knew that. It was going nowhere. She knew that, too. A man like Zack would want a woman like his partner, Cassie. One who was the epitome of womanhood. Whose hair wasn’t short and practical. Who dressed in the latest and most feminine styles. Who wore high heels and makeup.
A woman who could make herself pet a dog.
Except he didn’t want Cassie.
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