Defending Hearts

by Rebecca Crowley

  “Be my guest.” She propped her cue on the floor and leaned against it, already bored.

  Her first mistake, she concluded as he sank a ball, was accepting the date with Jared. She’d agreed because she felt guilty, then dreaded the Friday-night dinner until the moment he buzzed her apartment. She’d spent the entire meal trying to drop hints that they were only ever going to be friends.

  Her second mistake was bringing him to her favorite dive bar. She thought she could get support from Carrie, the bartender she was becoming more and more friendly with.

  Her third and totally unanticipated mistake, it turned out, was introducing Carrie and Jared. The two of them practically sizzled with instant chemistry, Carrie distracted to the point that she filled Jared’s glass until beer poured down the sides and then handed a half-empty one to Kate. She spent nearly an hour waiting for one of them to wake up to how rudely they excluded her before giving up, muttering something about a headache and walking out. Carrie had the decency to look mildly apologetic as she waved goodbye. If Jared even noticed her departure, he gave no sign.

  She traded the dive bar for the hipster-looking one down the block. She’d started the evening counting two people as burgeoning friends in her new city, and within hours she was back to zero. The last thing she wanted to do on a Friday night was go home sober.

  She sighed, taking up her cue as her opponent missed. She hated fashionable, overpriced bars like this one, not to mention the fashionable people buying the overpriced drinks. Thankfully it had a pool table and plenty of men keen to show off their skills. Jared had paid for dinner, so if she played as well as she knew she could, she would end the night in profit.

  Small consolation, but she’d take it.

  She eyed up the table, considered her angles. Then she put hours of taxpayer-funded pool games in isolated desert outposts and windswept Midwestern Army posts to good use.

  Clack, thunk. Clack, thunk. Clack, thunk. She worked the table methodically, ruthlessly, calling each shot until only the eight ball remained.

  “Wait a second,” her opponent objected, striding up to the table. “We didn’t agree on the rules before we started. In pub pool you have to give the other person their turn to—”

  She sank the eight ball mercilessly, swept up his ten-dollar bill and turned to the handful of onlookers who’d gathered to watch the action.

  “Who’s next?”

  As was her experience, almost every man in the room wanted to be the one who finally beat her. She bought a stupidly expensive beer while they jostled to write their names on the chalkboard behind the pool table. Then she flexed her fingers, put resin on her cue and spent the next two hours relieving each one of them of ten, fifteen, or twenty dollars.

  Clack, thunk. Ten-dollar bill in her pocket. She watched her opponent wipe his name off the chalkboard and realized he was the last one. She shook his hand. He offered to buy her a drink. He wasn’t a bad pool player, nor was he bad looking. She opened her mouth to accept when a voice rumbled behind her.

  “Time for one more?”

  She spun to face the last person she wanted to see.

  “Oz. Hello.”

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Just fine. Yourself?”

  “Couldn’t be better. This is Davida. Davida, this is Kate.”

  She nodded to the short brunette at his side who, to her credit, already glanced between the two of them with a less-than-impressed expression.

  “How do you know each other?” Davida asked.

  Oz’s eyes leveled on hers. From the moment she left his hotel room she’d hoped he wouldn’t take her departure personally and somewhat fantastically envisioned them becoming friendly, if strictly professional, acquaintances. Specifically, the sort of acquaintances who offer spots in their VIP box.

  Now she was pretty sure she’d never be crossing that VIP threshold again. Ever.

  “Kate’s a contractor for Atlanta Skyline,” he replied icily.

  “Speaking of which, don’t you have a match tomorrow?”

  “Sunday.”

  She slid her gaze to the glass of water in his hand. “I guess that’s why you’re keeping halal tonight.”

  Her words came out more acidic than intended, but by the time she registered her tone the damage was done. Davida’s eyes widened while Oz’s narrowed.

  “I’m leaving,” Davida announced, placing her untouched cocktail on an empty table.

  “Wait, hang on.” Unlike Jared had with her, Oz pursued Davida to the door and out of Kate’s earshot. She picked up her beer and watched their exchange over the rim of the glass. Oz gestured and leaned in, not quite blocking her exit but not getting out of her way, either. She smiled but shook her head firmly, patted his arm and left.

  He watched her walk out and shut the door behind her. Then he turned and fixed Kate with a hard glare.

  She raised her glass in salute.

  He stormed across the room. She straightened her spine and arched a brow, her eyes never leaving his as he halted in front of her.

  “Yes?”

  He nodded to the chalkboard. “How much to play?”

  “Ten.”

  “Let’s make it worth my while.” He counted out five twenty-dollar bills and flattened them on the edge of the pool table. Then he racked the balls and picked up a cue.

  He broke without asking permission, and silently pocketed three balls before he missed. He looked at her expectantly.

  She took her time. The hundred he’d nonchalantly slapped down would almost double her winnings…or decimate them.

  She didn’t begrudge him his money, his house, his car. She’d spent her life on the far side of that divide, learning to go without, tiptoeing at the edge of bailiffs’ shadows. Poverty didn’t scare her—it was too familiar to be frightening—but no matter how far ahead of it she ran, it had hardened her. Made her hungry. Brought everything into focus until she saw exactly what to do and how to do it.

  A hundred dollars was half a week’s rent. Three tanks of gas. A thrift-store summer wardrobe for her niece.

  She would take Oz’s money, and she would enjoy doing it.

  She walked around the table, examining the balls’ positions, gauging her options. He was good, so she wanted to give him as few turns as possible.

  She leaned over, lined up. Clack, thunk. One down.

  He moved into her line of vision and crossed his arms. She almost smiled at his attempt to put her off.

  Clack, thunk. Two.

  “Davida’s a tech columnist,” he volunteered. “She writes for a men’s magazine. She’s hugely influential.”

  “Interesting.” Clack, thunk. Three.

  “Very.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “She thought you were an ex-girlfriend.”

  She smiled, positioning her cue on the felt. “I hope you told her I wasn’t the competition.”

  “I did, but she didn’t believe me. I guess it was too obvious.”

  “What was too obvious?” She squinted, lining up her shot.

  “That I think you’re fucking hot.”

  Pain seared across her knuckles as she scraped them against the table’s splintery edge, the tip of the cue scratching along the felt. Balls bounced around the table, and Kate cursed under her breath. Oz wore a smug expression as he stepped up for his turn.

  She shook out her sore hand, sucking briefly on a place where the skin had split open. She’d let him get to her. Inexcusable. And with an obviously provocative comment that shouldn’t feel this good.

  She exhaled as he leaned over the table, trying to cool the fever that had settled over her body at his words. He hadn’t meant it. Even if he had, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t learn to stand on her own two feet while she had a man between her legs.

  At a push—a drunken,
horny, desperate push—she might allow herself a totally anonymous one-night stand, but not with Oz. Not with someone she was guaranteed to see again. Not with someone who could cost her a job.

  Not when she knew one night would never be enough.

  She shut down that train of thought and recovered her focus. She wanted that hundred dollars, and goddammit, she would do what it took to get it.

  Oz pocketed his fourth ball and moved to find his fifth. She watched his dark eyes flicking from one ball to the next. Calculating. Considering.

  She glanced down at the outfit she’d chosen for her apology date with Jared. Purple flip-flops. Tight jeans. A sleeveless pink top selected because it hid the way her fly sat awkwardly on her stomach and gave her a muffin top. No jewelry. No makeup. Certainly no cleavage.

  Seduction wasn’t her thing. Most of the men she’d slept with had started as friends, a one-of-the-guys situation that eventually bubbled over into the bedroom. She knew how to be buddies with men, how to drink with them, play pool, watch sports, swear, talk trash. She inhabited her body comfortably but practically. Her physicality was functional, not decorative.

  Oz bent over the cue. She drifted into his sightline. No matter how unnatural it felt, she knew she had to act quickly.

  As he drew back his arm she let her cue drop from her grip and clatter to the floor. He paused, giving her a dark look.

  “Slipped. Sorry.”

  He huffed his annoyance and returned his attention to the table. She edged around the corner in pursuit of her cue until she was—by her calculations—just in his peripheral vision. Then she bent forward from the waist to retrieve it, presenting him with an unimpeded view of her butt.

  Wood scratched felt, accompanied by non-English words that she didn’t need to be multilingual to know were filthy.

  She didn’t bother hiding her smile as she informed him cheerily, “My turn.”

  He moved aside—slightly. Her quick glance found unyielding determination tightening his jaw, narrowing his eyes, flat-lining his mouth.

  God, he was gorgeous.

  And close. Too close. He propped a hip against the side of the table. The zipper on his jeans was inches from her cheek as she leaned over. She could count the stitches on his pocket. His muscular thigh strained the denim.

  Solid red, corner pocket. Her eyes flicked traitorously to Oz’s crotch. Jesus Christ, was he hard?

  Clack, thunk. She’d gotten lucky, but she might not again. Time to get serious, to play like her life depended on it, to ignore—

  He not-at-all-accidentally brushed past her as he stalked to the opposite side.

  Definitely hard.

  Her throat tightened. That wasn’t something he could fake. And he wanted her to see it. Know what she did to him.

  Her face heated until her vision swam. She gave herself a bolstering shake, sipped her beer, and then tried to turn fresh eyes to the scattered balls.

  Four shots away from a hundred dollars. Three solids and the eight ball. She’d been on a winning streak all night. She could do this.

  If Oz moved or made a face or did anything intended to distract her, she didn’t notice. She found the impenetrable concentration she perfected on the firing range and her next two shots were textbook, rolling neatly into pockets as if tugged by magnets.

  Then she made the mistake of looking up as she changed position. Oz moved in parallel, like a snake tracking its prey, barely blinking as he watched her reset her angle.

  She thought about the money. The satisfaction of winning. She did her best to ignore him, to shut out his eucalyptus scent, to forget that his lean, trim, unapologetically masculine body showed such an obvious reaction to her nearness.

  She drew back her arm and he broke into a sudden, exaggerated yawn, stretching his arms over his head…and pulling up his shirt to expose a perfectly sculpted abdomen at the exact moment she took her shot.

  Kate’s eyes were on the last solid ball slicing across the table, but all she saw was the faint line of dark hair bisecting the stacked muscles of Oz’s stomach. The image was so consuming that she didn’t celebrate the ball landing in a pocket, didn’t even realize it happened until the owner of that exquisite six-pack spoke up from the other side of the table.

  “Last shot. Don’t choke.”

  “I won’t.”

  She would take Oz’s money, sure, but her real victory would be walking away from him. Resisting this seductive, insistent, terrifying thing happening between them, because it couldn’t end well. Their lives were too different, the distance separating them totally unbridgeable. Even if it wasn’t, she had to focus on figuring out who she was—not Kate the dutiful daughter, Kate the sensible sister, Kate the reliable aunt, Kate in the military or Kate in a relationship.

  Just Kate.

  He stopped at her side, so close she caught the faintest whiff of the shaving cream he’d used on those smooth cheeks.

  “Do you mind?” She gestured for him to move away.

  “Not at all.” He crossed his arms without shifting an inch.

  “I’d like a little space to take my winning shot.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “But you’re not going to give it to me,” she replied resignedly.

  “I have a hundred dollars on the table. I’m taking every advantage.”

  She picked up the resin block and rubbed it on the tip of her cue. “Sounds like a sore loser.”

  “Sounds like someone worried about choking.”

  “Please.” She rolled her eyes. “Stand wherever you want. I’ll still take your money.”

  “Do it.”

  She didn’t need to be told twice. As it happened, the final shot was an easy one. The eight ball sat on the edge of a corner pocket, largely unimpeded. If both her arms fell off she could probably sink it with the cue in her mouth. There was no excuse not to win.

  Except the tall, dark-haired one hovering at her side.

  She leaned over the felt and he leaned over her, near enough for the heat of his body to warm her back. Her nipples tightened inside her bra as she imagined that same heat more intensely, accompanied by the hard press of his bare flesh and the weight of his muscular frame.

  What would he be like in bed? So different to the rest, she imagined. Dominant but unselfish. Tender but firm. Admiring, energetic, playful…

  She positioned her cue on the table and he traced his finger across the bare skin where her shirt parted from her jeans. She gritted her teeth and clutched the wood beneath her fingers as his touch launched a wave of heat roaring from her ears to her toes.

  Had she ever had such an overwhelming, vision-blurring urge to throw a man to the floor and ride him until he begged for mercy? Only in her most private, dead-of-night fantasies.

  Which never, ever came true.

  Nor would this one. He was trying to put her off, that’s all. They would never, could never have a relationship. She barely managed to sustain two or three dates with men she knew as friends, what chance did she have with someone like Oz?

  Someone smart, successful, sophisticated. Someone whose future floated higher and higher every day, not tethered close to the ground like hers, not weighted by the burden of a careless mother and a reckless sister and an innocent little niece.

  Different worlds. Different people. She slipped out from beneath Oz’s hand. He let it fall to his side, maybe wounded at her repeated rejection, maybe bored with their back-and-forth. Maybe indifferent, already thinking about that woman he came in with and how he could convince her to meet him again.

  Childish, irrational jealousy spiked in her chest and she popped her shot, sharp and precise. The ball found its pocket comfortably. She slapped her hand over the stack of bills.

  Oz placed his hand on top of hers. “Wait.”

  “Why? You lost, and I’m ready to go hom
e.”

  “Have a drink with me.”

  “You’re not drinking.”

  “You know what I mean, Kate.” God, her name sounded good when he said it.

  “Why?”

  “Because I like you.”

  “You barely know me.”

  “Change that.” He pressed his palm against her knuckles. “Stay.”

  She wanted to be the woman who would—who could—kiss him. Who could toss her hair, soften her expression, let him read all the sultry intention in her eyes. Who could slide her fingers to the back of his neck, press her thighs between his and say all the right things to get him in bed and keep him there.

  But she was Kate Mitchell, in flip-flops and ill-fitting jeans. The soldier. The pool shark. The to-be-determined.

  She jerked her hand out from under his, pocketed the money and stepped backward.

  “You’re a smart man, Oz.” She spoke without looking at him, picking up her purse and rooting through it for her phone. “Call Davida. I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”

  He said nothing as she walked away, and she didn’t glance over her shoulder to check his expression. She hoped it was longing. But she knew it probably wasn’t.

  At least she was a hundred dollars richer than she’d been a half-hour earlier. She walked down the block as she opened an app to call a taxi, using every bit of her willpower not to run back into the warm glow of the bar, into Oz’s waiting arms.

  Chapter 9

  “Eighteen, take it easy. Don’t test me a second time.”

  Oz rolled his eyes as he turned his back on the referee and walked away. Skyline was up one-nil with twelve minutes to go. He was sick of his opponents hurling themselves all over the pitch as if they’d been mortally wounded, and even sicker of this passive-aggressive ref and his linesmen. If this guy offered one more vague, don’t-test-me threat, he was going to—

  “Eighteen. Eighteen.”

  Oz spun on his heel. “What?”

  The ref’s eyes narrowed in irritation as he reached into his pocket and raised a yellow card.

  Oz threw up his hands. “Are you kidding me? For what?”