Love. Set. Match.

by Taylor Lunsford

  “Anyone with money can throw it at a problem,” Michael snarled. “You could be doing so much more with your life. Your mother wanted so much more for you. When you were a baby, we talked about how you could become the first female president or run a major company. Instead, you prance around the world in little skirts, taking pictures like you’re some sort of Playboy bunny.”

  “Hey! That’s enough.” Rob shot to his feet. “You show up here out of the blue, and you treat your own daughter like shit in front of your mother, who raised her for you because you couldn’t man up and stop ‘prancing around the world’ taking pictures. She’s got a fucking stalker after her, but all you care about is being like every sexist asshole out there judging her.”

  He didn’t stop to think about what he was saying. He didn’t stop to think about what Em and her grandma might think. He just knew this guy was hurting Em when he was supposed to be her father, the man who should protect her from the world.

  “How dare you? You have no right to stick your nose in our business.” Michael sneered. “And what are you talking about? What stalker? Is this a story you’re drumming up to boost your ratings?”

  “Stop it. Damn it, Dad.” Em stomped her foot. “Get out of here. Now. You don’t belong here.”

  Michael didn’t move until Poppy stood and tugged at him, her eyes as stormy as Em’s. “Yes, Michael. I think it’s time we left. You can see me to my room and get on with your trip. I’m sure Owen or Emmy or Zoe can get me back to Florida safely. You’ve outstayed your welcome.”

  Rob and Em stood in silence as they watched her grandmother manhandle her father out of the room, bristling with rage. It wasn’t until the door shut that Em turned to Rob. The tension hadn’t left her body, but some of the fire died down. Unfortunately, he was still mad as hell.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. “I…you’re getting really good at defending me against assholes.”

  “Of course I am,” he snapped. “Damn it, Em. Don’t you get it? You matter to me. A hell of a lot more than fuck buddies, but you won’t admit what we are, even to your own family.”

  He knew he shouldn’t take his anger out on her, but she’d pissed him off when she tried to shove him in the closet, and he wasn’t over it yet. He loved her, or at least he thought he did, and she kept shoving him away.

  “I don’t know what we are, Rob. Do I like having sex with you? Hell, yes. What heterosexual female wouldn’t? But do I want to have to answer all the questions that come with anything beyond the sex? No. My life is complicated enough. Our past is complicated enough. Telling everyone would ramp that up ten notches. Being more than that almost broke me last time. So can’t we go back to where we were before we got interrupted?”

  She moved closer, giving him a glimpse down the plunging neckline of her dress. He hesitated, his brain flashing back to the memory of how smoking hot and fierce she’d looked in those sexy red lace panties and that mouthwatering bra. Instead, he took a step toward the door. “Maybe another night. The moment’s gone, and we both have busy days tomorrow.”

  She blinked at him in shock. “Seriously? You get me that turned on and just leave?”

  “Sorry, doll.” A trace of bitterness colored his words. “Like you said, things between us are complicated. And I’m not sure how I feel about being your dirty little secret.”

  His hand rested on the door for a moment before he turned on his heel, and long strides ate up the distance between them. Leaning over her, he took her mouth in a hard, hot, passionate, and all too brief kiss. She might have even whimpered when he pulled away. “Think about how that made you feel. Because I think you and whatever complications there might be are worth it because of that, Em. Am I worth it to you?”

  The satisfaction of the door slamming behind him faded thirty seconds later when he came face to face with Owen and Cruz, staring at him dumbfounded down at the end of the hall.

  “Dude. Tell me you weren’t just in my sister’s room,” Owen growled, coming up to him. Rob shifted uncomfortably; Owen Grace might be a gentle giant, but he was still a giant who worked out a hell of a lot more than Rob did lately.

  “If it makes you feel any better, you missed your dad and your grandma by only a few minutes,” Rob said, trying to get a rein on his temper.

  Cruz’s eyes widened, but he never lost his usual easy facade. “Ah. I think this might be best discussed over alcohol. Join us in the bar?”

  “Lots and lots of alcohol,” Owen muttered.

  Rob couldn’t agree more.

  ****

  “Emerson Grace, as I live and breathe. I thought that you were spending the evening with your fuck buddy.” Dera patted the seat of the tall stool beside her in the upscale hotel bar. The French woman sat with Maren Ashton, both dressed to kill in short, strapless dresses and high heels. Em had changed into a red silk dress to match her mood. Damn her father. And damn Rob. Why did he have to make everything so complicated?

  “Well, the mood kinda got ruined when my dad and my grandma interrupted us,” Em said, setting the tumbler of bourbon she’d grabbed from the bar on the table.

  Maren winced. “Ouch. I heard shouting from your room, but I didn’t know what was going on. Your dad showed up?”

  “Yep. Gran strong-armed him into bringing her out here to watch us play.” Em bolted back the bourbon and nodded to the waitress to bring her another. “God. Why are men such unmitigated asses?”

  She’d tried so hard over the years to keep the peace with her father out of some misguided need to have a relationship with him, to maintain that connection to her mother, but hearing him say those awful things broke that last tie. He didn’t care about her or what she did, only how it reflected on his idealized picture of what a daughter should be.

  And Rob. He’d stood up for her again and then completely turned her world on its head—again. Why couldn’t he accept that she wasn’t willing to let him in? They were working as friends with the occasional benefits. If they went deeper than that, things would get messy, and she didn’t have time for that. She was on a roll, and she couldn’t afford to lose her focus now.

  “Uh-oh. Did things go south with the fuck buddy as well as your father?” Dera asked. “Where is your bodyguard? Aren’t you supposed to have him trailing you everywhere? And do we need to do damage control? Maybe distract you? Because there are at least five guys checking you out right now.”

  Some of the tension in Em’s chest eased, and a rusty laugh escaped her lips. “Oh, D. I wish that would work. I gave the bodyguard the slip, and I’m down here to get pleasantly drunk and spend time with my friends, not flirt with guys.”

  At that moment, one of the guys Em assumed Dera was referring to showed up. His name was Ian, and he was an investment banker from LA.

  “So can I get your number?” he asked after making the usual mundane chit-chat, clearly ignoring the signs that the three friends were in a serious conversation.

  He was cute, in a Wall Street hotshot sort of way, but definitely not her type. She should want to date a guy like him; it’d be so much easier if she did. Falling for athletes or anyone associated with sports was a headache and a half, but Ian didn’t make her body tingle even a tenth as much as Rob had before they’d been so rudely interrupted.

  “You seem like a nice guy, but I’m from out of town,” she said, going for the easy let down. No need to bruise his ego this early in the night. Her spine tingled, as if someone was watching her. Glancing around, she spotted Rob sitting at a table in the opposite corner with her brother and Cruz. Fuck. She really couldn’t escape him.

  Ian’s grin turned wolfish. “I know. I’ve read a lot about you lately. But I travel all the time. Bet we could meet up and have a lot of fun.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Dera muttered, rolling her eyes.

  Em’s stomach churned. God, how many of these guys were there in the world? He was the fourth so far this tournament and the tenth since the pictures came out.

  “Mm. Tempting, but I’
m really not interested.” Em gave him her best brush off smile, but she doubted it was as effective as usual. The confrontations with her dad and Rob left her with very little bullshit tolerance at the moment.

  Ian shrugged. “Guess the rumors aren’t true.”

  As he walked away, a tall, leggy blonde sauntered up to the table in a skin-tight tube dress in violent pink. “Breaking hearts all over the place, aren’t you, Emerson?”

  “It’s not breaking hearts if you turn the guy down before the first kiss, Chessa.” Emerson eyed the Croatian Amazon suspiciously. Chessa Pavlich didn’t get along with most women on the tour, least of all Maren, Dera, and Em. Their philosophies for play and their careers were completely different. Chessa craved the attention and thrived on being outrageous. Unfortunately, she had the skills to back up the showboating.

  “What are you still doing here, Chessa?” Maren asked. “I would have thought you’d be on your way home after Em here whipped you in the quarters.”

  Chessa looked down her perfectly sculpted nose. “As the world number one, I’m expected to stay around for press obligations.”

  Now it was Em’s turn to roll her eyes. Trust Chessa to toss that in their faces. The four of them had spent the last four years duking it out for the top positions, but Chessa had settled comfortably at number one eighteen months ago, and they hadn’t managed to budge her since.

  “Well, I guess we’ll see you in Paris.” Emerson hoped Chessa took the hint. Her politeness filter had started degrading during the fight with her dad, and it’d only gone downhill from there.

  Thankfully, Chessa walked away, her attention homing in on some slick guy who waved to her from the bar. Em returned her attention to her friends, hoping they could move into safer conversational territory.

  “So I understand why you’re pissed at your father,” Maren said. “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But what’d your fuck buddy do to make you start slamming down bourbons like they’re chocolate milk?”

  Dera sipped her lemon drop martini that perfectly matched her dress. “More importantly, who is your fuck buddy? He must be very special for you to even let him into your bed after what that bastard-who-shall-not-be-named did to you.”

  Em chewed on her lip, her gaze returning to Rob for a moment before flitting away. She didn’t miss how his attention had drifted to her as well, gray steel boring holes in the back of her head. The alcohol burned through her system, leaving behind a pleasant haze, but it didn’t cut through the confusion clouding her mind as much as she’d hoped.

  She shouldn’t say anything to them. She should keep her mouth shut and let them think she was fucking some random guy. But it wasn’t some random guy. It was Rob, and he came with so much emotional baggage she didn’t know if she could keep it in.

  “It’s Rob,” she murmured into her glass as she tossed back the fresh double the waitress set in front of her. The smooth alcohol scorched its way down her throat.

  Her friends froze mid-drink, their eyes almost cartoonishly wide. Em motioned for another drink, waiting for them to respond.

  “Excusez moi. I’m going to need you to repeat that,” Dera demanded, setting her glass down slowly.

  “I don’t. Emmy said my brother is her fuck buddy, and now I need brain bleach.” Maren shuddered and drained the remnants of her cosmo.

  Dera’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows rose almost to meet her hairline. “Rob Ashton? Aren’t we daring?”

  “It just—happened. No big deal.” Em shrugged. “At least at first.”

  “You don’t have fuck buddies.” Dera studied Em, sipping the remnants of her cocktail. “That’s usually my modus operandi, not yours. You have boyfriends. They’re few and far between and short-lived, but they’re still boyfriends.”

  Dera spoke with the certainty only a best friend could, and Emerson looked away. She didn’t like where Dera was going with this. “And look how well that’s worked out for me in the past.”

  “It’s still a little weird,” Maren said. “I mean, no offense, but I never pictured you and my brother together. You were always so…hostile toward each other.”

  “Well, there’s a fine line between love and hate, you know,” Em said lightly, ignoring the pang of guilt for not telling her friends the whole story. “We were stuck on a plane together on our way back from Melbourne, and one thing led to another.”

  “Hmm…and I suppose it had nothing to do with him defending you after the pictures came out?” Dera raised one dark brow, challenging Em to deny it.

  “Look, he’s an attractive guy who finds me attractive for reasons other than those damn pictures, so I’m enjoying myself.” She hated to dismiss her friend’s questions, but she didn’t want her prying too deep, not after today. The last thing she wanted was to think about what Rob made her feel. “And like you said, he gives really fantastic orgasms. Or he did last time we got together. Which wasn’t recently because, well, my dad and grandmother interrupted us.”

  Maren winced. “Okay, enough. New topic. Like what he did to piss you off.”

  Em couldn’t even begin to unpack that question. “He…Rob wants us to be something more than fuck buddies, and because I’ve been burned one time too many and have way, way too much going on right now, I want to stay strictly in the FWB territory.”

  Just then, one of the impeccably dressed concierges came up to the table and held out a folded piece of paper. “Ms. Grace? Someone left this for you at the front desk earlier.”

  “Who?” she asked, wondering if her father had decided to continue to berate her in letter form now.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “It was waiting at the desk. Someone must have left it when I stepped away to help another guest about thirty minutes ago.”

  Ignoring the debate going on between her friends about whether FWB was a viable option for her, she unfolded the paper, her blood running cold when she saw that it definitely wasn’t from Michael.

  Bitch. Bet you think you’re the shit now that you finally won something. Did you whore yourself to the umpire for those calls? You never deserved him. You spread your legs around like all the other cunts out there who think they deserve all the glory. I saw you, smiling for the fans, with that slab of beef following you everywhere. Are you fucking him too? All those men are hitting on you thanks to me. I’m surprised you haven’t set up a rotating schedule by now. Go crawl under a rock where you belong.

  “Emmy? What’s wrong?” Dera asked.

  Em struggled to breathe, the paper shaking as she clutched it. God, why now? The last letter had come three weeks ago, and there hadn’t been a sign of problems here. Everything had started to go back to normal. “He’s here. That bastard is here, and he’s watching me.”

  “Shit, Em.” Maren glanced around. “We need to get you out of here.”

  Shaking her head, Em gulped some of Dera’s water. “No. Not here as in at the bar. Here as in Indian Wells. And at this hotel. But he’s probably gone now.”

  “Either way,” Dera said, glancing around. “You shouldn’t be here without your guard.”

  “I let him go for the night. This guy won’t try anything in a crowded place like this.” Em rubbed her chest, trying to get control of her breathing.

  Maren rubbed her hand up and down Em’s arm. “Breathe, sweetie. You need to calm down and breathe.”

  Ha. Easier said than done. She was scared—really, truly scared—and frustrated. She hated feeling so helpless, like someone else had control of her life and there was no way she could get it back. She stared down at the letter, trying to make sense of what was happening. She was vaguely aware of Dera getting up, but she didn’t look to see where her friend went.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should go back to my room,” Em said eventually, looking up into Maren’s worried blue-gray eyes.

  “Uh-uh. Your brother and your cher amie here need to hear this now, not after you’ve had time to hide and process.” Dera’s accent grew thicker when she was stressed.
It was subtle but hard to miss.

  Em looked up to find Owen, Cruz, and Rob standing behind Dera, all of them looking at her full of concern.

  “Wait, you two know?” Owen demanded.

  Maren let out an impatient huff. “Yes, we know these two are screwing each other’s brains out. Keep up, that’s old news. We’ve got bigger problems.”

  “Bigger problems than my sister having a secret relationship with someone I thought she hated?” Owen’s glare hit Em full force, but she couldn’t focus on that now.

  Rob reached out and took her hand. “Em? You okay? What happened?”

  “Yeah, Emmy, you look like you did that time Grandpa and I made you go deer hunting with us.” Her brother’s glare faded into worry. “And if you’re going to puke, please aim away from me this time.”

  That got a weak laugh out of her. “Jerk. I’m not going to puke. I swear. It’s just…I got a note. From the creeper. He dropped it at the concierge desk while it was unattended. And someone thinks it’s a bigger deal than it really is.”

  “It is a big deal, Emerson,” Maren insisted. “The jackass has been watching you the whole tournament. He was in the freaking hotel!”

  “What?” Rob’s bark made Em jump a little. She didn’t blame him for being upset with her about earlier, but he didn’t get to be in a snit about this.

  Owen pounded a fist on the table. “Goddamnit, Squeaker. I knew I should have said something when you showed up here without your guard.”

  “He hasn’t done anything, O. He’s trying to scare me, and it’s not going to work,” she said, silently cursing when her voice trembled.

  Shaking his head, Rob slid onto the stool beside her, his big body facing her, almost shielding her from the door. “He’s dangerous, Em. He’s taunting you for now, but what are you going to do if he goes beyond taunting and decides to really come after you?”

  She fought back a shudder at the thought of what might happen. She hated that Rob was right. On any other night, she might have been able to shrug it off and not let it bother her. She’d go up to her hotel room, chug some water, and go to sleep without a second thought. But tonight, after seeing her dad, after hearing the venom he spewed at her, her armor had more than a few chinks in it.