Play to Win

by A. C. Arthur

Portia heard the hint of sadness in Camy’s voice as she said those last words. Roxanne Greer had been sick for as long as Portia could remember. By the way Camy was staring with a mixture of grief and fond memories at the CD, Portia assumed Roxanne had passed away during the years she’d been gone.

  “Well you and I were a lot alike because I migrated toward older music too. There are so many CDs here,” Portia said. “I’d forgotten all about them. But I remember all the nights listening to slow songs before falling asleep.”

  She also recalled the songs that played through the speakers at the bar last night when she’d been with Ethan.

  “You should bring them with you to the cookout. It’ll be fun to reminisce a bit. And we could have our own karaoke night. I keep trying to tell the guys they should have one down at the bar, but Lance is stuck on the playlists they use on loop or live entertainment,” Camy said, excitement once again in her tone.

  “I don’t know about all that.” She decided she liked Camy excited and enthusiastic, instead of sad. “But I’ll come to the cookout to hear the new song you’re going to sing.”

  “Great! You remember where our house is right? The rambling old colonial down by the bridge. Just show up around five or sooner if you’re inclined to help me with some of the food.” She stood, but then knelt again and grabbed the Mariah Carey CD. “Can I keep this? I want to listen to it in the car while I finish running my errands.”

  “Sure. And I’ll come early to help. I just have to clean up this mess here first,” she told her and watched as Camy danced her way across the grass to her car.

  Feeling a little lighter than she had just moments before, Portia began picking up the stacks of CDs and placing them neatly into the box she’d taken them out of earlier. This time as she moved, she hummed one of Mariah Carey’s tunes and felt the bits of happiness she’d been deprived of when she was a young girl collecting all this music.

  Wayne and Judy did not like loud music being played in the house. That meant if they could walk past her closed bedroom door and hear the music, it was too loud. Wayne insisted on Portia remaining focused on getting perfect grades so that she would receive scholarships and acceptance letters to all the Ivy League colleges. Even though he’d already decided she was going to Yale. It was her mother’s job to make sure this happened, so Judy was stern about Portia’s extracurricular activities and her social life—meaning she basically had none. Sure, she could go to the library after school or to do anything that centered around academics but that was about it. There’d been a schedule on the back of Portia’s bedroom door and Portia dare not alter it because that would place her directly on the receiving end of Judy’s wrath.

  The only place Portia was allowed to go with permission was here, to Sunnydale. All the kids in school referred to Sunny’s yellow Victorian by that name. It could’ve also come about because of the friendly neighbor Sunny was. While she was strict about not letting the busybodies of this town—as she called them—through her front door to feed their gossip mill, it wasn’t strange to see her sitting on her front porch with fresh baked cookies and lemonade for the children as they walked by on their way home from school. Portia always thought Sunny would’ve been a terrific mother. Except Sunny had been clear that men were only good for one thing and once they’d shown her all their tricks in bed, she politely moved on to the next one. And yet she’d talked to Portia last night of finding love.

  With a shake of her head to clear that thought from her mind, Portia stood and paused before lifting the box to take back inside. She looked at the lovely yellow house with the gray shutters and realized with a start that every happy moment she’d ever had during her childhood had happened in there. Not in the house she’d shared with her parents, or the schools she’d spent the bulk of her time in, or even the church where older women whispered behind her back just as much as the young girls. Every fond part of Providence for Portia was at Sunnydale. And in a couple of days she would sign the paperwork to sell it to someone else.

  Portia didn’t know how she felt about that and she didn’t have much time to consider it either. She had a couple more boxes to go through before she wanted to shower and change and head over to Camy’s house. It was her first social invitation in Providence. It didn’t matter that it’d come years too late, she was still excited about receiving it, partly because she knew Ethan would be there.

  Ethan’s fingers paused over the screen of his phone.

  She hadn’t responded to his text messages.

  Three of them and no answer.

  He was trying not to feel rejected. There were plenty of other numbers stored in his phone that he could dial if he wanted a repeat of last night. Except, he knew it wouldn’t actually be a repeat because it wouldn’t be with Portia. He had a feeling there was never going to be another Portia in his life. He didn’t even know why he was thinking of her in that way. She was only here for another couple of days and then she’d be gone. That worked perfectly because another monogamous relationship was out of the question for him. Once was enough, especially when it ended with him dangerously close to using his training to actually kill someone.

  It had been months since he’d thought about the six years he’d spent in D.C. working for the Secret Service. He’d accomplished a goal nobody in this town thought he would, obtaining a college degree and a good government job. He was in the place he’d imagined himself being after the rough childhood he’d endured. And in one afternoon, it had all come crashing down.

  With a frown, Ethan tucked the phone into his pocket and got out of his truck. He opened the back-passenger door and pulled out three cases of beer he’d taken from the bar and headed toward the backyard of Camy’s house. It used to be Del and Lance’s home too, until the vandalism incident at the school where neither of the twins would tell who had trashed the boys’ locker room and the gym teachers’ offices. That had been the last straw for their mother and off to the House they went. Ethan had been there for almost a year at that time and had bonded with the twins in a way he’d never done with any of the other residents.

  The three of them used to walk by this two-story white house with its black shutters and sprawling front and back lawns on many occasions. In fact, Del and Lance always spent Sunday afternoons here with their mother and Camy. Now, Ethan walked toward the back of the house where the large yard had been freshly landscaped. The grass was cut, the bushes trimmed and fresh mulch was around each of the mature trees. Camy took pride in keeping the house up, inside and out, especially since she was the only one who lived there now.

  Del was already standing at one of the two grills set up closest to the house. White tents stood over two picnic tables with benches on each side. There were more chairs positioned around the tents and two big red coolers sitting beside a tree. Ethan moved in that direction to set the cases of beer down beside the coolers. He’d just ripped the paper wrapping off one and was about to start loading the cans into one of the coolers when Lance appeared.

  “Guess who’s coming today?” he asked, but Ethan assumed he was talking to Del and didn’t bother to turn around and answer.

  “Okay, you don’t want to guess. Well, I’ll tell you because I don’t think you’ll want to be as surprised as you were when you saw her last night.”

  Now, he did turn toward where Lance was standing.

  The smile that spread across Lance’s face was big and annoying. “Yeah, I thought that’d get your attention.”

  “You think you could help unload my truck or you wanna keep yapping?” Ethan asked and went back to taking the beers out of the package and dropping them into the ice inside the cooler.

  “Sure. You’re probably going to need a cold one when you see Portia. She looks even hotter than she did last night, if that’s possible.”

  Ethan kept working.

  “She’s in the house right now, helping Camy in the kitchen. Isn’t she, Del? And man, those shorts she’s wearing are really short. I mean, they’re shorter tha
n the dress she wore last night and that was short. You know what I’m sayin—”

  His words were cut short when Del came over and bowed him in the ribs playfully. “Stop teasing him. It’s cool if he’s got a thing for little Portia.”

  “She’s not little,” Ethan snapped before he could stop himself.

  Del gazed at Ethan with a slow grin. “I can agree with that,” Del said. “She’s definitely all grown up now. Easy to see why she’s in the sex industry.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Ethan asked.

  He’d been keeping the eye contact to a minimum while opening another pack of beer.

  “Nothing, man. Don’t bite my head off,” Del said. “We’re just messing with you. She seems like a really nice woman, who happens to be extremely attractive and pretty rich too. Her company’s called Pleasure, Inc. and it’s made a killing over the past few years. Her book’s even on track to become a bestseller.”

  Irritated that Del had investigated Portia, Ethan looked up to his friend with a frown. Sure, he’d run her name and dug up a few things about her too. And his friend, Byran at the Secret Service had found her private cell phone number. But Ethan hadn’t thought he was being intrusive. Del, on the other hand, had no reason to want to know more about Portia.

  “She’s a successful businesswoman,” Ethan replied. “No need for you to dig up anything else about her.”

  Del shrugged. “She’s been gone a while and now she’s back. I wanted to know why.”

  So had Ethan. The three of them each had law enforcement experience so being precautious and suspicious came natural to them.

  “Yeah, she’s back alright, and looking sweeeeet,” Lance said. “Still, I never really figured you’d go for her, E. I mean, you never did when we were in school.”

  “She was two years younger than us,” Del said. “Considering where we were forced to live, we were all trying to stay in our lane then.”

  “Yeah, she’s still two years younger than us,” Lance stated.

  “But she’s an adult now,” Ethan told them.

  He stood, lifting the empty boxes in his hand. He could take them into the house. Camy kept a recycling bin right outside the pantry. There was also one on the side of the house near the trash cans. But he was not going inside just to see Portia.

  “An adult that you’re definitely looking at with interest,” Lance continued. “Camy told me how your eyes almost bugged out of your head when she brought Portia upstairs last night. And we noticed the two of you stayed behind to “clean up” a little more after we all left.” Lance used his fingers to make air quotes, annoying the hell out of Ethan.

  “Cut it out,” Ethan told him. “There’s nothing there.” At least that’s what he’d been desperately trying to convince himself.

  “I can’t tell,” Lance insisted, and Ethan wanted to punch him.

  Del just shook his head. “Don’t let him get to you, E. You know how big of an ass he can be.”

  “Yeah.” They all knew that about Lance, unfortunately, this time, the guy had managed to latch onto something that Ethan just didn’t want to address. He was about to turn and head toward the house, but Lance stopped him with his next comment.

  “It’s cool if you’ve got a thing for Portia.” Lance stared at Ethan seriously. “I told you that when we were in school, but you ignored me. You know I don’t hold with the rules other people make. If you liked her and she liked you, there should’ve never been a problem. And if you want to go for it with her now, that makes perfect sense.”

  There wasn’t a problem, Ethan thought. He hadn’t pursued Portia back then because he hadn’t known what he felt for her. It had always been different with her. He knew what he wanted from the other girls, and he knew how to get it. With Portia, not so much. She wasn’t like other girls and not just by outside appearances. There was something inside her, a kindness and purity that he hadn’t sensed in anybody else. What was a guy like him going to do with someone like that?

  “Look, let’s be clear,” Ethan said. “I don’t have a thing for Portia. I don’t plan on having a thing for anyone, anytime soon. Now, can you move your talkative ass out to the truck and get some of those boxes?”

  He didn’t wait for Lance’s response, but turned around, ready to walk out of the yard and back to his truck. Instead, he walked straight into Portia, who had apparently been standing right behind him.

  Her hair was pulled up so that her curls hung in a cheerful tail down to her shoulders. Portia’s denim shorts weren’t short. The light washed out denim came to her knees but had rips strategically placed so that the shorts looked both distressed and sexy as hell. A simple gray tank top hugged her perfect palm-sized breasts and she was smiling at him. It was a stilted smile, but still one that made him feel like a colossal ass for what he’d just said regarding her.

  She looked great but that didn’t explain the clenching in his chest when he saw her. “Hey,” was all Ethan could manage to say because hell if he knew what was going on between them.

  Portia lifted a hand and waved her fingers. “Hey.”

  “Ah, we’ve got boxes to get from the truck,” Del said and reached over to yank his twin by the arm. “Let’s go get ‘em.”

  Lance nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

  The two of them leaving did nothing to make Ethan feel better, although it probably should have. Hadn’t he been thinking of being alone with Portia again all day? Isn’t that the real reason he’d been so irritated with her not answering his text messages?

  “I sent you a text,” he said because he couldn’t think of anything else that wouldn’t make him sound more like an idiot.

  The slight furrow of her forehead wasn’t exactly the reaction he’d expected.

  “You did?” she asked and then reached into her back pocket to pull out her phone.

  “Yeah, just once,” he started and resisted the urge to smack himself on the forehead for sounding like a bumbling teenager. “Or maybe twice. I just wanted to see how you were doing today.”

  “Three times,” she said still staring down at her phone screen.

  “Huh?”

  She looked up at him. “You sent three text messages.”

  Now would be a good time for a hole to open in the earth and swallow him as a reprieve from the embarrassment he was feeling right now.

  Portia shook her head as she looked down again and her fingers moved over the phone. “I put my phone on silent this morning after speaking to my agent. The publishing house isn’t happy that I’m not back in New York yet, but I reassured them that I’d be there next Tuesday for the scheduled signings. My agent said the book was doing great, but they want me on the road to keep the momentum going. I didn’t feel like explaining myself over and over again, so I just silenced the phone for a while. Sorry about that.” She looked at him again with another smile.

  This one was more genuine. It lifted her cheekbones and showcased the golden flecks in her eyes. Ethan swallowed hard before speaking because a little bit of that worry he’d seen in her previously was gone.

  “No problem,” he said and shifted from one foot to the other. “And ah, about what I said…I mean, what you may have heard. I was just, ah…it wasn’t—”

  She shook her head again. “No worries, Ethan. I don’t have a thing for you either. And last night, well, that was great. I’m totally fine with great sex, especially since I’d never had it until you.”

  Fuck!

  Now he felt even lower than the dirt beneath his feet. Sure, she’d just given him a huge compliment, but the hitch in her voice as she’d said those last words told more than anything he’d actually heard her say. Did she still have a thing for him? And if so, how did that effect the thing he’d had for her but had been too stupid to explore?

  “You’re reading my book, so I’m flattered,” she continued. “And to be quite honest, I am actually enjoying the way you—I mean, we—have been able to implement the things I wrote into reality. It�
�s what my work is all about.”

  So this was an experiment for her. Okay, that was cool. Ethan could get behind that. Experiments weren’t permanent. There were no expectations beyond the question the project sought to answer. He nodded and lifted a hand to drag down the back of his head.

  “Glad I can be of assistance,” he said, for lack of a better response. And then, “I need a beer. How about you?”

  She chuckled and for an instant, Ethan felt at ease. The sound seemed so natural and lit up her face. He should just relax. She obviously wasn’t angry about his words, so why should he still feel uncomfortable about her having heard them? He had no idea and didn’t want to waste any more time contemplating an issue, that apparently wasn’t really an issue.

  “Sure. How about I get us both a beer?” She’d moved around him and was reaching into the cooler he’d just filled while Ethan still stood there not knowing what to say.

  He’d never been rendered speechless by a woman before. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. His mother’s actions had been something Ethan hadn’t talked about for years after it had happened. And then there was Savannah. No, it seemed Ethan was well-versed in what women could do to him. Well-versed and wary, which made him even happier when he accepted the beer from Portia. He knew very well what to expect from women and wasn’t about to take a walk down the path of disappointment again. So, it was good that Portia was on board with the temporary nature of whatever they were doing together.

  Ethan pulled the top off the beer and took a deep drag.

  It was damn good.

  10

  Yesterday had been perfect.

  Portia smiled as her fingers stilled over the keys of her laptop. It was nearing noon on a dreary Sunday and she was sitting cross-legged on her childhood bed working on an outline for a book that would explore the emotional aspect of sexual attraction. The idea had come to her yesterday while she’d stood listening to Ethan talk to his friends.

  He’d said he didn’t have a thing for her, that he didn’t plan to have a thing for anyone for a while. And with those words, Portia had felt like she was sixteen all over again. But this time, she’d actually heard the words. It was odd and she’d spent a good portion of the night thinking of just how weird her train of thought was, but when she’d climbed out of bed at almost nine this morning and headed for the shower, she’d had a moment of clarity. When she was in high school, she’d wanted Ethan Henley more than she’d wanted air. If Ethan had been a jerk like a good majority of the kids in Providence High, she wouldn’t have wanted him at all. If he’d come to her and asked her on a date, and if she’d gone on that date and he’d touched her in any way, kissed her or acted as if he wanted to do something intimate with her, what would she have done? Would she have frozen? Run scared? Cry? Or embarrassed herself in some other way?