Chapter 5

Temptation, thy name is Acqua Di Giò. Millie slid closer to the door of the town car. The distance wasn’t nearly enough. Ty seemed to take up every single cubic inch of space. She knew it wasn’t a purposeful thing. The guy was more than six and a half feet tall and, according to the crazy basketball junkie website she’d bookmarked, boasted a wingspan measuring seven feet across. He also wore a size sixteen shoe—the kind of stat she couldn’t help but memorize.

“I think the interview went well.”

She shook off the haze of attraction and looked directly at him for the first time since the driver closed the door. Bad idea. Meticulously groomed to be camera ready, the man looked even better than he smelled. “Yes. Very well, until you cut it short at the end.”

“Not too short,” he argued. “Just enough to reduce the risk of me punching the guy on national TV.”

Needing to shift the balance of power and keep his mood light, she swung her legs toward him, knocking her knees into the side of his thigh. “What’s the deal with you and Greg Chambers?”

Ty looked out the window. The neon lights of Times Square danced across his face, highlighting the smooth curve of his high forehead and a jaw chiseled enough to make a statue jealous. “No deal. He’s a jerk-off, and I’m a failure.” He curled his index finger over his upper lip, but a tiny muscle jumped in his jaw. “No breaking news here. I just wish we could stop rehashing it.”

“So what’s the old news?” she asked. He blew out a breath, and her suspicions were confirmed. Ty and Chambers had a history. A past that might prove to be more dangerous than a few insults mumbled to a small-time reporter. Knotting her fingers together, she kept her gaze steady, refusing to be shut down by his non-answer. “Tell me the story.”

Without so much as a glance, he waved her off. “Nothing.” A beat passed. “Everything.”

He shrugged those wide shoulders, and Millie grabbed hold of the armrest to keep from launching herself across the car at him. A week of intermittent bouts of sexual tension was one thing. Six straight hours of sizzle was enough to frazzle a nun. And she’d never been a particularly religious woman. Though at the moment, hearing Ty’s confession seemed to be the best way to keep her mind off the fact that this too-small town car was heading for her hotel, and if the itinerary SaraAnn had printed for her wasn’t lying, she had a king-sized bed in her room. “Tell me what ‘everything’ is.”

At last, he looked at her. “It’s stupid. Kid stuff someone never outgrew.”

“After you tell me what’s behind this grudge match, we’ll mock him mercilessly. Now, go,” she prompted with a nod. He heaved another one of those whole-body sighs, and her hormones kicked into overdrive. Pressing her fingernails into the soft leather of the armrest, she forced a fake smile. “Unless you’re the one who never outgrew it.”

He rolled his eyes at her tactics but gave in with grace. “We played against each other a few times in school. I won. We both declared for the draft. I got picked; he didn’t. I had the chance he thought he should have had, and I couldn’t deliver. Plain and simple.”

“Doesn’t look plain and simple.”

“You’d think at some point he’d let it go.” He shook his head and made a show of studying the blur of lights whizzing past his window. “It’s been twenty years. Why can’t he find another yardstick?”

She had no answer and didn’t feel inclined to make one up. As far as she was concerned, it was better to let these testosterone-fueled flares burn themselves out. No sense in getting scorched when they got their drawers in a twist over the stupidest things. The male ego was a strange, indecipherable mystery, one she had given up trying to sort out years ago. So she changed the subject.

“When do you leave for Reno?”

He twisted his wrist and pulled back his cuff to check the time. She liked the way the chunky wristwatch looked on him. Usually, he wore a utilitarian sports watch, but this was one of those sleek stainless-steel deals that probably cost more than her first car. Hell, maybe even her current car. “Eleven forty. Plenty of time.”

Millie’s jaw dropped as realization sank in. She’d made a general note of the flight time when she scanned the itinerary, but she didn’t think to check which side of the meridian they’d be on when he left. “Tonight?”

He nodded. “Might as well get started on my residency.”

“Oh. Wow.” A nervous laugh escaped her. She ran a hand through her hair, then quickly shook the layers back into place. No sense in scaring the man off for good with the Cruella de Vil look. “Yeah, right. Good plan.”

She gulped down a lump of disappointment. In the back of her mind, she’d been playing out a variety of scenarios for the evening. Drinks. Dinner. An interview postmortem designed to slide right into playful flirtation. A chance to see if he liked her enough, wanted her enough to push past the playful part and try to make a play. She’d have to shut him down, of course. He was a married man, and while she claimed to have few scruples, vows were one of them. But it would be nice if he tried…

“I’m following your advice.”

She looked up, taken aback by the assertion. “Mine?”

“Divorce her as quickly as I can.” He stretched his arm across the back of the seat as he leaned toward her. “Get up, get out, and get on with life. That’s what you said.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Pretty easy to say.”

“Surprisingly easy to do,” he countered. “Once the hangover wore off, I mean.”

Tilting her head, she studied him in the not-so-subtle glow of Manhattan at twilight. “You’re not sad?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m not, but I will say I’m not as sad as I think I ought to be.”

Millie pondered his statement. When David left her, her whole world imploded. For years, she felt fragmented and cast adrift. Then they’d run into each other and…nothing.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m not as sad as I should be?”

She wet her own parched lips, then softly cleared her throat. “Uh, no. Your feelings are your own business.”

“You’re not curious?”

Millie pondered his question for a moment, then shook her head. “You know, I didn’t see my ex-husband for over a decade after we signed our divorce papers,” she said quietly. “We met when I was sixteen, divorced when I was twenty-six.” She cast a glance in his direction, trying to gauge his reception as she clarified her stance on the end of her marriage. “He divorced me.”

“The man had to be a fool.”

Millie chuckled. “I thought so too. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t heartbroken for a long, long time.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, so sincerely, her heart gave a dull thud of gratitude. “But you bounced back. I mean, look at you.”

“Took me a while to—as you say it—bounce back.” She smiled as she recalled her metamorphosis. “When I hit my midthirties, I started dating again. With a vengeance,” she added with some relish.

“I’m almost scared for the guys,” he said gruffly. “Or I would be, if I didn’t feel so damn jealous of them.”

“Bought my first vibrator for my fortieth birthday,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken.

“The gift that keeps on giving.”

“Then I ran into David again, and I wondered what the hell I’d been thinking, wasting all that time between him and…anyone else.” She turned to look him directly in the eye. “My point is that I know how you feel, being sad about not feeling more sad.”

“I’m sorry that you do,” he said, enveloping her hand in his much larger one.

The gentleness in his tone almost broke her resolve to keep her distance. Almost, but not quite.

She wasn’t the gullible girl with stars in her eyes, nor was she the desperate parody of the panicked divorcée any longer. Millie knew who she was and what she liked. Cocktails with umbrellas and skewers of fruit she refused to eat, outrageously expensive dark chocolates, and shoes topped the list. A nice, hard fuck came in somewhere in the top five, but depending on the pickings, a hot bath with a good book topped it in the pecking order. She eyed the man sitting beside her, trying to slot where he might rank. As if reading her mind, his eyebrows rose, and his mouth curved into a panty-dampening smile.

The driver hooked a sharp right onto a cross street, and Ty used the change in momentum to his advantage. A shiver zinged down her spine as his arm slipped from the seat to her shoulders. He curled one hand around her upper arm and pulled her closer as he slid across the soft leather seat. She looked up to find him lowering his head.

“Don’t.” She pulled back, making it clear she wasn’t being coy. Darting a glance at the front seat, she ignored the persistent ache low in her belly and forced a tremulous smile. “The driver.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“He might recognize you,” she insisted in a low whisper.

“You really overestimate my public appeal.”

Millie was about to say she could write a press release highlighting all the ways she found him appealing, but he pulled away. A pout threatened. Her upper arm tingled, demanding she take back whatever she’d said to deprive it of his warm caress. Her libido was working itself up to rage level when he leaned forward between the headrests.

“Hey. How’re things going…Manny?” he asked the driver.

For a split second, she wondered how he knew the guy’s name, but then she saw he had his credentials prominently displayed on the dash.

The man barely flicked a peek at the rearview mirror. “Going better up here than back there, buddy.”

Ty chuckled and hung his head in mock shame. “I’m trying, Manny. I’m trying.”

Clearly, the driver had seen such situations before. Heaving a sigh, he craned his neck and eyeballed the traffic ahead of them. As usual, cars sat bumper to bumper as they waited for the light to change. Anywhere else in the world, this would be called gridlock. In Manhattan, this was the usual flow.

“You’ve only got about six blocks. Try harder,” the man said gruffly.

Ty leaned forward. “Do you know who I am?”

“No.” The answer came swiftly enough to be the truth, but Manny gazed long and hard into the mirror, his eyes narrowing. “Should I? What are you, some kind of big deal?”

Ty shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Then why are you askin’?”

“My girl—” Ty shrugged as he cast a sidelong glance at Millie, then stared out the windshield. “She’s kind of shy.” The descriptor made Millie snort, but Ty seemed to gain confidence from her disbelief. “So I’m gonna kiss her and stuff for the next six blocks, and you’re gonna keep your eyes on the road. We get her to the hotel happy and in one piece, I’ll make it worth your while.”

“You’ve got a deal.” Eyes forward, the driver lifted his hand from the wheel and held it over his shoulder for Ty to shake. “Not too much of the ‘and stuff’ stuff, okay? I’m not one of those voyeur people or anything.”

“Gotcha.”

Negotiations concluded, Ty fell back, planting one hand on her door and the other on the back of the seat beside her head. “We struck a deal.”

“So I heard.” Her smile faded as she planted a hand on his chest, needing to establish at least a minimal barrier between them. “Ty, I don’t think—”

“Good. Don’t think.”

“I want to,” she whispered, her lips hovering over his. “But now—”

“Is the perfect time,” he finished for her. “Just one kiss, Mil. It’s going to be a long six weeks.”

And God help her, he was right. “Okay. One,” she said, knowing they had a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping at one kiss, but too far beyond temptation to care.

He captured her protest with a long, sweet kiss. Her teeth ached with the sweetness. Her toes curled in her shoes—no easy feat in a pair of extra-pointy Louboutins. She slid her hand under his jacket and clutched the front of his shirt. She didn’t have to worry about wrinkles now. She wanted to muss him. Muss him badly. Muss him so hard, he’d be a marked man. He must have picked up on the tenor of her thoughts, or perhaps she’d pulled a handful of chest hair, but either way, Ty angled his head and added a smidge more pressure to the kiss. Parting her lips, she encouraged him to take what they both wanted.

She slipped her tongue out to meet his, and he groaned deep in his throat. The car lurched and surged as Manny urged them toward their destination. Ty’s hand slid down her side, his thumb grazing the side of her breast in the time-honored tradition learned by teenage boys everywhere.

“Nice move,” she panted when they broke for air.

He stared deep into her eyes. “I have more.”

Wiping a smear of lipstick from his mouth with the pad of her thumb, she held his gaze and gave his ethics a nice, hard prod. “You’ve got an hour or two before you have to be at the airport. Come up to my room.” A slow smile overtook her as she fell back on her usual blunt-force seduction gambit. “I’m sure we can find a way to pass the time.”

He gave his head a gratifyingly slow shake. “You’re the devil.”

“I don’t have a blue dress on,” she pointed out.

“If you had a dress on, Manny’d be giving me hell right now, because I’d be in it too.”

“So sure of yourself,” she chided.

“You’re the one trying to tempt me to come up to your room.” He kissed her again, a lingering kiss packed with promise but lacking the sharp licks of heat she craved.

Before she could bend him to her will, he broke away, his breath coming fast and shallow as he pressed his forehead to hers. “I won’t. And I hope to God I don’t have to tell you it’s not you, it’s totally me. I don’t want to be that guy, Millie.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve resisted this…us in my head for so long. I’m not sure I can resist the reality of us, you know…”

“In the flesh?” she offered with a helpful smile.

He groaned and flung himself back into his seat, draping his forearm over his eyes. “You are the devil.”

Millie gave a quiet laugh. “I’m not sure the ‘in the flesh’ thing is a good idea anyhow. You’re used to women a few boy bands younger than me.”

“Don’t.” He jerked his head sharply. “Don’t say that kind of thing.”

“Truth.”

“You’re beautiful, Millie. Desirable. I desire you,” he added for emphasis.

“Thank you.” She gave him a smile that edged toward wicked. “I desire you too.”

“Your confidence is one of the sexiest things about you.”

She inclined her head, pleased to have evolved to a point where others recognized and appreciated her independence. “Thank you again.” A flush warmed her cheeks, then burst into flame the second she told herself she was too old to blush when a man paid her a compliment.

“One of the many things about you that I find irresistible,” he murmured. To her delight and mortification, he ran a knuckle over the curve of her cheek.

“And I find your moral fiber very attractive, even if I am cussing you in my head right now,” she said in a husky tone.

“The Merryton Hotel,” Manny announced. Without another word, he darted into the drop-off lane and jerked to a stop. He popped the trunk and threw open his door. A uniformed bellman reached for the back door, and Millie jerked upright.

Fear, unwelcome and irrational, gripped her as she eyed Ty. He was leaving. Getting on a plane and heading to the other side of the country for six long weeks. Desperate to hang on to the quasi-intimacy of the past week, she searched his face, eagerly cataloging each feature as she drank in the overall effect. “I don’t want you to go yet.”

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “The last thing I want to do is leave now, but I can’t stay here. This past week has been heaven and hell.”

She gave a mirthless laugh. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed her knuckles as Manny tapped on the lid of the trunk to spur things along. “I’ll call you. I’ll wanna get the scoop on the Wolcott water polo team’s plans for making a splash this season.”

This time, she blushed deeply, but more with pleasure than embarrassment. Swallowing a sigh, she accepted the doorman’s gloved hand and swung her legs from the car. “You have to admit, that was a good headline.”

“Damn straight it was.”

They shared a long look. “Safe travels, Ty.”

“See you soon, Millie.”

* * *

Unwinding the towel she’d wrapped around her hair, Millie tossed the heap of wet terry cloth onto the lip of the tub. She padded into the bedroom wearing nothing but boy-cut panties and a pair of rainbow-striped, fuzzy socks Kate said were supposed to be infused with shea butter.

The socks were nice but not exactly the kind of infusion a girl thinks about when she’s been burning through the double-A batteries a lot faster than she’d like. Reaching into her bag, she extracted a washed-thin Warrior tank top three sizes too big and slipped the soft cotton over her head.

Pulling her phone off the charger, she checked to see what she’d missed in the forty minutes since she plugged the darn thing in. A dozen or more media outlet apps boasted alert notifications, but she only clicked on the icon for National Sports Network headlines. A quick glance at NSN showed nothing to send her rushing to check the other sites. The scandal of the week had pretty much petered out. Greg Chambers hadn’t managed to bait Ty into a fight, so the gist of the interview had been boiled down to a few sound bites and a still of Ty smiling broadly and looking far too fit and handsome to be anyone’s cuckold.

She found a couple of emails in her inbox, the most important one a sale notification from ShoeIn. A text from Avery confirmed the date and time for Kate’s post-honeymoon debriefing at Calhoun’s Bar and Grill the following week. And one missed call from Tyrell Ransom.

Her thumb tapped the callback option before she even had a chance to check the clock. Three minutes after eleven. He’d be boarding soon. One little phone call should be safe enough.

“Hello.”

His voice was warm and deep and put her in the mood for Barry White music and lamps draped with gauzy scarves. “Plan on visiting any brothels while you’re in the great state of Nevada?”

He laughed. A full, rumbling laugh that did little to dispel the red-wallpapered room she’d conjured in her head. “You never know. If the casinos don’t have any good headliners…”

She could see the whole setup perfectly. Of course, her version was highly romanticized and most likely television inspired. Reality was no doubt a fairly businesslike concern, but this was her trip down the rabbit hole. If she wanted piles of pillows, sheets made of satin, and heavy velvet drapes on the four-poster bed she had him tied to in her head, who could tell her no?

“Boarding soon?”

“Let’s get back to the brothel thing,” he teased.

“Not the kind of headline I want to spin. Besides, it’s been done. Promise me you won’t do anything reckless.”

Ty sobered instantly. “My dad is flying out, remember? I’ll probably be playing thirty-six holes of golf each day and listening to the old man heckle me about my slice.”

Dropping onto the bed, she leaned back against the headboard and pulled her knees up under her shirt. “Shift your weight before you start your downswing.”

“You golf?”

“Some,” she replied, relishing his pleased surprise.

“What’s your handicap?”

“The shoes,” she said without hesitation. He laughed again, and she beamed, delighted to have found their easy rhythm once again. “Pick up any good trinkets in the gift shops?”

“I’ve been hanging out in the Captain’s Club.”

“Free drinks?”

“Coffee.”

She nodded. “Good boy.”

“I’m no boy.”

“Man,” she corrected, allowing a sly smile to color the words. “Big, strong, handsome man.”

“Much better.”

“So your dad will be keeping an eye on you. That makes me feel much better.”

“Were you really worried?”

Millie caught a hint of injury in his question and hurried to correct course. “Well, not really, but I wanted to make you feel all badass and loose cannon, because I know guys like to think they are.”

His chuckle told her she’d hit the right note. “Yes, well, I think I perfected my badass loose cannon act last week.”

They lapsed into silence but not the uncomfortable kind. This was easy. Companionable. The quiet was unusual for Millie but not unwelcome. She spent so many hours of the day pitching and talking and promoting, she sometimes found it hard to switch off the ticker in her head. But Ty made the quiet she’d dedicated her life to filling seem almost natural. Almost but not entirely. Nature abhorred a vacuum and all that.

Plucking at the hem of her tank, she asked the question that had niggled at her all day. “Are things really going to be this easy with Mari?”

There was a beat of hesitation so brief, she wasn’t sure anyone else would have noticed, but she did. Her job hinged on her ability to pick up on cues, verbal and nonverbal. Millie only wished she could see him. Pauses were so much more eloquent when one could see the body language accompanying them.

“She’s the one who wants this,” he reminded her.

“You don’t?”

“I didn’t say that,” he corrected with heartening speed. “I’ll admit I wouldn’t be zipping out to Reno for the quick fix if this hadn’t happened, but I think we both knew we weren’t going to last much longer.”

Genuinely curious, Millie felt compelled to pry. After all, the man had left his taste in her mouth, then kicked her to the curb. Almost literally. She figured she was entitled to a little nonprofessionally motivated probing if she wasn’t going to get the kind of probing that made spending a night in a hotel room so much more enjoyable. “Why do you think?”

His laugh rang hollow, even over the phone. “Oh, I don’t know…a lack of any common ground, maybe?”

“You had to have something in common at one time. You married her.”

Ty paused, then said, “I’d like to exercise my rights under the Fifth Amendment.”

“Ah.” She grinned, pleased by the surprising candor of his nonanswer. “Combustible, huh?” She waited a beat. “Did I put enough emphasis on the bust part? I hate when I fall…flat.”

This time, his chuckle was for real. “You crack me up.”

Sinking into the pillows, she stared at the muted television without really seeing the screen. “How’d you meet her? Your typical sideline romance? You made up a play, and she let you touch her pom-poms?”

“Actually, we met in class.”

The answer would have shocked her right out of her smarty-pants, if she had been wearing any pants. “Class?”

“Yes. When I wasn’t busy populating the world with illegitimate children or buying another set of ten-carat studs for my ears, I was in class.”

“And here I thought I had you pigeonholed. Go ahead, shatter more of my illusions.”

“When I went back to Eastern to work with Coach Washington, I decided to finish my undergrad degree.”

“Because you went into the NBA early.”

“Not that early compared to some, but I did need to complete my senior year.”

“I think it’s great you did. Let me guess, kinesiology major?”

“Funny,” he deadpanned.

The entire athletic department knew Millie loved making jabs at the jocks and their preferred fields of study, but she was no longer surprised when football players told her about their biochemistry classes. Acknowledging the scope of study the degree entailed didn’t stop her from making fun of those who chose the major, but it did change the tenor of her teasing.

“When I left school, it might have been something along those lines,” Ty admitted, jerking her from her ruminations. “But when I finished, I ended up with a degree in psychology.”

“Huh.”

“Then I went on to do some postgraduate work in psychology. Emphasis in sports psychology, of course,” he added with a self-deprecating chuckle.

“Brains, beauty, and brawn,” she murmured. “I guess you had to screw up somewhere.”

“I’m not particularly lucky in love.” The gruff admission sent a shiver racing through her. “But thanks for saying I’m pretty. I feel so much better now.”

“You met in class,” she prompted.

“I was doing a little time as a teaching assistant. Psych 101. She was making up a couple of missed general studies courses before graduation.” The words were cut off by a too-perky-for-the-hour voice making a flight announcement. “The professor and the coed. A tale as old as time,” he said brusquely. “I have to go. We’re boarding.”

Reluctant to give in to the demands of the airlines, she blurted out the one thought running through her brain like a hamster on a wheel. “This isn’t at all how I envisioned tonight.”

She heard his breath hitch. “I think we can save some conversations for another night.”

A hot blush scalded her cheeks and set the tips of her ears aflame. Between the tomato face, the decidedly unsexy nightwear, and her now air-dried and uncombed hair, she was damn glad he hadn’t thought to try a video chat. “No.”

“Yes,” he countered. The background noise became more pronounced, and she figured he’d left the VIP lounge. His breathing became choppy. “Good night, Millie. Think about me.”

She closed her eyes and tried not to groan. Those huffy, little puffs in her ear were doing something to her. Something she hadn’t packed the equipment to handle, even though she knew his sense of honor wouldn’t allow anything to happen between them. Yet. Damn wishful thinking. “A pretty good bet.”

“I’ll be thinking about you too. Probably too much.”

“Good night, Ty.”

“Sweet dreams.”

She ended the call and, out of habit, double-checked to make sure the screen showed they had disconnected. Tossing the phone aside, she reached for the remote and zapped the television as well. Flopping back on the bed, she stared at the ceiling, waiting for her body to give her the go/no-go. Of course, her engines were revving. Sliding her hand under the thin cotton of her shirt, she closed her eyes and pictured Ty sprawled in his seat, ready for takeoff. If she was going to have the kinds of sweet dreams she wanted to have, she’d have to make them happen on her own.