Pressing my forehead to his chest, I breathe in his mesmerizing scent, sea and sunshine. “I thought I had it. I did have it. But you tried to run inside, and if something had happened to you, I’d want to die.” I place my cheek over his heart, listening to the rapid beats. Highly trained athletes have a resting heart rate of below sixty beats per minute, but his is out of control. I sigh. He’s still upset, and I tighten my hold around his waist.
I don’t know how long he holds me—a minute, maybe five. Time feels distorted as his hands move up to my scalp, palming my head under my hair. His lips brush the top of my head.
“You can let me go.” Don’t. “I’m soaked,” I whisper, noticing for the first time that he’s changed clothes since the club. His black shirt and jeans have been replaced with slim-fitting gray joggers and a white damp T-shirt that clings to his chest, outlining his pecs. In the dark car, he feels bigger, more muscular.
“You’re shivering.”
He lets me go to crank up the heat, and I sigh, missing his comfort. He stares down at me, tilting my chin up as he inspects me.
“I’m really okay.”
His eyes land on my tank top.
“Not wearing a bra,” I say, stating the obvious. “It’s the first thing to come off when I get home. Then, the pearls.”
His eyes drift up from my erect nipples and cling to mine. Whoa. My brain is too scattered to count the seconds, but I think it goes past ten.
The angry kiss is on my mind, but I don’t dare bring it up. Logically, I connect the dots: his inner caveman reacting out of fear and anger or adrenaline, a heady cocktail of epinephrine erupting straight from the medulla to the bloodstream—that is, alpha Devon at his peak, ready to tear the world apart. Probably the same way he feels when a pass intended for him gets intercepted. Nothing sexual.
“I would have gone in there for you a hundred times.”
I swallow thickly. “You’d do that for anyone.”
He pulls away and settles back in his seat. “Right. Where do you want to go?”
“There’s a Hilton a few blocks from here.”
“No.”
I eye him. That was fast. “Why not?”
“You need someone tonight.”
“Mama’s, I guess.”
He studies me. “Is that really what you want?”
I groan. “No, she’ll ask me a million questions and be upset. I’ll call her tomorrow. Same for Aunt Clara.” I stare down at my bare legs. “I have a key to Jack and Elena’s house while they’re gone, but the hardwood is being redone this week, so the fumes will be awful . . .” I wince at that.
“Topher?”
“He just got a small rental in Daisy, but the new roommate situation is tricky. I’m assuming I’ll need a few days to get situated, and I don’t want to bother him.”
“Any other friends?”
I bite my lip, not wanting to explain my small social circle. Most of my friends are still in Memphis, where I did my undergrad and master’s, or have moved on to graduate work across the country.
“Stay with me until this gets sorted.”
Surprise makes me blink. “The fuck palace?” I say, reaching for levity because, hello, stay with him?
“I see Elena shared her nickname for it with you.”
I shrug. Devon purchased the penthouse from Jack, who had bought it only to bring his girlfriends there while he kept a separate apartment for himself and Devon. The penthouse was where Jack and Elena had their drunken one-night stand, when she didn’t know he was a famous football player. Elena hated the penthouse with a passion and had it sold to Devon a week after they were engaged.
He pulls out on the street, driving to the intersection. “Beggars can’t be choosers. I imagine you’ll need several days to find a new place. I’ll hardly be at the penthouse anyway, since I have training camp.”
“Sounds good.” Sounds terrifying—in an exhilarating way.
He darts a look at me. “You think staying with me is a good idea.” He says it as a statement, not a question.
I smooth down the frayed edges of my shorts. “With the giant V on my forehead, I’m in the safest hands in Nashville.” I snort. “Funny. You’re a wide receiver.”
He mutters something under his breath, and I study the hard lines of his profile, the blade of his nose, the glints of blue in his dark hair, the slope of his broad shoulders. I can’t mistake the tension rolling off him. Did he expect me to turn down his offer?
“You never said why you were at my place in the middle of the night,” I say, searching for a way to break this strange tautness between us.
He makes a left onto the street. “Wanted to tell you I was sorry for yelling.”
“At midnight?”
“Didn’t say it was a good idea. I drove past and was gonna check if your light was on. I was going to call you if it was, but then I saw the fire trucks.” He gives me side-eye.
“I didn’t know you knew where I lived.”
He shrugs, his expression casual. “Elena mentioned your building once. I heard you tell someone what floor you had.”
Ah, I see. Just a coincidence that he knew where I lived. Not a real interest.
My fists clench at the next topic I want to address. “Back to the club, I don’t think I can go another minute without explaining. First, I’m sorry I lashed out. Jack is the one who needs to be yelled at. Second, you must know I haven’t been saving myself for someone special. If that were true, then I would have slept with Preston as soon as he put the ring on my finger—which, in hindsight, is what he really wanted anyway.” A long pause comes as I let out a breath. “I just couldn’t do it.”
He frowns. “What did you mean by your comment about being frigid? Did that jerk tell you that?”
Unwelcome memories wrap around me, and as much as I try to shove them off, they linger. “He did.”
“Asshole.” His eyes flick over to me. “He didn’t deserve a nice girl like you. Don’t let him get in your head.”
I stare out my window.
“Hey,” he says. “Talk to me.”
“You like long stories?”
“Hit me.”
I chew on my bottom lip, and before I think too hard, the horrible truth spills out. “When I was fifteen, almost sixteen, this lacrosse player in high school caught my eye. Handsome with dreamy eyes, he reminded me of Lord Byron, you know, with dark hair and a pout on his lips, like a girl’s. I was a year younger but had skipped a grade, so we were in the same class.” I sigh. “Needless to say, I adored him, and anytime he looked at me—and boy, he had a way of just looking—I did his bidding. Wrote his term paper, let him copy my chemistry notes, saved his seat at lunch—but he never asked me out. He really laid it on thick the summer before our senior year, asking me to come to his practices and watch. After one of those, he led me under the bleachers, and I went, knowing that’s where all the cool kids go to get high or laid. Did you know they voted me the most boring girl of my class? It’s one of those secret lists they make, not the real ones that make the yearbook.” My voice cracks, just a little, and I jerk it back. “Anyway, he kissed me, my first real one, and had me down to my underwear in no time. Then I heard his friends laughing. They were hidden, videoing me on his phone. It was my birthday.” Heat rises in my cheeks, and I’m glad Devon’s looking at the road, his face hard.
“By the time I got home, my daddy was in a coma. Looking back, now that I have distance, I know all guys aren’t like him, but it’s made me hesitant about sex.”
“What’s this dickhead’s name? Where does he live?”
My fists curl. “I took care of him.”
He flashes his eyes over to me. “Good.”
We’ve reached the Breton Hotel, where his penthouse sits at the top. Close to the stadium, the building’s exterior is a dark-gray stucco color. The night valet, a young guy dressed in a black uniform, dashes for the Hummer like it’s the best day of his life, his wide face spreading in a grin.
/> I take Pookie from the back, and Devon waits for me, his eyes low and heavy, as if he doesn’t want me to read his thoughts. He takes my hand in his, his thumb brushing over mine—killing me with the sparks—as we head inside. The interior is all marble and glass with a chic sitting area encircling a four-tiered stone fountain made of black monolith-style granite. Lush plants and bright flowers in textured gray urns decorate the corners around a twenty-foot fireplace. An older woman at the front desk waves at him, her eyes appreciative as she rakes her gaze over his broad shoulders. I swear she puts her hand over her heart as we pass by. Yeah. Everyone adores him.
My heart flutters, not from the fire but from his proximity. He stalks across the lobby like he owns the whole place, and I keep up with him. He leads me around a hidden alcove and shows me the penthouse elevator and the code to use it. It slides opens, and he tugs me inside.
The air feels thick as we rise to the top.
He lets go of my hand.
“So did you confess to doing the lacrosse player’s homework and get him in trouble?” he asks.
“Worse.”
His arm brushes mine as he takes Pookie from me and arches a brow, the one with the piercing. I have the insane urge to lick it. “Spill your devious ways, Giselle. What did you do to him?”
“My stories can get long, Dev.”
“I want to hear them.”
Butterflies dance in my chest, and I push them down. This is Devon. Friend.
“That night, I sat at the hospital and forgot about Carlton for the moment—that was the lacrosse player’s name.”
“Last name?”
I smirk. “Anyway, Daddy passed that night. When I checked to see if Carlton had posted the video, he hadn’t. Maybe he heard about my dad—it is a small town, and Daddy was the mayor, and news travels fast, so perhaps he felt bad. I don’t know—maybe he never intended to make the video public but planned to use it to hold over me in some way. School was set to start the next day, so I was terrified he planned to do something with it on the first day back. What he didn’t know was that I may be the quiet sort, but I will make a plan.”
“Revenge?”
I nod.
He grins. “You’re fierce.”
My lashes lower. Oh, if you only knew the thoughts I’ve had about you. “I worked at the school office, organizing and cleaning. I had access to info you’d never believe. Records, test papers left on the copier, teacher’s computer passwords—I never used those, by the way.”
“Of course. But you wrote his paper.”
“A mistake. Anyway, I came to school the next day—Mama had no idea. I was exhausted and heartbroken, and my head wasn’t right, but I was angry—God, so angry. At everything.” My breath hitches. “I wasn’t myself.”
He puts an arm around me and tugs me to his side. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
I nod. “I didn’t get my name on the attendance roll, because I wasn’t planning on staying, just slipped into the office, hugged the secretary—she was the sweetest old lady and had heard about Dad—then grabbed Carlton’s locker combination. Keep in mind all students had to leave their phones in their lockers. Then, while everyone was in class, I opened his locker and swiped his phone. I left the textbooks. A man needs an education. With the state I was in, I wanted to blow up everything he had.”
“Ballbuster.”
“Are you bored yet?”
“You never bore me.”
“People put crazy things on their phones. I went home—because remember, I was never at school—and found two videos of him drinking and snorting coke at various keggers over the past years.”
He gives me a surprised look. “How did you get the passcode?”
I tap my head. “I’d watched him unlock it several times, and I mostly never forget what I see. I sent the videos to his parents from his own phone. Pretty easy since I had all their contact info. If you think about it, I was helping him. He was on the road to drug addiction. His parents got him in rehab the next week, and he missed half of our senior year.” I pause, feeling the weight of his stare, green and intense. “Too hard core?”
“Hell no. I’m kind of . . . turned on.”
A blush steals up my face. I see it in the reflection of the elevator. “Interesting.”
A long second stretches out—until the ping of our arrival makes me jump.
He pulls me along as the elevator opens, and we walk down the hall. “No one ever saw your video?”
“Just his buddies, I assume, but then they saw it firsthand anyway. There was some talk amongst their crowd, sly jokes directed at me, and it hurt—it really did—but I just put my head down and kept going. Losing my dad had me in a haze anyway.” I think about those blurry days of dealing with my father’s death. “If Mama had seen that video . . . she couldn’t take any more. She would have been arrested for killing him.”
“Huh. Did you get your revenge on Preston?”
I shake my head.
“Why?”
I shrug, feeling the weight of his question, wondering the same thing myself. “I don’t know.”
We reach his door, and he opens it for us, a grin twitching his lips. “Welcome to the fuck palace, baby.”
Laughing, we walk in. He sets down a squirming Pookie, who promptly finds a pair of sneakers by the door, squats, and pees.
Devon blinks. “Shit.”
“Just pee. She only does that when she’s nervous—which is ninety percent of the time.”
“Great.”
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re now living with two females.” I hit him with a blinding smile. “Let’s hope our cycles don’t sync up. We’ll clean out your ice cream and cry over nothing.”
He blanches.
“Kidding. Small dogs typically go into heat only three to four times a year—a larger dog, every six months. She’s spayed, so you’re safe.” I pat his arm and pick up the shoe, and he stops me.
“Leave it. Come on; let’s get you settled.”
I follow him past the foyer and into the massive den, taking in the open floor plan, noting the expensive gray leather couches, two huge black loungers sitting on chrome legs, the giant big screen, the trophies stuffed in the white built-in bookcase along the back wall. The floors are a wide-planked bamboo. Framed art of Devon dots the walls, one a blown-up image of him at a game in his blue-and-yellow jersey as he snatches the football from the air, his face a study in concentration. I take in a candid of him with his helmet gone, sweat misting his face as he smiles and accepts an MVP award. I watched that game. It was last year’s AFC Championship.
To the right is a huge window overlooking the gleaming lights of downtown. Farther out, I see the east bank of the Cumberland River and Nissan Stadium.
He hasn’t finished unpacking yet, judging by a few boxes lining the wall. My eyes snag on my heels, sitting like they don’t belong on a rectangular, heavy concrete coffee table. His style is modern and bare. How’s he going to feel when I start leaving my laptop and glasses everywhere? It’s just for a few days . . .
He gives me a quick tour, and I estimate it’s about four thousand square feet or more on one level. I follow him to the ultramodern kitchen with a spacious granite island in the middle. The cooking area is decorated with shiny black subway tiles all the way to the ceiling, the appliances a stark white. The formal dining room sports a Scandinavian pale-oak table with lush velvet high-back chairs. A brushed-nickel chandelier hangs from the textured ceiling. He leads me down the wide hall with thick molding around the baseboards and along the ceiling, all in white. He tells me I can have the best guest room, then shows me the en suite bathroom it opens to and the closet that’s as big as the bathroom in my apartment. The bed itself is a king, the headboard padded in tufted cream linen, the frame draped in a white duvet with pops of furry blue and gray pillows. There’s a whitewashed eight-foot armoire, an elegant mirror that leans against the wall, and two matching end tables. Everything looks like it came straight ou
t of a magazine.
“You’re gaping,” he murmurs.
I close my mouth. “You’ll have to kick me out of here when it’s time to go.”
He shrugs. “I hired someone to decorate. Never had a home that was all mine.”
Once out of my room, he opens the door to another bedroom across the hall, but it has zero furniture; it’s just sparkling clean. Two more rooms are the same. All have private bathrooms.
He points out his room at the end of the hall but doesn’t offer to let me peek in, and I’m disappointed but tuck it away. I follow him into a laundry room with its own kitchen, and he grabs a handful of clothes and stuffs them in my hands. He tells me there’s some of his cousin’s underclothes in the chest in the bedroom and maybe other things—he really isn’t sure what’s there—and I nod, barely noticing. This place is like a resort! He frowns, worried I don’t have enough clothes; dashes to his room; and comes back with more and takes them to the guest room as I pad along. A huge weight feels lifted, and I’m not sure if it’s the fact that he’s given me a place to sleep and is taking such gentle care of me or that I told him what happened all those years ago, and we laughed about it.
We head back to the kitchen, and he tells me to sit at the black-and-white island in the center while he grabs me a water bottle from the built-in stainless steel fridge, then checks out my ankle. He props it up on a stool rung and bends down to run light hands over my skin. Warm tingles dance over me, and I bite my lip. I’ve known him for months, but he’s never touched me this much. Finally, he sets my foot gently down and moves away.
“Keep the ice pack on it tonight while you sleep.” He sets one down on the counter.
I huff out a laugh. “We’re like characters in a book—me the damsel in distress, you the dashing hero. Twice in one day.”
“Hmm.”
I suck down a drink of water while he leans against the fridge, his lashes lowering every so often as he does that thing where he looks at me—but doesn’t.
The city outside is quiet, the kitchen is silent, and time feels frozen: just us—in this beautiful penthouse.
Is it odd that neither of us seems to notice we’re wet from the rain?
Not My Match Page 7
