by Reina Torres
But all of this talk about wives and babies unsettled him in ways he didn’t want to name. Stella Vincenzo was a distraction. Stella Vincenzo was a bother. And there was no way he was going to let Stella Vincenzo have the power to ruin his life.
“Come on,” he pushed the ball at Teo, watching as the other man caught it easily on his fingertips, “let’s get back to the game.”
Teo shrugged and passed the ball to Stella. “Go ahead, bring it in.”
And damn if she didn’t grin ear to ear. “Sure.” Holding the ball easily in her hands, Stella stepped out of bounds. And waited for the others to set themselves up for the next period of the half-court game.
Everyone paired up all around the court and Kyle suddenly realized that he was the only one left. He gave Dax a pointed look, but his friend just shrugged and waved him on.
“I’m not doing this.” The words came out before he could stop himself, but once they were out, he expected someone to say… something. But instead, the whole court remained quiet.
Kyle felt some of his earlier anger twist in his gut, but as it began to build he realized it wasn’t just irritation at his current predicament. No, some of the unsettling feeling inside of his chest was worry and something else he couldn’t quite name. Not when he was standing there looking like a complete idiot.
“This isn’t funny.” He muttered a few curses as he stood there in the middle of the key. “Come on, someone trade places with me. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Hurt me?” Stella scoffed at him from outside the court and gave him a grin that was almost bright enough to put the lights around the court to shame. “I seriously doubt that’s going to happen, not if you keep playing the way you have been.”
“What?” Kyle stepped toward her and she laughed, leaning to the side and pushing the ball away from her chest in a quick pass that bounced off the ground less than a foot from his sneaker, and flew behind him.
Stella ran around him, her hands out and ready to receive the ball back from her teammate.
Kyle made a half-hearted attempt to block her path to the net, and regretted it when she bumped him with her hip and ducked under his elbow to make a perfect swish through the net.
“Come on, O’Malley!” Dax called out to him across the court, elbowing Teo whose laughter was as loud as it was irritating to the other team.
“Leave the man alone,” this time it was Trey offering his own comment into the mix, “he’s just trying to be a gentleman.”
“Either that, or he just knows,” Gabe chuckled and sucked in a breath as Trey threw the ball at him, “that she’s going to take him down.” He pushed the ball down to the right and it whipped past Kyle’s knee making him step back with a curse.
“Language,” Stella had the ball well in hand and gifted him a sweet smile that sent a stab of longing through him.
Startled, he drew up short and she darted around him again, making quick work of dribbling the ball down to and into the net. With a ‘whoop’ she jumped in the air and got a high five from Teo who darted out of bounds to grab the ball. As she passed by Kyle she looked up at him, her eyes shining with joy and perhaps a little exertion.
And damn if Kyle’s eyes didn’t drift down over the rounded swell of her breasts that rose and fell with every breath.
He caught the odd look on her face, a curious wrinkle between her brows, and a half smile that made her lips all the more kissable. He realized that the world around him had slowed down to a crawl.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that someone was calling his name. He managed to lift his head and felt something collide with his shoulder. “What the-”
“Wake up, O’Malley!”
Kyle watched the basketball drop to the ground and bounce away from his feet, lifting his eyes to see Adam holding his hands out to his sides, asking a silent question.
He narrowed his eyes at the firefighter and pointed a finger at him. “Up yours, Baudouin!”
Adam held up both hands, urging him on. “You can try, O’Malley, but you’re just acting like a little girl-”
“Watch it, Adam.” Stella raised an eloquent eyebrow at him. “I seem to recall this little girl got a basket off a ball she took from you.”
“Girl, Stella,” Adam corrected with a wink, “you’re a woman.”
“Smooth, Adam… really smooth.”
The action started back up, with Kyle managing to switch with Jonah for a minute before Dax’s pointed look sent Jonah back to covering Trey. And in the confusion of the moment and the scent of some kind of perfume in Stella’s hair, Kyle missed an opportunity to grab the ball away from her.
He still knocked it out of her hands and was rewarded with a pursed-lip glare that he answered with a smug look of his own.
Kyle could almost see her dig in and hunker down, the look in her eyes told him he was in for some trouble.
A scuffle at the edge of the half court drew his attention as Gabe and Dax had their hands on the ball, each taking their turn with the upper hand. There was a moment when Dax almost had it, but Gabe adjusted his hold on the ball and pulled it free.
“Here!”
Kyle heard the call and half-heartedly threw a hand out to block Stella, but she pushed it down and broke away from him, her arms held out for the pass.
Over Dax’s shoulder, Adam threw his hands up in frustration. “Come on, man!”
Setting his shoulders and his resolve, Kyle bent his knees and struggled to focus on the ball. His last conscious thought was a jumble of curses and a voice in his head that sounded like a woman he once knew deciding, “This can’t possibly end well.”
She had always been disgustingly right about those kinds of things.
A moment later he felt something hit him, knocking him clean off his feet and onto his back.
The bright park lights bordering the court flared and his eyes struggled to focus, as a pain in his hips shifted and for one terrifying moment, he thought he’d really hurt himself.
“Oh my goodness, are you okay?”
Kyle blinked again, opened his eyes, and stared into the face of Stella Vincenzo. “What are you doing?”
She moved slightly away, leaning back and that’s when he felt excruciating pain. Apparently she’d not only knocked him off of his feet, which would be fodder for jokes from the guys in the foreseeable future, but she’d also landed square on top of the most vulnerable part of him. “Get off!”
Stella wanted to dissolve into thin air to avoid the fall out of this horrible situation she’d landed in. Kyle had picked the exact wrong moment to go from matador to stone wall. And if the ache in her head was any indication, she’d run into him head first.
Oh goodness, until this moment, she’d only wondered about how heavy he was, but now she knew, and boy did it hurt.
She was still a little shaken from the collision, struggling to shake some sense into her head, but she could tell that he was talking to her. She swung her head a little to the left, to look at his lips so she could focus on his words.
Her reward? Kyle O’Malley glaring at her. “Get off!”
“Okay then.” Taking his words on straight face value, because her mind was just the littlest bit confused. “Hold on a second.” She moved in one direction and then the other, trying to figure out how to get up and onto her feet, but wow, Kyle was almost a mountain of a man, and she was somehow near the ‘summit’ of all of his brawn.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Watch what you’re doing!”
She was sure she was blushing. She could feel the heat radiating across her face and she hoped that he couldn’t see her reddened complexion in between the thick curls that had pulled free of her ponytail and were now shadowing her face.
“Sorry, you told me to get off, so that's what I'm trying to do!” She managed to get one knee planted near his hip and a moment later the other joined it, on the other side of his body but the movement only managed to pitch her forward until her chest was pressed against
him.
Kyle groaned beneath her, throwing one hand over his eyes. “Be careful before you maim me!”
She shook her head and stared down at him with an audible huff. “It's not my fault that you're so big.”
“Well, I don't see why you want her to move,” Dax drawled as he came to a stop a few feet away from his friend, “if she stays where she is long enough, one or both of you are going to get off.”
Chapter 6
The interruption distracted Kyle long enough to understand what his friend was saying. Instead of glaring up at the woman that had knocked him on his ass, a woman who didn't even come up to his shoulders, and probably wasn't even half his weight, Kyle saw something entirely different. He saw the healthy flush of color in her face, the bright shine in her warm chocolate eyes, and the sexy curve of her breasts on her folded arms.
This new, somewhat horizontal perspective, was as distracting as it was game changing. For the challenging crook of her brow and the tight twist of her lips in a half smile only made him want to kiss them and-
What the hell?
And that’s when his body decided being flat on his back wasn't embarrassing enough. While he'd been busy thinking about her in new and disturbing ways, his body had discovered that it liked the feel of hers. Those cut-off jeans, that she must have a closet full of, were stretched tight and the part of his anatomy that she had nearly destroyed with a few careless rolls of her hip, was now very happy to have her stay where she was.
And before he could try to stop it, his body proved that blood flow to the area was more than sufficient.
“Someone please,” he ground out the plea through clenched teeth, “help her up.”
And it was the laughter surrounding them that caught Stella’s attention.
She heard the laughter and when she leaned back to turn her glare at the offenders, that was when she felt it. Kyle “Kiss My Ass” O’Malley was thick and hard beneath her. And even though she had spent the last week wanting to strangle him with her bare hands, her body had a mind of its own.
Dear Heaven, it felt good. The heat that she felt radiating through her body had a little to do with being embarrassed. No, the heat that had taken over was a languid heat that had everything to do with the fact that she hadn't had any action in more than four years and Kyle’s body would be an excellent ‘fit.’
“Hey, let me give you a hand.”
Dax held out his hand to her and she took it, grateful for a chance to get out of this with some dignity. It would have killed her to have to scramble off of him and if her luck stayed the same, she would have nailed him with her knee by accident. Kyle probably would have blamed her.
The men all turned on Kyle. Apparently, his earlier comments had left him open for a whole bunch of trouble from the others and she didn't doubt that he’d earned it. Stella knew she could join in with the banter and take a few shots of her own at Kyle. She knew his ego could handle it, but honestly she was glad for the little bit of privacy and the reprieve it gave her. While Kyle’s reaction was physically obvious, she wasn't any less affected. She reached into her bag where she'd left it on the bench and grabbed a bottle of water. As soon as the water touched her tongue, she realized how thirsty she was, and a quick look over at the guys as they surrounded Kyle made her almost sorry for him, even if he'd been a grade A ass for the last few days. But regardless of the conflict that had put a wall between them, Stella still couldn't shake the feelings that were still coursing through her. She'd had years of hero worship for Kyle in her past. As a child, she'd followed him around, hanging back so she wouldn't see him glare at her. And then later, when they’d been in school, even though he was years ahead of her she found a way to see him from time to time, never really finding the courage to walk up to him and say much of anything.
And now, she'd not only knocked him flat on his back, she had been plastered all over the front of him, and she could still remember the heavy press of him tightly between their bodies. She shifted on the bench, rolling from one hip to the other, trying to ease the ache she felt, and failing miserably.
“Hey, Stella!”
She heard Teodoro’s voice and turned, hoping that they wouldn't be able to see her thoughts written across her face.
“You ready to get back into the game?” She saw the playful smile on her friend’s face and set her water bottle down.
“Sure, let’s go.” She pushed up from the bench and was almost standing when a siren pierced the quiet St. Helena night. Everyone stood, turning to listen to the placement and direction of the siren as it echoed from the buildings around them.
Adam and Jonah would have a better idea of where the sound was coming from. Stella turned to ask them a question, but her phone started to ring. The sound shook her to her core. She bent down and fished her phone from the side pocket of her bag, hoping that the call was just badly timed.
“Uncle Stan?” She held the phone to her ear, barely aware that Kyle had come to stand by her side. “He what?” She swallowed and willed her knees to hold herself up. “What was he doing there? Well, I’m glad you were with-” She drew in a shuddering breath. “Okay, okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye.”
She lowered the phone and tried to drop it into her pants pocket. It was only when she heard the tinny crunch of sound that she remembered that she was wearing shorts instead of her coveralls.
“I’ve got it.”
She looked down, moving in slow motion. “I can-”
“Stella, let me help.”
She gasped in a breath, barely audible over the throbbing pain in her head. The face looking up at her, the hand that was suddenly at her elbow, was Kyle’s.
When he stood, her phone in his hand, he didn’t let go of her arm. He leaned closer, his voice low and full of concern. “What happened?”
She opened and closed her mouth, unable to remember the question.
“What did my granddad say?”
That got through the fog. Blinking away the sudden tears that gathered on her lashes. “My father fell at the construction site,” that was the final straw. Her knees buckled and she felt Kyle’s fingers bite into her arm one moment and then he shifted to her other side and wrapped an arm around her middle, pulling her close enough that he could support her while they walked. And walk was what they did.
She heard him talking to the others, explaining, but all she could hear in her head was Stan’s words. “Your dad fell.”
The words repeated in her head. “Your dad fell.”
“Dad.” She drew in a breath and felt Kyle’s fingers give her a gentle squeeze at her waist.
“I’m going to take you to the hospital, Stella.”
She nodded.
“They’re going to take good care of him.”
She nodded again.
When they stopped walking she startled and looked up at him, blinking as if her eyes were adjusting to the light. “What’s wrong?”
She saw the hint of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, making it a lopsided smile.
“Can you climb into my truck?”
Her eyes narrowed and then widened, her chin lifting to look into his eyes. “Your truck?”
The look in his eyes was soft, almost teasing, and she couldn’t seem to grasp what he was saying and she could feel herself begin to crumble.
“Hey,” he reached out his hands and she felt them settle on her waist, “hey, look at me.”
“I am.” She leaned away from him and stopped when she felt his fingers flex on her lower back.
“Okay good, I thought I was about to lose you there for a minute.” He lifted a hand, and opened the passenger door of his truck, pulling it open with a slight metallic groan. “Come on, let’s get going.” Before she could say a word, he’d set his hand back on her waist. Sliding both hands closer, he lifted her onto the seat and waited until she’d pulled her legs in before he took his hands away completely. “Can you get your seatbelt on?”
She nodded, her sho
ck written plainly on her face as he closed the door.
It only took a few moments for him to round the truck and pull himself up into the cab. With a click and a twist, he had the key in the ignition and the truck’s engine rumbled to life. They were on their way before she could start worrying about what she’d gotten herself into.
Kyle was hovering over her, by the time they reached the front door of St. Helena Memorial. He put a hand on Stella’s back and started to steer them toward the information desk, but they didn’t get that far. Stan met them in the lobby, his face was drawn with worry as he wrung his hands together. But as soon as she saw her uncle, Stella pulled away from Kyle and into Stan’s comforting embrace.
Stan met Kyle’s gaze over her shoulder, his worry plain in his darkened eyes, but he didn’t say a word.
Stella filled the silence for him. “How is he? Did he lose consciousness? Has the doctor seen him?”
Stan shook his head at the barrage of questions. “He was awake the whole time and ordering me around. Told me not to call you, that it would only make you worry.”
“Of course I’m worried!” Stella pressed her hands over her heart as if that was the only thing keeping it inside her chest. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Kyle watched his grandfather pull Stella against his side and press a kiss to her cheek. “Well, don’t you worry for now, the doctor is in with him, and that’s when I stepped out. I’d had enough of Nico ordering me around, I didn’t want to embarrass the doctor by sticking around to hear him get taken down a peg or two.”
Stella groaned and stepped away, taking Stan’s hand in her own. “You know how much he hates hospitals.”
That got Kyle’s attention.
“Well, I think you both have a right to stay clear of these places.” Stan’s tone was light, but Kyle could hear the sharp pang of worry in it as well. “But I think we’ll wait before we get too worried, hmm?”
Stella nodded slowly. “I guess. But I want to know what happened.”
