Playing to Win

by Sami Lee

  “You sound scared, Abs. Are you afraid to be alone with me?”

  There was a definite challenge there. The clang of the gauntlet being thrown to the ground brought her out of her momentary daze. “No.” She stepped back so Sam was forced to drop his hand. She ignored the way her whole face flamed, heat radiating outward from the point where he’d touched her. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Good. Let’s go then.”

  Abbi let him usher her into his car, wondering what she’d gotten herself into.

  And feeling very afraid indeed.

  Chapter 3

  He was such an idiot.

  Why had he sent Abbi that dress? When Sam had swung by the boutique after his meeting with Abbi and Larry that morning, he’d caught sight of it in the boutique window and had known immediately he wanted to see Abbi in it. She looked so jaw-droppingly good that the cameras flashing on them as they entered Allure seemed to do so with more frenzied enthusiasm than was usual. The press called out to Abbi, wanting her to turn their way. Sensing her discomfort, Sam tried to shield her from the worst of the media attention, but he knew photos of the two of them would appear on the sports blogs tomorrow, accompanied by speculations about their involvement.

  That didn’t bother Sam. He considered himself lucky to be linked with Abbi that way. She really was uber hot, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Unfortunately, neither could any other man in the upscale restaurant. When he’d bought the dress, Sam hadn’t considered what it would feel like to have every male eye in Allure focused on his date, to know every guy in the joint was picturing Abbi naked.

  Every guy, including his so-called friend, Anson Cross.

  “And that, my dear Abbi,” Anson was saying now as he leaned in close to Abbi’s side. Too damn close. They were sitting in the bar area after finishing their delicious seafood meal, and Anson was finally taking some time to mingle properly with all his guests. “Is the story of how Sam and I met.”

  “Wow. Who’d have thought two guys who played football against each other in high school, in Australia, would both end up in Miami, huh?”

  “You know what they say. Birds of a feather end up being charming multi-millionaires who live in Florida,” Anson quipped.

  Abbi laughed. “That old a cliché.”

  Anson’s smile nearly split his face. “You’ve been hiding this one, Sam old mate. You need to bring her out more often.”

  “Oh, we’re not dating.” Abbi was lightning fast at correcting Anson’s assumption. Fast like a dart shot straight at Sam’s ego. “This is only a work thing.”

  Anson’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? That’s interesting.”

  “No, it’s not.” Sam heard the warning tone in his own voice and hoped to hell Anson did too. “Don’t you have to go circulate?”

  “Sure. Later.” Anson waved a dismissive hand. “I want to hear Abbi’s life story now.”

  “There’s not much to tell.” Abbi shrugged and took a sip of her wine. “I grew up in a medium-sized town in Nebraska. Two brothers, one older, one younger.”

  “Ah, middle child,” Anson said, as though he was some kind of expert psychologist. Schmuck. “Your parents still together?”

  “They are. Mom’s a secretary and my dad sells cars. He’s a huge football fan—he’s very impressed that I know Sam.”

  She flicked Sam a look and a little smile that warmed his blood. Her dad was impressed? First he’d heard of it. Nice to know he could impress a Lehman, even if it wasn’t the one he really wanted to win over.

  “Why’d you leave?” Sam found himself asking. “It sounds peaceful. Nice even.”

  “It was nice, but not exactly exciting. I wanted to experience something more, I guess. So when I was picking colleges I chose Florida State. I always loved the idea of living near the ocean. Ten years later, I’m still here.”

  “I guess you must love the beach,” Anson said.

  Abbi screwed up her nose. “Actually, I hate getting sand stuck between my toes. But I made friends here and I have a good job. So I stayed.”

  Anson’s gaze dropped for a fleeting moment to Abbi’s cleavage. “Fascinating.”

  Oh that’s it, thought Sam. He nudged Anson so hard in the ribs a breath wheezed out of the other man. “Anson, a word?”

  “I have to go to the ladies’ room,” Abbi announced with a glance between them. “Behave while I’m gone. Please.”

  Sam watched her leave, her hips swaying beneath fine silk, her back slender and bare and her hair flowing gently behind her like a curtain. She was so damn sexy he could hardly take his eyes off her.

  Neither could Anson or any of the other red-blooded males in the joint. Sam nudged his friend again.

  “Ow! Watch the ribs, mate.”

  “I will if you stop watching my date.”

  “She’s not your date.” Anson looked at Sam askance. “She just said this is a work thing.”

  “True, but I want… I’m trying to… She’s…”

  He’d just spent the last hour and a half trying his charming best to impress her. He’d recommended dishes but ultimately let her choose what she wanted. He’d also respected her wish to take it slow with the wine. No way did he want her thinking he was trying to get her drunk. Sam wanted her to know her opinion mattered to him. He’d answered her small talk questions but asked more than her. He listened more than he’d talked, which wasn’t a chore because he was interested in Abbi. In short, he’d been a model date.

  But according to her, this still was not a date. He didn’t need her to fall in love with him or anything—in fact, that would be a disaster since he didn’t plan to fall for her and he didn’t want to hurt her. Mutual pleasure and a good time though, that was different. He wanted her, badly, but one night ought to be enough to get her out of his system. Maybe two…or three. That was usually enough with most women. Emotional attachments weren’t his thing anymore. One disastrous marriage had cured him of the desire for happy ever after.

  Anson’s laugh penetrated Sam’s broody thoughts. “Oh, I see.”

  “What?”

  “You like her, but she has zero interest and it’s killing you.”

  “I wouldn’t say zero interest.” Sam had seen the flare of passion in Abbi’s eyes when he’d touched her earlier, when he’d almost kissed her. If he’d done it, she would have responded, he knew it. But he was trying to show her he was a few steps above being a total Neanderthal. He wasn’t going to force anything. “But she’s fighting it.”

  “Must be a novelty for you—a woman who doesn’t fall at your feet.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  Anson got more than his fair share of easy sex with beautiful women. Between the two of them, they got laid more than concrete. But thinking of Abbi as just another woman he would bone and forget didn’t sit right with Sam. And unlike when he’d paraded other dates out in public, he didn’t like the idea that other men were looking at her as if she was a piece of meat. She was an incredible woman—smart, sassy and tough, as well as hellishly beautiful. She deserved to be seen as a whole person, not just eye-candy.

  Cripes, Cormack, did you grow a uterus or something?

  “Just stop flirting with Abbi, will ya?” Sam grumbled. “Do me that one favor.”

  “When you ask like that, you know I have to agree.” Anson and Sam gave each other a lot of shit, but when it came down to it, they were mates, two Aussie fish out of water in the Florida sun. Anson would never move in on a woman Sam really liked.

  Of course, he wasn’t friends with every guy here. The mate code didn’t apply to the smooth guy in a suit he saw talking to Abbi as she returned from using the facilities. Sam growled as he watched the guy try to schmooze her.

  He actually growled.

  “Calm down, animal,” Anson remarked, amused. “You’ll only convince her you really are a meathead if you storm over there. She can handle it.”

  Realizing his friend was right, on both counts, Sa
m eased his body back onto his barstool and satisfied himself with keeping an eye on the exchange from a distance. It was all he could do not to smash the glass he had his hand wrapped around as Smooth Guy took a not-so-smooth look at her cleavage and slipped her a business card. Abbi took it with a polite nod and left him where he was.

  The coil of tension inside Sam eased as she walked back to him. It grew taut again when she said, “I got two business cards and three cheesy lines during one trip to the bathroom. What kind of place are you running here, Mr. Cross?”

  “Hopefully a popular one. Which reminds me, I have to go mingle some more.” He took Abbi’s hand and brushed lips across her knuckles. “It’s been an absolute pleasure, Abbi. I hope Sam brings you around again sometime.”

  Talk about cheesy. Sam gave Anson a droll look, to which Anson merely laughed as he disappeared into the crowd to charm someone else’s girlfriend.

  You mean date. Or fuckable publicist. Abbi is not your girlfriend.

  Yet there was no denying that thinking of her as the fuckable publicist made him feel like a shit. There was more to Abbi than that. He’d just found out she used to dream of touring with the ballet and she read Anna Karenina at the age of sixteen. She wasn’t some airhead who existed only to please him. He was as bad as Smooth Guy or the idiots who’d tried to pick her up on the way to the bathroom. Treating her like a conquest and not a real person. Dressing her up and putting her on display.

  No wonder she didn’t like him.

  “You want to get out of here?” Sam asked, feeling like dirt all of a sudden.

  “Already? I figured you’d want to hang out longer.”

  “I’ve seen Anson, made my appearance. Unless you want to stay—”

  “No.”

  Her hasty response made Sam realize that the good time she’d appeared to be having was all for show. She was putting on a polite mask because that’s what polite, nice women like Abbi did when they didn’t want to insult their companions or the owners of too-trendy restaurants.

  Sam stood and put a fifty on the bar to cover their drinks. “Let’s go.”

  He took Abbi’s hand to lead her outside and was unable to stem his pleasure at feeling it settled in his.

  He was a joke.

  *

  Abbi was stung that Sam had wanted to end their evening so abruptly. She’d obviously done something wrong, but she could not put her finger on what it was. She’d parried every line delivered by his rogue of a friend, who despite his rather overblown ego had a tendency to self-deprecate that was more charming than she’d expected. Perhaps it was an Australian thing, because Sam tended to do the same. Jokingly put himself down even as he flexed his muscles and talked himself up. It was a unique trait that puzzled even as it fascinated.

  Even more puzzling was the leap Sam had made from laughing with his friend and the few people who’d stopped by to say hello to cutting the night short with a scowl. Perhaps he hadn’t been having a good time at all and he’d simply got tired of putting on a happy face. Maybe she was awful company.

  Embarrassed, Abbi shrunk a little inside her skin. She’d thought she was doing pretty well. Anson seemed to find her interesting. And all those men who’d sent her admiring glances had made her feel sexy in a way she never had before. She’d been asked out plenty and she knew men generally found her attractive, but she’d never felt truly va-va-voom sexy until tonight. It was a disconcerting feeling, but also not half bad. In fact, it had been arousing as hell wearing such a slinky dress in public.

  Not just wearing the dress, Abbi. It was Sam. Every time he’d smiled at her, another part of her resolve had melted. Every time he’d taken her hand in his, she’d tingled, and if he’d happened to rest a guiding hand on her bare back, she’d practically burst into flames.

  Pathetic. He obviously didn’t see her that way. He wasn’t even trying to cop a feel of her thigh as he drove her home, when the size of the Maserati made it nearly impossible for them not to touch. Either Sam’s reputation with the ladies was bullshit or he wasn’t attracted to her. At all.

  She knew his reputation wasn’t bullshit.

  “You like this area?” Sam asked her as they drove into her street. It was the first thing he’d said to her since the twenty-minute journey had started.

  “It’s nice enough. I like my apartment and the neighbors are quiet.”

  “I didn’t know you were from Nebraska. How often do you get back there?”

  “Sam, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make small talk with me. You can just let me out anytime.”

  He glanced at her, his forehead scrunched. “No I cannot. What do you take me for?”

  “You probably want to go out again and have some fun without your PR person making you watch every step.” He could find some woman to seduce, one with bigger boobs than her who knew how to flirt properly. “Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Larry is right. It wouldn’t be a good look if you turned up to the children’s hospital reeking of booze.”

  Sam said nothing as he drove the last distance to her apartment block and pulled into a parking space out front. His movements were tightly controlled, and Abbi could feel the tension coming off him like an electric force. He switched off the sports car’s thrumming engine and turned in his seat to glare at her.

  “Contrary to popular belief, I can go days, even weeks without chugging a beer. I am an athlete, you know. Abusing the body that earns me a living on a regular basis would be pretty fucking stupid.”

  He wasn’t merely tense, Abbi realized with a shiver of apprehension. He was furious. She shrank back against the passenger door. “I never said you were. In fact, I think you’re a smart man.” If a little hot-headed. Not something she was going to add when he was in this mood.

  His smile was mirthless. “For a football player?”

  “No, for a person,” Abbi insisted.

  “Am I?” Abbi wouldn’t have thought it possible for such huge shoulders to slump, but they appeared to do so before her eyes. He reached across the darkened car interior to touch her cheek. “I was a real knucklehead tonight. I’m sorry for everything, Abbi.”

  She tingled at the spot where he touched her, burning up. His nearness made her nipples prod at the front of her dress. With no bra to hide the response, Sam was going to see it in the light of the dash instruments before too long. Then he’d know she’d been throbbing with need all night while he’d been bored out of his mind.

  Trying to save herself that humiliation, Abbi reached behind her for the door handle. “It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize for not finding me…you know.”

  “Not finding you what?”

  Where the hell was that door handle? “I know your usual dates are probably more entertaining—not that this was a date.”

  “I’m so damn sick of you saying that.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  If it wasn’t a date, then why does it feel like you’ve been rejected, Abbi?

  “And what’s this shit about you not being entertaining?” Sam practically sneered the question. “Every guy at Allure seemed to find you an item of interest.”

  Every guy except you, you son-of-a-bitch. Anger rose to replace her hurt, and somehow it gave her the dexterity to locate the elusive door handle. “There’s no law against taking a man’s phone number when he offers it,” Abbi said as she hastily got out of the car. “In fact, it’s usually the most polite thing to do.”

  Sam got out his side and slammed his door. “Not when you’re there with someone else. And don’t you dare say this wasn’t a date, because it might as well have been.”

  “I don’t know how you want me to respond to that, Sam. So perhaps it’s time we said goodnight.”

  Abbi turned on her heel and stalked to the apartment complex’s security gate. She punched in the code with sharp jabs, impatient to get away from Sam. But footfalls on the asphalt told her he was in pursuit. Her heart pounded a
s the gate buzzed open. She tried to slip through it alone, but Sam’s agile hand stopped the gate from closing on him. Abbi quickened her strides but his long legs easily enabled him to keep up.

  “I picked you up at your apartment,” he pointed out, his tone as tense as his strides. “I would have brought flowers, but I figured you’d think that was a routine or something, so I didn’t. I should have. Regular guys bring flowers on dates.”

  Abbi ignored the question, figuring it was rhetorical. She kept up her hurried strides, a rising panic making her want to run up the staircase to the second floor.

  “I took you to a fancy restaurant, opened doors for you, bought you food and drinks, introduced you to everyone as my companion. What part of that doesn’t sound like a date? Oh, that’s right.” His tone turned sarcastic. “The part where you flirt with my best friend and collect a bunch of guys’ phone numbers.”

  “It wasn’t a bunch of guys.” Fury made Abbi find her voice. “It was two. I didn’t flirt with Anson. He flirted with me. And for your information, that never happens to me. It’s this damn dress.”

  “I wish I’d never bought it,” Sam groused. “It was a mistake.”

  For some reason, that stung. It was like he was saying she was the mistake, this whole thing—whatever the hell it had been—was one giant regret. Abbi felt a telltale burning behind her eyes and hurried to extract her keys from her clutch purse.

  “I’ll be sure and have it dry cleaned and sent back to you.” Her voice was raspy. Damn it. “Perhaps you can still give it to someone else.”

  “Are you out of your mind? That dress is yours. Forever. The image of you wearing it will be burned in my mind for years to come. Wank material for the next four decades.”

  Keys in hand, Abbi swung around to face him for the first time since she’d exited his car. She’d thought he was angry with her for ruining his evening. But now that she looked—really looked—at him she read something different in his expression. Frustration, yes. Annoyance, definitely. Yet there was something more driving it, something…