by Jamie Wesley
Her entire body warmed. He could turn on the charm in an instant. Effortlessly. She’d have to be hella diligent about not falling for it. She side-eyed him. “Please. Save the smooth talk for the groupies you’re so fond of. Speaking of, is there going to be someone waiting to pull my hair out when we get to the hotel?”
She was making small talk, that’s all. Joking. She didn’t really care if he had a girlfriend.
A shadow crossed his face, but his lips curved up. “No, I’ve only been in town a couple of weeks, trying to get acclimated to a new team, a new city. I haven’t had any time for dating. What about you? Am I going to have a talking-to from some guy who doesn’t know he’s supposed to pick up his date?”
She laughed. “No, I’m a free agent. No one’s waiting for me.” No, it was the other way around. She’d planned to lie in wait for someone else. But the night was still young. No need to abandon her mission just yet.
“Want to play blackjack?” Brady asked, strangely unwilling to part company with the woman he’d spent the better part of the last hour with. As small as Caitlin was, he got the sense she could and would handle herself in any situation she found herself in.
And that intrigued him. She intrigued him.
Surprise and something else—uncertainty maybe?—flashed in the pretty brown eyes that dominated her face. She scanned the room like she was looking for someone.
“Thanks, but I’m okay. I’m sure you have better things to do than babysit me,” she said, brushing aside a lock of the shiny black hair that swung near her ears in a style that managed to be both cute and edgy.
He dismissed the wave of disappointment that rippled through him. No one liked to get turned down even if it was a casual invitation, that’s all. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you around.”
He didn’t move, however. Not even when she said, “All right” and turned away. He shook his head. Why was he standing there like a geeky teen boy who couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to his crush? He spun on his heel and promptly bumped into someone.
“Sorry,” Brady said automatically, then nodded stiffly when he saw that he’d run into Lance Maguire, the Stampede’s starting shooting guard. His backcourt mate. Usually the main recipient of his passes. Always his main detractor in the locker room. Maguire didn’t like that his best friend got traded to make space for Brady.
Although this was a social occasion, eyes and ears were everywhere. If it was reported that the two teammates had obviously gone out of their way to avoid each other, it would hit Twitter in two seconds flat, then ESPN in five seconds, and be the topic of conversation on every sports talk show in the city and every other national show tomorrow. No thanks. Maguire was a veteran. Even though he’d made it clear he resented Brady’s presence on the team, he knew how to play the media game. Brady held out his hand. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” Maguire didn’t bother to make eye contact. Hostility, barely banked, permeated the air. Maybe his teammate didn’t know how to play the game.
Dropping his hand to his side, Brady bit back a sigh. “Have you tried any of the games yet?”
“Lost a few rounds of poker. The charity will be happy. You look happy.” Maguire finally met his gaze. Resentment twisted his features. “Shame considering you cost us the win last night.”
Brady suppressed a curse. Did Maguire really want to do this now? After not addressing the issue after the game? “You know that’s not true.”
“Hey, Lance,” Dante Whitmore, the starting small forward, said, joining them. He and Lance man-hugged. Brady barely rated a nod. “What are we talking about?”
“Our loss yesterday,” Maguire said.
“Oh.” Whitmore didn’t bother hiding his scowl. “Yeah, that sucked. We should’ve won.”
“We would have if Hudson here hadn’t decided to commit a charge instead of passing to me. Maybe he was too busy deciding which Stampede dancer he was going to hit on after the game to notice the guy in front of him.”
Fury grabbed Brady by the throat, but he didn’t let it choke him. Instead he bared his teeth in a piss-poor facsimile of a smile and peered directly into Maguire’s eyes. “This is not the time or the place. Got it?” His voice carried no farther than the three people involved in the conversation, but he made damn sure the steel in his tone came through loud and clear.
Maguire smirked. “Whatever you say. Let’s go,” he said to Whitmore. The two walked away without looking back.
Still struggling to reel in his anger, looking neither right nor left, Brady headed for the exit. He pushed the door open with more force than necessary and stepped outside. What the fuck was that? Was his time in Dallas destined to be a disaster? As targeted an attack as it was, he could get past the dumbass comment about dancers, but calling his game, the single most important thing in his life, into question? Unacceptable.
The urge to punch something, someone, had his hand curling into a fist.
The door opened behind him. Had Maguire followed him out here for round two? Brady spun, more than ready for another confrontation. Caitlin stood there. “Hey,” she said softly. “I was coming back to find you and I overheard. That was…brutal.”
He uncurled his fist. Calm down, Brady. He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“Still.” She paused, her eyes full of concern. “I know we just met, but do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” Curt would be the best way to explain the tenor of that response even to his own ears. And rude, especially since she’d gone out of her way to check on him, a person she’d known for an hour. He sighed. “I’ve been driving myself crazy picking apart every play trying to figure out what went wrong. I made the right play.”
“You played hero ball.”
His lips turned down. “Say what now?”
“You played hero ball,” she repeated, obviously uninterested in sparing his feelings.
“How exactly did I play hero ball?” he practically growled.
She swallowed like she’d recognized she’d poked a bear looking for its next meal, but she didn’t back down. “Well, on the last play of the game, you barreled to the basket all out of control instead of passing to your open teammate in the corner.”
“A layup is always a safer bet than a three-pointer.” He leveled the glare that always made grown men a foot taller than him toe the line on her.
She didn’t falter, her huge eyes remaining clear and focused. “True, except for when you get called for a charge.”
“It wasn’t a charge. It was a block.”
“That’s not how the referees saw it.”
“It wasn’t a charge,” he said succinctly. “The game shouldn’t have come down to that play anyway. We had an eight-point lead going into the fourth quarter. We blew it.” Against his will, his shoulders drooped under the truthfulness of the statement. Damn, he hated losing. Almost more than he loved winning. Losses ate at his soul. Kept him up late at night.
“Well, you have another game tomorrow, so snap out of it.”
Despite his shitty mood, Brady found his head lifting, found himself smiling, the intensity of the past few minutes draining out of him in a rush. Usually, people lined up to follow his orders. Caitlin didn’t look the slightest bit intimidated. No, she looked like temptation wrapped in a red dress he’d be seeing in his dreams for the foreseeable future. “Yes, Ms. Caitlin. So you’re a big fan of the team, huh?”
“Duh. You think I pulled what happened last night out of my butt?”
And what a fine butt it was.
Wait. No. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking of her that way. Yes, she was attractive, more than, okay a lot more than, but he’d committed to putting his well-chronicled love life on the backburner while he concentrated on basketball and winning the championship that had eluded him his entire career, especially after his last relationship blew up in his face. Women had always been his downfall. No, that wasn’t true. Ultimately, he was his downfall. He loved women. Their minds. The way they
talked. The way they walked. The way they smelled. Too much apparently because more than once he’d let common sense fly out the window when it came to women and lived to regret it. Over and over, they’d proven it wasn’t him they loved. It was the money, his status.
So he was putting himself and his goals first. No women. Just basketball.
Then what was the earlier flirting about? his inner bullshit meter countered. Telling her she looked better than fancy? That you were the lucky one? Just small compliments to make her feel more comfortable with him. Yeah, right, the bullshit meter whispered. Caitlin did look beautiful with her shining brown eyes, pretty sienna-colored skin, and red lips. The dress that contoured to shapely legs that would look great wrapped around his waist while he made love to her.
And there he went again. His heart rate increasing, his pants becoming a little tighter. He needed a distraction. “No, it’s clear you didn’t pull that out of your butt. Ready to go back in?”
He placed his hand at the small of her back. A mistake. An electric charge traveled up his arm. Their eyes met and held. Something hot sparked in her eyes. The moment stretched for a second, two, three. His gaze dropped to her enticing lips. It wouldn’t take much effort on his part to bridge the gap between them and stop wondering how they tasted. Wonderful, no doubt.
Only a shout of laughter from behind him stopped him from finding out.
She backed away, nervously tucking her hair behind her ear. “You know I think I need to refresh my lipstick. You don’t have to wait for me.”
She was offering him a reprieve. Which he would take because he wasn’t her date, and that’s all there was to it. “All right. Guess I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, continuing to step away.
Panic seized him. “Caitlin, wait,” he called out. “Why were you looking for me?”
“Because I forgot to thank you for stopping to help,” she said. “So thanks. I owe you.”
“I know,” he said.
That stopped her in her tracks. An eyebrow lifted, while her hands landed on her waist. “You do?”
“I do,” he said, unable to resist the urge to tease, to challenge her.
Her eyes flicked up and down his body. “We’ll see.”
Then she spun on her heel and disappeared down the hall, leaving him fighting the urge to grin. Fighting the urge to go after her. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t give in to his baser instincts. No matter how much the curve of her ass in that dress enthralled him. So he returned to the ballroom and headed straight for the bar.
Ten minutes later, after signing a few autographs for fans, he found himself nursing a beer and scanning the crowd. No, he wasn’t waiting for Caitlin to reappear. He couldn’t be. He was here to make good with the team, not pick up a woman. Prove to the assholes in the media he wasn’t a troublemaker. He wasn’t. Much. He just liked doing things his way. His way got things done.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, expecting another fan. Instead, Elise Templeton, the team’s assistant general manager, greeted him with a bright smile. “Brady, hi.”
“Hello,” he said with a pleasant smile. Inside, he cursed.
He didn’t know Elise well. He’d met her right before his introductory press conference with the team. After the press conference, they’d had lunch with the team owner, the general manager, and his agent. She knew her stuff, sharing her insights to his game and how he would fit in with the team.
She’d also felt him up under the table.
“Having fun?”
“Yes,” he said politely, because despite what the media claimed, he did know how to be polite.
“That’s good, but it is your first time at Stampede Casino Night. You probably need someone to show you the ropes. I’d be happy to offer my services.” Elise’s lips curved into a smile clearly meant to entice.
The “damns” flying through his head escalated to good, old-fashioned “fucks.” Why hadn’t he abandoned his post a few minutes earlier?
When her hand had landed somewhere it damn well shouldn’t have at lunch, he hadn’t reacted visibly, at least not above the table, even though he’d come close to spitting out the water in his mouth. He had reached under the table and matter-of-factly removed her hand from his inner thigh. They’d run into each other a few times since then, mostly pre or postgame, but he kept the contact brief. Not that a woman needed much time to let a man know she was interested. As she had with flirty glances and lingering touches. But she couldn’t do more than that with others around.
She flicked a lock of curly black hair over her shoulder and placed her hands on her trim waist. Invitation shone from her brown eyes. In another time, in another stupider time, hell yes, he’d have taken her up on her offer and damn the consequences. But now? He had no desire to mix business with pleasure with a team official, who, yeah, also happened to be the team owner’s daughter.
After the confrontation with Maguire, it was abundantly clear that last night’s game hadn’t helped his stock with teammates, who didn’t fully trust him or his objectives yet. If he walked around with Elise on his arm, he knew what they’d be wondering. Was he there looking to find the next woman to add to his list of conquests? Or worse, get in good with the team owner, who’d take his side in any dispute or offer up a large contract in the offseason? Did he not give a damn about the team’s success?
“That sounds great, but I can’t take you up on that offer,” he said to Elise.
“Why not?” she cooed.
“Because…” He had to let her down gently. She was the owner’s daughter after all. A splash of color behind Elise caught his eye. He stepped around her and curled a hand around Caitlin’s small waist, drawing her to his side. “I already have a date. Elise, please meet my girlfriend, Caitlin.”
Chapter Two
Wait. What?
Caitlin froze. Had Brady said what she thought he said? She opened her mouth to say, “Have you lost your mind? Get off me!” when he stepped in front of her, his back to the woman who looked like she was contemplating the best way to skin Caitlin alive. His eyes pleaded with her. She pressed her lips together, steeling herself against the ploy. Damn it—why did she keep finding herself involuntarily drawn into his orbit? She knew better. This was not why she’d come here tonight. To get involved with some athlete’s drama. She had her own drama to deal with, thank you very much.
She opened her mouth again to tell him she wanted no part of whatever he was up to. Only to have his mouth land on hers. He lingered only for a second, but that small taste was enough to scramble her senses. To send a wave of arousal crashing through her.
“Please go along with this. Please,” he whispered in her ear. “Sweetheart, I’ve been looking for you,” he said in a louder voice.
Which brought her right back to the real world.
“Well, sweetheart, here I am,” she answered, her tone as dry as unsweetened chocolate cake.
He sent her a look of censure before turning back to the other woman. “Caitlin, this is Elise.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Elise said. Considering the way she said it, like the words tasted like vinegar, Caitlin very much doubted the truthfulness of the statement.
“Likewise,” Caitlin said as pleasantly as she could.
“How did you and Brady meet?” Elise asked. “He’s only been with the team a few weeks, and I’d remember if you were at his press conference.”
“Elise is the team’s assistant GM,” Brady said.
No time like the present to tell the truth. “My car broke down, and Brady pulled over to help,” Caitlin said cheerfully.
Elise’s lips curved into a stiff smile. “It was your lucky day.”
“Indeed it was.” Caitlin wrapped her arm around Brady’s waist and pinched him as hard as she could through his jacket. Too bad he didn’t react.
“Hmm. Well, I don’t want to keep you two. I’ll be seeing you, Brady. You, too, Caitlin.” Elise patted Brady on the
forearm, lingering far too long considering his “girlfriend” was standing less than twelve inches away. She swanned through the crowd on the sharpest stilettos Caitlin had ever seen, her head held high.
Caitlin lifted an eyebrow at Brady.
He had the decency to look embarrassed at least. “Don’t say anything. Not yet.”
Grabbing her hand, he scanned the room and headed toward an exit. Since he outweighed her by Lord-only-knew-how-much, she was wearing shoes that weren’t known for their traction, and she was, you know, nosy, she chose not to pull away.
They escaped through a side door into a brightly lit corridor devoid of people. Down the hall, dishes rattled. They’d come through a service entrance. He let go of her hand. Ignoring the way it still tingled, she crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her foot. “Would you care to explain what that was about, sweetheart?”
“Remember how you said you owed me?” His lips had the nerve to stretch into a wide, self-satisfied grin. “I’m calling it in.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You do realize you can’t just call it in, right?”
“Oh, I believe I can, and I am.” His tone dared her to turn him down. Dared her to argue that going out with him wasn’t her most-desired wish.
Now this was the arrogant Brady Hudson who dominated the headlines. She could either order his cocky ass out of her way and leave him hanging or try to figure out what was going on. Her inherent curiosity led her to stop imagining kicking him in the shin and to choose door number two. She directed a no-nonsense look at him. “I need you to back up. What’s going on?”
He cleared his throat. “Elise has made her interest in me known. Getting involved with the owner’s daughter is not a good idea. I needed a reason to turn her down, and you were there.”
Caitlin covered her mouth with her hand to hide a snicker. “Poor Brady. So irresistible. But why would she come on to you?”
He shot her a narrowed-eyed glance. “You are so good for my ego.”
She shrugged, still struggling to hold back her laughter. “I have a feeling women have been good for your ego since before you were born. You have to admit it’s strange. It can’t be good for her professional reputation to date a player.”
