by Jill Shalvis
part. He didn’t do vulnerable.
“Want my advice?” Rick asked.
“No.”
His brother clapped a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Gonna give it to you anyway. Whatever it is, whatever stupid ass thing you’ve done, suck it up and apologize. Even if you weren’t wrong. Works every time, and as a bonus, you get make-up sex.”
“That’s your advice?” Mark asked. “To grovel?”
“You got anything better?”
“No.”
Rick laughed and walked off, heading for Lena, who greeted him with a sweet smile and a kiss.
Rainey was still looking at Mark. Raising her chin slightly, she headed right for him, and his heart, abused all damn morning, kicked hard. For the first time in his entire life, he actually had to fight a flight response but he forced himself to hold his ground as more cars pulled in.
Guys. Teenage guys. The ones James and Casey were working with. They piled out of their cars with greetings for Rainey and his girls, who were coming back outside, only slightly more covered than they’d been when they arrived.
“Mark.”
Sharee hadn’t changed out of her short shorts and she was sauntering up to Todd, who had his eyes locked on her body.
“Mark,” Rainey repeated.
“What the hell are they wearing?”
“Who?”
“The girls. Look at them, do you call that a swimsuit?” he asked. “Because I call it floss.”
She made a choked reply, and he turned to look at her. She was laughing at him. This morning she’d walked away from him and now she was laughing at him. “How is this funny?” he demanded.
“You’re micromanaging. Listen, Coach, all you have to do this afternoon is stand around and look pretty.”
“What?” he asked incredulously, but then he was distracted by Todd, who was running a finger over Sharee’s shoulder. What the hell?
Rainey moved in front of Mark and waited until he tore his attention away from the teens. “It’s a car wash, Mark. A summer car wash for the teenagers’ sports program. We do this biweekly. They’re having fun, as they should.”
He tried to look over her head but she merely went up on her tiptoes and held eye contact. “You going to tell me what happened this morning?”
“We…” He refused to say they broke up. One, they hadn’t had that kind of a relationship, and two, even if they had, he sure as hell didn’t want to admit it was over. “Had a difference of opinion.”
She blinked, then took a step back. “I meant about you getting locked out on my porch naked.”
Shit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nice,” she said, nodding. “And I can see how you manage to fool people with that voice. It’s absolutely authoritative.” She pulled out her phone, brought up a picture, and showed it to him.
It was him. Bare ass. On her porch.
“It’s a little blurry,” she said, staring at it. “Because Stacy—my neighbor—was extremely nervous. She was also impressed. It was chilly this morning.”
His jaw set. “She sent this to you?”
“Yes. She was worried about the naked guy trying to break into my place.” Mercifully she put her phone away. “Now, about that ‘difference of opinion’.”
Oh, hell. He braced himself. “You walked away from me.”
“Yes, because I had to go to work.” She paused again, her eyes on his. “And…you thought I walked away from you.” She waited a beat. “You actually thought I’d—” Now she shook her head. “It was an argument, Mark. And I’m guessing by your reaction that you don’t have many of them. Of course not.” She smacked her own forehead. “Because in your world, you’re the dictator. Well, Mark, welcome to the real world. Where I get to be right some of the time, and that means you have to be wrong occasionally.”
“Wrong,” he repeated slowly.
“Yeah, wrong,” she said on a mirthless laugh. “Even the word sounds foreign coming off your tongue.” She was hands on hips, pissed off. “So is that what usually happens? You just write off anyone who disagrees with you?”
Actually, very few people ever disagreed with him. He was paid the big bucks to be in charge, in control, and to make small decisions, and he was good at those things. He didn’t have much of a margin of error, and frankly, he’d surrounded himself with people who knew this and were either always in line with his way of thinking, or they kept their opinions to themselves.
“Wow, you are so spoiled.” Her smile had vanished, and now she just looked disappointed in him. That was new too.
New and entirely uncomfortable. “Rainey—”
“Tell me this. You came here this morning thinking what, that we were totally over?” She stared at him, obviously catching the answer in his eyes. “I see,” she said slowly. “How convenient that must have been for you.”
“It didn’t feel convenient,” he said. “It felt like a knife in my chest.”
She absorbed that silently, without any hint of how she felt about it. Fair enough, he supposed, since he’d kept his feelings from her often enough.
THEY MADE FIVE thousand dollars at the car wash, Mark made sure of it. He called in favors and made nonnegotiable requests of everyone he could think of, and the cars poured in.
When it was over, Rick pulled him aside. “I take back every shitty thing I said about you.”
Mark slid him a look.
“Well, for today anyway.” Rick grinned, hauling him in for a guy hug. Mark shoved free and wrote the rec center a check, matching the funds as he’d promised to do. “How’s it going finding a new building?”
“It’s not.” Rick’s smile faded. “But we still have until the end of the year. Hopefully something will work out or we’re out of a lot of jobs, not to mention what will happen if the kids end up with no programs to keep them busy.”
Mark nodded.
“How about you and Rainey?”
“What about us?” Mark asked.
“You forget what I said about groveling?”
“I’m not groveling, Rick.”
“Right, because that would be too big a step for you. You try the supply closet? That seems to work well for you two.”
“Hey, we were talking in that closet.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, I love you, man,” Rick said. “Love you like a brother…”
Mark rolled his eyes.
“But you can’t screw with Rainey like you do your other women.”
“I don’t screw with women.”
“No, you screw ’em and leave ’em. We all watch Entertainment Tonight, you know.”
“It was a photo shoot!”
“Rainey’s a sweetheart,” Rick said. “She’s strong and tough and fiercely protective, and she takes care of those she cares about, but sometimes she forgets to take care of herself.”
“I know that.”
“And did you also know that in her world, being with you, sleeping with you, is a relationship? She’s invested.”
“We’ve discussed it,” Mark said tightly. “We’re taking it day-to-day.”
Rick’s eyebrows went up, then he shook his head. “Day to day? Are you kidding me? You let a woman like Rainey hang on your whim?”
Mark pulled out his phone but for once it wasn’t ringing. That was great.
“You’re an even bigger idiot than I thought,” Rick said.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, I’m trying to help here. Figured since I’m the only one of us in a successful relationship, I should spread the wealth of knowledge.”
“You had nothing to do with your relationship. Lena set her sights on you, and you just happened to be smart enough to let her.”
“Which begs the question,” Rick said. “Why aren’t you just as smart?”
ON THE WAY to the airport, Mark made a drive-by past Rainey’s place. She wasn’t in, which just about killed him. He took the red-eye to New York and hit the ground running the next day. In his hotel
room that night, he stared at the ceiling. He’d told himself he’d been too busy to think of Rainey, but that was a lie, and one thing he never did was lie to himself.
He’d thought of her.
And as stupid as it seemed given that he’d just seen her the day before, all wet and soapy and having a great time at the car wash, he missed her. It wasn’t a physical ache. Okay, it was. But hell, she’d looked damn good in those shorts and tee, better than any of the teenagers and their newfound sexuality.
Rainey had looked comfortable in her skin. Happy with herself and what she’d chosen to do with her life. Sure of herself.
It had been the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, and yeah, now he was lying in bed with a hard-on the size of Montana, but he missed more than her body.
He’d be back in Santa Rey in a few days, he told himself. Just in time for the black-tie dinner and auction, and then the big games against Santa Barbara the next day. Every penny that was donated was going to the rec center, and Mark had made sure that there would be a lot of pennies. The Mammoths had donated the money for the event, the supplies, the ads, and the ballroom at the Four Seasons—everything, and all the players had agreed to get auctioned off.
The money should be huge, and then there were the games the next day. After that, Mark and the guys could leave town knowing they’d done their best to give back to a community that had badly needed the help.
And Rainey…Rainey would go back to dating. Hell, maybe she was out on a date right now. Which would be no one’s fault but his own.
Rick had been right. Mark was an idiot. If he’d played his cards better, he could have postponed the trip and right this minute be gliding into Rainey’s sweet, hot, tight heat, listening to those sexy little sounds she made when she got close, the ones that made him want to come just thinking about it.
Shoving up from his bed, he hit the shower, standing there at two-thirty in the morning beneath the hot water, his only company his regrets and his soapy fist.
RAINEY WALKED INTO the auction, her stomach in knots. She’d come with Lena and Rick, the three of them dressed to the hilt. She was wearing a little black dress and heels that bolstered her courage.
The ballroom glittered with the rich and famous. Santa Rey was four hours north of Hollywood and Malibu, and thanks to Mark offering up all the Mammoth players for auction, celebrities had flocked to the event. Casey was up on the block first, and was bought by a blonde television starlet. James went up next. Lena started to bid on him but Rick yanked her back into her seat. James ended up going to some cute young twenty-something, happily spending her daddy’s money.
And so it went, with Rainey dazzled by the money pouring in.
After the last player was auctioned off, the entire team of Mammoth players dragged Mark up onto the stage. She knew he’d just come back into town and had to be exhausted, but he looked incredible in a tux. He didn’t look thrilled about being auctioned off, but resigned to his fate, he stood there as the bidding started. And the crowd wasn’t shy either. Rainey’s heart started pounding, and her palms went sweaty as she lifted her bid paddle.
One hundred dollars. She’d just bid one hundred dollars on a man she was more than a little pissed at. Three women were in the bidding with her. One hundred twenty five. One hundred fifty. One hundred seventy-five… Unable to sit calmly, Rainey stood up and shouted her next bid. “Two hundred.” It was all she had left on her Visa. Maybe if she didn’t eat for the next month she could go to three hundred.
The next bidder was from Los Angeles. A woman producer, someone whispered. She bid a thousand dollars and Rainey sagged back in her seat. Probably for the best. It’d been silly to even think about bidding on him.
She felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning, she found James, crouched down low so he couldn’t be seen. “Here,” he said, and shoved something into her hand.
She looked down and her eyes almost fell out of her head. It was a wad of hundreds. “James—”
“It’s from the guys. You can’t turn it down, you’ll insult them. Plus, we all voted. We need you to win him, Rainey, bad. He’s been a complete ass this week, even from three thousand miles away. Only you can soften him up. Please win him and do whatever it is you do to make him nice again.”
She looked across the ballroom at the players, who were all watching her hopefully. “How much is here?” she asked.
“Five grand.”
“Five grand?”
James smiled. “Just hedging our bets. Plus, it’s a write-off. Don’t second-guess it, beautiful. It’s lunch money for some of these guys.”
“Mark Diego, going for thirty-five hundred,” the auctioneer said. “Once, twice—”
“Five thousand!” Rainey shouted.
The players cheered and hooted and hollered.
Lena leapt up and hugged her tight.
Rick was looking pleased.
James just grinned from ear to ear.
And from the stage, Mark’s gaze narrowed on Rainey, unreadable as ever.
WHEN THE AUCTION ended, Rainey headed out to her car and found a certain big shot NHL coach leaning against the hood, watching her walk toward him with dark, speculative eyes.
Up close and personal, he took her breath. Like his expensive players, he was looking GQ Corporate Hot tonight in that very sexy tux, black shirt, black on black tie, and those badass eyes glinting with pure trouble. It was a cool evening, and yet she felt herself begin to perspire.
She’d purchased him. Good Lord. She’d fought for him tooth and nail and she’d won, and all she wanted to do was tear off that suit with her teeth.
And then lick him head to toe.
Not good. She’d already licked him from head to toe and knew that he tasted better than any of her favorite foods. She knew that he felt the same about her.
And she knew something else too. She knew by the way that her heart was pounding, pounding, pounding, threatening to burst out of her ribs, that this was no simple thing that she’d be getting over anytime soon.
The closer she got, the more her stomach jangled. It was crazy, her reaction was crazy. He was just a guy, a bossy, demanding, alpha guy she’d once known....
And yet somewhere along the way, maybe when he’d so readily and willingly stepped up to the plate to help, becoming a true role model for the team, she’d realized how much more he was. Watching him step outside his comfort zone only intensified the experience.
You could do the same, a little voice said. Take a real risk for once. Step outside the box, veer from the plan…
Don’t let your fear hang you up. Take a risk on him.
His eyes never wavered from hers, and she hoped like hell she wasn’t broadcasting her thoughts because she really wasn’t ready for him to know them. “Hey.”
His smile went a little tight, but he gave her a soft “hey” and backed her to her car, pressing up against her, slipping his hands in her hair to tip her face up to his. “I missed you,” he said.
Her heart squeezed. “Are you sure? Because before you left, I thought maybe I was driving you a little nuts.”
“Definitely, you’re driving me nuts.”
She thought about getting annoyed at his present tense except he pressed his mouth to her temple, then took a tour along to her
