Play for Keeps Read online

  “Oh!” He grasped the thread of the conversation and held on tight, tucking his chin to his chest as he chuckled at his own distractibility. “Yes. He’s good. Lives south of Sarasota. Plays golf three hundred days a year, likes to brag he has all his original manufacturer parts, and keeps a string of girlfriends who cook for him.”

  “Good for him!”

  Millie’s eyes crinkled when she smiled, and an attractive pair of brackets creased her cheeks when she grinned. Of all the things he liked about her, these two features were near the top of his list. And the great thing about Millie was that the list of her assets was long and not strictly physical. She was real. Completely without filler. Or filter, for that matter.

  Mari couldn’t match his dad’s brag in terms of original parts. Ty had paid for the porcelain veneers and impressive rack himself. But what irked him more than external artifice was the way she embraced her “fake it till you make it” attitude. Hell, she’d even had a little sign on her bathroom wall saying that exact thing. Mari wasn’t one to work on improving herself. She preferred to pretend she was already all the things she wanted to be.

  “My dad is actually flying out to Reno with some of his buddies. We’ll play a few rounds.”

  It hadn’t taken him long to discover the charm and bravado Mari had displayed during their courtship was an act, but his father had figured it out right away. He and Mari never clicked, and Ty had been too oblivious to figure out why.

  “That’ll be nice.”

  “He’s a good man,” Ty said gruffly. “A smart one too—he’s letting me foot the bill.” Millie laughed, and Ty allowed his head to fall back as he wondered how the apple had fallen so far from the proverbial tree.

  Behind the facade, his Mari was possibly the most insecure woman he’d ever met. Once, before one of the chancellor’s dinner parties, he’d found Mari standing in front of the mirror, practicing which smile she’d use with each conversational tidbit she’d memorized from that day’s news. At the time, he’d felt bad for her. In truth, it broke his heart a little. But when he tried to engage her in conversation about the same topics, she waved them off as boring and started rambling about her next redecorating project.

  He smiled back at Millie, wishing their time alone could last. From the time she’d shown up at his sliding door, Millie had taken charge. Bullied him, really, but he didn’t mind too much. She was beautiful when she was bossy. Plus she seemed completely relaxed with him. He liked her ease. And he found her confidence intoxicating.

  Though he was ashamed to admit how lonely he’d been in his marriage, Ty hadn’t realized exactly how much his and Millie’s easy camaraderie meant to him until he’d kissed her and all thoughts of comfort went flying out the door.

  She’d been the first person to befriend him when he came to work at Wolcott. She’d helped smooth the way to a cordial relationship with Kate Snyder, the women’s basketball coach—a minor miracle, considering Ty’s hiring probably cost Kate her first marriage. Her ex had been considered the heir apparent for the job, and when he didn’t get the spot, he’d blamed Kate for not using her pull to make his promotion happen. Such bullshit. Still, Kate was happy now.

  He was poised on the verge of telling Millie how much he loved the lines around her mouth, and her laugh, and the sharp tongue she wielded like a weapon, when the flight attendant appeared in the aisle.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” The young woman spared him a conspiratorial glance, then placed a perfectly manicured hand on Millie’s shoulder. “I’m going to need you to stow your bag. Would you like me to lift it for you?”

  Millie looked up, incredulity written all over her face. Without taking her eyes off the woman, she gathered the long leather handles and made a show of trying to lift the tote from her lap. “Oh, no, thank you, dear,” she crooned. “I have this big, strong man to help me.” Ty barely had a chance to process what she’d said before she settled an imploring gaze on him. “What do you say, sweetie? Help your hot mama out, will you?”

  The flight attendant split a perplexed look between them, then recovered her wide smile as she straightened. As if Millie had somehow disappeared, the girl turned her limpid gaze on Ty. “Wonderful. Well, if you or your mother need anything, you let me know.”

  Millie gaped after the girl as she swayed toward the front of the cabin, astonishment shining in her wide eyes. Knowing there was nothing he could say to recover the situation, Ty simply took the tote bag from her grasp and placed it in the overhead compartment. Settling back in his seat, he buckled his seat belt low and snug across his hips, then rolled his head to look at her.

  “I think I get my coloring from you, Ma.”

  She huffed a laugh, then tugged on the end of her own seat belt. “Too bad you didn’t get my smarts, kiddo.”

  They shared a smile, and he watched the last of her pique fade away. Not for the first time, he wondered if she truly was a redhead. She had the flash-fire temper of one, for sure. Mesmerized by the gleam of humor in her eyes, the question slipped out before he could censor himself. “What color’s your hair?”

  One perfectly shaped eyebrow rose. “I think it’s called Strawberry Crushed.”

  His ears burned with embarrassment, but he was in too deep to back out now. “I mean, for real.”

  “I have a thousand inappropriate remarks running through my head right now, but I promised myself I wouldn’t work blue for the cheap laughs.”

  He chuckled and glanced away, the heat traveling from his ears into his cheeks. “Sorry. I was curious.”

  “Brown,” she said with a smirky little smile. “Plain old brown.”

  “Nothing about you is plain.” He shifted a few precious inches closer to her as the clueless attendant took her place for their preflight instructions. He waited until the girl looked directly at him, then reached over and took Millie’s hand from her lap. “Or old,” he added. “Unless you were one of those medical miracles and gave birth at six.”

  She looked down at their clasped hands. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

  “I bet you are.”

  The quick response coaxed another smile from her. She started to extricate her hand, but he held firm. “Ty, this isn’t a good idea—”

  “It’s the best idea.” When she attempted another escape, he pulled her hand over to rest on his thigh. “Takeoff scares me witless.” He held her gaze, unrelenting. “I need you to hold my hand so I don’t cry like a baby.”

  Millie blew out a breath and let her head fall back. “Bullshit.”

  Ty just grinned in response. She made it through the part about seat cushion flotation devices before she glanced at him again. “What happened to your mom?”

  He tossed the question off with a weak shrug. “She left when I was four.”

  A small gasp escaped her, and he squeezed her fingers to show both his appreciation and to reassure her. “We were fine.” He chuckled. “That’s what my dad kept telling me. ‘We’re fine. We’re gonna be fine.’”

  “You never heard from her?”

  He answered with a bitter little laugh. “Oh yeah. She showed up when I was playing college ball. The second the press dubbed me the next Michael Jordan, she came flitting around doing the old ‘that’s my boy’ routine, but I shut her down.”

  “How?”

  He gave her a sad shadow of a smile. “Distract, deflect, deny. You’d have been proud of how well I handled her. Eventually, she went away.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “She hung in for a couple of seasons after the draft. When she realized she wasn’t getting a slice of the pie, she tried manufacturing stories for the tabloids.” He looked up to find the attendants stowing their props. The plane began to taxi toward the runway, but his heart slowed to almost a stop when he saw the stark outrage on Millie’s face. “What?”

  She narrowed her eyes, not th
e least bit put off by his inane question. “Nothing. I hate when people fumble planting a fake story. It’s so damn easy, a child could do it.”

  Ty laughed. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t quite Kobe Bryant and nowhere near M.J. in terms of success. I think Kris Humphries ended up with a better Q score than I ever did, but I didn’t have to get hitched on TV either. Why bother with a headline about a guy no one cares about?”

  Twisting in her seat, Millie crossed her slim runner’s legs and angled toward him. “I love that you know about Q scores.”

  “I think I peaked when I was twenty-two.”

  She shrugged. “Most men do.”

  He grinned. “A myth.”

  “So you would have me believe,” she retorted without missing a beat.

  She gave his hand a gentle squeeze as the plane started down the runway with a roar of engines. Enthralled by the contrast of her skin against his, he traced the lines of her long, slender fingers with his free hand. “I’d like nothing more than to prove my…stamina to you over and over.”

  “You’re a married man.” She uttered the reminder as the nose of the plane lifted. The moment they were wheels up, Millie straightened her fingers in an unspoken demand he release her. “I’ve spent the last week telling the world what an upright kind of guy you are. Don’t make me a hypocrite.”

  Reluctantly, he let her go. But she didn’t put the expected distance between them. Instead, she loosened her seat belt a little, pushed the button to recline, and shifted fully onto her side.

  “It isn’t that I’m not interested,” she said bluntly. “I think we both know I am. I know you are. We like each other, which is both a bonus and an obstacle—”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Bonus, because, hey, we like each other,” she said, throwing up her hands. “It’s also an obstacle because, hey, we like each other.”

  Her delivery on the second part held a note of warning that rang too true to suit his purposes, so he ignored it. The crew moved through the dimly lit cabin, working with the kind of hushed efficiency he equated with hospital waiting rooms and the lobbies of funeral homes. But he wasn’t anyplace so morose. He was on a plane winging his way to the most vibrant city in the country with a woman he’d found fascinating since the day they were introduced. He didn’t want to be hushed or quiet or, heaven forbid, circumspect. For the first time in years, he wanted to draw attention to himself. To her. To the fact that he was the guy she chose to sit beside.

  But of course, she hadn’t really chosen to run away to New York with him. She was going because leading him through the press steeplechase was her job. He was her project. The pathetic part of this whole mess wasn’t his wife leaving him for another guy. No, he worried more Millie could be playing him with this whole “we like each other” spiel, and he was falling for her line. She might be humoring him. Or worse, babysitting to be sure he didn’t go off the deep end live on the National Sports Network. And the only defense he had was to play his kind of up-tempo offense.

  “And your folks?” he asked, pretending their conversation hadn’t taken a sharp left turn at sexual hypocrisy.

  She blinked, and her forehead creased. “What?”

  Pressing his shoulder into the seat, he mimicked the intimacy of her body language as much as the space would allow. “Your parents. Tell me about them.”

  The lines of her brow smoothed, and the wariness in her eyes melted into something close to gratitude but not nearly as standoffish. “What about them?”

  “Anything.”

  She smiled, and he could have sworn she set the whole cabin ablaze. Or maybe only him. Either way, heat pumped through him with every thud of his heart.

  “Nothing much to tell. Still alive. Still married to the first taker. My mom was a teacher, and my dad worked for a small appliance company. They were bought out by General Electric about twenty years ago, and he took an early retirement.”

  “Golf?”

  She shook her head. “He plays poker. Tournament level. She spends whatever he makes at the tables on crafting supplies.”

  He grinned, wondering if Mrs. Jensen had passed the creative gene on to her daughter. “Do you do crafty things?”

  “Well, some people would say I’m pretty clever with a press release, but other than knitting, I leave the crafty stuff to Mom.”

  “And Mr. and Mrs. Jensen live…where?”

  She laughed softly, then gave his attempt to draw her out a pitying, little head shake. “Well, last I heard, they were in Phoenix, but Mr. and Mrs. Piotrawski live outside Atlanta.”

  He peered at her, confused. “What? Who?”

  “My maiden name was Piotrawski. Jensen is my ex-husband’s name.”

  “Ex-husband’s? You were married?”

  This time she actually scoffed. “So hard to believe?”

  “Yes. I mean, no!” He tripped over his tongue, then tried again. “No. Not hard to believe. I mean, I didn’t know.”

  She looked him in the eye. “Why would you?” she asked with a bluntness so characteristically Millie she could trademark it. Still, the question felt like an accusation. He opened his mouth to reply, but she shut him down with an airy wave. “Ancient history. I haven’t seen or heard from John in, God, almost twenty years.”

  “Right.” Ty digested the information. “No kids?”

  “Not a one.”

  He nodded. “But you kept his name?”

  “Jensen is a helluva lot easier to spell than Piotrawski. Makes ordering pizza a snap.” She snapped her fingers to punctuate her assertion.

  Taken off guard, he frowned at her. “It never occurred to me you might have been married before.”

  Millie gasped softly, then pressed her hand to her throat in mock dismay. “You mean you thought I was a virgin?”

  “No, I just…”

  He didn’t complete the thought, so she jumped right into the gap. “…thought I was an old maid?”

  “No!”

  “…hoped maybe I was saving myself for the love of a good man?”

  “Hardly,” he retorted dryly.

  “…never dreamed I’d be the type to host orgies on the weekends?”

  He sighed. “Nothing I can say to stop this now, is there?”

  “Not much,” she agreed amicably.

  “I suppose an invite to one of those orgies is out of the question?”

  “I’ll put you on the waiting list.”

  Never one to pass up an opening, he charged down the lane. “Think maybe a space will become available in about six weeks?”

  “It’s possible,” she said with a coy smile.

  He returned the playful curl of her lips with the broad grin of a man who’d scored on the first drive to the hoop.

  “I do tire of them so quickly,” she mused, almost to herself.

  Ty barked a laugh so compelling, the sound drew the attention of the businessman across the aisle. Shaking his head in awed dismay, he straightened his cramping muscles and sprawled as far as a first-class ticket would allow. “And his shot was blocked, folks,” he murmured to the crowd of air vents and reading lamps above their seats.

  Following his lead, Millie rolled onto her back, a grin spreading across her face as she joined in on his color commentary. “And the crowd goes wild.”

  He shrugged. “I’m known for coming from behind to win.”

  “Again, so many dirty things I could say, but I’d have to take a shower, and this isn’t one of those fancy planes.” She heaved a heavy sigh, placed her hands on her lap, then pointed her stiletto-clad toes as she stretched. “Only plain old first class.”

  “Spoiled brat.” Closing his eyes, he tried to remember the last time he’d smiled so much in such a small amount of time. Had he ever laughed like that with Mari? Probably not. In the beginning, she’d been all sweetness and cha
rm, and he’d wanted nothing more than to be her man. Her protector. But Millie didn’t need any man stepping in to take care of her. Hell, she’d probably knee any guy who tried. And Ty liked that about her. Liked her independence.

  She was right: he liked her. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t want her too.

  * * *

  “So, Ty, you spent five years in the NBA, not playing most of the time, but you still collected a check. Then you spent some time playing in the EuroLeague, trying to prove you had legs under you, but not much came of your time in the league.”

  Ty wanted nothing more than to smack the smug smirk off Greg Chambers’s face, but his clenched fists weren’t the optic he was instructed to present. Swallowing his pride for the fifth time in as many minutes, he leaned forward and propped his elbows on the very legs that had let him down all those years ago. Genial smile plastered on his face, he waited for the question. As usual, Chambers was slow on the trigger, so Ty lobbed a pass. “Well, I did get to see a lot of Russia. Not many guys who grew up in Memphis can say the same.”

  “Do you think the fact you couldn’t cut it has given you some kind of edge in grooming talent to play at a higher level?”

  He had to laugh at the guy’s chutzpah. An English professor would need an hour to parse the question enough to determine whether he’d been complimented or insulted, but Ty didn’t need the time. He knew the source. Greg Chambers had been an above-average but not-quite-great player on a team with three consecutive Final Four finishes.

  Ty’s Eastern Panthers had blocked Greg’s path to undefeated seasons more than once. There’d been more than one strategically thrown elbow whenever they’d matched up. But Ty wasn’t the only enemy the guy had made along the way. Hot-tempered and unable to break through to the next level, Greg Chambers was quickly overshadowed by more talented, less controversial players.

  He came back for his senior year and could have been drafted in the end. But in the final weeks of the season, Chambers managed to have an on-court meltdown of such epic proportions, he’d become a verb. A part of the lexicon of the game. And virtually untouchable.