Page 99 of Love Game

He chuckled. “You are a party animal.”

“Danny, I’m tired. I’ve been on the road or on the phone with my agent for the past two weeks. I just want to get on that plane and get away for a while.”

“You just want to go home and watch the NBA draft.”

She flashed a sheepish smile. “Well, it’s been twenty years since Wolcott has had a first-round prospect coming out of the men’s program. I’m excited for Ty.”

He leaned in and placed a tender kiss at the center of her forehead. “Okay. We’ll make it quick. Then we’ll go home and turn on NSN while you pack your bikini.”

She snorted, then hauled him back for a better kiss. Right smack on the lips. “My bikini isn’t the star of the show. Wait until you see the Speedo I scored for you. We’re talking Mark Spitz 1976 red, white, and blue for my all-American boy. I thought it would be fitting, with the Fourth of July coming up and all.”

Unperturbed by the threat, he disentangled himself and gestured toward the door to the bar. “I bet I’ll look awesome in it.”

“I bet you will too with your big, powerful, former football player bod,” she cooed. But competitive annoyance surged as she yanked the handle on the heavy wooden door. He would look awesome, even in a ridiculous suit like that. As if she’d allow him to wear such a thing. The man attracted enough female attention just walking around in his coach khakis and a golf shirt.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she found him wearing his mind-reader smirk. She was conjuring a zinger to wipe that smidge of smug off his face when they stepped across the threshold and were hit by a wall of noise. Not the usual cacophony of clinking glasses and shrieking coeds but one cohesive shout of “Surprise!”

Before she realized what was happening, Millie enveloped her in a perfumed hug. “Happy wedding day!”

“Wait, what?” Kate squirmed, trying to break free from Millie’s grasp. Her resistance was futile. She may have had a height and muscle advantage on her friend, but Millie had a strength of will that made fire-forged iron look as flexible as aluminum foil.

“You said you were going to have a wedding, but then you didn’t do anything,” Millie shouted over the barroom hubbub.

“I’ve been gone,” Kate reminded her.

“And tomorrow you leave for your honeymoon. Well, you can’t have a honeymoon without a wedding, missy,” she said starchily. She clamped a hand around Kate’s wrist like a manacle and pulled. “Come on.”

In the blink of an eye, Kate found herself torn from Danny’s side and swallowed by the crowd. Summer sessions had started early in June, but the crowd was still much thinner than usual. She waved to Mike Samlin and his wife, and they raised their hands in return. She spotted the track and field coach, her own assistants, as well as a couple of Ty’s from the men’s team, and, surprisingly enough, Dominick Mann, Wolcott’s enigmatic baseball coach.

“How’d you get Dom Mann to come?” Kate shouted into Millie’s ear.

Millie shrugged. “I asked.”

“I’ve invited him to a hundred things,” Kate complained. “He never comes to anything.”

Millie’s steps slowed as they wound through a knot of revelers near the dartboards. “I’m a lot more charming than you are,” she replied with a saccharine-sweet smile.

Kate laughed. “Bullshit.”

“And less intimidating,” Millie added. “Believe it or not, Katie, not all men are as enthralled by your Wonder Womanness as dear Danny.”

Craning her neck, Kate scanned the crowd for more familiar faces. Her steps faltered when she caught the profile of a man seated at the small table she, Millie, and Avery usually shared, but Millie yanked her along like a steam engine. They were heading for the ladies’ room at the back of the bar, full speed ahead.

Once inside, Millie released her arm, but Kate was immobilized by a spindly missile aimed right at her torso.

“Oh, Aunt Katie,” her niece Kylie crooned as she hugged her tight. “You’re getting married.”

Kate ran her hand over the girl’s dishwater-blond hair, a soft smile curving her lips as she allowed herself to be squeezed with the anaconda-like enthusiasm of an almost-thirteen-year-old. No point in quibbling over the technicalities that took place at the courthouse weeks before. With Kylie here, whatever Millie had cooked up for these festivities would be family official.

Patting her niece’s bony back, she nodded. “That’s what I hear. Too bad no one told me, or I would have dressed better.”

Kylie drew back and stared at the cropped capris and washed-thin T-shirt Kate wore with a look of horrified distaste only an adolescent girl could pull off. She hesitated when she spotted Kate’s brightly colored sneakers.

“Well, the shoes are pretty,” Kylie said at last.

Kate preened, both at the compliment and the fact that she and her beloved girl shared some similar interests. She and her sister, Audrey, had struggled their whole lives to find common ground, but Kylie seemed to be the perfect meld of the two of them. Someone cleared their throat with a loud “Ahem,” and Kate looked up to find her sister standing beside the lone toilet stall, a long white garment bag suspended by her fingers.

“Oh. Hey, Aud,” Kate said, reluctantly untangling herself from Kylie’s gangly embrace. “You’re here.”

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