Page 23 of Love Game

Millie rolled her eyes, showing off the long, subtly curled fringe. “I once told you I went to a party where they injected botulinum into my forehead, and you’re shocked that I wear fake eyelashes?”

“Everyone makes questionable choices,” Kate said with mock solemnity.

“Like sleeping with Jim Davenport?”

Kate threw her hands up and stalked away. “I thought you liked Jim.”

Millie’s kitten heels clicked on the pavement, but Kate didn’t slow. She was still struggling to get a handle on the disturbing ambivalence she felt each time she thought about her upcoming date. She didn’t need Millie’s razzing on top of it.

The dating dance she and Jim had been doing had gone on long enough. Their timing was finally on target. And now, after months of haranguing Kate to push for more, her best friend was doing a one-eighty.

So Kate pulled one of her own.

She spun, and Millie thumped into her, carried by the momentum she’d gained in those ridiculous shoes. “Hey!”

“You’ve been after me for months to do this,” Kate hissed.

Millie smoothed her hair back from her face and straightened to her full five foot three. “That was before Danny McMillan came to town.”

Kate’s eyes popped in disbelief. Did Millie have some kind of psychic power? She needed to deny, deflect, de-Danny this conversation as quickly as possible.

“You can’t be serious. The man—”

Millie held up a preemptory hand. “I’m not saying you should sleep with him.” She paused, pursing her lips as she considered, then shook off the thought. “No. Definitely not. It would spoil the chemistry.”

“There’s no chemistry!”

“Sweetie, the two of you have so much chemistry there’s been talk of handing out hazmat suits to the entire athletics department, but I need you to hold off for a while.”

“I’m not going to sleep with Danny McMillan,” Kate said through gritted teeth.

“Yet.” Millie threw an apologetic smirk in with her qualifier. “I need some time to build the story, so don’t jump him yet.”

“I’m not jumping him.” Kate huffed. “And wasn’t the picture you posted on Twitter bad enough?”

The snapshot of Kate and Danny had been taken at a staff meeting. Whoever snapped it just happened to catch the moment when the two of them had swiveled away from one another. But the earnest look on Mike Samlin’s face made it appear intentional. As if his two high-profile coaches couldn’t bear to look at one another.

“It’s working. People like the whole Bobby Riggs versus Billie Jean King angle.”

“We aren’t tennis players.”

Millie’s face brightened, and the worry lines that defied her beauty experiments disappeared. “I didn’t think of an actual matchup,” she murmured.

Wary of the speculative gleam in her friend’s eye, Kate decided it was time to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all. She spoke slowly, so Millie couldn’t blame her enunciation skills for any lack of understanding. “I’m having dinner with Jim Davenport. That dinner will most likely lead to sex. At least, I hope it does. It’s been too damn long, and I’m starting to worry about rust.”

Millie’s face softened as she linked her arm through Kate’s and propelled her toward the mall entrance. “You’re not going to rust.”

“Just last month, you were giving me the ‘use it or lose it’ speech.”

“Then I saw what you could have.”

“What makes you think I could have Danny McMillan?”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you aren’t looking.”

“When?”

“Staff meeting.”

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