Page 17 of Play for Keeps

Millie’s jaw dropped as realization sank in. She’d made a general note of the flight time when she scanned the itinerary, but she didn’t think to check which side of the meridian they’d be on when he left. “Tonight?”

He nodded. “Might as well get started on my residency.”

“Oh. Wow.” A nervous laugh escaped her. She ran a hand through her hair, then quickly shook the layers back into place. No sense in scaring the man off for good with the Cruella de Vil look. “Yeah, right. Good plan.”

She gulped down a lump of disappointment. In the back of her mind, she’d been playing out a variety of scenarios for the evening. Drinks. Dinner. An interview postmortem designed to slide right into playful flirtation. A chance to see if he liked her enough, wanted her enough to push past the playful part and try to make a play. She’d have to shut him down, of course. He was a married man, and while she claimed to have few scruples, vows were one of them. But it would be nice if he tried…

“I’m following your advice.”

She looked up, taken aback by the assertion. “Mine?”

“Divorce her as quickly as I can.” He stretched his arm across the back of the seat as he leaned toward her. “Get up, get out, and get on with life. That’s what you said.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Pretty easy to say.”

“Surprisingly easy to do,” he countered. “Once the hangover wore off, I mean.”

Tilting her head, she studied him in the not-so-subtle glow of Manhattan at twilight. “You’re not sad?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m not, but I will say I’m not as sad as I think I ought to be.”

Millie pondered his statement. When David left her, her whole world imploded. For years, she felt fragmented and cast adrift. Then they’d run into each other and…nothing.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m not as sad as I should be?”

She wet her own parched lips, then softly cleared her throat. “Uh, no. Your feelings are your own business.”

“You’re not curious?”

Millie pondered his question for a moment, then shook her head. “You know, I didn’t see my ex-husband for over a decade after we signed our divorce papers,” she said quietly. “We met when I was sixteen, divorced when I was twenty-six.” She cast a glance in his direction, trying to gauge his reception as she clarified her stance on the end of her marriage. “He divorced me.”

“The man had to be a fool.”

Millie chuckled. “I thought so too. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t heartbroken for a long, long time.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, so sincerely, her heart gave a dull thud of gratitude. “But you bounced back. I mean, look at you.”

“Took me a while to—as you say it—bounce back.” She smiled as she recalled her metamorphosis. “When I hit my midthirties, I started dating again. With a vengeance,” she added with some relish.

“I’m almost scared for the guys,” he said gruffly. “Or I would be, if I didn’t feel so damn jealous of them.”

“Bought my first vibrator for my fortieth birthday,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken.

“The gift that keeps on giving.”

“Then I ran into David again, and I wondered what the hell I’d been thinking, wasting all that time between him and…anyone else.” She turned to look him directly in the eye. “My point is that I know how you feel, being sad about not feeling more sad.”

“I’m sorry that you do,” he said, enveloping her hand in his much larger one.

The gentleness in his tone almost broke her resolve to keep her distance. Almost, but not quite.

She wasn’t the gullible girl with stars in her eyes, nor was she the desperate parody of the panicked divorcée any longer. Millie knew who she was and what she liked. Cocktails with umbrellas and skewers of fruit she refused to eat, outrageously expensive dark chocolates, and shoes topped the list. A nice, hard fuck came in somewhere in the top five, but depending on the pickings, a hot bath with a good book topped it in the pecking order. She eyed the man sitting beside her, trying to slot where he might rank. As if reading her mind, his eyebrows rose, and his mouth curved into a panty-dampening smile.

The driver hooked a sharp right onto a cross street, and Ty used the change in momentum to his advantage. A shiver zinged down her spine as his arm slipped from the seat to her shoulders. He curled one hand around her upper arm and pulled her closer as he slid across the soft leather seat. She looked up to find him lowering his head.

“Don’t.” She pulled back, making it clear she wasn’t being coy. Darting a glance at the front seat, she ignored the persistent ache low in her belly and forced a tremulous smile. “The driver.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

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