Page 2 of Play for Keeps

“I’m working,” she reminded him. “I’ll try to be a better pal when I’m off the clock.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Setting her jaw, she studied him, measuring his readiness to step up to the line on this one. “First of all, we have to keep you off the phone. Then, we need to spin your marital situation: amicable split, coming for a long time, you wish her well, blah, blah, blah. When they start lobbing questions about Dante, we keep the focus on your contributions to his NBA career.”

“So you don’t think I should go on TV and tell the press I want to take a baseball bat to his shins?”

She blinked, surprised by even the hint of violence coming from this quiet giant of a man. “Do you?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Kinda.”

“Over her? Really?” The questions, three simple words tinged with seven shades of disbelief, popped out before she could stop them. “I thought you two were pretty much done before all this.”

The air between them sizzled and cracked with tension. At last, he ran a hand over his close-cropped hair and down to knead the muscles in his neck. “No. Not over her.”

“Then why?”

The corners of his mouth curled up in a rueful smile, but she didn’t see even a glimmer of happiness in his eyes. When he spoke, he enunciated each word slowly, as if he were forced to explain his reasoning to a particularly slow toddler. “Because I envy his court time. His career. His future.” He flung one long arm out. “He’s just starting out. No injuries. Nothing holding him back. He’s going to have the career I never had.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Then this could be the strangest midlife crisis ever.”

He held up both hands. “Hey, I’m not having a crisis, and this is not my fault.”

His palms looked to be about the size of salad plates. A fact Millie had long found intriguing. But this wasn’t the time or place to speculate about how great it would feel to have those big mitts all over her. She could let her fantasies loose later. When she was alone.

Besides, the defensive note in his denial told her he wasn’t quite as cool with his wife leaving him for one of his NBA-bound players as he wanted her to think. Feeling the need to do something, anything, to make him realize she was on his side, she reached out and gave his arm an awkward pat. “No. No, it’s not. And I am sorry.”

He looked down at her hand, a smirk curving his lips as she yanked her fingers away a tad too quickly. “Wow. You really suck at the sympathy thing.”

Millie had the good grace to grimace. “I’ve never been very touchy-feely.”

Ty cocked his head. “I’m surprised.”

“Are you?”

He took a half step closer. “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman to shy away from anything.”

Proved how much he knew about her. It was all she could do to hold her ground. Not because she was scared of him. More that she might not be able to keep her own impulses in check. Ty Ransom was not only tall, built, and too handsome for his own good, but he was also sweet and funny in a self-deprecating way that most successful jocks never quite mastered. A flutter of nerves tightened her belly.

Flattening her hand on her midriff to quell the internal uprising, she plastered her public-relations smile on her face. “Well, I do like a good fight.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“That’s why I’m here. We don’t have to let the press run this thing. Take control of your message instead of spouting off. Make the story the one you want to tell.”

“I don’t see what there is to control,” he said with feigned nonchalance. “My wife left me for a first-round draft pick. Can hardly blame the woman for upgrading, can you?”

“Well, truthfully—”

“He’s got two working knees, more vertical lift than I had on my best day, and according to our good friend Brittany at NSN”—he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper as he referred to the perky, blond reporter from the sports network—“charisma.” He nodded to the darkened screen, then shrugged. “God knows Brittany would know.”

“Brittany doesn’t know squat.”

He guffawed. “You do have a way with words.” He crossed to the wet bar and plucked another clean glass from the shelf. “You’re hired.”

“Thanks, but I already have a job.”

“See? You don’t even want me,” he muttered as he pulled the stopper off a decanter. “Charisma,” he growled. “Don’t think I ever had any, even when I had game.”

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