Page 20 of Play for Keeps

Her thumb tapped the callback option before she even had a chance to check the clock. Three minutes after eleven. He’d be boarding soon. One little phone call should be safe enough.

“Hello.”

His voice was warm and deep and put her in the mood for Barry White music and lamps draped with gauzy scarves. “Plan on visiting any brothels while you’re in the great state of Nevada?”

He laughed. A full, rumbling laugh that did little to dispel the red-wallpapered room she’d conjured in her head. “You never know. If the casinos don’t have any good headliners…”

She could see the whole setup perfectly. Of course, her version was highly romanticized and most likely television inspired. Reality was no doubt a fairly businesslike concern, but this was her trip down the rabbit hole. If she wanted piles of pillows, sheets made of satin, and heavy velvet drapes on the four-poster bed she had him tied to in her head, who could tell her no?

“Boarding soon?”

“Let’s get back to the brothel thing,” he teased.

“Not the kind of headline I want to spin. Besides, it’s been done. Promise me you won’t do anything reckless.”

Ty sobered instantly. “My dad is flying out, remember? I’ll probably be playing thirty-six holes of golf each day and listening to the old man heckle me about my slice.”

Dropping onto the bed, she leaned back against the headboard and pulled her knees up under her shirt. “Shift your weight before you start your downswing.”

“You golf?”

“Some,” she replied, relishing his pleased surprise.

“What’s your handicap?”

“The shoes,” she said without hesitation. He laughed again, and she beamed, delighted to have found their easy rhythm once again. “Pick up any good trinkets in the gift shops?”

“I’ve been hanging out in the Captain’s Club.”

“Free drinks?”

“Coffee.”

She nodded. “Good boy.”

“I’m no boy.”

“Man,” she corrected, allowing a sly smile to color the words. “Big, strong, handsome man.”

“Much better.”

“So your dad will be keeping an eye on you. That makes me feel much better.”

“Were you really worried?”

Millie caught a hint of injury in his question and hurried to correct course. “Well, not really, but I wanted to make you feel all badass and loose cannon, because I know guys like to think they are.”

His chuckle told her she’d hit the right note. “Yes, well, I think I perfected my badass loose cannon act last week.”

They lapsed into silence but not the uncomfortable kind. This was easy. Companionable. The quiet was unusual for Millie but not unwelcome. She spent so many hours of the day pitching and talking and promoting, she sometimes found it hard to switch off the ticker in her head. But Ty made the quiet she’d dedicated her life to filling seem almost natural. Almost but not entirely. Nature abhorred a vacuum and all that.

Plucking at the hem of her tank, she asked the question that had niggled at her all day. “Are things really going to be this easy with Mari?”

There was a beat of hesitation so brief, she wasn’t sure anyone else would have noticed, but she did. Her job hinged on her ability to pick up on cues, verbal and nonverbal. Millie only wished she could see him. Pauses were so much more eloquent when one could see the body language accompanying them.

“She’s the one who wants this,” he reminded her.

“You don’t?”

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