Page 31 of Play for Keeps

“Errrrrrgh!” Avery made the buzzer noise again, then glanced at Kate. “I’m going to need a ruling on this.”

Kate pulled back in surprise. “A ruling on what?”

“Can an implication be somewhat dirty?” Avery persisted.

Kate’s brow creased as she gave the concept consideration. “Well, yeah. I think so. I mean, an implication is by nature vague, so the connotation of an implication can be vague as well, can’t it?”

When Kate looked to Millie for backup, she held up both hands in self-defense. “I’m not the professor here.”

The two of them zeroed in on Avery, and Millie drew a calming breath as they joined forces to bounce her request for a ruling back at her. But Avery, being Avery, threw her head back and laughed, accepting the parry with grace. The younger woman could be bold to the point of aggressive, but she wasn’t the least bit cowed by being proved wrong or reluctant to admit when caught out.

“Fine. Implications, connotations, and ambiguities,” she chanted.

“Oh my!” Kate grinned, tickled by the verbal byplay. But simple amusement wasn’t enough to knock Kate Snyder off her game. The unwavering intensity Kate brought onto the court zoomed in on Millie. “Be as vague as you want, but anything you don’t tell us, we’ll fill in with our own versions.”

Resigned, Millie gave up the struggle. “We kissed. He called. Things were said,” she recapped.

“Can we get a little clarification on the ‘things’ bit?” Avery signaled the waitress for another round of drinks, then drained her own glass. “Not the dirty things, the other stuff. The general tenor, so we can better parse the subtext.”

Millie treated her friend to her own version of the impatient eye roll. “Okay. We discussed some of the finer points of the attraction between us—”

“Saw this coming from the get-go,” Kate interjected.

“From the start,” Millie conceded with a regal dip of her head. “I wasn’t alone in indulging some less-than-professional thoughts about him.”

“God, I love it when she gets all choosy with the words,” Avery murmured.

Millie paused as a perky coed in short shorts and a skintight shirt emblazoned with Greek letters delivered their drinks. To buy a little more time, she plucked the umbrella and uneaten fruit garnishes from glass number one and added them to the second before allowing the girl to take the melted dregs of her daiquiri away.

“Tell me, in any of these ‘less-than-professional thoughts,’ was Ty perhaps wearing those tight shorts like Magic Johnson used to wear?” Kate raised hopeful eyebrows. “I bet he’d look great in them.”

Avery cast a wistful sigh. “Ah, the days of guy thighs. I miss tight baseball pants too. I swear, they’re killing all the eye candy in sports. Then again, I don’t have a lot of luck with the baseball players.”

“Since when do you know anything about baseball players?” Kate demanded.

“Since the night of your wedding party,” Millie supplied, filling their friend in on what she’d missed while romping around on the beach. “Miss Avery made a play for Dominic Mann.”

“No,” Kate gasped, her gaze shooting to Avery, then back to Millie for confirmation.

“She’s been tight-lipped about it,” Millie said pointedly.

Avery shrugged. “Nothing to tell. I struck out.” She blinked beguilingly at her friends. “See what I did there? I sports-talked.”

“Very good,” Kate commended warmly.

“I’m into soccer now,” Avery added. “Did you know soccer guys wear knee-highs?”

Millie blinked in surprise. “You think those are sexy?”

“I’ve found a way to twist it into some variation of the Catholic-school-girl thing.”

“You are twisted,” Millie declared.

“Sauce for the gander.” Avery toasted her with the scotch, took a sip, then shuddered as she gulped the alcohol down. “But back to the thighs at hand. I mean, the guy we’re talking about,” she corrected with a smirk. “Tyrell Ransom, Coach Handsome, the fella about to be divorced and man voted most likely to tear up Ms. Millie Jensen’s sheets.” She planted an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. “Tell us about the phone sex. You can go word for word with that. Maybe we can help figure out where you went off the rails.”

Tiring of interrogation cloaked in conversation, Millie decided to charge right into the fray. “One night he called, the conversation went to a…more intimate place, and we backed our words up with deeds. But then Ty told me he didn’t want to do it again. He babbled something about saving things until he got back, and then the phone calls became a little too tense, so I backed off on talking to him, then…nothing.”

“Bupkus,” Avery added with a sad wag of her head.

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