Page 11 of Play for Keeps

He reared back as if she’d slapped him across the face.

Panic gripped her by the throat while she scrambled to rewind the last bit of conversation in her head. Sadly, her babbling came across every bit as muddled the second time through. “I mean, I do.” He cocked his head like a quizzical spaniel, and she blew out an exasperated huff. “I like you. There. I said it, okay?”

He opened his mouth to retort, then snapped his jaw shut. Then he smiled. Not one of those broad lady-killer grins but a small, pleased smile that made her feel fluttery inside. Which was disconcerting. She wasn’t a fluttery sort of woman. In fact, she prided herself on her logical, if not surgical, approach to life. She was strong. Decisive. Independent and opinionated. Millie liked to say she was a leader, not a lemming.

Her ex-husband simply called her a ballbuster.

Millie gave her head a hard shake. No sense in dwelling on ancient history. She needed to focus on the present. They were standing mere feet from their boss’s office, acting like a couple of junior high kids trying to decide if they were going to be an item. She needed to make it crystal clear that they couldn’t be one. Ty was still married.

Besides, he hadn’t said he liked her. He’d only asked if she liked him.

The whole thing was nuts. She should be focusing on ways to parlay the media attention into positive press for the university. Instead, here she was, breathing harder than she did in mile seventeen and wondering if he was going to kiss her again. His lips parted as if he’d read her mind. Her gaze zoomed in on his mouth like she was the director of some low-budget porn flick. The ridiculousness of the situation wasn’t lost on her, but she had a hard time mustering a laugh. Acting out of impulse and a healthy dose of self-preservation, she pressed her fingertips to his mouth and tried not to think about how impossibly soft his lips were.

Tried and failed.

“This is neither the time nor the place,” she managed in a desperate whisper.

He nodded almost imperceptibly, the movement so slight he didn’t even dislodge her hand. Millie’s breath caught in a snarl when he pursed his lips and kissed the pads of her fingertips. Curling her fingers into her palm, she let her hand fall to her side.

“Pick me up at six,” he ordered in a low, gruff voice. When she was slow to respond, he quirked a challenging brow. “You remember where I live, right?”

A strangled laugh escaped her, and she ducked her head, amused by his audacity. The drunk and discombobulated man was long gone. No sight of him all week. Thank God. In his place stood this quiet warrior, committed to doing what he needed to do to reclaim his life. And damn if his determination wasn’t as attractive as all get-out.

Chapter 4

The seats in first class were roomy, but they weren’t spacious enough for Ty. And he wasn’t bitching about the legroom. Hell, a court’s length of space could stretch between them, and his skin would still prickle every time Millie moved.

“I can’t believe they booked us first class,” she said for the tenth time.

They didn’t, he thought, pressing himself into the corner of his leather seat so he could watch her.I did.With her wild-cherry hair and ruthlessly coordinated cream-and-gold outfit, she looked like some kind of exotic butterfly. One who wore stiletto heels to tramp through the airport and pulled a pink-and-purple polka dot wheelie bag. She looked up to be sure he was still an active participant in her one-sided conversation, then returned to rummaging through the enormous tote bag she called a purse.

“Every time I’ve flown before, they booked me in coach.”

He stretched his legs out as far as the high-dollar seating would allow, then shrugged. “I can’t sit in coach.” She looked up, her eyes bright and inquisitive over the rims of the cheetah-print half-glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Well, I can, but I’d have to buy the whole row to have enough leg room. It’s actually cheaper for me to fly first class.”

She blinked and cocked her head to the side. “You know, I never thought about that,” she confessed.

Pleased to have found a topic other than his upcoming appearance as Greg Chambers’s whipping boy, he nodded. “I order my furniture custom too. Particularly couches and beds.” He tried to focus more on the relief he felt when his drool stain came out of the Ultrasuede sofa than the thought of chasing Millie around his outsized bed. The best way to do so was to talk about the elephant between them. “I would have had the kitchen and bath counters lifted, but that wouldn’t have worked for Mari.”

“I never thought about that either. What a pain.”

He chuckled. “I should have stopped eating my Wheaties, huh?”

Millie laughed and extracted a pack of chewing gum from her bag of tricks and offered him a stick. “I bet you cost your poor parents a fortune to feed.”

“Most of the time it was only me and my dad. And yeah, I remember the grocery bill being pretty outrageous.” Ty smiled as he waved her offering away. The memory of his father standing at the stove in his work pants, the sleeves of his shirt rolled back to avoid catching splatters as he stirred, filled Ty’s head. “God, he was a horrible cook. It’s a wonder we didn’t both starve.”

She laughed and unwrapped a stick of gum for herself. “He never got better?”

Ty stared, transfixed by the way she bent the pliant piece into an accordion against her tongue. A waft of fruity sweetness tickled his nostrils. He glanced down at the pack she’d tossed back into the cavernous bag, shaking his head as he noted she preferred watermelon gum to anything as boring as mint or cinnamon.

“No,” he whispered with an affectionate smile.

“Is he still with us?”

The cautious note in her voice snapped him out of his stupor. He wasn’t exactly sure what they were supposed to be talking about, so he responded with a noncommittal, “Hmm?”

She flipped her reading glasses up onto her head and met his eyes. “Your dad. Is he still alive?”

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