Page 22 of Play for Keeps

“I’ll be thinking about you too. Probably too much.”

“Good night, Ty.”

“Sweet dreams.”

She ended the call and, out of habit, double-checked to make sure the screen showed they had disconnected. Tossing the phone aside, she reached for the remote and zapped the television as well. Flopping back on the bed, she stared at the ceiling, waiting for her body to give her the go/no-go. Of course, her engines were revving. Sliding her hand under the thin cotton of her shirt, she closed her eyes and pictured Ty sprawled in his seat, ready for takeoff. If she was going to have the kinds of sweet dreams she wanted to have, she’d have to make them happen on her own.

Chapter 6

The first week, he only called her three times. Proof of his near-Herculean strength of will. Each of those occasions, he was careful to make contact during business hours and to have a media-related question ready as an excuse. Even if the ploy was one so lame a child could see through it. He also timed the calls to be sure they didn’t last any longer than ten minutes, though he really wanted to talk to her for hours.

At the end of the third call, she said simply, “You don’t need to make up excuses to call me, Ty. If you want to talk, we can talk.”

Her candor was both a comfort and catalyst. Before he could stop himself, he was calling her daily. Sometimes more. He hoped his father’s arrival the following week would prove to be a distraction, but he wasn’t counting on it curbing the urge altogether. The casual intimacy of their conversations on the plane and over the phone was a revelation. Though Millie’s questions weren’t particularly probing, he’d given her more information than he’d given anyone. He’d never had anything like this openness with Mari, even when things were fresh and new. When his marriage started to flounder, he’d tried to recapture the closeness they’d shared only to discover he and Mari had never had a tight connection.

Talking to Millie made him realize he’d never really had a confidante. Oh, he was close with his father, and they had a good, solid relationship, but delving deep wasn’t their forte. He was lonely. And like a bad tooth or a partially healed bruise, he couldn’t help pushing on the sensitive spot. Acknowledging his loneliness left a dull ache in his gut only the sound of Millie’s voice seemed to soothe.

Feeling something, even the sharp sting of regret, was better than the numbness he’d been living with for too long.

He wanted someone in his life. Not an arm charm or a warm body in his bed, but someone who wouldn’t hesitate to call him on his bullshit. A woman he could talk to without having to parse his words. Someone to guard his back and maybe set a few picks for him in life. A partner. Millie.

He wanted Millie.

The second week he was in Reno, he played a lot of golf. Staying active kept him off the phone, but working up a sweat didn’t stop him from thinking about Millie. Incessantly. And oddly enough, those thoughts weren’t entirely salacious. Mostly but not entirely.

After long days on the course, his father crashed early, leaving Ty with too much alone time after business hours. Every night, he played a little game with himself. How long could he go before he cracked and placed the call? Some nights, his will was pathetically weak. Others, he held strong.

The first time he delayed his gratification as late as eight o’clock, he’d caught her in bed. Stupid time difference. The mental image he conjured played havoc with his swing for the next few days, but the husky welcome in her voice was consolation enough. They talked about everything and nothing. What she had for lunch. His dad’s outlandish golf pants. Whether he could blame his sad performance on the back nine on his custom Pings or if he needed to man up and admit he sucked at the game.

He always ended the call with a smile on his face, even if Millie had been prickly with him. Glutton that he was, he discovered he liked her salty side almost as much as the sweet she tried so hard to hide. Every night, he ticked off another day on his mental calendar. With every conversation, Ty realized he’d thought about hanging around Millie more than any married man should over the years. Still, when he searched his conscience for a hint of guilt, he came up clean. He never acted on the impulse, and if his marriage hadn’t gone south in such a spectacular way, that kiss might never have happened.

All jokes about players being players aside, he simply wasn’t built to be a dog with women. Sure, he’d dated a lot in his younger days, but he’d never been one to juggle relationships. He claimed he didn’t have the skills for keeping multiple women happy, but in reality, he didn’t have the interest. Even in his globe-trotting days playing EuroLeague ball, he’d known he wanted to come home to the States, meet a nice woman, and try to build a family complete with both a dad and a mom.

Lust. He’d been blinded by lust when he met Mari. And she’d been the starry-eyed girl who hung on his stories from his playing days. He never really gave her curiosity much thought. People liked knowing pro athletes whether they were retired or not. Hell, his own father still took great pleasure in holding court with his golf cronies, bragging as if Ty’d dunked a game-winning shot the night before.

By the time his third week in Reno rolled around, he and Millie were on a semiregular schedule. Ty found himself looking forward to their nightly calls more than anything. They hardly consisted of anything earth-shattering. Mostly day-to-day stuff. Millie dished what little gossip she could scrape up on a college campus in the summer session. He told funny stories about his dad and the guys they golfed with each day.

They laughed and teased, keeping the conversation light, but all the while, he was mining for information. Small pieces of Millie he could pretend he alone knew. Like her inexplicable aversion to seeded hamburger buns or the fact that she enjoyed knitting. One night, she’d talked about how devastated she’d been when she lost her grandmother. He told her about the magical inlet in the Greek islands where he’d found peace with the end of his career as a ballplayer.

When things got too deep or too heavy, Millie got them back on track with a quick quip or Sahara-dry observation, but he didn’t let her deflections bother him. Stories were exchanged. The connection was deepening.

At least on his end.

Ty had a hard time figuring out exactly what Millie was thinking or feeling. She was a woman trained to hold her cards close to her vest. Not one to air her every grievance or frustration aloud. If Millie didn’t like something, she found a way to shape what troubled her into something more palatable. Her restraint and determination were qualities Ty found both admirable and frustrating as all hell.

Of course, the juxtaposition between Millie and Mari cut both ways. If Mari had chosen to end their marriage in a more circumspect way, he wouldn’t have gone through all the upheaval that gave him opportunity to spend more time with Millie. Maybe they would have found their way to each other eventually, but if his wife hadn’t publicly humiliated him, he’d have moved slower. He would have gone through the formalities and let a decent interval go by before he even thought about dating.

But his relationship with Mari hadn’t ended with grace and decorum. He’d ignored the snarky tweets she posted with a hashtag #TydDown whenever he dragged her away from her online life to attend one of the many university and booster functions a coach’s wife was expected to attend. He’d also tried to ignore the PicturSpam images of his wife and other men. They’d been popping up here and there for months, but he chose to turn a blind eye. To pretend he didn’t know she was making a chump out of him. But they both knew the jig was up long before Mari packed her bags and loaded them into her car the night before the NBA draft.

She claimed to be in love with Dante Harris. Since Ty couldn’t, in all honesty, make the same declaration concerning his feelings for her, he didn’t try to stop her. When Dante’s name was called in the draft, the first person Dante kissed was his mama—and the second was Ty Ransom’s wife. If ever there was a film clip guaranteed to make the sports world hum with speculation, it was a star player planting one square on his coach’s spouse.

Ty’s quiet life became a circus, and Mari was its scantily clad social media ringmaster. That night, she changed her favorite hashtag to #NotTydDown and proceeded to post photos and video of all the ways she and Dante celebrated, some of them featuring bits and pieces the sports media was required to blur when they aired them.

Part of the agreement their lawyers had made included a cease and desist on all public commentary about their split following the NSN interview with Greg Chambers. As far as Ty knew, Mari had stuck to the bargain, and he certainly wasn’t interested in stirring things up, so all was quiet on the Ransom front. Just the way he liked it.

He could go on with his life. Choose his own furniture. Eat Chinese food straight out of the container while standing there with the refrigerator door wide open. Drink milk from the carton. Leave the toilet seat up. His life was his own again, and he liked having control. Ty considered himself an essentially private man. On leaving the league, he learned to appreciate the simplicity of life outside the limelight. This past month had reminded him how much happier he was when people minded their own business. Therefore, he saw no reason to announce his desire to have private relations with the university’s public relations guru to the world. He was content with the way things were.

Mostly.

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