Page 24 of Play for Keeps

“Have you ever seen me step foot in the fitness center?”

Ty blinked, his whirling thoughts stopped cold. “No.”

“If the little shit thinks he can bully me by fueling Katie’s fire, he’s going to be in for a rude awakening.”

Several parts of her statement leaped out at him. First, Danny McMillan was about as far from a “little shit” as a man could be. Sure, the guy had toned and trimmed his physique from the height of his NFL playing days, but he was still built like a bull. Second, she wasn’t wrong about her “Katie” calling her new husband on his bullshit if she saw fit to. If any person was qualified to deliver a master class on gamesmanship, it was Coach Kate Snyder. And last…he had no fucking idea. He’d lost the handle on the entire conversation when she’d said his voice made her hot.

“My voice makes you hot?”

“Yeah. Sure it does.”

Her confession was glib. Completely offhand. As if he’d asked what color the sky was, and she’d reminded him it was dark outside. A bark of a laugh escaped him. “You’re a piece of work, Millie.”

“About time you noticed,” she answered without missing a beat.

Catching on to the tempo, he grinned as he adjusted his grip on the phone. “You want me to list all the things I’ve noticed about you?”

“Would you?”

This time, he was better prepared for her no-nonsense volley. “Do you play tennis?”

“God, no. What’s the point of doing all that running and never getting anywhere?”

“But you ran track in school?”

“Cross-country,” she corrected. “I’ve never been good at staying inside the lines.”

“I can believe that,” he said. She laughed, and his dick perked up and took notice. “You’re awfully good at this.”

“At what?” she asked, all innocence.

“Keeping the conversation moving, never lighting for very long on one subject. Particularly not when the subject is you.”

He’d swear it wasn’t possible, but her voice dropped even deeper. “Oh, you’re wrong. I’m my favorite subject. Ask me anything.”

Emboldened by her straightforward play, he drove straight to the goal. “What do you do about it?”

“About what?” Her voice rose on a coy note, letting him know she wasn’t the least bit confused by his line of questioning.

“You said my voice makes you hot. When we hang up, do you…handle things?”

“Sometimes I don’t wait until we hang up.”

Zero to one hundred in a split second, he was feeling turbo-charged. “Christ almighty, woman.”

“You asked.”

She lobbed those two little words back at him. A chance and a dare. Now, after weeks of keeping things friendly, comfortable, and strictly aboveboard, she was changing the game and challenging him to play along. Without allowing himself a chance to think better of his actions, he opened the knot on his towel and tossed the now-stifling terry cloth open wide. Blessed cool gusted from the vent above the bed, but the conditioned air offered little relief. Every ounce of restraint he’d cultivated dried up. His body pulsed as if he hadn’t jerked himself raw nearly every night since he’d left her. He was melting down at the core, and he was helpless to resist.

“Millie.”

Her soft sigh wafted through the phone. “You know, I’ve always hated my name.”

He swallowed hard, trying to come up with enough spit to form at least one more syllable. “Why?” he managed to croak.

“Well, it’s not exactly sexy,” she said with a husky laugh. “I’m named after my grandmother. Not much of a surprise. Aren’t too many women my age called Millicent.”

“I like your name. It suits you.”

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