Page 5 of Play for Keeps

Damn.

He winced as he peeled his cheek off the cushion. A dark patch marked the spot where he’d drooled in his sleep.Stupor, he corrected, pushing up on shaky arms. He hadn’t been asleep; he’d been sleeping off an epic bender. One that started the minute Millie walked out his door.

Tired of women leaving him high and dry, he’d decided to get wet. Soused.

Ty swung his feet to the floor. His knees popped and creaked, as usual. His head thumped like a subwoofer. His vision swam and his stomach lurched. The second he felt the bile rise, he slammed his eyes shut again.

Funny, he’d always considered the floor-to-ceiling windows in the great room an asset. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. The massive panes of reflective glass allowed an obscene amount of light into the room. Sliding his parched tongue over cracked lips, he grunted and forced himself to sit up straighter. This injury was self-inflicted. “Man up,” he whispered.

Shuffling across the room, he marveled at the fact that he’d managed the distance to the wet bar. The bottles markedvodkaandscotchstood empty. Only the bourbon survived, but it had taken a hit as well.

Millie hadn’t been far off in her assessment on how much it would take to get him drunk. No surprise. Millie was rarely wrong.

Ignoring the mini fridge stocked with bottles of imported water, he flipped on the tap, held a glass under the faucet, then guzzled all he managed to capture in three big gulps. Two glasses later, he started to feel reconstituted. He filled the tumbler one more time, then hazarded a look around. The television remote sat squarely on the arm of the chair. Other than the spotted sofa and the empty liquor bottles, the room didn’t appear to be any worse for wear. But his phone was missing.

He stood still and listened for the chirp again. He wasn’t sure if the noise was a notification or the sound of the battery’s death throes. A true man of the millennium, he’d never allowed his phone to run all the way down. God forbid he risk missing something. Until this week, he might have counted his phone among his favorite possessions, and he had a lot of possessions.

But ever since a tip from one of his assistant coaches pointed him toward his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s PicturSpam account, his precious phone had slipped down a few notches in the rankings. Incriminating photos. She hadn’t only made a fool of him with the man she was now calling her “soul mate.” Oh, no. Once people got to talking, it came out that she’d had inappropriate relationships with at least three of his former players and the assistant who’d taken a job with their biggest rival.

Mari had been restless and unhappy with his lack of high-profile success; he knew that. He just didn’t know how far afield she’d strayed in the two short years they’d been at Wolcott until he saw that picture.

The phone bleeped again.

Narrowing his eyes at the oversized armchair, he approached with caution. His cell wasn’t on the arm or under the cushion. He ran his fingers along the crevice between the seat and the arms and back. Nothing. Frustrated and aching, he dropped into the chair and stared up at the dark television screen. If he waited, the damn thing would beep again, and he’d get a better bead on its whereabouts. Propping his elbow on the armrest, he cradled his aching head. Two fingers pressed into his temple helped alleviate the worst of the pounding. He leaned into the relief.

He’d almost dozed off when “War Cry” blasted once more.

Hurling himself from the chair, Ty let loose with a cry of his own as his reconstructed knee hit the floor.Bionic man my ass, he thought as he swung his head around, desperate to find the source. He blinked as a beam of sunlight bounced off the glass screen. He lunged for the screaming device, swiping his hand across the glass as if he were a grizzly set to tear the damn thing to shreds in order to make the ringtone stop.

“Hello,” he growled.

“Good morning,friend.”

The husky rasp combined with the intimate greeting did a myriad of things to him. A flush burned deep beneath his skin. His sluggish thoughts slowed to a near halt, then jumped into hyperdrive as a series of images and remembered sensations rocketed through his brain. Millie Jensen slipping through his back door. Cherry-cola-red hair. Bright-eyed determination. Long, lithe arms. Bare but not naked. No, he hadn’t gotten her naked. A realization that filled him with relief and disappointment.

Millie’d popped up at his patio door wearing some kind of silky black tank top over skinny black pants. A cat burglar in zebra-print shoes.

Cigarette pants. That’s what Mari had called them. The term suited Millie. The deep, throaty timbre of her voice would lead anyone to believe the woman chain-smoked Marlboros all day. But she didn’t. Millie was a distance runner. Had been since her high school days, she’d told him. Each year, she entered and completed one of the big marathons. Boston. New York. Chicago. She’d pounded the pavement in all those cities and more. And finished with impressive if not news-making time.

He wasn’t surprised she would make a good showing. Everything about Wolcott’s public relations guru was sleek, streamlined, and ruthlessly vetted. The lines of her clothing suited her to perfection. As did the flamboyant animal prints and outrageous colors she chose. Millie didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do, and what she did do, she did breathtakingly well.

Even kissing.

And Ty certainly remembered laying one on his good friend Millie the night before. Mortification mixed with a smidge of pride as he tried to figure out exactly how to respond to her greeting. As always, he did what he did best—pressed until he was forced to fall back. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

“Sleep well?”

Ty didn’t know how it was possible for a woman who sounded like a veteran truck-stop waitress to coo, but somehow, Millie pulled it off. “Like a baby,” he grumbled.

“I bet.”

Every word left unspoken sizzled and popped in the silence that followed. Weakened by dehydration and the harsh sunlight, Ty closed his eyes, then covered them with his hand for added protection. “I had the strangest dream…”

The opening hung like a buzzer beater hurled from the half-court line. He counted three full seconds off the clock before she took mercy on him and went up for the alley-oop. “Did you? Was I in it?”

“You were the star.”

Millie laughed. As expected, she had few girlish giggles or glass-shattering squeals in her repertoire. Only a low, gravelly chuckle that let him know she knew exactly what had gone on in his dream. Because his fantasies had actually come to life. After nearly two years of keeping his hands shoved firmly in his pockets, he’d given in to the impulse that had seized him the first time he’d laid eyes on Millie. He’d seized her. Kissed her. Finally. But the scene hadn’t played out in any of the millions of ways he’d imagined.

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