Page 28 of The Wedding Deal
Charlotte had been on edge all day. For one, she’d climbed her balcony like some kind of lunatic last night, all to save a few measly minutes of being around Lance. Because she’d started to drop her walls. To drift closer to him. To reveal things she hadn’t meant to reveal.
So naturally she’d hurdled a too-tall balcony in a skirt and ended up stuck enough that he’d had to put his hands on her butt to help her over the rail. While he’d done it as respectfully as anyone could when it came to palming your ass, it’d made her way too aware of the size of his hands and the strength of his arms.
Even this morning as they’d been working, she kept getting distracted by his rounded shoulders. The dark hair on his corded forearms. Their interim office smelled like him, too, all masculine and divine, and she’d spent the morning on pins and needles, purposely putting space between them.
Now they were preparing to play football, where there’d be no space. Bonus, it’d also probably end with her falling flat on her ass or in an ungraceful nosedive.
The fact that Lance had gone from buttoned up to buttoned down wasn’t helping matters. The T-shirt and board shorts brought out his sporty side, and the Mustangs baseball hat managed to highlight his scruff even more.
He tossed the ball in the air and caught it, again and again, his movements precise yet second nature. No thought to the throw. The spin of the ball. The way it made those muscles she kept staring at stand out even more—the short-sleeved T-shirt could hardly contain his arms and pecs andomigosh stop checking out his body.
Several beachgoers were sprawled out on towels in scattered groups while others splashed and played in the waves. Families. Single people. Couples. Friends. People everywhere she looked. “So many witnesses.”
She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Lance glanced at her, a crooked grin on his face. “We’ve been out here for less than five minutes, and you’re already contemplating killing me?”
“That implies I ever stopped.”
He chuckled, juggled the football to his left hand, and then reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Relax. We’re gonna practice catching and throwing, and like we said last night, we’re just gonna play for fun.”
“You and your brother were making bets on who’d win.Expensivebets.” It made her skin itch to think about the dollar amounts they’d thrown out. They were silly bets between brothers, but she’d been around her dad when he’d put a lot of money on the line and lost. As solid as her internal stats calculator was, occasionally players had an off game. Or weather or officials came into play—so many variables, not to mention that bitch, Lady Luck, or fate or karma or whatever you wanted to call it…
She’d been blamed for some of those losses. Thousands of dollars here and there, but then Dad would get up again. He’d crave that next adrenaline rush and risk more. Her gut sank as she recalled being yelled at over a Super Bowl game he’d lost five figures on. Or so she’d thought, because they’d had a fight about the amount he was gambling.
Then he revealed it wassixfigures, and money he didn’t have. His decision making turned from bad to worse, and she didn’t want to think now about the snowball effect of that loss.
“Okay, so my brother and I are super competitive. But it’s all in good fun, I swear.”
A band formed around her lungs, growing tighter and tighter as the memories and pressure began slowly suffocating her. “What if you lose because of me?”
“Wow, now who’s got the ego, thinking you can determine the entire outcome of the game?”
She fired a dirty look at him, which was starting to feel like her main form of communication with the guy, but after last night she couldn’t throw her usual fire into it, and his grin made it clear he was far from scared. Every moment since they’d dipped their toes into the ocean—even their bickering—was starting to feel less tension filled and more…more.
He stepped a little closer, plenty of taunting creeping into the curve of his mouth. “Haven’t you heard the no ‘I’ in team speech?”
She yanked the ball out of his hands and took a provoking step of her own. “Haven’t you heard the one about the HR rep who spiked a football in her boss’s face for being so frustrating?” She even cocked her arm as if she were going to follow through on her threat.
“With all these witnesses?” Another smug grin spread across his stupidly perfect face. “Think of the due diligence.”
Well, what do you know? He is pretty good at the jokes.
“Also, your form’s all wrong.” He maneuvered behind her and nudged her elbow down a few inches. “Think ninety degrees. If all your weight’s on the front foot to start, you’ve already lost your momentum, so”—he gripped her hips and swiveled the right one back—“you want about seventy percent on the back leg, thirty on the front.”
She set up, doing her best to ignore the way her blood rushed to his hand on her hip and focus on his instructions. “Take a second to aim, and when you throw, flip the weight distribution, going an extra ten or so percent on the forward leg.”
Lance guided her arm forward in a practice throw, his chest bumping her shoulder as his breath warmed her temple. “Make sure to follow through.”
A pleasant shiver tiptoed down her spine, and she forgot how to breathe.
Yeah, she’d forgotten how to do something vital to life, even with decades of practice, so she wasn’t going to hold her breath on her follow-through magically improving.
Or apparently she was going to, but in an incognizant way that…man, he smelled good.
“Charlotte?”
“Hmm?” His instructions and the reason they were standing so close, his body wrapped around hers, came barreling back to her. “I mean, yeah. That makes sense. Aim, swivel, throw. I think I got it.”
He stepped back to give her space, and she set up the way he’d showed her. The percentages on weight distribution helped—she was good at percentages. Silently chanting the things he’d told her in her mind, she hurtled the ball.
