Page 41 of Make the Play

I narrow my eyes, circling the table and stepping closer to her. “An observation, huh?”

“Mhmm.” She taps her cue stick against the floor, watching me with that impossibly smug expression. “It’s just distracting, you know?”

My brows lift. “Me?”

Shealmostsmiles. “The staring.”

Two can play this game, sweetheart.

“Maybe I just like what I see.”

Her lips part just slightly, so fast someone else might miss it. But I don’t, I never do.

Then, quick as anything, she rolls her eyes. “See that? That’s exactly why you have a PR crisis right now.”

“Yeah?”

“A little humility wouldn’t kill you.”

I lean in slightly, lowering my voice. “But then I wouldn’t beme,sweetheart.”

She makes a deeply unimpressed sound, and leans down to take her final shot. Stretching out across the green felt table, she looks up at me. “You sure you’re okay over there? You look a little tense.”

I don’t answer. Just watch in horrified silence as she gets ready to sink the ball—the shot that will end me.

CRASH!

The unmistakable sound of a bar fight breaks out behind us. Just a couple of drunk idiots shoving each other, knocking overstools, nothing serious. Gary’s shouting obscenities and moving them along before I feel the need to get involved. But it’s just enough of a distraction to make Zoe flinch, sending the cue ball spinning straight into the wrong pocket.

For a moment, neither of us reacts. Then I laugh. It bursts out of me loudly, triumphantly, and definitely a little unhinged.

Zoe whips around to face me, so fast her hair swishes with the motion. Her mouth drops open, and her eyes blaze with that I-will-bury-you-in-litigation look I’ve learned to fear and respect.

“That doesn’t count,” she snaps. “That was an interference!”

I hold my hands up. “You sunk the wrong ball. You lost.”

Her glare sharpens, heat rising in her cheeks. “That wasnota fair win.”

“Listen,” I say, grinning, “I didn’t start the fight. It’s not my fault fate intervened.”

She crosses her arms, weight shifting onto one hip, looking so outrageously pissed off that I can’t help but love her.

Wait.

No, I don’t.

“Rules are rules, sweetheart.”

She exhales sharply, cursing under her breath and dragging a hand through her hair. Then, after a long pause, she mutters, “Fine. But I have conditions.”

“Oh, Iloveconditions.”

“One. No touching in public unless I initiate.”

“What if you fall over and I have to—”

Her eyes narrow.

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