Page 11 of Naked

Extremely talented. If I weren’t so confident I might begin to feel intimidated by all the awesome around me.

* * *

We droppedAdam and Elizabeth off in Kentucky and then we were alone in a private jet with several hours all to ourselves. In an ideal situation I knew exactly how I’d spend time high in the sky with a beautiful woman.

This was not an ideal situation.

Tilley sat across from me—not beside me—like she was watching a live tiger be transported by plane without a cage. But it was okay. I never expected her to simply accept that we could still be friends...friends who might be more. I knew she had a predetermined set of rules and parameters that she believed controlled the world.

Namely that she was too nerdy to be interesting to a ballplayer and that ballplayers couldn’t be interested in anyone who wasn’t a supermodel. I never uncovered where she came up with these rules, but no amount of reality seemed to convince her she might be wrong.

For one, my best friends weren’t dating supermodels. In fact, there was only one guy on the team who exclusively dated celebrities. Everyone else dated softball players, fellow athletes, were married to their college sweethearts. Things like that.

Or there were the two people we’d just shared a plane with. In just a short time with them it was clear that both Adam and Elizabeth were very smart. Adam was once a race car driver. And yet they were happily married, too. Tilley’s rules simply didn’t make any sense at all.

But the only way to get her to understand that was to fight fire with fire. Therefore I’d spent a good amount of time over the last six months coming up with some rules of my own.

“Tilley?”

Her pretty green eyes widened a bit and locked onto mine. “Yes?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

She didn’t move for several beats, then shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Have I ever deceived you or even misled you?”

Her answer was much faster this time. “No.”

“So, logically, you should trust me. Believe what I say?” I hated that it was necessary to point out my trustworthiness, but it was what it was. Tilley simply wasn’t built to automatically trust people.

“Yes. I trust you.”

I very much wanted to move across the table, to sit beside her and pull her against me, but in order to establish the rule of law for this trip, I needed to remain where I was until she agreed.

To everything.

“Then for the rest of the trip you should believe me without reservation.”Rule #1.“It will make things much easier for both of us if you stop overthinking my motivations with the assumption I’m the villain.”

“You’re not the villain. You’re not evil at all!”

If onlyshebelieved herself. Everything would be much easier if she weren’t so smart she outsmarted herself. “You treat me like the villain. You second guess my reasons, you tell me I don’t mean what I say, you think the worst of me.”

Her mouth opened as if she were going to protest, but instead got stuck that way. Her red hair hung like a cloud around her, the large curls maddeningly sexy. It was hair. Why did I find itsexy?And yet I did. I found itverysexy. Her green eyes were bright and always reminded me of jewels or the grass of a healthy outfield, but jewels were more romantic, so I tried to stick with that thought instead of the other. And her lips were full and shapely, which was why it was hard to concentrate when she was confused, like she was now.

Then she snapped her mouth shut and glared at me. “I see your point. I will revise my behavior going forward.”

“Thank you.”Onto Rule #2.“From here on out we’re friends again. No matter what.” My eyes were drawn back to her lips. I couldn’t stop them. I wanted to kiss her and the more we talked instead of kissing only made the urge more powerful. “We’re friends if we decide to be only friends, and we’re friends if we kiss and enjoy it. We’re also still friends if we repeat our last night together. Except this time you won’t run away afterward because, as we both acknowledge right now, we’re friends first and foremost and that will never change.”

She fidgeted and I couldn’t tell if it was because she wanted to contradict my statements or because she was turned on. With Tilley the two things resulted in the same body language. At least, that was what I thought I learned right before she disappeared.

“I agree to your terms. We are friends. Always.” She said the last word softly. With emotion.

Ifeltthat word in my chest. “Good.”Rule #3.“And one more thing. I’d appreciate it if you could help me with something.” She perked up a little. “I’m curious about my teammates. What relationships they’re in and whether they’re happy. I thought maybe we could work together to come up with this list and study it.”

“Study it for what purpose?”

I had her.“Since I believe I have feelings for you and hope that you have feelings for me, I thought it would be sensible to understand other relationships. Who do my teammates date and are they happy? What challenges do they face? What would they do differently?”

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