Page 10 of Broken Play
She shakes her head and throws the ball high into the air. She stretches her tight torso, her arm extended and her feet off the ground. I've never seen anyone so beautiful. She strikes the ball; it hits the far corner and aces me.
"I wasn't ready," I plead.
"Are you ready now?"
"Yep."
She aces me again. This goes on two more times until she's won the first game and then the first set.
"Ready yet?" Her tone is filled with sarcasm.
"I haven't picked up a racket since junior year."
"Were you just trying to get in a girl's pants? Athletes," she says, shaking her head in disbelief.
"I didn't have to try. The girls gave it willingly."
She doesn't hurl a ball at me. Instead, she taps the ball over the net. "Your serve." On my serve, I manage to get two points, but she still controls the set two to zero. Part of me wants to win just so I can have an excuse to see her every day at work. Another part hopes she wins and asks me to continue our one night. One kiss isn't enough. But based on our back-and-forth, she'll probably ask me to grovel or run laps, but... on the off chance she wants me in her bed, I hope I lose.
It's a moot point. When I lose, she compliments me. "Not bad for someone who hasn't played in twenty years."
"Not twenty years. I was seventeen."
She cocks a brow and leans on her racket, her lips twitching in amusement. "How old are you now?"
I bite my lip, doing the math, and realize it's not far from twenty years. "Thirty-three."
She smirks, tilting her head as if she's sizing me up. "Close enough."
Her dad and J.D. are watching from the balcony, and Mr. Anders claps for his daughter. We shake hands over the net. "So, Sutton, what do you want from me?"
She smiles, and I swear it's like the sun shining on the water. "Nothing. I just wanted to put you in your place."
"You can put me wherever you want me."
SIX
SUTTON
Anna's face pops up on our video call. "It's late. This better be good. You know how much I love my sleep," she says, complete with bedhead and swollen eyes.
"I have news. Big news." It's so big it needs to be delivered with a touch of drama—the jaw-dropping, best-friend-screaming-in-the-background kind. "You will not believe who I just saw," I whisper-shout, glancing over my shoulder as if someone might hear. "Remember the hottie at the Denver nightclub? The guy with the smirk, the hands, and the lips that melted mine?"
"How could I forget?" she asks loudly.
Anna barely gets her words out before I'm talking over her, excited and panicking. "Yeah, him. Where, you ask? Oh, at a meeting with my dad, who apparently just went out and bought the Austin Armadillos, a professional football team, like he was picking up milk. And get this: Greyson isn't just here; he's also the freaking quarterback of the team."
She perks up, screaming, "This is amazing. I knew he didn't live in Denver. Now you can be together. No longertwo ships colliding on a dance floor; you can get Bodhi out of your system. Ooh, I may have to move to the States. But wait. Why were you in the meeting?"
"Because I think my dad is having a midlife crisis a few years too late. Maybe he's living a youthful dream, but he can't devote one hundred percent of his time to the franchise, so he wants me to run the daily operations."
"You don't think he's dying, do you?"
It gives me pause. "No."
"What does he expect you to do, slam the employees with a tennis racquet if they don't follow directions? Did you accept the job?"
"Not yet. A little voice has been nagging me for the last few months, making me think I want to do something else. Coaching is fun and I'd like to keep coaching Paulina and Gabby, but will I only ever be a tennis player? I want to stretch my knowledge, be challenged."
