Page 78 of Playing to Win

His lips rise at one side in the kind of half smile that liquefies women, this woman. “Fuck it, I miss that too.”

“What about kale smoothies?” I giggle, less at what I’m saying and more at the giddy relief I’m feeling, which is making my body tingle.

“Too far, Coulthard. I draw the line at kale smoothies.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve missed your steak and eggs.”

He winks at me and the power of that move, together with his half smile, has me practically wetting my knickers.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Cady. I should have.”

“I guess I understand why you might not have told me. I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. Even if you had been having a sexual encounter with an eighteen-year-old with pink hair, I shouldn’t have gone public with it.”

“We both seem to have a few things to work on, huh?”

I nod. “It would seem that way.”

“How about we get through the next few hours here and you let me take you home?”

“I’d like that a lot.”

“You know it sucks that I can’t take you to dinner.”

“Maybe when our fourteen days are up.” As I say those words, I feel the mood shift between us. It’s day eleven. On day fourteen we end this charade. On day fifteen, I fly back to London. We both know that a dinner date can’t happen any time soon.

As if he hears my thoughts, Brooks leans across the table and presses his palm to my cheek. “We don’t have to think about that now.”

I lean into his palm and close my eyes, wanting to see and feel nothing but his touch.

* * * *

I’m standing by a table in the bistro, my sports bag on a chair, waiting for Brooks to finish up.

My iPhone tells me I have six missed calls and two voice messages from my mother. I hit Play. “Isabella, we need to talk. This has got out of ha—”

I happily cut her off when Brooks appears through the double doors into reception. Charlie walks by his side. Otherwise, the gym is empty.

Brooks’s lips break into a beam when he sees me. The kind that feels like he has folded me into his big warm arms. “Are you ready?” he asks.

“Yep.” Picking up my bag, I almost skip toward him.

“I’ll lock up, Charlie,” he says. “You have a good night.”

“’Night, boss. ’Night, Izzy.”

“Good night, Charlie.” I like her so much more now she’s stopped scowling at me all the time.

On the sidewalk, Brooks locks the doors and tucks me under his arm. We walk like this all the way back to our block. When we reach the twelfth floor, he stops outside his apartment and takes my hand. “Let’s stay here tonight.”

I feel one eyebrow rise. “The secret fortress?”

“Otherwise known as home.”

I run my hands down his back and bite his shoulder through his T-shirt as he opens the door, all the while I’m feeling like we’ve crossed an invisible barrier.

He flicks on the lights and takes the bag from my shoulder as we both slip out of our training shoes. I pad, barefoot, into the whitewashed space. It’s similar to the apartment I’m staying in but this one feels bigger and cleaner. Homier too, although it does have a single-man feel about it.

I clock three guitar stands in the lounge. One holds an electric guitar, another a bass guitar, and one is empty. Brooks draws sheer curtains closed across the floor-to-ceiling windows, hiding us from the apartments in the building opposite. He has a large flat-screen TV opposite an L-shaped sofa. The bright abstract artwork on the walls steals my attention. He has three canvases. One is splatters of bright paint on a white background. Another looks like a pathway to heaven—a long gray path leading to the sky. Around the path are what look like random items—a guitar, an American football, a hockey stick, boxing gloves—but the more I look, the more I see Brooks.

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