Page 12 of Hard to Handle

“You’re just here for the night then? Flew in from New York to catch a game, then sit at a bar and talk to the guys afterward, but you’re—uh—not recruiting?”

There’s the slightest hitch in her movement and it’s her tell. She’s definitely here to steal a client.

“Just came here to enjoy the atmosphere of a winning team, a player who’s on top of his game”—she lifts her chin to me—“and get a break from the monotony of things for a bit.”

“How’s what’s-his-name?” I ask, thinking of the guy I saw her with the last time I was in New York. Or was it at the ESPYs? Regardless, he was too slick, too pretty, and nothing like who she needs.

She was on his arm but her eyes were firmly on me.

Definitely not a match made in paradise, and I’m a dick for being happy about it.

“Well, considering I was supposed to be at his work event with him tonight.” She shrugs with a lift of her eyebrows . . . but there’s something more there she’s hiding.

“So what? He can’t adjust to his girlfriend’s successful career because it reminds him he has a little dick?” The words come from nowhere, and I’m surprised by the pang of jealousy that hits me over the thought of them together.

She opens her mouth to defend him but her hesitation speaks volumes. “When my dad ordered me here, Chad decided—”

“Chad?” What kind of name is Chad?

“Yes. Chad,” she says with a resolute nod. “He said he was sick of me putting work before him—”

“Probably like he does to you.”

She takes a gulp of her wine. “So, he is no more.”

“I’m sorry,” I lie.

“No, you’re not.” She forces a smile. “You hated him.”

“I never met him.”

“But you still hated him. I could tell in the way you glared at him during the Corporate Cares Charity Gala when we ran into each other.” She eyes me above the rim of her glass.

I laugh and tilt my head to the side. “You’re right. I did hate him. He wasn’t good enough for you.”

That and I can’t stand the idea of any other man touching you.

“Says the man who doesn’t know him.”

“I don’t have to meet him. No one’ll ever be good enough for you, Dekk,” I say, our eyes holding. Including me.

“Not your business,” she murmurs and her words hang in the unsettled air because fuck if there isn’t so much unsettled between us. Like why she walked away. Like how I let her. “Besides, you know me, I suck at relationships.”

“It wasn’t relationship status, was it?”

She snorts. “Not even close.”

And there’s something about the way she says the words, almost as if she’d been trying to talk herself into believing it was more than whatever they thought it was for so very long, that she almost feels a relief that she can stop bullshitting herself now.

“So you came all this way to take a spin around my cock for old times’ sake, then?” My words are meant to ease the tension—partially—and to see that gorgeous smile of hers.

“Yes. That’s it.” She sighs. “Do you really get women with lines like that?” she asks dryly.

“I don’t have to speak and I get women.”

“Jesus. And you wonder why we fought all the time.” She rolls her eyes for good measure.

“We fought all the time, because you could never get enough of me and because I . . .” I falter over my words, because I prefer not to finish the thought. Maybe because I can’t. Maybe because the truth is I was starting to feel things and those things were feelings . . . and feelings are bullshit.