Beautiful Player (4 page)

My eyes dropped to his toned arms, the large hands relaxed at his sides—
holy shit what those fingers probably knew how to do
—his flat stomach, and the front of his running pants that told me Will Sumner had plenty going on below the belt. Good sweet baby Jesus, I wanted to bang the smirk off this man.

Silence ticked between us and awareness trickled in. I wasn’t living behind a damn two-way mirror and I’d never had a poker face. Will could probably read every single thought I’d just had.

His eyes darkened in understanding, and he took one step closer, looking me over from head to foot as if inspecting an animal caught in a trap. A gorgeous, deadly smile tugged at his mouth. “What’s the verdict?”

I swallowed thickly, closing my fists around sweaty hands, saying only, “Will?”

He blinked, and then blinked again, stepping back and seeming to remember himself. I could practically see the realizations tick through his mind:
this is Jensen’s baby
sister
 . . . she’s seven years younger than I am . . . I made out with Liv . . . this kid is a dork . . . stop thinking with your dick.

He winced slightly, saying, “Right, sorry,” under his breath.

I relaxed, amused by the reaction. Unlike me, Will had an infamous poker face . . . but not
here
, and apparently not with me. That understanding sent a jolt of confidence through my chest: he might be nearly irresistible and the most naturally sensual man on the planet, but Hanna Bergstrom could handle Will Sumner.

“So,” I said. “Not ready to settle down, then?”

“Definitely not.” His smile pulled up one corner of his mouth and he looked
completely
destructive. My heart and lady bits would not survive a night with this man.

Good thing that’s not even an option, vagina. Stand down.

We’d circled back around to the beginning of the trail, and Will leaned against a tree. “So why are you diving into the world of the living
now
?” He tilted his head as he turned the conversation back to me. “I know Jensen and your dad want you to have a more active social life, but come on. You’re a pretty girl, Ziggs. It can’t be that you haven’t had offers.”

I bit my lip for a second, amused that
of course
Will
would assume that, for me, this was about getting laid. The truth was . . . he wasn’t entirely wrong. And there was no judgment in his expression, no weird distance around such a personal topic.

“It’s not that I haven’t dated. It’s that I haven’t dated
well
,” I said, remembering my most recent, completely bland encounter. “I know it might be hard to tell behind all this smooth charm but I’m not very good in those kinds of situations. Jensen’s told me stories. You managed to get through your doctorate with top honors and what sounds like a whole lot of fun. Here I am, in a lab with people who seem to consider social awkwardness a field of study. Not really that many jumping in the boat, if you know what I mean.”

“You’re young, Ziggs. Why are you worrying about this now?”

“I’m not
worried
about it, but I’m twenty-four. I have functioning body parts and my mind tends to go to interesting places. I just want to . . . explore. You weren’t thinking about these things when you were my age?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t stressing over it.”

“Of course you weren’t. You’d lift an eyebrow and panties would hit the floor.”

Will licked his lips, reaching to scratch the back of his neck. “You’re a trip.”

“I’m a
scientist,
Will. If I’m going to do this I need to learn how men think, get inside their head.” I took a deep breath, watched him carefully before saying, “Teach me. You told my brother you’d help me, so do that.”

“Pretty sure he didn’t mean
Hey, show my kid sister the city, make sure she isn’t paying too much for rent, and, by the way, help her get laid
.” His dark brows pulled together as something seemed to occur to him. “Are you asking me to set you up with a friend?”

“No.
God.
” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to laugh or crawl into a hole and hide for the rest of
forever
. Despite his DEFCON 5 degree of hotness, what I needed was for him to help me bang the smirk off
other
men. Maybe then I’d be properly degeeked and socialized. “I want your help to learn . . .” I shrugged and scratched my hair beneath the hat. “
How
to date. Teach me the rules.”

He blinked away, looking torn. “The ‘rules’? I don’t . . .” He shivered, letting his words fall away as he reached up to scratch his jaw. “I’m not sure I am qualified to help you meet guys.”

“You went to Yale.”

“Yeah, and? That was years ago, Ziggs. I don’t think they offered this in the course catalog.”

“And you were in a band,” I continued, ignoring that last part.

Finally, amusement lit up his eyes. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that I went to MIT and played
D&D
and
Magic
—”

“Hello, I was a fucking
D&D
pro, Ziggs.”

“My point,” I said, ignoring him, “is that Yale-attending, lacrosse-playing former bass players might have
ideas about how to improve the dating pool options of bespectacled, nerdtastic geeks.”

“Are you fucking with me right now?”

Instead of answering, I crossed my arms over my chest and waited patiently. It was the same stance I’d adopted back when I was supposed to be rotating through several labs to help decide what type of research I wanted. But I didn’t want to do lab rotations for my entire first year of graduate school; I wanted to get started on my research with Liemacki, immediately. I’d stood outside his office after explaining why his work was perfectly positioned to move away from viral vaccine research into parasitology, and what I thought I could work on for my thesis. I’d been prepared to stand like that for hours, but after only five minutes he’d relented and, as the chair of the department, made an exception for me.

Will looked off into the distance. I wasn’t sure if he was considering what I was saying, or deciding whether he should just start running and leave me wheezing in his snow-dust.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay, well, rule one of having a broader social life is never call anyone except a cab before the sun is up.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

He studied me, eventually motioning to my outfit. “We’ll run. We’ll go out and do stuff.” He winced, waving vaguely at my body. “I don’t really think you need to do anything but . . . fuck, I don’t know. You’re wearing your brother’s baggy sweatshirt. Correct me if I’m
wrong, but I have a feeling that’s pretty standard attire, even when you’re not jogging.” He shrugged. “Though it is kind of cute.”

“I am not dressing like a hoochie.”

“You don’t have to dress like a
hoochie
.” He straightened, messing up his hair before tucking it beneath his beanie again. “
God
. You’re a ballbuster. Do you know Chloe and Sara?”

I shook my head. “Are those some girls you’re . . .
not dating
?”

“Oh, hell no,” he said with a laugh. “They’re the women who have my best friends by the balls. I think they’d be good for you to meet. Swear to God you’ll all probably be best friends at the end of the night.”

“So wait,” Max said, pulling out his chair to sit down. “Is this Jensen’s sister you shagged?”

“No, that’s the other sister, Liv.” I sat across from the Brit and ignored both the amused grin on his face as well as the uncomfortable twist in my stomach. “And I didn’t
shag
her. We just hooked up a little. The youngest sister is Ziggy. She was only a kid that first time I went home with Jensen for Christmas.”

“I still can’t believe he took you home for Christmas and you made out with his sister in the backyard. I’d kick your ass.” He reconsidered, scratching his chin. “Ah fuck that. I wouldn’t have given a shit.”

I looked at Max, felt a small grin pull at my mouth. “Liv wasn’t there when I came back a few years later for the summer. I behaved myself the second time around.”

All around us, glasses clinked and conversation carried on in a quiet murmur. Tuesday lunch at Le Bernardin had
become a routine for our group in the past six months. Max and I were usually the last ones to the table, but apparently the others had been held up in a meeting.

“I suspect you want an award for that,” Max said, studying his menu before closing it with a snap. Truthfully, I’m not sure why he even bothered to open it in the first place. He always got the caviar for his first course, and the monkfish for the main course. I’d recently surmised that Max kept all of his spontaneity for his life with Sara; with food and work, he was a quiet creature of habit.

“You just forget what
you
were like before Sara,” I said. “Stop acting like you lived in a monastery.”

He acknowledged this with a wink and his big, easy smile. “So tell me about this little sis.”

“She’s the youngest of the five Bergstrom kids, and in grad school here at Columbia. Ziggy’s always been this ridiculous brain. Finished undergrad in three years, and now works in the Liemacki lab? The one who does the vaccine work?”

Max shook his head and shrugged as if to say,
The fuck are you talking about?

I continued, “It’s a very high-profile operation over at the med school. Anyway, last weekend in Vegas when you were off chasing your pussy to the blackjack tables, Jensen texted to let me know he was coming to visit her. I guess he gave her a
Come-to-Jesus
about not living among the test tubes and beakers for the rest of her life.”

The waiter came by to fill our water glasses, and we explained that we were waiting on a few more people to join the table.

Max looked back to me. “So you have plans to see her again, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m sure we’ll go out and do something this weekend. I think we’ll run together again.”

I didn’t miss the way his eyes widened. “Letting someone in your private little running headspace? That seems like it would be more intimate than sex to you, William.”

I waved him off. “Whatever.”

“So it was fun then? Catching up with the little sis and all?”

It
had
been fun. It hadn’t been wild, or even anything all that special—we’d gone for a run, of all things. But I still felt a little shaken by how unexpected
she
had been. I’d gone in thinking there had to be a reason for her isolation, other than her long work hours. I’d expected she would be awkward, or hideous, or the poster child for inappropriate social behavior.

But she’d been none of those things, and she definitely didn’t seem anything like someone’s “little sister.” She was naïve and a bit unfiltered at times, but really she was simply hardworking and had found herself trapped in a set of habits she didn’t enjoy anymore. I could relate.

I’d first met the Bergstroms over Christmas, my sophomore year in college. I hadn’t been able to afford to fly
home that year, and Jensen’s mother had such a fit at the idea of me staying alone in the dorms that she drove down from Boston two days before Christmas to pick me up and bring me home for the holidays. The family was as loving and loud as one would expect with five kids spaced almost exactly two years apart.

True to form for that stage in my life, I’d thanked them by secretly fooling around with their oldest daughter in the shed out back.

A few years later I’d interned for Johan, and lived at the Bergstrom house. Most of the other kids had moved out or stayed near college for the summer, so it was just me and Jensen, and the youngest daughter, Ziggy. Theirs had come to feel like a second home to me. Still, even though I’d lived near her for three months, and had seen her a few years ago at Jensen’s wedding, when she’d called yesterday, it had been hard to even remember her face.

But when I saw her at the park, more memories than I realized I’d had came flooding in. Ziggy at twelve, her freckled nose hidden behind books. She’d offer only the occasional shy smile across the dinner table, but otherwise avoided contact with me. I’d been nineteen and nearly oblivious anyway. And I remembered Ziggy at sixteen, all legs and elbows, her tangled hair cascading down her back. She spent her afternoons wearing cutoff shorts and tank tops, reading on a blanket in the backyard while I worked with her father. I’d checked her out, like I’d checked out every female at the
time, as if I were scanning and cataloging body parts. The girl was curvy, but quiet, and obviously naïve enough about the art of flirting to earn my scornful disinterest. At the time, my life had been full of curiosity and kink, younger and older women who were willing to try anything once.

But this afternoon, it felt as though a bomb had gone off in my head. Seeing her face was—strangely—like being home again, but also like meeting a beautiful girl for the first time. She didn’t look anything like Liv or Jensen, who were towheaded and gangly, almost carbon copies of one another. Ziggy looked like her father, for better or worse. She had the paradoxical combination of her father’s long limbs and her mother’s curves. She inherited Johan’s gray eyes, light brown hair, and freckles, but her mother’s wide-open smile.

I’d hesitated when she stepped forward, wrapped her arms around my neck, and squeezed. It was a comfortable hug, bordering on intimate. Other than Chloe and Sara, I didn’t have a lot of females in my life who were strictly
friends
. When I hugged a woman like that—close and pressing—there was generally some sexual element. Ziggy had always been the kid sister, but there in my arms it fully registered that she wasn’t a kid anymore. She was a twenty-something woman with her warm hands on my neck and her body flush to mine. She smelled like shampoo and coffee. She smelled like a
woman,
and beneath the bulk of her sweatshirt and pathetically thin jacket, I could feel the shape of her breasts press against my chest. When she
stepped back and looked me over, I’d immediately
liked
her: she hadn’t dressed up, hadn’t put on makeup or expensive workout gear. She wore her brother’s Yale sweatshirt, black pants that were too short, and shoes that definitely looked like they’d seen better days. She wasn’t trying to impress me; she just wanted to
see
me.