Love in Straight Sets (10 page)

“Let’s get this over with,” he pressed, extending his arm to help her out of the car. The color had drained from his face, and his grim expression was more suitable for a firing squad than a row of reporters.

Guilt sliced through her stomach like a cold blade. She was so thrilled by the idea of being escorted into her fabulous party by her devastatingly handsome new coach that she hadn’t thought about Ben’s reaction. Was he worried the press would add two and two to make five and that tomorrow he’d be on the phone to everyone he knew insisting they weren’t romantically linked? Her cheeks burned at the image of him rolling his eyes as he repeated that their relationship was strictly professional.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, anxiety flaring in her chest as she pulled on his hand to bring him in close. “We’ll make this quick.”

He snatched his hand out of her grip and moved it to the small of her back, propelling her forward without meeting her eyes.

A photographer called her name and she willed her mouth into a smile, when in fact her stomach felt full of lead and her lower lip threatened to quiver. Maybe on some level she’d known that Ben’s sexy good looks and intriguing backstory would prompt some inches of speculation in tomorrow’s gossip columns. With the Tallahassee Invitational only two weeks away and the Baron’s Open hot on its heels, maybe subconsciously she’d wanted a reason to push her way to the fronts of the minds of the sportswriters.

And she’d gotten it, if the hungry expressions on the photographers were any indication. But at what price?

She bit back tears as they shuffled toward the entrance. She always managed to screw things up like this, to make decisions without thinking through the consequences, to be so self-centered and insensitive that she hurt the people she cared about most.

Right now Ben was at the top of that list, she realized with a sinking feeling. And as of this moment, she was probably at the very bottom of his.

Ben ushered her down the walkway faster than she would’ve liked, but she was in no position to complain. Tension practically rolled off him in waves. His free hand was fisted at his side, and he clenched his jaw so hard she worried he’d put cracks in his teeth. He didn’t speak or make any acknowledgement of the reporters and fans shouting his name, until a lanky frat-boy type who probably still used a fake ID leaned over the metal barrier and wolf whistled to get her attention.

“Regan, baby, you’re the hottest piece of ass on the court! Come home with me, honey. I’ll show you how the game is played.”

Ben’s lunge toward him was so quick—and the bouncers’ response even quicker—that she barely had time to seize his elbow and pull him to her side before the offender was dragged away by security, muttering slurred protests as he went.

Ben practically seethed in her grip. “Did you hear what he said?”

“Ignore it, it happens all the time. Look, we’re nearly inside.”

It only took three more steps to transport them from the frenetic din outside the hotel to the cool quiet of the grand, marble-floored lobby. Regan gathered the party was already in full swing from the bursts of noisy laughter and music every time the double doors to the ballroom swung open and closed. Her PR manager was beelining in her direction, and she held up a stalling hand as she turned to her coach.

“Are you okay? You look like you could happily throttle someone.”

“What the hell was that?” he demanded furiously, his hushed tone the only remnant of his usual demeanor. “I thought I was just catching a ride with you, not starring in your latest publicity strategy.”

She winced. “I should’ve warned you. I’m sorry.”

“Damn right you should have. What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I don’t always understand why I do what I do—or don’t do. There’s no strategy, I promise, I was just being stupid and callous not to give you the full picture and I’m really sorry.” She flapped her hands uselessly, growing frantic as panic swelled in her stomach. “Please don’t be mad, I want you to stay and have a nice time. I swear I didn’t—”

“Okay, enough.” He scrubbed a hand over his forehead before flashing a weary, unconvincing smile. “You made a mistake and I’m overreacting. I’m a little rusty at the press onslaught, apparently.” He sighed heavily. “I spent so long fighting to reclaim my privacy, I guess I forgot that sometimes it’s essential.”

“Believe me when I tell you this wasn’t a calculated ploy. Sometimes I can be a total idiot, that’s all.”

He offered a weak half smile. “Can I have that last part in writing?”

He raised his hand in a dismissive gesture, but before he could close the conversation she continued, “I appreciate your sticking up for me, with that guy outside. I’m used to that kind of thing. You probably never experienced it as a male athlete, but people feel at liberty to make all kinds of comments to women players at this level.”

He dropped his hand and fixed her with a searching gaze. “Really? You get that a lot?”

She shrugged. “You know how it is with women’s sports. On one hand we’re supposed to be inspiring generations of young girls, but on the other, the prize money is so low that we have to sell our souls to our sponsors. Except the fancy watch and car companies all want to sponsor the male players, and the only ones interested in the women either want us to hawk beauty products or take off our clothes and pose for a magazine.”

“Don’t ever do that.”

“I don’t plan on it.” She quirked a smile. “I’m just saying that although most of the time I can take care of myself, I can always use a little backup.”

His expression softened and she took a hesitant step forward, instinctively reaching for his hand but stopping herself at the last minute.
We’re not on those terms
. “I have to start mingling before Des gets eaten alive by everyone asking where I am. Let me buy you a drink?”

“It’s an open bar. That you’re paying for.”

“Exactly.” She nodded toward the door. “Come on, Coach, what do you say?”

Ben glanced at the window, at the floor, at his cuffs—everywhere but at her.

“You have a lot of people to meet and greet,” he said, finally raising his eyes to hers. “I’ll find you later on, okay?”

“Definitely,” she replied with a cheeriness so fragile she thought the words might shatter as soon as they left her mouth. “Have fun, and I’ll see you later.”

Then she turned and left the cloakroom, her steps as heavy and reluctant as if she was dragging an anvil into the party she’d planned for months and now desperately wanted to leave.

Chapter Seven

The evening was a complete success, yet Regan moved through it feeling like a failure. The flattery and congratulations she usually lapped up sounded hollow in her ears, the specially crafted hors d’oeuvres tasted like stale bread and the gourmet cocktails that were a rare treat this close to a tournament might as well have been lukewarm tap water.

She drifted from person to person, less because it was a hostess’s responsibility to mingle than because she struggled to stay engaged in any one conversation. She barely had a second to say hello to the rowdy Jacksonville crew of her parents, brother and hometown friends before Des dragged her off to be introduced to another business contact. She constantly found herself searching for someone over her companion’s shoulder, straining to catch the swish of her mother’s last-season floral skirt, or the flash of white sock beneath her father’s chronically too-short trousers, or the black jacket seams so taut they practically creaked as they stretched across Ben’s broad shoulders.

But she was chasing ghosts. Her parents were right where she left them, ordering cocktails, laughing with her high school friends and enjoying the luxury of the evening with an unabashed vim Regan wasn’t sure she’d ever possessed. And despite several people asking after him, she hadn’t seen Ben since they arrived. He was probably in a taxi on the way back to his unassuming house in Jupiter, mentally composing the resignation she’d tried so hard to instigate yet now would do anything to avoid.

When her small talk with the founder of a highly profitable wealth management company flagged and Des remained distracted with a Miami city official, she took the opportunity to excuse herself and slip from the ballroom.

This was her chance to sidle back to the sea-facing bar packed with her friends and family, to join in with their jokey banter and act as though she didn’t belong to this upscale world any more than they did. But that felt hollow, false and no less inauthentic than the polished schmoozing she’d be running away from.

Instead she mounted a set of lushly carpeted stairs, rising beyond the party that had grown to encompass the entire ground floor. There was a heavy trudge to her step as she curled her hand into a fist so tight her nails dug into her palm, steeling herself against the hot yet irrational sorrow flooding through her as she made her way down the empty corridor.

She pushed open a set of double doors and stepped onto a balcony, which offered a view of the hotel’s pool, the path to its private beach and the gently crashing ocean waves beyond. The hotel was set far enough back from the ocean for the breeze to be gentle, yet close enough for it to still carry a salty tang and the distant sound of the waves.

Though she was a native Floridian, growing up on the northwest side of Jacksonville and going to college in Gainesville meant the ocean hadn’t become a permanent fixture in her life until adulthood. Even now, despite living a fifteen-minute drive from her gated community’s private beachfront club, she only made it down there three or four times a year. The whole experience was too far out of her comfort zone. Too unpredictable, too wild. More often than not she decided to stick with the temperature-controlled, professionally cleaned, meticulously chlorinated pool in her own backyard.

Yet as she watched the waves crash in uneven, jagged arcs of foam, an unfamiliar longing tugged inside her chest. She didn’t want to go back inside to check her hair, freshen her makeup and straighten her dress. She didn’t want to return to the crowd gathered in her honor, to smile and nod and make charming but neutral remarks about the state of the local economy or her hopes for the Grand Slam season. She didn’t want to see her parents grinning their pride, so endlessly supportive yet innocently oblivious to the realities of her everyday life.

She wanted to toss her shoes behind one of the hotel’s immaculately trimmed hedges, yank off her dress and dive into the ocean headfirst, losing herself in the quiet beneath the waves and then breaking the surface with salt on her lips and wet sand beneath her toes, treading water in the dark without a check-writing sponsor or a multicolored cocktail in sight.

“Hello, birthday girl. I’ve been looking for you.”

Even if the accent didn’t give him away, Regan would know that aftershave anywhere.

“How did you find me?” she asked as Ben joined her at the railing, his presence so big and warm that it banished every inch of the isolation she’d felt so palpably only seconds earlier. “I thought this was an ironclad hiding place.”

“It is for the rest of your guests. But I was standing there—” he pointed to a spot near the pool, “—and I saw you. Bright blue dress and diamonds in moonlight, shining like a beacon.”

“My ninja outfit is at the cleaner’s,” she joked, shrugging on a playful tone as though it could protect her from the dangerous thrill his words sent ricocheting through her body. Terrified of the urge yet unable to stop it, she reached up to touch the end of his untied bow tie, which hung on either side of his open collar. “This is a good look. Very James Bond. Though in Palm Beach society it’s normally reserved for the after-party.”

“I snagged the knot and it came undone. It was a lost cause.”

He drew the kind of breath that signaled a shift to serious conversation, and Regan braced herself for the worst. This would be the moment he quit—the moment she lost him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a better red carpet companion earlier.” He leaned his forearms on the railing, tilting his head to face her. “The cameras caught me by surprise and I took it out on you. I need to come to terms with the fact that publicity is unavoidable at this level, and that coping with it is my problem, not yours.”

She stared at him in startled silence, her stomach somersaulting with a mixture of surprise and relief. Ben watched the waves for another minute, his expression thoughtful, until her lack of response must have begun to worry him and he turned to her with a furrowed brow.

“I don’t want you to think I can’t handle all the extras that come with coaching a professional. Just because I haven’t done it before doesn’t mean I won’t figure it out as I go along.”

“I don’t think that.” She shook her head. “Actually, I think you’re doing great. And I know I don’t make it easy for you.”

He smiled, and it rivaled the glow of the almost-full moon. “No, you don’t. Nor do you make it easy for yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

He straightened and faced her, propping one hip against the railing. “You know that if you transferred even half of the effort you put into arguing with me into your tactics on the court, you could be unbeatable.”

“It’s how I’ve always played,” she protested, crossing her arms. “I’m not one of those mechanistic, programmable players that get churned out of the academies and don’t know what to do unless their coach tells them. I’m too independent for that. I’m a thinker.”

“You’re an overthinker,” he countered. “You need to play more with your heart and less with your head. Leave the technicalities and the tactics to me—that’s my job. Yours is to listen to your gut and react.”

“But I
like
the technicalities,” she insisted, knowing full well it wasn’t true. “I
like
the tactics. I don’t want to be cut out of that.”

“No one’s cutting you out of anything.” Ben put his hands on her upper arms, and a sensual beat began to throb low in her belly at the touch of his palms against her bare skin. “Remember how good it felt to run outside yesterday? You were so worried about leaving the clubhouse, but I looked after you, didn’t I? Nothing went wrong. You left the navigation to me and enjoyed the ride. That’s all I want. Trust me enough to give me some of your burdens and make some of your hard decisions. Put your faith in me. Let go.”

Let go.
Those two small, gently urged words were like a sledgehammer to the high but brittle wall Regan had been building around herself since her first session with Ben. She wanted more than anything to do what he asked, to concentrate on her aching legs and her burning lungs instead of the thousand-and-one possible directions the match could take, to focus on the external and forget about the internal, to watch the ball arc toward her across the court and empty her mind of everything but how to hit it back. She was desperate for the relief of being forced out of her own brain and relinquishing all control.

But she had no idea how to do it, and was scared to death of what might happen if she did.

“I haven’t given you your birthday present.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to do anything else for me. Being here tonight is more than I had the right to ask.”

“Too late—it’s nonrefundable.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, but kept his fist closed around whatever he retrieved from it.

“In Zimbabwe we have the Shona people,” he began, his voice low and reflective. “And they use totems, or
mitupo
, to symbolize their clans. The totems are often animals, like zebras or elephants, and although the totems may be used across regions, people of the same totem regard themselves as descendants of a common ancestor.”

Regan watched his closed hand, listening carefully, keen not to disrespect the African traditions he’d grown up with.

“So when a chieftain, when a clan needs—” Ben cleared his throat and she looked up at him in concern, worried this was too emotional for him...and caught sight of the grin he was failing to smother.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” He laughed fully then, such a welcoming, congenial sound that a smile tugged at her own lips. “I haven’t gotten you a Shona artifact. I’ve never even seen one. There was no African mysticism in my childhood—we had a swimming pool and a Portuguese housekeeper. Here.” He took her hand and rolled a purple rubber band onto her wrist. “This is your gift. Happy birthday.”

She stared down at her arm, trying to ignore the leap of excitement incited by his confident touch. “Thanks, but you shouldn’t have. Really.”

“Don’t dismiss my present as a misuse of office supplies. My sister wears a rubber band on her wrist. Whenever she feels a panic attack coming on, she gives it a little snap.” He plucked the band lightly so it pinged against her skin. “The sting of it jerks her out of her thoughts and helps her calm down. I thought it might be worth a try, and no one would ever know that’s why you wear it—they’d assume it was for your ponytail.”

She gazed up at Ben’s face, its masculine angles softened by his easy smile. Did he have any idea how much this silly, playful, yet incredibly thoughtful gesture meant to her? That he’d kept her secret was gift enough, and then to so gently suggest such a practical, discreet solution was better than three Christmas mornings at once.

She looked again at the simple rubber band. Maybe it was little more than a grubby castoff to someone else, but to her, in that moment, it was a lifeline.

“I can get another color if you’d prefer,” he offered. “But I went for purple to match your grip tape.”

Suddenly the weight of the evening—of her smiling reflection in the camera lenses, of the expectant faces of her guests, of her mother’s voice carrying over the din, of the waves crashing indifferently on the shore and of this gesture that was so touching it was terrifying—became too much to bear. Her shoulders buckled under it, her head bowed and, before she could stop them, her eyes spilled over with exhausted, bewildered tears.

“Hey now, none of that.” Ben wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tightly.

She flattened her palms against his chest, pressing her face against the crisp cloth of his shirt as she was engulfed by the warmth of his embrace.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he urged without loosening his grip.

“Nothing. Everything.” She sniffed, her voice wavering as she spoke. “I’m just under a lot of pressure right now.”

“I know,” he murmured, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll get easier, I promise.”

His moved his hand up to her nape, threading his fingers through her hair, and all at once Regan’s nerves began to broadcast their exhilaration, as her sense of his touch transformed from soothing tenderness to heady yearning.

Abruptly her tears dried and her nipples hardened as his thumb trailed along her hairline. She felt the hard strength of his body keenly beneath her hands and shuddered deliciously under the thrilling weight of his grip. His fresh, outdoorsy scent made her think of the tickling pleasure of running her bare toes through newly cut grass. Every inch of her skin tingled, and she jerked backward in an effort to get control of herself.

It was a mistake. As soon as her gaze met Ben’s and saw the hot, glittering intent in his eyes, there was no turning back.

His arm tightened around her waist as his big hand slid from the back of her neck to cup her face, his long fingers brushing back the hair at her temple. She watched his eyes flick down to her lips and back up again, and then his mouth was on hers.

Ever since she’d been old enough to read romance novels, Regan had thought kissing was overrated. Her first kiss had been at a fraternity party in college. The guy had broken away just in time to lurch outside and empty most of what he’d guzzled during his keg stand onto the lawn. Her preference for casual hookups and no-strings-attached relationships meant most of what followed was in the same vein, and she grew to see kissing as a tedious but necessary prelude to more fun, tactile activities.

When Ben’s lips moved against hers, however, she finally understood what all the fuss was about.

The first touch of his mouth was gentle and testing, as if silently asking her permission. When she returned the pressure threefold, his kiss became firm and confident, slowly building in insistence and urgency.

She raised her fingers to feel his clean-shaven cheek and then plunged them into his thick hair as her other hand clenched the stiff material of his shirt. His tongue pushed between her teeth and she widened her jaw to grant him access. The taste of champagne and ripe strawberries and the faintest hint of mint toothpaste sent a storm of desire brewing deep in her belly until it boiled over and spilled out of her as a guttural, begging moan.