Love in Straight Sets (11 page)

In response Ben pulled her closer, increasing the tempo as he backed her up against the railing. The metal bar digging into her back mirrored the press of his erection on her thigh, and as her sluggish, lust-heavy brain processed the size of the arousal straining against his zipper, an answering dampness flooded the apex of her thighs with such fierce urgency that she nearly cried out in desperation.

The last sliver of coherence left in her brain narrowed with every second, and as it ran through a dimly remembered map of the hotel layout searching for hidden closets or alcoves to which they could sneak off, she grabbed Ben’s wrist, roughly pulled his hand from her face and planted it on her aching breast.

He growled low in his throat as his thumb found the hard, hypersensitive point of her nipple through the material of her dress. She thought of how his easygoing nature contrasted with the steely, unflinching way he ordered her around the tennis court and the pace of her heartbeat doubled as she imagined how that juxtaposition might play out in the bedroom. They had to get off this balcony. But where could they go? There was that empty meeting room...

* * *

“There you are, Percy, I’ve been looking—oh, sorry to interrupt.”

Ben lurched backward from the railing and spun to see Spencer Vaughan’s smug face. Tanya was at his side, her blue eyes wide as she glanced uncertainly between the two of them.

“You’re not interrupting anything.” Regan appeared at his side, tugging at the top of her strapless dress in a way that had Ben’s groin stiffening all over again. “We were just taking a break from the party. Are you both having a good time?”

Tanya nodded earnestly, but Spencer’s eyes glittered wolfishly. “Not as much as the two of you, I suspect.”

Out of all the people at the party, of course they had to be discovered by the one least likely to be discreet. Well aware that his job was on the line, Ben figured the best option was to quell Spencer’s thirst for gossip before it ramped up. The less he thought he was in possession of a juicy secret, the fewer people he’d bother to tell.

“You know how these things go,” Ben said in what he hoped was a convincingly conspiratorial, boys-will-be-boys tone. He slid his arm across Regan’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s all—”

She jerked so violently out of his grasp that for a split second he thought he’d hurt her. Her cheeks were bright red, but with the heat of shame rather than the sexy, hot-to-trot blush he’d seen only moments earlier. Her hands were balled at her sides, her eyes were fixed on her feet and her shoulders slumped with humiliation. She angled her body away from him, and Spencer latched on to her embarrassment like a barracuda.

“I can hardly believe it. Regan Hunter’s slumming it with her has-been coach.” He elbowed Tanya, who looked as if she’d rather be anywhere but on that balcony, as he turned his mocking grin on Ben. “No offense, Percy, but you’re not exactly in her league, are you?”

When Regan’s gaze remained fixed on the floor Ben’s jaw slackened in disbelief, then locked in indignation. His head was spinning with conflicting emotions, their frantic orbits fuelled by the adrenaline that still ebbed from those all-too-brief minutes when he’d let the floodgates of his desire fling wide. He was furious with Spencer for interrupting, pained by Regan’s apparent acquiescence to the other man’s opinion, doubting his own belief that they weren’t in the wrong, ruing the failure of his self-control, worried about the repercussions of breaking the professional boundary and still reeling with raw, unsatisfied lust. He had simultaneous, warring impulses to tell Spencer where to stick his leering disapproval, to beg Regan to forgive him for crossing the line and swear her to secrecy, and to simply throw her over his shoulder and find somewhere for them to pick up where they left off.

One thing was clear: he had to get out of there.

Ben cast one last, hopeful glance at Regan, but she still stared at the ground as if counting the tiles on the balcony. He returned his attention to his old rival and her present one.

“Well, I’ll leave you all to your pro players’ conversation. I’m sure you have a lot to discuss.” His icy tone was unnecessarily petty. It would only feed Spencer’s appetite for gossip, and Ben knew he was abandoning Regan to deal with this situation on her own. And he couldn’t have cared less.

He pivoted and marched out of the room and down the steps. Walking into the din and color of the party—now even more lively and alcohol-fueled than when he’d left it—felt like wading into a storm-tossed sea. He shouldered his way through the throng of expensive tuxedos, spangled ball gowns and drinks trays held dangerously aloft.

What had he been thinking, trying to mix with this crowd? That first moment in front of the cameras had reminded him just how far he’d fallen, and how very long ago that brief, soaring period had been. He shook his head in disgust as he pushed through the diamond-laden, designer-labeled horde. Spencer was right—he was nothing more than a washed-up, one hit wonder who couldn’t even scrape together enough money to help his little sister. A failed, fatherless outcast who would never rise high enough to stand side by side with someone as spirited, capable and unbelievably beguiling as Regan.

He was reaching into his pocket for his phone, wincing at how much the taxi would cost, when Des emerged from the crowd to grab his arm and arrest his progress toward the door.

“Ben Percy, just the man I wanted to see.” He ushered him away from a clump of partygoers to an empty spot by the wall. “Have you seen Regan? I can’t find her anywhere.”

Fear replaced the anger fueling the pounding pulse of Ben’s blood. If Des found out what they’d done, he was finished. Forget earning the lump sum for the lawyer’s fees—if the Scot blacklisted him, he’d be lucky to get enough work to pay his electricity bill. He swallowed hard, forcing evenness into his voice.

“She’s upstairs on the balcony with Spencer and Tanya.”

The ruddiness drained from the beefy man’s face. “With Spencer and Tanya? Alone?”

Ben nodded, and Des hissed a curse under his breath. “I have to get her out of there. Where did you say they were? Upstairs?”

“On the balcony,” he repeated. “But she didn’t need rescuing as far as I could tell.”

Des snorted. “Never underestimate the power of an ex-boyfriend, especially when he’s as manipulative and calculating as Spencer. He’s probably trying to talk her into a threesome with Tanya and threatening to expose some filthy secret if she doesn’t agree.”

Ben shoved his hands in his pockets, reframing the confrontation on the balcony in this new context. Maybe he should’ve stood up for her and told Spencer to back off. But then she’d flinched from his touch and wouldn’t look at him. Maybe she regretted their kiss, maybe she hadn’t wanted it as much as he thought, and she was using Spencer to cover up her own remorse.

Des watched him with narrowed eyes. “How did the two of you end up on the balcony in the first place?”

“Oh, well, I just—” Ben had always been a crappy liar, and now the pressure was on. “I was giving her a birthday present.”

He didn’t need to see Des’s arched brow to know how suggestive that sounded. He stifled the urge to smack himself in the forehead.
Idiot
.

“Tell me,” the manager implored drily, “what did you get for the girl who has everything?”

“It was a stupid present, you know, a joke gift.”

“Which was?”

“A rubber band. For her hair. To keep it out of the way. So she can see the lines and keep her shots in the box for once.”

Ben was pretty sure his feeble smile wouldn’t convince a gullible six-year-old, let alone this skeptical Scot. Des regarded him steadily, his neutral expression undermined by the calculations clearly ticking away behind his eyes.

Finally he nodded toward the staircase. “Coming?”

Ben bit the inside of his lower lip as his mind spun with the events of the past half hour, pushing himself to distill them down to the basic truths.

Regan was the topflight player he was paid a lot of money to coach on the condition he didn’t touch her. His feelings for her were decidedly unprofessional and his self-control was appalling. And to top it off, he was the last person anyone should want to intervene in their professional affairs. After all, it took a special kind of loser to go from world-famous Grand Slam winner to bewildered, penniless stray in a matter of weeks.

“I’m her coach, not her therapist,” he said finally. “It’s not my place.”

Des looked at him for a long, uncomfortable minute. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to. Ben could read the accusations all over the Scot’s face.

Finally Des shook his head and started in the direction of the staircase. Ben continued his path to the door, wondering if he’d still have a job on Monday—and whether he even wanted it.

Chapter Eight

“That’s match point,” Ben announced as Regan delivered a devastatingly perfect serve Catharina had no hope of returning. “Nice work today, ladies. I’ll take these rackets for restringing. You two hit the showers.”

Catharina reached him first, passing over her racket in her characteristically efficient, businesslike manner. “See you tomorrow.” She gathered her bag and headed toward the clubhouse.

Regan approached him more slowly, and his stomach tightened as he watched her cross the court, the late afternoon sun illuminating a range of caramels and milk chocolates and equally decadent shades in her fudge-colored hair. She’d been unusually sedate since the incident at the party—the incident they had yet to acknowledge since he’d stormed off the balcony. Now, as she strolled up to him with a casualness he knew was put on, he was afraid his few days’ reprieve was over. Time to face up to what had passed between them.

At the end of his sleepless weekend, it was the money that propelled him into his car and down the road toward the gated community on Monday morning. It could be his only chance to bring over his sister, and he owed it to her to shove his still-simmering, lustful impulses to the back of his mind and do his job. He had no idea how Regan managed to keep Des in the dark about their encounter, but given the manager hadn’t said anything, he had to assume the Scot didn’t know.

Of course, that made his daily catch-ups with Des almost unbearable. He was sure he saw suspicion in the man’s eyes whenever they spoke, and their interactions had taken on a strange new dynamic, as if Des was constantly trying to catch him out or press him to say something he shouldn’t. Every time Ben gave his brief training report he couldn’t stop thinking that if the manager knew how he’d lost his grip and given in to his howling urges, how he’d shamelessly shoved his tongue in Regan’s mouth and palmed her breast, that if Spencer hadn’t come along Ben almost certainly would’ve shoved that tight dress up over her hips, hauled down whatever silky scrap of cloth she wore beneath and—

“That phrase sounds so funny when you say it.” Regan had stopped in front of him, wearing a smile as sudden and unexpected as a midsummer cloudburst and even more refreshing. “Like it’s a threat instead of a dismissal. I think it’s the accent. Hit the
showahs
,” she mimicked, pitching her voice low and dissolving into giggles on the last syllable.

“I don’t sound like that,” he scoffed, yet unable to stop the answering smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. They stared at each other in easy camaraderie for a minute, the hostilities and complications of the previous four weeks apparently forgotten, until without warning she dropped her eyes to the court and drew a shaky breath.

“About Saturday night—”

“We don’t have to talk about it. You’re playing really well this week, that’s all that matters.”

She shook her head. “You were right that evening, when you said I needed to lean on my instincts and trust you with the technicalities. In fact, you’re always right. It’s extremely irritating.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be.” The playful smile she flashed him disappeared as quickly as it emerged. “We both got carried away on Saturday. We spend a lot of time together, in intense circumstances, and we let the champagne and party atmosphere go to our heads. Would you agree?”

Not in the slightest.
You’re gorgeous and exciting and I’d do it all over again
,
anytime.

Ben forced a nod.

“Good.” She exhaled with a relief that was like a knife through his heart. “I know I don’t always act like it, but I do enjoy working with you, and I would hate for that to be compromised by a stupid, momentary, drunken lapse in judgment.”

Except it couldn’t have felt more right at the time. And it lasted a lot longer than a moment. And he’d been stone-cold sober.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about wanting more.

“Yeah,” he managed dumbly, aware his silence was stretching on too long but unable to come up with anything more clever.

“I’ve never made much time for relationships,” she admitted, shifting her weight. “It’s easy to ignore that side of life when you’re a professional athlete. But I promised myself that this would be my big finale year, when I finally win the Baron’s and retire at the top. Then I can shift gears and think about love and marriage and kids and all that stuff my peers have been doing for years.” She glanced up at him, her smile small and sheepish. “I guess I’m saying there’s a lot at stake, and I don’t want to mess anything up.”

He nodded again, unable to produce any other response. She wanted him to carry on coaching her because he was good at it, good enough to get her to the win that would free her to find someone to love.

Someone who wasn’t him.

He pulled his hat down lower over his eyes as all his suspicions from that night were confirmed. Her words echoed in his brain.
I
enjoy working with you.
Sure, he’d looked all right in his tux, drinking champagne in a luxury hotel. But in the cold light of day he was just another one of the hired hands that orbited her career, on par with her stylist, her masseuse and the guy who cleaned her pool.

He’d forgotten the first rule of coaching: know your place. And he had no one to blame but himself.

“How did things finish with Spencer?” he asked, despite not really wanting to know the answer.

“With about as much ribbing as you’d expect.” She rolled her eyes, and Ben narrowed his own. What was the appropriate degree of mockery for the heinous crime of kissing your lowly coach? “Don’t worry, I can handle him.”

He kept his skeptical mouth shut as she indicated the several rackets that had accumulated in his restringing pile. “I’ll help you carry these in.”

“Thanks. I think Pete’s left for the day.” He passed Regan two of the rackets. “But we can leave these for him to get on with tomorrow.”

They fell into step as they traversed the grid of outdoor courts, passing matches that ranged from long-retired, affluent businessmen playing jocular doubles to fiercely ambitious teenagers firing hotheaded serves into the net. The otherwise quiet afternoon was punctuated by the
pock
of balls hitting rackets, the squeak of shoes on the court and the occasional clatter of an overeager shot crashing into the chain link fences. It was peaceful and familiar, and as they walked side by side Ben regretted more than ever that life hadn’t thrust them together under different circumstances. They would always be on opposite sides of the net, bound to face each other yet held apart.

“It’s working, you know,” she murmured as they crossed the threshold into the immaculate, air-conditioned clubhouse. “Your training.”

He shrugged, kneeing open the door to the stringing room. The lights were off inside, and with their hands full of rackets and gear, neither of them reached for the switch as they shuffled into the small, windowless room. “Don’t get complacent because you’ve had a good week. There’s still a lot of work to do before London.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Regan edged around the two waist-high stringing machines, one of which had an empty racket frame mounted in the clamp. “You should’ve seen your predecessors—I chewed them up and spat them out. But you’ve stuck it out, and I’m glad. I know I can be difficult.”

“Running a marathon is difficult.” He snorted, propping his batch of rackets against the wall and digging on the small desk for a Post-it note. “You’re a brick wall.”

“I was,” she corrected, joining him beside the desk. “But you broke through. So just promise me you won’t quit, okay?”

He spun, astonished, to find her eyes big and pleading. “Quit?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to quit. I told you—”

She flung her arms around his neck, squeezing tightly, as if trying to keep him in that spot forever. Bewildered, stunned, but not in a hurry to let her go, Ben let his hands settle on her waist. Her chest expanded against his, and he sensed that she was about to speak again. She pulled back just enough to look up at him.

Her cheeks were flushed with exertion, her eyes were bright and shining, and her hair escaped from her high ponytail in messy strands that framed her face. His heart faltered and then raced. Within seconds a rushing that sounded like the ocean in a squall echoed in his ears, building to a crescendo until every logical, reasonable, self-restraining thought was drowned out by the throbbing, pounding waves of pure desire.

And then his mouth came down on hers, as fast and sure as his legendary serve.

* * *

Oh God
,
yes.
Regan melted against Ben’s hard body, losing herself in the softness of his lips, the adamant push of his tongue, the smooth row of teeth that clacked against hers as they devoured each other.

This was what she’d imagined every night since her birthday party, lying alone in her huge bed in the absolute silence of her enormous, empty house. It was Ben’s face in her mind as she slipped her hand between her legs, his dexterous fingers making the tantalizing motions that her own did, his mouth she tasted as she ran her tongue along her lips, and it was his rakish, playfully chiding expression dancing before her eyes as she jerked and shook with the force of her orgasm.

This was what she wanted—and the last thing she needed. Her career was at its peak and she had no room to concentrate on anything else. If she was going to waste any of her precious time on a man, she needed the piggybacking publicity of a big player with sponsorships that could feed her own, not some no-name coach with beautiful eyes and skillful hands, and—oh, his teeth were closing on her earlobe, nipping lightly. She didn’t care about anything except touching and tasting as much of him as she could, as quickly as possible.

She gripped the brim of his ever-present UCLA ball cap and yanked it up and off, running her hands through the disheveled hair underneath. Ben’s mouth had moved from her ear to her jawbone and was commencing a journey down her neck, which she angled and stretched to give him better access. Her eyes fell shut as his lips blazed a simmering trail down her flushed skin. He smelled so good, like sunshine the morning after a night of thunderstorms. The hot solidity of his chest and arms beneath the T-shirt that was worn to inviting softness made her ache with longing to discover whether the rest of him was equally as hard.

As he bared his teeth against her collarbone, Ben raised his hand to cup her shoulder and shoved his thumb beneath the layered straps of her synthetic-fiber tank top and sports bra.

Her eyes snapped open at his touch, at the welcome press of his hand against her bare flesh, and she was overtaken by a renewed urgency that had her clenching her fingers in his hair. Ben lifted his head to look at her, laying his palm along her cheek. As she stared into eyes that glowed green despite the shadowed darkness of the unlit room, her breath surged on the crest of a swelling desire that was unnerving in its sudden strength. She clamped her hands on his shoulders and—without fully knowing exactly what she meant, and caring even less—she nodded.

In one smooth movement Ben hoisted her onto the flat edge of the restringing machine, which teetered and creaked under her weight until she tightened steadying arms around his neck.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he assured her as the machine stabilized on its stand and his hands moved to her waist.

His words triggered something in her memory. Had she heard him say that before?

Of course she had—outside the elevator in the Miami hotel, as she’d hovered between dizzy panic and creeping unconsciousness. He’d seen her at her worst then, yet he was still here, still waiting for her every morning, still spending each day calmly ignoring her complaints, still bidding her a cheerful farewell when the long afternoons ended and they parted at the clubhouse door. And now, as his fingers slipped beneath the bottom of her tank top to stroke tantalizing promises up her spine, he was offering her even more.

She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve this—and wasn’t sure she wanted to, in case she found she had a balance still to pay.

“Hey,” Ben murmured, the tips of his thumbs brushing the edge of the spandex bra she wished wasn’t so tight. “I can practically smell your mental gears grinding. Stay with me. Be here.”

“I am.” But it was a lie. A wave of anxious self-doubt reared up and crashed over her, extinguishing her bright, confident flame of lust and leaving behind a smoldering mess of worry, unease and apprehension. What if there
was
a price to all this? Surrendering to their impulses was reckless and irresponsible, and it would surely cost them both. How could it not? He was her coach, for God’s sake, and the best one she’d ever had. Adding this volatile dimension to their relationship put her whole career at risk, her whole life, everything she’d worked for since she was a teenager.

And what about Ben? What was at stake for him?

What
,
like trying to date the crazy woman he’s also supposed to be coaching isn’t enough?

“Regan.” Ben’s firm command was emphasized by a slight shake that dragged her back to the present. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m a puzzle you can solve if you think about it hard enough. There’s no mystery here. Just me, the guy who makes you run laps, who thinks you’re beautiful and really enjoyed kissing you a second ago. See?” He pressed her palms against his chest, covering her hands with his own. “It’s all here.”

The pleading note in his voice turned the key in the last lock on Regan’s desire. Ben was so good. Too good. She realized now that this wasn’t about what she wanted, it was about what he deserved.

“This was a mistake.” She slipped her hands out of his grasp, doing her best—which was pretty terrible—to ignore the pain that tugged at her heart at the broken contact. “We both know it. We said as much on the walk over here.”

“There’s no champagne now. No party. What do you want to blame it on this time?”

She couldn’t look at the accusatory anger in his eyes. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”