Love in Straight Sets (4 page)

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know.”

“No idea? Ballpark figure?”

“Three thousand, seven hundred and twenty-five dollars.” Des appeared on the other side of the metal fence that encircled the court. The door clinked open and shut as he joined Ben on the sideline. “And eighty-five cents.”

Regan’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she stalked to the perimeter and broke into a reluctant jog.

“She’ll never forgive you for this,” Des declared cheerfully, giving Ben a hearty slap on the back.

“Probably not.”

“And enforcing the new rules in front of her sparring partner? Absolute genius. I underestimated you, Percy. You’re not a very nice guy at all.”

Ben shrugged. “Just doing my job.”

Regan was on her way toward them, her mouth set in a grim line as she rounded the corner.

“I hate you both,” she muttered as she jogged past. Ben’s mouth went dry as he watched the smooth bounce of her retreating behind. He quickly turned to her manager, hoping Des hadn’t noticed the way Ben’s pupils dilated every time his precious player came within touching distance.

“Ivona has to go.”

Des nodded. “She should’ve gone a long time ago, but Regan knows her from the early days. Ivona’s husband ran off with her doubles partner and she had nowhere to go, so Regan insisted I hire her. She’s been with us ever since.”

Ben’s surprise must have shown on his face because Des added, “Regan’s mostly bark, with very little bite. If you can get past the noise, she’s loyal to a fault.”

An interesting assertion—but he’d believe it when he saw it. Ben rocked back on his heels. “I’m sure you realize that she’s also a control freak. It’s the main thing holding her back.”

Des frowned. “I thought you said it was discipline?”

“That’s the means to the end. She needs to learn to let go and play with more heart, less mind. If I can wrest some of that control from her hands, it should give her space to breathe and listen to her instincts.”

Regan was beginning her second lap, and Ben cupped his hands around his mouth. “Pick up the pace, champ,” he called. “Anything less than workout tempo earns another ten push-ups.”

She gave him an unobstructed view of her middle finger.

Des snorted. “You want to take control, huh?” He chuckled as he shook his head. “Well, good luck.”

“I have someone in mind to replace Ivona.” Ben ignored the manager’s doubt. “Do you want to fire her, or shall I?”

Des squinted at the blonde figure standing motionless near the net, her gaze following her sparring partner’s progress around the perimeter. “I’ll do it. Regan doesn’t need another reason to hate you. Tell Ivona to see me in the house when you’re finished.”

“Will do.”

“Regan tells me several times a day that you have no idea what you’re doing. She plays best when she’s angry—keep up the good work.” Des shot him a parting grin and made his way back out through the fence.

Discarding Des’s slightly sinister comment as a poor attempt at humor, Ben narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched Regan approach the end of her second lap. His brain had churned with questions since the moment he came upon her in the grocery store, her eyes wide and wet and full of an emotion as complex as it was unnamable. For once the routine shock of arousal that seared through him every time he laid eyes on her was tempered, but not by his self-control. Instead his heart lurched with an instinct to protect her, to comfort her, to bundle her to his chest and promise to fix whatever upset her.

The unstoppable surges of lust were bad, but this new compulsion was far more unnerving.

And even more unshakeable.

“Wait.” He crossed toward her as she knelt on the clay to start her push-ups. “I’ll count.”

Let her fire him the minute she stepped off the court at the Baron’s. He didn’t care. He’d help her become the champion she deserved to be if it was the last act of his career.

* * *

“Des is firing Ivona, isn’t he? That’s why he asked her to meet him in the clubhouse.”

To his credit, Ben paused in reaching for a ball to face her directly. “Yes. I know she’s your friend, but it’s not working.” He resumed their now-routine process of clearing the court after each practice. “I know someone looking for a new sparring partner for his client, plus Des is planning to give her a solid payout. Don’t worry, she’ll be fine.”

Regan fixed her eyes on the white line bisecting the court, pain radiating into her temples from her tightly clenched jaw as she fought to hold it together. She’d spent so much of the past two weeks exploding at Ben’s interferences that she knew doing so again would have no effect. But that didn’t make it any easier to keep her temper in check.

“I want you to know I’m really unhappy about this.” She chucked a ball into a can with more force than necessary. “I don’t think it’s unfair to expect to be consulted on such major decisions.”

“Consider your objection lodged and marked for review.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “Response times will vary. There’s a high staff turnover at the Office of Regan’s Opinions, yet the work keeps pouring in.”

His breezy tone, casual posture and bemused smile at his totally unfunny joke pushed her over the edge. Few things rankled her more than not being taken seriously, and she was sick to death of his flippant dismissals of every suggestion she made. She knew she was more than capable of losing her temper and needed to give her coach the margin to do his job, but there was a fine line between teasing intervention and bald disrespect. As far as she was concerned, Ben was committing a blatant foot fault.

“You may be getting one over on Des, but I see right through you.” She crossed her arms and gave him her hardest stare.

“Oh yeah? How’s the view?”

“Pathetic.”

That got Ben’s attention, she noted with satisfaction.

The rigid line of his jaw betrayed his thinly concealed annoyance when he turned to face her. She sensed his grip on his patience loosening, and worry about his simmering anger undermined her triumph.

He squared his broad shoulders, squinting against the glare of the low-hanging sun. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“It’s obvious—you have no idea what you’re doing. You’ve only gotten this far by training wealthy teenagers who’d either be successful regardless or are so talentless that good or bad coaching won’t make a difference. After all, you used to be one of them, right? A spoiled rich boy with all the advantages money could buy.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously, but she was on a roll. On impulse she took an accusatory step forward, then another.

“Did you really think that
you
have anything to teach
me
? I’m a champion despite people like you, not because of them. People who want all the credit for their own successes without ever considering the huge amounts of luck and privilege that pushed them along the way. Well, that isn’t the case here. I earned my seat at the professional table—no one bought it for me. And no washed-up has-been whose budget coaching techniques couldn’t get a high school player from one end of the court to the other is going to stand in my way, not when I’m so close to having it all. Is that clear?”

She was so angry she was trembling. They were only inches apart now, close enough to see the coppery highlights in his ginger-brown hair, the thick lashes fringing his eyes and the angular definition in the planes of his face. Emotion smoldered in his irises, and she could tell from the stiff way he held himself that she’d gotten to him, finally put the tiniest dent in his impenetrable armor. Yet he maintained his resolute, unflinching silence.

Her rage boiled higher as they stood locked in a noiseless stalemate, until her craving for a reaction had her fisting her hands to keep from shaking him. She didn’t care whether he shouted or argued or even laughed in her face. Anything would be better than simply standing there, watching her with leashed fury flickering behind his eyes.

A split second before she thought she might start screaming just to end the standoff, Ben leaned forward ever so slightly, one side of his mouth quirking.

“One person on this court has their name on the Baron’s Open trophy. And it’s not you.”

He spun on his heel and was bending to pick up another ball before Regan had a chance to blink. Whatever salve his cool tone had applied to her temper dissolved in the fresh heat of her anger as his words sunk in.

“Yeah, like a decade ago,” she retorted, aware that her petulant whine made her sound closer to thirteen than thirty. “You were only a kid then. I bet you couldn’t beat me now.”

He didn’t turn around. “I bet I could.”

“Prove it. Play me right now.”

He shook his head as he put the lid on a can. “Don’t be ridiculous. Come on, let’s clear the rest of these up.”

“Why not? Are you scared?”

“No, I’m retired.”

She snorted. “Tennis coaches are all the same. They spend their lives bossing around the players they know they never could’ve beaten. The profession is full of sad wannabes propping up their egos by shouting at people who are actually talented.”

Ben’s shoulders rose and fell with a resigned sigh. He remained rooted to the spot for a minute, as if deciding whether or not to engage. Then he pivoted to face her.

“First to three games. If I win, I don’t want to hear a single complaint for the rest of the week.”

“And if I win?”

“Your choice.”

Regan peered at him through the slanting light of the late afternoon. She thought about how he so cavalierly dispatched with her training routines, his infuriating imperviousness to her hostile defiance and the way her double-crossing heart beat that little bit faster every time he walked in a room.

She liked Ben—that was the problem. Her life had no room for distractions.

“If I win, you quit.”

He didn’t so much as flinch at her command, his face remaining as impassive as it had been all afternoon.

“High stakes,” he said finally. “I like it.”

He shoved the ball he was holding into the pocket of his chambray shorts and bent to pick up another. When he straightened, he was grinning. “Let’s play.”

Doubt materialized at the edge of Regan’s consciousness, but she gave it a hard shove to the periphery as she withdrew one of her spare rackets from her bag and passed it to him.

“Give me that ball can, as well.” He pointed to one near her feet. “Since this was your idea, I get to serve. And I have a feeling there won’t be much coming back my way.”

“Unlikely.”

She took her place on the baseline and watched Ben circle around to the other side. In low-top canvas sneakers and a lightweight collared shirt he looked more ready for a backyard barbecue than a three-game match against a world-ranked player. But he rolled his shoulders to warm them up as he walked, seemingly unfazed by the magnitude of this faceoff.

He could be about to lose his job—didn’t that bother him? Regan frowned as she bounced on the balls of her feet, preparing for his serve. She’d made it hard for him, but he couldn’t be that keen to walk away from her. Could he?

No one could be that confident in their game after more than ten years out of the circuit. He either had the world’s best poker face, or he had nothing to lose.

Ben moved into position and leaned over to bounce the ball on the court. He caught it three, four, five times, and then straightened for the toss. She watched him intently, looking for any giveaway on his strategy, but his expression was as blank and unreadable as a smooth marble slab. He angled his hips slightly, held his racket poised behind him, threw the ball in the air and smashed it across the court with such force that his feet left the ground.

Regan dove for the ball, but by the time her brain registered the hard
pop
that sounded more like the crack of a baseball bat than a tennis serve, the shot was long gone.

“Fifteen love,” he called unnecessarily.

“Hard to tell if it’s in when it’s going so fast you can’t see it,” she grumbled, returning to the baseline.

“Did you say something?”

“Play the point.”

He withdrew another ball from his pocket and began to bounce it. She squinted across the court, scrutinizing his every move as he set up the serve. She took in his narrow stance as he pushed up onto the balls of his feet, the muscles in his calves flexing with untapped energy. He bent his knees and twisted his torso, winding his long, lean body into a powerful coil ready to spring.

His left hand rose as his right shoulder dropped in anticipation, and as soon as he lobbed that yellow target into the air his slow, methodical posture exploded into motion. His racket flew up to meet the ball as his body twisted and unwound to release the kinetic force in his shoulders, his hips, his legs, right down to the feet that arched until they leaped from the sheer strength radiating through every muscle.

The ball hurtled toward her with such speed, viciously controlled aim and fierce spin that she didn’t even care when it bounced way out of her reach. Watching Ben serve was more breathtaking than any artwork or ballet or natural landscape she’d ever seen. It was beautiful, it was magnificent and she wanted to learn exactly how he did it.

“Thirty love,” he announced. She didn’t have to move more than an inch to reset her position, so awestruck by his last shot that she’d barely attempted to return it. She dug her heels into the ground as she leaned down in anticipation of his next serve, determined not to let this one get past her.

Her stomach leaped with welcome exhilaration as he bounced the ball again. She had some fierce competitors on the circuit, but what got her adrenaline going was the challenge of defeating her opponent in a contest that really mattered, like a semifinal or a trophy match. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this excited to simply return the ball. Maybe Ben was right. Maybe Ivona
was
too easy a sparring partner.

Not that she’d ever admit that to him, of course.

She knew what to expect from him now—unfathomable speed and incredible accuracy—so as he readied his next serve, she focused on his body language in an effort to gauge his aim. Her best hope was to block his shot and use his own power to get the ball back over the net.