Most Valuable Playboy (Ballers and Babes #1)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

He slides in closer to me, setting his hands on my waist. “You weren’t going to take off for the slow song, were you?”

My throat is dry. My pulse hammers. “No.”

“Good,” he says, his voice soft, and the gentle sound of it makes me freeze, my arms in mid-air.

I know I need to put my arms around his neck, but I haven’t been this close to him since prom. Cooper Armstrong was my date at prom. He was a freshman in college, I was a senior in high school, and he came back to town for that weekend. I’d been planning on going with my boyfriend but the guy broke up with me shortly before the big dance. Cooper swooped in and saved the day. He said he didn’t want my dress to go to waste. He wanted me to wear it and to have a good time. I wound up having the best time with him.

“You can put your arms around my neck,” he says tenderly.

I blink. “Sorry. I was kind of out of it for a second.”

“That’s okay. I have that effect on women.”

Right. Women. I need the reminder. Cooper is a hot, single, eligible bachelor. He dates. He plays the field. He doesn’t know I have a long-standing crush on him. He doesn’t know I have feelings that run much deeper than friendship. We’ve never been together, even though in moments like this, with his hands on my waist and my arms slinking around his neck, something starts to feel inevitable in the way we touch.

Like we were meant to come together on this dance floor.

Only I know that’s my foolish heart talking. Or my eyes, since they’re busy drinking in the up-close-and-personal sight of this most handsome man, his square jaw, his messy brown hair that the hairdresser in me wants to get my scissors on and cut, but the woman in me wants to get my hands in and run my fingers through.

Most of all, there’s a part of me every now and then that wishes we could have this. These long chats that unfurl late into the night and lead to more.

That lead to dancing.

To his hands on my waist.

To my fingers tiptoeing dangerously close to the ends of his hair. “Cooper,” I say, chiding him. “Your hair is getting long. We need to cut it again.”

He arches an eyebrow, pretending to think. “Know any good hairdressers?”

As if I’m also contemplating, I stare at the ceiling as the soft strains of Ella Fitzgerald cocoon us. “I do, but I wonder if she can fit you in.”

“I’ll just go to a barber.”

I gasp. “Horrors. What a terrible thing to say. You can’t take this pretty hair to a barber.”

“So you’ll fit me in, then?”

Anytime, anywhere.

“I’ll do my best to get you on the books, and I’ll give you a very nice haircut.”

He moves in closer. “You give the best haircuts.”

It doesn’t seem as if we’re talking about haircuts.

It doesn’t seem that way at all.

His lips skate tantalizingly close to my neck, as his mouth comes near my ear. “As if I’d let anyone else touch my hair.”

This time, I don’t shiver. I melt. I’m molten all over, and I can feel the effects of his words everywhere in my body.

He inches even closer, and I do, too, like it’s the next step in the dance.

An inch here, an inch there, and we’d be indecent.

I wonder if it’s apparent to anyone else that the bridesmaid is thinking about doing filthy things to the best man and wishing, wishing, wishing he would take her home.

Wishing, too, she knew what the best man was thinking in this moment.

We’re quiet as we sway, the twinkling lights scattering across the dance floor.

Like this, it feels like fantasy could slide into reality. It feels like we’re one slip of the tongue away.

It might be the way his right hand curls tighter around my waist. It might be the way he moves almost imperceptibly closer. It might even be the slightest rumble in his throat as the song nears its end.

Or it might all be in my imagination.

The music fades, and when a faster song begins, we break apart.