Chapter 10
GAME, SET, AND MATCH, GAFFNEY.”
Penny stood, applauding Indy’s win, her third in three days.
It was a decisive victory and she could remember what that felt like; a few years ago, she was down on that court, winning her first Classic semifinal.
Long before there were sponsorships and British bad boys, there was tennis and her simple love for the sport.
She still loved it, of course, but everything was so complicated now.
Indy and her opponent met at the net and shook hands to end the match, and Penny turned to leave.
She had a training session with Dom and Alex in fifteen minutes.
Coming down the stairs out of the OBX stadium with the rest of the crowd, Penny felt him before she saw him.
It was like that in Australia, too. She’d felt his eyes on her long before he’d approached her.
She tried to disappear into the throng of people, but he was head and shoulders above nearly everyone. If he wanted to find her, he would.
“Penny,” Alex said, suddenly beside her. The people around them shifted, and she was forced closer to him. “Come on. We need to talk.” His hand reached for her and then stopped, hovering and dropping away instead, flexing and then relaxing. “Please, love.”
“What do you want, Alex?” she asked, acutely aware of the eyes that followed them as they started down the path leading away from the stadium.
“I want to talk to you.”
He drew to a halt near their practice court.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Yeah, see, I don’t believe you.”
She shrugged. “Believe what you like.”
“I get it. You’re hacked off at me. You’ve been hacked off at me for months, since that night at the Aussie.”
Penny blinked at him in disbelief. “Seriously? You really think now is the time to talk about this?”
“I meant to the day I arrived, but you radiate a sort of force field, so I put it off, and then the other night I worked up some courage.”
“You mean you drank until you weren’t scared of me anymore.”
“Right, that. But you shot me down.”
“You were drunk and you didn’t just want to talk.”
She arched an eyebrow at him and he shrugged unapologetically.
“I’m not drunk now, and while I’d much rather not talk, I think maybe we should.”
“We can’t. We have a training session. Dom’ll be here in…” Her phone buzzed in her pocket, cutting her off. Alex’s phone buzzed as well.
Only one person would be texting them at the same time.
“Dom’s not coming,” he said, reading off his screen. “He’s got press to do with Jasmine and Indiana for the final tomorrow.”
“Of course he does. I’m out of here.”
In two strides he leapt out in front of her, blocking her path. “Oy, where are you going? We’ve got to train.”
Penny looked up at the sky, a dusky blue color, as a few dark, wispy clouds gathered high in the heavens. Maybe if she were really lucky, lightning would strike and put her out of her misery. “First you want to talk, and now you want to train?”
“We can’t do both?”
“Train first,” she said, “then talk.” Of course she had no intention of sticking around once they finished their session. He’d have to get over it.
They stretched out on their practice court in silence, like they had every day since he arrived, but even without words, the connection between them was practically tangible.
Every time he shifted, her body wanted to mimic the motion.
She fought it, trying desperately to focus on her own stretching regime.
What was it about him? Aside from the mind-blowing sex, of course.
It was getting harder and harder to brush aside the memories.
Every night he invaded her dreams and every day he was there, waiting on the court, their training sessions almost as arousing as her memories.
She’d never experienced anything like it.
Their bodies were made for each other, and though her mind was set against him, her body refused to let her forget.
And as for her heart… she tried not to think about that.
“Okay?” he asked, pulling her from her thoughts, but not enough to make her forget the last time he’d asked that question, leaning over her, one hand gripping her thigh, the other holding himself up against the mattress, his body cradled by her hips, slick with sweat, straining with the effort of holding back, waiting for her permission.
“Penny?” She pushed herself out of the fog of the past and stood, brushing the clay from her shorts.
“Let’s just do a short warm-up,” she suggested, hoping he’d agree.
“Yeah,” he said, a wicked grin blooming across his face. “Then let’s play.”
A few practice serves, forehands, backhands, and some net work later and they were both geared up for a set.
“Go on, then,” Alex said, “let’s see what you got.” He chucked a ball at her from across the net and she plucked it neatly out of the air.
After bouncing it a few times at her feet, Penny let her weight fall back and then explode forward through the ball, sending a flat BB down the center of the court. He blocked it back, but she raced forward, putting away a short volley totally out of his reach.
“Fifteen–love.”
And so, on and on it went, trading point after point, breaking serve, breaking back, forcing deuce, and losing at love, their level of play rising with every stroke of the racket for nearly an hour. They stopped keeping score early in, recognizing the need to just play.
“Next point wins,” Alex called out finally as they caught their breath between points.
“Tired?” she challenged.
“Nah, I’ve got somewhere to be and you owe me a bit of a chat.”
“Fine, next point.”
It was his serve. He stood tall, then coiled his body down, his back bending as he lifted the ball up into the heavens. Then, like lightning, he sprung, the ball a missile, but she was ready, pouncing on it, returning it deep into his side of the court.
“Out!”
“Bullshit,” she called back at him, jogging around the net. It was a clay court; there would be a mark where the ball landed. He met her there, pointing to the skid past the white line with his racket head.
“Out,” he repeated. “Shame you refuse to take me at my word.”
Penny’s head snapped up. “And why should I trust you?”
“Have I ever given you reason not to?”
It was a fair question, she admitted to herself, not that she’d ever tell him that, so she shrugged.
It’s not like it mattered. Whether she could trust him or not wasn’t the issue.
She couldn’t trust herself to keep her focus if she was with him.
If it happened in Australia, it could happen again, and Penny wasn’t willing to take that risk.
“I think I know what the problem is. You don’t know me.”
“I know you as well as I ever want to.” She made for the edge of the court, slid her racket back into its bag, and zipped up.
He waved away her response and kept talking. “I mean it. I like training here. I like working with Dom, and God help me, I actually like training with you, but if we don’t figure out some of the shit between us, it’s not going to work, not long-term.”
“Yeah, you not around to torture me, that would be tragic.”
He ignored the sarcasm and nodded. “Indeed, it would, so come here and lie down on the court with me.”
She squinted at him, the request coming out of nowhere. “What? No.”
“This will help your game.”
Unconvinced, she lifted her bag over her shoulder, ready to leave.
“Jesus, do you fight everyone like this or is it just me?”
It was just him. No one had ever made her feel the way he did. “I’m not lying down.”
“Do you want to win the bloody French Open or not?”
Did she want to win the French Open? Of course she did. So she put her bag down. “Sounds too good to be true,” she said, and watched him as he reclined onto the court. “Was this what you were doing on your first day here?”
“Yes. It was something I hadn’t done for a long time, but if you’ll trust me for half a second, I promise it’ll work. Now get down here.”
She kneeled, the clay shifting beneath her and sticking to her sweaty knees. Then she rolled over onto her back, careful to keep a body width of distance between them. “Okay, now what?”
“Now close your eyes and let your mind go blank.”
“That’s not possible. I’ll just be thinking about not thinking.”
“Penny,” he said, reaching out, his fingers wrapping lightly around her wrist. She wanted to pull away, but something about the way he said her name, a desperate note in his voice she hadn’t heard before, kept her still. “Close your eyes and breathe.”
He inhaled deeply and she followed him, matching his breathing pattern. A soft pressure on the inside of her wrist kept time for them, back and forth, his calloused thumb stroking against the sensitive skin.
“Do you really hate me?”
The question startled her so much, she actually answered. “No.” She didn’t have to open her eyes to know he was smiling. “I don’t hate you.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“What?”
“That morning, I woke up and you were gone.”
It was so much easier to talk with her eyes closed, when she couldn’t see him. It was almost like no one could see her—it was so easy, she decided not to be pissed off at him for tricking her into talking. “I was embarrassed.”
“Of me?”
Penny shook her head, the clay beneath her caking into her hair. “No, not you, of me. I don’t do things like that, one-night stands.”
“Oh,” he said simply.
“And then you grabbed the nearest supermodel, got drunk, and crashed your bike,” she said, the dots finally connecting in her head. Had he gone out and gotten himself drunk because she left? Had he wanted her to stay?
“Something like that,” he admitted.
“So it’s my fault.”
“No,” he said. The soft feel of his thumb disappeared, replaced quickly by her entire hand being wrapped up in the warmth of his. “That was all me. I was spiraling.”
“You’ve been doing really well here.”