Chapter 9 #2
Finding myself up to my numb knees in the water I yelped when a big wave came crashing.
I turned and ran for the shore, trying to outrun it before I got drenched in the freezing water.
Max was almost back and closing in. I looked up and waved, laughing as I stumbled toward the safe ground.
But fool that I was, I didn’t see the rock and stumbled to the ground, hitting the shallow water and taking the hit as the wave I’d tried to outrun crashed over me, soaking me all the way up to my boobs.
Luckily my hair was saved as I scrambled back to a stand, letting out small cries of distress.
“Fuck, this water is freezing.” I hopped to the sand and shook, my body quaking with the cold, as I tried to wring the water out of my skirt, never mind my tank top. I may as well be naked with my shocked nipples protruding like an ice sculpture, hard and cold.
Max ran straight for me. “You’d make a gorgeous mermaid, Red, but this water is going to turn you blue.” He grinned and wrapped an arm around me. The heat of his body instantly soothed my shivering.
“I’m going to get you all wet.”
“I’ll suffer,” he said.
I laughed and my teeth chattered. He hugged me tighter, walking with me back in the direction of the hotel.
“Let’s see if we can find a back door. I don’t want to parade you through the lobby with your wet T-shirt ready to take first prize in any contest.”
I looked down and then at him. He wasn’t leering, but I could feel his interest growing. Literally. He held me very close, at least partly to keep me warm.
“That’s very gentlemanly of you,” I said because it was.
“Funny, I don’t feel very gentlemanly.”
I laughed, wanting to say all kinds of things to that line about how I’d love to feel him and check to see, but I couldn’t. I was into his approach now, holding back, testing the waters, pun intended, and only going so far until we couldn’t stand it anymore.
If he could stand the unquenched lust, then I could. The main thing was that he had me in his arms and he was taking care of me, he was thoughtful and kind and I think he liked me.
Avoiding the main door to the lobby, we found a path leading to a back entrance and he slid in his key card to open the door. He looked around the corridor and said, “Let’s take the stairs.”
“Sneaking around again,” I said.
He laughed. “So we are. One of these times we’re going to have to make all this sneaking around legitimate.”
That made my tummy tumble around and my heart go crazy. The cold that had invaded me a moment ago vanished under the heat of lusty promise in his words.
“Don’t make rash promises, Max. I might want to hold you to those words.”
His warm blue eyes aimed at me and bore down with purpose, checking on my soul, visiting my heart, and whipping all my hope into a frenzy of longing. But he didn’t say anything as he held an arm around me, guiding me up the stairs and into the corridor to my room.
He held his hand out for my key card when I’d slipped it from my wet pocket.
He slid it into the door, shoved the handle down, and pushed it open for me to go inside.
He remained standing where he was, close, hard bodied, breathing evenly while I was breathless.
I think it was from the stairs, but it might have been those eyes of his on me, lingering on my face.
Not on my boobs with their protruding nipples.
The feeling spun my head, gave me a swelling feeling in my chest.
“Take a hot shower. I’ll see you at lunch,” he said.
Even though everything in me, namely my vagina, screamed to invite him into my room to ravish him, I didn’t. Instead I nodded.
“See you at lunch.”
After my prescribed hot shower, all wrapped up in the thick white robe that came with the room, I wandered into the living area of the suite to see if Cat was back from wherever she’d been. She came into the living room from her bedroom at the same time I did and that made me laugh.
“I was wondering where you were.”
“Spending time with Mom and Penny and Dad.” She waved a hand and came up to me, clutching my arms. “Cat, I’m so sorry about last night. I didn’t mean for you to have to leave.”
“No worries,” I said truthfully. She paused and eyed me.
“Did you end up staying with Max?”
I thought of lying but I nodded. “Nothing happened. We stayed in separate beds, I swear.”
She laughed. “Seriously? Since when is it a thing that you need to swear to me that nothing happened, like I might judge you? And why the hell would you sleep in separate beds? Why didn’t anything happen?”
“I don’t know.” I flopped onto the couch, the towel still wrapped around my hair.
“The whole thing with him is so full of intrigue, like we’re sneaking around hiding from Coach or maybe he’s holding back because he’s still stuck on his ex.
” I didn’t dare tell her about Max’s insight on my vulnerability.
It was still hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that Max might not want the same thing as I did. I shrugged.
“He has good reason,” Cat said. “Dad warned him against you. Still, there’ll be plenty of opportunity.”
“Right. There’s tonight. Maybe you could kick me out of the room again. Leave the Do Not Disturb sign out.”
“Happy to oblige. I’ll leave the sign out, but Hunter will be sleeping in his own room tonight.”
“Does that mean you want company tonight? I don’t have to spend the night with Max. I can stay with you.”
“No, don’t, Nattie. It’s sweet of you to offer, but I’ll be going to bed early. I’m already exhausted and it’s not even lunch.” She sat next to me. “You sure about Max? I’ve never seen you so set on a man before. It’s kind of . . . funny. Him playing hard to get and you chasing after him.”
I elbowed her. “Ha ha. I’m not sure what to do, Cat. Honestly, I’ve never felt this way about a man before, wanted him so badly I’d practically beg for him.”
“Don’t beg,” she said, frowning.
“Easy for you to say. You have Hunter salivating over you.”
“Confession—it wasn’t always that way. Sure we always had an attraction, but he wanted nothing to do with me because—”
“Because of Coach,” I said. “Unfortunately for me, Coach is the least of my problems. Max is holding back for a whole other trunkload of demons. He says it’s not his ex, but I’m sure the divorce has taken a toll. Then he threw his twin girls up as a roadblock. As if.”
“Doesn’t he know you love children?”
I nodded. “It’s probably more about logistics and exposing the girls to strange women. I see it all the time with the divorced parents of my students. Mostly it’s the single moms that are worried about it though.”
She nodded. “There is something to his holding back then. Something legitimate.” Cat spoke quietly as if the low volume of her words could soften the meaning.
I waved my hand in dismissal. “Not if we were having a fling. We’re here now, this weekend, with no logistics and no fears of his girls being exposed to a strange woman.”
She laughed. “You’re right. But I thought you wanted more than a fling, with Max.
Don’t you? Because to tell the truth, even if he is a little old and with baggage—although I hesitate to refer to is twin girls as baggage especially because I know you love children—he is a quality guy.
Well respected as one of the most decent men on the team. Not a fling kind of guy.”
I nodded. ”That’s the problem. I need to convince him I’m okay with a fling, that a fling is a good idea.”
“But you’re not? I don’t get how that’s going to help—”
“I catch him with a fling and then reel him in.” Maybe I should have been crossing my fingers behind my back as I said this since I’d already rejected this line of attack as never going to work because Max could see right through me. But I didn’t want Cat to know that for some reason.
She shook her head and snorted. “You’re something else. But I think maybe you could carry it off because I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” She paused a beat and I held my breath, wondering what she saw. “Like there’s a connection between you. Something deep going on.” She shrugged.
“That’s how it feels to me. I’m betting he feels it too.” I knew he felt something, but I had no idea how determined he was to keep me at arm’s length and I wasn’t sure I knew all the reasons why. His twins, his ex, logistics were all things we could deal with, but maybe there was something more.
We both dressed in flirty tops and tight skirts. My skirt was shorter and my neckline deeper, but we both looked great in our own ways. Cat shoved me aside to take a twirl in front of the mirror.
“You’re such a tomboy,” I said. She’d always been fond of roughhousing as if she’d grown up with brothers, but I knew it was her need to belong on her Dad’s team that made her want to act like she was football ready. “You look flawlessly gorgeous. Let’s go.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have a troop of photographers and videographers following you around.”
“No.” I shivered at the thought. “I’d settle for one man following me straight into my bed.”
“You’re incorrigible.” She bopped my shoulder then hooked her arm through mine and we headed down to the Grill Room.
The room was fancy and filled to the brim with hunky men as far as the eye could see.
“If I wasn’t with you, I’d be salivating at the eye-popping sight of all these mouthwatering men, but I don’t want to get caught on camera. Wouldn’t want to shock my school principal into an early grave. He has no idea.”
Cat laughed. “Here comes a camera now.”
I pecked her on the cheek. “Sorry, but I gotta go and find my one true mouthwatering man.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be sitting with my family.” She added in a whisper, “Good luck with Max.” She gave a squeeze to my arm before I took off.