Authors: Regina Kyle
“N
ICE
GAME
,” C
ADE
repeated through gritted teeth as he went down the line of police officers, shaking hands. Christ, he hated losing. Especially when it was his own damn fault.
“Better luck next year.” The last cop in line squeezed Cade’s hand a little too hard, his smile a little too broad.
“Bite me.” Cade squeezed right back, engaging his long-time friend and one-time roommate Trey Brannigan in a familiar battle of wills.
“No, thanks.” Trey grimaced but held on. “But I will bite into at least four slices of Valentino’s meat-lovers special, courtesy of the SFD.”
“Keep it up and it may just be your last meal.”
Cappy came up behind Cade and clapped his shoulder. “Play nice, boys.”
“We were just messing around, Cap.” Cade dropped Trey’s hand.
His buddy smirked at him, barely suppressing a laugh, and mouthed,
I win
.
“Well, quit messing around.” Cappy thrust an equipment bag at Cade and gestured to the balls, bats and gloves strewn on the ground around home plate and near the dugouts. “You struck out three times tonight, more than anyone else on the team. That means you get to pick up the gear. And don’t forget the bases.”
Cappy strode off, and Cade turned back to his friend. “Looks like I’m gonna be a while. Save me a seat at Valentino’s.”
“Don’t you mean three?” Trey looked over Cade’s shoulder.
Cade followed Trey’s gaze and saw Sasha and Ivy bearing down on him from opposite directions. “Shit. Can you run interference for me?”
“Which one do you want me to waylay?” Trey snickered. “The blonde or the redhead?”
“The blonde. Keep her busy while Ivy and I grab the equipment and run.”
“Ivy?” Trey squinted at her. “Damn. Is that Jabba the Mutt?”
There was that stupid nickname again. Cade clenched his fists at his sides. “Don’t call her that.”
“Sorry, man.” Trey stepped back, holding his hands up, palms out, in a show of surrender. “I didn’t realize things were like that.”
Cade frowned. “Like what?”
“When a guy rushes to his woman’s defense, he’s hooked. Not that I blame you. If I’d known she was gonna turn out this hot, I would’ve paid more attention to her in high school.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you.” Cade’s eyes pinged from Ivy to Sasha. Both women were gunning for him like a couple of F-14 fighter jets. He turned to Trey, just shy of begging. “Will you get Sasha off my back or not?”
“Damn. You’ve got Jabba the...”
Cade gave his friend a murderous look, stopping Trey in midsentence before he corrected himself.
“...Ivy
and
the Gibson’s girl after you?” Trey whistled. “Lucky stiff.”
Stiff
didn’t even begin to describe how he’d feel after those two were through with him. And not in a good way. “Yes or no?”
“Fine.” Trey headed off to intercept Sasha, calling over his shoulder as he went, “You owe me one.”
Cade was tempted to respond that distracting Sasha wasn’t much of a hardship. After all, she was blonde and beautiful, with a killer rack and legs that went on for days. But she was also self-centered and not too bright. And at a certain point in a guy’s life, the pretty package wasn’t enough to outweigh the personality flaws.
He was definitely at that point. He wasn’t so sure about Trey.
“Geez, you weren’t kidding about your ex,” Ivy said as she approached him. “That girl can’t take a hint to save her life.”
Cade took her elbow and ushered her toward home plate. “You can tell me all about it later. Right now we’ve got to pick up this gear and get out of here before Sasha figures out Trey’s blowing smoke up her ass.”
“Trey Brannigan, from high school?”
Ivy seemed to shrink before his eyes. He tried to ignore the lump of guilt in his stomach. He’d been her friend back then, but when push came to shove he was no better than the assholes who’d ridiculed her. Like Trey.
Fortunately, most people grew out of that bullshit. For the most part Trey had, although once in a while he slipped back into his old ways, which usually earned him a smack upside the head from Cade.
“Trey can be an idiot. But the ladies love him. He’ll keep Sasha out of our hair until we can split.” He handed her the bag. “I’ll pull up the bases if you get the equipment.”
“No problem.” She went right to work. Yet another difference between her and Sasha, who would have made some excuse about ruining her designer duds or breaking a nail.
Not that the comparison mattered. Because he wasn’t any more interested in Ivy than he was in Sasha. Despite her obvious charms. Charms that were on full display as she bent to gather the gear in that tied-too-tight shirt and shorter-than-short shorts.
It took him twice as long as it should have to pry up the bases thanks to the repeated glimpses of Ivy’s ample cleavage and biteable bottom. When he was done, he met her behind the backstop, where she was zipping up the bag.
“All set.”
“I’ll get that.” He reached for the bag as she hefted it over her shoulder.
“Are you kidding?” She shook him off and started for the parking lot, not even breaking a sweat. “You’ve seen the stuff I work with, right? I haul around twice this much every day.”
“I thought you had people to do that for you.”
“Not always.”
She hitched up the bag, and for the first time he realized what had struck him about her in the studio. Not so much that she was thinner than he remembered her, but that she was stronger.
No, that wasn’t right, either. It was a strength inside, not just physically, that hadn’t been there before.
“Quit dawdling,” she called to him, not missing a step.
“Right behind you.”
He jogged a few paces to catch up and they walked to his SUV in silence.
“Home free.” Cade hit the button on his remote to unlock the doors.
“Hey, baby.”
So damn close, but yet so fucking far.
Sasha’s high heels crunched in the gravel as she bore down on them across the parking lot. “Wait up.”
“So much for your diversionary tactic.” Ivy tossed the equipment bag onto the backseat. “Guess Trey’s not the ladies’ man either of you think he is.”
She slammed the door and turned to face him, hands on her hips in that way she had, the one that made her breasts strain against the fabric of her shirt, her nipples clearly visible under the SFD logo. He cleared his throat and adjusted the crotch of his baseball pants.
“Come on.” He reached for the car door handle. “We can still make it if we hurry. This puppy may not look like much, but it can go zero to sixty in under seven seconds.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” Ivy put a hand over his, stopping him from opening the door. “Kiss me.”
His breath caught in his throat. “What?”
“Are you deaf or dense?” She leaned in to him, pressing those damn delicious breasts against his chest. “Kiss. Me. Like you mean it. If that doesn’t convince her you’re not interested, nothing will.”
He took a step back and found himself pinned between Ivy’s soft, warm curves and the cold, hard SUV. Not much of a dilemma there except for the whole safe-distance thing. “I thought that was a last resort.”
“What’s more last-resort than her closing in on us like a heat-seeking missile? It’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? What we practiced for.” She molded herself to him and he was pretty sure she could feel his erection against her thigh. “One little kiss and she’ll get the message.”
“And what message is that, exactly?”
With surprising force, she grabbed his shoulders and spun him around so she was the one trapped against the car. She rose up on tiptoe so when she spoke her lips moved against his.
“This one.”
* * *
T
HEIR
FIRST
KISS
was a brushfire compared to this. This was a five-alarm inferno.
Last time Ivy had gone in with the intent to tease, to tantalize. This time she was more like a one-woman wrecking crew, determined to wipe thoughts of Sasha or any other woman from Cade’s mind.
Only he wasn’t biting. Literally or figuratively.
She slid her lips along his strong jaw, smiling as she tasted him. Salt and soap and all sorts of yummy maleness. Just like she’d imagined since she hit puberty.
“This isn’t supposed to be a solo performance,” she whispered against his neck. The sweet scrape of his five-o’-clock shadow made her lips tingle. “Do something. Put your hand on my ass. Your tongue down my throat. Anything.”
He mumbled something that sounded like “fuck safe distance,” wedged a leg between hers and cupped her ass, dragging her to him. She sighed into the hollow at the base of his neck and reached around to pull his shirt from the waistband of his pants.
“That’s more like it.” She slipped her hands under his shirt and up his back, still slick with sweat from the ball game, scraping gently with her nails as she went. He rewarded her with a shudder and her insides did a little happy dance. He might want to deny it, but he was as affected by this as she was. The evidence was undeniable, pressing against her core.
“Christ, Ivy.” He moaned, further proving her point.
Over his shoulder she saw Sasha. Her steps had slowed and her mouth gaped as she stared at them.
“Perfect. She’s looking at us like she’s seen the Ghost of Christmas Past. Kiss me and she’ll probably keel over.”
“Then it’s a good thing there’s plenty of cops and firefighters around,” Cade murmured just before his mouth claimed hers. His hands left her bottom and traveled up to frame her face. In one swift but gentle move, he tugged off her baseball cap and freed her hair from the ponytail, letting it cascade over his fingers.
A moan stuck in Ivy’s throat as his lips teased and pressed harder. She opened to him, letting his tongue play with hers in a dance as old as time but new to her. Sure, she’d kissed guys before. Not many, but a few. And not like this. Hot. Wet. Urgent.
She melted into him, her legs unable to support her weight. His big hand trailed down her neck, his fingers toying with the top button of the borrowed baseball jersey, teasing the sensitive skin between her breasts and making her shiver.
He broke off the kiss and licked a moist path to her ear, his teeth tugging at the lobe. “Sasha still watching?”
Sasha who?
“Uh-huh.” The two syllables were all Ivy could manage.
“She look convinced?” His breath stirred the hair behind her ear, and he raised a hand to twine a strand around his finger.
It took a second for Ivy to come out of her lust-induced haze so she could focus on the parking lot beyond Cade’s shoulder. Sasha was at a dead stop a few feet away, hands on her model-thin hips, eyes flashing. She met Ivy’s gaze, tossed her perfectly coiffed, long, blond hair in a gesture that screamed “I have no clue why he’s with you when he could have all of this” and stomped off.
“She looks pissed. Or looked. She’s gone now.”
“Good.” He let his hand drop and reached around her to open the car door. “Your chariot awaits.”
“Valentino’s?” she asked, still shaking a bit from the aftereffects of their kiss as she climbed in. “I’m dying for a piece of meat-lovers pie. Or three.”
She cringed, instantly regretting mentioning her appetite—another knee-jerk reaction from her way overweight days, when talk of food had been all but verboten—but Cade didn’t seem to notice. He leaned on the open door. “Sasha’s bound to be there. Sure you’re up for that?”
After that kiss, she wasn’t sure of anything, especially her ability to be within five feet of Cade without mauling him like a sex-starved grizzly. But at least at Valentino’s they’d be surrounded by a crowd. And dinner would put off the awkwardness when he dropped her off at the end of the night.
“I’m game as long as you are.”
“Great.” He bent to pick up her baseball cap, brushed it off and handed it to her. “I’m starving.”
Two hours, one beer and more pieces of pizza than she wanted to admit later, Ivy yawned, unable to delay the inevitable any longer. She tapped Cade, who was sitting next to her, on the shoulder. “Can we leave soon? I’ve got to be at the nursery at the butt crack of dawn, and it’s way past my bedtime.”
Plus, she’d had about as much of Sasha and her high-pitched, fake laugh as she could take. Cade’s ex had kept her distance, but that annoying laugh traveled across the room like a bullet to the brain.
And then there were the well-meaning but double-edged compliments from classmates she hadn’t seen since graduation.
“Oh, my God, Ivy, is that you?”
“What happened to you?”
“You’re so much thinner.”
And her personal favorite: “Are you sick?” Like that was the only conceivable way Jabba the Mutt could drop a few pounds.
Cade pulled out his wallet. “No problem. I’m ready to head out, too.”
He threw a handful of bills on the table and stood. “This ought to cover my share.”
Trey snatched it up. “If it doesn’t, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Thanks for everything,” Cade said to Ivy once they’d gotten into his SUV. “I owe you.”
“We’re even, remember?” She ran a finger along the brim of the ball cap, now laying in her lap. “The dare.”
“Right. The dare.” He turned onto the narrow road that circled Leffert’s Pond and led to Holly and Nick’s place. “Anyway, you were great tonight.”
Ivy stared silently out the window, her heart knocking against her ribs. He had no idea how great tonight could be, if only she could work up the nerve. After a few minutes, she turned to Cade, his profile handsome even in the eerie half light of the car’s dashboard. She wished she had her Nikon so she could capture him. “So, that kiss...”
“Yeah, that was something.” He shot her a quick, embarrassed smile and her heart skittered even faster. “I bet I won’t be hearing from Sasha again after that performance.”
Screech.
Just like that, her heart skidded to a stop, her hopes dashed.
Performance? Who did he think was performing? Her? Him? Both of them?
She scrunched up the baseball cap in her hands. “That’s not the word I’d use to describe it.”