Date with a Diva. Joanne Rock

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СКАЧАТЬ had been getting off on the memory for weeks.

      “Didn’t you have a contract?” Her question forced him to blink away the black leather.

      “Absolutely. But in my egomania at the time, I signed a one-year deal knowing I’d have a monster season of career highs and then I’d be in a position to sign a longer deal for more money.” Stupid, selfish move, but then he’d always been the kind of guy to go for it all and put himself on the line. If he hadn’t been thinking about having a record-breaking deal quoted on ESPN, he would have just gone for the very reasonable long-term option the Panthers had offered him. He’d chosen to gamble.

      “So you’re bummed because after years of living on the big-league paycheck, you’re back to nothing once your contract year is up.” She took another sip and passed the bottle back. When he set his Hacky Sack down to take the flask, she nodded at his new toy. “May I?”

      “Sure.” He couldn’t picture her playing Hacky Sack but he handed it over. “Only I wasn’t upset about the money so much as the lost glory. Hockey is—was—my whole life. You remember Field of Dreams and how the people in the movie were so nuts for baseball?” He waited for her nod. “That’s how I am about hockey. It’s—it was—a way of life.”

      Pointing one of her perfectly painted fingernails at him, she stared him down. “I hope you’ve already talked to a financial planner.”

      Bad enough he was spilling his guts, he’d be damned if he would take financial advice, too. He made a noncommittal shrug.

      “Okay. After six years in corporate law, I had to at least warn you. Chapter two?” She squeezed the Hacky Sack between her fingers the same way that he liked to when he wasn’t kicking the hell out of the thing.

      Distracted by her hands, he was surprised when she handed the beanbag back to him.

      “Chapter two?” She prodded like an impatient trial lawyer nudging the witness.

      Nico wondered if she would be that aggressive in bed. And if he’d ever have a chance to find out for himself.

      “Chapter two finds me without a job, which quickly leads to my girlfriend walking out.”

      “She sure wasn’t much of a girlfriend.”

      “I didn’t discover until too late that groupies are only interested in the fame and the paycheck.” Although Ashley had done a hell of a job convincing him they wanted the same things in life—kids, family, roots. He’d laid his heart on the line for her, too, only to have it booted back to him. “To be fair, though, I guess I’d always been pretty interested in the fame and the paycheck, too.”

      “And not to stick up for this piranha of a girlfriend, but is there any chance you were just flat out bad company once your luck changed?” She recrossed her legs in the other direction, calling his attention to the lean thighs that he’d been dreaming about for weeks. “Sometimes people can turn superornery when the rug has been pulled out from under them.”

      “I’m positive I acted like a complete bastard at times, but I thought our relationship was more grounded than that.” Ashley leaving him had been a second slap in the face—no, make that a third—after his injury and his career ending.

      “You think maybe you could work things out now that you’ve leveled out? Assuming you have?”

      Yeah, sure he was level. Most of the time. “Nope. She’s dating my replacement on the team.”

      “Ouch.”

      “Apparently my judgment sucks.”

      “So does mine.” She lifted the flask to toast him. “Looks like we have something in common.”

      If he’d had a drink of his own, Nico would have chugged long and thoroughly to that notion. He promised himself it would be the first of many things they had in common.

      As it stood, he settled for watching Lainie’s lips mold around the top of the bourbon bottle and imaginining what they’d feel like wrapped around him. Soon.

      “Cheers to common ground. Now it’s your turn for some storytelling.”

      LAINIE BLINKED and the movement seemed to take forever.

      She struggled to haul her eyelids back up, eager to feast her gaze on the tall, dark and delectable Nico Cesare again.

      “Lainie?” He even sounded gorgeous.

      “Hmm?” As she licked her lips and tasted the bourbon her grandfather had given her as a going-away present when she left Kentucky, Lainie remembered she was already getting drunk tonight. Bad enough she’d let naughty Nico talk her into wallowing in her sorrows, leading to the pleasant numbing effects of alcohol. She definitely couldn’t indulge in sex with a stranger.

      “Are you okay?” His voice was all concern and deep male bass.

      She could eat him up with a spoon if the timing had been different. If she hadn’t been confronted with her own failure on page one of the Herald today.

      “I’m fine.” She passed him the bottle back and let her eyes linger on those well-muscled arms of his. Without her permission her gaze fell to his chest. His muscular thighs. “Too fine, in fact. I don’t think I’d better have any more.”

      “You want to start walking back toward the hotel while I coerce your story out of you?” He looked around the beach. “We’re a long way from Club Paradise up here.”

      Lainie bit back the first thought in her head—that they should get a room at the nearest hotel instead. She never knew bourbon was an aphrodisiac.

      “Good idea.” Rising carefully to make sure she didn’t fall over when she stood, Lainie handed him the newspaper she’d been holding. “And if you want my story, all you need to do is read today’s paper.”

      Without sparing it a glance, he shot the newspaper into a waste can at the end of the bench. “That’s your ex-husband’s story—a guy who didn’t know how to hold on to a good thing.” His dark eyes latched onto hers in the twilight. “I want to know what’s bothering you enough to make you come out here all by yourself and drink some sentimental concoction that could peel the paint off your nails. You don’t really miss that guy, do you?”

      Somehow seeing the paper in the trash made her feel marginally better.

      “Of course I don’t miss him.” She did miss the idea of being married even though she’d never admit it. There was a certain respectability that came with marriage. And comfort.

      “I just hate that I’m going to cringe for the rest of my life whenever I have to talk about my ex-husband, the convicted criminal.” She tried to shrug it off as if it was no big deal. Obviously she didn’t want to get into the whys and wherefores of how her marriage weighed on her like a giant red F—a grade she’d always feared but never actually received in school. She’d never fully shaken her backwoods roots. The sense of being watched and judged followed her around even now.

      She swayed on her feet a little as she put her leather sandals back on. Nico’s arm snaked around her waist to steady her. Of course, having him stand that close to her did little to stabilize her. If anything, she only felt more light-headed.

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