Playing it Cool (Sydney Smoke Rugby) (13 page)

She recoiled as if he had struck her. “What the hell are you talking about? I did
not
say the
L
word.”

“You did. Before. In your sleep. You said ‘I love you.’”

God was it only a handful of minutes ago that the sleepy words she’d uttered had sounded so damn good in his slumberous drowse.

What had he been thinking? It was a fucking
disaster
.

Harper looked stunned at the revelation, her olive complexion draining to white. She seemed temporarily speechless before she straightened her spine.

“Take a freaking breath, Dex. I once apparently told my father in the middle of a very sound sleep that I was in Narnia. I’m pretty sure he didn’t take it as gospel.”

Dex had waited for her denial. Yearned for it. But now it was here, it didn’t bring him the relief he’d hoped for. It only made him want to grab her and shake her even more.

For fuck’s sake
. Where the hell was his head at? “This is the kind of distraction I just don’t need.”

“Well, go,” she said, her back stiff, her arms folded. “I’m not bloody stopping you.”

Dex grabbed his keys from off the floor where they’d fallen a handful of hours ago and strode to the door. He paused when he got there. “I can’t do this anymore.”

She frowned. “Do what?”

“This,” he said, turning to face her. “
Us
. Obviously it’s more distracting than I realised.”

Her look could have refrozen melted polar ice. “What on Earth makes you think I
ever
want to see you again? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

Then she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.

Chapter Eleven

“Something more important you had to do?” Griff inquired, his voice low and icy, as Dex ran onto the field forty-five minutes later.

The Smoke’s coach was a big lion of a man. Only in his early forties, his hair was liberally shot with gray and a permanent frown crinkled his face into harsh lines. Apparently women found that sexy instead of terrifying. There was an insanely popular Facebook fan page devoted to him, complete with his own memes.

Obviously they’d never been at the wrong end of his ire.

There were times when Griff could yell loud enough to let everyone in the surrounding suburbs know his displeasure. But it was his quiet, menacing fury that was the most dangerous.

Fuck.

“No, boss. I…” Nothing short of an apocalypse or admission to intensive care was going to satisfy Griff.

“It’s complicated,” Dex said grimly. “But it won’t happen again.”

His eyes glittered a tawny yellow. “You’ve taken care of it?”

Dex nodded. “I have.”

“Good.” He pointed to the field behind him. “Lucky you, you get to drill twice. And you’re benched for Saturday’s game.”

Dex used his fury at himself and Griff’s punishment to get him through the gruelling session. They were always physically challenging, but having to do everything twice pushed him to his limits. By the time he’d hit the locker room he’d never been so exhausted in his life. Only a few hours sleep, combined with an exercise programme specifically designed by Griff to make grown men cry after just
one
run through, had left him utterly spent.

No such thing as gentle recovery swims as far as Griff was concerned.

The guys were mercifully devoid of smack talk—for the moment, anyway—obviously pitying him as he sat his sorry ass on the low bench. Also, Linc had the floor, talking about some chick he’d met at a club last night, and Dex had never been so thankful for Linc’s big mouth and bigger ego.

Perspiration poured off Dex and every muscle quivered in a gelatinous soup as he leaned forward on his elbows and cradled his head in his hands. Aromas of sweat and grass and muscle liniment surrounded him.

“You okay?” Tanner asked, his voice low as he sat down beside Dex, his legs on the opposite side of the bench.

“I’ve been better.”

“You need to talk about anything?”

Dex shook his head. Tanner was his skipper and his friend, but they didn’t talk about their personal shit. And that was just the way Dex liked it.

“You know…” Tanner hesitated. “Griff is a goddamn genius. At
rugby
. But he’s got nothing outside of it, Dex. His personal life is a wasteland. Don’t try and emulate a guy who’s so emotionally stunted he can’t even bear to look at his own daughter most of the time.”

Dex shrugged. “He’s been through a lot.”

Griffin King never talked about the tragedy that had poleaxed his life twenty years ago. Neither did anybody else, not even between themselves. It was taboo. “And he’s alone,” Tanner added. “Alone sucks.”

“Fuck me,” Dex said, trying to lighten the mood. “Tilly really does have you by the balls, doesn’t she?”

Tanner grinned. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Dex blinked at the statement. “What?” he half laughed. “Better than
rugby?
” If Dex has been asked to put money on it he would have said Tanner’s priorities were to the game first.

“I’d give it up tomorrow if she asked me to.”

Dex waited for Tanner to grow a second head or do
something
to indicate his apparent demonic possession.

“Look man,” said Tanner, “I think you really like this chick. I haven’t seen you serious about anyone, and I’ve known you since under nineteens. Don’t fuck it up.”

Maybe Tanner was right. Maybe there was more to him and Harper hanging out. Maybe there was more to the fucking than just friendly benefits. But he couldn’t think about that now. He wouldn’t
let
himself go there.

“I’ll worry about all that shit after my career is done.”

Tanner groaned. “Don’t make her your consolation prize, man. Jesus, don’t you know anything about women?”

“Only what Linc tells me,” he said with a humourless smile, tipping his chin at Linc, still flapping his gums.

“Christ, that’s a worry.” Tanner grinned. “What Linc
thinks
he knows would take up all the space on the frickin’ internet. What he
really
knows could fit on the back of a postage stamp.”

Dex laughed. Linc talked a lot of shit, but at least he was focused on the game first and foremost, too.

“She won’t be around, man,” Tanner continued. “Some other guy will have snapped her up, and you’ll be too damn old and broken-down to beat him up.”

The thought of Harper with someone else hammered inside his head, filling Dex with the unreasonable urge to smash his fist into the nearest locker. Although Tanner’s face might be a good alternative if he didn’t
shut the fuck up
.

He dropped his head from side to side to stretch out his traps, then stood in case he succumbed to the impulse. He needed a shower. He needed to be alone. He needed to crawl into his bed and die for a couple of hours.

He needed to forget about Harper Nugent.

Signalling their
conversation
was over, he stripped his shirt off as he strode the two paces to his locker.

A wolf whistle rang out around the room, echoing off the tinny lockers and he realised too late about the paint on his body.

Fuck.
There went his moratorium on smack talk.

“Don’t look now Dex,” Bodie said, “but I think you’re on fire.”

“Smmmmokin’,” Linc called in his best Jim Carey voice.

“Cool ink, man,” Donovan added. “But you should really ask for your money back. It’s a little smudged.”

A lot of Harper’s swirling smoke was either smudged from rolling around on the sheets with her, or had run in streaks from the sweat that had dripped down his body. But it was largely still recognisable.

“So, that’s where you were,” John Trimble mused. “I hope it came with a happy ending.”

Dex grabbed a towel from his locker and slammed it shut. “Why don’t you ask your mother, Johnny,” he snapped, and strode away.

Laughter followed him all the way to the shower.

…

It took two weeks for Dex to crack. His life had gone to hell in a handbasket, and he hated it. After being benched for that one game, he’d been raring and ready to go for the next one, but he’d screwed up, including fucking up a line out that had led to the other team scoring a crucial try and winning the match.

Griff had been apoplectic, but no one had taken it harder than Dex.

His training was suffering, too. Once upon a time, rugby had filled his head from morning to night, especially during those sessions on the field when he was pounding away and sweating like a pig, giving everything he had and more for the game and for Griff
.
Now, all he could think about was Harper.

The things he’d said to her that last morning. The
L
word on her lips.

How much he missed her.

And he got no relief from his thoughts at night. In the dark, when his mind finally let up enough to drift off to sleep, his dreams turned steamy and he’d wake with a start, his body aching, reaching for her, desperate for her touch.

Christ,
if there were a worldwide award for wanking, Dex would win it with flying colours. He lay in the dark night after night, his hand on his cock, conjuring her face, her smell, the feel of her hair brushing his stomach, only to be left with a limp dick and that sick, hollow feeling in the aftermath.

Because no amount of instant gratification could make up for her absence.

He felt the loss of her acutely every moment of the day. It weighed heavily on him even during training, ruining his concentration. And every time he fudged a tackle or dropped a ball, Griff grew grimmer and grimmer.

Dex got so desperate he let Linc take him to a strip club, thinking he might find some distraction there. A woman with hips and thighs. Someone with whom he could close his eyes and pretend he was with her. But none of the women did a damn thing for him, and he was left to his own devices yet again.

He didn’t know what kind of wild female juju Harper had going on, but she had crept under his skin and he was hooked.

When the fuck it had happened, he had no idea. But he did know he needed to fix it.

Pronto.

He needed her back in his life. He needed things the way they were. Then maybe his world could return to its regularly scheduled programming.

Rugby six days a week, and Harper on Sundays.

…

He wasn’t nervous when he knocked on her door. His heart was pumping for sure, but that was from anticipation. Even if she kicked him out he’d get to see her again, and frankly, he’d give his right nut just for a glimpse.

He’d waited till six, figuring she’d be home from the hospital and any sibling wrangling she had to do by now. If she wasn’t home, he’d wait for her. He’d done it before, and he’d been nowhere near as desperate as he was now.

He should have rung. Or, at the very least, texted. It would have been the polite thing to do. But he didn’t want her to hang up on him, or give her a heads-up he was coming over.

He wanted her at as much of a disadvantage as he was where she was concerned.

The door swung abruptly open, and he couldn’t say who was more taken aback—Harper, from the unexpected sight of him after two weeks of radio silence, or him, at finding her in her long red dressing gown with Japanese symbols stitched in yellow cotton down the front panels. Her hair was piled on top of her head, and there was a towel slung over her arm.

He’d bet his other nut she was naked beneath.

Neither of them said or did anything for a moment. But he could hear the roughness of her breath, echoing his own, and see the wild dilation of her pupils. “Go away,” she said finally, crankily, slamming the door in his face.

But he was too quick, catching it before it shut, holding it open against the insistent push of her arm. “Please,” he said, “I just want to talk. I have something to say.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, her voice glacial.

“I’m not leaving until I say what I came to say.”

She glared at him, obviously weighing up her chances of winning a tug-of-war with the door and concluding she wouldn’t win.

“Fine.” Her hand dropped from the doorframe. “But I’m going out, and I’ve got fifteen minutes to have a shower, get ready, and be out the door, so you better talk fast.”

She pivoted away, stalking across the lounge area and heading for her bedroom. Dex had no choice but to follow if he wanted to talk to her. “Where are you going?” he asked as he stepped into her bedroom in time to catch the swish of red fabric entering her en suite.

And with who?

He followed her into the bathroom. She was throwing the towel up over the glass of the shower screen when he caught up. Dex halted at the line where the wooden floorboards of her bedroom met the tiles of her bathroom, leaning against the doorjamb. It seemed like it was a line he probably shouldn’t cross anymore, although, God knew, that seemed to be their thing.

“To a movie,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him, “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

“Are you going with someone?”

She quirked an eyebrow that perfectly conveyed just the right amount of you-have-to-be-shitting-me. “Yes.”

Dex decided to quit now. If she told him it was a guy, he didn’t trust himself not to do something drastic like drag her up against him and kiss her until they both couldn’t breathe.

He shoved his hands in his pockets just to be on the safe side. He was supposed to be winning her back, not demonstrating how much of a caveman he could be.

“I came to apologise for that morning.”

“Oh really?”

Dex couldn’t tell what
oh really
meant. Her voice was neutral, so was her face. She wasn’t giving anything away.

“Yes. Really.” He tried to inject every single ounce of his remorse into the two words.

She stared at him for long minutes. “Okay, fine. Thanks,” she said flippantly. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

She pulled the shower door open, but Dex moved quicker, his hand landing on her shoulder to stop her from getting in. If nothing else, he needed her to know he
was
sorry. “Please, let me explain.”

The angle of her jaw tightened as her gaze flicked to the hand on her shoulder. Dex could feel the stiffness of her frame through the palm of his hand.

“Fine,” she said, her fingers quickly untying the belt of the robe and wriggling her shoulders. His hand fell away, so did the gown, slithering to the ground and pooling at her feet. “You have ten minutes.”

The breath hissed out of his lungs as acres of her flesh were exposed to his view. “
Holy fuck…”

Was she being deliberately provocative or just practical? She was supposedly in a hurry, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her naked before.

Dex would have liked to have done the gentlemanly thing and averted his gaze but it was just not in his power. In fact, he flat out ogled her—the thrust of her breasts and the tight points of her nipples, olive skin, soft belly, rounded hips, legs that were long and strong.

His Xena, warrior princess.

“Nine and a half,” she said, her lips twisting in a bitter smile as she stepped in and shut the door after her.

The glass of the shower stall had a wide band of frosting half way up, obscuring everything from mid-thigh to her shoulders.

In other words, the
good
bits.

And it didn’t seem to matter how hard he stared at it, the glass remained stubbornly frosted. Running water added background music to the amateur porn film that was currently running through his head.

Him opening the door and stepping in. Her telling him she was a dirty girl. Him picking up the soap and offering to
cleanse
her.