What If (Willowbrook Book 2) (2 page)

It had been too long, and she wanted badly to set her hands on either side of Drew’s face and lose herself in the intensity of his blue eyes. Two months ago when they had been a couple, she would’ve. Now, she hung onto her pride, and again insisted he put her down.

He didn’t answer or do as she asked. The silence between them killed her. Did he miss her like she missed him? When it rained in San Francisco, did he remember the time they’d made love during a storm, out in the fields behind his place?

As they moved farther from the party, the noise of the ballroom faded to a low hum. On the back deck, he set her down, pulled out his cell phone, and began to text.

“One of the servers will bring food for you.” He put his cell away and pointed to one of the outdoor overstuffed chairs. “Take a seat.”

She straightened her shoulders. “I’m not one of your players.”

“Please,” he insisted, raking his fingers through his short cut.

She slumped into the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. He sat next to her, reached over, and after untangling her arms, clasped her hands in his. He started to rub out the cold.

Unnerved by his touch and his concern, she slipped her hands from his hold with the excuse of, “It’s in the 50s. I’m warm enough.”

He stood with his back to her. “I remember you always being cold. There’s not enough fat on you to keep you warm.”

First he found her boring. Now she was too skinny?
Unbelievable
. She remembered times when he’d run his hands up and down the length of her, murmuring how much he loved her slim, runner’s body. And how he had thought about kissing and tasting her as he’d sweated hard during football practices.

As he sweet-talked her, he’d ease his fingers in and out of her before stroking her swollen and sensitive nub to a mind-erasing orgasm. Then he’d drop his head low and taste her. After she came again, she’d push him onto his back so she could ride him. She’d do him slow—the way he liked it—before he took her hard, the way she preferred her sex.

Ah, the good old days before Drew shot to the limelight and into the arms of a woman who was the opposite of Emma. She now realized who was with Drew earlier. The woman was the youngest daughter of the team’s general manager.

While Drew continued to keep his back to her, a server came by and set a platter on the small table that had separated her chair from Drew’s. Whispering a “Thank you,” she grabbed pieces of fruit and cheese and popped them into her mouth before downing a big glass of water. Her gaze lingered longingly at the flute filled with pink wine. In her condition, it was best to avoid alcohol.

They were at the back of the house, on a cement deck with a gorgeous view of the city skyline. The view she’d for sure enjoy. Leaning back, she soaked in the twinkling lights of the city and resisted the urge to get up and pull Drew’s body to hers. To tell him how proud she was of what he’d accomplished. He had come a long way from Ashton, the neighboring city of Willowbrook, where he had lived and breathed football.

Instead, she finished off the crackers topped with smoked salmon and followed her bites with more water.

“Once you get food in you, go lie down. You’re dead on your feet.”

“I said I won’t stay in the bedroom where—”

“I haven’t seen anyone since we called it off, okay?”

She cried bullshit. “What about the tabloids linking you to that Tess girl?”

“She’s a woman, Em.”

With crackers in her hands, she stood. “Okay, if she’s a woman, how old is she?”

“Nineteen.”

Nineteen.
Definitely not jailbait but old enough to get into the eighteen and over clubs. However, Tess was too young to legally drink and too young for Drew. Emma crushed the crackers in her hands and let the pieces fall to the ground.

“She doesn’t mean jack to me.” He was brave to keep his back facing her, more so when a low growl rumbled from her. “I’ve had several meetings with the GM. She’s his daughter. She hangs around for a project for a college class of hers, something to do with the workings of a sports franchise.”

Sure
. “You two were photographed leaving clubs together.”

Finally, he turned and looked at her. The intensity in his eyes never left, but he’d put up a guarded expression beneath the plain black mask he wore. What could he be thinking at this moment? Most importantly, why was he hiding his feelings from her?

Her world seeming to spin, she took deep breaths in and out. Take risks, he’d said. I haven’t seen anyone, he’d reassured. She’d given Drew four years of her life. He could give her one more night. Then she’d forget him and move on with her life.

“Remember what you said when we ended it?” she asked.

He nodded. The movement was slow, yet firm, as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether he liked where she was taking the conversation or didn’t want to know.

“Take a risk with me, Drew. Make love to me, out here in the open.” Yeah, her resolve to not involve herself with him had quietly left the party.

He walked past her to the French doors of the house and clicked them shut, leaving her completely alone with a man who’d earlier promised to punish her for crashing his party. Her heart raced, and her mouth went dry.

Grasping the soft fabric in her hands, she hitched up her dress and scanned him from head to toe and back up again to meet his eyes. Could he read her thoughts? If he could, he’d know exactly what she longed to do. She’d run her fingers through his dark brown hair then clasp his face in her palms before pressing her lips to his proud mouth.

As though he also couldn’t wait, they hurried to one another and met in the middle. His large hands cinched her waist. “You sure this is what you want?” he asked. “We can’t go back to what we had.”

How to get past the ache in her chest and the lump in her throat at the finality in his words? What she had asked of him was stupid and reckless. But she felt so alive at being stupid and reckless
with him
. Only him.

He trailed his knuckles over her lips, down her neck and lower. When he swept his palm across her exposed cleavage, her heart beat out of control, and her knees weakened. She wanted him, had since she’d set her eyes on him at a football game their senior year of high school.

In the silence, his question begged an answer. Confident he’d play by the rules—he usually did—she gave him her answer. “Yes. As long as we keep our masks and clothes on.”

He tsked. “I made the rules, Em. Which means—” he slipped off his mask then hers “—I can break them.”

Chapter Three

Drew pulled Emma closer to him, if that were possible. The feel of her breasts pressed against him through the fabric of her gown, the fit of her body molded to his . . . he bit down a groan. He’d let her keep her gown on. However, he wanted to see her face when she came for him.

“Would you like to dance?”

Next to his ear, she laughed. No, not laughter, but… “Did you just giggle?”

“I did, and I can’t believe you just said the word giggle,” she said.

Smiling, he began to swing them around the deck. As they glided from one end to the other, he hummed.

“Drew—” Her amber eyes shimmered beneath the moonlight, and he stopped their dancing. “Seriously?
Cryin’
?” On her toes, she pressed her cheek to his and whispered next to his ear. “I hate you.”

She didn’t. She loved their song by Aerosmith. The lyrics reminded her of when they had met, a moment of profound loss for her. He understood the agony of losing a father. His own dad had died in a worksite accident Drew’s freshman year of high school.

The drive to succeed and have his dad look down proudly from heaven had him living and breathing football. Until Emma. After their first kiss in their second year of college, he’d wanted to live and breathe only her. Thank God she’d felt the same way. The day of her father’s death, she’d fallen hard for Drew. Her time of loss and love. That had been her confession months after they went exclusive.
Four
years.

Amazing how oblivious he’d been to the amount of time that had passed. College and football had been the focus of his life while Emma had been his anchor. Since their breakup and his team’s Super Bowl win, nothing held him back from getting whatever it was he wanted in life. He was rich, famous and . . . single.

“Thank you.” The gratitude in her voice shook him out of his thoughts.

“For what?”

“To be serenaded in the moonlight and danced with like a princess? Absolutely priceless.”

She was too sweet, and he was a bastard for wanting her to change for him. Unable to resist her quiet charm, he brushed her flushed cheek with his knuckles then trailed his fingers lower to her full and parted lips.

As though undecided about something, her gaze swung to the ground before she looked him straight in the eyes. “If we do this, we won’t see each other again, right?”

“If that’s what you want.” His hands swept down the back of her gown. Stopped at her waist, he tugged her to him.

Her acquiescence was barely a whisper. “Yes.”

He dipped his head and nuzzled her neck. Against his mouth, her skin was cool while her pulse beat strong and fast. Tearing his mouth from the soft skin of her neck, he lifted her by the waist, sank his face into her cleavage, and inhaled the scent of her. Vanilla with a hint of cinnamon.

“God, you smell good.”

She gripped the sides of his head and pushed him further into the swell of her breasts. Needing to be any place but upright, he steered them toward the chaise. He sat, and she straddled his hips.

Tonight, he could pretend they were a couple again. Afterward, he would forget Emma. She’d made it clear she wanted no part of his world. He had wanted to go public with their relationship. She’d decided to stick with the status quo. She liked her privacy too much to have her life lambasted in the tabloids.

He and their close circle of friends had suspected differently. Fear was the real reason Emma had wanted to keep their relationship a secret. Emma was afraid of new experiences, new places, new . . . anything. Fast forward four years and a Super Bowl Championship, and Drew realized he wanted “new”—new city, new happenings, and possibly a new woman.
Tess
.

“Did you just say ‘Tess?’”

Oh shit.

She scrambled off his lap. The hurt in her eyes was like a swift kick to his gut. He reached for her.

Shaking her head, she backed up. “I thought it was me, but now I realize it’s you.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, confused.

“I haven’t changed, Drew. You have. Our break-up wasn’t about going public.” She came over and jabbed a finger on the spot above his heart. “You want fast. I like predictable. You want new. I like routine.” She spread her hands out. “What you see is what you get. Last chance. Take all of me, or none of me.”

She was wrong. He hadn’t changed. Instead, he’d grown from the star-in-the-eyes eighteen-year-old kid she’d known to a twenty-five-year old guy who’d finally caught his star in the sky.

“I tried all of you, and you weren’t enough.” At his clipped tone, she sucked in a breath. His gut clenched. “And you broke up with me, Em, not the other way around.”

Giving him a view of her tipped chin, she grabbed her mask off the table. “You’re right.” The strap dangled from her fingers. “Goodbye, Drew. Have a nice life with Tess.” She headed for the back doors.

Wait a minute
. He stalked toward her. “You flew
here
, crashed
my
party, and think you can just leave? I don’t think so. Risks, remember?”

The gentleman in him warned him to cool his temper and walk away from her rejection. Again. The bastard that seemed to win out more since their breakup had other plans.

“Get laid, Emma. You need a big cock in you like no one’s business.”

The pissed off determination on her face was the last thing he saw before she stormed off in the direction of . . . his motorcycle.
Shit!

Chapter Four

Get laid? She needed a big penis in her? Emma chucked her mask over the side of the deck and straddled Drew’s motorcycle.

Damn him for being so crass. And shame on her for thinking she could ask for one night and be good with that. She didn’t want one night. She had wanted forever.

Yet, forever as a couple didn’t exist for her and Drew. Football was his life, and the kind of life he lived—in the limelight—wasn’t a life she wanted for herself.

She gathered the excess material of her dress and stuffed it between her legs. Tears obscured her sight. She didn’t care. The strength of his hand on her bare shoulder sent a tingle of warning and warmth through her like a scorching lightning bolt. She shrugged off his hand.

“Em, get off.”

“I am.” She stared forward and kicked back the kickstand. “With something bigger than you.” She smoothed her hand over the red and black Ducati, a shiny new ride to go along with Drew’s big, fancy house and his new, younger gal.

The key was in the ignition. Holding down on the clutch, she kicked the gear into neutral, started the engine, and let it idle. In her peripheral vision, Drew’s attention shot to the downward slope of the deck and back to her face again before shifting to the rear seat—where she’d normally sit when they took his old Kawasaki motorcycle for a spin.

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret.” His tone was soft. She knew better. Steel lined his words.

Glancing up at the sky, she blinked away the tears. Rawness clawed at her throat.

“Emma.”

The hardness in his voice was gone, replaced by concern and a desperation she refused to heed. He’d said another woman’s name in place of hers. How could she forgive him even though she’d been the one who had broken things off between them?

“I already have regrets.” She held down the clutch again and shifted up to first gear with the tip of her boot. Beneath her, the engine thrummed with power. “I shouldn’t have propositioned you. I came here to see if you were happy. Simple enough.” But not. Not really. Everything going forward would be difficult as hell.