“No. I just pay attention to the trainers and what they do to me when my muscles tighten up. Figured it would work the same for you.”
“Huh. You surprise me, Gavin.”
“Yeah? In what way?”
She turned her back to him again and shrugged. “In a lot of ways.”
“Wanna give me a list?”
“No. Your ego is inflated enough.”
He pressed in on her muscles again, sliding his thumbs into the nape of her neck. “Now that hurts my feelings.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t.”
She laughed, then went quiet as he slid his fingers up into her hair, pulling the barrette and pins out and shaking it loose.
“Why don’t you wear your hair down?”
“It gets in my way. Up is more professional.”
He sifted his fingers through the softness of her hair, lifted the strands to his nose. She smelled like flowers. “Down is sexy.”
“I don’t need to be sexy to negotiate a contract.”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
She laughed. “I need to be taken seriously, Gavin.”
“Oh, come on, Elizabeth. You use your sexuality like a negotiating point.”
She flipped around to face him. “Are you kidding me? That’s what you think?”
“Yeah.”
She narrowed her gaze and backed away. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him.
“Don’t be offended. I don’t mean that you’re, like, trading sexual favors or anything. I mean, you’re a beautiful woman. You dress professionally, but you can’t hide your sexuality. It’s just . . . there. But no, you don’t show off like a sex bomb or anything.”
“I have no idea what you mean, then. I don’t offer sexual favors to gain a client or to get a client a good offer.”
“I didn’t say that. But you give off sexual vibes. It’s a natural thing for you to flirt. And you can’t deny that you’re one of only a few women in your field. You use being a beautiful woman to your advantage. You capture men’s attention because of your beauty and your presence. There’s nothing wrong with that. I never meant that you used sex.”
“Oh. I see what you mean. Well, of course I use it to my advantage. It’s a marketing tool, and especially in the beginning I needed every advantage I could to get me in the door. Now my reputation gets me there because I’m damn good at what I do. And if your brother didn’t realize that, then it’s his loss.”
Gavin raised his hands. “Whoa. How did the topic get turned to Mick?”
She stood, grabbed her blouse. “I don’t know. I’m tired. It’s been a rough few days. I’m going to take a shower.”
She headed off toward the bedroom. Gavin grabbed his drink and took a long swallow.
Okay, his back rub obviously hadn’t worked on her. He wondered what the hell had gone wrong the past five days to make her so upset?
ELIZABETH LET THE HOT WATER RAIN DOWN OVER HER head, hoping it would erase the past five days from her memory.
The Blane contract was going well, but that was the only positive to the trip. Steve Lincoln was dropping her. A Pro Bowl–caliber player and a free agent, he’d just signed with the Davis Agency, one of her top competitors.
Steve Lincoln was also a very good friend of Mick’s, and it was a known fact Mick wanted Lincoln—a stellar fullback—to play for San Francisco, Mick’s team.
And it was also becoming well known that Mick had fired Elizabeth.
And suddenly Steve fired Elizabeth.
Pretty easy to put two and two together and figure out who was behind Steve’s sudden change in agents. Mick was out to ruin her.
She wasn’t going to let it happen. And she wasn’t going to let Gavin know about it.
Unless Gavin already knew.
Was that why he’d invited her to stay with him, so he could keep an eye on her while Mick did his behind-the-scenes damage? Maybe Gavin was talking to her baseball clients, too. He knew who all her clients were. Maybe it was a team effort between the two of them, and Gavin was f**king her senseless to keep her off balance.
Paranoid much, Liz?
It was a ridiculous idea.
Then again, she refused to discount anything. This was her livelihood, and she’d do whatever it took to save it. She’d worked too damn hard to build her business—her very name. Her personal feelings for Gavin aside, she wouldn’t let anyone ruin her. She might have invested her heart in Gavin, but she’d stomp all over her own heart in order to save her business.
She grabbed the body wash and scrubbed until she was pink, then rinsed her hair and got out of the shower, dried off and tossed on a cotton sundress, combed her hair out and decided not to bother with drying it. She was exhausted.
She slipped on a pair of flip-flops and went in search of Gavin. He was out on the deck. The cool breeze coming off the water coupled with her wet hair made her skin break out in chills.
“Hey.” Gavin rose from the chair when she came outside. “Your hair’s wet.”
“I’m too tired to dry it.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He went inside. She shrugged and slunk into the swing, pulled her feet up and stared out into the darkness.
Gavin came back a minute later with a blanket. He’d turned the lights out inside, making it even darker outside. There wasn’t a moon tonight, so there was no light casting over the water. Just the sound of the ocean and her own black thoughts.
Gavin put the soft blanket over her and sat in the swing with her.
“Thanks.”
“It’s cold out here and your hair’s wet. Wanna go inside?”
“No. I like it out here.”
“Me, too.” He put his arm around her, and they sat there swinging and listening to the ocean, both of them quiet.
“Something bothering you?” He pulled her closer.
She didn’t want to be close to him. She should have gone back to Saint Louis, but something brought her back here. She had no idea what it was.
You know exactly what brought you back here, idiot. You’re in love with him, and he’s probably using you. No, he’s definitely using you. And he’s probably setting you up, too.
She sighed, feeling stupid. She hadn’t felt stupid in a long time. She’d vowed no man would ever make her feel like this. So why was she letting Gavin?
“It’s just been a long few days.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
He played with the ends of her hair. “Elizabeth, if we’re going to have any kind of relationship, you’re going to have to start opening up to me.”
She stilled, held her breath, afraid to move.
He’s playing you. Don’t trust him.
“Is that what we’re doing, Gavin? Having a relationship?”
“I don’t know. I missed you while you were gone. So maybe we are. Maybe I want to.”
He’d missed her? The giant hole in her heart filled up with longing and need. Part of her wanted to crawl up next to him, throw her arms around him, and tell him she loved him, that she’d been in love with him for years. The other part of her wanted to close off her heart and run like hell. “Don’t say things you don’t mean. This is just sex.”
He caressed her arm, letting his fingers trail up her neck. “I don’t say things I don’t mean. Not about this, anyway. I don’t really know what this is between us. I don’t have relationships with women, but I did miss you, so I’m pretty sure whatever it is that’s between us has become more than just sex. I kind of thought you had left for good.”
He sounded so sincere. She leaned back and studied his face, wished they weren’t shrouded in total darkness so she could read him better. “You did?”
“Yeah. I figured I pissed you off tying you up and asking you to talk about your past.”
“Oh. That. No. The sex was really good.”
He laughed. “Yeah, the sex between us is really good. But there has to be more.”
She looked out over the water, barely making out the whitecapped tips rushing toward the shore. “More sex?”
He made a low growl in his throat. “You’re trying to kill me. No, not more sex. If we’re going to take this any further, then there has to be more than sex.”
She wrinkled her nose. “More talking.”
“Yeah.”
“Talking’s overrated.”
“Now you sound like a guy.”
“That’s why you like me.”
“Because you’re a guy?”
She laughed. “No, because I’m not like your average woman.”
“You’re not at all like an average woman, Elizabeth. You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever known. That’s why I like you. You’re complicated. A giant pain in my ass most of the time. You frustrate the hell out of me. And I like that about you. But I don’t know anything about you, and that just doesn’t work for me.”
She swept her fingers across his goatee. “Mysterious is sexy, you know.”
He cupped her chin between his fingers and brushed his lips across hers. Everything inside her tightened as he took her mouth in a deeper kiss that lasted long enough that she thought he might forget about the talking part. She leaned into him, rested her palm on his chest, felt his heart rate quicken. But then he pulled back.
“Yeah, mysterious is sexy if it’s a one night stand. You’re not a one-night stand. You’re someone I want to get to know. Which means you’re going to have to open up and start talking to me.”
Once again he was heading down a track she didn’t want to follow. “You already know me, Gavin. It’s not like we’re strangers. You got a whole packet of information about me when you signed with me.”
He looked at her as if she’d just fed him bullshit. Which she had.
“Are you f**king serious? How dumb do I look?”
“What?”
“Your business portfolio is supposed to pass as getting to know you? I’m not talking about your bio, Elizabeth. I know where you graduated college and did your marketing internship. I know which sports agency gave you your start. But you didn’t start to exist in college. I want to know who you were before then. And if you don’t trust me enough to tell me—”
“Okay. Fine.” She pulled the blanket over her shoulders, wrapped her hair around itself, and pulled it into a makeshift ponytail. The wind had picked up, but the moody atmosphere outside matched her own. “What do you want to know?”
He tugged her closer and pulled the blanket over her legs. “Might as well start at the beginning. I want to know everything about you. You know everything about me.”
She did know everything about him. His family had become her family over the past five years because she had no family of her own.
“Well, let’s see. I was born and raised in Harrison, Arkansas. No brothers or sisters. My dad worked as a laborer, so he was in and out of work. My mom was a secretary, so she held down the full-time job. She was always working. I went to school, got decent grades. I was very lucky to get the scholarship to Brown—”
“Wait. We’re already on college? You skipped everything.”
“My childhood’s pretty boring, Gavin. I went to school. Not much to tell.”
“Did you have friends?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about them.”
“I had a couple of girlfriends. They lived on the same block as me. I wasn’t allowed to hang out with them until the weekends so I didn’t get to—”
“Why not?”
“What?”
“Why couldn’t you see them until the weekends?”
“Oh. My father wouldn’t allow it. I had chores to do after school and dinner to put on the table. Then I had homework at night.”
He frowned. “But in the summer . . .”
“In the summer there were chores during the day. And I got sent to my grandparents’ farm a lot, so my parents didn’t have to wonder what I was up to during the times my dad was working.”
“The farm, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Bet that was fun.”
Her lips curled up remembering times on the farm, some of the best—only—good memories of her childhood. “It was, actually. My grandpa taught me to ride a tractor, and they had horses. My grandma taught me to bake pies from scratch—’ ”
He sat up straight and turned to face her. “Aha! You can cook.”
She laughed. “That was a long time ago, Gavin. I don’t remember.”
“So you say. I’ll bet you could remember. How many summers did you spend at your grandparents’ farm?”
She tilted her head back, trying to remember. “I first remember going there when I was about five. Last time I went I was sixteen.”
“So eleven years. That’s a lot of pie making.”
Her lips lifted. “Sixteen was a long time ago.”
He leaned back again, drawing close to her so he could nuzzle her neck. “Would you make me a pie, Elizabeth?”
She nudged her shoulder at him. “You’re out of your mind. I don’t cook. You’re supposed to cook for me, remember?”
“I’ll make you dinner if you bake a pie.”
“I don’t cook for anyone.”
“But you’ll bake for me, right?”
Sometimes he was like a kid. Exasperating. But it was one of the things she loved most about him. “We’ll talk about it.”