Midnight Play Read online

  Danica watched her friend slip back inside. Yes, she was on a terrace eating cake alone, and she wasn’t ashamed in the least. As long as she was getting comfortable, she might as well give her feet a few minutes’ relief from the god-awful shoes.

  Balancing the plate, her purse and bridesmaid bouquet, she had no free hands. So she lifted a leg and tried to shake her foot free of the skinny high heel. No luck. She bent and positioned one foot behind the other to give the shoe a nudge—

  And pitched forward.

  Her plate slipped from her grasp, but her panicked “Oh, crap!” hung in the air as a man caught the dish in one hand and wound a muscled arm around her waist. She was aware of being crushed against a hard male body, of cologne with hints of rum and spice, yet her eyes were on her plate.

  “You rescued my cake! I could kiss you.”

  She felt her heart tattoo inside her chest as she looked up into Dex Harper’s eyes. He handed her the plate and whispered, “What’s stopping you?”

  Chapter 5

  Danica should have walked away—except she had an arsenal of smart-ass comebacks ready for this guy, who had the audacity to lurk on the terrace reserved for her friend’s wedding. Well, it was nice that he’d caught her in the nick of time. But he was still holding her, his arm an iron vise around her waist.

  And he was watching her as if expecting an actual answer. What was stopping her from kissing him? Certainly not distance. All he had to do was lower his mouth to fit effortlessly over hers.

  Lips to lips…then she’d sample his taste with a soft stroke of her tongue…then she’d open her mouth under his…

  Danica squeezed her eyes shut as it dawned that she’d been staring at his mouth.

  “You can put me down now, Sir Galahad.”

  Dex set her on her feet. “And here I was, hoping you’d make good on that offer.”

  “Not gonna happen. I said I could kiss you. Not that I would. Besides, it’s only an expression.” Danica was desperate to focus on anything but him. What was it about formal-wear that highlighted nearly every attractive detail of a man’s looks, anyway? The well-cut suit seemed to emphasize his height. The titanium-colored silk necktie complemented the gunmetal flecks in his blue eyes, which were even darker now than when she’d last seen him on the balcony of Slayers Club Lounge yesterday.

  Hmm. Every time she ended up alone with this man, she was left with heart-thudding horniness that she didn’t know how to handle.

  “So, Dex—” she maneuvered her purse and bouquet under one arm and dug into the cake “—does the bride or groom know you’re hanging around in the shadows like a creeper?”

  “If you’re asking whether I’m a crasher, the answer’s no. My date models jewelry. She knows Mekhi Corrine.” He had the balls to smirk. Oh, it burned her up when men smirked at her, as if she existed for their amusement. “Another thing. Coming out here to make a call is no more creepy than hiding in the dark so no one sees you eating.”

  A snapshot of her shoveling cake into her mouth wouldn’t appear flattering splashed all over TMZ. Not that she was obligated to explain that to him. He probably wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain why she had to hide to eat cake. He dated models and actresses—women who were paid to be perfect.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”

  “The truth?”

  She took a bite of cake and smiled indulgently. “Nothing less.”

  “I saw you come out here, and all I could think about was what happened yesterday. I’m talking about you and me on that balcony, Danica. What could I have said to you tonight that wouldn’t make things awkward for us both?”

  “What about hello?”

  Dex raised his eyebrows. Then he gave the slightest of nods and slowly moved in close while she sucked frosting from her fork. Taking full advantage of the fact that she was positively paralyzed with anticipation, he stepped behind her. His fingers tantalized her skin as he gathered her hair in his fist and cupped her shoulder. Cool night air touched the nape of her neck just before his warm, firm mouth did.

  Lazily, he left a path of those hot, full-pressure kisses from her hairline to the carefully tied bow that held her halter gown in place.

  When his hand slid off her shoulder and roamed to cover her breast, all she could do was arch into his touch with a shallow sigh. Carnal agony. What else could describe a need so immediate and so intense? She was wet for him—he had to know it. He had to know that the scrape of his fingertips across her hardened nipple had her desperate to have all of him.

  “Hello, Danica,” he murmured.

  The words, all dressed up in the coarse timbre of his voice, rattled her every erogenous zone. She plucked the fork from her mouth and licked her lips to double-check that she hadn’t just swallowed her tongue.

  He took a step back. “By the time I’d made up my mind to just go back inside, you and the bride were already talking,” he said, picking up the conversation as if she wasn’t standing there nearly shaking with arousal—and furious because she was so turned on. “On the upside, I did get to play your Sir Galahad. Sounds to me like you could use one.”

  Danica frowned. “I don’t need a hero, Dex. What I do need is a drink to go with my dessert.”

  With nothing more to say, she slipped past him and into the ballroom.

  *

  If Dex wanted to screw himself out of any chance to return to the Las Vegas Slayers roster, then kissing Danica Blue again would definitely be the way to go. But hell, yeah, he was tempted.

  The temptation had begun the day she’d called him into a meeting with his agent and a few corporate higher-ups, introduced herself as the new GM and then fired him. Beyond the instant anger, in the recesses of his male instincts, was heady attraction and reckless curiosity. What would a woman like that—fragile-looking but as lethal as a poisoned dagger—be like in his bed?

  Now he was aching to know. Each time he encountered her, his resistance buckled and common sense crumbled. Catching her as she’d tripped had been an automatic reaction, but what he’d gained from the contact was that for all her bravado, she was delicate to hold…a shockingly gentle weight for a man to have against his body. And damn, the way her eyes glittered like dark jewels and her lush mouth teased that damn fork as he advanced on her…

  Was it a tactic? Few things were more dangerous than a woman who knew how to use her assets as artillery. Dex had watched her in televised press conferences. He’d witnessed her charm aggressive journalists into drooling stooges with just the right words, just the right expression. Was she working him the same way?

  Or had the vulnerability that rose off her been real?

  Dex wasn’t going to take the risk. His career, his dreams of Super Bowl victories and Hall of Fame glory, were riding on his next steps. Tonight, instead of escorting an ex to a Vegas wedding, he should’ve been playing on a football field in Texas. He’d placed too much trust in his boys, in the franchise’s decision-makers. He regretted that now, but beyond regret, he’d learned in the grittiest way possible to be smarter.

  To look out for himself—because no one else would.

  Inside, Dex found his way to the bar where his date, Samantha Weatherby, was swaying to an R&B song and tossing back a drink.

  “Is that a beer?”

  “Yes, it is. They’re all out of Jim Beam.” Samantha signaled the bartender to refill her glass with a bottle of Heineken. “Our barkeep here carded me. Imagine that.”

  Smart man. One of her modeling selling points was that she was a chameleon and could easily be made to appear older or younger, sexed up or pure. Tonight she’d turned the dial to wholesome and could pass for any high-school boy’s girl-next-door fantasy. With pale skin, big violet eyes and shiny strawberry-blond hair that was decorated with a pink streak, Samantha was for damn sure the kind of girl Dex would’ve loved to have had next door. Instead, his closest neighbor had been an elderly farmer with anemic cows.

  Samantha was as honest as an
y woman he’d ever been involved with, but she had her own set of vices—like a smoking habit and anxiety and a fear of exclusive relationships. An angel with a crooked halo.

  She ducked under his arm to hug him. “Did I ever tell you that you’re awesome, Dexter Harper?”

  “What do you want?”

  She glared at him for a moment. Her lips, painted a glossy nude shade, puckered into a pout. “Cynic. I was only going to say that I really appreciate you coming with me to Mekhi’s wedding. Most ex-boyfriends would’ve said no.”

  “I did say no. The first time you asked.”

  “But the second time you said yes.”

  Dex lowered his voice an octave as a chain of giggling women shuffled past them toward the dance floor. “We were both naked at the time, Samantha. I would’ve said yes to almost anything.”

  “Anyway—” she unwrapped her arms and took a sip of the beer “—I was saying that I’m thankful for you. And I met someone…here at the reception, I mean. I’m going to be leaving with him. Of course you can take off, if you want. But I wish you’d stay awhile and get the most out of tonight.”

  Shyness wasn’t something he associated with her. No, it wasn’t shyness he detected. It was guilt. “When we broke up, we gave up the right to each other’s business, didn’t we, Samantha?”

  At least, that had been the plan. He’d dated women after her, and even though over the past several months she reappeared in his life for sexual pit stops on her way to other relationships, and tabloids couldn’t grasp that sometimes a woman showed up at a man’s house at two in the morning for a quick fix and not to restart a relationship, they’d lost the layer of closeness that came with being a bona fide couple.

  “I care what happens to you.” Samantha sipped from her glass. “Dragging you here, then leaving with some other guy…not my finest behavior.”

  “Would it make you feel better to know I wasn’t expecting to get any from you tonight?” She jabbed his side with her knuckle, and he grinned.

  “Oh, Dex. I’m trying to be serious. Don’t tell me you’re taking up with yet another overeager, fawn-all-over-you-type groupie. It’s time you met somebody who’ll treat you right. Let’s see…” Samantha scanned the ballroom. “What about her? She’s awfully pretty and seems capable of holding a decent conversation.”

  Dex watched as an Asian woman in a flowing dress held a group in rapt amusement. His gaze drifted to the hand she was waving animatedly in the air. Big-ass diamond on her finger. “She’s married, Samantha. Contrary to what the general public thinks, I’m not that much of a bastard.”

  “You’re not a bastard at all.” Undeterred, she continued to twist left, then right, tactfully pointing out women who had the potential to be what his best friend, Russo, a defensive tackle who’d been traded from Las Vegas to San Francisco, called “one-hit wonders.”

  “Drop it, Samantha—”

  “Oh, mister, mister,” she interrupted in an excited whisper. “What about that woman? No wedding ring. She’s dancing alone. Gutsy.” She put her arm around him again. “Don’t you see her? The one in the bridesmaid gown with her hair down.”

  Dex saw her, all right. A knockout from the front, Danica was just as tempting from the back. Fine-boned with a nicely shaped ass.

  “Swear you’ll talk to her. Dex, seriously. I want that for you.”

  Danica’s hips rocked in time to the music. With a sexy little wiggle, she made room for a middle-aged couple on the dance floor while a scattering of men ogled her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him. In acknowledgment, he gave a slow nod and lifted one corner of his mouth. And Danica, on display for hundreds of others, was her perfect, unapproachable self again. Not the woman who ate cake with uninhibited pleasure, who stumbled over her own feet, who carried girlish pink bags filled with sex gifts.

  As guests crisscrossed the distance between Dex and Danica, he turned to give his ex a firm head shake. “No.”

  “Why the holy hell not?”

  “That woman is Danica Blue. She dropped me from the Slayers.”

  Samantha’s pert nose scrunched. “Oh. Well, that won’t work.”

  No freakin’ kidding. Dex reached, claimed her beer and finished it off. Though Samantha gave him a withering look, she didn’t say more until a few moments later when someone announced the tossing of the garter belt and bouquet.

  Despite the fact that Samantha claimed she would never be the marrying type, she made a run for the press of partygoers.

  Dex hung back, sticking to the ballroom’s shadows. Cameras flashed, earsplitting laughter and applause ricocheted off the walls. A lacy garter belt flew into a crowd of rowdy men. Then women and girls of varying ages formed an eager cluster in the center of the dance floor.

  Again, Dex was able to spot Danica. Forgetting about her would be best for his sanity, but his brain wasn’t in control right now. Other, more demanding, parts of his anatomy had taken over. He crossed his arms and ventured forward, his footsteps sure and strong but soundless under the heart-pumping hip-hop music.

  The bride flung her bouquet behind her, and a sea of hands shot up. It flipped a few times as it descended onto the crowd.

  Dex watched Danica—subtly yet deliberately—shift to the left. And the bouquet dropped into the frantic grasp of the woman next to her. She’d sabotaged her own chance of grabbing it.

  Well, well, well. She didn’t want to be the next to get hitched. Even in his state of brewing arousal, he knew exactly why.

  *

  Danica was buzzed as the crowd finally started to thin well past midnight. Not buzzed on booze—it typically took three full glasses of wine, or four beers, or an impressive five bottles of hard lemonade to get her tipsy, and so far she was under the two-flute limit she’d set for tonight. No, she was all fuzzy in the head and aflutter in the tummy because a man with the most sexilicious body she’d ever seen—well, of course she remembered his feature in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue—had felt her up.

  Unfortunately, it wouldn’t happen again. She had other plans for Dex Harper.

  Working the room toward the exit, she noticed the woman who’d been snuggled up to him a while ago was now dancing rather intimately with another man. Dex was still in the hotel…somewhere. Only minutes before she’d spotted several teens bombarding him for autographs and camera-phone snapshots.

  In the hushed foyer, she felt her throat constrict but didn’t break her stride as she approached Dex, who stood near the massive wall of windows. He watched her confidently, as though he’d known she’d come searching for him.

  “There’s a gal with a pink streak in her hair who’s doing a little dirty dancing with one of the groomsmen.”

  “Samantha’s my ex-girlfriend. I escorted her to the wedding as a favor. Who she dirty dances, or does anything else dirty with, isn’t my territory.” Dex raked his gaze from her hair to the stiletto torture instruments that doubled as designer shoes. “Know something, Danica? Your face says you don’t give a damn, but your body language is telling me a different story.”

  “That’s a crock of—”

  “Save it for a man who doesn’t know anything about nonverbal behavior. Four-year hitch at LSU. I picked up a thing or two in the psych program. And watching people’s moves, predicting what they’ll do next, is part of a quarterback’s job. Communication’s about a lot more than words.”

  She’d be lying through her teeth to say she wasn’t drawn in by the glint of heat that made his pupils flare. Was his restraint as tight as a drum, like hers?

  “When I said that Samantha’s my ex, your shoulders relaxed and you got a little closer. Not much, but enough for me to notice. The exact moment I called you on it, you tensed up again.”

  Danica wouldn’t play into this man’s games. But she couldn’t walk away, either. She had a plan to put into place—a plan that required his full cooperation. Time to disarm him with…what?

  “Danica Blue.” The hint of military formality in the thunderous
voice just behind Danica had her swinging around. Ah, yes. The father of the bride. A decorated military veteran, Elroy “Captain” Smart was as take-charge and startlingly powerful as her own father. Meddling mothers and larger-than-life fathers were what she and Veda had right away discovered they’d had in common and, frankly, was what had cemented their instant friendship.

  “The one and only,” Danica greeted. “Are you enjoying yourself, Cap?”

  “My wife and Veda would settle for nothing less than a legendary party. Give me my slippers and a crisp newspaper any day. But the smile on my girl’s face is worth all this expense and more.” Cap looked beyond Danica and gave Dex an assessing look. “Well. Dexter Harper. The Blue-Eyed Badass.”

  Please, Cap, keep your commentary to yourself just this once. Don’t mention his stats, his reputation, his unemployment, my firing him. In fact, don’t mention football at all….

  At least, not before Danica got Dex to agree to her suggestions.

  “You’re taller in person.” With nothing more, Cap walked on.

  The good thing about the interruption was that it took Dex’s attention off the subject of Danica’s body language and what tales it was telling on her.

  “You’ve been on my mind,” she told Dex, her face schooled into a neutral expression. “Your career, your situation, to be exact. I have a solution.”

  “Unless you have an offer from the Slayers, I’m not interested.” His words were so final, his baritone so deadly serious, that she almost flipped him off for dismissing her without first allowing her to propose the damn solution.

  But she wasn’t so easily discouraged. “A contract with another team can resurrect your career. You were not Mr. Congeniality on the Slayers. The temper, the fines, the disrespect for authority? How many times did your coach chew you out last season for going rogue and disregarding his plays?”

  “Disregarding bullshit plays, you mean,” he growled. “Yeah, America thinks I’m an arrogant dick, but the truth is that the plays I wouldn’t follow are the ones that would’ve screwed the team worse than it already was. I’m talking about a hell of a lot more turnovers and injuries. I’m talking about shit that only makes sense now that we know there were players and coaches on the take.” His eyes burned like blue fire, and there was almost no trace of the flirt who’d teased her on the terrace. “You weren’t out there. You don’t know, Danica. I know. So trust me.”