Fair Game: A Football Romance (26 page)

“You’re a little thing, aren’t you? How tall are you anyway?”

I straighten up taller and hold my head high.

“I’m five foot one and a half,” I say with pride.

“And a half, huh? You may as well claim that half-inch.”

“Okay then, five foot two. I like that better anyway.”

“Come on, let’s go inside. I’ll fix you a drink. I’m afraid I don’t know the ingredients for a Red Velvet Martini, but I can get you some wine.”

“Wine is good. The martinis are my mother’s drink, not mine.”

He opens the door that connects the house to the garage and immediately toes off his shoes and places them on a rubber matt. I don’t want to track anything in. If his house is anything like his garage, nothing goes unnoticed, so I follow suit.

At the end of a long hall is a kitchen. When he reaches it, he flips on the lights. It’s beautiful—not exactly my style, but still nice—and clean. I lean against a large island, feeling much shorter without my heels, and watch him move around the kitchen.

He works on pouring us two glasses of a blush wine while I look around. The rooms flow one into another, starting with the kitchen flowing into the dining area with French doors that open out to a deck. The living room is next, facing the front of the house. All the spaces are sparsely furnished. The essentials are here—table with four chairs, a couch, coffee table and a television mounted on the wall—but no personal touches, no knickknacks or photographs. Nothing, just bare, unlived in looking space.

“Did you decorate yourself?” I ask.

He turns and sets the wine glasses on the counter next to me and surprises me by lifting me onto the counter in front of him.

“It was hurting my neck to look so far down at you,” he says with a half-grin. I punch his rippled abdomen and wince when it hurts my knuckles. He tilts his head to the side and looks at me with a twinkle of ornery and a dash of sympathy.

The wine glasses seem to catch his eye, and he reaches out to adjust them on the counter. They don’t look to be in a different position, but he appears satisfied.

“I remodeled the house a few years ago. I was going for simple and understated.”

I twist to look at the living room again. “Well, I think you accomplished that.”

“You don’t like it?” he says, pulling me to the edge of the counter and pushing up my skirt to nestle in between my legs. I’m tempted to lie and tell him it’s lovely so he’ll just kiss me, but as usual, I say what’s on my mind.

“It’s very impersonal. I can’t learn anything about you looking around this room.”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t want people to know you?”

“People know what I want them to know and that’s all.”

“Why?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“You avoid a lot of questions.”

His hands are traveling up and down my back in a hypnotizing pattern, and it’s very distracting, but I try to keep focused on the question at hand . . . which was what again? I groan and remove his hands from my back and hold them between us. He sighs and backs away from me a step.

“Violet, I don’t invite people into my life because I don’t want to complicate it. I don’t bring people into my home because I can’t stand to see them mess it up. I like order and neatness in all aspects of my life.”

I cross my arms over my chest, unconsciously protecting myself. His desire for neatness extends far past his immediate environment. It’s deep, personal, intimate. I am not that kind of person. I don’t live my life in a little box where everything is ship-shape and orderly all the time.

What am I doing here? This is ridiculous. Coming home with this tempting man seemed like the best idea I’d ever had an hour ago. But seeing his blank slate of a life is ebbing my enthusiasm more and more by the minute.

I hop down off the counter onto the cold Spanish tile. I don’t know where I think I’m going. I didn’t drive here. I’ll call a cab.

Major reaches out to stop me. “Violet, what’s wrong?”

I turn and look into this gorgeous, complicated man’s endless blue eyes and see honest confusion. He doesn’t even know that what he just said is a depressing turn off.

“Major, I don’t think I belong here. I’m confused. I wasn’t looking for anything more than a one-night stand, but something makes me want to know more about you. I’m supposed to be having drinks, playing golf, and going to bachelorette parties, not deluding myself with thoughts of and hearts and rainbows. But something made me want to come here, and now I see what a mistake that was. I’m a free-spirited dreamer, and you’re a disciplined Marine, and I have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m trying to say. I’m sorry. I need to go.”

He pulls me into his arms and presses my cheek against his chest.

“You’ve misunderstood me. I didn’t mean that I don’t want you here—on the contrary. I don’t bring women to my house, but I brought you. In fact, I’m a strict believer in one-night stands in hotel rooms where there are no connections, no expectations . . . but I want you here in my house with me.”

Being pressed against him makes his scent intense and intoxicating. I close my eyes to try and sort out my thoughts.

He moves my head back, placing his hands on either side of my face, and I open my eyes.

“I want you here. I don’t know what will come of it, if anything, but I brought you here instead of a hotel for a reason.”

“What reason?”

He caresses my cheeks with his thumbs while looking back and forth between my eyes like he’s trying to find something there.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want you to leave.”

I cuff his wrists with my small hands on both sides of my head.

“Then tell me something about yourself that you don’t tell people.”

He blinks, and it seems like time stops for a moment before he speaks.

“I was adopted. There. No one but the Marine Corps knows that about me.”

Okay, wow. I thought he’d tell me his favorite color or football team, but he’s taken it to a whole different level.

“Now you,” he says, lifting me back onto the counter and handing me my glass of wine.

“I sleepwalk.”

He tilts his head to the side, narrowing his eyes.

“Lots of people sleepwalk.”

“Lots of people are adopted.”

“True. Is this sleepwalking something you do often?”

“I’m not really sure. You see, I’m asleep when I do it.”

“Watch it there, Target girl.”

I smile at the dumb nickname.

“I find things in places they shouldn’t be all the time. Like I put my brush on the counter in the bathroom when I go to bed, and it’s in the kitchen sink when I wake up—things like that.”

We are close to each other. He has his hands on my thighs, and he’s standing between them. He takes a drink of wine while he unconsciously rubs his thumb back and forth over my bare skin. When I tell him about my mysterious brush story he cringes—like, he actually cringes—and a little shiver runs through his body.

“Have you ever left the house?” he asks. “That you know of, I mean.”

I chuckle. “Yes, I have, on several occasions.” I avert my eyes to a tall vase in the corner filled with long sticks that look like pussy willows. It’s one of the few decorative pieces in his house, and I find it strange that of all things to choose, he would choose pussy willows.

“On foot?”

“Yes, and once in my car.”

He leans back and takes ahold of my chin to bring my gaze back to his eyes. He’s worried, I think, or anxious.

“Violet, that’s serious. Have you seen a doctor about it?”

Only my closest friends and family know about my sleepwalking. It’s something I’ve always been self-conscious about. I don’t tell people for this exact reason. They worry, and there isn’t much that can be done about it.

“Yes, I’m a rare case. I’ve been studied a lot. People usually grow out of it when they’re teenagers, but I haven’t. I just have to be careful, you know—lock up my car keys, special locks on my windows and doors, stuff like that.”

He still looks worried, and I find it odd that a stranger seems to care so much about my idiosyncrasies.

“Do you know your birth parents?”

He shakes his head. “Oh no, we aren’t done talking about you yet. Where did you drive to?”

“The last time, I drove to the beach. I woke up in the middle of the night in the sand. My feet were wet, so we weren’t sure if I’d been walking in the water.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Six months ago. I lock my keys in a safe when I go to bed at night now.”

“What if you remember the combination in your sleep?”

“I haven’t.”

“But you might.”

“Don’t worry, Major. I won’t sleep drive up to Oceanside to see you in the middle of the night.”

“I’d much rather you stick to awake driving to Oceanside to see me in the middle of the night.”

I smile and take a drink of wine.

“I don’t know my birth parents.”

“So a sleepwalker and an adoptee. Interesting pair we are, huh?” I say.

“Tell me something else. It doesn’t have to be something people don’t know, just something I don’t know . . . which is anything, I guess.”

“I love tacos, I play golf, and I love social media,” I say with pride, sitting up a little straighter.

“Tacos are messy, I enjoy golf, and I am not a part of social media.”

“You don’t do messy well, do you, Major?”

He looks around the pristine, sterile clean house and then back at me. “No, I don’t do messy well at all.”

I yawn and cover my mouth, internally groaning. I don’t want him to think I’m uninterested or tired, but truth is, I am tired. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night on the kitchen floor a lot lately, and it’s a little unnerving. I make light of my sleepwalking, but it can be very dangerous living alone and wandering around at night.

I should just put a pillow and blanket down on the kitchen floor so I can roll over and go back to sleep when I wake up there. If it were only that easy. Instead, I end up staying awake for the rest of the night no matter what time I find myself there.

“You’re tired.”

I wave my hand at him dismissively. “No, no, I’m fine.” But my body betrays me, and I try like hell to suppress another yawn.

He rolls his eyes and takes the wine glass from my hand. He sets it on the island, and before I know what he’s doing, he has scooped me up in his arms and we are moving across his neutral, uninspiring living room toward the staircase. Halfway up, he glances down at me with warm, lazy eyes, and the corner of his mouth twitches with the hint of a smile.

“Where are you taking me, Major Steele?” I ask.

“To bed, Ms. Washington.”

I lay my head against his chest and my pulse quickens. I’m far from tired now.

“How do you know my last name anyway?”

He shakes his head. “Driver’s license?”

“Oh yes.”

We reach the top of the stairs, and he proceeds down the hall to an open door at the end—his bedroom. Moving through the dark with ease, he strides straight to the bed and places me on my feet. My feet, not on my back on the bed where I want to be.

I can’t see at first, but my eyes quickly adjust to the dark. I watch an outline of Major as he removes each decorative pillow and places them on a chair on the far side of the bed. He pulls back the comforter by one corner, creating a perfect, inviting triangle.

When he’s finished fussing with the bed, he silently stands in front of me. Barely touching me, he brushes his lips against my cheek and a shiver flows through my body. He smiles and drags his nose down my neck. I drop my head back to offer him easier access, and he glides along the curve of my throat and down to the tiny space between my collarbone and my neck. He kisses this spot as if he already knows it’s the start button to my engine, and I moan in appreciation.

His hands are still not on me when I reach for him. I’m confused when he takes ahold of my wrists and places them back at my sides and begins to unbutton my shirt. When he’s finished slowly opening my shirt, he slides if off my shoulders and lays it on the bed. His hands are on my shoulders, turning me away from him, I hold my breath and close my eyes. Slowly, he pulls the thin zipper on the back of my skirt down, down, down, until it slides off my hips and onto the floor around my feet with a soft whoosh.

He is quiet. The only sounds in the room are our breathing and the ticking of a clock near the bedside table. A ticking clock? Why doesn’t he have a digital clock that glows in the dark so he can always see the time?

That fleeting thought is gone in a puff of smoke when his fingers return to my shoulders and begin descending down my arms. He leaves a smoldering trail in their wake, settling on my bare hips. His hands almost circle my whole body. He is very big, or I am just very small. Either way, he holds all the control.

He leans closer to me, and I feel his warm breath against my ear before he speaks.

“I’m putting you to bed,” he whispers.