He had an unsettling thought—a notion that, up until this very second, he could never have imagined entertaining. What if Olivia Shore was out of his league?
Absurd. He was Thad Walker Bowman Owens. No woman had ever been out of his league. He was a star. And Olivia . . . ?
Olivia Shore was a superstar.
With an abrupt good night, he headed upstairs.
*
After dinner, Olivia had turned on the hot tub on the private balcony outside the master bedroom where she was staying, and now a veil of steam rose from the water into the cold night air. Her muscles ached pleasantly from their hike. A few days ago she’d been sweating in the Phoenix heat, and now she was gazing out on snow. This was one amazing country.
She stripped, opened the door, and wearing only flip-flops, walked carefully across the icy deck and gradually lowered herself into the hot water.
The cold air slapped her face as the heat enveloped her body. She studied the inky, star-laced sky. This would be a perfect moment, if only she could shake off the guilt that refused to ease its grip on her.
The scene at Adam’s graveside had been so over the top it belonged onstage. As his sisters, clad in black from head to toe, had laid the last two flowers on his coffin, Colleen, the oldest of the two, advanced on Olivia, her face contorted with grief. “You killed him.” Her words were little more than a whisper, but they gradually grew louder. “You led him on. Made him believe you had a future when all you cared about was yourself. You might as well have pulled the trigger!”
The onlookers had stared. A few had drawn back. More had inched forward, unwilling to miss a word.
Adam’s other sister, Brenda, had rushed to Colleen’s side, her face mirroring her sister’s grief. Olivia had stood there paralyzed, unable to defend herself against the truth in those words, until Rachel had dragged her away from them to the car. “You can’t let this get to you,” Rachel had said.
But how could it not?
Olivia jumped as the bedroom’s sliding doors opened and Thad stepped out. “I knocked a couple of times, but you didn’t seem to hear.” He had a towel wrapped around his waist and his feet stuffed into a pair of sneakers. She stared at his bare chest. “Go back to your computer and your mysterious phone calls,” she said. “I’m having me time.”
“Nobody likes a hot tub hog.” He dropped the towel to reveal a pair of navy boxer briefs. “Turn around if you don’t want to see these come off.”
She definitely did want to see, and if she were a different woman with a different profession, she might let herself enjoy everything this deliciously sexy man had to offer, but her relationship with Adam had caused enough destruction in her life. For all Thad Owens wanted was the world to see him as a good-natured guy who lived for football, she wasn’t fooled. Every instinct she possessed told her he wasn’t nearly as straightforward as he pretended to be, and the last thing she needed in her life right now was more complexity.
She waited a few seconds for him to settle into the water before she looked. He’d grown some beard stubble since the morning, and the glow from the hot tub lights intensified the green of his eyes, while feathers of steam drifted around his broad shoulders. The rush of heat racing through her body didn’t come from the water temperature.
He leaned against the tub’s edge. “I was about to get in the shower when I saw you down here.”
The possibility that he’d seen her traipse naked across the deck unsettled her, even though she liked her body. She liked the height that gave her presence onstage and the strength that allowed her to endure long performances. Pop stars who relied on microphones could afford to be rail thin, but opera singers’ unamplified voices had to carry out into the audience over a full orchestra. While the era of the obese opera singer had ended, a small, malnourished body couldn’t cut it, either. Yet those super-thin bodies were probably what Thad Owens feasted on.
The realization that she was thinking about how a professional athlete-playboy would judge her body made her angry with herself. But also curious. “What do you think is most attractive in a woman? Body, brains, or power?”
“All of the above.”
“But if you could only have one?”
“Let me point out that you’re the person who’s reducing women to a single attribute.”
She smiled. “I was speaking theoretically.”
“Then how about we reverse the questions? What’s most attractive to you in a man? Body, brains, or power?”
“Point made.”
“I guess we all have certain physical traits we’re attracted to.”
Thick, dark hair, great chest, perfect profile.
“What really attracts me is a person who has a passion,” he said. “Their job, their hobby. Whether it’s saving tigers, or making a great barbecue sauce. I like people who want to suck all the juice out of life.”
He kept surprising her. She understood exactly what he meant because she felt the same way. “What’s your passion?” she asked. “Or is the answer too obvious?”
The way he hesitated made her suspect he was about to make another wisecrack, but he surprised her once again. “Being the best. Just like you said. What else is there?”
She’d watched him with Clint Garrett. She’d seen how much he resented Clint, yet she’d also overheard enough of their conversations to know he was determined to make Clint a better player. She wondered how he’d resolve this conflict inside himself. Or maybe he hadn’t.
They fell into quiet, but this silence didn’t feel as comfortable as their others had. Maybe it was the dark, the brush of water against her skin. Maybe it was the sight of those muscular shoulders emerging from the water. She imagined herself sliding over to him. Pressing her hands against his chest. His hands coming to her breasts. She imagined— “I’m getting out.”
She hadn’t brought a towel, only flip-flops. He was better prepared. She reached over the side and grabbed the towel he’d left there. “I’ll bring you another one.”
“Don’t cover up on my account.”
“You’re not going to seduce me.” As soon as the words were out, she wished she hadn’t spoken them.
“Hey, you’re the one who keeps bringing up sex.”
She shot up in the water, gripping the towel around herself. “Liar. You bring it up every time you waltz around in front of me without a shirt.”
“I’ve never once waltzed around—”
“And when you look at me with that face.” She climbed out.
“I can’t help my—”
“And bat those green eyes.”
His voice raised in outrage. “I never batted an eye in my life!”
She stomped across the snowy deck in her flip-flops. “Every time you— You—” She grabbed the bedroom doorknob.
It was locked.
7
Stunned, Olivia spun toward him. “You locked the door!”
He reared up from the bubbles. “What do you mean?”
“The door! You must have pushed the lock when you came out here.”
“I didn’t do anything to the lock. Let me see.”
He rose—his body steaming in the cold night air, a male Aphrodite emerging from an artificial sea.
The veteran of a hundred locker rooms wasn’t self-conscious about nudity, and she should have been too focused on the locked door for more than a passing glance, but she wasn’t.
He was magnificent, every part of him. Shoulders and chest, narrow hips, lean and powerful legs. And . . . Wow.
He moved in front of her and tried the knob. “You’re right.”
She forced herself to refocus. “Of course I’m right!”
“What kind of idiot would use a lock like this on a balcony door?”
“They’re your friends, not mine.”
He felt above the door frame. “See if you can find an extra key anyplace out here.”
There was no furniture, nowhere to really look, but she poked around anyway. “Nothing. Why didn’t we bring our phones? We should have brought Paisley.”
“Depressing thought.” He abandoned his fruitless search above the door and reached for his boxers. “I don’t suppose any of those classes you take taught you how to pick a lock?”