“In my dreams,” Lauren scoffed. She grabbed Becca’s case and set it near the door. Then she popped open her own pocketbook to leave a tip for the housekeeper.
Georgia grabbed her garment bag off the desk chair and then seemed to freeze. “Wow, Lauren! Did you do it?”
“Um, what?”
Georgia looked up with sparkling eyes, then pointed at something on the cabinet shelf. “Did you seduce a basketball player? You’re my hero.”
Lauren crossed to the desk to discover . . . a hastily discarded condom package on its surface. She picked it up and crumpled it in her hand.
It had been a three pack. There were none left.
She dropped the evidence in an otherwise empty wastepaper basket. Then she raised her eyes to find Georgia’s amused ones watching her. “Don’t laugh.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. As long as I get at least one juicy detail.”
Slowly she shook her head. “No can do.”
“Not even his position? Point guard? Center?”
“Goalie,” Lauren said quietly.
“Oh,” Georgia whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. You were right. That dress has some powerful mojo.”
Lauren clapped a hand over her mouth. “I guess it does. Don’t tell anyone, okay? It isn’t going to become a thing.”
“Huh. Does he know that?”
“I hope so.”
“Maybe Florida makes people a little crazy,” Georgia speculated as the two of them headed out the door. “Leo and I did it in a hammock on the beach last night. I’ve never done that before.”
Lauren gave a snort of laughter. “It is Florida’s fault. Let’s blame Florida.”
The two of them went downstairs, where the team milled around, looking hungover. At least Lauren wasn’t the only one who’d had a wild night. She kept close to Georgia and steered a wide berth around Mike Beacon. Though it was tempting to stare at him and relive the finer points of last night’s sexcapades.
Go ahead, she dared herself. The virtual replay was the only kind she was going to get.
She boarded the bus when it arrived, taking the seat beside Georgia. Lauren pulled out her phone and began to deal with the day’s e-mails. But the bus just sat there longer than it should have. Lauren looked up and waved over Jimbo, the youngest member of the operations team. “Is there a problem with the schedule?”
He was handing out paper sacks containing muffins, and small cups of coffee, which she and Georgia accepted gratefully. “We’re waiting on Nate,” Jimbo said.
“Ah.” The bus couldn’t really leave without the owner. And the jet would wait for him as long as it took.
She went back to her e-mail. From the back of the bus she heard Mike’s laugh. Who knew what he was laughing at—probably one of Doulie’s jokes. But the sound resonated inside her chest and made her feel fizzy inside.
Georgia nudged her. “Omigod. Look. Out the window.”
Lauren craned her neck to see what Georgia meant. Outside, Nate was leaning into the back seat of a hired sedan with tinted windows. Way in. “So?”
“Becca got into that car first—she’s flying back to New York out of the Lauderdale airport. Do you think he’s . . . kissing her good-bye?”
Lauren stared as Nate’s back emerged from the car. He snapped the door shut with typical Nate efficiency, his face unreadable. Then he walked out of her line of sight to board the bus.
“Did you see that?” Georgia asked in an awed tone.
“I don’t know what I saw.”
A moment later the doors to the bus closed and the breaks squeaked. The bus began to roll forward. As Nate slowly approached their seat, both Georgia and Lauren stared at him.
“Problem?” he said, giving them a frown.
“Not in this row,” Lauren said, watching for a crack in his stern facade. “You?”
He gave her a Nate frown and moved past, heading toward the back.
“Maybe I imagined it,” Georgia whispered.
“Maybe,” Lauren agreed.
She went back to work and tried not to listen for Mike’s laugh among the others.
? ? ?
Forty-eight hours later, her phone pressed to her ear, Lauren listened to an endless stream of voice mails for Nate. Multitasking, she hustled into a hotel conference room where the team’s lunch was set out. While one of Nate’s tech officers droned on about their upcoming trip to China, she handed Jimbo a new itinerary for the next twenty-four hours.
He scanned the page and gave her a salute, so Lauren walked over to hand the same information to Georgia and her partner in the publicity office—Tommy.
Lauren put her phone away and greeted Georgia with an apology. “I know I gave you different information this morning, but the host team keeps switching our ice time, so the schedule changed again.”
“No problem. But . . . do you think it’s intentional? Are they messing with us on purpose?”
Lauren had wondered that same thing. “That would be pretty low. I won’t do that when they come to Brooklyn in two days.”
“Do it!” Leo Trevi teased, coming over to stand behind his fiancée. “And let’s short-sheet all their beds, and put itching powder in their underwear.”
“Someone spent too many years at summer camp,” Lauren guessed.
“You know it! We were worse, though.” He pulled out a chair next to Georgia. “I found a dead frog in my shoe one time, so I put it . . .”
Lauren held up a hand. “I get it. But it’s lunchtime.”
He grinned.
She gave him a friendly wave and wandered off to check out the buffet. She wasn’t hungry at all, but there was a decent-looking Caesar salad, so she grabbed a to-go container and forked some salad leaves into it.
“Hi there,” a smoky voice said from just beside her. Mike had snuck up and ambushed her. “Are you ready for round two yet?”
Oh, boy. Lauren stifled a laugh, even as her senses began to hum in unison. “Sure,” she said lightly. “As long as you’re talking about hockey.”
“Ah, well. It was worth a shot.”
Lauren just shook her head, smiling down at the croutons on the salad bar.
“Join me for lunch?” he asked.
“I wish I could,” she said quickly. “But I have a ton to do before the game, and Nate is expecting me upstairs.”
“Maybe another time,” he said, giving her a quick smile.
And, damn, she’d seen that smile in bed just two days ago. Suddenly the room was warmer than it had been a few minutes ago.
“How are you doing, anyway?” he pressed. “Haven’t seen you at all in Tampa. I’d think you were avoiding me, except Coach has had us in strategy sessions for hours and hours.”
She returned his smile, but then looked down at the buffet again, to try to shake off his sexual tractor beam. None of that. “Fine, thank you. And yourself? Has Coach been working you hard?”
“You know it.” He added a couple of olives to his plate, which already overflowed with two sandwiches and pasta salad.