Block Shot (Hoops #2)(34)

“How was the gym?” he asks, stepping away to shuck off his boxers, revealing his beautiful, well-conditioned athlete’s body.

“It was great.” I go into my walk-in closet, pulling out a summer pantsuit to put on once I’m done with my hair and makeup. “Quinn had no mercy, as usual.”

“I wish I’d gotten to spend more time with her.” He raises his voice over the shower. “I wish I had more time with you for that matter.”

“I know. This trip was much too quick,” I yell back. “And next week I’m in Denver for that convention.”

I head back into the bathroom to grab my hair dryer. There’s a snow globe on the counter beside it. It’s heavy when I pick it up. The base is marble with Vancouver, British Columbia etched into the stone. A winter sunset fills the glass arch, a gold and scarlet sky vivid against the snowy ground and the drift of powdery flakes when I shake it.

I walk over to the shower, globe in hand, delighted grin on my face.

“And what is this?” I ask.

A pleased smile creases Zo’s handsome face. “Just a little something I picked up for you.”

“It’s beautiful.” I lean my head in to kiss him lightly on the lips, but his soapy hands slide down my arms and bring me under the spray.

“Zo!” I laugh and grab at the towel slipping from my breasts and the globe slipping from my hand.

“Thank me properly,” he says, his voice husky, his eyes hot on my wet, bare skin.

I tip up on my toes to kiss him, taking his tongue into my mouth and allowing the towel to fall. I press my body into his and slide my fingers into the thick, wet curls at his neck. He groans, cups my ass, and pushes into the V of my naked thighs.

“I can’t. I’m already late.” I giggle into the watery kiss, pick up the now sodden towel, and step out of the shower. “But consider yourself properly thanked.”

His laughter follows me to the linen closet where I find a fresh towel to dry off and wrap around myself again.

“You got a full day?” Zo asks, his voice still slightly raised over the shower.

“Very.” I run a hand through the hair hanging past my shoulders and pick up the dryer. “Isn’t every day?”

“When do you meet with Lowell?”

Even with my back turned, I know Zo well enough to hear concern in his voice.

Lowell, the Titans’ president of basketball operations, is a tough customer. He’ll play hard ball because Zo’s numbers are down, and it’s bad timing. Right at the end of the regular season, going into post, his performance started suffering, but Zo has almost a decade of outstanding performance in this league. He’s eligible for a supermax contract, the designated veteran player extension, which can be up to thirty-five percent of a team’s cap space but can only be given by the team that drafted the player. He’s earned it, and I plan to get it for him.

“Hey.” I put my dryer on the counter and turn to face the shower, propping my butt against the counter and meeting the concern I anticipated in his eyes. “You know I got you.”

“En las buenas,” he says, our private message of loyalty through the years.

Through thick.

“En las malas,” I reply.

Through thin.

I’m reassured by the warm feeling of contentment his smile brings. The trepidation I haven’t been able to shake, my fear that our relationship will somehow ruin our friendship is unfounded. We’ve been too close for too long.

En las buenas y en las malas.

What could possibly come between us?





11





Jared





“Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you."

-Viola Davis, Oscar-Winning Actress





I don’t believe in fate.

“The universe” is not some omnipotent force moving us around like chess pieces, manipulating us or protecting us or colliding us. Work hard, good things happen.

Or not.

It’s life. A cosmic crapshoot in which odds don’t mean shit. I’m more fatalism, less fate. With that said, I do believe circumstances happen in a certain order at a certain time. And for a certain reason. That does sound suspiciously like fate, but I dwell less on the why things happen and more on how I should respond when they do.

I sense storms coming, things shifting in the air. That helps me plan. It’s helped me in every area of my life, especially the market. I have my own money, nothing compared to Bent’s generational coffers. His mother traces her roots back to the Mayflower. Several times Bent has tipped me off, gotten me in on the ground floor of something big, but it’s my gut that tells me when to play. An intuition. I just know.

I’ve seen Banner Morales more in the last two weeks than I have in the last ten years, and I “just know” something’s shifting. When we literally ran into each other at the gym, the scent of those dryer sheets transported me back to late nights in Sudz. Before we worked for rival firms. Before Prescott’s stupid prank broke the fragile connection between us. Back to a time of discovery. Deciding what I felt for her. Figuring out how she felt about me when all I had to go on were the shifting winds.

Something’s shifting.