Sure Shot (Brooklyn #4)(7)

We’d had a friends-with-benefits arrangement that lasted for several months. It had been magic. I’d never hit it off with anyone quite so well as I had with her.

She’d ended it without really saying why, and I hadn’t had the good sense to be very upset. I’d missed her, and I’d sure as hell missed the sex, but I’d been riding the high of being a young, successful athlete in the big city. I didn’t lack for female attention.

But, man, our chemistry had been on another level. I hadn’t appreciated it while it lasted. And now she pretends not to recognize me? Ouch.

“Excuse me,” Bess says now. She turns her back on me, heading for the house, ducking into the crowd, her hips swaying.

Oh, hell no. She won’t get away from me that easily. I eye the boss’s mansion and wonder where she’ll head next.

“Who needs a drink?” Heidi asks, pulling my attention back to the party. “And who’s willing to play the new winner?”

“I’m very afraid,” Castro says. “But I’ll do it.”

“That’s my boy.” Heidi stands on her tiptoes and kisses him. “I’m going to grab us all a bucket of cold beer.”

“I’ll help you,” I offer. “I need a drink after that whipping you just gave me.”

There are a few good-natured chuckles. Losing to the team’s favorite assistant was probably a good move, even if I didn’t mean to do it.

I head for the bar with Heidi. As I help her tuck bottles of beer into an ice bucket, I feel eyes on me. I finish what I’m doing and glance up.

Busted. There’s Bess Beringer, watching me from the food table. She looks away quickly, embarrassed to be caught.

I don’t know why she pretended not to remember me, when it’s so very obvious she does.





Three





Creamed Spinach and a Proposition





Bess





It’s unlike me to panic. I love pressure. I’m an athlete, for goodness’ sake. In college, I scored goals seconds before the game-ending buzzer. And in my professional life, I’ve wrestled fat contracts out of managers who were determined not to pay up. I’ve removed the hands of grabby, drunk sportscasters from my body without breaking a sweat.

Tonight, though, I’d been unprepared to come face to face with Tank after so many years. I’d seized up completely. Those broody green eyes have always made me stupid.

Thirty-two looks good on Tank. His dark, arrogant smirk is the same, but he’s aged into a harder, less boyish version of the man I used to know. His body is less bulky, but more cut. The muscles in his forearms are defined, where they used to be just beefy.

I sneak another peek at him. He looks dangerous. In a good way. All he’s doing is standing in the grass holding a beer, and I still have the urge to scale him like a tree.

The universe is having a laugh at my expense tonight. My birthday looms, which means I’ve already thought of Tank several times today. He’s the man who’d made my twenty-first so special. It hadn’t been for just the one night, either. Our fling had a shelf life of three or four months. I’d put a halt to it when I realized my relationship with Tank could become a career-ending mistake.

At that point, I’d already landed my dream job as an assistant at Henry Kassman & Associates. Since I’d skipped a grade in middle school, I’d been a very young college graduate. Young and very na?ve. My office nickname had been The Rookie.

By the time my birthday rolled around, all the hockey rookies were turning up for training camp. Since I was based in New York, I’d met a few of the young guys who were playing for New York and New Jersey.

Tank had been one of them.

And the night of my birthday, my boss had plans to entertain a few rookies at Sparks Steak House. “Spend your big night with us!” Henry Kassman had said, inviting me out to the dinner.

“You don’t need to buy me a steak for my birthday,” I’d insisted.

“Listen, Rookie, it’s not like that,” he’d said. “After twenty years at this job, I don’t really need another steak dinner at Sparks. I’d rather go home and read a Patterson thriller until the book hits me in the face when I nod off. But this is the business. I gotta welcome some young punks to the city and show ’em a good time. If you come out tonight, you’ll be doing me a favor.”

“Oh,” I’d said slowly, trying to decide whether or not to believe him.

“Do you like creamed spinach?”

“I really don’t know.” Twenty-one-year-old Bess hadn’t had much experience with fine dining.

“It’s so good. I promise. And the steak is to die for. Come out. Enjoy a glass of expensive birthday wine on me. Chat up some rookies. It’ll be great.”

So I’d gone, wearing a sleeveless silk top that I’d bought on sale at Bloomingdales on the way there. I’d tried the spinach, and it had been delicious. I’d eaten a filet mignon so tender that it seemed to melt on my tongue like butter. And I drank fine red wine for the first time in my life.

Every time I’d looked across the table, my gaze had locked with a hot twenty-three-year-old rookie from Washington state named Mark Tankiewicz. He’d been handsome and brash, with piercing green-gray eyes. He hadn’t been worried about which fork to use or how to pronounce Cabernet Sauvignon.