Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(8)

Not usually, but alcohol does help me smile when I feel like scowling. “Sure. Wine’s fine. Red.”

I avoid the hard stuff as much as possible, even in the off-season. Besides, if I plan to make it off this boat without Amanda taking advantage of me, I need a relatively clear head.

JP grabs a glass of red from one of the trays and introduces me to several more people. They may as well be the same person as much as their names and faces compute.

“It’s a lot,” a pretty redhead with green eyes says. “We’re a lot, but we mean well. I’m Billie, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Billie,” I say.

“The games will help you get to know everyone,” JP assures, as if that assures me.

“Games?” I ask. I play one game. Basketball. Anything else, I can’t be bothered.

“They always have games,” Billie says dryly, offering a commiserative glance. “You don’t have to play, but it usually turns out to be fun. We’ve played hide and seek.”

“Pin the tail,” JP adds jovially.

“Dodgeball,” Amanda laughs.

“We broke a twenty-thousand-dollar vase that night,” a male voice says from behind me. “Needless to say, no more dodgeball.”

I turn to face the voice, and immediately recognize the guy who goes with it. The dark-eyed, petite, sexy-as-fuck pixie I can’t stop thinking about was with this dude the last time I saw her.

“Chase, right?” I ask, making a conscious effort to un-bend my eyebrows because I can feel the scowl forming. “I think we met at a Christmas party a few months back. You’re a photographer?”

You were with Lotus is what I think, but don’t say.

“Yup, great memory.” He smiles, and I want to snatch the dirty blond man bun from his scalp hair by hair. I recognize it’s an extreme reaction, but that is the only way to describe how I feel when I’m around that woman. Extreme.

“Chase is the reason we found each other,” JP says, giving him a pleased smile.

“How so?” I ask. This alliance is looking less likely with every passing minute and each revelation.

“Your arms.” Chase nods to my forearms, exposed by my short-sleeve shirt. “Remember at the party I said you had great arms?”

He says it like that should explain everything, but I raise both brows meaningfully, silently encouraging him to elaborate.

“When JP told me he was looking for a watch spokesperson,” Chase continues, “I thought of you.”

My mind latches on to a vague improbability. “Do you know Lotus, too?” I ask JP directly.

“Know her?” JP laughs heartily, shaking his little paunch and straining the buttons on his silk shirt. “She works in my atelier.”

Note for later: Google atelier.

I’m not one to believe in fate, but my first week in a city this big, I have a six-degrees-of-separation with the one woman I‘d summer fling and summer fuck. When fate knocks, you answer.

“So is she . . .” I clear my throat. “She’s not here, is she? On the boat?”

“Why?” Chase asks, suspicion lacing his voice now, the easy friendliness from minutes ago gone.

None of your damn business, is what I want to say, but Banner’s still in my ear.

“We have mutual friends,” I say, eyeing him as closely as he’s eyeing me.

“I didn’t realize that,” JP says. “I wonder why she didn’t mention you know each other?”

“Know each other is a stretch,” I tell him with a humorless grin. “Like I said, we have mutual friends. One of my teammates is married to her cousin. We’ve met a few times before.”

“She’s here somewhere,” JP says, scanning the deck.

Considering that at the Christmas party, she basically fled the scene as soon as she realized I was there, I wouldn’t lay odds on actually getting to speak to her. She’ll probably jump overboard. Knowing she’s here, though, shouldn’t make me feel this way. I barely know the woman. Correction. I do not know the woman, and she has made it clear she doesn’t want to know me. Amanda wants to know me. Bridget claims to want me back. I could find a dozen, no, more, women tonight who want me.

And perversely, I’m drawn to the one who doesn’t.

“I’ll find her,” JP interrupts my inner monologue, “and call her over.”

“That’s not necessary.” I say it half-heartedly because I don’t plan to stop him.

“Yari,” JP calls across the deck. “Where’s Lo?”

An attractive Latina woman—maybe Puerto Rican, Dominican—turns her head from the person she’s talking to. Her eyes drift from JP to me and back again.

“Upper deck maybe?” Yari answers with a shrug.

“Be a doll,” JP says drolly, “and go get her for me?”

She says something to the person standing with her and then disappears up a set of stairs.

JP, Chase, and Amanda continue talking, moving on in the conversation. I’m tuned into the discussion with half an ear and a quarter of my attention. I’m starting to believe Lotus really did abandon ship rather than see me when her friend Yari returns.

And Lotus follows.

Somehow she looks different every time I see her, but there is something about her that never seems to change. I’ve seen her with platinum braids and hair cut so short it framed her face, but I should have known better than to think I could predict her.