The Player Next Door (4 page)

“I need you to stay off that roof.” Then he rubbed his face. “Look, just get a thicker rope, okay? At least tie yourself off with the right type of rope.”

She nodded. Good advice. She could get it at the rock store. Er, garden store. “Okay, then…” She’d already been backing away so it was an easy thing to give him a last wave and let herself out.

Once outside in the sunshine, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Well, this was a day for her diary. The day she’d ended the career of one of the country’s favorite sons. She sighed as she started walking away. Normally, she’d be thinking of ways to make it up to the man, but honestly, she already knew that wouldn’t be possible. First off, there wasn’t anything anyone could do to make up for that type of disaster. Second, they were completely incompatible as friends. Or even friendly neighbors.

She resented anyone who thought he could order her not to roof her own house. And he was too much mega ego sports jock for her to find anything but his physique appealing over the long haul. In short, it would be best if she just let him be. After all, even in Evanston, neighbors didn’t have to be friendly.

Decision made: she’d ignore him. And with that thought in mind, she headed off to the garden store to buy some decorative rocks.

Chapter Three

“What part of ‘rest and recovery’ didn’t you understand?”

Mike grimaced at Doc and just shook his head. “She fell off her roof. Was I supposed to just let her die?”

For a middle-aged white guy with a paunch, Doc had a glare that could make even him squirm. But he didn’t break. He would not feel bad about saving Tori’s life. So, eventually, the man grunted and returned to pushing annoying fingers into his painful shoulder.

“You sure she fell by accident?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Mike’s gaze cut to a man he trusted with his life. He was damned lucky that the guy had decided to spend the summer with his daughter in Chicago. That meant the man was on call night and day to save Mike’s bacon
—
or shoulder
—
as it were. That and Joey, personal trainer to the megastars, and he was set for Evanston rest and rehab. “She fell off her roof.”

“Women have done crazier things to get into your bed.”

“They have not. She fell off
—
”

“Her roof. Yeah, I heard that.”

Mike sighed. “Look, it’s different out here. She didn’t recognize me.”

Doc grunted as he raised Mike’s arm slowly, watching for the moment Mike grimaced. “Out here? You mean in far-off Evanston?” The man rolled his eyes. “They have TVs here too. Big screen monstrosities. Bulls Fever hits here just like the rest of Chicago. And everybody knows the point guard who fed the Bulls their lunch.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Mike winced as Doc shifted his arm too quickly. “She thought I was Tiger Woods.”

“Bullshit.”

Mike nodded, still feeling the prick to his ego at the idea. “She might have been joking,” he grudgingly admitted.

Doc snorted. “You megastars. If it’s not the booze and other shit
—
”

“I don’t do that,” he snapped. Outside of the obvious reason that his body was his career and he didn’t screw with his career, his mother would kill him if she found out. The one time he’d come home drunk, she’d tanned his hide so hard he couldn’t sit for a week.

But Doc was unimpressed. “If it’s not that shit, then it’s the women.”

Mike felt his jaw clench. “I don’t do the women either. You know that.”

“Not during the season. You’re on rest and recovery vacation now.”

Mike opened his mouth to argue, but then had to bite back a groan as Doc moved his arm in a particularly painful way.

“And you do do the women,” the man continued. “Lots of them. Just not before a game.”

Mike wanted to jerk his arm back and away from the sadistic doctor, but he knew better. So he sat there and groused. “Those aren’t women. Not like you mean. They’re just
—
”

“Basketball bunnies are women too. They’re just easy women.”

Easily had, easily forgotten. That was different. Tori was different. She came off as a total ditz, but there had been something in her expression that belied that impression. As if she was purposely pretending to be clueless. He had no idea how much was true, and how much was an act.

Meanwhile, Doc finished with his shoulder
—
thank God
—
then he rocked back on his heels. Mike waited while the bastard stared at him with that blank-faced silent shit that never failed to make Mike nuts.

“What?”

“The burbs don’t agree with you. Why don’t you go back to New York?”

“I hate that circus. And I’m kinda getting fond of sidewalk chalk.”

“And women that fall from the sky?”

Mike crossed his arms
—
gingerly. “She could have died.”

“Just don’t screw your career.”

And right there was the crux of the problem. “How bad is it?”

Doc huffed out a breath while Mike held his. “You’ve put yourself back a month at least, so the pre-season’s out.”

Yeah, he’d already guessed that.

“But if you do everything exactly as I tell you, then I think you’ll be okay for the regular season.”

“Yes!”

“But don’t fuck up. And don’t
—
”

“Fuck her. Yeah, I got it.”

Doc frowned. “I was going to say don’t fuck with your system. It got you to being a Knicks superstar. Don’t abandon it now.”

“That’s the same thing.” His system was really simple. Anything that interfered with his game was avoided like the plague. Booze harder than beer and any recreational drugs were the easiest of the distractions to avoid. Gambling was his father’s sin, so Mike didn’t even play Lotto. Naw, his problem had always been the girls. Serious girls seriously screwed up his game. So if he couldn’t bed ’em and forget ’em, then he avoided them. “And for the record, I don’t even like her. She’s a rich white girl who hasn’t got the brains God gave a gnat. And she knows shit about basketball. Or golf.”

Doc didn’t comment as he lifted up Mike’s bottle of prescription painkillers. Then he turned and dropped them in his bag. “I’m taking these.”

“What? Why?” He had a pretty high tolerance for pain, but sometimes his shoulder ached so bad he couldn’t sleep.

“So you remember to protect it. And stop thinking you’re Superman rescuing damsels in distress.”

“Jesus, Doc, I saved her life.”

“And now you can suffer the consequences.” The man pulled out a pad and started scribbling, but that didn’t stop him from talking. “A few beers are fine, but be careful of the calories. The key is moderation which I know is a hard concept for you athletes to understand.” And that was that. Well, that was all the chitchat. The rest was the serious business of rehab schedules, crazy-making exercises three times a day. “Not seven, not ten,” the doc stressed. “And certainly not forever. Just three. Slowly. And you stop if there’s pain.”

“There’s always pain.”

“Suck it up.” Doc’s last words before he left. In fact, those were always his last words.

And Mike listened.

Mike was finishing off his turkey burger when he heard the commotion. He was on his back deck, enjoying the beautiful evening and listening to the Tigers play baseball. He might live in New York
—
and temporarily in Chicago
—
but he’d been born and raised in Detroit. He was a Tiger baseball fan and would be until the day he died.

So he’d turned on the game through his iPhone, settled on the back deck with lemon water—it didn’t have enough sugar to be called lemonade—and …well, and he waited to see if his neighbor decided to try and kill herself again by roofing.

She hadn’t, as far as he was aware. She’d spent the rest of yesterday and most of today on her new rock garden. She’d switched off of whatever drum beat thing she’d been listening to on the roof to the Beatles. He’d heard just enough of
Ticket to Ride
—sung in a sweet alto—to settle into memories of his grandmother and chocolate chip cookies.

A perfect night until a car pulled into her driveway and a man pounded on Tori’s door.

“Tori! Tori!” There was definite fury in the man’s voice, but Mike recognized an undercurrent of panic as well. The guy left off pounding on the door to rush around her house. He cursed as he tripped over the roofing tiles on the ground, then cursed again as he ran foul of the rock garden. Mike had a perfect view because he’d stood up to see over the fence.

The starting-to-bald thin guy in khaki pants and a polo had made it up to Tori’s back door and was pounding on it now, his curses taking on a more vehement edge.

Mike left his deck to head around the hedge. The guy was making enough noise to alert the entire neighborhood. If Tori didn’t respond to that, then something really could be wrong.

He was just rounding the edge of the fence when he heard the back door wrench open.

“Shit, Edward, you scared me half to death.”

“Me?” the guy squeaked. “Damn it, Tori, I’ve been calling you for hours. What the hell? Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. I’ve been making pies.”

“Pies? I’ve been worried sick. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Even from across the backyard, Mike could hear the woman huff in disgust. “Because it’s not going to rain for another couple days.”

Edward was understandably confused by this statement, but Mike had spent enough time in Tori’s company to get an idea of her thought process. Unlike the pompous Edward, Mike knew that her phone was still up on the roof. Apparently, Tori had decided to leave it up there. There was no danger because it wasn’t going to rain.

“Tori, you’re not making any sense,” Edward said, each word pronounced with sharp derision.

“Yes, I am,” she returned hotly. “Besides, no one important was going to call me anyway.”

“I was calling!”

Tori didn’t answer; her silence a clear slap on the guy’s face. Mike had to stifle his laugh. Meanwhile, Edward shifted his tactics, his tone becoming both wounded and condescending at the same time.

“That’s not fair, Tori. You know I worry about you. We all do. You’re not used to living alone. And this house—”

“Oh hi, Mike,” Tori interrupted. “Come on in. I’ve been making pies for you.”

Mike should have felt guilty for eavesdropping, but he didn’t. Not with the offer of pie. So he grinned and sauntered forward. Doc’s words about not fucking Tori wandered through his mind, but he escorted the words right back out. He wasn’t going to screw Tori. He was going to enjoy some pie.

Meanwhile, Edward turned around, his eyes widening when he saw him. Then Mike waited, expecting the usual frown before shocked recognition.

He waited. And waited.

“I thought you said an old couple lived next door,” Edward said, his voice and attitude wary.

“Mike’s house-sitting. And encouraging me to make a rock garden.” She gestured to the side of her yard where a seemingly haphazard collection of rocks clustered. One boulder, painted hot pink, stood regally over five medium rocks, each a different neon color, near a collection of smaller stones of natural color laid in a circle.

“Very nice,” Mike said because that’s what a man says when offered free pie.

“Is that what I tripped over? Good God, Tori, I thought it was debris from the roof.”

“It’s a work in progress,” she said stiffly. “Come on in, Mike. The pies are almost done.”

Now that he was closer, he could smell them. Hot pie, fresh from the oven. He was already salivating and a quick mental calculation told him he could afford the calories if he cut back tomorrow and ran a few extra miles.

“Tori!” Edward exclaimed, but she had already given the man her back.

Mike didn’t bother to hide his grin as he pushed his way through the back door. He was about to head for the kitchen by smell alone but he had to stop to look at her family room. Or should he say disaster zone?

The furniture was scattered—or stacked—mostly in the corner. She’d ripped up the carpet, so he stepped onto the unfinished wood underneath. To one side was a stack of books, spilling out of three moving boxes. To the other side was a kitchen filled with knickknack chickens of every size and ilk. The largest one was a concrete rooster, frozen in the act of cock-a-doodle-doing. The smallest were the zillions of chickens scattered about the wallpaper. The others were just too many to take in, including seven sets of chicken salt and pepper shakers all lined up along the counter wall.

“Chicken pot pie, anyone?” he quipped as he stepped in.

Tori laughed. Or rather she started to, but then tried to stifle it. So it came out as more of a snort that he found charming anyway.

“I was going to rip down the wallpaper, but then I noticed that my cooking splatters were kind of like food for the chickens. So I’ve decided to leave it for now.”

“Good idea,” he said with a chuckle.

Then Edward trailed in. “This place is a death trap. What happens if you start sleepwalking again? God only knows what will happen.”

“I expect I’ll trip over something and wake up.” She leaned down to pull the pies out from the oven, treating Mike to a nice view of her backside. She was wearing cutoffs again which hugged her ass perfectly. Not to mention the length of creamy thigh underneath.

Next to him, Edward sighed in frustration. “Tori…” he said. Mike didn’t know whether it was in annoyance about her lack of sleepwalking precautions or because those shorts were just shy of indecent. Either way, the man was becoming a first-class bore.

But before he put the prick in his place, Mike needed to understand the relationship. Edward spoke to Tori like an irritated older brother, but there was no family resemblance between them. She was a slender blonde with crystal clear blue eyes and legs that went on for miles even on her petite frame. Edward, on the other hand, was a dumpy looking white guy with curly brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses over mud-colored eyes.

Meanwhile, Tori had just set two lumpy looking pies on the stove. One of them had clearly spilled over, its reddish brown innards burned onto the cookie tray. Once those were set down, she pulled off her rooster-shaped oven mitts and turned to face Edward.