The Player's Club: Scott (18 page)

“She’s right, though, hon,” Tina said, wiping her hands daintily on her napkin. “Cooking for a man is a husband-trapping exercise. We know it, and they know it. Granted, your cooking could probably land somebody, but it’s probably going to just make him take advantage of you.”

“Why marry the girl when you can get the grilled cheese for free?” Jackie muttered darkly, before finishing her own sandwich.

“At least I haven’t done his laundry,” Amanda piped up. “You guys act like I’m invertebrate, I swear to God. I’m not angling to be his wife.”

“You want to be his girlfriend, though.” Tina got up, clearing away the dishes. Jackie nodded in agreement.

“Okay.” She wasn’t going to get that one past these two anyway. “Yeah, maybe. It’d be nice. But I’ve been married, and I don’t need to repeat that right away.”

“I don’t have any problem with you marrying,” Jackie amended, her voice growing much more gentle. “Just trying to marry the wrong guy, that’s all. If he doesn’t want to admit you’re his girlfriend, then he’s wasting your time.”

“Unless I’m
just trying to have some sex,
” Amanda said, then threw her hands in the air. “Why do I keep having this conversation? I love you, Jacks, but you really need to save some of it for your advice columns, you know?”

She got up, disgusted with the whole topic, and headed for her kitchen. She’d splurged and made chocolate petits fours, glazed with ganache and filled with raspberry jam and fresh whipped cream. “Have some dessert.”

Tina considered her waistline, but indulged in one anyway, making very pleased yummy noises. Jackie considered her tiny, artistic cake carefully. Then she tilted her head. Amanda braced herself for the assault.

“You miss the shop, don’t you?”

Amanda blinked. She hadn’t thought about the shop in—well, a long time. “Sometimes.”

“Not just the shop. Being around food. Being in business.”

Amanda shrugged. “Sometimes,” she repeated. Now that it had been brought to her attention, she realized that what used to be stress had been replaced with a numb sort of ache. She wasn’t sure if that was better.

Jackie turned to Tina. “Maybe it’s not the guy, after all,” she mused, as if Amanda weren’t even there. “Maybe it’s the job.”

“Oh?” Tina said, pouring a cup of coffee for all of them.

“She’s never
not
owned a business. She’s always run the show,” Jackie said slowly, frowning with thought. “Now she’s trying to get a handle on this Scott thing, but I think it’s more distraction.”

“Feel free to open a forum on my life,” Amanda said caustically, unable to even enjoy her dessert. She grabbed a mug of coffee, its warm richness soothing. “You’re the one that told me not to open a business, remember?”

“You are all or nothing. I should’ve seen it,” Jackie said ruefully. “You’re not the type to get a hobby. I guess it was silly to even suggest it.”

“All right, that’s enough!” Amanda barked, slamming her mug down. Tina stared at her, wide-eyed, and Jackie finally gave Amanda her full attention. “Maybe I’m getting too involved with Scott. But that’s my problem, my business, and as much as I love you, I’m getting tired of being treated like your letter of the week at the advice column.”

Jackie looked genuinely wounded. “I was just…”

“Trying to help. I know.” Amanda forced her voice to lower. “I know I’m still not happy. And that scares me. But trust me, I’m doing the best I can. Maybe I’ll do something food related again, I don’t know. I know I need to do something. Something besides having wild monkey sex with Scott,” she said, causing Tina to grin. “But I don’t know what. And until then…”

Tina stood next to her, nudging her with her hip. “Until then—monkey away, crazy girl. Sorry, I shouldn’t have come on so strong. It’s just, I’ve been where you are. Nobody wants to see a friend being used.”

Used.
Was that what Scott was doing?

Or, really, was that what
she
was doing?

Jackie nodded. “I’m glad you pushed back on me. I know I come on too hard. But you need to draw boundaries with him, too. Otherwise… Well, I’ll be here to pick up the pieces when he lets you down, but I swear I’m going to slash his tires and God help him if I run into him in a dark alley.”

Amanda smiled. “Point taken. If it comes to it, I imagine a very violent ‘I told you so’ in my future.”

There was a knock on the door. “Speak of the devil,” Jackie muttered darkly.

“I need to get going, anyway,” Tina said, giving her a warm hug. “Up for a little club work? Less rowdy this time, I promise. With the whole troupe.”

“I’m there,” Amanda said, and then she gave a hug to Jackie. “Thanks, guys.”

She opened the door. Scott was there, looking harried and tired, and happy to see her. Then he saw her friends and backed up a step, his smile a little hesitant. Tina smiled back. Jackie sent him a third-degree glare and walked past him, saying goodbye to Amanda only. When they’d left, he walked in, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

“So your friends hate me, huh?”

“At least you’ve seen my friends,” Amanda said, then bit her lip. “I’m sorry. That was completely uncalled for.”

He blinked at her.

“They— My friends don’t necessarily think our fling is the healthiest thing for me,” she said, washing the dishes quickly.

He leaned against a counter, drying each dish and putting it away without error. He
had
been over for dinner a lot, she admitted. “What do you think? Is this… Are we unhealthy?”

She gripped the edge of the counter by the sink for a minute, closing her eyes. She was tired. The malaise, her general boredom and unhappiness with her new life of leisure had been creeping up on her. She hadn’t really brought it into focus until Jackie had commented on it tonight. She didn’t want to break up with Scott, although she might have to, sometime.

But please, not tonight.

“Maybe,” she answered honestly. “But, hey, we’ve got great sex.”

He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck. “That we do.”

“And not much else.”

He froze against her for a second, then continued kissing her shoulder. “I didn’t know you wanted something else.”

“I didn’t say I did,” she said, and recognized the petulant sound of her own voice. She sighed. “Do you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and his honesty stung. “I do know that we like a lot of the same movies, the same books. We’ve got similar senses of humor.” He turned her to face him. “That’s more than sex.”

She leaned her forehead against his chest as reality struck her.

Damn it,
that
was why I wanted to be your girlfriend.

Because he’d be perfect for her. Her ex-husband had made sense to her on paper, but there had been no passion. Now, she had passion—and insanity.

What she really needed was some kind of happy medium, not a fling with a daredevil who didn’t want to commit, just to get into a club that she knew almost nothing about except rumors and what little she learned from Scott.

“Well, before we got all grim,” Scott said, stroking her cheek, “I did have a question to ask you.”

Not the question I want you to ask,
she thought, depressingly. “Yes?”

He seemed nervous all of a sudden, and rubbed the back of his neck. She found herself unwillingly curious. “Well, I know I probably should have asked you earlier, but I was wondering…”

“Yes?” she repeated, without enthusiasm.

“Would you like to go to Spain with me?”

She blinked. “Spain?”

“You said you’d help me with my challenges,” he quipped, and his broken smile melted her, like it always did. “I’ve got this bull run to tackle.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Europe,” she murmured. “I’ll admit, I hadn’t planned on jogging with two-ton bovines to do it, though.”

“A wild woman like you can handle it, no sweat,” he said with no tone of sarcasm. He grinned at her. Then he kissed her again, deeper, harder. “Come with me,” he whispered against her skin.

She thought about it. She had that little plane phobia thing. And the thought of running with the bulls terrified her. And she was falling in love with him—and this was only going to be more torturous when he became a Player, and all she had of him was casual sex and these senseless “adventures.”

He nudged her chin until her eyes met his. “Please.” There was genuine longing in his gaze—a real plea.

She swallowed. “Yeah. I’ll go.”

10

SCOTT WAS IRRITATED. It figured that the company would have a party when he was just finishing all his backlog. He’d just wrapped up the last report before his vacation, and he still needed to pack.

He glanced at his watch. At least the usual office parties had been scaled back from lavish sit-down dinners with rubbery chicken to uncomfortable cocktail parties with better hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. The company had barely made quota, anyway—not exactly a huge reason to celebrate. Still, it was a nice restaurant, and there was a lot of mingling. You could see who was here to “work the room,” angling for a better job in the next reorganization, who was trying to solidify their position, and who was simply putting in an appearance out of bare courtesy.

Scott fell into the latter camp, big-time.

He glanced at his watch again. The minute hand still hadn’t moved. He could be with Amanda, eating her fantastic oven-fried chicken with mashed potatoes, looking at pictures of Spain and discussing what they’d see. And, of course, making love to her until he was practically blind and paralyzed from the sheer force of it.

So far, they’d had sex in every room of her apartment—and on almost every surface. The only place they hadn’t was the fire escape, frankly because he wasn’t quite that adventurous.

Not yet, anyway. Something about that woman seemed to bring out the worst in him…or the best, depending on how you looked at it.

“Scott,” his boss, Jake, said. “Glad to see you here.”

Scott smiled, shaking his hand. Finally. Now, he could make polite remarks and get the hell out of here.

“Saw you’d put in for vacation. Good to see you’re finally taking a break, but I don’t know if I can let you go that week. I expect we’ll be getting slammed with a lot of reports. The reorganization will probably have happened, and you know how crazy that makes everyone. So how about you shift that, say, to the following week?”

Scott shrugged. “Actually, I have to leave that week. I’ve already bought plane tickets.”

Jake blinked at him, smiling a little…until he realized Scott was serious. “Plane, huh? Where you going?”

“Spain.” He left it at that.

“Huh. Europe. Some kind of tour?”

“Something like that.”
Actually, I’m going to be chased by a couple of huge herbivores down some cobblestone streets.
Better to keep that little fact to himself. It might sound cool, but it was also sort of stupid out of context.

Okay. Possibly a bit stupid
in
context.

“All right, fine, take the time off,” Jake said grudgingly.

“Spain? Did I hear that right?”

Jake turned to see Kayla and some strange guy next to her—probably Kayla’s new boyfriend, Scott thought. Funny, that didn’t really sting anymore. Kayla’s perfectly tweezed eyebrow went up in an aristocratic arch.

“Yup. Our boy’s going to Spain on a tour or something,” Jake replied.

Put that way, it sounded lame. Scott quickly tried to amend his boss’s statement. “I didn’t actually say…”

“I love Spain,” Kayla’s new guy said easily, as if he went there every weekend. He was tall and broad, built like a linebacker, but there was something shrewd about his face that suggested more than “dumb jock.” He studied Scott intently. “Where in Spain are you going? Madrid? Lots of good clubs there.”