“Don’t you see, Derek? It is already starting to happen!”
He lowered his head, refusing to look at her even when she slid off the chair and stood next to him.
“Your playing has been off-kilter for months, you’ve been suspended right before the most important games of the season and your reputation in the media has taken a major hit.”
“I know,” he muttered, running his hand down his face. “I can’t seem to get it together. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Natalie smiled inwardly, secretly pleased he didn’t deny what was happening to him, even if he didn’t know what it was.
On the flip side, it made Derek even more attractive to her. He was less of an untouchable sports celebrity and ultimately more human.
“Do you really think seeing my family is going to help?” He lifted his head. “I haven’t spoken to my dad or my brother in over ten years. Not since high school,” he murmured. “Can you believe that?”
The shame in his voice curdled in her ear. It was so real and so familiar that she just wanted to bolt. But perhaps it was time for her to stop running. Sometimes her faith and her inner drive to succeed, no matter the consequences, were the only things that kept her going.
She forced her voice steady. “You can do this. I’ll help you.”
He shook his head again. “No, Natalie.” Derek’s voice was firm. “I haven’t seen them in years. It will never work.”
“Only because you won’t let it,” she charged, even though she knew she should be more patient. The stubborn determination in his eyes upset her because it could only mean one thing: his mind was made up.
She turned away and grabbed her purse. Why couldn’t he see that this was for the best? Even worse, why did she care so much? So soon? She had that irrefutable feeling in the pit of her stomach that made her want to dive into his muscular arms and never come up for air.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she snapped. For reasons she knew she’d analyze to death later on, she was deeply hurt by his rejection of her plan. “I’ll let Tony know that we won’t be working together.”
Her heels tapped out a brisk rhythm as she walked to the elevator.
As she was searching for the down button, Derek placed one arm against the wall and turned her around to face him. Her breath came out in a rush of surprise.
“There’s a security code,” he reminded her.
“So why don’t you punch it in, so I can leave,” she retorted.
He didn’t move.
Behind his gray eyes: pure pain.
Between their bodies: pure heat.
“Look. I hurt a lot of people when I was coming up. My family mostly. And you’re right. I need someone to walk through this with me.” He stepped a little closer. “Someone who doesn’t want anything personal from me.”
Natalie’s heart plummeted and bottomed out in frustration. Mostly at herself for thinking the spark she’d felt between them yesterday and this morning was more than just a bunch of molecules colliding together.
Derek wouldn’t be the first person who hadn’t bothered to look beneath her expensive clothes and runway-model looks. No one but she knew that she existed within a carefully crafted persona, designed over the years to avoid being hurt by anyone.
She’d given up on the dream to be loved for who she was a long time ago.
Nothing personal, huh?
Fine. She could keep it real. Real superficial.
Besides, keeping it casual was just the way she liked all her relationships to be, business or otherwise. She hadn’t been called “Ice Queen” back in her skating days for nothing.
She met his eyes and plastered on a confident smile that belied her true feelings. “All I want is to get you back on that court. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He ran a thumb along her jawline and she shivered at the gentleness of his touch.
“Is that a promise?”
She had a feeling that despite his imposing presence and competitive spirit, there was a soft and tender side to him that was rarely seen. She was always a sucker for teddy bears, especially a big, hard-muscled one like Derek.
She tilted her head, trying not to lose her professional composure. “You want to play me for it?” she challenged, not realizing that her voice had dropped to a low whisper.
He moved even closer and put his other hand against the wall where she leaned, barely able to breathe. She was trapped, although not unpleasantly, in a dual firestorm of will.
Her nose twitched. Something that sometimes happened when she got nervous or excited. In this unusual situation, she was both.
“So, what’s in it for you?”
His question hit her rock-square in the gut. It wasn’t the money she’d make, that meant nothing to her. Instead she thought of Jamal, her grandparents and her parents. All gone now. Nothing left for her but memories, dead dreams and wishes for more time.
How does one explain all that?
Yet, for the first time in a long time, she felt hope.
Her eyes met his and her voice was strong. “A chance to see a family come together instead of being torn apart.”
Derek punched in the security code and slid the elevator door open. “I’ll have a car pick you up this evening.”
There it was again. The alluring sound in his voice making her skin tingle in all the places it shouldn’t.
But how to resist the rest of him? The hair she longed to twist around her finger, the broad shoulders she wanted to trace, the full lips that looked too delicious not to kiss. She certainly couldn’t work with a blindfold on her face.
She nodded, but didn’t say anything else as she entered the elevator. When she turned around, their eyes locked and she froze, not in fear, but in anticipation. As she descended to the ground, she hoped she wouldn’t pay for digging into his past with her heart.
Chapter 3
Derek felt a sensual hunger unlike any he’d ever known at the sight of Natalie stepping out of the limousine. She could have melted the tar right out of the tarmac as she walked toward him with those long legs and curves that could drive a man crazy and make him lose himself, or worse, his independence.
At age twenty-nine staring down the hard-nosed barrel of thirty, he was rich beyond his wildest dreams playing the game he’d loved ever since he was a young boy growing up in the notorious Pinecrest projects. He’d made it. He’d beaten the system all but designed to shackle him.
Yet the only thing he didn’t have was what he wanted most of all: a family, with a woman he could call his own.
Playing pro basketball for most of the year and doing intense training during the off-season wasn’t exactly conducive to a mortgage on a house in the suburbs with a picket fence and a couple of kids, or a commitment to one woman for more than an evening.
His playboy rep in the league was only an excuse for the truth. A real woman, one like Natalie perhaps, wouldn’t want more than a night with him anyway, if she knew how he’d treated his own flesh and blood during his rise to the top.
He found himself standing even taller when Natalie finally reached him.
A breeze ruffled her short black hair, shorn into a pixie cut, and he noticed she was shivering, despite