anyone had any answers, they were keeping quiet about them. It was none of his business, and he intended to keep it that way, for his own sanity.
As they rode through the silent streets he noticed that she kept tugging on the hem of her dress, seemingly uncomfortable in her outfit. If she was so uncomfortable in it why did she wear it? Why dress like that? Did she really want to attract men like Dewey? What was really going on with her, beneath the image she showed the world?
Silence descended and filled the car until at last he pulled into the driveway of her town house. Before she could move, he was out of the car, around the other side and had her door open. He extended a hand to help her out and guided her to the front door with a hand at the small of her back.
On the little porch, she turned to him. “Thank you again for answering my call and coming to pick me up, Rafe. I know I had no right to ask you, but you can’t imagine how much I appreciate it.”
“Next time pick your entertainment in a safer place,” he cautioned. He studied her face. “Just out of curiosity, why did you call me, of all people? We can barely stand each other.”
Hurt flashed so quickly in her eyes he wasn’t even sure he had seen it.
“Maybe you’re the only one I know who could have gotten me out of there.” She flicked her fingers against his chest. “Don’t worry. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Fine. Good night, Tyler. Stay out of trouble if you can.”
Before he could turn away, she launched herself at him, reaching up and wrapping her arms around his neck as she plastered her body to his. He reacted automatically, holding her against him, inhaling the tantalizing scent of her perfume. She was warm and pliant and his body reacted before his mind caught up. Before he realized it she had him in a lip-lock, her tongue halfway down his throat. It took him a moment to recover himself, but when he did, when he realized what he was doing, he lifted her gently but forcefully away from him.
“You don’t want to do that, Tyler. You’re drunk and tomorrow you’ll regret it and be embarrassed.”
She looked up at him, something like pain glittering in her eyes. “And what if I don’t regret it? What if I’m serious?” Her lips curved in a sloppy semblance of a come-hither smile. “I could give you a very good thank-you, Rafe Ortiz. Very good. It’s what I do best.”
He sighed. He seemed to be doing a lot of that tonight. “Go inside, Tyler. Go to sleep. You’ll feel differently in the morning.”
He took her keys from her hand, unlocked her door, and eased her inside. Dropping the keys on a little table in the foyer, he gave her one last searching look before he closed the door and headed back to his car. He didn’t fire the engine right away. Instead, he sat back in his seat, eyes closed. He could still feel the softness of her round breasts pressed to his chest, the hard tips of her nipples poking into him. He was sure she hadn’t been able to miss his swollen dick imprinting itself on her mound. That damned dress was just too thin.
He ran his fingers over his lips where the taste of her still lingered, her own sweetness mingled with the flavor of whatever she had been drinking. The combination should have been a turnoff, but instead it gave his hormones a mega jump-start. And her tongue. God, when she’d thrust it into his mouth all he’d wanted was to suck hard on it and wrap his own around it. He silently cursed the unwanted boner pushing at his fly.
Tyler Gillette was a hot mess, a disaster waiting to happen. He wondered how a man like Kurt Gillette had let his daughter get so out of control and why he didn’t figure a way to rein her in. Yeah, that “trouble” tattoo seemed like a good idea.
He was allergic to women like her, especially when the woman was Kurt Gillette’s daughter. The man would eviscerate him if he stepped out of line with her. That alone was enough to throw cold water on his feelings.
He was so preoccupied with his body and Tyler’s effect on it that he barely noticed the dark sedan that followed him through the quiet residential streets and out to the interstate.
Chapter 2
The first thing Tyler noticed when she opened her eyes the next morning was how difficult the process was. Crap! That meant she’d fallen into bed with her makeup still on and her mascara was bonding her eyelashes together. The next thing she noticed was the headache pounding in her skull, a reminder of how quickly alcohol had an adverse effect on her these days. And finally, her lips curving in a tiny smile, she recalled that hot kiss with Rafe Ortiz.
Rafe! How many years now had she dreamed of getting him into bed for just one night of incendiary, soul-searing, no-holds-barred sex? It seemed as if that feeling had hovered at the edge of her awareness ever since he joined the team as a rookie at twenty-two. She’d crushed on him big time. Huge! She’d been just a college freshman then with a bad case of hero worship.
Of course, her father had laid down the only rule he’d ever been inflexible on: stay away from the players. She could have defied him out of meanness, but despite her feelings for Rafe, she hated the team enough not to go head-to-head with Kurt. She wanted nothing to do with any part of the operation, not the players, not anything else. Even as the years passed and Rafe morphed into a man so masculine, so sexy, he made every woman’s mouth water and her panties get wet, she’d forced herself to ignore him. He was connected with the team and her father, a man she believed had ruined her life, so that meant Rafe was definitely off her to-do list. Her father hadn’t had to forbid her to date the players. They held about as much attraction for her as a bad case of the flu.
All except Rafe.
Why had she never been able to kill her desire for him, or the longing that persisted to this day? Somehow, even as she had an excess of wild flings with men whose names she couldn’t even remember, even as she nearly ruined her life with a very bad—and thankfully brief—marriage, when she closed her eyes at night it was Rafe Ortiz’s face she always saw.
Well, damn. Just damn.
He was off-limits. She shouldn’t have kissed him last night.
Yeah, well, there were a lot of things she shouldn’t have done in the course of her very rocky thirty-two years. The list had grown to be endless.
Your choice, Tyler. Can the pity party.
She pushed herself out of bed, dragged her fingers through the wild tangle of her hair, and made her way to the bathroom. She chanced a look in the mirror over her vanity, and for the second time since she’d started the wild, crazy ride that was her life, she didn’t like what she saw. Didn’t like? Make that disgusted. Who was that cheap-looking person staring back at her? The one who ended up in that ugly situation with Dewey. She wanted to throw up. What had she done to herself on this vindictive road? The whole thing had certainly not done her any good. Her relationship with Kurt Gillette wasn’t one bit better. Maybe worse, even. Poking the bear had only made him turn away from her even more.
What did she do with her life besides shop, spend time with her two best friends and hang out in bars? Talk about a waste case. At the rate she was going even her friends might wash their hands of her before too long. She couldn’t get rid of the memory of drunken Dewey trying to break down the door of the ladies’ room and her cowering inside, frantically trying to figure out who to call for rescue.
God! She was a disaster and heading toward complete self-destruction.
Scrubbing her face clean of the thick layer of makeup that
