publicly. Any contractual ties she’d had with Nik’s team had been severed months ago when she’d learned that the third injury she’d sustained would damage her knee irrevocably if she continued to play.
At least, her everyday life hadn’t been affected.
With that devastating blow and Brian’s accident, her life had been on a downward spiral. The announcement at the press conference—it was to be a new start. Only she’d been ambushed by the press about Brian’s affairs.
And Nikandros had been there.
Sweat beaded her brow. That nauseous feeling returned with a vengeance. “Did you know the news about Brian’s affairs? Why didn’t you warn me?” Her fingers bunched in his shirt, renewed betrayal coursing through her. “Or did you decide I deserved to be humiliated and turned into a spectacle for my alleged sins against Brian?”
His fingers clamped over her arms, the warmth from his body teasing her awake in more ways than one. “I did not know what was going to come out. Mia, I did not know what he...was doing with all those women. I... If nothing else, I would have told him he had a problem.”
“Somehow I doubt that the vows of marriage would mean anything to a serial womanizer like you.”
His chin drew back. “Who is drawing conclusions now?”
His eyes were hard, flat, his fingers tightening over her arms. He tensed, and then slowly the breath he’d been holding pushed out. She’d hurt him?
It was the most nonsensical thought on the most bizarre night of her life.
But then, the man she’d thought him to be would have never offered help tonight. He wouldn’t have even looked at her twice, especially since it was obvious that he’d made up his mind that she had driven Brian away.
But Nikandros had never pretended a friendship or even an acquaintance. Among Brian’s friends, he’d always maintained a polite, even wary, distance from her. As if she’d contaminate his pedigree if he got too close.
“Then why were you there? You sold the women’s team, I know. They said you were leaving Florida. Maybe even the States. You dumped your latest girlfriend.” She rattled off everything she had gathered about him from social media, a habit she hadn’t quite kicked from when he’d first appeared on the scene.
“You had to know... Don’t lie to me, Nikandros. God, please, no more lies.”
Mia closed her eyes. It made her face the one thing she’d been trying to deny—that something inside her had sparked into life tonight, inside the car. Because of the Daredevil Prince.
The sense of him around her amplified a thousand times. The scent of him—dark and delicious and so fundamentally different from her own, clung to her nostrils.
So when he spoke, when his breath feathered over her skin, when his hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her into his body, when the strength and heat of him teased her into a desperate, deep longing, she drowned in the sensations.
She felt his powerful body shudder around her, felt his sharp inhale as he buried his nose in her hair, felt the raw, shameful urge to press her body into his, vibrating through her like a quake.
“I came because I needed to say goodbye.”
A brittle laugh escaped her. “I don’t believe you. You’ve never even considered me a friend. You couldn’t stomach the idea of Brian marrying me. You—”
He pushed her away from him with a contained sort of violence that was far more terrifying than the way Brian used to lash out at her. Roughly, he pushed his hair back, his mouth curled into that familiar curve. “I couldn’t stomach the idea of him with you because... I wanted you for myself.
“From that first moment when you came onto that field like a streak of lightning all those years ago, your joy on the field, your love of the game... I wanted all of that for myself.”
Falling back a step, Mia stared. “What?”
The debacle of her marriage, the horrible truth of Brian’s affairs, diluted as he spoke with a glittering challenge. “When he married you, I thought it would be done. That this infatuation with you...would die. All these years, I hated you for freezing him out, told myself I was lucky.
“Nothing helped.
“I came tonight because...even now, even after he’s gone, I can’t seem to stop.
“Stop thinking about you. Stop wanting you.” Gripping her arms, he pulled her toward him until their faces were mere inches from each other. The gleam of his blue eyes—Mia had never seen anything so beautiful. “I came because I needed to say goodbye to a decade-old obsession. To this madness.
“Is that honest enough for you, Mia?”
DROPLETS OF WATER dripped from the ends of her still-wet hair, dampening the thin cotton of the oversize T-shirt that fell to her thighs. Shivering, Mia twisted the damp ends with her palm and squeezed the water onto the towel. She rubbed her hair one more time and threw the towel in the hamper.
Drying her hair seemed to need more energy than she had. Which was funny because she had just swum for an hour, running away as if from the very devil.
I wanted you for myself...
For hours on end, she found herself going back over every interaction they had had over the years, and like he said, God, they’d known each other for a decade. So many memories to sift through, so many interactions that she now viewed afresh.
How she wished she could cling to disbelief, to the outrageous hope that he had said that because he’d felt sorry for her. But the fire in his eyes—as if she were the next challenge he was contemplating.
She had no idea how she’d turned away from him and returned to the car, or what she’d even said when he’d brought her here. When he’d pointed it out, she’d fled into a bedroom and then, like clockwork, to the pool when it had struck midnight.
The corridor stretched now into the endless marble-floored open lounge with incredible views of Biscayne Bay’s spectacular skyline on one side and Miami Beach on the other side. Tall palm trees and beach views told Mia she was in Miami and yet a world apart.
She wandered the penthouse, far too wired after the disastrous day she’d had.
There was a custom wine cellar, outdoor terrace, an indoor pool and an outdoor infinity pool, and four hot tubs with a bath deck overlooking the spectacular Brickell skyline.
Her feet sank deep into thick dark carpet as she walked into the media room. Colorful images moved soundlessly on the huge screen, and cast flashes of lightning into the vast, dome-like theater.
It was a recording of one of her own games—the championship game from three years ago when her team had won the World Cup.
A deep, shuddering ache went through her.
Heart steadily climbing, she found Nikandros seated on a step in the aisle. Arms leaning
