Page 7

Saturday, April 15

I WAKE UP with a start, my neck sweaty, as the alarm pounds out a steady, piercing beat. I blink, and the neon numbers stare rudely back at me—6:30 a.m.—which means Deb is going to be here in exactly ninety minutes for a lesson. She always comes just before the club opens on Saturday and then handles the front desk while I coach.

Groaning into the pillow, I reach a hand up to my ribs to rub at the indent imprinted by my sports bra. I stayed up until almost 2:00 a.m. in hyper-fixation mode, researching how to print my own T-shirts, so theoretically I should be exhausted. But my brain starts churning the second my eyes flutter open, and I know there’s no way I’ll be able to fall back asleep. Already the thoughts are circling—I need money; I need to save this place; I need to prove I can do it, somehow—and I stumble bleary-eyed to the bathroom. I feel like a zombie who hasn’t totally turned yet, and I don’t even wait for the shower to warm up, choosing instead to boldly step under the piddling icy stream of water, the rest of my body jolting to attention.

Figuring out how to save the club feels like a second chance at life for this place, or maybe it’s a first chance, an opportunity for me to forge my own path. This mission gives me a small spark of optimism, and I skip conditioning my hair, even though the water is finally at a temperature fit for humans, and bolt from the shower, hustling through the rest of my morning routine.

I grab my water bottle and a hard-boiled egg that I hope is still edible from the fridge, and I bound down the stairs and burst into the lobby, letting out a shriek when I find Niko bent over the reception counter, flexing in a runner’s stretch.

“Jesus, Niko!” I clutch a hand to my chest, my fingers digging into the faded, tie-dyed, cropped tank I chose especially for this morning. I gave him the key code to the door—a special perk normally reserved for longtime members who like to come in and play before regular hours—but I’d never seen him use it, until now. “What the hell are you doing here this early?”

He doesn’t even bother to bestow a glance in my direction, his gaze fixed on his palms, which are planted flat on the desk in front of him.

“I run on Saturday mornings,” he says, as he lets out a long, audible groan, dancing somewhere between pleasure and pain, before switching the position of his legs. He’s breathing into the tightness of his muscles, willing them to release, and it needles at the soft spot I have for him and the harder, lusty spot hidden directly behind it. “So I decided to run here, shower, and then practice. Stefan’s meeting me today.”

Stefan was one of the best tennis players at the club, a former college tennis coach who retired in Sunset Springs to be closer to his grandkids in nearby Temecula. Niko had roped him into playing on a weekly basis, though their matches appeared completely one-sided. Niko was like a spider, trapping unsuspecting members in his web of vicious serves and rocketing volleys that gave me whiplash every time I tried to follow the ball across the court.

“Yeah, but it’s only, like, seven a.m.,” I grumble through a mouth full of dry yolk. It’s bad enough that he’s been squatting in my brain all night, but seeing him in the flesh like this now prickles at me and sends a sheen of hot annoyance radiating across my skin.

It’s not just attraction that has me charged; it’s the distinct realization that, even on my best days, I’m overcome by the relentless feeling of loneliness. I’m not even thirty, and I’m the only person I know my age who has lost both parents. I run a business solo, surrounded by people generations older than me who I adore but don’t totally get. Even though Niko is a pain in the ass, he’s also a default ally of sorts just due to his age, and part of me likes having him around.

“And I just finished my run,” he says in that matter-of-fact, slightly irritated tone of his. “So now I’m coming to shower and then play.”

“A perfect day for Sunset Springs’ own Tennis Prince,” I tease, as I desperately focus all my attention on firing up the computer, giving myself something to look at other than him. I squint at the dark screen like it’s a calculus equation. Maybe if I stare hard enough, I’ll will the computer to turn on faster just with the power of my brain. It doesn’t work, and my eyes drift back over to the man in front of me.

He finally lifts his gaze, still leaning on those taut, sun-kissed forearms. He’s near enough that I can make out the way his hair has curled into short, soft ringlets from his sweat, and I tap at the mouse impatiently, begging it to save me.

“How’d you get back here last night?” he asks, and there’s a protective edge to his voice that disarms me, tricking me into thinking he might actually care. “I could have given you a ride.”

“Deb and Maureen drove me home,” I croak, reaching for my water bottle. It feels like a thirty-pound barbell in my hand. I need to do something to distract myself, and so I hop up from behind the desk and move past him to the shelf of towels by the door that exits into the court area, trying not to mentally measure the inches between his ass and my thighs. I grab a stack and bring them back to the desk, where I yank one off the top and begin unfolding and refolding it with painstaking attention.

His gaze leaves my face, moving slowly down the length of my body. It doesn’t feel like he’s undressing me with his eyes, not exactly. More like he’s studying me, taking silent notes, memorizing what he sees now to use in some sort of future review.

“Did you make those?” He points to my purple and white bike shorts, which match the scattered, circular tie-dyed pattern of my shirt.

“I make a lot of my pickleball clothes,” I say, nodding, exhausted by what feels like his constant scrutiny. Why does this have to be so hard? “I told you that last night.”

Niko moves closer, one step, then two, until he’s a foot away, near enough that my eyes can trace the smudge of dirt that lingers just above his right eyebrow.

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, the hardness of his gaze shifting into something that seems almost kind, or as close to kind as Niko can get. He reaches a hand toward me, pinching the shoulder of my tank top between his fingers for a brief moment, like he’s marveling at it, even, until he remembers that we don’t especially like each other and recoils with a grimace.

“What?” I ask, lowering my voice to mimic him, lips curled. “Let me guess. I look like the cross between a clown and someone who follows the Grateful Dead?”

I cross my arms in front of my chest, awaiting whatever insult he’s going to sling my way. But he just drops his chin to stare down at me, and goddamnit, I instantly see the path I could take directly to his lips if I were to kiss him.

Which I’m not.

“I should be the one asking you what you’re doing here,” he says, ignoring my comment as he drags the side of his hand against his upper lip.

“You know I live upstairs,” I reply.

“You don’t seem like the type to be up early on a weekend,” he says, and then avoids my eyes when I give him an offended look as I fold one edge of the rough white towel and then the other. “Sorry,” he says, giving me a rare win. “That came out wrong.”

I resist the urge to gloat and continue with my folding. “I’m trying to figure out some way to raise some money for club repairs. I couldn’t sleep. My mind just started planning.”

This catches his attention. “Planning what?”

He shifts upright, arms stretching overhead so that his crisp white tee rises up a couple of inches. My chest flutters at the sight of his belly button and the pitch-black hair that travels down across the expanse of his muscular stomach, sneaking into the top of his shorts.

Goddamnit.

“I don’t know, exactly,” I say slowly, my voice echoing that of a no-nonsense kindergarten teacher. I’m trying to portray a sense of confidence, like I totally have this all figured out. “Maybe a T-shirt? Something advertising the club?”

He nods but doesn’t say anything.

“Or maybe something about pickleball. ‘Stay out of my kitchen’? ‘Give a dink, take a mile’?”

I’m spitballing. These are all slogans I’ve already dismissed. “I need something catchy.”

He lets out a laugh, an honest-to-goodness, full-throated guffaw, and for the first time, I notice that when his smile is wide, two tiny, barely there dimples dot the edges of his cheeks.

I’ve never seen Niko laugh, not this loud, and it disarms me, knocking me off my perch where I’m always training my eyes on him like a sniper.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have a better idea?”

“I’m a professional athlete, Bex,” he says. “I have no creative bones in my body.”

Only broken ones, I think.

“Then why are you laughing at me?” I ask pointedly.

“I’m not laughing at you , Bex,” he says, and the look he gives me says he’s downright hurt that I’d think that. “I’m laughing because it’s kind of perfect timing.”

“For what?” I rack my brain for a more confusing, maddening person, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like Niko.

His biceps ripple as he lengthens his right arm overhead. “I’ve decided that I’m going to play pickleball.”

I snort. Somehow his arrogance still shocks me despite being up close and personal with it for a while now.

“You.” I say this kindly, as if maybe he misspoke and doesn’t realize it.

He nods like it’s no big deal.

“You,” I repeat slowly. “The man who’s been scoffing at the sport for the last two weeks. Are going. To play pickleball .”

Niko’s face doesn’t change, unfazed by my attitude. He just nods again and points at Wilson’s flyer up on the board. “In that tournament. And I need you to be my partner. I’ve seen you coaching your lessons. I know you’re the best player here. Besides me.”

Stunned, I buy myself some time by yanking the scrunchie from my wrist and wrapping it tightly around the end of my hair until there’s no give left in the elastic.

“Wow, and here I thought you weren’t funny,” I scoff with a laugh, grabbing the refolded stack of towels and walking over to the white IKEA shelves, stacking them carefully like Jenga pieces, before I have to return his gaze. “Turns out you’re hilarious.”

“Bex, please,” he says quietly, and the hint of desperation in his voice catches my attention. I turn back toward him, and he’s staring at me, his lashes flattening against the dark shadows under his eyes as he blinks. “I’m serious. I could really use your help.”

I freeze because the smoldering look he’s giving me has faulted the wiring of my brain. I’d expected a healthy round of teasing, because surely he can’t be serious. He’s only ever spoken of pickleball with a sneer, but right now he’s practically begging me, eyes pleading. There’s something else that mixes with this out-of-left-field ask, almost like desire is a part of it, even though he doesn’t want it to be.

It makes no sense. How can he loathe me and look at me like this at the same time? Then again, I claim to be annoyed by him, but I also can’t get him out of my thoughts. I remember the gum in his car and how he seemingly cared how I got to Loretta’s house last night, and nothing computes. It’s like I have a bunch of puzzle pieces in front of me that almost fit together, but not quite.

“Absolutely not,” I say finally, once I determine that he is, in fact, entirely serious about this request.

“Come on, Bex,” he says, his voice still teetering on the edge of desperate, which is not a place I’ve ever witnessed him go before. “A favor, for me?”

“Niko, I’m already doing you a favor by letting you have a full-time membership here,” I huff, even though, technically, he is the one helping me out. It’s not like the club didn’t need the money.

“I thought that was a favor for my aunt, not for me,” he counters.

I let out a loud sigh to let him know that I’m not convinced. “I don’t have the time to train for a tournament, much less teach you how to play pickleball.”

“I know we could win,” he says confidently, taking a step toward me. “And we could split the prize money. We’d each get fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, startled by the size of that number. Good lord, I knew people were investing in pickleball, but this is triple what I won the last time I played in a tournament back in college.

Somewhere in the distance, the bells above the front door jingle. I spin on my feet like an Olympic skater, turning to greet Deb with a tight grin, escaping Niko and his devouring eyes.

“Well, hello there, Coach!” she coos at me, adjusting the giant white visor resting on her cropped slate-gray hair. “And… Loretta’s nephew .”

The door swings closed behind her as she stops abruptly and eyes us both, the lenses of her glasses shifting color as they adjust to the brightness of the room.

“Are you both coaching me today?” she asks playfully, and I know exactly what she’s thinking as she watches us.

Niko scoffs at this, like the mere suggestion of him stepping near a pickleball court is absurd, even though he just had the audacity to ask me to play with him. “I was just on my way to shower,” he says. I’m so irritated by his constant high-and-mighty-tennis-player routine that when the horny corner of my brain tries imagining the soapy water mixing in with the tuft of dark hair along the firm sloped ridges of his stomach, I push the thought aside.

“Bex, think about it.” He tents his fingers in a prayer that lingers at his chest for a split second. It’s a flash of a movement, but for Niko, this is full-fledged begging.

“I already told you no,” I say in my most chipper singsong voice.

He throws up his hands and storms off toward the small, gender-neutral dressing room, and I don’t stop staring at him until Deb smacks me on the thigh with the flat side of her paddle.

“He had the nerve to ask me to partner with him for a pickleball tournament,” I tell her, grimacing.

“I know he’s a little bit salty,” she says, smirking when she catches a look at my frustrated furrowed brow, “but I do think you’d make a good pair.”

I give her a look that says absolutely not . “As doubles partners? Hell no.”

She tilts her head at me with a wise, knowing look. “Well, how about as a couple, then?”

I shudder, putting on my best disgusted face. “When hell freezes over, and even then, no.”

It doesn’t matter how attractive he is, or how being in his presence somehow feels like both being rocketed into space without an oxygen tank and sinking into a warm bath at the end of a long day. The only thing worse than dating Niko—with his pompous, moody attitude—would be being his pickleball partner.

Not even for fifteen thousand dollars.

I shake my head no.

Not even then.