Page 6

E ndy was still puzzled as she climbed back onto the pro shop’s golf cart. She didn’t know why tennis players loathed pickleball, but she was sure of pickleball’s growing popularity.

Heading back to work, she decided to take the long way and loop past all the courts. It was another glorious day with a searing sun and cloudless sky, and the wind swirled around her in the open-air cart.

At the far end of the racquet property, many of the pickleball courts were filled.

On one court, a mother and young son were playing against a father and even younger son.

A stroller parked in the shade held an infant who had just started screaming.

On the next court over, The Grands played with a fourth player, who cackled loudly with delight when she hit a winning shot between Candi and Nora.

Endy tooted the golf cart’s horn, leaned out, and waved. Candi held up her hand, shading her eyes, then yelled out, “Hiiiii, Ennnnnddddyyyy!”

Endy’s gaze then shifted to the tennis courts across from the pickleball courts.

A middle-aged foursome was immersed in their tennis match, their slow, sure steps gliding from side to side and moving deliberately forward to the net.

Dressed in white, they seemed like the occasional groups of egrets that glided above the country club’s golf course lakes.

“Well done,” one called out. The only other sound coming from their court was the pop of the felted tennis ball against the strings of their racquets.

As Endy drove past, she couldn’t help but compare the two sports being played next to each other. Daniel had said that they weren’t that different. But Endy knew that to some people, tennis and pickleball were as different as cats and dogs.

She slowed the golf cart as a bright green plastic ball rolled onto the path. She parked and picked up the ball and walked in the direction of the courts, looking around for its owner.

As she passed in between the pickleball court and the tennis court directly next to it, Endy’s gaze was drawn to two younger tennis players. The one with short black hair was Collin Park, a club member in his late twenties.

But who was the other one? He was lean and muscular with his tousled brown hair pulled back with a headband. Endy couldn’t pull her eyes away. She inhaled sharply as he turned to return a serve, revealing his face—it was the drop-dead gorgeous guy who’d rescued Rusty.

Endy leaned on the fence, her hair flowing over her shoulders.

She pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head and watched, riveted, as the tennis battle played out.

The ball rocketed back and forth between the immensely skilled players, each hitting it so hard that the boom of the ball off their racquets echoed like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

On the next point, Collin hit a huge, whomping serve. But the handsome stranger returned the ball as if it were nothing more than a feather floating in the air, hitting it so solidly, so deeply, that it landed inches away from the baseline before Collin had any chance of moving.

“Nice shot, Hall,” called Collin, clapping his hand on the strings of his racquet.

Endy leaned back from the fence and applauded. When Rusty’s rescuer glanced up to the railing, she thought she saw him grin.

On the next point, Collin was incapable of handling a returned hard-hit ball, and it popped up, way above his head.

He shook his head and muttered, “Crap,” when he realized that his ball would be an easy slam return.

The handsome stranger lifted his left arm, pointing to the sky, his right arm cocked behind him.

But from the side of the court, another ball, this one bright green plastic with holes, sailed onto the tennis court just as he swung overhead and slammed the tennis ball … right into the net.

The plastic pickleball rolled onto the court—its thin and reedy clk, clk, clk, clk sounding loud in the absolute stillness of the aftermath of the netted overhead slam—and came to rest against his foot.

“Ball on!” shouted an older pickleball player wearing a purple flowered shade hat, her palms on her cheeks. “Sorry!” She ran over from her pickleball court, horrified.

On the opposite side of the tennis court, Collin stood, a look of annoyance across his face and his racquet lowered by his side.

But the handsome stranger just took a deep breath and adjusted the headband holding back his tangled mane of dark, chocolate-brown hair.

He rolled his neck and shoulders in irritation, picked up the pickleball, and tossed it up in the air.

“Someone missing this?” he asked. Then he swatted the plastic ball, launching it with velocity out of the tennis court.

Endy stepped aside quickly, stumbling back, barely dodging the pickleball as it came shooting toward her head.

Sebastian Hall pushed back his dark brown hair again.

After netting that shot, he’d looked up to see where that miserable bright green plastic ball came from.

At first, he’d only seen a huge neon-green T-shirt with something that looked like a dill pickle wearing Ray Bans and weirdly oversized white gloves across the front.

But then he saw her watching from the fence, with the sun from behind, creating a radiant halo around her.

A shock of long, dark hair hung down her back and shadows brought out the lean and athletic cut of her arms. Her legs, long and graceful, peaked out from under a short tennis skirt.

Sebastian grinned when he recognized her as the girl from earlier, when he’d pulled that vicious dog out from under the bush and scratched his hand.

He studied her, standing at the railing, and within seconds, he took in her striking eyes that were rimmed with thick, dark lashes and had a slight upturn at the outside edges.

But it was her mouth, opened into a gasp when she’d realized he’d missed that easy overhead, that stuck in his mind.

A mouth, he thought, that was infinitely kissable.

“TIME!” yelled Collin from the other side of the net, holding up his hands. “If I could, I’d give you a freakin’ time violation. Serve it up, already!”

“What do you mean ‘time violation’?” yelled Sebastian, laughing. He held one tennis ball and shoved another in the pocket of his shorts. “What are you, an actual player or a chair umpire?”

Collin shook his head, a huge grin across his face. “Just serve, Hall.”

“Alright, Park,” Sebastian agreed. “You asked for it.”

He took the tennis ball in his left hand, tossed it high above his head, loaded up on his back leg, then exploded up.

His racquet carved through the air, the strings making contact with the fuzzy green ball.

It soared over the net at about a hundred miles per hour, then hit the front of the service line, and blasted directly into Collin’s body.

Twisting his hips to avoid getting hit, Collin blocked the serve with his racquet, which sent the ball flying high in the sky.

Sebastian jogged toward the net, leaped into the air with his racquet cocked behind him, and slammed the ball.

It ricocheted off the hard surface and flew over the ten-foot-high chain-link fence, finally coming to a stop yards away on the nearby manicured croquet court.

Sebastian landed on his feet, laughing.

He looked up at the railing to see if the stunning girl with the long, dark hair saw that overhead slam, but she’d vanished, only leaving him with an image of a huge neon-green T-shirt with a dill pickle.