Way too early.He tossed the phone on the other side of the king-size bed and rolled over. He’d been thrown off by her—so thrown off that he hadn’t even introduced himself.
What an idiot.
But when she’d touched him, it’d rocked him straight to his heart—just like his mom used to describe. One of the country’s foremost cardiothoracic surgeons, she used to talk about the heart and its mysteries. When he was a kid, he’d roll his eyes at it.
There was one thing she’d said that stuck with him though. He remembered her describing how each heart has its own beat and when you take a sample of the muscle tissue, it continues to beat with its rhythm. But take two samples and touch them together, and they begin to beat as one. “It’s like that when you meet the person you love,” she’d said to him. “You get close to them and your heart beats in time with theirs.”
He'd feltjust like thatyesterday.
He wondered if his mom had felt that way when she’d met his dad, but he had a feeling the answer was no. He didn’t know very much about his parents together. They’d never been a unit.
He thought about the woman in the hallway. He knew she’d felt their connection too—he could see it in her eyes. And then she’d admitted it. Attraction like that wasn’t normal—he’d never felt that way on meeting someone. Hell—he’d never felt that way after knowing a woman for a while. It wasn’t a common thing.
She wasn’t his type normally. He liked quiet women.
She would not be quiet.
Why had she been there? She was obviously one of MacNiven’s clients. He wondered what she wanted so badly that she’d have gone there. She looked like she could hold any tiger by the tail.
After she’d gone inside Winners Inc., he’d sat in the lobby for a long time, waiting for her to come out so he could talk to her again. To ask her out. Only he’d waited a long time and didn’t see her. Finally, he’d moved along because the security guard had started to circle around him. Getting arrested wasn’t the way to make an impression on a woman.
Because she felt important and she deserved his A-game. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that it’d be serious if he got with her.
When I get with her. He couldn’t let this go. He’d have to figure out a way to find her.
He closed his eyes and remembered how she’d smelled—clean, like soap, not drenched in cheap perfume like the women his dad and his cronies brought home. He’d wanted to lower his head and burrow it in the curve of her neck, right below her prim ears, and inhale her.
Hell—he wanted to do that between her thighs.
Just thinking about it made him hard—again. He pushed the sheet aside and took himself in hand.
She’d been hot in that suit she’d worn, peeking from her wool coat. It’d been a caramel color, with pants instead of a skirt, buttoned up from head to toe. He wondered what she wanted to hide. Her curves? If so, it hadn’t worked. He’d seen them right off.
She’d be a handful—a sweet, soft handful.
Amazingly, he got even harder. He slowed his hand down, sighing as he imagined it was her hand on him. He wished it was her palm sliding up and down him. He imagined her fingers, feminine but sure, squeezing and caressing him. He’d take her hair down and twine it through his fingers, bringing her mouth to his.
She’d taste as delicious as she smelled—he just knew it.
He arched his head back and closed his eyes, speeding up his hand. With a low groan, he let it go. His climax pulsed through him, surge after surge of pleasure, until he was slumped and panting.
Well, shit.
Breathing heavily, he opened his eyes. He could still feel the residual ripples, and he hadn’t gone soft yet like he usually did. Stilling his hand, he lay there and stared at the ceiling.
It’d been over a year since he’d had sex, even though girls were easy to come by when you were a famous footballer in Europe. He’d never been one for casual encounters—being a bastard made you look at the choices you made differently—and he’d wanted to set a good example for Kofi. Now, there wasn’t room for anything serious given his situation. Call him crazy, but having a house full of slacker guys put a serious damper on long-term romance.
His lack of desire to get with anyone was compounded by his dad, who’d been pushing women at him for the past year and a half. It was all his dad talked about these days—that Danny was getting old and people would start to question his manhood if he didn’t start having children.
One time, Danny had come home from a game to find a line of women for him to choose from. He’d escorted them out and then locked himself in his room. He’d made up some excuse to his dad about needing to preserve his energy for the game, but his dad was pressing him more and more to start having babies. “I had my first when I was fourteen,” his dad said in his booming voice. “A man’s riches come in his sons.”
Danny wasn’t just going to find a baby momma and start making kids. Call it his mom’s influence, but somehow Danny didn’t think that impregnating a bunch of girls was the hallmark of a man. That was his father’s MO. Not that he could voice that sentiment to his father. His dad didn’t like to be contradicted, especially in front of his “brothers.”
Frankly, his mom had been smart not to stay in Ghana with him. Danny couldn’t see her putting up with that shit.
Truth? Danny wanted a family. A real family—with one wife he loved and a couple kids, if she was amenable to that.
He wondered ifshe’dbe amenable to that, what with how she said she worked. He didn’t think she should stop working or anything—not if she loved it like his mom loved medicine. He’d be happy to retire from football and take care of their kids. Football was just a job and not even the real source of his income anymore.