Love Game

Using it as a pulley, he drew her forward toward him. Her knees met the couch he was sitting on. Thank goodness for the couch—something solid to keep her knees from hitting the floor.

Greg gave a quick yank and she felt herself falling, guided by his hands on her waist, until she was spilled over him. Their faces so close, her halting gasps fanned his lips. The taste of danger, his voice gritty, challenging and…amused?

“What did you think I was going to do?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Were you curious?” When she nodded he said, “Curious. That’s good. What about…excited?”

Answering honestly, she said, “I was.”

“Excellent.” He led her hands from his shoulders to the first button of his shirt. “Anything and everything you can possibly imagine…
I want.”

Dear Reader,

Some of you are old friends, faithful readers who know me as Olivia Rupprecht, romance author. Others of you are new friends; we met once before in my first Mallory Rush Temptation novel,
Love Slave.
As for the rest of you, I hope we can become friends, as well.

Friends. This is how I think of my readers. After all, we have so much in common. Most of us are women who are spread thin, demands from jobs and families leaving us precious little time for ourselves. It’s often a matter of stealing it in the bathtub or after everyone else is asleep.

Escape. Who doesn’t need it? I sure do. Ah, romance, take me away. I want to feel pretty, I want to relive the first flush of falling in love. And I want to feel sexy. These are wondrous things that make us feel
alive.

Welcome to
Love Game.
This book is very special to me, and I wish I could say it’s for everyone. It is not.

Readers, beware. There is a level of eroticism and a bit of frank language that some of you might take exception to. But for those who, like myself, have longed for a story that blends sexual fantasies with tender emotion and a sweeping romance…

Well, let’s just say my publisher and I are eager to hear what you think. Did you enjoy this book? Would you want to read more books like this? Write to me c/o Harlequin Books, Editorial Department, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

Wishing you happiness and love.

Your friend,

Mallory Rush

Of all the books I’ve written, only those indelibly marked by others bear the distinction of a dedication.

And so…

To Chris Pacheco, writer par excellence and dear friend, who kicked me in the butt when I wanted to roll over and play dead. You believed in this book when my own faith was shaken, and for that I am truly grateful.

To Malle Vallik and Birgit Davis-Todd, editors both of amazing courage and vision. My deepest thanks for taking the risk, for loving, respecting this genre enough to let it grow.

Take a bow, ladies. Without you, what miraculously is, simply would not be.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“S
TOP THAT
! Did you hear—Mark! Stop it, Mark, that—that tickles!” Her knees hitched over his shoulders, Chris used her heels to pound his back in time with her squeals of laughter. A playful shove at his head dislodged a fluffy red-and-white cap that skittered beneath the Christmas tree. With a firm clamp on the legs she’d squeezed shut, he spread them and nipped an interior thigh.

“Ho, ho, ho,” her equally naked lover replied. “Quit squirming, Chris, and let me give you a hickey.”

“No hickey! No hickey, please…” Amid wiggles and giggles and pleas for mercy, Chris tumbled them off their secondhand couch. Rolling over the creaky wood floor, she reached for a long candy cane and smacked him with it.

“Ouch!” Sitting atop her hips, Mark rubbed his jaw.

“Did I hurt you?” Suddenly still beneath him, she touched his mouth—which curled into a suggestive half smile.

“I’m in agony.” He bit softly into the heel of her palm, then leaned over her, all playfulness gone. Sifting through the tangle of her hair, he took a dark strand and teased it over her lips. “You love me.”

“I love you too much,” she answered truthfully. “Mark, I don’t think I could live if I ever lost you.”

“Then don’t think it. You’re stuck with me for life.”

She drew his mouth to hers. They kissed with tender emotion until their lovemaking escalated and he impulsively pushed into her. Then quickly, he began to pull out.

“No, please
no,” she whispered, gripping him. “Please, Mark. I want a baby. Your baby, my baby.
Ours
.”

“Chris.” His gaze was steady, wise, patient. That was Mark, CPA, MBA, wing tips shiny and conservative suits Martinized clean. He was her rock. “We’ve only been married two years. We just signed our lives away on a mortgage and we’ll be needing a new car before we can—”

“Start a college fund,” she finished by rote. Mark was right, she knew. They were young, their future bright. That was logical, and the almost-frantic instinct to conceive that had been in her for the past year wasn’t. But there it was. “We can get by. So what if we can’t afford formula, I want to nurse our babies anyway. As for clothes, I’d rather sew with remnants than have ready-made.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you sound like a home-ec teacher?” He squeezed her hand, gentling the brewing storm. “A sexy home-ec teacher who’s married to a guy with a cash register for a brain. At least, that’s what you said the last time we got into this.”

Turning her head to the side, Chris stared at the slim pile of presents under the scraggly pine they’d cut from her parents’ yard in Dallas and hauled all the way to Lubbock. The tree hadn’t cost a penny but had more meaning than a hundred-dollar flocked fir.

A baby would be like Christmas. A present to be unwrapped each day of the year, an ever-changing surprise of life and wonder.

“Money is fine and good,” she said quietly. “But a baby doesn’t care about anything but being wanted and cherished.” She implored him with her eyes while seducing his agreement with the upward tilt of her hips. His gaze locked with hers and they shared a taut silence in this, their battlefield, a place where their allegiance was increasingly torn.

“All right,
then. If we have to make a few sacrifices, it won’t be at the expense of our marriage. A rift between us just isn’t worth it.” He took a deep breath and committed himself with a thrust. “You’re my life, Chris. No man should ever love a woman as much as I do you.”

Good and sure was the rock of his hips. She held tight to the arms anchoring her against the floor, desperate to never let him go. What they had together was too wonderful.

The feel of his body emptying inside her own was a bond they sealed with soul-deep kisses. “No regrets?” she asked, just to be sure.

“No regrets, hon, we’ll do fine.” They hugged each other with fierce affection. “Maybe next Christmas we’ll have more than cookies in the oven.”

“You’ll still want me, even if I’m tipping the scales?”

“You betcha. At least then you can’t outrun me if I want to give you a hickey.” His grin got him a pinch on the butt.

“For a numbers kind of guy, you sure know how to make a woman feel like she’s in the chips.”

“Mmm. What do you say that we open our presents, then take another crack at investing in futures? Once my personal stock’s on the rise, I’ll put up the liquid assets.”

“The bank’s open and ready for your deposit, sir.”

“Deposits. Much more to my liking than withdrawals are, any day.” His hands stretched over hers. Their wedding bands fit snugly between the grooves of interlocked fingers. “Jingle bells, jingle bells. Kiss me and let’s make them ring.”

The scent of drying pine needles and woodsmoke mingled with their hushed, intimate laughter.

T
HE SCENT OF DRYING
pine
needles and woodsmoke mingled with the sound of family laughter.

Chris opened her eyes and smiled as six-year-old Audrey tore open another package from the mountainous pile of gifts. Most had Audrey’s name on them. Chris thought it an awful lot for one little girl when so many other children went without. But Audrey went without in ways, too, and she wasn’t overly spoiled. Besides, judging from the beaming faces of her own parents, Anna and Don, they were having as much fun as their only grandchild. And if Rick and Tammy, her brother and his wife, had gone overboard on the gifts, Chris knew their hearts were in the right places.

“Wow, neat! Look, Mama, look at what Uncle Rick and Aunt Tammy gafed me.” Bounding from the floor, Audrey rushed to the couch and thrust her newest prized possession at her mother. “Isn’t she pretty? She looks just like Aunt Tammy. ’Cept Barbie doesn’t have a baby in her tummy.”

“That’s because Ken’s not a stud like me, right, Tammy?”

“Whoa, big boy, that’s some real competition. A rubber doll who’s not even anatomically correct.”

Chris watched her brother pat Tammy’s stomach as they shared a grin. They were an inspiration and one Chris needed, a reminder of how rich life could be. It seemed that her own heart’s good fortune was spent, and she couldn’t deny that poverty had taken its toll. Not bad on the outside for thirty-three, but where it counted, inside, she felt like a woman past her prime. Washed-up, hollowed out, hanging on to the fringes of other people’s lives to fill up the gaps in her own. And smiling, always smiling until she thought her jaw would break from the effort. But for now, it was easy enough.

“What do you
say to Uncle Rick and Aunt Tammy, Audrey?”

Dutifully, the little girl thanked them, then threw in two big hugs before she tore into the next foil-wrapped box.

An hour later Audrey was tucked into the old double bed that Chris had slept in as a child. Audrey was a good little snuggler, but she couldn’t take the place of a large, comforting body to warm cold toes on. And she wasn’t a listening ear that shared secrets on a pillow deep into the night. Not for the first time, Chris wished she’d never had that comfort. Never to have it was never to miss it.

“Did you have a good Christmas Eve, sugar?”

“It was great, Mama. Super good. Almost, anyway.”

“Almost? You mean there was something you wanted that you didn’t get?”

“Uh-huh. But Santa comes tonight so maybe he’ll bring me what I really, really want.” Audrey looked confident.

“And what’s that, your two front teeth?”

“Uh-uh. But can’t tell or maybe I’ll jinx it. Only God knows since I told Him—but He’s good at keeping secrets.” Audrey’s quiet smile was poignantly familiar. The hair belonged to her father too, pale colored, fine textured. Chris stroked it back, and touched him through their child. The soulful, deep brown eyes that blinked away the sandman were the only trait she’d passed on to her daughter. In all else, Audrey was Mark’s; even his wisdom was reflected in her maturing baby face.

Please don’t grow up, don’t ever leave me. I need you too much.
Swallowing the words, Chris kissed her—a tender kiss that imparted her desperation to hang on to yesterday while her child was slipping too fast into tomorrow.

Leaving on the
night-light, Chris left the room. She paused behind the cracked door and, curious, listened.

“Now I lay me—Aw, shoot, You’ve probably heard that a jillion times. Besides, You know I’m just sayin’ it to get to what I want. Please, God, make Santa bring me a daddy. I want one really bad. All my friends have one and they think they’re awful neat. And besides, Mama—Well, she doesn’t say so, but I think she’s lonesome and she’d like it lots if you sent my real daddy back. But if he’s too busy with the other angels the way Mama says he is, I bet she’d be happy with someone nice and funny and—”

Chris moved quickly away. The hall, suddenly too narrow and dark, lent its support as she skated her flattened palm against the wall. Once alone in the bathroom, she turned the lock and slumped against the door. No light. No sound, except for a heart that beat dully in her chest, her ears.

“Were you listening, God?” she whispered sharply. “Is there a goddam chance in hell that You listen to little children? Do they possibly get through when a deaf ear’s all You gave me when I was on hands and knees and—” Pressing a tight fist against her mouth, Chris bit into her knuckles.

Stop it,
she silently railed.
He’s gone.
Gone. And no amount of anger, regret or sorrow would change what was. She had to go on. She had to make everyone believe that she was fine. Then maybe she could convince herself. She had worth; she had purpose. Audrey needed her. The family needed her. Even some of her students needed her.

She needed them
to need her. Without them, where would she be?
Who
would she be? Chris knew too well they were her only defense against this bitter woman cursing God in a dark bathroom on Christmas Eve.

“Well, Lord,” she muttered, trying to summon a bit more respect. A caustic laugh and she went on, “If I couldn’t fool Audrey, I might as well quit trying to fool myself. I
am
lonely. But I’ve had my slice of the pie, so I don’t expect a motherlode of generosity. My little girl is something else. She deserves more than presents to make up for what money can’t buy. Audrey wants a daddy. Got an extra, by chance?”

Silence. What had she expected? Jingle bells? A kiss to make them ring? With a snort, Chris flipped on the light and fished a cigarette from her pocket. Despite the cold weather, she opened a window to puff the evidence into the frosty night air. Smoking. Just one of the things she hid from those who loved her and thought they knew her best.

They didn’t know her, she just let them think they did. Hell, half the time she wasn’t sure if she knew herself. Heel hitched onto the toilet lid, she stared into the starry sky and absently finger-drummed her knee.

Make You a deal. Find Audrey a decent daddy and I’ll quit bitching. I’m not asking for love, just so he can love her and support PTA. You know, a good guy who likes kids. He doesn’t have to be rich or handsome, but a sense of humor would be nice. A few common interests, not too tough to live with—as in, demanding, macho types need not apply—and, say…mutual respect. That’ll do it for me, and I’ll try hard not to slip and call him the wrong name at the wrong time.

Chris glanced down to where she’d instinctively tensed. Her
fingers inched up and brushed the place she’d ignored so long that she’d begun to wonder if her sexuality had decided to go away and never come back.

While we’re on the subject…If You can dig up a daddy for Audrey, even if he’s not good in the sack, I’d appreciate it if he could spark a tingle. I’d like to like his kisses. But I’m not greedy, he doesn’t even have to give hickeys.

Window closed and cigarette butt flushed, Chris gargled, then made a
spot check in the mirror. No smoker’s breath and no tears. Except for the stray gray hairs she plucked and a few well-concealed lines, she decided she didn’t seem much changed from when she’d left for college in Lubbock: pretty and polite, cheerleader vivacious and an honor-roll listee, just the kind of girl a boy’s parents liked to meet.
Groan.

A convincing smile firmly in place, Chris marched out. Before she reached the den, a knock sounded at the front door.

“I’ll get it,” she called, wondering which relative it would be. Thank goodness she had met her husband at Texas Tech and he hadn’t wanted to move away from his Lubbock roots. Even if it did smell like cow shit when the downwind brought the stockyards home, the outskirts of Dallas were far more cloying. In the Adams clan, smother love went way past doting parents.

Pulling open the door, she pitched her voice low to imitate Santa. “Mer-ry Christ-mas…?”

“Chris? Chris Adams?”

“Yes. Well, no. Chris Nicholson.”

The man she stared at stirred a wisp of memory. High school. Her, a freshman, with a major-league crush on a senior. Wanting more than anything to wear his letter jacket. Even better, his high school ring; each wrap of surgical tape to take up the slack would be a band of honor.

Three dates that ended with kisses. On the fourth, ending up in the back seat of his parents’ Buick. Half an hour past her curfew, Dad meeting them at the door. The fast boy had proved he was an even faster talker. Apologies made, he’d promised it wouldn’t happen again.

It hadn’t. He’d moved on. While she spent a month with tears on her pillow after listening to the phone not ring, he’d chosen a girl who put out over one with standards. That’s where she’d lost him, both of them knowing he’d have a long wait to get more than kisses, a quick feel and…

A hickey.

She touched her neck. A smile spread from her lips and lit up her eyes.

“Greg Reynolds! I haven’t seen you since—Come in, get yourself out of that rain.”

“No argument here. And just for the record, I haven’t forgotten ‘since,’ either.” He grasped her extended hands and stepped into the warm foyer. His gloves were wet and she felt his shiver beneath.

He let go but the shiver remained in her fingertips. It was from the cold, mostly. But a flash of steamy windows in the back seat of his parents’ car caused the shiver to linger.

“You’re the last person I expected to see at my old doorstep on Christmas Eve. What
are
you doing here?”

“I was on my way to surprise Mom and Dad when the car I’d rented at the airport had a radiator blow just down your street and wouldn’t you know, my cell phone ran out of juice. Much as I hate to barge in, I was counting on your parents’ goodwill toward men. Thought they might let me use their phone.”

He doffed a military dress cap. Marine, she thought. A slight
recession of his hairline reminded her more than she liked of just how many years had passed since they’d parted. What she did like, however, was that he brushed his hair straight back, not trying to hide time’s progress with an overlong front strand draped over a prominent forehead. Several lines were creased there, from laughter and maybe some worry and sorrow.

Altogether, the years had treated him well. His jaw was a little large, but firm, and his chin had a small indentation in the middle, as if a fingertip had been pressed into it. His eyes were flecked with several colors, none taking the lead. His nose had been broken in the interim and, if set, it was not a good job. The thick, sandy hair was clipped close to ears into which she suddenly, vividly remembered whispering, “Greg, no, I can’t.” He hadn’t pushed her to pet him again, but a part of her had wished he’d been more persistent.

A slight clutch in her belly took her by surprise. Glad as she was that her body was miraculously showing some signs of life, Chris was sorry it stemmed from an adolescent crush on a boy who was now a man—a man who was sure to be married or divorced and carrying around a lot of emotional baggage.

And you’re not?
came a small, nagging voice. Shutting it out, she said brightly, “If your car had to break down I’m glad it was here. Where did you fly in from?”

“D.C. Got assigned to the Pentagon after traipsing the globe to wherever Uncle Sam needed me. Man, is it good to be back stateside. Never knew how much I took for granted until it was gone. Sure does make a body appreciate what they’ve got the next time around.”

“You can say that again.” Chris, amazed at how easy it was to talk to him after so many years, decided she wanted to talk some more. “You’re welcome to stay for eggnog,” she said hopefully. “And I’m sure Rick would love to hear about your pro-football days.”

“That should take all of two minutes since I didn’t make the final cut.” Greg’s smile was craggy, a little weary, but just as infectious as she remembered. He had a nice smile, with a touch of something else that wasn’t so nice. “I’d like to stay and visit, but it’s getting late and I’m eager to surprise the folks. If I could use your phone, I’ll give them a call to come get me.”

“And spoil
your banner entrance at their front door? Hang on while I get my coat. I’ll drive you.”

“You’re sure? I hate to take you away from—”

“Sure I’m sure, and Santa can simply eat her cookies and milk when she gets back. Besides, I’d rather hear more about you than pig out on some sweets I don’t need.”

She squeezed a waist that looked thinner to him now than it had when she was fifteen. He thought her face slightly drawn, too. But it didn’t detract from the wholesome prettiness that had matured into a frank beauty—a beauty he found all the more interesting for the character lines life had crafted.

Watching her as she strode away for her coat, Greg was caught by the way she carried herself. There was a stiffness to her spine he recognized as almost regimental, a bearing that was proud, as if trained not to show any hint of weakness. It could have been the same walk as the men he had once commanded, except for the fluid swish of her hips showcased in black leggings that seemed to have no end.

Chris the Dish was still a dish. Straight toothsome smile, high rosy cheeks, Ivory-soap complexion and a mouth to dream about. The dark hair was shorter—just to her shoulders and she wore it in soft waves.

Too bad she was married. One look at that ring on her finger and he knew there would be no making amends for past mistakes. It ate at him some. Chris had a distinct manner that told him she’d realized her potential admirably well.

“Ready?” Keys
in hand, she paused in the entryway, beneath a sprig of mistletoe.

“Not quite.” Leaning down, he kissed her. Why the hell he did it, Greg didn’t know. But he did it just the same.