As she stood, she noticed two things immediately. First, she was taller than he. Which shouldn’t have been surprising—she was nearly six feet tall without heels, and she knew from a zillion magazine articles that he was five ten on a good day. Then, as she moved in to kiss his cheek (where had she found the nerve to do that?!), Charlie could see the deep grooves around his eyes and beside his mouth. On screen he was bronzed, velvety, perfect, and looked like a cross between a young Leo and a clean-cut Brad, but up close he was huskier, rougher, more masculine. And about a thousand times sexier.
He motioned for her to sit and he slid into the banquette next to her, closer than was strictly necessary, and she immediately caught a whiff of him. Oddly, it was an earthy, athletic scent that reminded her of male tennis players: that heady mixture of grass and sunshine and possibly clay that suggested he spent nearly all of his time outside. Again, her mind went straight to Marco. What was she going to tell him? she wondered, before banishing the thought. If he’d uttered a single congratulation for the biggest win of her career, perhaps she would have declined dinner. Perhaps.
She looked around. Jake had disappeared.
“Share the joke with me?” Zeke asked, his smile causing the slightest dimple below his left eye. How had she never seen that before?
Charlie couldn’t help smiling back. “Oh, it’s nothing.” She coughed. What were they supposed to do now? What was going on? She saw a light flash out of the corner of her eye.
“Sorry,” he said, not really sounding it. “I try to fly under the radar, but it’s not so easy with the big guy I have to drag around now.”
Charlie followed his gaze to the restaurant’s front picture window, where she saw a gaggle of passersby gathered with iPhones poised, video cameras filming, flashes all on. There were at least two dozen crowded together, looking in, and they were jockeying for position as an enormous bald man in a sports coat and chinos kept them corralled. “Aren’t they too far away to see anything?”
Zeke nodded. “Definitely. But that won’t stop them. I’m sorry to tell you that the paparazzi probably aren’t far behind them, and their flashes are way more disruptive. Hopefully the restaurant will handle it.”
“How do you deal with that? It must get so oppressive.”
“It’s the same for you, I’m sure,” he said graciously.
Charlie laughed. “Not exactly.”
“Well, for years I had a system down: in and out of back doors, baseball caps, the whole thing. But then there was all that stuff with the psycho woman, and now I have the bodyguard. Which, as you can see, does not exactly lend itself to discretion.”
Charlie vaguely remembered something about a stalker with a golf club breaking into Zeke’s pool house.
The waitress came over and tried not to stare at Zeke. “Hello, Ms. Silver and Mr. Leighton. We are so pleased to have you with us this evening. May I start you off with a drink?”
“I’ll have a club soda and lime,” Charlie said reflexively.
Zeke turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t we celebrating tonight? Last I checked someone won a huge tournament. Does that entitle you to something a little more festive?”
“May I recommend the Seelbach?” the waitress said. “The recipe was lost during Prohibition and only recently rediscovered. It’s made with whiskey, bitters, Cointreau, and a splash of champagne. It’s our most popular.”
“Sure,” Charlie said with a shrug.
Zeke held up two fingers. “We’ll each try one.”
There was a moment of awkward silence after the waitress left, and before she could even consider it, Charlie blurted out, “What are we doing here?”
“Having a drink? And hopefully some dinner?” When Charlie didn’t smile, he reached across the table and took her hand. “There’s no agenda, Charlotte. I’m shooting in Charleston tonight and I saw on TV that you were here, too. I’m a big fan of yours. I think you have a gorgeous game, and I admit I’ve read everything on you I can find. So I called to see if I could take you out tonight, because hell, it’s not every night I get to sit across from a beautiful woman who also happens to be very talented.”
Charlie gave him a disbelieving look. “Seriously?” she asked. “You expect me to believe that? It’s your job to sit across from beautiful women.”
Zeke held both hands above his head in surrender. “You really want to make me say it?”
“Say what?”
“That it’s my grand master plan to get you into bed tonight? That I’m hoping you’ll overlook the douchey bodyguard and your handsome tennis player boyfriend and the fact that six hundred people are going to follow us back to my hotel, and you’re going to sleep with me regardless? Because I will. I’ll say it.”
Charlie felt a quickening in her belly. “I think you just said it.”
“Did I?” Zeke asked with a mischievous grin. Never had she met someone with so much confidence. Marco suddenly seemed like a boy-child compared with the man sitting across from her. She never imagined there could be a brasher, more openly confident category of men than professional athletes, but clearly she hadn’t met an A-list movie star.
The waitress brought their drinks and they toasted. Charlie drained hers in nearly a single sip, but Zeke set his aside and took a sip of water. And then she remembered all the headlines from years earlier. A messy divorce from his second wife, who was also his publicist and the mother of his two children. The deliciously salacious claims she’d made in court while arguing for full custody. The fiery car crash involving a Maserati, two beautiful women, and the Pacific Coast Highway at four in the morning. The judge-ordered thirty-day inpatient stint at Promises in Malibu. The ensuing rumors of cocaine-fueled orgies at his Hollywood Hills manse. A CAA agent who had supposedly overdosed at one of the parties before a phalanx of A-team crisis managers quickly reworked the story to suggest previous heart troubles. The drinking, the drugs, the womanizing, all left behind in either a brilliant PR coup or a genuine effort to turn his life around and keep his kids, Zeke’s fame being well-enough established that he could not only survive but even flourish with a crushingly boring, squeaky clean lifestyle. Tomes were written on whether the turnaround was sincere or merely for show, and every week it seemed like both camps had further proof. No one knew for sure, but it didn’t really matter. Zeke Leighton was worth talking about.
“Has anyone ever said no to you before?” Charlie asked, leaning toward him on both elbows. Flirtatiously, were she being honest.
“Of course, more often that I care to admit. But I’m hoping you’re not going to be one of them.”
When the waitress reappeared, Zeke asked her for recommendations. He raised a questioning eyebrow to Charlie, who nodded her assent. He ordered for them. Gun to her head, she couldn’t have remembered a single dish he had requested. Nor would she be able to recall, when pressed by Piper, exactly what they’d discussed for the next two hours. There was a story that involved an overzealous fan and his mother that had her in tears she was laughing so hard, and another about his crushing fear of flying (something she’d never read anywhere). He asked her questions about tennis, the tour, the rigorous travel schedule she maintained eleven months a year, and then asked even more in-depth follow-up questions when she answered. Surprisingly, his fan claim wasn’t mere flattery: he knew the game inside and out, knew all the players, followed her closely. Charlie remembered from some article she’d read in People or Entertainment Weekly that he had a court at his house in LA and played often, and she found it charming that he didn’t mention it. In fact, he didn’t name-drop a single celebrity with whom he socialized (despite a well-documented visit with George and Amal at Lake Como the previous month and a high-profile week aboard the Sultan of Brunei’s yacht, pictures Charlie had pored over when they were published) or try to impress her with all the homes she knew he owned. He was funny and self-deprecating and a good listene
r, and somehow—although she couldn’t really explain it, to herself or anyone else—by the time they shared a lemon sorbet, she actually forgot he was famous. Forgot she’d been at least partially obsessed with him since she was a tween. Forgot that a crowd a hundred deep had gathered outside the restaurant to catch a glimpse of him. Forgot she was sitting across the table from arguably the most recognizable man alive.
When Zeke looked her straight in the eye and asked, “Would you like to get out of here?” Charlie didn’t really think about Marco or the media frenzy that would surely ensue or the not-inconsequential fact that she’d had gym sessions that lasted longer than the total time she’d known Zeke. Thinking, for the first time in so long, didn’t really factor in at all. She’d been a good girl. She followed the rules everyone else laid out for her. And to what end? She’d missed so much fun over the years with the training and traveling, the practice and tournaments, that she almost felt as if she couldn’t say no. That she’d be letting herself down if she did—that is, her eighty-year-old self who would remember the night she’d had a sexy affair with a movie star in far greater detail than ten full years of tennis grind. She couldn’t blame it on being drunk (she wasn’t), or on being starstruck, or even being angry at Marco. No, the truth was far simpler, and not something she would admit to Piper when they were hashing over every detail or Jake when he feigned disapproval because that’s what big brothers do: she was doing it because she could.
Charlie looked him straight in the eye and grinned. “Let’s go. Your room or mine?”
15
the morning after
CHARLESTON
APRIL 2016
Her fellow players often complained of not knowing where they were when they first woke up in a strange place: all the travel messed with their heads and left them feeling confused and displaced, like nowhere was home. Charlie usually nodded in agreement, but the truth was she always knew exactly where she was, whether it was a hotel room in Singapore or a short-term sublet in Wimbledon Village or a cramped seat on a flight across the Pacific. Today, though, for the first time in possibly her entire life, she understood what they meant. Despite the fact that that Zeke Leighton lay next to her in bed—or maybe because of it—for the briefest moment she couldn’t remember where they were or how they’d gotten there.
“Hey,” he murmured, setting down his phone. “You’re up.”
She self-consciously pulled the duvet up to cover her chest, but he reached over and gently pulled it back. He kissed her breasts as though they were highly breakable objects of art.
“What time is it?” she asked, although she could clearly see the bedside clock read 9:12 a.m.
“It’s a little after nine. I’ve been watching you sleep forever.”
“Forever?” She rolled over and, encouraged by his smile, kissed his mouth. “Didn’t we, like, only go to sleep a few hours ago?”
He rolled on top of her, and she could feel that he’d been waiting for her. She moaned.
“We can’t,” he said, teasingly pulling her bottom lip in his teeth. “You have a flight to catch, apparently.”
Munich. Had she already missed her connecting flight to New York?
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“Well, the hotel manager finally knocked. It sounds like your people really want to get in touch with you . . .”
“Where should I look?” Charlie asked, grabbing her phone. Immediately she could see that her home screen was exploding with messages: two from her father, two from Jake, one from Todd, four from Piper, and even one from Natalya.
“Take your pick. They all probably say the same thing. And just so you’re not surprised, there’s pretty much a riot outside the hotel right now. They know you’re here.”
“They know I’m here?” Her voice was shrieky, panicked. “Of course I’m here! I’m staying here! We’re in my room! I didn’t know until we left the restaurant that you were staying here, too.”
Zeke held his hands up in self-defense, but he couldn’t disguise his amused expression. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
She bypassed the screen of text messages without reading any of them and clicked open US Weekly. Instantly, a photo of her and Marco appeared. There was a jagged red line running down the center and the headline screamed at her in a massive red font: “CHEATERS!”
She closed her eyes and took another breath. It was a hideous thing to be called, perhaps even more so as a professional athlete—there was something about that word that just cut her legs right out. Cheater. Only the most spineless actually cheated—in sport, in love, or in life. And now here she was, being accused of it in bold print for all the world to see.
Charlie forced herself to pick up her phone, but Zeke clamped his hand over it. “Maybe you shouldn’t read it right now. Not much to be gained.”
She wrested it away from him and quickly read the first two sentences:
No love in this game! It looks like even their close friends got it wrong: despite reports the couple were hot and heavy, it appears that tennis phenoms Marco Vallejo and Charlotte Silver each scored—with other people.
She looked up at Zeke, who was watching her closely. And then it occurred to her: the “CHEATERS!” headline was plural.
The first-ranked men’s player is competing at the Rolex Open in Monte Carlo and has just advanced to the semifinals. Vallejo’s love interest is still a mystery, but multiple sources confirm he was seen kissing a blond beauty at the official player party before departing with her. The cute couple was spotted later in the evening sharing yet another kiss on the balcony outside the gorgeous Spaniard’s hotel room—this time while she straddled his lap wearing what appeared to be a men’s T-shirt! Not to worry, Silver hit her own winner with a romantic dinner a deux with none other than Zeke Leighton. Not only did the steamy new couple share multiple champagne cocktails and nibble on truffle risotto, but his bodyguard also made a drugstore pit stop (safety first!). And it doesn’t look like they kissed goodnight at the door . . . Hotel staff report the gorgeous duo are still holed up in the movie star’s room. Check back for more details!
And if that weren’t bad enough, there were pictures. Four of them, to be precise. In the first, Charlotte and Marco shared their first public kiss on the red carpet in Miami. Right after that was a zoomed-in shot of what appeared to be a blond teenager wearing an oversized, collared Nike shirt that ended halfway down the same perfect thighs that were firmly wrapped around Marco’s midsection. He was laughing as she kissed his neck. The third photo in the series featured Charlie and Zeke at dinner the previous night, both leaning in toward each other, making obvious, flirtatious eye contact. The last was, thankfully, a bit grainy, but not so much that you couldn’t clearly recognize Zeke’s bodyguard handing a small red box to a cashier.
“Oh. My. God.”
Charlie didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Zeke pulled her closer. “Come here, this is all crap. Worthless, gossip crap. Don’t even look at it.”
“Oh. My. God. I’m so humiliated, I don’t even know where to begin.” Immediately a thought struck her: her father. It was quickly followed by another: her mother. “Nooooo,” she moaned, as though physically ill. Which was exactly how she was beginning to feel.
She looked back to her phone and began to scroll through everyone’s texts.
Call me ASAP.
C? Where are you? Call me before you read anything.
911! 911!
He’s not a sicko secret rapist, is he? You’re fine, right? Just not like you . . .
Want to know every delicious detail!!! Call me the second you come up for air!!!
Your flight to Munich has been changed to tonight. Check your email for details.
Charlie, please call me the moment you receive this text. Thank you.
The last text she opened was Natalya’s. It was a picture. The subjects we
re clearly unaware they were being snapped, probably by someone’s cell phone. Although she couldn’t clearly see the man’s face, she could tell by the hair and the distinctive purple check button-down that it was Marco. His head was buried in a woman’s neck—or rather, a girl’s—but her face was unobstructed. The only caption that accompanied it was, “Look familar?”
The misspelling distracted her, but only briefly. The girl did look familiar. She wasn’t a player, not even a junior or an amateur, Charlie knew that much. Perhaps she was another player’s girlfriend’s friend? Or someone who worked at the tournament? The simplest answer was usually the correct one: most likely she was a pretty local girl, one who waited all year for the men’s tour to come to town, who looked familiar because she looked like every young, attractive tennis groupie everywhere. As Charlie was squinting at the screen trying to place her, another text popped open on her screen. It was also from Natalya, and it featured a screen grab. Charlie spread-zoomed the photo and saw that the girl’s profile was featured on the homepage of the website Au Pair in America.
Charlie remembered then. Elin. That wasn’t her name, of course, but that’s what all the players jokingly called her because she could have been a clone of Tiger’s ex-wife—the other hot nanny. This girl’s name was Sofie Larsson and she was an au pair working for a male player’s coach. She was Swedish, eighteen years old, and experienced with children from toddlers to teenagers (she didn’t really know newborns but was sooooo excited to learn). Her fluent languages included Swedish, German, English, Italian, and some Dutch, and she planned to attend university one day to study communications. Naturally, she loooooooved to travel.
And screw tennis players, Charlie thought, closing out the text. Little Miss I-Love-Kids-and-Speak-Everything didn’t think twice about throwing down for Marco Vallejo. Better add Spanish to the repertoire.