Game For Love: Game On (Kindle Worlds Novella) (5 page)

“It’s a’ight. I was just wondering, is all.”
When Rafe’s frown didn’t go away, Trent added. “Maybe she just checked in.”

“Perhaps.” The drinks poured and garnished, Rafe slid them onto the bar in front of Trent.

“Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome, Mr. Warren.”

Poor Rafe. Even as Trent was walking away, the man still looked miserable that one guest had slipped by without his knowing her.

T
hat the bartender didn’t know the lovely Ms. Laurel McCann told Trent plenty. It meant Laurel hadn’t stayed here in the years since Rafe had worked for the resort and she was a new arrival this stay.

Concentrating on the path so he didn’t trip and spill the drinks, Trent arrived at the lounge chairs and nearly swallowed his tongue. Sometime while he’d been gone, Laurel had decided to take off her dress. Be
neath it was one hell of a body with not much of a bikini covering it.

He stood for lon
g enough that she turned to look at him. One dark brow cocked up. “Is one of those for me? They look delicious.”

“Uh, yeah. Here you go.”

“Thank you.” She smiled prettily.

“You’re welcome.” Trent moved to s
it down as quickly as possible. He needed to cover his groin with a towel or his book or something, because he was about to embarrass himself.

He was a grown man. His body shouldn’t react to seeing an attractive woman in a bathing suit like a teenager looking at his first nudie magazine. Yet here Trent was, trying
to hide his arousal.

Not sure if the alcohol was going to help or hurt the situation in his swim trunks, h
e drew in a long sip of the fruity, but surprisingly potent drink.

This had to be the result of his denying himself female companionship for too long. Since signing that contract that put more zeroes after the amount on his paycheck than he ever imagined existed when he was
growing up in Texas, he’d made it a policy to not have sex with any woman he wasn’t in a relationship with.

He’d stuck by
that policy for the three seasons he’d been with the Outlaws and over those years the times he’d been in a serious relationship were few and far between. The hard-on from hell currently throbbing in his bathing suit was obviously the result of that.

Nope, he’d never broken his rule or even seriously considered breaking it, until now.
As Laurel’s lids narrowed while she looked at him, Trent started to convince himself that this was as good a time as any.

CHAPTER SIX

Laurel’s excitement had her heart pounding so wildly, she’d be surprised if he couldn’t hear it.

Trent O’Shea. Right in front of her.
Buying her drinks, no less. She’d done it. She’d found him and if she wasn’t mistaken he was interested in her.

He was acting t
rue to form, just like her client, Becky, had said. If he was going to repeat his despicable actions of the past, he’d try to get her drunk, and then seduce her just like he’d done to Becky. The only difference was Laurel would be seduced in a much nicer setting.

The Little Palm
Resort was a huge step up from the Travel Inn in Miami. If she didn’t get caught for sneaking onto the property and making herself at home as if she was a guest, she’d be golden. But with Trent buying her drinks as if she was his friend—or his date—the management shouldn’t look twice. At least, that’s what she hoped.

Laur
el took another sip of her cocktail and tried to formulate a game plan. She’d been so focused on actually finding him, she hadn’t thought all that much about what exactly to do when she finally did. She did know one thing, the more leverage she had over him the better.

If he came on to her
too hard, tried to have sex with her and lied to her in any way, she could use that against him. Use it to force him to take a paternity test. She didn’t even need to threaten legal action. Trent’s fame gave her a better weapon to use against him than the law—namely the court of public opinion.

The m
edia loved stories about the downfall of their public icons probably more than they did their successes. That hyper level of scrutiny Trent lived under could only help her.

Seeing him
looking nervous in front of her, she almost felt bad for him—then she remembered Becky’s tears landing on that big baby belly.

Time to get back to work taking him down. Good thing she seemed to be his type, judging by the way he’d eyed her in the bikini. Then again, she was nothing like Becky, and she’d obviously been his type too, at least for that night.

Drawing in a breath, Laurel set to bringing this man down. It was a shame too. He was just as the clerk at the Travel Inn and Missy had said—a hottie. Though Laurel could describe Trent much more eloquently.

“How’s the drink?”

“Very good. Thank you so much for buying it for me. I really appreciate it.”

“It’s a’ight. Anything for a pretty lady.”
He shrugged, smiling and looking almost shy.

This man had a smile that could charm a girl’s panties right off and the hard body built for pleasing a woman to go with it. Not to m
ention that hint of a drawl coloring his speech that only made his smooth sexy voice even more appealing—

Wait
a minute.
Becky hadn’t said anything about an accent. And she’d said the guy she was with was only a couple of inches taller than she was. Though Laurel hadn’t stood next to him, this guy looked pretty damn tall to her. Much taller than the five-foot-eight Becky had guessed he was.

Laurel could
believe that the hard-bodied Greek god before her had been carrying around some extra weight when he’d been with Becky and had lost it, but the rest wasn’t adding up. An adult man couldn’t grow a half a foot.

Maybe her initial suspicion had been correct. Perhaps B
ecky had been taken in by a con-artist and Trent was an unwitting victim of identity theft. As much as she felt for Becky and her situation, now that Laurel had met Trent she was beginning to hope that he was innocent.

Whether Trent was i
nnocent or guilty, Laurel still needed evidence either way.

What else had Becky said? Trent
was supposed to have a tattoo on his chest. She leaned forward and tried to get a look. His tank top was covering that particularly luscious part of him, but Laurel could still see there were some damn nice muscles beneath that cotton. It made total sense a shirtless ad featuring this man had made Missy take notice. Hell, he probably sold a ton of product for whatever company had hired him.

No matter how this investigation turned out
, Becky made a mental note to search for that ad as she tried to study his chest without him noticing.

W
hen Trent reached down to set his drink on the ground, the cotton gaped and just a tiny bit of black ink peeked out above the shirt’s neckline.

He had a tattoo on his chest.
Her heart beat faster, a wake up call for her common sense reminding her that even gorgeous men could be guilty. Maybe Becky was just a really bad judge of height.

Swallowing away the tightness in her throat, Laurel got her flirt on and eyed Trent’s ches
t openly now.

“You have a tattoo.” She’d said it as a state
ment, not a question. He looked a bit disturbed that she’d noticed

“Yeah.” He glanced down and adjusted the neckline of his shirt so it covered the ink. “Souvenir of a drunken night in college.”

“Can I see?” She leaned forward and reached out.

Trent leaned back. “I don’t really like to show it.”

He was being evasive. Dammit, she’d really been hoping he was innocent too.

“
Why not?” Laurel mustered her most seductive smile even as disappointment crashed down upon her. “Ink is sexy.”

“Is it, now?” One corner of his mouth lifted in a sexy smirk.

“It is.” She brought her eyes up to meet his. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

She watched his gaze drop to all of her visible skin before he drew the
obvious conclusion that her tattoo was hidden. He looked as if the air had been knocked out of his lungs as he dragged his focus back to her face.

Yup, the bikini had totally been the right choice.

Finally, he laughed and shook his head. “It’s really no big deal.”

He reached down, grabbed the hem of the shirt and dragged it over his head.
As he tossed the tank top onto the end of his lounge chair Laurel had to think that Trent without his shirt on was a very big deal.

From his abs to his pecs, Trent’s muscles were cut so sharp Michelangelo could have sculpted them from marble. But more
intriguing than the fact that Laurel was salivating as she imagined running her hands—and mouth—over this man, was his tattoo.

It wasn’t the skull and crossbones as Becky had remembered her lover h
aving. It was a horned bull. Laurel didn’t follow football but even she recognized the Texas Longhorns team logo from the University of Texas where Trent had played football in college, if the information she’d found online was correct.

This
hunk of male perfection before her was Trent O’Shea. She’d bet her life’s savings on that. The man who’d gotten Becky pregnant seemed more and more like a liar and an imposter.

“I won’t hold you to our deal, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

His statement brought her attention back to the present. “Um, what?”

“You look a little worried. I’m not going to make you show me your
tattoo—wherever it is—just because I showed you mine.”

“Oh.” She let out a short laugh as her entire case crumbled around her.

Her client still needed her help. Laurel would have to go back to Miami and hope there was someone at the Travel Inn who had been working there during the time Becky and the man who’d seduced her had been guests. Get the check-in records and hope he’d left an address or phone number. Ask around to see if there were other instances in the area of someone pretending to be Trent O’Shea.

But here and now, the real Trent O’Shea was in front of her
and what was she going to do about it?

A
s the evening progressed the sun dipped behind a palm tree, moving toward the horizon. Trent took off his sunglasses. Now that the barrier of the dark lenses had been removed, Laurel found herself captured in a gaze the color of the ocean. A swirling blend of blue and green deepened by the mixture of concern and overt sexual interest she saw in his gaze.

“Your eyes are an ama
zing color.” As Laurel said it, Becky’s words niggled on the edge of her consciousness. Her man had brown eyes. In one last effort to hang on to her professionalism and gather evidence, Laurel asked, “Are you wearing colored contacts?”

He laughed. “No. I tried getting contact
lenses once. I think I’d rather be tortured than have to stick those things in my own eye.” As if he’d just remembered, he added, “I, uh, wear glasses, but I left them in my bungalow because I came out wearing these.” He held up the sunglasses as proof.

Laurel nodded.
Now what? She was trespassing on the grounds of a high-end resort that wouldn’t think twice about calling the police should they catch her. Her case had just fallen apart yet the main thoughts running through her head were fantasies of rolling around sweaty with Trent.

“Are you hungry?”
He asked the question out of the blue.

“Yeah, actually,
I could eat.” She lied smoothly, when the truth was she wasn’t all that hungry. Not for food anyway.

Laurel’
s stomach twisted from all the emotions assaulting her, not the least of which was overwhelming lust for a man she’d just met. She might not believe in love at first sight, but she was experiencing first hand that lust at first sight existed. The desire she felt was very real.

It was just nature. Her body was harkening back to the days when the survival of the fittest depended on the females of the species choosing the strongest male specimen to mate with.

Given that, it was no wonder she couldn’t fight this feeling. Millennia of her species’ evolution had wired her to be attracted to men like Trent. It just so happened that she’d never actually encountered a man as fine as him before. As a young healthy woman of childbearing age, of course she’d be affected by him.

That nagging voice in her head called bullshit on all Laurel’s justification
s. The reality was simple. Trent was hot and she wanted him, not to mention that it had been so long since she’d had sex she was beginning to forget what it was like.

“I
can call for a table in the dining room, or order something in. I have a bungalow with a terrace.”

She glanced at her discarded sundress not sure it was up to the standards of the dress code for the dining room here. Besides that, the thought of eating in Trent’s private accom
modations had all sorts of appeal.

“Your bungalow sounds
lovely.” While her pulse pounded she stood.