around her finger so tight he never wanted to leave.
“I love it when you drive.”
She rolled her eyes. “Liar. But that’s what I will be doing when I win.”
“You haven’t won yet, baby.”
Skylar pulled out her phone and looked at the screen once before returning it back to her pocket. “That’s because I wanted to allow you a few more moments of your misguided belief this will work out in your favor.”
“Recon, baby. I’m always confident.” Who the fuck was sending her messages on their date night?
“At least you’ll have Recon and your confidence to soothe that wounded pride by the end.”
He popped her on the ass. “Enough stalling. Get up and let’s get this ass-beating under way.” Parker refused to let thoughts of him not ever getting back there to ruin his time with her.
With a deliberate glance to his ass, she nodded. “I agree. I can’t wait to be on your bike, straddling that rumbling engine.” She shivered. “God, that’s going to be soo good.”
He dropped the discs he held, and she laughed as she sent hers soaring toward the basket.
So this is the kind of game it is going to be.
He loved this place and the course. Some in the open field, some through the wooded area along the lake with some hilly spots as well. It was a good test of how you were able to handle the discs.
By the time they hit basket nine, he knew she would win. He would have been in the same boat if he’d told her to just walk up and set it in the basket. But he wasn’t about to give up, so he waved her on, wanting to do all eighteen.
And yes, a lot of it was he didn’t want this date to end. Her laughter and undisguised joy at everything leached into him. Continually sidetracked by her form as she released the disc, he couldn’t make a good throw, other than one out of every five or six.
She checked her phone often and the fifth time she did, he grasped her wrist, pulling her near. “Who keeps calling you?”
“No one.”
“You keep looking at your phone.”
“No one is calling me. I have a thing to see Alpin and am interested to see how it works.”
Made sense, but there was something else she wasn’t telling him. Parker let it go for the moment, because he didn’t want to ruin the night.
As they played, they talked. They spoke about her best friend Ryliee and how she never seemed to stay in one place for long, but they were fast friends and nothing came between them. This multifaceted woman continued to shock and surprise him. Rarely a bad thing to say about anyone. Other than Gemma.
“How did you get started in woodworking?”
“Reggie Masterson.”
He heard a hitch in her voice, and he didn’t like it. But he waited. She didn’t speak until she tossed her disc.
“We met in high school. He was everything a girl like me could want. He did play basketball, but his love was woodworking. I walked in on him in shop class once working on a piece, and he asked me what I thought. I told him and let him know what I didn’t like. Guess he took it as a challenge because he got me my own piece and told me to do better. From then on it was”—a slight shoulder bounce—“our thing.”
“How so?”
“I’d go to a few games but I wasn’t hugely into it. The man I watched on the court wasn’t the one I got to know in the shop. His smiles there were real but not. It was a different side to him, I suppose. Anyway, I loved working with wood and spent all the time I could there, learning. From both him and the teacher. I’d show up early and stay late. A lot of people thought I was sleeping around with the team but I was always in the shop, learning carving techniques, antiquing, anything I could absorb. I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
So many questions raced up with her specific wording and it took so much to clamp them back. Not wanting to ruin the evening, he just grunted and turned to look where his disc landed.
True to her word, she won and true to his, he gave her a rundown on how to operate his Harley. They did some rides around the park, following the curving road, and he was proud of her. She picked it up with