The Player Next Door - Kathy Lyons Page 0,44

stomach. In the end, he had to ask. “Sir? What did you want to say?”

Mr. Williams pulled his attention back from an annoying moth that was drawn to the front porch light and focused back on him. “I like watching you play.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“But if you hurt my daughter, I’ll send the picture to the internet.”

“What picture?” Though of course, he already knew.

“Oh. Right.” He pulled out his phone and thumbed it on. Two excruciating minutes passed as the man worked to find the picture and then finally passed it to Mike. And there he was, pink handcuffs and all, as Tori was busy unlocking them.

As pictures went, it wasn’t that damaging, though his teammates would have a grand time ribbing him about it. The angle didn’t show his unbuttoned shorts, and since he had on his shirt, there was nothing scandalous there by today’s standards.

What startled Mike was something else in the picture. It was the look on his face as he was watching Tori. She was bent over, clearly fitting key to cuff, so she couldn’t have seen it. But the camera did. As had Tori’s father.

Mike looked totally enthralled. Infatuated. Besotted. Pussy whipped.

All those words filtered through his mind, not to mention a few more graphic terms that were less than complimentary. He knew he wasn’t being led around by his dick. Truthfully, Tori was too distractible to be manipulative. But the look on his face scared him.

That was the look of a man whose world centered around a woman. Not his career, not basketball, not even the normal ebb and flow of life. He had the look of a man in far too deep with a woman, and it terrified him.

He pushed the phone away, panic beating tightly in his throat. “I have no intention of hurting your daughter, sir,” he said, barely keeping himself from running back to his house. Not the one next to Tori, but his condo in New York. Jesus, he’d only known her a couple weeks. How the hell had he gotten in so deep so fast?

“Good to know.”

Mike waited a moment—a couple heartbeats out of politeness—to see if the man wanted to say anything else. Then he just shook his head. “I think I’m going to call it a night. Got therapy early in the morning.”

Her father tilted his head. “You’re seeing a psychiatrist? You probably shouldn’t say that too loud. Not with reporters—”

“Physical therapy,” Mike ground out. “For my shoulder.”

Mr. Williams blinked then flushed. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

Jesus, the whole lot of them were bat-shit crazy. Meanwhile, Tori came back, her arms filled with five different tomes. She could barely see over the stack.

“Dad, I really don’t know which one—”

“This one is great, honey,” the man answered, pulling the smallest one off the top. “Thanks.” Then he leaned down and gave her a kiss. “I gotta get home. You know how your mother worries when I’m gone.”

“Dad, you just dropped her off at O’Hare, remember? She’s not home.”

“She knows anyway. I’m not sure how, but she knows when I’m out late. And when I don’t remember my pills.”

“You never remember your pills.”

“Exactly.”

Then he turned and shook Mike’s hand in a firm grip just as if he hadn’t just threatened him with internet exposure. “Great meeting you, son. Be careful with that shoulder. Lots of people like watching you play.”

“I will—”

“Good night,” he said, then he turned around and meandered back to his orange of a car. Mike watched him go, trying to settle the roiling emotions inside him. Damn it, he liked the guy. And he liked the man’s daughter. But he couldn’t be the Mike in that picture. He couldn’t be that out of control.

And so he turned to Tori, meaning to tell her—again—that they were done. But she beat him to the punch.

“You can’t spend the night, Mike.”

Again with the sucker punch to the gut. “What?”

“I’m still weirded out by my dad seeing you in handcuffs.”

“You took the key with you.”

“I know. It was totally my fault. But I can’t shake the image of Dad standing right there with you…well, you know.”

Yeah. He knew.

“I’ll have forgotten it by tomorrow, but for tonight…” She gave a shudder. “Besides, I have to draw up some plans for my rock garden.”

He looked over at the collection of stones by the side of the house. Sometime in the last few days they’d changed positions and had added two medium-sized orange ones.

“Um…”

“It’s a work in progress.”

Certifiable. They were all nuts. “Yeah, okay, Tori.