night with a friend who teaches at Columbia. He says there’s an opening in the religious studies department coming up next year.”
“You’re a shoo-in.”
She laughed. “Call it my goal.” Then she arched her brows. “So what’s my incentive?”
“Courtside seats for the rest of my career?”
“Hmmm. I don’t know. I just renovated this house in Chicago.”
He grinned. “As much hot sex as you can stand?”
She shook her head. “Baby, I’ve been in charge of my own—”
“Right.” No need to force the networks to bleep out her words. “How about this? I swear to love you, to honor you, and to cherish you until death do us part.”
Her face lit up, and damn he was once again caught by the beauty of her whole being. “I do.”
Epilogue
“Mike, look at this.” She’d nabbed a book off a nearby kiosk in the bookstore café. It was placed strategically so that anyone at the nearest tables could grab straight off the shelf.
Her husband of two months looked up from his latte and a book on successful kids’ after-school programs. “What?”
She held up a book on mountain climbing complete with a very happy couple on the side of a mountain. The woman even had a toddler strapped to her back.
Mike frowned as he studied the title. “What am I looking at? The colors? The people? The sexy climbing boots?”
She laughed, the sound unrestrained. “I was thinking about the kid, actually. Would you take a child mountain climbing with you?”
He winced. “That young? I don’t know.”
“But they look so happy.”
“Because they’re getting paid to look pretty.” Then he lifted the book out of her hand. “If you want to try mountain climbing, I’ll give it a go. But if I fall and break something, you’ll have to tell Coach.”
She shuddered. She’d learned over the past year just how much of a hard-ass the Knicks coach was. Turned out the owner was much more of a pussy cat. At least as long as Tori stayed within the guidelines of what her media training had emphasized and Mike’s play continued to dazzle everyone. Fortunately, he was having no trouble with that part.
“Actually,” she said as she took the book back. “I was thinking about the kid.”
“He looks happy, too.”
She laughed. “Yeah, he does.” Her gaze lifted to Mike’s. And right then her life changed. The words spilled out without thought, but once said, she didn’t regret it. “So you want to try it?”
He stilled. Then he spoke quietly and carefully. “Try having a baby? Tori, are you telling me you’re pregnant?”
She shook her head. “Definitely not. At least I don’t think so, but I want to be.” With her job at Columbia locked down, everything in her life was on track. And even more surprising, she found she didn’t have to pretend to be a ditz anymore. If she wanted to be left alone, she just said it and then a security guard made sure it happened. That was one advantage to living in the media spotlight. There was usually security around to make sure she had privacy when she needed it. Plus having a huge superstar husband helped in that area, too. Mike made sure she had the space she needed to do whatever her heart desired.
Which meant she had room in her life for a baby. She had room for a whole parcel of Mike’s babies. “So…do you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“A thousand times yes!”
She nodded, her mind already making plans. He’d made a convert of her on that score. “Fine. Coach says you need to steal the ball six times tomorrow, and then we can start trying.”
He blinked at her. “You talked to Coach about kids? Before me?”
“God, no.” Hell, she hadn’t thought of it in such concrete terms until just this moment. But that didn’t lessen how much she really, really wanted this. “He just said you have to steal the ball. That you’re getting a little slow on your feet.”
“The hell I am!” But he smiled as he said it. Lately, he’d been much more accepting of the idea that he was aging. And though he’d never played better, she had good hopes that when the time came, he could step away from the spotlight without too much trauma. Especially if they had something else to occupy his time. Like a wife who wanted to spend more time with him. And a child or three…
“Okay,” she said with a smirk. “He didn’t say you were getting slow. I added that part. But if we’re going to have a baby, you’ve got to keep bringing in the money.”
He snorted. “Tori, we’ve got plenty.”
“Not if you’re going to single-handedly revitalize urban ghettos.” Then she leaned forward and kissed him slow and sweet on his lips. She’d meant to tantalize him, but found herself completely revved and wondering how long it would take to get back to their penthouse apartment.
“We need to get home, right now,” he growled.
She’d like that, too. A lot. “Six steals.”
“If I make seven you’re going to let me cuff you to an office chair.”
She grinned. “Deal.”
And then they said it together, because they were always that in sync.
“I love you.”
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