The Virgin Rule Book (Rules of Love #1) - Lauren Blakely Page 0,9
rice, she’d rattle off questions about the electoral college, equal pay, or famous female scientists.
She made every meal at the Harlowe house an engaging debate, and that fiery spirit traveled with her out of the house too.
One weekend when I was seventeen and she was fifteen, her family took me skiing with them in Tahoe. Fearless to the max, Nadia raced down the trails at Sugar Bowl on her snowboard, schussing over moguls, cruising around bends, and tackling every kind of terrain.
Always ready to do it again.
That’s why she’s the Wild Girl, the name I gave her in my phone.
While walking down Fillmore, passing a boutique with scarves and wrap thingamajigs in the window, my phone rings and a picture of her flashes across the screen.
It’s a shot of her from the LGO Excellence in Sports Awards Gala last year. We both attended—her for the football awards, me for baseball. When I saw her at the gala, I marched up to her, wrapped her in my arms, kissed her cheek, and said, “Please tell me you saved a spot on your dance card for me.”
She laughed, hugged me back, and said, “If they ever have dancing at these awards, I’m outta here.”
We grabbed a drink instead, caught up, and toasted to next year, since neither of us had won that night.
But damn, did she look good. And I’m glad I took that shot of her decked out in a ruby-red dress that worshipped her curves, her dark hair pinned up in one of those fancy buns and her eyes looking all smoky.
I smile when smokey-eyed, red-dress-wearing Nadia appears on my screen.
“Wild Girl,” I say, nice and easy when I answer.
“Wannabe All-Star,” she tosses back, using her nickname for me when we were younger and I was all hopes, dreams, and bright-eyed bravado.
“You do know you can just call me All-Star now? You can drop the ‘wannabe’ part,” I say as I adjust the phone against my ear.
“Hmm. But I do like keeping you on your toes. If I don’t, who will?”
Considering what just went down at Gabriel’s, a whole damn menagerie of dudes will. But I don’t want to think about the guys while talking to a woman who makes red dresses look like they throw themselves at her feet and beg for the chance to grace her curves. “You’re the only one, Nadia. So keep it up.”
“Speaking of your toes, how are your lucky socks faring?”
Stopping at the corner, I wiggle them in my shoes. “Happy as clams to be home and safe with their keeper. I even have on my purple ones today.”
“And is it your lucky day?”
With a grin that she can’t see but I bet she can hear, I say, “I’m on the phone with you. How could I be anything but the luckiest?”
“Perfect answer, Mr. Purple Socks,” she says, her laughter floating across the phone line.
“Tell me stuff,” I say as the light changes and I cross the street. “Are you stoked to come back to San Francisco?”
“I am counting down the days,” she says, but her tone is mixed—a little too cheery, and a little bit melancholy.
“Bullshit,” I say as I stride down the hill, making my way to the gym a few blocks away. “I hear a little reticence in your voice.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Because you’re a Vegas woman,” I say as my gaze catches on the window display in the lingerie shop I’m passing—red lacy bras and white teddies and all sorts of itty-bitty numbers that would look fabulous on—
Whoa.
Stop, brain. Stop thinking about women. I force my amphibian mind away from pretty underthings and lovely curves, from soft skin and the scent of a woman.
“You’re going to miss Vegas, Nadia. You love to gamble. You love the neon and the billboards. You love to clean up at the poker table.”
“That is true. I do kill it at poker. Maybe I’ll just have to start my own game in San Francisco, open a casino, bring the high rollers there.”
I can see that perfectly, can picture her doing precisely that. “I’ve got all sorts of teammates who would love a high stakes game of poker.”
“Fantastic. Molly’s Game will be my next gig,” she says, then she sighs, but it sounds contented. “And truth be told, I’ll miss my friends here, but I’m excited to return to the Bay Area. It’s been a while, but it’s always good to be home, even though I have a ton on my plate when