Faceoff

Chapter Five

Sitting with the girls on the sidelines had never been Kyla’s favorite thing to do.

But there she was the next morning, with all the girls―Remi, Jessica, holding baby Caleb, and Emily― watching six men play beach volleyball.

And it wasn’t so bad. Two of the guys were her brothers and she ignored them, but the four Heller boys were oh-my-god gorgeous in board shorts and no shirts. They earned their living with their bodies. Well, the three older ones did; Matt was still in college, but he’d just been drafted and he’d soon be playing in the NHL too. So those bodies had to be in the peak of physical condition, and oh yeah, were they ever. Muscles rippled beneath skin that gleamed with perspiration in the sun. She watched Tag fearlessly dive for the ball, landing in the sand and rolling. With a shout of triumph, Matt spiked the ball over the net and it hit the sand before Scott could get to it.

“Damn,” Jessica said.

Which team was Kyla cheering for? Her two brothers and Jase played against Tag, Logan and Matt. She should probably cheer for her brothers, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Tag, and couldn’t help but feel happy every time they scored a point.

She’d had more sex dreams about him last night.

That annoyed her, because she was still all tingly and achy and hyperaware of him. What was going on? This was crazy. It was like the last twelve years had disappeared and she was a lustful teenager for him all over again.

“I need more iced tea,” she said. “Anybody else?”

“Can I come wiff you?” Emily asked, jumping to her feet.

“You sure can, sweetie pie. You can help me carry the drinks back. I bet those guys are thirsty too.”

She and Emily trudged hand in hand through powder-soft sand back toward the cottage. Crystal Beach on the south shore of Lake Winnipeg had the finest, whitest sand, fine enough to be annoying when it got in everything, but there was no denying the beauty of the wide sandy beach.

“Daddy says I’m gonna wearn to wawer ski this afternoon,” Emily said.

Kyla glanced down at her, startled. “Waterski? You?”

“Yes.”

She blinked. “I think your daddy drank too much beer last night. Maybe he’ll pull you on the tube though. That would be fun. We could ride together.”

Mom sat on the deck reading a book. “We came for drinks,” Kyla told her.

“You should fill up that big Thermos jug,” Mom said, setting aside her book. “And take some plastic cups.”

“Good idea.”

A short while later, Kyla carried the jug full of iced tea and Emily carefully held a stack of plastic cups as they returned to the beach where the game was just ending. Tag swiped a beach towel across his face.

“Good game,” he said to the others.

“Who won?” Kyla asked, pouring drinks.

“We did, of course,” Tag said with a grin. “Man, I’m sweaty. I’m gonna go in the water.” He guzzled back an entire glass of tea, nestled his cup in the sand and then headed to the lake.

“Good idea,” Logan said, following him.

Kyla watched Tag wade in. The lake was shallow here and you could walk out a long ways before it got deep, so she watched him, taking in his wide shoulders, the defined muscles in his back and his strong arms.

“It’s going up to thirty-one degrees today,” Jessica said.

“What’s that?” Remi asked. “I’m only used to Fahrenheit.”

“Hmm.” Kyla thought. “I’m not sure. It’s hot.”

Remi laughed.

“That’d be high eighties,” Jessica said, standing with the baby. “I’m going back to the cottage to change this little dude. Come on, Emily.”

“It’s hot already,” Remi said. “A swim sounds like a great idea.”

“Apparently we’re going waterskiing later,” Kyla said. “Do you ski?”

“No.” Remi grimaced. “Jase said he’d teach me how, but I’m not so sure I want to try.”

“I haven’t skied for a few years,” Kyla said. “But it’s fun.”

Silence fell between the two women as they watched the guys cavorting in the water, too far away to hear what they were saying, although a burst of laughter reached their ears. Kyla looked at the petite blonde. “So. How did you and Jase meet?”

Remi turned toward her with a smile. “We met in a bar one night. I asked him to talk to me to keep my friend Delise from trying to fix me up with some random guy. Then Jase’s ex showed up and he wanted me to talk to him to keep her away.” A shadow passed over Remi’s eyes.

Kyla shifted in the sand. “I…uh…heard that Jase’s ex-girlfriend is pregnant.”

“Yeah.” The corners of Remi’s mouth turned down briefly, then she smiled and met Kyla’s eyes. Kyla dropped her gaze to the sand. She wasn’t good at girl talk. Girls wanted to talk about things like clothes and shoes and men. Kyla would rather talk to men than about them. “It happened before we met. Like, just before. It’s weird. But it is what it is.”

“I guess so.” The whole scenario raised a bunch of questions, but it didn’t seem like a fun topic of conversation.

“Anyway, that was how we met, but we also ended up working together. Jase volunteers with a reading program and this past year he was at my school, working with my class.”

“You’re a teacher?”

“Yes.”

Kyla grinned. “No shit.”

Remi’s eyebrows lifted, but she smiled. “You grew up with Jase. I guess you know what he thinks of teachers.”

“Yeah. He had a rough time in school. It’s kinda funny actually.” She glanced back out toward the guys. “I’m going to give him a hard time about that.”

“Oh…” Remi stepped toward Kyla. “I don’t…”

Kyla looked back at the other woman. “Oh don’t worry. That’s what we do. He’s like a brother. He knows I love him. I mean… I don’t love him. I…he’s like a brother. You know. We’re supposed to give each other a hard time.” She paused. For an articulate attorney who had a reputation for presenting compelling arguments in court, she sounded like an idiot. She sighed. “He gave me enough grief in our younger days, believe me, I owe him.”

Remi still gazed back at her with a worried expression. Damn. Remi was trying to protect him. Jase, the big guy, the fighter, the guy who’d protect anyone on his team, and that included the family team. Kyla’d seen it. She sighed. “Sorry, Remi. I guess you have to understand our families.”

Remi’s mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed a little. “Yeah. I’m just an outsider.” She lifted her chin. “But if you hurt Jase…” She paused as if she wasn’t sure what kind of threat to use. Kyla felt her lips twitch. The little pipsqueak wasn’t exactly scary. Kyla almost laughed, but inside she also felt a pang of…what was that? Envy? That Jase had someone looking out for him like that? Jase, the last person in the world who needed protecting.

Or…maybe…everyone needed someone to look out for them. It was kind of sweet. Which almost made Kyla roll her eyes. And also feel a little burn of jealousy deep inside.

Stupid.

She smiled at Remi. “Don’t worry.”

The guys were coming back, wading through the shallow water, hair dripping. Tag lifted both hands to his head to sleek his hair back and the pose showed off his perfect shape, wide shoulders and chest tapering down to narrow hips. His board shorts rode so low on his hips it verged on indecent and Kyla couldn’t drag her eyes away from there. Then Tag hooked his thumbs in the wet shorts and tugged them a little higher. She blinked.

Jase grabbed Remi and wrapped her in a big wet hug that made her squeal. “Oh my god, you’re cold! You’re getting me all wet.”

He laughed and picked her up and started walking back towards his parents’ cottage. Kyla watched them go, then turned back to see Tag, Matt and Logan exchanging glances.

“There they go again,” Logan said. “Besides Mom and Dad, they’re the only ones with their own bedroom.”

“Where’d Jess go?” Scott asked.

“She took Emily and Caleb back to the cottage. Caleb needed a diaper change.”

“Better go see if she needs any help.” Scott and Michael both headed for the cottage.

“I’m hungry,” Logan said. “Let’s go find some lunch.” He and Matt started walking down the beach too. “Coming, Tag?”

“Yeah. In a minute.” He held the towel in his hands and stood next to Kyla. “How’re you feeling today?”

“Good.”

They were alone on the beach. Around the rocky point that separated the public beach from the cottages, the public beach was probably filling up with people, beach blankets and umbrellas, but here nobody else was out yet.

“You coming skiing later?” He rubbed the towel slowly over his chest.

“Sure.”

“Mom’s planning a game night tonight at our place. You’re all invited.”

Kyla nodded. “Cool. Just like old times.”

“Yeah.”

She studied him, his tanned skin gleaming in the bright sun, remembering the game nights of the past, how competitive he and his brothers were. And how competitive she was and how they’d had cut-throat games of Monopoly and Rummikub and Trivial Pursuit. She watched a drop of water slide down the side of his neck, then lower, slowly trickling down his chest. She wanted to go up on her tiptoes and lick that drop of water.

Heat suffused her body, and not from the noon sun overhead. Flashes of her dreams returned, hot glimpses of Tag naked, underneath her, on top of her. She swallowed. She lifted her gaze to his face and the heat in his eyes had her breath stalling. Tension arced between them as they stood there eyeing each other. When he looked at her mouth, her eyes went heavy-lidded and her heart began to thud.

“Oh man,” he said. He swiped the towel across his forehead, breaking the eye contact. She blinked. “Kyla.”

“What?”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Um…like what?” As if she needed to ask. She wanted to eat him up. But did it show that much?

He looked her in the eye again. “Your brothers would kill me.”

Her breath came in choppy little pants. Her insides went hot and liquid. “What am I supposed to say to that?” she said, her voice breathy. “We’re not teenagers anymore.”

“No. We’re not.” They were both remembering the last time this had happened. A long time ago. Heat built hotter between them.

She was used to going after what she wanted. She had a plan for her career and she worked to make things happen. If she wanted Tag, why couldn’t she have him?

Last time he’d tried to make a joke of it. As if he didn’t want her. This time, older, wiser, more experienced, she could tell he did. Was he really going to let their families stand in the way of what they both wanted?

“My brothers have no say in who I…” She stopped. They’d been tiptoeing around it and when it came to saying it outright, she found she couldn’t.

He smiled, that sexy lift of his wide mouth that melted her. She couldn’t breathe. Her body thrummed with sexual tension. “Think about it, Mac,” he said, his voice low and raspy. “We may not be teenagers but we’re here with our families. Every bed in both our cottages is occupied. You’re sharing a room with a three-year-old. I’m sharing a room with Matt.”

She couldn’t get air into her lungs and her heart thudded wildly against her ribs. She opened her mouth to tell him that she was very good at solving problems when she heard a little voice calling, “Auntie Kywa!”

She turned to see Emily appear on the path through the poplar trees edging the beach. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, but she plastered on a smile and reached for her niece as she hurtled toward her. She lifted her and propped her on her hip. “What’s up, doodle bug?”

“Gwamma said to tell you we’re having lunch.”

“Okey dokey. I’m hungry.” She met Tag’s smiling eyes. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.”

Holy hell, this was crazy. What had gotten her suddenly so hot and horny, dreaming about sex when she was asleep, thinking about it when she was awake and practically ready to jump Tag right there on the beach? She pondered this as she carried a chattering Emily back to the cottage. It must be all pent up inside her or something, another effect of working too much. She needed to do something about it. But geez, even if she wanted to take care of things herself, privacy was a definite issue, as Tag had so accurately pointed out. Damn.

Tag walked back to his parents’ cottage along the beach rather than follow Kyla and take the shortcut through the fence between the two properties. Jesus. He swiped perspiration from his brow that had nothing to do with the sun.

When she’d looked at him like that, with hungry, hot eyes, blood had rushed to his groin and his heart had pounded in his ears. If Emily hadn’t shown up just then, he and Kyla would be rolling around in the sand.

He kicked the sand. What the hell was going on? Yeah, years ago he and Kyla had had a little heat happening, but he hadn’t let anything come of it, although it had come pretty close that one night. So why after all this time was the heat even…hotter?

She was sexy as hell, that was why. As a teenager she’d changed from skinny kid with braces who tagged along with them and got in their way to a real girl with breasts and the sweetest ass, soft lips, silky dark hair and sultry brown eyes…he closed his eyes briefly as he headed up the path to the cottage. Now she was even hotter, a woman with the sexiest smile he’d ever seen, intelligence gleaming in those dark eyes along with lust.

There was no way they could do anything. That would be just crazy. Her brothers would kill him. Wouldn’t they?

Waterskiing would take his mind off that.

But when Kyla showed up on the dock in a tiny little black bikini, waterskiing did not distract him from thinking about sex. And Kyla. And sex with Kyla. Holy hell. His gaze tracked down her body, from the round curves revealed in the V of the little halter top, to a bikini bottom that was so small he couldn’t help but wonder about what was beneath it and the wax job she must have recently had, ’cause, whoa.

He swallowed, grateful for the sunglasses that shielded his eyes and the baggy board shorts he wore as he turned to the wheel of the boat.

She covered up with a life jacket when it was her turn to ski.

“You still remember how?” Scott asked her, throwing the tow rope out. She grabbed it.

“I hope so! It’s been awhile.”

She struggled a little to get up on the skis, finding her balance, but once she got going, she was fine. Tag was driving so he could only glance at her over his shoulder, leaving the others to spot her if she went down. She skied sedately in a straight line behind the boat for a while, then released the rope and sank into the water. They turned around and went back to get her.

When it was his turn, he couldn’t resist showing off a little, skiing on one slalom ski, back and forth across the wake of the boat, turning backwards, spinning. He grinned, enjoying the speed, the use of his muscles, the adrenaline rush of it.

Then Kyla rode with Emily on the big inner tube, Emily’s screams of excitement audible over the motor of the boat, Jessica watching anxiously, Scott laughing.

After an afternoon out on the lake, they all retreated to their cottages to shower and change and eat and then reconvened in the Heller dining room around a big oak table to play Trivial Pursuit.

Since there were so many of them, they formed teams of two, with one team of three, and Remi and Kyla ended up on a team. Jase folded his arms across his chest and regarded them glumly. “A teacher and a lawyer on the same team,” he said. “How is that fair? We don’t have a hope.”

Tag gave him an elbow in the ribs. “Give yourself a little credit. We’re not stupid.”

Tag watched Remi share a glance with Kyla, then look back at Jase. “No, you’re not,” Remi said and Tag had the feeling she’d told Jase that before. Jase had always had that idea ever since that witch of a middle school teacher had told him that. Yeah, he’d struggled in school with his ADHD, but it didn’t mean he was stupid.

The game began and soon turned into a cutthroat competition between Remi and Kyla and Jase and Tag.

“Science,” Tag said when Remi and Kyla’s piece landed on a green square. “What is the largest mammal that ever lived?”

Kyla grinned. “The blue whale.”

“Damn.”

Remi pumped a fist as she collected a little wedge and put it in their circle.

“Roll again.”

Kyla rolled the dice and moved.

“Entertainment.” Remi glanced at Kyla.

“What is Radar O’Reilly’s favorite drink?”

The two women stared at each other. “I have no idea,” Remi whispered.

The two older couples snorted, earning a look from Kyla. “You know, I suppose?” she said to her parents.

“Of course. Don’t you know who Radar O’Reilly is?”

“I know who he is,” Kyla said loftily. “I just don’t know what his favorite drink is.”

“Beer,” guessed Remi.

“Wrong!” Jace held up the card. “Grape Nehi.”

“Whatever that is,” Kyla muttered and everyone laughed.

“Sports!” Tag called triumphantly, landing on an orange square.

“How do you always land on sports?” Kyla complained. “Okay. Who played for the New York Rangers, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Knicks in a single season?”

Tag stared at her, turned to look at Jase and got a blank look in return. “Rangers? Dodgers? Knicks? That’s impossible. There’s no one who’s played for all those teams.”

Kyla tapped her finger on her bottom lip in a very distracting way. Tag momentarily forgot all about sports.

“Give up?”

“Guess,” Jase said to him.

“I got nothing.”

Kyla grinned. “Gladys Gooding. The organist.”

Tag groaned and fell back in his chair. “Shit!”

Laughing silently, Kyla slipped the card back into the box. The game continued until Kyla and Remi got the question, “Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald?”

Remi smiled and looked at Kyla. “You know that?”

“Jack Ruby.”

“Yes!”

The two girls high-fived. “We win! This is fun!” Kyla said, wiggling in her chair. “Let’s play again.”

“We need to go put the kids to bed,” Jess said, standing with the baby. Scott immediately rose too. “Good night, everyone.”

“They get some alone time,” Jase said with a look at Remi. Her cheeks went pink.

“You’ve got your own bedroom, what are you complaining about?” Tag said. “Hey, that reminds me. Mom, do we still have that tent we used to put up in the backyard?”

“Yes. It’s in the shed. Why?”

“I was thinking I’d like to sleep out there. Matt snores and it’s bugging me.”

“I don’t snore!”

“Yeah, you do.” Tag grinned. “I’ll find it later. Okay, one more game. We have to kick butt here.”

“I’m out,” Doug said. “You kids are too competitive for me.”

The two sets of parents picked up their drinks and moved to sit on the couches, leaving Jase and Tag, Kyla and Remi and Michael, Matt and Logan.

“Okay. What does the C stand for in the equation E=Mc squared?”

Kyla turned to Remi wide-eyed. “Jesus. No clue.”

“The speed of light,” Remi said.

“Oh for…yes that’s right.” Michael grumbled as he returned the card to the box and Tag caught the look of pride on Jase’s face. His chest warmed inside. Damn. Seeing his little brother so happy and in love almost made him…nah.

The guys got the next one right and the intensity rose with each question. Kyla was bouncing in her seat most distractingly again. “You love this, don’t you?” Tag said to her.

She tipped her head to one side. “Are you saying I’m competitive?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t deny it. And right backatcha, Mr. We-have-to-win-the-Stanley-Cup.”

“Sure, sure, rub it in. Jase came closest of any of us this year to winning the Cup.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jase said.

“Can you imagine?” Kyla said, rolling the dice. “If Jase had won the Stanley Cup and brought it home, along with the Jets coming back and Matt getting a first-round draft pick…oh my god, the city would be going crazy!”

“Yeah, it’s probably good you lost,” Tag told Jase helpfully.

“Thanks, man.” Jase lifted a hand with the middle finger raised, not high enough for his parents to see, but everyone at the table snickered.

Soon it was down to the last question for Tag and Jase to win. Matt read the question. “How many strokes make up a quadruple bogey on a par five golf hole?”

Tag closed his eyes, briefly, then said, “Nine.”

“I knew that!” Kyla cried. “Damn!”

“We each won one game,” Tag said.

“Let’s play again!” Kyla said. Everyone else groaned. She slouched back. “Okay. Fine. I need another glass of wine.”