Most Likely to Score

He shakes his head, his blue eyes sparkling with playfulness. “Not when we have other stuff to discuss. Want to get room service in my room? Or yours?”

His eyes drift to the elevator behind him. The doors have closed, and it’s heading down.

I’m not sure which room feels more dangerous. His or mine. Mine or his.

“Yours? Since it’s your floor?” he suggests, and at least now I don’t have to figure out the answer to a trick question.

I take a shaky breath and say yes.

We walk down the hall in silence. When I stop at room 508, I take out my card key with nervous fingers, fighting like hell to keep it steady as I wave it over the card reader.

For a brief moment, I picture other women he’s taken to other hotel rooms. I wonder if he had room service with them. Talked to them. Helped their fathers assemble desks. Looked at their baby photos.

Then I ask why I’m torturing myself thinking of other women, and their dads, and their desks, and their baby photos. When I turn the knob, open the door, and step into the room, I banish them from my brain.

I can’t think of anything but the huge risk I’m taking by letting him into my room.

And yet, it’s a risk I want to take.

I don’t mind eating alone. I meant what I said—I love room service with a deep and abiding passion.

But I’m also learning how much I like being with him. Maybe that’s the bigger risk. Perhaps it’s the bigger issue, too—not what other women have done in hotel rooms with him, but if they’ve enjoyed talking to him as much as I do.

I fervently hope the answer is no. I want that part of him all to myself.

We share most of the food, working our way through a Caesar salad, a mango and mint salad, an appetizer of salted edamame, a steak for him, and french fries for me.

“Just one,” I say, waggling a fry. “You can do it.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “You temptress.”

“You healthy eater, you.” I swipe the fry through some ketchup and brandish it like an offering. “Can you resist now?”

Rolling his eyes, he grabs the fry and pops it into his mouth, chewing then making a satisfied smack of his lips. “There. Just so you know I’m not afraid to break the rules every now and then.” He holds my gaze as he says that, and I want to look away, but I can’t. I just can’t. I like looking at him far too much for my own good. So much I might break the rules if I have a chance.

He taps the table. “I’ll have you know, you addicted me to a certain citrus.”

“You bought more pomelos?”

He nods. “I can’t get enough of them.”

For some stupid reason, that makes me happy.

As we eat, we talk about the calendar and the sponsorship, but quickly the conversation moves to other matters. I ask him about his family and learn how close he is to his two brothers and his sister. He tells me he’s saving money in retirement accounts for all of them, and his greatest dream is to provide for every single Beckett. I learn, too, that he bought his parents a spacious new home, and he provides for them so they no longer have to work.

“That’s seriously amazing, Jones,” I say.

“They’re as cool as your dad. You should meet them someday.” The offer sounds so earnest that I nearly believe he means it.

“That sounds nice.” I can almost picture driving up to their home, bringing a huge bouquet of fall flowers, meeting his mom and dad, chatting with them, since I’d be so eager to get to know the parents of my—

I swerve the car in the other direction. The not-my-boyfriend-in-any-way-shape-or-form direction. “I bet they’re so proud of you for all you’ve done on and off the field.”

“They are, but I’m proud of them, too. Raising four kids on next to nothing wasn’t easy, and that’s why I work hard to take care of them now. I guess that’s why some of the things that happened with my last agent were so frustrating. I’m not suffering financially. But I want to be able to do everything I possibly can for them.”

I nod, completely understanding the drive to help, to support. “I get it. I feel the same way about my dad. That’s why I try to see him as much as possible. Just to be there.”

“The least we can do is take care of the ones who took care of us. Hell, that’s part of why I’m so glad my brother moved back to San Francisco from New York. He’s the sibling I’m closest to, and helping him with his beer show is my way of repaying that smart bastard for the way he helped me in high school.”

“He did?”

Jones nods. “He’s the creative one in the family, and since eleventh grade essays on Huck Finn are the foundation of hell, Trevor made sure I didn’t burn in the fiery depths.” He pauses, then winks. “I bet you loved high school essays.”

I narrow my eyes. “Confession: even though I was an English major, I think essays ought to be abolished. They are the devil’s work.”

His hand rises for another high five. Once more I smack back, and foolishly I wait for him to link hands with mine.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he gathers the plates on the tray, carries it to the door, sets it outside, then dials room service for a pickup. He brushes one hand against the other, and my heart free-falls. This is when he leaves. This is when our evening ends.

He raises a hand. “Question.”

“Answer.”

“How do you feel about movies?”

“Love them. The good ones, that is.”

“Mission Impossible? Is that a good one?”

I laugh like his question is crazy. “Duh. More like a great one.”

He gestures to the big-screen TV facing the bed. “Want to watch? When we checked in, I saw it was on pay-per-view.”

The free-falling heart screeches to a stop. “Yes.” My answer comes out more breathlessly than I intend.

I know this is a bad idea. I know this is flirting with danger. But if we managed to eat dinner and chat in this hotel room, we can certainly manage to watch a movie.

He eyes my bed then hops on it, stretching out his long legs and parking his hands behind his head. He looks over at me, and I’m officially frozen. He’ll need to pluck me from the ground like an ice sculpture because I can’t move.

Where am I supposed to watch? The floor? The table?

The answer comes when he pats the spot next to him on the mattress.

My insides go up in flames, and a million dangerous thoughts speed through my head. Do I actually lie down next to him? Do I put my body near his? Horizontal and inches apart?

I’m fully clothed. He is, too. But still . . . that’s a bed.

“Do you . . .?” I start to ask, but talking is so hard in this overheated state that I can’t finish the sentence—think this is a good idea?

He must sense my question because he rolls his eyes. “It’s a lot more comfortable than sitting in those awkward chairs for a two-hour flick,” he says, reaching for the TV remote on the nightstand and clicking to the menu. “C’mon.”

Here goes nothing.

I lie next to him, and he turns on the movie.

I don’t know what to do with my arms. I let them hang at my sides, but I bet that looks dumb. I cross them at my chest. I bet I look mad. I lace my hands together across my belly. I bet I look prim.

I want to just lounge and stretch and be cool as Tom Cruise rappels into a vault in the CIA’s headquarters, but I can’t focus. I can’t think about a single thing that Ethan Hunt is doing on the screen when I’m literally six inches away from the man I’ve crushed on, lusted after, and now fear I’m starting to like.