Love. Set. Match. Page 5

  The second her hotel room door shut behind her, she kicked off her shoes and grabbed her tablet. She watched the full panel, then watched it again, a dull buzzing noise filling her ears.

  None of this made sense. He’d really stood up for her, and he’d done it in a subtle, classy way. He hadn’t made it personal or done anything that would make things worse for her. He’d pointed out the sides of the story that everyone else ignored. Amir was still working on finding out who leaked the pictures, but Rob had turned it and made them the story too, shifting the focus away from her as much as possible.

  She should dismiss this as him being a stand-up guy, showing integrity in his job. That would make more sense than what she was thinking. Because seeing him there, protecting her when everyone else was skewering her, made her question everything. For seven years, she’d believed he didn’t care. Something—or someone—had convinced him to hate her, but now she wasn’t so sure. A warmth in her chest started to grow, breaking free of the triple deadbolts she’d put in place when he broke up with her. Did he still care about her? Did she still care about him? This was all…too much. Maybe it would clear up in the morning, but right now she didn’t know how she’d deal with the mess that had become her life.

  ****

  Rob left Em and took a seat in one of the corner booths in the restaurant bar. Her rejection stung—a lot. He’d hoped that after today, some of the old animosity might have faded. Honestly, he couldn’t blame her for being so mad at him, at any man today. God knew he was disillusioned with his gender after hearing some of the questions the reporters had asked her. He hated how the vultures picked at her. The press team had done a good job of keeping the press conference brief, but there’d been enough time for the gaggle to get some sharp jabs in.

  And yet after facing all of that, there she was, sitting at the bar in a dress designed to make a man’s mouth water. The fiery red of the slightly shiny fabric made her golden skin glow in the bar’s artful lighting. Its loose neckline had dipped low over her full breasts, giving a teasing glance at the upper swells and the tempting cleft between them, without showing too much. From here, he could see how the dress’s skirt rode up her thighs, showing off a tempting expanse of soft flesh. His body tightened at the memory of those thighs and how they’d felt around him. He’d spent seven years trying to forget how sweet she tasted, how passionate he could make her.

  “Rob. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Tearing his gaze away from Em, Rob found himself looking up at the towering figure of her older brother. Although Owen hadn’t been a full-time student, he’d trained at the same tennis academy in Spain where Cruz and Rob trained from ages twelve to seventeen. Owen had been one of the students who usually came over for a few weeks on school breaks. His grandparents couldn’t afford to send him full time, and they’d preferred to have him at home, which wasn’t the case for most of the guys at the academy.

  Rob stood, extending a hand to him. “It’s been a while, Owen. Won’t you join me?”

  “Care to add a third?” Cruz asked, coming up beside Owen. “Grace and I were getting ready to grab a drink when we spotted you skulking over here by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t skulking,” Rob argued, scooting so his friends could join him on the circular bench.

  A waitress shimmied up and took their orders, blatantly flirting with each of them in turn, but judging from his friends’ expressions, they weren’t in the mood for a casual flirtation any more than he was tonight.

  “I’m surprised to see you here tonight, Grace,” Rob said, sipping at the remnants of the microbrew he’d grabbed at the bar. “Would have thought you’d want to avoid any place a reporter might ambush you.”

  Owen snorted. “Believe me, I would if I could. But Dera gave me the heads-up that she and my sister were planning to be in the bar tonight. I couldn’t hide in my room while Emmy was down here.”

  “We heard Emmy handing you your ass as we walked in,” Cruz commented with a cheeky grin.

  “Her tongue’s as sharp as I remember it.” Rob kept his tone light as he accepted the new bottle of beer the waitress handed him before she gave Cruz and Owen theirs.

  “She didn’t hear most of the interview.” Owen settled back on the bench, taking a drink of his beer. “She tends to tune Bruno out within a few seconds on good days.”

  The Grace siblings, while opposite in height, shared more than a few similarities. The same easy spirit, the same sense of humor, the same blunt honesty, and the same eyes. Where Em’s were more mysterious and assessing, Owen’s usually sparkled with mischief. He was known for the little pranks he liked to pull.

  “You did a good thing, amigo,” Cruz added in. “Did you catch heat from your producers for standing up to Bruno?”

  Rob shrugged. “Not too much. Bruno’s mad as hell, but Joey’s softer side prevailed, for now at least.”

  “Well, since my sister’s not likely to say it, thank you for standing up for her.” Owen raised his bottle in salute.

  Rob managed a tight smile. Appreciation from Em’s brother paled in comparison to a “thank you” from the woman herself, but he doubted he’d get that anytime soon. “Don’t thank me for responsible journalism. The vultures focus in on the easiest person to lampoon, and I don’t think that’s fair to anyone. Everyone deserves privacy and respect, simple as that.”

  “Here, here.” Cruz nodded. “But it was still a big risk to take. You’re new at that job. For all you knew, they’d toss you out on your overpriced ass.”

  Rob watched Em go, her head held high, her dress skimming her curves the way he wished he could. He didn’t blame her for leaving now that she’d been seen. He imagined she’d hole up in her room, reading one of the twenty books she always seemed to have with her.

  “I hate to see anyone going through this. I’ve been in the crosshairs before, and it was bad enough when it was an injury. I can’t imagine what it’s like in Emerson’s situation.”

  The rage that coursed through his veins when he first saw the pictures had boiled down to low-level pissed off, but it still spiked every time he thought of Em’s face during the press conference. She’d kept her expression neutral for the most part, which impressed him, but her eyes told a different story. She always had the most expressive eyes; they were his favorite feature of hers. They always told the real story if he looked close enough. He’d seen them bright with joy and the same mischief her brother’s usually held, but he’d also seen them swimming with hurt and regret and anger—all because of him.

  There’d been so much pain in the warm brown depths during the press conference. He could see it, even through the TV screen. She’d been itching to give them a piece of her mind, but too many years of keeping herself contained, for the sake of her grandparents and under the direction of Zoe, prevented her from going off on them the way she had with him.

  “Rob? You with us?” Cruz dragged him back to reality.

  “Hm? Yeah, sorry, man.” Rob gave his head a mental shake. “What did you say?”

  Owen rolled his eyes. “I asked how your shoulder’s doing. I’ve heard a bunch of different stuff, but I thought I’d get it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

  Shrugging, Rob leaned his forearms on the table, studying the sleek wooden surface. “Truth? It depends on the day. It’ll never be the same, but a day when it doesn’t ache like a sore tooth is a good day.”

  “I gotta say, I admire you for coming back and doing the whole reporting thing.” Owen’s brows furrowed. “I don’t know if I could be around the courts if I couldn’t play anymore.”

  “Tennis is the only steady thing in my life. Even if I can’t play, I want to be around it. And it’s really not as bad as I thought it would be.” Okay, a small lie. It sucked to sit on the sidelines, more than he’d expected. But at least he had control again; at least he was doing something. He’d spent too much time brooding already. He needed to focus on the here and now, not on his bum shoulder and the loss of the onl
y career he’d ever wanted.

  “How’s Emmy doing with all of this? Really?” Cruz asked, pitching his voice lower so they wouldn’t be overheard.

  Owen’s jaw tightened. “She doesn’t let on, but the last few months have been rough. Getting injured when she was on such a roll was bad enough, but add in the breakup and top it off with the grandparents’ health problems and Papa Vic’s passing, and last year ended up being pretty shitty. Now to start the season with these fucking pictures getting leaked? She’s a lot stronger than I am. I honestly think I’d be curled up in a closet if I were in her shoes.”

  He remembered how close Em and Owen were to their grandparents, but Em had always been especially close to her grandfather. Her face lit up when she told him stories about her early tournaments and how her grandpa used to fret over her and dote on her.

  He’d never know it, but Victor Grace had helped Rob win his granddaughter over in the end.

  Em hadn’t easily agreed to go out with him, which only made Rob want her more. At almost twenty-three, he’d already been with more than his fair share of women, but they always fell at his feet easily. Not Em, though. He’d asked her out the very first time he met her in London, but it’d taken getting stuck in an elevator with her before she agreed to go out with him. They’d shared their first kiss in that elevator. The first of many kisses. Kisses that stopped because he’d been a complete idiot and listened to his father instead of his heart.

  Rob picked at the label on his beer bottle as his friends chatted about some of the matches they’d caught in the men’s draw. This felt good. Being here, with his friends. This was what he’d missed in the time he’d been gone. But something was definitely missing from the picture he’d formed in his head.

  Em.

  She was the missing part of the picture. She’d always been the missing piece. Every time he’d won a major title, even his Olympic medal and his Grand Slam title, something had been missing to make it perfect. He’d realized during his time away from the game that she was what had been missing from all of it.

  “Do you have anyone looking into who’s behind all of this?” Cruz asked Owen, pulling Rob back to the present.

  Owen finished off his beer. “Our agent, Amir al-Tammar, is working on it, but his guys haven’t had any luck so far. He’s got a top firm looking into it. They specialize in cyber forensics.”

  “Are the police involved yet?” Rob set aside his beer bottle. He was worried for Em. This was bigger than a prank or revenge. He had some friends who were actors and actresses, and he’d heard horror stories about what happened in situations like this. The crazies came out of the woodwork, and life got complicated.

  “Not yet. There’s not a lot they can go on right now, and the legality of it all is a bit murky.” Owen’s eyes darkened dangerously. “But if I find out that it’s that dick Naumov who posted them, I may need one of you to come bail me out of jail in whatever city we’re in.”

  “Deal,” Rob and Cruz said in unison.

  The friends chatted for a while longer before Rob finally stood. “I’ve got an early call time in the morning, so I’ll see you guys later.”

  After letting himself into his room, Rob flopped down in one of the stylish armchairs and stared out over the Melbourne city lights. Ignoring the ache in his shoulder, he let his thoughts drift into the realm of brooding. He hated this whole situation. He hated that he wasn’t on the court, but more than that he hated that he wasn’t in the position to do more to help Em. That she didn’t know how much he still cared.

  It was his own damn fault for letting her go in the first place. He’d let his dad bully him and convince him that his career should come before everything. He’d let himself believe that Em would hold him back from becoming the best. He should have known that was a load of bullshit after how hard it was to forget her. He’d drunk himself blind for a week straight after things ended between them, but nothing worked.

  Now every instinct screamed at him to find some way to help Em, to be there for her as he should have been for the last seven years. But she’d made it very clear tonight that she wanted nothing to do with him or his help, and he wasn’t sure he could change her mind after everything he’d done.

  ****

  “All right, let’s go over the schedule one more time,” Zoe said as they sat in a quiet corner of the Melbourne airport.

  Emerson tried not to roll her eyes. In the six days since she’d been knocked out of the quarterfinals, all she and Zoe and—via FaceTime—Amir had done was strategize. Her head spun with all the meetings and events they’d managed to squeeze in between now and her next tournament at the end of February.

  “Okay,” Emmy said, setting down the book she had been trying to read. “Let’s go over operation ‘don’t lose any more sponsors’ for the fiftieth time.”

  Zoe, with the practice of someone who’d known her since she was six, ignored Emerson’s attitude and continued on. “I’m going back to Miami to get things in order and to see my poor dogs. You have meetings with FashFit and hopefully a photoshoot with them in New York. Then the meeting about the exhibition match with Maren Ashton, her mother, and Rosamund Gilligan to benefit some women in sports charity in May. You and Maren versus the older set. Amir’s working on squeezing in meetings with a few of your other sponsors to make sure they understand that dropping you would be worse for their public image than a few pictures. From there, you’ll join me in Florida, and we’ll go over the video again and see what we need to hone in on.”

  “Sounds good.” She tried to smile but failed as she watched someone buy a tabloid from a nearby news stand with her picture splashed across the front page. Bile rose in her throat. God, when would this be over? Surely some minor royal or B-list movie star had done something stupid recently? It didn’t help that one of her sponsors, a hair product line, had dropped her yesterday with a strongly worded release about the “moral character” of the “face of their brand.”

  Zoe looked to where Emerson’s gaze rested. “Don’t let it bother you.”

  “I just—” She took a breath, fighting the lump in her throat. “I thought that it would have died down by now. It’s not like I’m that big a name.”

  “Tennis is hot right now, love. On top of that, Kole is the world number one, and he’s got a memorable personality and a body to go with it. You’re the girl who broke his heart and took dirty pictures for him, which makes you newsworthy. It’ll die down eventually, but right now, there’s nothing to distract them from you.”

  The laugh that escaped Emmy held a rusty quality. She hadn’t had much cause to laugh lately. She’d spent the last six days holed up at Zoe’s estate, either practicing, plotting, or curled up in the guest room she’d been staying in since she was twelve. She’d lost herself in books and old movies, trying to forget the entire world knew what she looked like in her underwear.

  “Well, well, look who it is.”

  The thick Eastern European accent made the hairs on the back of Emmy’s neck stand on end and her breath catch in her chest.

  Fuck.

  She’d forgotten that before all of this nightmare began, she and Kole bought their tickets so that their planes left around the same time. What seemed like a sweet idea two months ago when they’d still been together now proved the worst idea ever.

  “You’ve got some nerve to even think of talking to me.” Emerson didn’t look up, didn’t do anything that might look like she was acknowledging him. Looking at him would only make things worse. Seeing him with those high, sharp cheekbones and midnight blue eyes and the light brown hair he always kept cut military short would remind her how much she’d come to care for him and what an ass he’d turned out to be. He towered over her and Zoe, so looking at him would give her a cramp in her neck.

  “I have the nerve? You broke up with me, Emerson.” Kole’s voice was cold, but she heard the hurt beneath the words.

  She steeled herself against the small twinge of guilt and stood to face him
. “Yes, I broke up with you. Do you remember why? Or have you taken one too many tennis balls to the head?”

  “Was it because you chose to put your family ahead of your relationship?” His eyes narrowed. “Or is it because you’re a ball-busting bitch who didn’t want to sacrifice any of herself to be with a man who cared for her?”

  “Hey.” She took a step back as if he’d slapped her. “I’m not the one who acted like a toddler because his girlfriend wanted to go see her dying grandfather instead of going to some party in New York. And if you really cared for me, you would have understood that. Caring about my life and my career in conjunction with caring for you does not make me a ball-busting bitch—it makes me a modern woman.”

  Zoe stood up as well, hands on her slim hips, green eyes shooting daggers. “I think you need to go now, Kole.”

  “Yes, try to shield your precious Emerson like you always do,” he sneered. “The poor parentless girl needs her coach to defend her from an adult conversation.”

  Emerson shot Zoe a warning look. Her coach could be a mama bear when she got the chance, but Emerson needed to handle this on her own.

  “An adult conversation? Because it’s so mature to take swipes at me about my parents.” Emerson crossed her arms, one hip cocked to the side. “You know, I was saying to Dera the other day that it felt like we’d reverted to high school, what with all of the completely false rumors you’ve been spreading about me. I know you’ve got quite the ego, but saying that I cheated on you? With multiple men? At the same time? Well, that doesn’t really speak well of your…prowess in the bedroom.”

  He snorted, shifting his leather duffle bag from one shoulder to the other, eyes darting around. “Or it speaks to what a selfish slut you are. Those pictures are worth a thousand words, aren’t they?”