Millie smirked and pushed an empty plate across to him. “I’m not your mama. You know what that means?” She didn’t bother giving him a chance to answer. “Two things. I don’t have to fill your plate, and I don’t have to pretend I know what your sports talk means.”
Ty laughed and pushed away from the counter with his hips. “If you’re not my mama, why do I have to call you ma’am?”
She grinned as she twirled a fork in a bed of noodles. “Because I like when you do. Makes me feel extra naughty, and you like when I feel extra naughty, don’t you?”
Setting his glass aside, he set to the task of filling his plate with singular efficiency. “Yes, ma’am.”
He felt her eyes on him but studiously avoided looking up. She was the one who wanted to talk. If Ty knew one thing, it was strategy. No point in initiating a conversation that wasn’t going to give him the result he wanted, so he hung back. He was okay with waiting her out. He hadn’t expected to get everything he wanted from Millie right away. He’d woo her with plenty of sex and wine over the stretch of a few weeks, months, or even years if time was the deciding factor. He’d always been good at working the game clock.
Millie shoveled the tightly wound forkful into her mouth and chewed, a tiny frown appearing between her brows. “This can’t be a relationship.”
Picking up his plate, he fell back against the counter once more, needing the time and distance to put the lid on the slow simmer starting to bubble inside him. “I thought it already was.”
“Not a relationship relationship,” she said, as if repeating the word clarified everything.
“Okay.” He drew the word out, but he figured he was entitled to a little dramatic effect if she was going to be issuing proclamations. “Let me ask this… Why not? I have no morals clause like Danny’s in my contract, and even if I did, we both know ways around those pesky clauses.”
The reference to the morals clause that gave the football coach such a hard time in establishing his relationship with Kate Snyder made Millie stiffen. Kate and Danny had circumvented disaster with a marriage license and a quick trip to the courthouse. The abject horror in her expression told him Millie wasn’t itching to be a loophole bride.
“Not even up for discussion,” she said dismissively, but her posture remained stiff.
“I’m involved too, and I say we open the debate.” Impervious to her glare, Ty plowed ahead. “Why can’t this be a relationship?”
Millie stopped, the tines of her fork buried in the pile of noodles but unmoving. At last, she lifted her head and met his gaze. “Because I don’t want one.”
Her bluntness shouldn’t have shocked him, but it did. Her answer landed like an elbow to the solar plexus, but he’d been a pro for too long to let any sign of weakness show. He nodded as he processed her declaration. “Okay.”
“But we can have sex.”
Boy, she was quick to toss sex out as a consolation prize. Needing to buy some time, he fished a shrimp out of the mountain of food he’d dumped on the plate and popped the morsel into his mouth. Shifting the spicy tidbit around as he chewed, he nodded as if he understood. Which he didn’t. What kind of person wanted to hook up with someone for sex but nothing more?
Then it hit him.
Men.
Righteous indignation and shame weren’t the best chasers for overspiced shellfish, but he swallowed them along with the shrimp. If Millie’s militant friend Avery were privy to his inner thoughts, she’d be doing a feminazi goose step all over him. And he’d deserve every bruise. If not for the initial reaction, then for using the term feminazi.
He hated knee-jerk labels. His whole life, he’d had to fight his own battles with people who wanted to put him in a box. Now, he was doing the same damn thing. If Millie wanted their relationship to be purely physical, she had every right to say so. Just as he had dozens of times through his twenty and thirties. And he had the right to say no. As if he would. “You’re saying you only wanna have sex?” The question was out, his tone a bit too incredulous. “No strings attached?”
Millie’s pointed stare was loaded with challenge. “If having sex is okay with you.”
Her manner was so patronizing he had to set his plate on the counter before he smashed the ceramic to bits on the tile floor he’d so painstakingly chosen. When he didn’t answer, she flashed a patently insincere smile. This was a woman who dealt with the media sharks on a daily basis. She wasn’t going to be bullied into anything, but neither was he.
As expected, she didn’t back down. “I don’t want you to feel used or anything.”
There was nothing he could do. He knew he was at her mercy. She did too. If he objected, he’d not only look like a big, fat jerk, but he’d also be denying them both what they desperately wanted. And maybe if he agreed, he might be able to win her over.
“Oh no. Feel free.” Holding his hands out like some kind of religious martyr, he tried to play the whole thing off with a shrug. “Use as much as you want.”
She smirked at him, but it softened into a smile. “Of course, there are strings. We’re friends. Colleagues. We’ll have to set some boundaries for work and stuff, but we can figure those out.” She glanced down at her own plate. “I don’t want any unrealistic expectations popping up,” she said, attacking her food with renewed vigor. “We’re having fun, enjoying each other’s company—”
“And the sex.”
Ty cringed and wished the words back with all his might. Something about being this close to this particular woman robbed him of any control over
