Staying On Top(60)

It was as though a dam had broken. I didn’t know if the connection Sam and I had back in St. Moritz had sped up the process or if it could have happened with anyone, but it felt amazing to stop pretending I had an easy life.

But I couldn’t tell Sam the whole truth without admitting that I was still under my dad’s thumb. That the reason I had come to see him was to work a con, not to find my father and turn him in. As much as I wanted to break down, to blubber about how I’d never be free and see if he’d be willing to help me figure out a way, I couldn’t risk it. I would lose Sam eventually.

But not tonight.

“Thank you for saying that, Sam. I don’t mean to be all weepy and girly—”

“For the record, your being a girl is one of the things I like most about you.”

I smiled because that’s what he wanted. Still analyzing everything I did and every word that came out of my mouth made me sick. “It’s just that no one knows the truth about my dad. I mean, obviously the government does, and so do the people he’s conned, but the kids at Whitman don’t. Audra doesn’t.”

“No one? You’ve never had anyone to talk to?”

“Not since my mom died, no.” He looked as though he was going to ask something about my mother, and that was a place I was not ready to go at all. Maybe I never would be. “In answer to your question, I don’t know. Be able to live without secrets, I guess. Be myself. Make my own way.”

“It would be hard, don’t you think. Without the money?”

“Sure. But I’m smart, and in a couple years I’ll have a good education.” I punched his arm. “Maybe I’ll find me a rich husband to make the transition a little easier.”

He chuckled. “I have a hard time picturing a guy amazing enough to take you on, devil girl.”

My heart sank. He might feel sorry for me, but the thought of taking me on scared him. It proved that I was far more work than I was worth. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re special, Blair. You’re strong, and there are a ton of guys threatened by that. You’re hard to crack, and people are lazy. You’re also beautiful enough to intimidate at least seventy percent of the male population right off the bat.”

“Oh.” I refused to look at Sam, even though his words made my face burn. “I guess you’re pretty glad you decided to pretend not to have any condoms a couple of days ago, huh? You dodged a bullet.”

“You know, I’m getting a little tired of you assuming that you know everything about me because you watch me chase a ball around a court and give a few interviews afterward.” The anger in his tone snapped my eyes to his face. It swirled in his eyes and tightened his jaw, making the muscles in his neck stand out in a way that turned me on.

Maybe I just needed to accept that everything about Sam turned me on.

“I’m not threatened by you, Blair. I’m challenged by you. I love that I didn’t know everything about you after one conversation and it speaks volumes about your character that you refused to go home with me in St. Moritz—I was acting like a shallow doofus. Your beauty . . . well, it humbles me that you’d have anything to do with me, but I’m not intimidated.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not the seventy percent. It kind of sucks that, as hard as I’ve been working to get to know you this past week, you couldn’t be bothered to see me.”

It was hard to believe that anyone—never mind Sam Bradford, a guy who could have whomever he wanted—cared so much about what I thought. There had been something between us in Switzerland; I’d felt it even though he had been acting like a shallow doofus, and maybe it spoke more to my lagging self-confidence than anything else that it never occurred to me that it could be something special.

That I could be something special.

Since we’d been traveling together, I’d been bitchy and distant, unwilling to keep him in the loop and denying him comforts at every turn. It made no sense that he would like me at all, want me at all, but maybe it didn’t have to.

“Sam, that’s not it. I don’t think you’re shallow or insecure. I’ve never thought that, actually, even on spring break. You like to have a good time and unwind, and with the pressure of the tour and your injuries, it made sense. You’ve been a saint, putting up with me since we left Melbourne, but honestly . . . I never thought this thing between us was about more than a conquest for you.”

“How can you say that? I invited you to sit in my box my first tournament back, that’s not a casual-fuck kind of invitation. Do you not feel that something . . . more?”