Seduced in Sand Read Free Page B

wife before. I can’t help wonder what else you haven’t mentioned that could screw with the game.”
    â€œTabatha won’t mess me up.” Again. She still had power over him that made forgetting or moving on impossible, but he refused to allow her on the court. Volleyball had saved him. It would remain his.
    To prove his point, maybe to himself, Danny gestured to the court. “We can go right now if you need reassured.”
    His voice leaned heavily on reassured, daring his partner to doubt him. The more people doubted him, the harder he played. And he’d faced a lot of doubt since joining Will. He was a virtual unknown with next to no track record. The public ate up the mystery of his past and he fed it by giving vague answers and always wearing sunglasses and hats that obscured most of his face.
    Luck had been working in his favor so far, but luck always ran out or, more accurately, shifted from a favorable fate to a vindictive vixen.
    â€œA hot-headed challenge does not reassure me,” Will said calmly.
    â€œSpeaking with no contractions does not make you right.”
    Will wasn’t the first person to call him hot-headed. Hot-blooded, irrational, unrealistic, lazy. They were all on a much longer list of less than positive words used to describe Danny. Self-reinvention was hard and time-consuming, but while he couldn’t change everything about himself he hoped he’d changed enough to win back Tabatha.
    â€œAnd it’s a heartfelt challenge, not a hot-headed one,” Danny stated. “I’m not known for talking much, especially not feely shit, but I’m in Miami for two reasons. One, to play volleyball. Two, to win back my wife. I may be an absent-minded dumbass who screwed up an amazing thing, but I’ve never been a quitter.”
    Will Wylie, playboy to the extreme, whose only commitment was to volleyball, wouldn’t be able to understand why Danny would want to tie himself down to one woman. Words hadn’t been invented to describe the what, the why or the how he’d grown to feel for Tabatha. Frankly, explanations were only owed to Tabatha and they would have to be shown for her to believe.
    â€œNot sure why you’d want to, but what’s your big plan for winning the ball and chain back?”
    â€œI’d thought about going back to the beginning. Warming her up with what won her over the first time.”
    â€œAnd that’s where I stop listening,” Will said as he stood.
    â€œPervert.” Danny scowled. “That’s not what I meant.”
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with basing things on sex. Maybe not a marriage…”
    â€œI meant laughter.”
    â€œShit.” Will burst out a laugh. “Now the rumors about you being gay make more sense.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour marital castration has screwed your testosterone levels. Do you think you can recover from that?”
    â€œSave your trash talk for the court and our opponents.”
    Will sank back down into the sand and sighed. “You’re going to ask for help or advice, aren’t you?”
    â€œYour advice would be to give her the divorce and go to bed with a different woman every night.”
    â€œIf she’s asked for a divorce, hell yeah. Unshackle yourself. Play on and off the court.”
    Growing up in a functional family in a dysfunctional world had preconditioned Danny to look for commitment. No couple in his family, regardless how rough things got, had ever divorced. They’d gotten close, but always reconciled and became stronger.
    His and Tabatha’s beginning had been the quickest and most unexpected, with their wedding coming only a few short months after meeting for the first time. They’d been asked if she was pregnant and the marriage was his way of doing right by her, and their refusals hadn’t fully been believed until her body proved the story for them. Only then had his family begun to