Playing With Fire

“Um, hey.”

Zienna turned, and was surprised to see Ed standing in the doorway. “Yes?”

“I just wanted to say that not only are you beautiful, you’re incredibly smart. I’m glad my friend referred me to this clinic.”

“Oh.” Zienna hadn’t expected that. “Why, thank you.”

Ed offered a bashful smile, then a little wave.

As he disappeared again, Zienna made a face, confused by what had just happened. Was Ed simply being nice, or was he a little bit smitten?

It wouldn’t be the first time a client had become enamored with her. She was attractive and liked to smile, something that won over many men. The way she saw it, having male clientele develop a crush on her was a bit of an occupational hazard.

As she sat at the desk, her mind ventured back to when she’d met Wendell five years ago. And the crush that had turned into something more.

As one of the four athletic therapists for the Chicago Bears, she had seen him during practices, and then when the NFL season had started. He’d been thirty-two at the time, almost considered a senior when it came to professional sports, but he still had the kind of skill that put some of the younger players to shame. His talent as a wide receiver kept him in the starting position on the team’s roster.

Zienna hadn’t personally engaged with him until the tackle that had injured his left shoulder. And pretty much instantly, the professional demeanor between them had changed.

He had torn the rotator cuff, and weeks of physiotherapy with the team’s head athletic therapist followed. Once his shoulder had stabilized, he’d begun work with Zienna to further help with his healing and regain optimum strength.

The spark between them had been immediate that first day she’d met with him one on one. Perhaps it was the way he’d looked at her with those beautiful hazel eyes...a heated look that had melted her professional resolve almost instantly.

Zienna knew it was about more than the look he’d given her, because right from the start she had noticed him. Of all the players on the team, Wendell was the one who stood out to her. Of course, she never would have approached him in a personal way. She’d valued her fairly new position with the Chicago Bears too much to do that.

Wendell, on the other hand, had no such qualms. He’d asked her out the day of their second session.

Everything about him had made Zienna want to forget all about being professional, but she knew better than to accept his offer, and had politely turned him down. Undeterred, Wendell had proudly told her, when they got together for his third exercise session, that he’d made reservations for the two of them to have dinner the following Saturday night at Michael Jordan’s Steak House. It hadn’t been a question.

He had known her answer without having to ask.

And Zienna, turned on by his confidence, had been unable to deny him.

The dinner had been wonderful, enhanced by a personal exchange with Michael Jordan, who’d been in that night. Zienna wasn’t surprised to learn that Wendell and Michael knew each other, but she did feel extraspecial when the basketball legend sat at their table and chatted with them for a few minutes.

It wasn’t just the top-of-the-line champagne that had Zienna forgetting her own moral code after dinner and agreeing to go back to Wendell’s place for a nightcap. It was her lust for him. From the moment she’d agreed to have dinner with him, she’d known that the sex would be inevitable.

What she didn’t expect was just how amazing he was in bed. Or on the sofa, in the shower...

Zienna felt the stirring of desire, and it snapped her out of her trip down memory lane. Made her realize where she was, and what had just happened.

Good Lord, what was wrong with her? She was thinking about Wendell to the point where she was getting aroused?

She stood, paced the floor. And all she could think of was what Alexis had said last night. It took you years to get over Wendell.

That comment had allowed her to acknowledge her fear that seeing Wendell would erase all the progress she’d made. Damn it, was that already happening? Were thoughts of him going to invade her mind at regular intervals again?

“No,” she said aloud. She wouldn’t let them.

She was going to see Nicholas later, the man she loved. The man who could be her everything.

Unlike Wendell.

He’d never been hers. Learning he’d followed someone else to Texas—when he’d told her that he wasn’t ready to settle down—was the most bitter part of all.

Oh, he had wanted to commit—just not to her. When he’d left her, Zienna had stupidly told herself that Wendell had been afraid of their intense connection, intimidated by it. That he didn’t know how to handle his feelings for her. And she’d fully expected him to return.

It had been a fairy tale concocted out of total bull to make herself feel better.

That thought helped her purge the unsettling sexual memories of Wendell from her mind. He was the last man on the planet she should be thinking of.

Zienna got her cell phone and sent Nicholas a text: Can’t wait for tonight.

And to make the night extraspecial, she would stop by a lingerie shop on the way home and pick up something very skimpy—for Nicholas’s eyes only.

5

Nicholas didn’t call back. But he did send a text to tell Zienna where they would dine. And she wasn’t surprised when he said he’d made reservations at Café Tagine in the West Loop for Mediterranean fare, as it was one of the few places he enjoyed eating other than his own restaurant. The highlight of the dining experience—if you were there at the right time—was the belly dancing performance.

Zienna sent him a text back to ask if she should meet him there or if he would pick her up. She wasn’t one of those women who expected to be picked up for every date. She had her own car, her own career, and she could take care of herself. A few guys she’d dated had told her that she was too independent. But after years of providing for herself, she wasn’t about to pass over the reins to a man.

Not yet, anyway.

When her cell phone trilled, Zienna lifted it from the bathroom counter and looked at the screen.

I’ll pick you up.

She grinned. It would be better this way. Because being beside him in the front seat, she could get a little frisky.

Sample a little of the heat of what was to come.

* * *

At 7:30, Zienna’s cell phone rang. Even before she looked to see if Nicholas was the one calling her, she hurried to the window of her second floor condo, which looked down on North Kingsbury Street, and saw Nicholas’s car. He was nothing if not punctual.

She then ran to pick up her phone, which was on her dining room table. “Hey, you.”

“I’m downstairs.”

“I know, I just saw you. I’m on my way.”

She gathered her clutch purse and headed to the door, where she stopped to give herself one last glance in the hall mirror. She was wearing a red dress with a plunging neckline that went to the base of her cleavage. It was an outfit that revealed what Nicholas had termed her “great boobage.” The dress hugged her waist, then flared slightly over her hips. It was a sexy yet classically feminine outfit.

Beneath the dress, she was also wearing red—a lacy red thong adorned with a tiny white bow at the front, and a matching bra with little bows on the straps. A grin played on her lips. She knew she looked absolutely amazing in the ensemble, and she knew that Nicholas would go nuts when he saw her without her dress later.

Zienna made her way downstairs. Ever the gentleman, Nicholas got out of his black Infiniti SUV to meet her as she headed down the short walkway toward him.

“Wow.” He whistled, then reached out and fingered a strand of her long, flat-ironed black hair. It was a look that suited her well.