Broken Play by Samantha Kane Page B

poetry or romance. They made this encounter about intimacy and not sex. His words showed her respect and admiration. And for the first time in a long time, she had respect for herself, because she’d finally faced her demons. At least a couple of them.
    Once Cass and Beau left her office, Marian began to shake. She’d practically thrown them out, but they’d been good-natured about it, attributing her sudden shyness and panic to the risk of getting caught. But the truth was, reality had hit her hard. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. With them. Here. She had gone certifiably crazy. Off the deep end. She sat down in her office chair and put her head between her knees, so she wouldn’t pass out.
    Cass and Beau had both insisted they needed to talk, but she wasn’t ready for that. She couldn’t believe what a chance she had taken with them. In her office. The inappropriateness of it was shocking. What if someone had walked in?
    Marian stayed late at the office, hoping to avoid Cass and Beau. She actually did have paperwork piled high on her desk. Mike and Shannon wanted reports on the players and their recent physicals and workouts at mini-camp. By the time she felt she’d caught up enough to call it a day, she’d missed dinner. When she stepped out of her office, her stomach was rumbling as she turned to lock the door.
    “Yoo-hoo,” a man softly said on her left. She spun around in surprise, dropping her keys. Tyler stood at the end of the hallway, about five or six feet away. “This time I stayed back here and gave fair warning,” he said with a smile. “Still too much?”
    She laughed and blew out a breath as she picked her keys up off the floor. “No, good,” she said, locking her door with a minimum of clumsiness. She smiled at him and he took a tentative step forward. “It’s just that I wasn’t expecting anyone to be around,” she explained, checking her watch. “It’s pretty late. I assumed everyone else had gone home.” She got suspicious. “Why are you here? Did Cass and Beau put you up to this?”
    Tyler continued walking toward her, and when he reached her, she turned and they set out together.
    “First, I’d like to know exactly what you think Cass and Beau put me up to, and then I’d like to know why.”
    Marian barely spared him a glance, and said nothing.
    “That’s what I thought,” Tyler said. “Nobody ever tells me anything.” He sighed dramatically and she laughed.
    “Not going to work,” she told him. He pushed open the outside door and held it as she passed him. “Why are you still here?”
    “I had an aching thigh,” he said with a shrug. “I was in the whirlpool with the trainer.” Marian’s eyes got big as she stared at him. She had no idea he and Ashe were an item. “Not together,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes. “Ashe is straight as an arrow. I was in the whirlpool, he was overseeing my hydrotherapy and gave me a massage. Not the kind with a happy ending.”
    Marian blushed, both at her erroneous assumption and at the thought of her own happy ending earlier. “Better now?” she asked, avoiding Tyler’s look.
    “Better,” he said, a little too casually. He was treading lightly. These damn football players around here were too sensitive by half. “I’m hitting a club tonight with Tom and some other players. Want to go?”
    She didn’t, not really. But she didn’t want to sit around her apartment, either, hiding with her phone off like a chickenshit. She knew without a doubt that Cass and Beau would come to find her, and she didn’t want to be there when they did. She couldn’t be alone with them again. They made her do stupid things and make bad decisions. Damn lust hormones.
    “Sure,” she told Tyler. “Let me just go home and change. These are work clothes. I need play clothes.”
    “The kind you can get dirty in?” Tyler asked with a suggestive grin.
    “You wish,” Marian told him as she stopped at her car and unlocked the doors. “I