Free Playing Hard by Melanie Scott Page A

than just sitting here talking to the man. That could lead to disaster in so many ways. “Do you really want to play?” she asked. He looked slightly better than he had the previous day—for a start he’d shaved—but he still looked exhausted.
    “Scared I’ll beat you?”
    She stuck her nose in the air. “You’re the one who should be scared. Point me at the closet, Shields.”
    He nodded toward the door. “Down the hall. Second door on the right. Games are on the shelves to the left, I think.”
    “I’ll be right back.”
    Curiosity spiking, she followed his instructions. The hall was lit by a series of bright downlights that cast a line of shining circles on the polished concrete floor. They led all the way to the room at the very end of the hall. She wondered if that was his bedroom. Then she dragged her thoughts back to where they should be. The hall walls were dark gray and hung with vintage sports posters, not all of them for baseball. When she stepped into the second room on the right, she was expecting more dark and masculine decoration but the walls were white and the spread covering the bed had vivid abstract splashes of bright blue and leafy green.
    On the far wall was a series of black-framed photographs. Unable to help herself, she took a closer look. Family, she decided. A dark-haired man and a woman with equally dark wild curly hair grinned at the camera from half the photos, their arms wrapped around Oliver at various ages as well as two younger girls. Sisters. She hadn’t thought about Oliver, the baseball bad boy, having sisters. Most of the other pictures showed Oliver in baseball gear. Starting from an age when the bat he held was almost taller than he was.
    His face changed from chubby-cheeked and adorable to gangly and adorable to something that was like a less well-defined version of the man he was today. In the last one he wore a Saints uniform—not the current version, though. Seventeen, she remembered. Practically a baby. But he wasn’t a baby any longer. Nope, he was 100 percent man. One that made her want to do things that involved words you couldn’t play on a Scrabble board.
    Scrabble. Right. She remembered what she was supposed to be doing. Finding a board game. If she took too long Oliver was going to think that she was snooping. Which she was, but she wasn’t ready to let him know that.
    Turning her back on the pictures, she moved to the closet. The door opened easily, revealing neatly stacked shelves that were way more organized than hers back in her apartment. Was he neat, or was his housekeeper?
    Either way, it made her search easy. The top shelf on the left was full of small plastic storage boxes, the one below that had a good assortment of trophies that she would have liked to dig through, and the next one had just about every board game under the sun. Clue. Trivial Pursuit. Pictionary. Something called Settlers of Catan. Risk. Snakes ’n Ladders. Candy Land. Star Wars Monopoly, which made her laugh. The Scrabble box was easy enough to spot and she pulled it out after moving a little black box labeled CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY that rested on top of it.
    “What’s Cards Against Humanity?” she asked when she got back to the living room with her prize.
    Oliver shook his head with a grin. “Something that requires more people and a lot of booze.” He held out his left hand for the Scrabble set. “Speaking of booze, do you want something to drink? Or eat? I’m sorry, I can’t be much of a host right now. But help yourself to whatever is in the fridge.”
    She’d eaten a salad earlier at her desk but she was still hungry. “Wait here. I’ll go look. Do you want something to chase down the gummy bears?”
    “I think there’s some ginger ale in there,” he said. “Maybe some of that?”
    Ginger ale. That gave her pause. “Are you feeling okay?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, just not very hungry. Don’t fuss. I like ginger ale. I drink it a lot when I’m not in