Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [26]
10
“Forty–love,” Nadine said, after tossing the yellow tennis ball into the sky and whacking it with all her might. Zak was only able to return a fraction of her serves, though he was doing better on his volleying, but even those points were infrequent against Nadine’s powerful returns and anticipation. After half an hour he noticed she was having a harder time moving to her right than her left, no doubt because her left leg still had pins in it, but the inside knowledge helped only a little.
She was surprisingly aggressive, putting him away with wicked overhands, grunting as she smashed the ball into his court. Her thighs were tan and thick with muscle, and her calves flexed as she moved in the sunshine. She rarely hit the net and almost never sent a ball out of bounds. She had one grunt for her forehand and another distinctive sound when she put both hands on the racket for a backhand. He began to find the grunts endearing.
“You’re not going to win this one,” Zak said, even as they both knew she certainly was—she’d won every game so far. The ball landed inside the line on her right side, and she returned it as hard as she could, but he’d run up to the net and was able to tap it inside the left corner for a point.
“Nice,” she said.
“Thanks. How much longer do you want to play?”
“As long as you can stand it.”
“I was just thinking it looks like your ankle’s starting to bother you.”
“Is that why you were hitting more to that side?”
“You noticed that?”
“Sure. It is getting sore, but I don’t have anybody lined up to play tomorrow, so I’ll swim and that’ll give it an extra day of rest.”
“Are you trying to wear me out, Nadine?”
“Your serve.”
“You can’t wear me out. You can beat me, but you can’t wear me out.”
“I’m killing you.”
“And enjoying every second of it, aren’t you?”
“Serve.”
In Nadine’s mind every minute on the court was clearly for tennis; she didn’t like resting or talking. All she wanted to do was play. He knew he couldn’t beat her, but he was determined to grind her down and maybe get a few points, even win a game if he could. He’d been an athlete all his life and thus admired her innate aggressiveness, her dogged determination to do him in. In many ways she reminded him of his dead sister, Charlene, who had been a high school swimmer and was just as tenacious in competition. Zak stopped mentally compiling the similarities between Nadine and his sister when he realized they’d both been in rollover accidents, and that he’d saved one and not the other.
It was May, and he was starting to put in some of the hardest rides of the year on the bike. This was going to tear his legs up for the ride later in the day. Yet she was so aggressive, and excelled so at the game, that he played for the first half hour in sheer wonderment. She’d seemed so ingenuous and gullible off court, so simple and uncomplicated, yet on court she was complex, tricky, and imbued with a killer instinct he hadn’t seen often in women. Unlike a lot of females playing against a male, she didn’t give an inch.
“Is this where you always play?” he asked.
“At Seattle U. They have indoor and outdoor courts. And at the Seattle Tennis Club. When I wasn’t at school, that’s where I always went. It was easy to pick up a partner there.”
“So why aren’t we there today?”
“There are too many people I don’t want to run into.”
“I can’t imagine there are any people you don’t want to run into.”
“You have to see the tennis club to understand.”
“You’re talking about your boyfriend, aren’t you?”
“He gets funny when I’m with another guy.”
“Then why isn’t he playing you?”
“He likes to win too much to