I kept my eyes on the golf statistics and prayed they were not talking about Fenton. The last thing I could handle was hearing other women drooling over him.
"Come on, tell me you don't think he's handsome," the first woman sat up and thrust a magazine at her friend.
"Polo shirts are not really my thing. He looks kinda stuck up."
My shoulders eased and I was able to turn my head. The women were looking at a tabloid magazine with the headline "Oh My God!". Underneath the bold letters was a clean-cut, all-American man with short, cropped brown hair. He did have sexy brown eyes, minus the devilish glint that Fenton's often showed.
I looked again and recognized the man on the cover. I had met him minutes before Fenton came to speak to me at the nightclub. I studied the tabloid cover the women held up and almost laughed out loud. The man held a golf club over his shoulder – he was a professional golfer!
"Excuse me, what's his name?" I asked the women.
They looked up from their magazine and both their jaws dropped open.
"Jackson McRay," a voice behind me said.
I turned around and caught myself before gaping like the other women. He was even more handsome in person than his cover shot and his smiling brown eyes were fixed on me. My bikini instantly felt too small, but I could not reach my sundress without wriggling all around.
"We met the other night," he said. "Remember?"
"Yes, I do. I mean, I remember. Sorry, my name is Kya," I said.
Jackson chuckled and sat down on the lounge chair next to me. "I remember," he said.
The waiter approached and I drew a complete blank when he asked if I would like another drink. I stared up at him, trying not to feel Jackson's eyes sweep over my body.
"Are
you having champagne? Sounds good to me," Jackson said. He trailed his glance back up to my face and smiled. "Do you mind if I join you?"
"No, thanks. That'd be nice," I replied. I was glad I had on sunglasses as my eyes were wide and blinking was an effort. He had appeared out of nowhere the moment I was thinking about him.
"Sorry to sneak up on you, but I never got a chance to ask for your number the other night. We got interrupted," he said.
"Interrupted?" I asked. That was a nice way of dismissing the way Fenton appeared and claimed me. "Oh, yes. That was business, though it ended up being a waste of time. I'm an endorsement agent."
"Really? Wait, are you Kya Allen? You've represented a few of my friends," he said.
I was kicking myself for confessing my profession, so his response shocked a laugh out of me. "Sorry, I just forget that golfers manage to be competitors and friends at the same time. You don't see that in many other one-on-one sports."
"Especially not with MMA fighters?"
I could tell he was curious about my involvement with Fenton. There was a hard twinge in my body every time I thought of him, so denouncing Fenton felt like the right thing to do. "Mixed Martial Arts isn't really my thing. I started out by representing tennis players, but golf is really more my game."
Jackson tipped his head and smiled at me. "I would think you were just saying that if I had not already heard rumors about your golfing skills. I hear you've got a good swing."
"There's a difference between rumors and facts," I sat up and smoothed my hair.
"I like the confidence," he said. "How about a game, then?"
"I'm not really dressed for the golf course."
He let his eyes wander lower for a few seconds. "I don't mind. Actually, there's a mini-golf course just over there. Want to show me the facts?"
Jackson McRay stood up as the waiter returned with our drinks. He took both champagne flutes and held one out to me. I stood up and shimmied into my sundress before accepting the drink.
"I suppose I could have time for one quick game," I said as I scooped up my phone and checked the time.
A message from Fenton blinked on the screen and I felt my stomach drop. He sent it a full twenty minutes after I had left our suite. Did it really take him that long to notice I was gone? I thought of everything he could have done in that time and felt sick.