Read Opposites Attract for Free Online Page B

recreation. Practice was a religion. Morning hours were spent in the peaceful tree-shaded court five, grooving in, polishing her footwork, honing her reflexes.
    Exercise was a law. Push-ups and weight lifting, stretching and hardening the muscles. Good press was more than a balm for the ego. Press was important to the game as a whole as well as the individual player. And the press loved a winner.
    Play was what the athlete lived for. Pure competition—the testing of the skills of the body, the use of the skills of the mind. The best played as the best dancers danced—for the love of it. During the days of her second debut, Asher rediscovered love.
    In her one brief morning meeting with Ty she had rediscovered passion. Only her fierce concentration on her profession kept her from dwelling on a need that had never died. Rome was a city for lovers—it had been once for her. Asher knew that this time she must think of it only as a city for competition if she was to survive the first hurdle of regaining her identity. Lady Wickerton was a woman she hardly recognized. She had nearly lost Asher Wolfe trying to fit an image. How could she recapture herself if she once again became Starbuck’s lady?
    In a small club in the Via Sistina where the music was loud and the wine was abundant, Asher sat at a table crowded with bodies. Elbows nudged as glasses were reached for. Liquor spilled and was cheerfully cursed. In the second and final week of the Italian Open, the tension grew, but the pace mercifully slowed.
    Rome was noise, fruit stands, traffic, outdoor cafés. Rome was serenity, cathedrals, antiquity. For the athletes it was days of grueling competition and nights of celebration or commiseration. The next match was a persistent shadow over the thoughts of the winners and the losers. As the music blared and the drinks were poured, they discussed every serve, every smash and error and every bad call. Rome was blissfully indolent over its reputation for bad calls.
    “Long!” A dark, lanky Australian brooded into his wine. “That ball was inside by two inches. Two bloody inches.”
    “You won the game, Michael,” Madge reminded him philosophically. “And in the second game of the fifth set, you had a wide ball that wasn’t called.”
    The Australian grinned and shrugged. “It was only a little wide.” He brought his thumb and forefinger close together at the good-natured razzing of his peers. “What about this one?” His gesture was necessarily shortened by the close quarters as he lifted a drink toward Asher. “She beats an Italian in the Foro Italico, and the crowd still cheers her.”
    “Breeding,” Asher returned with a mild smile. “The fans always recognize good breeding.”
    Michael snorted before he swallowed the heavy red wine. “Since when does a bloody steamroller need breeding?” he countered. “You flattened her.” To emphasize his point he slammed a palm down on the table and ground it in.
    “Yeah.” Her smile widened in reminiscent pleasure. “I did, didn’t I?” She sipped her dry, cool wine. The match had been longer and more demanding than her first with Kingston, but her body had rebelled a bit less afterward. Asher considered it a double victory.
    “Tia Conway will go for your jugular,” he said pleasantly, then called to his countrywoman at a nearby table. “Hey, Tia, you gonna beat this nasty American?”
    A dark, compact woman with striking black eyes glanced over. The two women measured each other slowly before Tia lifted her glass in salute. Asher responded in kind before the group fell back to its individual conversations. With the music at high volume, they shouted to be heard, but words carried only a foot.
    “A nice woman,” Michael began, “off the court. On it, she’s a devil. Off, she grows petunias and rosemary. Her husband sells swimming pools.”
    Madge chuckled. “You make that sound like a misdemeanor.”
    “I bought one,” he said ruefully, then looked back at