Opposites Attract

forward to it.” A terror, a well of doubt, easily masked.
    “Will you and Starbuck pair up again?”
    Fury, briefly exposed.
    “Starbuck’s a singles player,” she managed after a moment.
    “You guys’ll have to keep your eyes open to see if that changes.” With his own brand of nonchalance, Ty slipped an arm around Asher’s rigid shoulders. “There’s no telling what might happen, is there, Asher?”
    Her answer was an icy smile. “You’ve always been more unpredictable than I have, Ty.”
    He met the smile with one of his own. “Have I?” Leaning down, he brushed her lips lightly. Flashbulbs popped in a blaze of excitement. Even as their lips met, so did their eyes. Hers were twin slits of fury, his grimly laughing and ripe with purpose. Lazily he straightened. “The Face and I have some catching up to do.”
    “In Rome?” a reporter cracked.
    Ty grinned and quite deliberately drew Asher closer. “That’s where it started.”

Chapter 2
    Rome. The Colosseum. The Trevi fountain. The Vatican. Ancient history, tragedy and triumphs. Gladiators and competition. In the Foro Italico the steaming Italian sun beat down on the modern-day competitors just as it had on those of the Empire. To play in this arena was a theatrical experience. It was sun and space. There were lush umbrella pines and massive statues to set the forum apart from any other on the circuit. Beyond the stadium, wooded hills rose from the Tiber. Within its hedge trimmings, ten thousand people could chant, shout and whistle. Italian tennis fans were an emotional, enthusiastic and blatantly patriotic lot. Asher hadn’t forgotten.
    Nor had she forgotten that the Foro Italico had been the setting for the two biggest revelations in her life: her consuming love for tennis, her overwhelming love for Ty Starbuck.
    She had been seven the first time she had watched her father win the Italian championship in the famed Campo Centrale
.
Of course she had seen him play before. One of her earliest memories was of watching her tall, tanned father dash around a court in blazing white. Jim Wolfe had been a champion before Asher had been born, and a force to be reckoned with long after.
    Her own lessons had begun at the age of three. With her shortened racket she had hit balls to some of the greatest players of her father’s generation. Her looks and her poise had made her a pet among the athletes. She grew up finding nothing unusual about seeing her picture in the paper or bouncing on the knee of a Davis Cup champion. Tennis and travel ruled her world. She had napped in the rear of limousines and walked across the pampered grass of Wimbledon. She had curtsied to heads of state and had her cheek pinched by a president. Before she began attending school she had already crossed the Atlantic a half dozen times.
    But it had been in Rome, a year after the death of her mother, that Asher Wolfe had found a life’s love and ambition.
    Her father had still been wet and glowing from his victory, his white shorts splattered with the red dust of the court, when she had told him she would play in the Campo Centrale one day. And win.
    Perhaps it had been a father’s indulgence for his only child, or his ambition. Or perhaps it had been the quietly firm determination he saw in his seven-year-old eyes. But Asher’s journey had begun that day, with her father as her guide and her mentor.
    Fourteen years later, after her own defeat in the semifinals, Asher had watched Starbuck’s victory. There had been nothing similar in the style of her father and the style of the new champion. Jim Wolfe had played a meticulous game—cold control with the accent on form. Starbuck played like a fireball—all emotion and muscle. Often, Asher had speculated on what the results would be if the two men were to meet across a net. Where her father brought her pride, Ty brought her excitement. Watching him, she could understand the sense of sexuality onlookers experienced during a bullfight. Indeed, there was a thirst for blood in his style that both alarmed and fascinated.
    Ty had pursued her doggedly for months, but she had held him off. His reputation with women, his temper, his flamboyance and nonconformity had both attracted and repulsed her. Though the attraction was strong, and her heart was already lost, Asher had sensibly listened to her head. Until that day in May.
    He’d been like a god, a powerful, mythological warrior with a strength and power that even the biased Italian