by Elise Faber
She held his gaze, and in that moment, he was speechless. Frozen. Because of what was in her eyes.
Warmth. Affection. Desire. Fire.
God, he loved this woman.
Her hands dropped to his shoulders and she leaned in. “I’m not letting you off the hook in the romance department.” Her giggle teased his lips. “I want more ice cream, please. But let’s just enjoy this moment when it’s only us.”
Before the outside world intruded.
Because it would, Mike knew that.
“Okay,” he murmured and closed the last inch between their mouths.
Heat… but more. Love fueled the desire, made it flame with an intensity that should have scared him.
Instead, like a pyromaniac, he embraced the inferno, let it carry him under, and not until he felt the last vestiges of his self-control slipping did he pull back.
He turned Sara on his lap, pulled her back tight against his chest, and looped his arms around her middle.
“But — I—” Her protest was more moan than words. She turned her head toward his, mouth seeking—
“Doing this right, Sara girl.” He put a finger to her cheek and gently pressed her face toward the TV screen.
“How about you do me instead?”
She squirmed on his lap and, fuck, did the motion of her hips against his cock feel incredible.
His hands clamped down on her waist to stay her motion. “Soon, sweetheart. But we’re going to take our time.”
He didn’t want to rush. Not again.
“I don’t want time.” She rolled her ass against his erection, made stars flash behind his eyes. “I want you inside me.”
And every bit of blood left his brain.
It headed south, directly to the part of his body thinking it was an exceptional idea to fuck Sara right there on the couch.
His cell ringing saved him.
That was, until he answered it and realized who was on the other end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MIKE’S ENTIRE BODY changed the moment he heard the person on the other end of the call.
He stiffened, and it wasn’t like the formal distance from earlier. His mind wasn’t holding him back from connecting with her. This reaction was rock-hard, instant fury.
But his hands were gentle.
Head tilting to press the phone between his ear and shoulder, he clasped her waist and carefully slid her to the side.
The couch had been incredibly comfortable, a soft micro-velvet in a cool shade of gray, but now she might as well have been sitting on concrete.
Because something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Mike stood and paced the room. Not saying anything as he listened to whoever was speaking, and the longer the call went on, the tenser he became. Rage radiated off his body, spreading into the space around them.
“If you do this—”
Ice cold. His words were a dagger, a frosty sword that should have wounded.
“No,” he snapped. “It’s my turn to talk now. If you do this, if you continue along this path, know we are done.” A pause. “Everything. The house. The cars. The art. All gone—”
He stopped for a second as the person he was talking to seemed to cut him off, but only for a second.
“I’m hanging up now. No. I’m. Hanging. Up. Make your choice, and I hope to fucking God that it’s the right one.”
Sara jumped when the phone clattered down onto the table by her feet.
“What’s wrong?”
Mike sat next to her, picked up her hand, and said, “We’re out of time, Sara girl. You’ve got to decide now if we’re really doing this.”
Her brows pulled down. “I thought we already made that choice.”
“Between us, yes.” He sighed, shoved his free hand through his hair. “But the rest of the world is about to know. You good with that?”
Flashes.
Burly men screaming her name.
Crowds on the sidewalk yelling obscenities.
Not being able to leave her house, to turn on the TV, to go online.
The images collided with her mind, fear swelled up in her throat, choked off any reply she might have hoped to make.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He shook his head. “This isn’t how I wanted—”
“Who?”
“What?”
“No. Who was on the phone?”
He closed his eyes for a beat before opening them. Regret was clear in their depths. “My mother.”
Sara struggled to align the call with what she knew of Mike’s mother. But she hardly knew anything. Mrs. Stewart had never come to Mike’s games, and he’d always hung out at her house, never the other way around.
“She apparently had come into the city to surprise me. Read that as code for hitting me up for money. Again.” He stood, fingers slipping from hers as he began to pace the room. “Ostensibly, she saw you come out of my house and decided to follow you. She has pictures of us in my car.”
Her brain hurt. Putting aside that his mother had followed her, why the pictures? What had she hoped to accomplish? “I — I guess I don’t really understand.”
“My mom considers herself an artist.” His head dropped back, eyes on the ceiling as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Fuck me. She used to be a pretty damned good one. When she could actually complete a project, that is.”
Sara rose to her feet, crossed over to him, and grasped his forearms. “You’ve got to start at the beginning. I’m… well, I’m confused.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.” He tilted his chin down, met her gaze. “You remember my dad was in that accident and went on permanent disability?”
She nodded. His dad had worked at the local paper mill until a piece of machinery had fallen on his leg and shattered the bones so horribly it had to be amputated below the knee.
“I remember.”
“Well, everyone was great about it, getting me to practices, donating money, supporting us until we got back on our feet,” he said. “It even gave my mom the opportunity to sell some of her photos. Started her on her career — or what should have been one.”
Her fingers tightened unconsciously. “What happened?”
“She hurt her knee pretty bad when she was out shooting one day. Slipped on some ice and just went down hard. There was no way we could afford another doctor’s visit, not since we were just getting by.”
His hands were fists, his forearms steel beneath her palms. “It’s okay—”
“No, it’s really not.” He laughed, harsh and bitter. “But I know what you’re trying to say. Thing is, Jumping Bean, you need to know all of it.”
Sara inhaled, released it slowly. “Okay.”
“My mom took her first pill that day. My dad was in pain all the time, had a permanent prescription for them, in fact. He wouldn’t miss one.”
“Or more.”
Mike nodded. “A lot more. One turned into a half dozen, which morphed into more than my dad was taking per day. And like a true addict, she hid her addiction until the problem was too large to keep under wraps.”
“But how’d she get the pills? Didn’t your dad need them?”
“Yup. Except, when you’re a patient with as many health problems as my dad, turns out it’s easier to up your dosage, to even get another prescription for a different opioid.” His shoulders slumped. “My mom learned every trick. Different doctors. Different pharmacies. She had power of attorney for my father, and since part of the settlement with the mill was covering his medical bills, it didn’t cost anything. It was almost too easy.”
“Why am I sensing the but coming?”
He snorted. “Because there is one. While my mom was out on her nature hikes, high out of her mind and definitely not taking pictures, the bills piled up. She wasn’t working, wasn’t selling her art. We were sinking, only no one knew it.”
Pieces began aligning in Sara’s mind. Her heart pounded, her knees trembled. “When, Mike?” she asked, voice sha
king. “When did you find out?”
“Two days before you left for the Olympics.” He cursed. “So there it is. My whole sordid tale.”
“That’s why you—”
Another curse. “I couldn’t put that on you. Not then.”
“Mike.” She cupped his cheek. “I mean this with the utmost kindness… You are a fucking idiot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
REBECCA STRAVOKRAUS WAS a shark, a shark who was paid very well by the Gold to handle the media surrounding the team and, more specifically, the extra scrutiny that they received because of Brit.
Pierre Barie, Stefan’s father and a powerful businessman in his own right, had snagged ownership of the team just over a year ago. Rebecca had been one of his first additions.
As a former publicist for a Hollywood starlet, media shit-shows were her specialty.
Mike just hoped she’d be up for this one.
It was after ten when she pulled through the gate and parked next to Stefan’s car. He and Brit had arrived at the house first but hadn’t made it past the foyer.
Now Rebecca click-clicked up the stairs and breezed past the four of them.
“Close the door,” she chirped.
Mike shut the heavy panel and turned to escort everyone to the kitchen, but Sara had beaten him to it.
She’d gotten everyone seated on stools around the island. “What do you want to drink?”
“Nothing for me,” Stefan said.
“I’ll take a water if you have one,” Brit said.
“Same for me,” Rebecca said.
“Mike?” Sara asked.
He shook his head and watched as his woman opened a cabinet and grabbed three glasses, before filling them with ice and retrieving the pitcher of water from the fridge.
“I’m sorry to drag you guys out so late—”
Mike dropped his hand to Sara’s waist and gave it a warning squeeze. “This isn’t your fault—”
“Well, I guess that depends on how you determine fault,” Rebecca said.
She spoke in such honey-sweet tones that it took Mike a second to process the words.
“Excuse me?” he snapped.
Cherry-red lips pursed before Rebecca brought her glass to her lips. “It depends on whether or not she cheated.”
The air in the room froze.
“I don’t think—” Brit began.
“I believe the public has already convicted and tried me on that fact,” Sara said.
“But not this room,” Mike said.
Rebecca set her glass on the counter. “Let’s be frank here. This room doesn’t mean a damn thing when it comes to the public’s opinion.”
Sara snorted but placed her hand on Mike’s chest, quieting him when he would have spoken. “That’s not exactly news, Ms. Stravokraus. I’ve lived through public opinion.”
“The question isn’t whether you’ve already navigated a media circus, but rather, whether or not you committed the crimes you’ve been accused of.” Rebecca slipped her heels off her feet, sighing as they fell to the floor beneath her stool. “The truth may not matter to them, but it matters to me.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“It is that easy.”
“And if I cheated?”
Ruby-red lips curved. “I’d be hard-pressed to believe it.” Rebecca bent and retrieved her iPad from her briefcase and swiped her finger across the screen.
A graph appeared, colored lines zigzagging across a white background.
“Your scores are in gold, Ms. Jetty.” A fingernail painted the same shade of red as Rebecca’s lips followed the metallic path. “I’ve traced these back to your first competitions and find it difficult to believe that you’d bribe the judges for the Westin Rink Winter Performance of 2002 or the 2003 Ms. Dairy Open or—”
“I know my scores, Ms. Stravokraus,” Sara cut in. “What I don’t understand is your reasoning for bringing them up.”
“My reasoning is this. One.” She ticked off her fingers as she spoke, little flashes of cherry in the soft lighting of the kitchen. “You could have been cheating since you were a child. Two. There’s no payoff in that. Three. Your scores were consistently on a higher level than your age would seem to dictate. Four. You had no motivation to cheat because, five, you were infinitely more skilled than any other woman in that competition.”
“Strange things happen in competitions all the time,” Sara countered.
“You would have had to fall twice and shortened three of your jumps to match the difficulty level of the next closest girl.”
Stefan whistled. “Is that true?”
Even Mike was taken aback. He’d known Sara was good but had his teenaged mind ever grasped how good?
“She was doing quads before most of the men were,” Rebecca said and swiped her finger across the screen.
A video of Sara as she’d been, graceful legs and arms, but minimal womanly curves, appeared on the screen. She skated across the ice, quickly gaining speed before launching into the air.
One. Two. Three. Four—
Holy shit. It was true.
A crunch as she landed on one foot and jumped immediately again. Not another quad, but a double that she also stuck.
“This was practice the morning before the long program,” Sara murmured.
“Yes.”
Her waist lifted and fell under Mike’s hand as she took a deep breath. “How do you know—”
“So much about you?” Rebecca made the iPad sleep and then folded her hands together. “I’m good at my job.” A shrug that was paired with the slightest hint of pink on her elegantly made-up cheeks. “Also, I was a big fan.”
Sara gave a self-deprecating smirk. “Was, I think, is the key word here.” She waved away any response Rebecca might have made. “None of this is the point, however. I don’t want my past to cloud the Gold’s future. I know there was trouble with the press last season, and that the team is playing great right now. I — as Sara Jetty, disgraced figure skater — don’t want to impact your chances.”
Brit spoke up for the first time. “One thing I’ve learned is that hockey isn’t more important than your happiness.”
If Mike hadn’t been so close to Sara, he might have missed her little hitch of breath.
“She’s right, you know,” he said. “At some point, hockey will be over for me, and I’ll be left with—”
“Someone who might have taken that from you? Shit, Mike. How can I ask you to risk your career for me? For us?” She pulled away from him. “This is your dream. I should step back and let you live it.”
“Sara.” Brit slid from her stool and crossed around the island. “I know I’m just this strange chick who has no right to offer advice, but I’m pushy and bossy, and I’m going to offer it anyway, ‘kay?”
Stefan choked back a laugh, and even Sara’s lips twitched as she nodded.
“Hockey used to be my dream — my only dream, the only thing I lived for — same as, I suspect, skating was yours. You know what I found once I’d finally gotten it?” She paused, and Sara shook her head. “That I wasn’t sharing it with anyone.”
Brit glanced over at Stefan, and emotion was a heavy rope that connected them. “I discovered that going it alone was really lonely, and then I found Stefan, and things suddenly made sense.” She blew out a breath, the sincerity in her tone making even Mike feel a little choked up.
Fucking feelings.
“Stefan was a risk. Hell,” she said with a chuckle, “I was probably a bigger risk for him. But worse than the risk was the possibility of living a life without him.”
“Shit, sweetheart,” Stefan muttered, his eyes looking suspiciously glassy, “you’re killing me.”
Brit ran a finger under one eye as Stefan came around the island and pulled her into his arms. “Sorry, not sorry,” she said, cupping his cheek. “There’s no getting rid of me now.”
“Not even a possibility,” he said.
Sara sniffed, blinked rapidly.
“You two,” Mike warned softly as he stepped close to his girl and wrapped an arm around her waist. “You make her cry and—”
“Tears aren’t bad, Stewie,” Brit said, turning in Stefan’s embrace and leaning her head back against his shoulder. “They remind us of what’s important.” A pause as her gaze connected with Sara’s. “You understand?”
Sara blew out a breath. “I do. But what about the team?”
Rebecca shoved her feet back into her heels and stood. “That’s why I’m here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SARA WOKE UP sweating.
Which, she figured, was mainly due to Mike having curled around her like she was his favorite teddy bear.
Which wasn’t a bad place to be, all things considered. Except for the sweating. And the need to pee.
Mornings after were new for her.
This being her second, both of which had been with Mike.
Men weren’t regular features in her life, and while she liked sex, she had always kept the sex part of her life and the sleeping part completely separate.
No walks of shame for her.
Carefully, she lifted Mike’s arm from around her waist and wrestled herself free of the blankets.
His leg slung over the top of hers.
“Mike,” she said, squirming. “I have to pee.”
“Mmm.” He rolled over, tucked her beneath him. She might have thought the stink was awake if not for his even breathing and clumsy sleep-stunted movements.
But it was like fighting an octopus, trying to get out of that bed.
She’d get one leg loose, and he’d toss his arm over her waist again. Then she’d wriggle free of that, and his leg would be back, shoving between hers and pinning her in place.
She was huffing and puffing and still sweaty by the time she managed to get out of the bed… or rather by the time she slipped off the edge of the mattress and fell to the floor in an ungraceful heap.
At which point (because this was her life) that Mike decided to wake fully up.
