by Elise Faber
But he wasn’t going to say anything.
Not when he got that sweet and floral scent of her. Not when he got her breast grazing his arm and sending tendrils of desire snaking through his body.
“Well?” she prompted, studying Noah.
“I put it back together.”
She smirked, fist-pumped with her free hand. “I knew it.” A beat. “Teresa was your adopted mom?”
He nodded, heart pulsing again. “Yeah.”
“What was she like?”
“A lot like your mom, I think. Or at least, how you’ve described her. She was warm and funny and didn’t care that I was a ten-year-old boy who’d never been shown love or affection. She gave it to me without reservation. She gave it even when I’d convinced myself I didn’t want it.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“It was an adjustment,” he said. “After being on my own for so long, I wasn’t used to relying on other people.”
“Still aren’t, I’d wager.” It was a murmur, but not one he could ignore.
“No,” he agreed. “I’m definitely not used to people taking care of me or looking out for me. I’m still…I don’t know, not open in that way. When you grew up the way I did, you learn to protect yourself. You bury the things that hurt and move on because there isn’t any time for you to process it. Survival is most important.”
“I can understand why you needed that.” A squeeze of his arm. “Even if it makes me sad that you had to go through that.”
No judgment.
No pity.
Just empathy and understanding.
He fell right there for her. Just a little bit. Okay, maybe more than that considering he’d pulled out romance in the form of a candle, music, and dimmed lights in his boss’s house.
But how couldn’t he?
She was incredible.
And because of that, he found himself still talking. “Teresa basically bullied her way into loving me, dragging Alex behind her—he wasn’t the bullying type. He was quiet and patient and could out-wait the fuck out of me.”
Hazel giggled, and it wasn’t lost on him that she still had her hand on his arm.
“My dad is like that, too,” she said. “He’s so chill that it seems like he’s just letting everything go and then bam, you find yourself on the other side of his piercing stare, and you just blabber like you’re a seven-year-old trying to pretend you didn’t eat the last cookie.”
Amusement hit him hard, building in his gut, filling his chest, bubbling in his veins. Funny and smart and sweet.
Perfect.
“And Luc and Lexi?” she asked. “They seem to get through the protective barriers.” A comment, albeit a gentle probing one. But since it wasn’t filled with pity or—too much—pressure, he found it easy to answer.
“Have you met those two? They’re as stubborn as they are pig-headed. I couldn’t not let them in. Even if I tried, they would have barreled their way right through any protective barriers after my injury.”
“Says the man who keeps stealing the baby from me because he’s worried my arms are going to get tired.”
He pretended to flex, as much as he could do so with a baby in his arms. “Look at these muscles compared to your puny biceps.”
“Hey!” She tugged up the short sleeve of her blouse and flexed, showing off a surprisingly toned upper arm. “I do pilates four days a week! I’m strong enough to cart around that little one.” Her body drifted to his, her head dropping to his shoulder for a moment, and Oliver’s breath caught at the sheer intimacy of having her that close while cuddling a baby. She seemed to realize the same because she stepped back and before he could process the loss of her against him, she asked, “Did you expect anything different of Luc and Lexi? Or the team?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’d be there, doing the same if it was any of the other guys. But because it was me…”
Gentle brown eyes on his. “Weird?”
A snort. “Weirder than anything I’ve experienced. Made harder by everyone expecting me to freak out.”
“I think it would be normal to freak out.”
His pulse sped. “And what would that get me?”
Her voice was even. “Closure? An emotional release? Acceptance?”
Anger coiled in his stomach, pushing out the humor and sensation of falling hard and happily. “And how will that change anything?”
“I’m not saying this as a therapist,” she said softly. Carefully. And he was brought back into her office earlier that day, to him losing his shit, to the guilt that he’d carried until he’d seen her that evening. Because she wasn’t a punching bag, and this wasn’t her fault.
Neither was the conversation.
She’d been open.
He was doing the same.
“I’m saying it as your friend,” she went on, just as soft, just as careful, and Oliver tempered his reaction, “as the woman who really, really enjoyed that kiss in the kitchen. Not that you’re going to get another one,” she added quickly, and a curl of amusement wrapped around him—bare feet walking along the shore, a wave dancing up the sand and just barely washing over his toes. But it was there, and the urge to lash out and push her away, to keep himself safe, dissipated. “I think there could be something helpful in a freak-out. I…had my fair share of them after Trevor decided to end things, and it released some of the fury that was tearing me up inside.”
He reached out, rubbed one of her curls between his fingers. “I wish you didn’t have to go through that.”
She rested her hand on his chest, leaned a little heavier into his side, still careful of the baby. “Right back at ya, big guy. And I think that’s why Luc, Lexi, and company are so worried. Luc especially, since he had that injury that ended his career. It threw him for a loop in a way that couldn’t have been easy to come back from, and for all intents and purposes, your injury was worse, you know?”
He processed that, still rubbing that curl, back and forth, back and forth.
He knew.
He understood that.
So, he nodded.
“But what they need to understand, and the part I missed enumerating to them, was that your feelings are your feelings. You don’t grieve via a playbook. You do it under your own terms and timeline, and that’s why you and I never would have worked.”
“Babe,” he warned.
She softened. “I’m referring to required therapy sessions, honey.”
He pulled lightly on the curl. “And not to the fact that both of us are considering how you and I might work in other ways?”
“Oliver,” she warned. But she didn’t back away, didn’t tug her head—her curl—out of his grip. She kept her body to his, her curl between his fingers, her scent to his nose.
“Don’t give me that bullshit about me being a client and you a therapist,” he said.
“It’s not bullshit, I—”
He fixed her with a glare. “We had two sessions together, and during the first one, I fixed your computer and asked you questions about yourself—which you answered, by the way, and based on the therapists that came to my room while I was in the hospital was very not therapist-esque.”
She winced, hurt streaking across her beautiful face.
Fuck. Shifting, he released her hair and caught her jaw instead. “Not a comment on you or your abilities, babe. You’re talented and smart, and I know that not just because I’ve spent time with you, but because Luc wouldn’t have hired you otherwise.”
Her throat worked.
He kept going. “So, the way I see it is that our first date was in your office, me fixing your laptop, you telling me about yourself. Our second date was this morning, and I almost blew it, but I redeemed myself with udon, dimmed lights, a candle, and music for our third date.” His thumb brushed her bottom lip. “And I waited until the third date for a kiss, even though I was desperate to do it from the moment I first saw you walking into the practice facility last year.”
Wide e
yes on his. “You were?”
A nod. “Until I saw that diamond ring on your left hand and realized someone had got there first.” Another brush of her bottom lip before he leaned close and whispered in her ear, “And I was still desperate to do it even after I saw the ring.”
She shuddered. “So, the music wasn’t just about doing something nice?”
“Hell no.” He nipped her earlobe. “It was about you and me and making it clear to you that I am as far away from a client as I can be.” Oliver straightened, her curls clinging to the stubble on his cheek, wafting that floral and sweet scent into the air. “It wasn’t about me getting something. It was me making a point that you’re a woman I want to know better. Though what I already know about you means that you deserve the romance, the candles and music and dimmed lights and a hell of a lot more than that.” A brush of his knuckles over her skin. “It was me telling you that in no way do I consider our relationship anything resembling doctor-patient, and I hope to fuck that you don’t because I want to take you out on date four.”
The only noise was the breeze through the trees, rattling the leaves, mingling in with the sound of their breaths, the soft hoot of an owl, the occasional rumble of a car driving in the distance. For far too long that was it.
He’d laid it out there.
And she’d gone silent.
And stiff.
He couldn’t miss that either. She was still next to him, her front pressed to his side, her hand on his chest, but she might as well have become a statue instead of a living, breathing woman.
But he’d just given her a lot to process, so he waited.
Quietly.
Absorbing the noise of the busier street in the distance, the critters making themselves at home during the night, the leaves rustling, the way her breathing had been short and staccato and a bit loud, but how it was now slowing and evening out and growing quiet.
He knew she was going to speak before her soft words filled the air. He’d sensed something in her body, the way the space around her shifted, the slightest bit of easing in the tension filling her frame.
“I liked the music,” she whispered.
His breath slid from his lips on a long, slow exhale, heart pounding because some part of him had been worried she would deny it—the draw, the connection, the tractor beam pulling them together.
“I did, too.”
She relaxed. Her head came against his shoulder, and they stood there, the night sounds surrounding them all over again.
At least until he said, “So, am I going to get a date four?”
Tilting her head up brought her body away from his—which he didn’t like—but it brought her mouth in line with his—which he liked for obvious reasons. Then she smiled, and he knew he had to taste her, date four on the line or not.
He bent, felt her warm breath on his lips.
And then the sliding glass door opened behind them.
Luc stumbled out onto the patio, his hair askew, his shirt wrinkled, and if Oliver was seeing correctly, the imprint of his watch on his cheek.
“Argh,” Luc grunted, not quite human yet as he rubbed his eyes.
Hazel stepped away.
“Why don’t you go back to sleep?” she said. “We have Noah.”
Green eyes were slowly clearing. “I—”
Footsteps on the wood floor behind Luc, Lexi slipping through and shutting the door that Luc had left open. She’d been asleep for a shorter amount of time, but it appeared to have refreshed her. Either that or she just was better upon waking, because those dark circles were still there, fatigue was still written into the lines of her face. Oliver made a mental note to talk to Luc about a night nurse.
Hazel took another step back.
Lexi scooped up Noah. “My baby,” she crooned to the sleeping infant—sleeping because he appeared to have absolutely no problem with going to bed…so long as that bed was someone’s arms. Luc stumbled over, rubbed a hand over his face, and stared down at his son with such adoration on his face that it made Oliver’s heart skip a beat.
The moment thoroughly broken, Hazel bustled toward the house. “If you two won’t go back to sleep,” she said all business-like, “let’s at least get you something to eat.” She headed for the kitchen, tossing over her shoulder for them to follow, telling them about the dinner they’d missed that could be easily heated up.
Lexi stroked a finger down Noah’s nose then followed.
Luc trailed her—a ship to a tractor beam.
Just like Oliver followed Hazel, slipping into the kitchen and helping with the heating up. Because Luc and Lexi needed to eat, but also, because…Hazel.
They fed the tired parents.
They chatted for a few minutes.
Then they let the tired parents get on with their evening, Luc and Lexi walking them to the door, waving goodbye from the porch as he and Hazel got into their respective cars.
Which meant that, in the end, he didn’t get another opportunity for a second kiss.
Nor for confirmation of that “fourth” date.
Chapter Ten
Hazel
She slept soundly through the night, very glad she didn’t have a newborn.
The next morning, she woke with sunlight glimmering through a piece of stained glass hanging on her window that made little rainbows appear on her bedspread. Blues and greens and purples. Her favorite. Mixed with a bit of orange—her mom’s favorite—and gray—her dad’s.
Yup.
Her dad’s favorite color was gray.
Well, graphite, if she were being precise.
Which she wasn’t.
It was Wednesday morning and that was her late day and that meant she got to sleep in and not worry about being precise or getting to the rink early.
She could lounge in bed, read for an hour, stumble downstairs for coffee, and then slowly greet the day.
So that’s what she did.
Lounging. Trying not to drop her paperback on her face when she rolled over from one side to the other while continuing to read. Then, eventually, tugging on a pair of old jeans, a Breakers hoodie, and doing that stumbling so she could ingest some caffeine.
Hair into a ponytail.
Feet in sneakers.
The team was away and so she would play.
It was after ten by the time she rolled into the practice facility, sipping on a traveler mug of coffee, still smiling from the happily ever after she’d read, and anxious to get started on her work. She’d come up with a new plan for Marcel, who had been struggling the last couple of games. Truthfully, he hadn’t been right since Mark Shelby had fucked his girlfriend—and seriously, Shelby had a special place in Hell reserved just for him. Marcel had pulled it together for the most part, but he was streaky, and that made it difficult for the coaching staff to rely on him.
Which Marcel knew.
Which then made Marcel even more insecure and even more streaky, even though he worked really, really hard at being consistent.
He was at the rink before everyone else, stayed longer, worked hard. Always did extra reps, extra conditioning, extra skating. All in all, he was a totally awesome guy, was beyond sweet, and was just too much in his head. So…she would find a way to get him out of his head.
That was where her plan came in.
For now, though, she had some paperwork to complete, some emails to send, and then some pieces to put into place for her plan with Marcel.
She was grinning about that, about her book, about the really nice night she’d had with Oliver last night, so that might be why she didn’t immediately notice that her couch wasn’t empty.
Dropping her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk, opening her laptop, settling into her chair, fingers on her mouse to click—
“Holy fucking mother of fuck!” she gasped, her hand coming to her chest.
Because Oliver was on her couch.
Sprawled out, hands folded behind his head, and smiling at her like it was the most natural thing
in the world for him to be on her couch.
“That’s a twist on the f-word I haven’t heard before,” he said, sitting up and crossing to her.
“Wh-what are you doing in here?”
He perched on the edge of her desk. “I brought you coffee.” He nodded next to her laptop—where she was now noticing there was a cup of coffee with Oliver’s name written on the outside of the paper cup. “I just expected you in…” He glanced at his smartwatch. “Two hours ago…”
“You’ve been on my couch for two hours?”
What the actual—
“No.”
She relaxed.
“I’ve been on your couch”—another glance at his watch—“two hours and twenty-three minutes.” He bent, ran his knuckles over her cheek. “Worth every minute of it to see you walking in here with that gorgeous smile on your face.”
Her lips parted, whatever she might have said just flitting out of her mind.
“I—what?”
“Why were you smiling, gorgeous?”
He was the one who was gorgeous. He was the one who was smiling.
But again, her being comfortable with saying whatever was flitting through her mind last night was rearing its not-so-ugly head that morning because…she just told him what had made her smile. “My book, my plan for Marcel, and…you.”
That sent him rocking back slightly, his fingers gripping the edge of her desk. “Me?”
“Last night.”
Smug approval sliding across his face. “Date four?”
She didn’t touch that. Just lifted her brows.
Amusement joined the approval, and he bent at the waist, his fingers coming to her jaw, stroking lightly along it. “I see I may have to go for that second kiss before I get you to agree to that.”
Her heart thudded. Hard. “What?”
“What book were you reading?”
Her brows drew together. “What?” she asked again.
“What were you reading that put a smile on your face, babe?”
She told him. Again.
“Romance?” he asked when he heard the title, his lips curving.
She didn’t like that smile, didn’t like where that was likely going, the derision that would follow. She brushed his hand aside, poked him in the chest. “Yes. Romance. And don’t give me any crap about reading smut or books with happy endings. I love it and the world needs more books written by women and for women from a woman’s point of view. Plus, normalizing sex is a good thing, especially healthy and kinky and fun sex. And—”
