by RJ Scott
He seemed uncomfortable at first, and pressed his lips together with his gaze fixed past my shoulder. I wasn’t clever enough to hazard a guess at what was going through his mind, but when he let out a soft sigh, I really hoped that he’d tell me something real.
“I’m a former US Marine.” He let the information settle, and I think he was expecting me to ask searching questions, but for some reason my messed up head only knew one fact about Marines, and I blurted it out before my brain connected to control my mouth.
“Hudson was a US Marine.” What the fuck? Why the hell did I say that?
He looked interested. “Hudson? Where was he based?”
Shit, he was interested, as if we might have had this Hudson guy in common, some kind of mutual friend, instead of my freaking brain having a nerd meltdown.
“He’s a character in a movie, and I don’t know why I… he’s in Aliens,” I tried to hide the huge amounts of embarrassment, then I changed the subject after I’d probably belittled his service. “Why a former Marine?”
“Took a bullet or two, medically discharged, created Deamax.”
“What do you mean created?”
“I’m the Dea part of Deamax,” he said. Then he loomed over me and his voice deepened, “I have a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” My chest tightened and I blinked at him as he snorted a laugh. “Liam Neeson, Taken. I thought we were doing movies.”
I clutched my chest. “Jesus,” I managed, and he was contrite at first, and then he grinned.
“My bad.”
After my heart returned to its normal rhythm, I wanted the conversation back on an even keel.
“Does that mean I’m special because I get the owner of the company?” I waited for more, but he didn’t offer anything else. I was just going to ask him more when my cell vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to see Kyle’s name on the screen. “I need to get this,” I said, and waved my phone in front of me before answering. “K.”
“Saw that post dude, what happened?”
“Team prank,” I lied.
“That’s kind of out there for a prank.”
“You know what it can be like.”
I managed to talk a whole lot to Kyle without once mentioning the stalker issue, which was hard because I shared everything with him. By the time I’d finished the call, shooting the shit and swapping ideas for the bachelor event, I was tired. Jason was on his laptop, deep in thought, and even though it was only nine p.m. I was ready to get some sleep.
“Think I might hit the hay,” I announced.
“Cool. Your schedule has you at practice tomorrow. Nine a.m., do you want to leave here at eight?”
“Seven-thirty, and I stop at Martha’s bakery, where I promise not take a photo in case my stalker tracks me down and pelts me with stale cookies.” I waved my hands as if I was panicking.
He shook his head in that way some coaches did when they thought I wasn’t taking things seriously. Of course that didn’t happen often, I hadn’t gotten to where I was by fucking about on the ice. Still, I loved that he was shaking his head as if I was an idiot. That was my happy place, making people smile, and I needed that tonight. He regarded me thoughtfully and I knew that he was going to say something profound about Martha’s or baked goods, or saving my life.
“That is not a good idea,” he said as I expected he would.
“It’s non negotiable,” I stayed as firm as I could.
He huffed irritably. “The bakery is a predictable routine and you need to break that. How about you do something spontaneous instead, keep yourself on the down low. Maybe you could buy your breakfast at a gas station.”
So serious.
I pressed a hand over my heart and fake-gasped. “But how will my followers know which muffin is Martha’s baked product of the day if I don’t post about it?”
He gave me the middle finger then, but he wasn’t pissed at me and there was even the hint of a smile. I went into my bedroom and shut the door, with one thought—that the next few days could end up being fun, if I got Jason to smile again.
Chapter Six
We didn’t go to Martha’s for muffins for four entire days, even though I started to get withdrawal symptoms and kept saying that not going was messing with my game. Some players had lucky pants, or a ritual of fist bumps with a fellow skater, all in the name of good luck. I had the entire process of buying muffins, and that included where I parked, who I spoke to, and what time I went.
Predictable equals unsafe.
I got that Jason was just doing his job, but we’d settled into this uneasy silence where we’d moved from exchanging smiles and had moved to me pushing his buttons and him frowning at me on more than one occasion. This was because after our easygoing first night he’d spent a lot of time telling me what kind of things could hurt me, and how it was his job to not let those things hurt me.
To him it was simple. I stayed inside my apartment and the boogeyman didn’t get me. I think he even resented that we had to go to the arena each day. But that was my job, whether it be for conditioning or practice, not to mention an antsy home game against a snapping Dallas team that had resulted in the biggest amount of penalty minutes in any game so far this season.
It started out normal enough, just a battle for the puck, but then Simba was called on a tripping penalty, and Loki was in on the action accusing the Dallas player, a thick-set Russian called Ivanov, of embellishment.
Everyone paired up to break the fight apart, but when one of the D-Men got a hit in on me, I was ready to drop the gloves and go for the takedown.
Weeks of stress and fear wrapped up in me dropping the Dallas guy in one, leaving him floundering on the ice, with me jumping on top of him. Referees tried to break us apart, but the asshole had my sweater, pulling it up and over my head, trying to drag it off me, and there was no fucking way that was happening.
Anyone watching was going to be absolutely sure that I wasn’t backing down when someone took liberties.
I punched at him, but he’d rolled to one side, and I had to pull the punch at the last minute before I cracked my hand on the damn ice. He took the opportunity, shoving me onto my back as I lost balance, and then Loki was there, dragging the guy off, shouting about Stokesy, our man in net, fronting off against the Dallas goalie.
This was turning into a yard sale, gloves and sticks all over the ice, Loki and the ref pulling the rookie off me, but I wasn’t done.
I had a fucking stalker, and he was making my life a misery and I was fucking done with it all.
I flailed out, catching the ref, Loki grabbing my hand, telling me to stop, and just as the adrenalin began to subside, the damn Dallas player caught my chin, and I felt the pain explode on my face, and tasted blood where a tooth split my lip inside.
Somehow, seeing blood on my hand, lifting my fingers to the cut on my chin, and seeing the scarlet there made me give in.
Flash fire, but as quickly as the fire had started, it stopped, exhausted of the temper and stress I held inside.
Stokesy and the Dallas goalie snapped and snarled at center ice, but fighting in goalie gear is hard at the best of times, and they ended up flailing around, taking it in turns to smack at each other.
Loki stick-tapped my calf, I did the same back, and we headed for the exit. With no time left in this period the penalties would be assessed with us off ice. I knew I was injured, but it had stopped bleeding, and I felt good.
Take that stalker! You fucking asshole. Look what I can fucking do.
“In here, now!” Jason snapped at me, before Coach could get anywhere near me, and dragged me into a room before shutting the door.
Five minutes he shouted at me, and I didn’t think he realized that he was scaring me as much as the stalker was.
“And then you deliberately get into a fight!” he shouted.
“And you’re making me jump at every single fucking thing!�
� I yelled even louder, because in the skate-sharpening room only the team would hear, and they’d already given me shit about having a bodyguard, and they knew I was pissed.
“You’re an idiot, Howell!”
“You nearly killed that fan waiting by the practice arena door, yesterday—”
“He wanted to hug you!”
“Hug! That’s the fucking point!”
“And what if he had a knife? Huh?”
“He didn’t have a knife!”
“You don’t know that!”
“I saw you pat the guy down. Did he have a knife?”
“That’s not the point!”
“That’s exactly the point! And what about the pizza delivery guy last night? You made him cry!”
He slammed a hand to the wall next to my head, and loomed toward me. In skates I was at his height, but he had this intimidation technique honed. “You make me so mad,” he snarled. Then, visibly pulling himself together, he moved away, and hit the door at his back, pushing a hand through his hair in exasperation.
“Don’t. Fucking. Fight. For no reason,” he finished, then pulled open the door to expose a pissed-off Coach who took one look at me and Jason and cursed loudly.
Of course, things didn’t stay quiet. I didn’t know if it was the fan or the pizza dude who’d made the first post, and I guess that Jason may have been able to find out, but the tweet had appeared on day whatever of our forced proximity. I was losing count of days and times, and everything was a blur.
Jason was pissed, and I knew it, because he was pacing my apartment and holding his iPad in front of him.
“Minecraft23_666.” He imbued that word with so much disgust I nearly laughed. “This asshole says, and I quote, it must be bad if a freaking hockey player needs protection, unquote. Look.” He thrust the phone under my nose, and I frowned at it, and then at him.
“Minecraft23_666 only has fifty seven followers,” I said to calm him down, “he didn’t reference me, in fact, this might not be about me. Anyway, the tweet is old now, and only got a small amount of traction.”
“It’s about you, this is your pizza delivery guy.”
“What? How do you even know that?”
He ignored me. “You should have just let me answer the damn door.”
“And you shouldn’t have shoved me to one side with your hand on your sidearm, looking like some kind of reject from an action movie. Then he wouldn’t have thought anything at all.”
“He could’ve had a gun in that box.”
“But what he actually had was a pepperoni pizza with extra mushrooms—”
“Don’t answer your door again.”
“Jesus, I’m not a prisoner.”
He poked me in the chest. “You will be if you end up buried in a coffin.”
I grabbed at his finger. “How does that statement even make sense?”
He twisted my hold until I was pressed against the wall. “It makes sense to me,” he snapped.
Was it wrong that my dick twitched when I saw his mouth form those words? It didn’t feel wrong. In fact it felt more right than it had done on day one. Oh god, I was going to get hard and embarrass myself, but the fierce protectiveness in Jason was getting me all ramped up and it had been way too long since I’d gotten anything like decent sex.
Sex with Jason. Want. Now.
I’d seen small glimpses of the real Jason beneath that stoic mask. He didn’t like Sci-Fi, but he did like action movies. He didn’t like short episodic comedies but Saturday Night Live was his kryptonite. He buttered his toast sparingly, but had so much cream cheese on bagels that it was more spread than bread. He also whistled when he shaved, and ran his fingers over his smooth face at least twice when he was making coffee, probably checking for any places he’d missed.
What I wouldn’t give to be the one to trace my fingers over his cheekbones, to his chin, pressing on his lower lip and releasing the hold watching the plump—
“What?” He snapped me out of my daydreaming.
“What, what?”
“You’re staring at me and your face is all…” He stepped away from me and gestured at his own face and made this expression where he was staring into the distance with his mouth open.
Change the subject. Now.
“I was thinking, before we head to the arena for today’s team talk, I want to go to Martha’s,” I lied. As long as he didn’t notice my hard-on then I was golden, unless I could convince him that muffins turned me on.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me, the team hired me, not you.”
“You’re messing with my routine.” I shrugged on a jacket and grabbed my gloves and hat. “I’ll go on my own.”
He moved to block the door, and crossed his arms over his chest. “No, you’re not.”
“I need to go.”
“I’ll order a hundred freaking muffins in—”
“No, you don’t get it, I have this thing I do, and we’re at home to Toronto tomorrow and if I don’t do this thing today then I will fuck everything up. You saw what happened with the Dallas game.”
“You’re saying that shitfest was because you didn’t get your muffin?”
Okay, putting it like that made me sound stupid, and I wasn’t an idiot. We proceeded to have an epic stare down, when I could see his brown eyes had flecks of an even darker color in them. Also, I was way too close and inhaled the scent of him with every breath. He was gorgeous with those temptingly plump lips, the way he was narrowing his eyes in thought, looking all bad ass, and toppy, and freaking sexy.
So much for losing the erection.
He sighed and his shoulders dropped. “In and out, one muffin, no fancy coffee.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, staying serious even though inside I was doing a happy dance. I’d have felt so much more in control of everything if I could’ve just gotten back to some sort of routine, and stop messing with the rituals that brought me luck. He disappeared into his room, I heard some uncharacteristic banging around—he was normally so calm and quiet—then he was back out, holster on, shrugging his jacket on and scowling.
“Are we doing this thing or not?” he demanded. I guess he was angry and antsy because the discussion we’d had about heading out had come right on the tail of the Twitter sharing.
“We’re only leaving once you look less like you’re going to kill everyone.”
“I don’t look like I want to kill everyone.” He sounded tired, and worried, and even though I was getting my way, after four days, his constant attention was making me paranoid. He was supposed to be here keeping me safe, but in doing so, with such intensity, he was ramping up my fears.
“Then, stop frowning at people, and just for the record, you’re making me jump at my own shadow.”
“Seems everyone knows you have me around you, and you should be jumping at shadows if they want to hurt you.”
“Let me open the door at Martha’s and go in first.”
“No, because that is part of how I keep you safe.”
“Not this time, okay, it’s something I need to do.”
“I can’t believe you let routine define you—”
“Says the bodyguard who won’t change his routine for me.”
He muttered something under his breath that sounded like stupid-ass hockey idiots, or something like that. “Don’t blame me if you get killed,” he added louder, so I could hear.
My chest tightened, but I couldn’t give into that fear which threatened to consume me, and I needed to break the tension.
“So, Mr. Bodyguard, if someone throws a muffin at my head, will you move in front of me and take one for the team? Imagine the scene. I could cradle you in my arms as you lose the battle to live and then rail at the sky, nooooooooo!”
He shook his head, and muttered the single word, idiot, but there was that hint of a smile again, and it was a win for me. I didn’t have to fo
cus on dying today, I just needed to get my rituals out of the way and then I was set for tomorrow’s game.
Martha’s was a small out of the way bakery that I’d found on my first day as a rookie. I’d eaten a blueberry muffin that reminded me of the ones that Mamma P made, then had gotten a goal my first ever NHL game.
The causality was established. Eat a Martha’s muffin—play well.
And the opposite, don’t eat a muffin—spend entire game thinking about not eating the baked goods, and therefore fuck everything up.
Of course, it wasn’t that bad, but visiting it daily as part of both practice and game day rituals was a thing. I imagined it had a lot to do with a smiling Martha standing behind the counter, with her muffin of the day all ready to go for me. She was a huge fan, had the Dragons game schedule up on the wall, but from experience she knew what date I would need a muffin, or when I’d add coffee to the order, and when I didn’t, and why. On a game day I avoided coffee, on practice days I had coffee. It was as simple as that and I assumed the days I didn’t come in that the muffin she’d earmarked for me was sold to someone else. She never charged me for the baked goods, even though I always left ten dollars in the tip jar anyway. Apparently me sharing her specialty baked items on my Instagram had meant that the place was busy enough for her not to worry about the shop, or its income.
Jason was right about how my routine defined me, but that was what playing hockey was about. On a game day, I had a sixty-minute nap in the afternoon, a power nap I guess, and it was never more and never less. I ate well, my only indulgence was the muffin and my coffee, but when Jason parked my car in the lot out the back I felt nervous that my need for routine was making me vulnerable. I was also sulking, albeit in a grown-up way, because when we’d gotten down to my car, he’d informed me that he was driving. End of story.
“I have extensive training in evasive driving,” he began as soon as the doors were locked and we were safe inside.
“This is my car.”
