Good Guy

by Kate Meader

  Control the narrative.

  He tugged at the collar of his button-down before realizing that he wasn’t wearing the suit and tie he’d walked into the hotel with. It just felt that way. Fuck, he was nervous.

  Jordan made him nervous. Mostly, he had no idea how to act around her.

  He’d tried the asshole approach. She’d seen right through that.

  Plan B was the kiss-her-breathless strategy that had only made him hot, bothered, and blue-balled.

  Now he was going for Plan C: Cool politeness. He’d “yes, ma’am” her into a coma and ensure any sparks he imagined between them were well and truly dampened.

  “Kraken!”

  He turned to see the boys heading his way: Petrov, Burnett, Jorgenson, and Kershaw.

  “You waiting for us?” Theo looked behind them back toward the elevator, out of which Jordan was (in)conveniently stepping. Her cute, floral print dress showcased her perfect legs. She bent over, fixing her heel, and gave everyone a peek-a-boo view of the shadow between her breasts. “Or you waiting for her?”

  Jordan approached, her smile luminous and catching somewhere right in the middle of Levi’s chest. “Hey, guys! Heading out to paint the town?”

  Erik’s gaze turned dreamy. “We’re going to dinner, Jordan. You should join us.”

  “Wish I could, but I’m on the clock, Fish. Got to pry some words out of this guy.” She thumbed in the direction of Levi.

  “Sounds dull,” Theo said. “Tellin’ ya, Hockey Grrl, I have so much to share with your listeners. I’ve been doing some research on average hip-to-flank measurements for NHL players and—”

  The boys groaned.

  “All right, enough of this.” Vadim slapped a big paw on Theo’s shoulder, encouraging him forward. “Our new star has important media duties to perform. Let us leave him to it. No revealing any locker-room secrets, Hunt.”

  “Aye, captain.” At least Petrov understood that this was just business. Dinner with the media. No big deal.

  The ragtag crew headed off, but were accosted by a group of women near the revolving door. One of them screamed, “Theo!” and thrust a sharpie at him so he could sign her Rebels jersey. Big grins all around, then Theo was signing T-shirts and purses and even a forearm. Levi almost envied the ease with which the kid took it all in his stride.

  “Kershaw really wants on your podcast,” he muttered to Jordan.

  “Yeah, I got that. He’s such a sweetheart.”

  Of course she’d see him like that. The guy was a charmer through and through, and if the big-assed doofus wasn’t such a ladies’ man, he would probably be a good fit for Jordan.

  Idle thought: Had she hooked up with the lawyer yet?

  She grabbed his arm. “Oh! So I’ve got a good one: why do hockey players never sweat?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “They have too many fans! Get it?”

  “I do. Unfortunately.” Stop being so cute.

  Two minutes later they were in the back of a slow-crawling taxi and Levi was questioning every single one of his life choices. The cab had the usual weird odor of New York transport, barely masked by a car freshener Levi thought wasn’t even made anymore. But Jordan’s scent still rose above it and made his balls zing.

  “What’s your usual routine the night before an away game?”

  “Eating with the crew. Video games in Petrov’s suite. He usually books a bigger place.”

  “Right, all those inherited rubles. So no heading out to have a little fun like the other guys?” She raised an eyebrow at the mention of the word “fun,” no doubt, teasing him because he wasn’t known for his outgoing manner.

  “Not really my style. And tonight, I have to talk to you.”

  She gave a look of faux-pity. “You get a lot of offers since you got the call to the big leagues? Or even before?”

  “Pro athletes aren’t hard up for company. Guys at this level are in their prime and women are usually throwing themselves at them. But there’s a midnight curfew that the team is serious about.”

  “Hmm,” was all she had to say to that.

  A few minutes later, he was holding the door open to a taqueria on the lower east side. He’d been coming here since he was old enough to ride the train from Hoboken into the city. A hole-in-the-wall, it was about as far from romantic as any place could be. No one could mistake this for a date, especially him.

  Pretty busy, it took a few minutes for them to clear off a table in the corner. Chips and salsa were thrown down with attitude.

  “You want a margarita? They’re really good here.”

  “You having one?”

  He shook his head. He never drank the night before a game.

  “I’ll stick with water then.” When the server had left, Jordan took a good look around, which gave him a chance to watch her. She wore hardly any makeup, which highlighted the smattering of freckles across her nose and made her look young and vulnerable. “How’d you find this place?”

  “My dad boxed at a gym around the corner, and I’d take the train in from Jersey to watch him.”

  “He passed away when you were pretty young, right?”

  “Yeah, when I was fifteen. Pneumonia.”

  “Who’d you live with after?”

  “A couple of distant relatives until I started college on my hockey scholarship. This is all common knowledge. Rebels PR probably has a one-pager on it.” When she didn’t look interested in that version, he went on. “My dad wasn’t that good a boxer, to be honest, and he stayed in the business long past his prime. Got pounded one too many times, had constant ear infections, which lowered his immune system.” He rubbed his mouth, trying to eliminate the bad taste at the memory. “He encouraged me to play hockey. Always said that’s how I’d make the family proud. And when he was gone, I wondered if that was good enough. If hockey was good enough.”

  “If you were good enough.”

  Levi met her gaze head on. “When someone leaves us too soon, you start to question everything. You want to be sure that you’re honoring them with how you live.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself,” she said quietly. “Might be enough to do what makes you happy.”

  Christ, how did this get so serious so fast? But that was Jordan. She made him think and say things he’d never think or say around anyone else. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I put in my time in the service and when I was done, I figured I had this second act left in me.”

  “Talent doesn’t fade.”

  “Oh, it fades. I just work my ass off to make sure I can stay with the pack. Every team turned me down but the Rebels. They seem to like going against the grain.”

  “Three women and an openly gay GM—yeah, that might be considered going against the grain.” She dipped a chip in the house salsa. “Some people have big problems with the team management. Think it’s a little unorthodox.”

  He let his eyes indulge for a forbidden moment while she popped the chip past her lush lips. “You trying to get me to trash the Chase sisters and Moretti on the record?”

  “Just want to hear what you think.”

  “All I care about are results. Their first year out they won the Cup, the second year, they made the finals. Last couple of seasons weren’t so great for them, but they had a few changes with St. James retiring and throwing off the dynamic. Guy was a recovering alcoholic and by all accounts, a bit of an asshole—”

  “Your kind of player.”

  Do not smile. “But he and DuPre held the team together. New blood can take a while to start flowing to the heart and get all the limbs pumping.”

  “You’ve got to prove yourself.”

  “We all do, but especially me.”

  A little divot appeared between her brows. “Because you’re not sure you deserve your place?” She paused and added, “On the team?”

  He rolled his shoulders, seeking a tension drain that refused to come. On the team, on this earth, breathing her air …

 
“We all suffer from impostor syndrome on occasion. Well, except you. You’ve always seemed so sure about everything.”

  Her mouth twitched in surprise.

  Shit, he’d made a mistake. Not the impostor syndrome comment but his remark about her. An astute observer might think he’d spent a little too much time analyzing one Jordan Cooke.

  “Everyone has doubts,” she said, slowly, and he could almost hear the wheels turning as she figured out how to use this new information to press home an advantage. An even more astute observer might say he’d given her the opening—on purpose. “But I’ve always been fairly comfortable in my own skin. Is that why you don’t like me? Or at, least didn’t back then?”

  “You keep saying that. I’m not sure where you got that idea.”

  “How about the fact that every time we met back in the day, you scowled at me like I’d killed your puppy or cat or hamster or cockroach because now I’m doubting you’d have a normal pet?”

  Levi wanted to laugh, such a foreign impulse. He fought it off, but there was no fighting off his next words. No wanting to.

  “Jordan, I like you plenty. In fact, I think you’re the sexiest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

  * * *

  Jordan’s mouth dropped open. She’d clearly fallen through a trap door in this universe and had landed in an alternate reality. Levi Hunt had just called her beautiful and sexy.

  No. The sexiest, most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

  Bonus: he liked her! He’d said it out loud, before God and everything.

  “But, the scowling!”

  “Did you see me smiling at anyone else?”

  She thought about it for a second. “Well, no. But you dealt extra servings of disgust in my direction.”

  “I can’t really help that I have resting scowl face, Jordan. I’m not the most expressive guy.”

  With anyone else she’d buy that. Might even feel sorry for them, forced to navigate a world of happy-sappiness that went against their natural makeup. She was innately cheerful and recognized that not everyone had it in them. But she wasn’t mistaken in thinking Levi had once had a particular gripe with her.

  “But you were such a jerk.”

  “I’m going to be honest here.” This clearly pained him greatly. “When you and Cookie married, I didn’t approve.”

  “What? Why?” She’d suspected this but hearing it confirmed threw her.

  “You were both so young. I mean, really young. Working in Special Forces is already stressful enough. Add to that, the weight of trying to make a relationship, a marriage, succeed, a lot of it long-distance, and that’s hell on anyone. You seemed like a nice girl—”

  She cocked her head.

  He cocked his right back, which made her laugh. What the hell.

  “Woman. But Josh was on months-long missions, doing things he couldn’t share with you. He told me that it was tough on you both because you’re the kind of woman who wants to talk. All the fucking time.”

  She smiled, accepting that as a compliment. “It makes me good at my job. I have thoughts. I ask questions. I use my words. You should try it sometime.”

  Briefly, he looked to the heavens, but for the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t seem to take offense. Or perhaps she was learning to read him better.

  “I know that Josh not being able to confide in you on everything as well as the time away on missions took its toll.”

  “We made it work.”

  “You did. What I’m trying to say is that I thought you were beautiful and funny and perfect for him. This was never a case of not liking you. If anything, I …” He halted, grimaced.

  “What?” Don’t stop now, Hunt!

  “I was jealous. Josh had found his soulmate and I would have liked to have something—someone—to fight for like that. Like you.”

  Jordan’s heart melted at his sincerity. Josh had always looked up to Levi, who seemed older than everyone on the team. Actually, only by a few months but in spirit, he was wise beyond his years, who knew himself and his men. She wasn’t mature enough to understand that at the time, and instead assumed his attitude was based on something superficial like her raucous laugh or her in-your-face personality.

  She took a chance. “Were you attracted to me back then?”

  “Yes.”

  She’d thought it would be hard to get Levi to open up. Not at all. She just had to ask the right questions.

  “And now?” She held her breath.

  “Did you not hear what I said about you being the most beautiful, sexiest woman I’ve ever met?”

  He had said that, and she’d dismissed it as impossible. Yet Levi was honest to a fault, every word from his mouth deliberately chosen. Something was happening here, something miraculous, strange, and more than a little terrifying.

  “We should get back to the interview.” She flipped a page on her notebook, her hand shaking. “I have all these questions.”

  He didn’t respond and suddenly, she was afraid to look at him. Afraid of what she’d see in those damnably blue eyes, things she’d ignored all those years ago.

  Before she could shape her next query, he said, low and husky, “I keep thinking about how you taste.”

  She inhaled a shuddering breath. Moving forward and ignoring that comment would be best. What was it she wanted to know? Something about the NCAA? Hockey player diets? The words blurred before her eyes as a heavy heat pumped though her veins, slow and syrupy.

  “How did I taste?” Wrong question!

  “Sweet. Hot.” His inhale sounded labored. “My end.”

  My God. “Levi …” She looked up, meeting his gaze at last. It was only a kiss. Why was it imbued with all this significance?

  Because of Josh?

  She’d felt guilty when she kissed Levi that first time, the day she buried her husband. But not now. Now she felt torn because she couldn’t kiss or touch or stroke or—stop, stop, stop—do anything with the subject of a story. Besides, it was merely lust. She and Levi had nothing in common beyond the sports connection. They weren’t compatible in any way … except for how their mouths and bodies fit. Pure chemistry.

  “Why would I taste like … your end?”

  “After that kiss, I brushed my teeth, sloshed with mouthwash, tried to gargle you away. But it was like your scent was in my pores and on my sheets, embedded in my pillow. Woke up the next day as hard as granite.”

  Was it her imagination that he had leaned in? Or perhaps she’d inched toward him, drawn to his solidity and maleness and every crazy-hot word passing from his crazy-hot lips.

  “That kiss, your mouth, is all I can taste,” he continued. “And you here, so close, is making me hard again.”

  “You mean …?” Her X-ray vision was on the fritz tonight so she couldn’t see through the table. She would, however, take his word for it.

  His nostrils flared and his lips parted, but no words emerged. He was waiting for something—perhaps, for her to make a move or ask a question.

  Does it hurt? That was what she wanted to ask, followed by: What can I do to help? But she couldn’t help. This was all so deliciously wrong.

  “We probably should …” She gestured at the phone to indicate that they still had an interview to complete but her fingertips brushed against his. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” he said in a way that assured her it was most definitely not okay. The tension between them smothered.

  “Would you rather we continued this another time?”

  “Is my hard-on interfering with your ability to ask questions?”

  She laughed, and—amazingly—he joined in.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, self-deprecating humor she hadn’t heard before in his tone. “That was inappropriate of me to even bring it up.” He blushed—blushed!—at the phrasing, which sent her into a giggle fit.

  Bring it up. Oh God.

  Might be best to just lean into it. “Want to expand on that? Your fans would love that inside angl
e. Have you ever had, uh, a similar problem on the ice? During practice? At a game? Let’s discuss the erection-suppressing power of cups!”

  “Jordan …” he warned, but he was still laughing, his eyes crinkly at the corners, his lips curved with the joy they were sharing. Hearing him let loose like this was a revelation.

  “No, seriously, Levi. This is why I got into sports journalism, to be able to ask the hard questions. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen another guy’s stiffie in the communal shower. Your public deserves to know.”

  “The answers to your questions are no, no, no, and I don’t look at any of my teammates’ junk if I can help it. Got enough problems having to listen to Kershaw’s moaning about his thick ass and how suit pants are not built for a man of his superior glutinous proportions.”

  “Wow, you guys really get deep in that locker room.” With a giggle-quashing inhale, she looked at her notes again, then back up with a sly glance. “Calmed down a bit?”

  “They say humor can deflate the biggest problems but a beautiful woman’s smile won’t help in the slightest.”

  She had to say she was fairly pleased to hear that.

  12

  “To new jobs and new opportunities.”

  Jordan clinked the wine glass of her friend Sandra Watson, a baseball reporter living in New York. They’d graduated the same class at Syracuse and Sandy had made a name for herself as the Mets beat reporter for the New York Post.

  “Thanks, lady. It feels pretty surreal.”

  “Always knew you had it in you. How are you handling the trolls?”

  Jordan lifted one shoulder. “Like any job, there’s always going to be some toxic elements, but I can manage.”

  “Because if you say you can’t, you look weak. We all do.”

  Sandy had been doing this longer than Jordan, so she undoubtedly had terrible tales to tell. Of course, every woman had damage. Pro sports was a patriarchal system, with a deck stacked so high that not even a woman in high heels could see over it.

  “Can’t exactly bite the hand. But I have to say that so far all the guys I’ve encountered on the Rebels have been nothing but respectful.” A couple of weeks ago, Theo had even apologized to her for a slightly risqué comment that had gone ten miles over her head.