by G. K. Brady
And now she’d just leveled him by saying he was “fun to talk to” and that she was enjoying hanging with him. What? A beautiful, successful, intelligent woman like her? Must have been the martinis talking. Women didn’t tell him stuff like that. Ever. In fact, the shit they normally focused on—which always centered on the money or fame—Michaela hadn’t even brought up. The difference was refreshing, and his body was unfortunately taking note. He rolled his lips between his teeth and clamped down—hard—in a bid to get his libido under control. Usually not too difficult for him, but he was struggling with it tonight.
Not only was she turning out to be different than any other woman he’d met, she was different from the woman he’d assumed her to be; she was growing more attractive with every breath she took. And that was a problem.
He looked into her eyes, searching—practically praying—for a hint of deceit or her trying to stroke him, but all he saw looking back at him were those same eyes, big and clear, reminding him of a mountain lake shimmering with sunlight. Did the glasses normally obscure those liquid metal pools, the lush lashes, the—
For fuck’s sake! Knock it the hell off. You’re not the one drinking, dumbass.
“Okay,” he practically shouted, instantly regretting his volume when he registered her flinch. “Uh, I mean, thank you. I’m, uh, enjoying hanging with you too.” And yes, I’m older than the thirteen-year-old I sound like.
He offered her an awkward smile as an afterthought. Her gaze remained even, not giving away what thoughts lurked in her fascinating mind. She thinks you’re an idiot, and nothing you’re doing will counteract that. Ferguson was way better at this shit than Blake was. No wonder he could “close the deal” while Blake grappled with what the deal was.
Drumming his fingers on the edge of the tiny table to steady his jumpy nerves, he cleared his dry throat. “I believe there’s a question that still needs to be answered.”
“What was it again?”
What had he asked her? No idea. He was a transistor short of a full circuit. A chin strap short of a safely functioning helmet. A—
“I remember,” she enthused, saving him from himself. “My philosophy on romance. Er, love. Or was it relationships?”
He flicked his hand at her, going for a casual demeanor he was incapable of mustering. “All of the above.”
“Well, one might argue they’re quite different …” When he narrowed his eyes at her, she let out a very feminine, very pleasant giggle and kept going. “Message received. No attorney-speak.” Her eyes traveled up to the glass ceiling and back. “In a nutshell, I bought into the fairy tales I heard as a little girl, and I believe there’s someone out there who’s my perfect complement …”
Oh God, don’t say “the yin to my yang.” He found himself not wanting Michaela to be so … easily hoodwinked, like his sister with her inane rom-coms. Or so predictable. So cliché. Because she was anything but, and her quirkiness delighted him. Mesmerized him.
“… the mustard to my ketchup, the salt to my pepper, the soy sauce to my rice.” She paused and gave him a triumphant little grin. “How’s that for philosophy?”
“That’s … it’s brilliant!”
She blinked at him like a gnat had splattered itself against her eyeball. Not that he blamed her. He was acting certifiably idiotic.
“Which part?” she asked dubiously.
“The part about the mustard and ketchup pairing is my favorite.”
“Huh. Okay. So nothing about the philosophy itself. Just the … condiments?” Her grin turned impish. “Must be the food connection.”
He laughed again. He found himself doing that a lot around her. “Yeah, food kinda makes my world go round. So we’ve established that you have an unrealistically idealistic view of romantic relationships.”
“Wow. That’s a pessimistic way of looking at it.”
God, he had sounded pessimistic! It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in relationships, but he was skeptical one was in his future. The real deal, like what some of his teammates enjoyed. How would he find someone like they had when all he met were puck bunnies? A puck bunny could be the real deal, or she could be the woman who chased bragging rights or access to a player’s bank account. Some guys he knew had attached themselves to those girls, and for some it hadn’t ended well, while for others it had ended fine. But those guys had intentions shallower than those harbored by the girls they married: they’d been all about scoring trophy wives. His father had scored a trophy wife, except he’d deluded himself she was the real deal, gone all in, and had his heart ripped out.
“Frankly, I disagree that my view is unrealistic,” Michaela continued. “I think it’s a hopeful view. And if you aren’t going for an ideal, aren’t you setting the bar so low you’re practically guaranteeing you’ll never go higher? You didn’t get where you are in your profession by setting low expectations for yourself, did you?”
“No, but that’s different.” Isn’t it?
“How is it different? Don’t you have a certain level of expectation for your personal life? Goals you’re aiming for? So many points you want to rack up or retiring by a certain age, for instance?” She sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. The motion pulled her sleeve taut, exposing more delicately inked vines and flowers.
“No. Yes. Maybe.” He dragged his hand across his chin. “I haven’t really given it that much thought. It’s been all about my career, which, by the way, is real. Tangible. And, unlike relationships where at least one other person is involved, it’s within my control.”
One eyebrow arched. “You sure about that? What if you’re injured or you get traded?”
“Those possibilities are always there. Comes with the job. But in the meantime, how hard I push myself, how high I climb, is up to me, right? Yes, I’m part of a hockey team, but my individual effort is a solo journey. But that’s not true in relationships. That’s a team effort, and if the teammates don’t agree on the vision for that team, any amount of pushing by one partner isn’t going to work if the other isn’t willing to get on board. And that’s where the lack of control comes in.”
She paused for a beat as if marshaling her next counter. “I see what you’re saying, though I disagree on the lack of control. You always have control over yourself, and you shouldn’t give that up to the other person.” She raised her cocktail. “So you’re a cynic when it comes to matters of the heart. Does that come from experience?” Glass at her lips, she took a deep sip.
I’m a skeptic, and it comes from lack of experience. With no past relationships of his own to call upon, and the volatile one modeled by his parents, how was he equipped to untangle the good from the bad?
He twirled his nearly empty glass between his hands on the tabletop, calculating how to answer. “I don’t know that I’d classify myself as a cynic. I think I’m a realist, and yeah, that’s based on observation.”
“Okay. So what does a realist’s philosophy look like?” Her bright eyes were trained on his, her look one of curiosity, nothing more, as if she really wanted to understand his take on this particular subject. He felt safe being up front with her.
“I think we get dazzled from time to time by someone we think is the so-called ‘one,’ but it’s our minds and our libidos blowing smoke up our butts and letting the fantasies we’ve built up since childhood hack our common sense. Which blinds us to the pitfalls. I also believe we each have many possible partners, some better than others, and if we’re lucky, we find the best match and build a decent life with that person.” He shrugged.
She tilted her head to the side. “So tell me. Have you ever been dazzled, Blake Barrett?”
“Honestly? No.” The admission brought a twinge of melancholy to his soul.
Nodding, she smiled knowingly. “Because you’re a realist.”
He nodded back, though inside he questioned what the hell he was agreeing to. No one had ever pushed him to delve inside and examine these beliefs, and he sure as hell hadn’t pushed hims
elf. Did he buy into the dry philosophy he had spewed? Love and happily-ever-afters had been vague ideas lurking in some musty back closet of his mind. Lofty, unattainable goals for a guy like him. And it was nothing he’d ever shared with anyone, nothing he’d ever put into words before. Now that he just had, he wasn’t convinced they were true. He didn’t want to ponder it, not now, so he put the irritating thought aside.
“That must get lonely.” A hint of sadness flitted through her eyes. “You do realize you might change your tune if someone … dazzling … were to come along?”
Did he get lonely? Yeah, he did, which explained why he’d brought Sherry home the other night. While it might have let him lose himself for a few hours and scratch a very prickly itch, he was boggled by the fact that such an intimate act hadn’t filled anything inside him. Which sounded weird as he turned it over in his head. “Anything’s possible,” he conceded at last.
“Just look at our host and hostess”—she glanced over her shoulder at a thinning crowd before turning back to him—“and I think they completely smoke your theory. And that’s not all. I’ve met a handful of couples tonight who could give them a run for their money for Soul Mate Couple of the Year. And one of them is a teammate of yours.”
He smirked, taking the bait. “Which teammate?”
She sat up brightly. “Mac. His fiancée, Mia, is the one who got me the couch you helped move into my apartment. Did you see the way they sort of orbited around each other all night? Even when they weren’t ‘together,’ they were together, like some invisible rope bound them to one another.”
“Rope. That’s a good analogy. Makes me think of someone who’s hog-tied.”
She burst out with a mirthless laugh. “Wow, you are cynical. Seriously, I bet those two like being tied to one another. Keeps other people from trying to pull them apart, if nothing else. And if they aren’t soul mates, I’ll go on Soul Train and make a fool of myself dancing.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Soul Train? Seriously? Didn’t that die a long-overdue death a while ago?”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “My point exactly.”
Though he didn’t want it to, his mind detoured to the team goalie, Mac McPherson, whom Blake had partied with before the guy fell hard for Mia. No doubt about it, Mac was much happier since Mia had become a permanent—and the most central—fixture in his life.
“Come on. I’m sure you can think of at least one couple you couldn’t imagine without each other,” Michaela nudged so sweetly—dimple and all—that he found himself chuckling, and his mind vaulted to Dave Grimson.
When she raised an expectant brow, he elaborated. “Okay. Maybe one. Our team captain, Dave Grimson.” Dropping his voice, he leaned across the table, and she leaned in too, the intoxicating perfume he recognized from before wreathing his head. It was a soft scent, like wildflowers or fresh laundry or rain or … Shit! Now he was waxing poetic about perfume. He conjured the Grim Reaper’s resting mad face, and it wrenched him back to reality. “The guy scares the crap out of me and nearly everyone else, but he’s almost comical when his wife, Ellie, is around. His face transforms instantly”—he snapped his fingers for effect—“from fierce gladiator to melted butter the second his eyes land on her. I swear, he looks like badass Wade from Dead Pool with the cartoon bunnies and flowers tripping around his head.” So yeah, anything was possible, even if growing up with his parents had convinced Blake otherwise. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Tell them what?” Her eyes drifted to his mouth.
“That he scares the shit out of me.” He forced himself to sit upright so he could put space between them, and she sat back too. “Wait. You can’t tell anyone, right? Attorney-client privilege and all that?”
Her head wagged from side to side, causing her curls to bounce. “You’re not my client, so I can pretty much tell whomever I want.” She swiveled her head dramatically, as if looking for an audience to share the secret with, then her twinkling eyes landed back on him. “Except I won’t. Your secret’s safe with me, you cupid contrarian.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” he fake-protested. “I didn’t say I hated hearts and flowers.” Or did I? Thoughts were becoming more difficult to track. He decided to turn the tables on Michaela, whose expression had gone adorably mischievous again, though he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answer to his next question. “How about you? Ever been ‘dazzled’?” He bounced his eyebrows up and down in a bid to hide his uneasiness.
Her eyes circled the ceiling again. “Once. The guy I told you about,” she admitted, and his heart sank for some strange reason.
“The guy who married someone else.”
She nodded. “But now that I look back on it, I realize we were together because it was convenient.” Her eyes stabbed his with an intensity that made him squirm. “Had we stuck it out, we both would have been settling, which would have been extremely sad.”
“Do you still, ah, see him?”
“No, not for a long time. Which is as it should be.”
A frisson of relief sped through him. He laced his fingers together and rested his forearms on the table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir up bad memories.”
She gave him a warm smile. “You didn’t. So what’s your excuse for your world view? You sound like someone with firsthand knowledge in the broken-heart department.”
Damn, he hated when those childhood memories bubbled up to the surface, jabbing at him. They were treading over rocky ground, and despite the discomfort he always felt when his thoughts turned to the mess that had been his parents’ marriage, he found himself wanting to open up to Michaela. Well, not the whole ugly story—he’d never shared that—but some of it anyway.
“My parents met in college. He was from a small rural town in eastern Oregon, going to school on a scholarship, and she was a spoiled rich girl from an upper-class family in Lake Oswego. His world was hard work on a ranch, and hers was debutante balls and prom-queen parades. Talk about your opposites. The pictures of my mom from then … She was gorgeous, a real looker, as my dad would say. He was so in love with her that he couldn’t admit to himself what a piece of work she was. They got married right after Dad finished college. Apparently, she was a big party girl in school, and she never slowed down.
“My childhood memories of my mother aren’t pleasant. She was a raging alcoholic with a quick, nasty temper who was a huge believer in corporal punishment. Sometimes she’d go off on benders and disappear for weeks at a time, which was a relief for me, but it left my dad juggling a little kid while holding down a full-time job. One time, when I was about five, she was gone for months, then just showed back up as if nothing had happened, and he took her back.”
Michaela’s mouth hinged open and quickly shut again. “How did he manage when she wasn’t there?”
“His sister, my aunt, stepped in. My memories of her are a little sketchy, but I remember her smelling like garlic. Funny what you remember as a kid. I don’t think she liked me much. Anyway, I always thought he’d get fed up and walk, but he didn’t. Not even after I left to billet with another family. The only way he escaped his lousy marriage was by dying a few years ago.”
Before his dad died, he’d taught Blake that women were to be protected, cherished—and forgiven for their sins. Blake had no problem with the first two, but swallowing the third one was like inhaling a thistle that clawed its way down his throat. That principle had destroyed his dad, but clinging to it as he had might also have allowed his father to justify what his mom had done.
“I am so sorry, Blake.” Michaela reached out and traced his knuckles with soft fingertips.
“The thing is,” he continued, not daring to move his hand, “they’d been crazy in love in the beginning … not that I was there back then. How does something so good go so wrong?”
“I don’t know, but it does, and it sounds like you witnessed only the crummy years.” She let out a sad sigh. “It makes perfect sense to me now that you’d be cynical, ske
ptical—guarded might be the right word—about getting close to someone.” Her hand closed around his. “He must have been very proud of you.”
“Yeah, he was pretty pleased when I made it to The Show. That’s a good memory.” His dad—and mom—had been there draft day, and Blake would forever remember the tears spilling down his dad’s cheeks. Blake’s chest compressed with emotion as the vision came swimming back.
“What other good memories do you have of your dad?” Michaela murmured.
He choked out a laugh, breaking the bands loose. “He used to take me fishing, just the two of us. We had this little beat-up aluminum boat, and we’d spend the whole day on a lake chasing largemouth bass. He’d pack bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, and I swear they tasted like gourmet food. Fun times. And so damn peaceful being out there on the water.” Blake’s lips hitched up as scenes from his past danced through his head. “Treasure those moments,” his mother’s voice hiccupped in his head, and the idyllic images dissolved. Such irony that those words came from her.
Michaela withdrew her hand and sat back.
Thankfully, the conversation steered itself in a different direction. His shoulders dropped a few inches, and laughter broke free more easily than it had moments before. From that point on, they got so lost in talking that the lessening din around them didn’t register until Paige’s voice rang out.
“Hey, you two. Beck and I are going to bed. Feel free to stay as long as you like. Just be sure you turn off the lights and lock up when you leave.”
“What?” Blake and Michaela sang out at the same time.
Paige laughed. “I guess you’re having a good conversation.”
Michaela bolted upright, looking all kinds of flustered as she gathered up her empty glass and forgotten purse under the table. “Oh, Paige, I’m so sorry!”
Blake stood too as Paige flapped a hand. “Don’t be! I’m thrilled when my guests enjoy themselves so much they forget about the time.” She blew them a kiss. “Good night, you two. Blake, you’re driving Micky home, I assume?”
