by Maria Luis
The words are out before I can stop them, and my hand itches to clap over my mouth and stop the verbal diarrhea.
But Andre only laughs, the sound emerging as a deep rumble that hints at twisted sheets and scattered pillows. “Jealous, Zoe?”
“What? Absolutely not.”
He leans in, one elbow planted on the bar. “Are you sure? You’ve got that look on your face again.”
My hand swipes over the bridge of my nose and down toward my chin, like I’m washing away all emotion from my face. “Better?”
“Hmm, maybe.” He shifts his big body on the barstool and reaches out to touch the corner of my mouth. It hardly constitutes anything of importance, but my breath hitches at the brief contact, just as he murmurs, “I can still see your frown.”
Memories of movie nights and lunch outings flit through my brain, and I bat Andre’s hand away. “Don’t,” I warn him in a low voice, and just like that, as though I turned off a switch, the easygoing expression on his face evaporates.
In its place is one that I’ve seen frequently—or, I mean, one that I used to see frequently. An icy cold mask that won’t melt.
He wraps a hand around his cocktail and, ignoring the thin, neon-green straw, drinks straight from the rim. His Adam’s apple bobs down, and he looks like something straight out of a soda commercial. My knees lock together. I hate him for doing this, for turning me on with nothing more than a stupid sip of his drink.
Maybe I need another year of no contact with him to really get my brain in the right place.
“So,” he says, breaking the terse silence, “your thirty days.”
Right, back to business.
“Twenty-nine,” I reply instinctively.
“All right, twenty-nine.” His tongue flicks out over his bottom lip to absorb a droplet of whiskey. “I’ve been thinking today—”
I feign shock, going so far as to press a hand to my chest. “So that’s what held you up this morning? I had no idea that you couldn’t think and do at the same time.”
Though his shoulders twitch, he ignores my taunting. “I think we’re going to have to lay out some parameters.”
For once, I agree with him. “Yes, that would probably be a good idea. What’s first on your list?”
“No sex.”
A surprised cough splits my lungs in half, and I double over. He waits patiently for my recovery, ordering another whiskey and coke from the bartender, as well as a bottle of water.
The bartender pops the water bottle on the bar first and Andre immediately slides it over. “A peace offering,” he tells me, “for nearly killing you.”
“I’m surprised you don’t want me dead,” I rasp, accepting his offering with as much finesse as possible.
“If you were dead, then who would revitalize my reputation?”
Good point.
When I’ve fully recovered from my coughing spree, I say, “Can you handle no sex for a month?”
Something in his gaze flickers, something that I can’t even begin to understand. “I’m not talking about no sex in general . . . I’m talking about not having sex with you.”
My mouth falls open, and I’m not entirely surprised when a growl emerges from deep within my chest. “Are you kidding me?” I abandon the water on the bar to jab a finger at him angrily. “I wouldn’t have sex with you even if you begged me.”
The look he gives me would cause a weaker woman to lose her panties upon its delivery, but I stand strong. Been there, done that, and I have no intention of returning to buy the damn T-shirt.
“We both know that I don’t beg,” he finally says. There’s a small pause. His gaze darts down to my lips, lingering, and then he adds, “The same can’t be said for you, though.”
Oh.
My.
God.
He did not just say that.
From the way his brows arch as he sips at his whiskey and coke, I bet he’s feeling mightily pleased with himself right about now. Which is, I decide, the only reason I retaliate.
“You’re right,” I say in a sugary-sweet tone, “I begged you, Andre.” I plant my palms on the barstool next to him, crumpling his once-crisp sports jacket, and jut my face close to his. “I begged you to take me, and then, when I realized that you had nothing substantial hanging between your legs, I begged for you to finish as quickly as possible.”
Silence swirls around us, and I swallow a flare of satisfaction when his face contorts.
“Did you just say that I have a small cock?”
Folding my arms across my chest, I nod. “If the condom fits. Or, you know—it doesn’t.”
I smile a little at my play on words, mentally pumping my fists into the air in victory.
But then . . . Andre’s dark expression clears, and he laughs. He laughs so hard that his deep, masculine ha-ha-has can be heard throughout Vittoria, earning us the attention of the very last couple in the restaurant. He laughs so hard that he wipes tears from his eyes with the pads of his thumbs. He laughs so hard that when he stops laughing, all I can do is stare at him, because why is he laughing when I just said he has a small dick?
“Oh, honey,” he says, his voice still rumbling with buried mirth, “is that the lie you tell yourself at night to feel better?”
Shock spins through me. And the words . . . all words have fled my body. I have no comeback. I have no witty reply to scathingly deliver. I have absolutely nothing, save for an undeniably burning hot face that grows hotter with each passing second.
Because he’s right, the jerk.
Late at night, when I curl up in bed (aka the couch), three fluffy pillows stuffed beneath the back of my head, I can’t help but think about the one day we gave in and had mind-blowingly good sex. Emphasis on the “mind-blowing” part. I don’t consider myself a sex savant—I’ve always been keener to focus on my career—but I’d be lying if I said Andre didn’t rock my world that day.
He rocked it one night, and then it all came crumbling down the next.
Andre finally stands, straightening to his full height of six-foot-something. He’s taller than me, which is all that matters, though I’m no shrinking violet myself. He pulls a leather wallet from his pocket and drops three Andrew Jacksons on the bar, even though his tab couldn’t have run higher than twenty dollars.
“I’ll stop by your office tomorrow,” he says, sliding the wallet back into his pocket, and snagging his jacket out from under my hands with a sharp tug. “Let you think real hard on what we’ve talked about tonight.”
Aboot.
It’s so Canadian, so cute, and I feel the strangest urge to take my boot—the one on my foot—and kick him. He’s been back in my life for all of two days and nothing is going as planned.
“Was that supposed to be a double entendre?” I demand, feeling off-kilter and not at all myself.
“Definitely not,” he counters, his dark eyes warm with stifled humor. “Remember, we’re not having sex again. Stop thinking about it.”
“I’m not thinking about it. You’re the one throwing out metaphors about things that are hard.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he tells me as he pulls on his jacket. The sleeves are creased from my hands, but he doesn’t even attempt to flatten them out.
“You think you’re so sly, Andre, but I can promise you that you aren’t.”
“I wouldn’t dare dream so.”
Annoyance flickers through me. “I’m not going home and thinking about you tonight.”
“I wouldn’t dare dream that either.” He turns away, but just before he does us both a favor and actually leaves, he twists back around to give me his parting words, “And, for the record, I distinctly remember you telling me to take it easy because my ‘small cock’ was too big.”
He steps back and lifts his hand in a casual wave. “Have a good night, Zoe. I’ll be at your office tomorrow morning. Ten a.m. sharp. Don’t be late.”
I sag against the barstool, my brain spinning with everything that just went d
own. I don’t even hear the bartender until she’s right behind me, gathering Andre’s ridiculously sized tip.
“Is he really small?” she asks me. “He looks like the kind of guy who’d be hung like a horse.”
I don’t even turn around, because I’m not sure I could lie to her face. “He has the smallest penis I’ve ever seen,” I fib. “The smallest.”
Chapter Seven
ZOE
Twenty-Eight Days Left…
By 9:45 a.m. the next morning, I am what some would call a “hot mess.”
I snoozed my alarm one too many times, therefore losing the opportunity to completely pull myself together for my meeting with Andre. My dark hair is washed, but untamed, and thanks to the very dry March air, the static teased the strands into something unrecognizable during my morning commute.
My coffee decided to leap out of its home—a Styrofoam cup—and splattered my white shirt. I did what I could to clean the stain while I rode the T, Boston’s subway, on my way in. But no matter how many napkins I’ve pressed to the stain, the dark espresso now resembles something that I would rather not talk about.
And, to top it all off, the heel of my favorite stiletto pair broke. Broke! There I was, striding down the street and giving myself a much-needed pep talk, when my poor Manolo Blahnik succumbed to a crack in the sidewalk. I went flying; the toe part of my stiletto went flying, but the damn heel remained wedged in the sidewalk’s crevice like a white flag waving surrender.
Walking six blocks through Boston’s financial district on bare feet is an experience I never want to repeat.
Honestly, thank God for convenient stores and cheap, plastic flip-flops.
So, like I said, “a hot mess.”
This is so not my day.
Cracking open my day planner, I scribble in today’s key points that I want to cover with Andre. Namely, the fact that we have twenty-eight days to strip him of his bad boy image off the ice.
Having worked with professional athletes before, it’s always been a little strange to me as to where the line is drawn. The public loves guys like Marshall Hunt, one of Andre’s teammates for the Blades. Since Hunt has just come up from the farm team, he rarely gets the same level of playtime on the ice. But the people love him—they love the way he stops to take selfies with fans after games. They love the way he jokes around with reporters, giving them his full attention whenever he’s in the hot seat.
From what I’ve gathered, Hunt also has a reputation as a ladies’ man—he makes no secret about the fact that he dates supermodels, and supermodels exclusively. He’s practically the Leonardo DiCaprio of the hockey world. But the public adores him anyway. They adore his boyish good looks, and the way he takes the time to hold open doors for the various women he dates, even when they change every weekend—or every other night.
The public does not adore Andre. He verbally snaps at the media, and, seeing the way he blew off Suzanne last night, it doesn’t seem that he’s all that kind to the ladies either.
Makes sense, considering the way he treated me too.
I have no doubt that I’m up for a battle today, but I’m hoping that he’ll see reason. Above all else, Andre Beaumont loves hockey. Without sponsors, without a willingness to play like a team-member on and off the ice, this could very well be his last season in the NHL.
Teams will take a risk on a player that’s physically injured, but they’re less likely to keep a player who is a liability to the structure or reputation of their organization.
A knock comes at the door, and I don’t even have to look up to see who’s standing there. Cliché as it might be, but the air changes with his entrance. It shifts and crackles and tenses with anticipation.
Or maybe that’s just my anticipation to get this over and done with.
I feign nonchalance, still scribbling in my planner. Play it cool, girl, play it cool.
“Good morning, Andre.”
The chair across from me creaks under the sudden onslaught of his weight. Like most hockey players, Andre is big. A hulking body of pure muscle that is put to the test on a daily basis.
“Morning,” he says, the ‘o’ drawn out in true Canadian flare. “That’s a nice shirt you’ve got on there.”
My fingers clench tightly around the pen. “I spilled my coffee this morning.”
I glance up in time to see the way he tilts his head in thought. “Very well-placed, eh?”
Perhaps I should have elaborated. When I spilled the Starbucks blend this morning, it somehow—in some stars-misaligning sort of way—splattered me right in the boob area. Specifically, in the left-nipple zone.
My eyes squeeze shut, and I lift a hand to shield the evidence of my embarrassment from his perusal. “I was already running late, otherwise I would have gone back home to change shirts. It’s been a rough morning.”
“It would seem that way,” he murmurs, and I can hear the laughter brimming just beneath the surface.
“Are you going to stare at my chest for our entire meeting?”
“Open your eyes and you’ll see I’m not looking at your chest now.”
With a deep breath for strength, I glance up to find that what he says is true. He isn’t looking at my chest.
His gaze is on my face, and for a moment, so brief that I swear I imagine it, I feel like I’ve jumped back to that second before he first kissed me. In the vacuum of time, I recall his hands lifting to my face to cup my cheeks. His breathing rustling the top of my hair, we stood so close. His mouth moving, expelling the words, “I need you, Zoe,” before he closed the distance between us.
Now, in my brand-spanking new office, I’m highly aware of my altered breathing, and also of the way that I’m squeezing my pen so tightly that I’m surprised it doesn’t snap in half.
Worry skits through me. Can I do this?
The reminder that I’m on a trial run with Golden Lights Media kicks me back into gear. I’ve submitted so many job applications in the last year, gone on so many interviews that end up with a rejection letter, leading off with, “Thank you for your interest, but we have found another candidate who better suits our needs . . .”
I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I’m the best publicist in existence—I’m not. But during my half-decade of work in Detroit, I certainly made a name for myself within the business. I got stuff done. I made miracles happen to the unlikeliest of clients. But no one wanted to give me another chance in Detroit, which led to my move.
If it doesn’t work out with Golden Lights Media . . . I honestly have no idea what will be my next step.
I flatten my hand across my day planner, grounding myself for what’s to come next. “We should probably get started.”
His wide shoulders lift in a casual shrug. “I’m yours for the next hour.”
The words send my brain on a tailspin. “Technically, you’re mine for the next twenty-eight days.”
He grins, and it’s such a rare thing that I almost sit back in my chair in shock. “Who’s counting?”
I am—not that I’ll ever admit that out loud. “We both should be. I want this job and you want to keep your career. We both benefit from this partnership if we can just work together.”
He’s silent after that, as if pondering my words. His dark eyes flit to my planner, and then to the document I have pulled up on the shiny new desktop computer that arrived this morning—a white one, because obviously Walter Collins has some sort of weird obsession with the color.
Andre sits back in his chair, and though I can’t see his legs beyond the desk, I know his knees must be splayed in that typical hot-guy pose. He looks relaxed, at ease, though his gaze remains sharp. “You’re looking mighty comfortable here.”
“I want to be here.”
“Why Boston?”
At the abruptness of his question, I narrow my eyes. “I’m not stalking you, Andre.”
“I didn’t say that you were.”
“You implied it.”
“Well, if the stalk
er fits . . . ”
Reflexively, I cross my arms over my chest. “My dad lives here, if you remember. He owns Vittoria.”
Slowly he nods, ignoring my not-so-subtle jab at our past, and a lock of his dark hair falls over his forehead in a ridiculously distracting manner. It’s like a calling card for me to push it back, to run my hands through the thick strands. “Ah, so that explains yesterday’s appearance.”
I don’t want to think about yesterday. I don’t want to think about last year. I want to focus on the now.
“Let’s get back to this, shall we?” I tap my pen on the desk impatiently. “I think we need to start with a bang, something big to let sponsors know that you’re keen on changing things around.”
Andre scrubs a hand over his unshaven jawline. “We talking about charity donations?” he asks, dropping his elbow to his knee as he shifts forward. The new position stretches his gray T-shirt across his broad chest, and I check back the need to salivate. Andre might be an unfeeling jerk, but he is, without doubt, a sexy unfeeling jerk.
It’s unfair, I tell you, so unfair.
Gathering my wits, or trying to anyway, I select a sheet of paper from Andre’s case file and slide it across the desk with the tip of my finger. “Not exactly. Providing assistance to others via charities has never been your problem.”
Dark eyes meet mine. “Is there a compliment in there somewhere?”
“I didn’t intend for there to be one, no.”
He shakes his head with a masculine chuckle, and I swear he mutters the word “ballbuster” under his breath.
“What did you say?”
“I said that I didn’t think there was a compliment.” He cocks his eyebrow, daring me to question him.
I try a different tactic, mainly because I’m weak when it comes to pretending trash talk isn’t the highlight of my day, especially with Andre. “Wouldn’t want your head to get too large,” I say, throwing down the gauntlet. Take. That.
“Are we talking about my reportedly small cock again, Zoe?”
Surprised laughter escapes me. I forget sometimes. I forget that under all that broodiness and sharpness is a man with a quick wit.
