by Flynn, Avery
She turned back to Zach, who was drinking the tea as if he hadn’t distrusted it in the first place. “Eat anything different than usual, or from a new place?”
“I don’t eat out.”
“Where’d the muffins come from, or do you cook?” she asked.
“A woman brought them over.” He twisted on the couch, looking at the island behind it. “I had three.”
Fallon could practically hear the ding-ding-ding in her head, and she scribbled down food poisoning and the pertinent information in her notebook. “And how soon after that did you become nauseous?”
“A few hours.” He whipped back around, groaned—no doubt because of the quick movement—and closed his eyes. “Do you think she poisoned them? She did have a Cajun Rage tattoo.”
Besides her family, nursing, and the trio of women she called her best friends, there was nothing in the world she cared about more than the Ice Knights. She wasn’t just an everyday fan. She was a superfan. She knew every stat and every factoid, right down to the fact that Coach Peppers had a sixth toe. And the Rage? There was no bigger rivalry in sports than the one between the Ice Knights and the Rage. The Rage played dirty, and their fans were obnoxious.
She snapped her notebook shut. “You slept with someone with a Rage tattoo?”
“Well,” Zach said as he curled his lips upward into the signature sexy smirk that had gotten him a huge endorsement deal, since it obviously hadn’t been his playing in Harbor City. “We didn’t exactly sleep.”
What was it with dudes always having to pull out their metaphorical dick to show how big it was? Be it hockey players or the doctors she worked with, she was so done dealing with the male ego.
“Yeah, well, if it gets out that you bang Rage fans, the tri-state metro area will be lining up to poison you.” She stood and carried her chair back over to the card table that was sitting underneath a for-real chandelier. It was a small one, sure, but still a chandelier.
“Like they need another reason,” Zach grumbled. “So what do I have to do to get over this?”
“Unfortunately,” she said with a smile to show exactly how not sad she was about it. Sleeping with a Cajun Rage puck bunny really was a step too far. “You just have to wait for it to clear your system. It’s probably a minor case of food poisoning. You’ll be fine. We just need to keep you hydrated and make sure it doesn’t get worse.”
“We?” he asked, pushing himself up from the couch with a groan, crossing over to the island and, like the prima donna he was, leaving the empty mug on the coffee table by the couch.
“Yeah. We. I promised Lucy I’d stay until you were out of the woods, and I’m sticking to it.” Unlike some people, she didn’t have a lot, but she had her word and she didn’t break it.
He kept his distance, but something in his stance changed, making him seem bigger than the team stats that listed him at six feet three inches and two hundred and thirty-eight pounds. “What was your name again?” he asked, his voice dropping to a lower register than before. “Felicia?”
“That’s my sister.”
Fallon couldn’t believe it: he was still trying to get her to leave. She knew the signs. She’d grown up around men who couldn’t express what they were feeling if someone tried to beat it out of them with a baseball bat. The Irish weren’t exactly known for being in touch with and wanting to talk about their emotional needs.
“Faith?” he asked.
“That’s my other sister.”
Sure, there were only a limited number of common girl’s names that started with F, but the fact that he’d nailed two of her sisters’ names while he was supposedly trying to remember hers? Yeah, she wasn’t falling for it.
He shifted. “Fiona?”
It took everything she had not to crack a smile. “That’s sister number three.”
“There are four girls in your family?”
As if he didn’t know. He must have gotten at least some background information about her before he agreed to let Lucy ask her to come over.
“Plus three brothers.” She nodded, not letting herself react outwardly to his little display. “And I’m flattered you obviously remembered my bio from Lucy.”
He glowered at her in silence, his eyes so dark they were practically black, zeroing in as if he could scare her. That wasn’t going to happen. One, she got more attitude from her pediatric patients than this. Two, Lucy trusted the guy, and Fallon trusted Lucy. Three, she was a Hartigan, and they didn’t back down from anything.
Finally, he spoke. “There are pillows and blankets in the box by the hall closet, Fallon Hartigan. Pick a room with a bed in it. I’m going to sleep.”
And without so much as a mumbled thank-you for giving up her weekend to play nursemaid, he turned and walked out of the kitchen and down a dark hallway. Most-hated man in Harbor City? Yeah, she could corroborate that. Food poisoning or not, Zach Blackburn was one prime, grade-A asshole. She glanced down at the basket of muffins and grinned. Fallon wouldn’t have been surprised if the puck bunny had tried to poison the prick on purpose—God knew she was tempted right about now.
Instead, she took out her phone.
Fallon: He’ll live, and you owe me. Big time.
Lucy: Going that well, huh?
Fallon: What did you tell him about me?
Lucy: Just that you’re my bestie, Frankie’s sister, maybe some family stuff, and that you’re an awesome nurse. The basics.
Fallon: That’s a lot.
Lucy: He doesn’t trust a lot of folks. He needed background. He has his reasons. Promise you won’t let him get to you.
Fallon: I can promise not to kill him, but that’s about as much as you’ll get from me. He’s the most obnoxious man I’ve ever met, and I work with doctors who think they’re God—not a god but the actual big guy himself.
Lucy: Just give Zach a chance. You’ll love him.
Yeah, that was so not going to happen—not even in a parallel universe.
Chapter Two
The blaring ring echoed off the bare walls of the nearly empty mansion as Fallon Hartigan marched down the hallway with murder on her mind.
As soon as she got to the source of that ringing, she was going to give Harbor City what they wanted most and kill the most-hated man in hockey. Sure, she might get arrested, but the metro area would probably throw her a parade. She turned the corner and stopped dead in her tracks outside the open double doors leading to the overpriced defenseman’s bedroom.
The man—who’d been puking his guts up less than twenty-four hours ago—was in the middle of a king-size bed, wearing nothing but a smirk and a bed sheet that was draped so low across his hips that she could see miles of those V lines south of his hard abs. Like she was a newbie nurse on her first set of rounds, her breath caught, and a blush she most definitely did not want to appear started to burn her cheeks. Damn her pasty Irish skin.
Still, she had to admit, if only to herself, that the view was fucking amazing. The man was a professional athlete and had the muscular, inked-up chest to prove it. Practically against her will, her gaze traveled over the plentiful ink across his pecs and lingered a few breaths too long on his silver nipple rings.
Seemingly indifferent to her perusal, Zach swiped his thumb across his cell phone’s screen, ending the incessant ringing.
“About time,” he said, his voice a mellow, low rumble. “I’ve been ringing for you for almost ten minutes.”
He dropped his phone on the small table next to the bed and then lounged against the headboard, managing somehow to look down his nose at her even with their current height differential.
Forget killing him, she was going to go after her bestie. It was Lucy’s fault Fallon was even here.
She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten as she recalled all the reasons why the man was a menace and not the solution to her three-month-long sexual dry spell.
He was a selfish player.
He was surly to the press, to the fans, and probably to his neigh
bor’s dog.
He’d banged a puck bunny tattooed with the logo of the Ice Knights’ most-hated rival.
She counted to another ten while remembering why she couldn’t off him.
He was Lucy’s client.
He was, for some incomprehensible reason, one of her bestie’s friends.
He had the skills to turn around the Ice Knights’ so-far shitty season if he could remove the giant chip from his shoulder and start playing as if he actually liked hockey again.
Exhaling a deep breath, she reopened her eyes and barely noticed his muscular shoulders this time as she moved away from the door.
There. All better.
She’d managed to pack away the Hartigan attitude, and her temper hadn’t even made an appearance. Bully for her. Now to get back to that cool, clinical demeanor she strove for whenever she was on the clock.
“You rang?” she asked, managing to keep a good 73 percent of her annoyance out of her tone as she walked farther into the room.
…
Yeah, he’d rang for mercy.
Every part of Zach Blackburn ached as if an oversize green muscle-man had plucked him up from the sidewalk and smashed him against one of Harbor City’s skyscrapers.
Some of the biggest names in professional hockey had threatened to tear the defenseman’s head off—several of them were even justified in doing so. Then there were the fans. The last poll of Knights fans had his approval rating at 3 percent. There were bloodthirsty dictators who ranked higher than that. And the media? They’d circled him like vultures waiting to pick the meat off his bones as soon as he’d signed his contract, reporting his every move and mistake.
But it hadn’t been any of those who’d made him wish for death. Sitting up in bed hurt his tortured gut enough that he couldn’t bite back his groan, but he tried to cover it with a cough. He needed to get Fallon out of his house. Something about the woman’s I-will-call-you-on-all-of-your-bullshit attitude got to him.
“I’m fine now, so you can take off,” he grumbled, shoving his hands through his hair, pushing back the part that flopped over his forehead and got in his eyes.
“Not gonna happen,” she said, taking a few more steps inside his bedroom. “I promised Lucy I’d stay until I was sure you were on the mend.”
“And last night was such a good time you wanted to stay here for more? That’s your idea of fun?” It looked like it just might be. Nothing about her, from her no-nonsense braid to her oversize T-shirt and joggers combo, screamed party girl, puck bunny, or anything else close to the women that had surrounded him since it became apparent he was designated for hockey’s big time.
“Since I usually see much worse on a daily basis, I’ll live. Today, it looks like you might, too.” Her gaze flickered down from his face before speeding back up to somewhere just north of his head, her eyes wide. “You need to pull up your covers.”
That made him bristle. The last people who told him that he needed to do something were his folks, who’d gotten him to unknowingly sign contracts for huge loans they’d taken out in his name. They’d called it boring minutiae that he didn’t need to worry about. And because he’d been a trusting moron, he’d believed them. After all, they were, at the time, both his parents and his managers. Who else would better watch out for him? Well, it had turned out the answer to that question was: just about anyone else in the world. The accountant he’d finally hired when he couldn’t shake his suspicions called what his parents had done embezzlement and financial ruin. So long, humiliating, shitty story short, he could give two shits what anyone felt he “needed to do” ever again.
However, something about the pink staining her cheeks had him looking downward. The basketball shorts he’d been wearing when he’d finally collapsed last night onto his king-size bed, the only piece of furniture in the huge bedroom, had worked their way down, waaaaaay down. And Fallon had noticed.
He glanced over at her and caught her snapping her attention back up to his face again as she approached his bed. But her gaze kept dipping back down, her blush deepening with each look. And for the first time in two days, he stopped thinking about how miserable he felt. Fallon Hartigan couldn’t stop looking, even though it was obvious from her grimace that she didn’t want to.
Well, this could be useful. All he wanted was to deal with the grossness of food poisoning on his own. Alone. No one seeing any crack in his defenses. That’s how he lived his life now. He probably always should have. All he had to do was make Fallon want to leave, and acting like a total dickhead would be the fastest way to do that.
“Pull up my covers?” he asked, knowing he was about to put a skate across the line of decency even if he had absolutely zero plans of following through. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time he fought dirty, as many of his opponents on the ice would attest. “If I do that, how are you going to give me a sponge bath before you leave?”
She jolted to a stop at the foot of his bed, and he practically heard the match strike the dynamite. “A. Sponge. Bath?!”
He shoots. He scores. He would have lifted his arms in celebration—after she stormed out of the house, of course—but something in his gut bubbled and cramped, causing beads of sweat to pop out along his forehead.
Want had nothing to do with it anymore, he needed to get her away from here.
Hello? This is karma here to fuck you up, asshole.
Ignoring the vehemence in her tone, along with the continuing twist in his stomach, Zach shrugged and ran one of his hands down the hard ridges of his six-pack, playing the part of a sexist jerk who would actually ask for a sponge bath. “I ran a fever yesterday. It made me all sweaty.”
Closing her eyes, she tipped her pointed chin toward the ceiling and sucked in a deep breath. That gave him a chance to try to will his stomach to chill the fuck out, which worked about as well as could be expected. He barely got the oh-fuck expression off his face before she lowered her chin and opened her eyes, staring right at him with nothing but sweetness and light.
The air around him stilled, and the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
“Well, I’d hate for you—in your weakened condition—to slip in the shower and crack open your head,” she said, putting enough sugar in her words to put him in a diabetic coma. “Where do you keep your sponges?”
Like the Homecoming Queen in a slasher movie, Zach bolted from his bed, managing to yank up his basketball shorts from just above his junk to his waist.
He held up his hand like she was a vampire he had to ward off. “Don’t even think about it.”
Her laugh burst out, full and teasing. She’d gotten him. She’d seen right through him like he was an unshaded window.
With her eyes as big and round as an anime heroine’s, she cocked her head to one side. “Do you no longer need my professional sponge bath expertise? I’ll have you know that I excelled in the wax-on, wax-off motion of it at nursing school.” She let out a deep, melodramatic sigh. “If only I could have specialized in that instead of trauma medicine.”
Zach dropped his hand and closed his eyes. She was fucking with him. He clamped his jaw shut so she wouldn’t see the smile fighting to get out even as his stomach was screaming in protest at his sudden movement.
Finally, he opened his eyes and took in a deep breath, knowing he had to get her out of this room before he puked again. “Point taken. I’ll just get in the shower.” He started edging toward the en suite bathroom.
“Good.” She crossed her arms and gave him a don’t-fuck-with-me-again smirk. “Anyway, hasn’t anyone ever told you that nurses aren’t scared by anything?”
They hadn’t, but then again, if it didn’t have something to do with on-ice defensive strategies, he wouldn’t have been paying attention.
And how’d that work out for you, Blackburn?
“Are you going to play nice now, so we can make Lucy happy and she can stop worrying about her client and enjoy her well-earned vacation?” she asked as she walked to his bedroom d
oor.
Another wave of impending doom washed over him, the kind that meant the fates were sending him a big fuck-you on the no-more-throwing-up thing. “Fine.”
Fallon nodded and walked out of his bedroom—right in time for him to rush to the bathroom.
Chapter Three
A few hours later, Zach knew his health had turned a corner when he started wondering if his own personal Nurse Ratchet was as bossy in bed as she was outside of it and what that would be like.
No doubt it was the lingering effects of the food poisoning.
Mouthy women weren’t his thing. Also, he usually went for a certain kind of woman—the super-femme, puck bunny kind. Big boobs. Big hair. Big red lips that he liked wrapped around his dick.
Attila the Nurse didn’t have any of those. Scratch that. He’d gotten a hint about the size of the rack she had hidden under her bulky sweatshirt that said Nurses Know Where to Stick It, but not enough for confirmation.
The woman is here to help your sick ass, and all you can do is wonder why she didn’t hot herself up for you? Blackburn, you are a dick of epic proportions.
The minuscule voice of his former, non-asshole self that he hadn’t been able to stomp to smithereens over the past year wasn’t wrong. That didn’t mean he was going to listen, though, because the sooner he could get Fallon out of his house the better. The whole idea of having someone in his space made him more uncomfortable than a jockstrap full of itching powder.
“Is this what you wear all the time?” he asked with more growl than he’d meant, but any memories of his parents tended to do that to him.
Good thing he only thought about them when he looked at the nearly empty house he couldn’t afford to furnish, each time he laced up his skates to play the game they’d ruined for him, and basically every time he fucking inhaled.
Fallon paused mid-march—because the woman did not walk, she attacked—from the kitchen island to the card table where he sat on the one chair. She glanced down at her outfit. “You mean clothes?”
The woman was annoyingly obtuse. “What do you wear out on dates?”
