by Pippa Grant
I take a can of baloney from Manning and turn to Zeus. “May I?” I ask with a nod at his stick.
I can’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but I can see the twitch in his left cheek.
Because I’m asking for his stick, or because I’m asking to borrow his baby?
“I’m not going to break it,” I say, and whoops.
Probably a poor choice of words, because now that twitch has moved to his chiseled jaw. Might even be causing some movement in one of those notches in his nose that speak of a man well-versed in hockey fights.
Gracie would be laughing her ass off if she were here.
And if she knew the full story. Which she doesn’t, because I’m a hard-ass when I have to be, but I’m not cruel.
It’s also two-faced of me to jump a guy while I’m sabotaging her efforts to take a walk with another, and I refuse to confess my transgression.
Zeus thrusts the stick at me. I take it, our fingers brush, and fuck.
Most of my adult life has been spent with egotistical asses. Part of the pilot world. You get used to it.
You also get used to feeling like one of the guys.
But Zeus Berger—despite everything—is still a big enough, bad enough dude to make me feel like a woman.
It’s the strength in his hands that causes that ripple of awareness to shoot up my arms, I tell myself.
Nothing more.
I mount my baloney can—similar to the shape of a can of tuna or a hockey puck—on four tees, step back, and get a feel for the stick in my hand. I’ve spent plenty of time on golf courses—was a personal goal to be able to golf as well as the colonels and generals I reported to back in my military days—but not as much time holding a hockey stick beyond some pick-up street hockey games with brooms and tennis balls. The wood’s smooth, the weight different than a driver, so I shift my stance to compensate, pull the stick back with the same motion I saw Zeus do—or as close as I can get—and I let the stick fly.
The blade connects with the can, and it flies down the center of the fairway.
“Yeah!” Bailey crows.
“Holy fuck,” Helium-Panther squeaks. We’re going to be carrying his ass off the course before too long if he doesn’t lay off the balloons, and I’ve had to forbid him from sneaking any more helium to the caddies.
I hate playing mom, but one of us has to do it. Should’ve been fucking Manning’s job. Or one of his lurking bodyguards.
“A good fifty meters, yeah?” Manning says. “Right good shot for a puck without ice. Berger, I do believe the lady could school us both in the rink.”
“Can I get your autograph?” Bailey says to me. “You are so cool.”
“You want mine, kid?” Panther asks.
“No, just Joey’s.”
Zeus is watching me, and it’s making my skin itch and my lady brain perk up. As if she’s forgotten last night. And as if she thinks he might be worth giving another chance.
She either knows something I don’t, or she’s been kicked in the head one too many times too. Might want to check the setting on my vibrator when I get home.
“Of course,” I tell Bailey.
Not a chance in hell are we going there with Zeus Berger again, I tell my lady brain.
Manning grins. “All this female bonding is making my bollocks itch.” He lines up his own baloney can, takes aim with Zeus’s stick, and sends his makeshift puck flying.
It stumbles to a halt a good ten yards short of my can, which gives me an inordinate burst of satisfaction.
“Thrusters are gonna fire your ass,” Zeus grunts.
Manning nods in agreement. “Only want me for the publicity anyway,” he says cheerfully.
I should’ve been born a fucking princess. I could’ve exhibitioned the shit out of being a royal stand-in for a few astronauts the way Manning is for Copper Valley’s hockey team.
“I can’t even throw a can that far,” Panther says. He’s coming down off his helium, and he almost has the gritty rock-and-roll voice back. He shoves his can of baloney at Bailey. “Here. You do it for me.”
Bailey lines up with Zeus’s stick, almost takes Panther’s head off when she pulls it back, and lets that puppy fly.
“Holy fuck,” Panther says again, and without the helium addition, he sounds as reverent as though he were stroking a guitar.
I’ve seen the guy’s music videos. Don’t let the helium fool you. He oozes sex when he’s ripping out a guitar solo, and the tats don’t hurt either.
Zeus squats down to Bailey’s level. “There’s no girls’ hockey team in your town?”
She gives him a look that would probably be accompanied by a bird if she were three or four years older. “If there was, you’d be carrying my golf clubs.”
“Cluckin’ right,” he grunts.
He stares at her another moment before jerking his head at the fairway. “Load up and go grab your cans. Stuffy McBust-Our-Balls is coming.”
The club manager is being a dick.
On that, we can all agree.
“I’ll get yours,” Panther says to Bailey. He flashes a rare smile. “If you’ll promise to not hit me with that stick.”
She puffs her chest up and shoves the hockey stick at Zeus.
He shakes his head. “Keep it.”
And then the big old goober pulls a Sharpie from his back pocket and flips it to me. “Sign that for her, Fireball. If she says please.”
And once again, Zeus Berger has managed to take me by surprise.
Dammit.
13
Zeus
Wanna know the last time four hours was such hilariously fun torture?
You’re gonna have to figure it out on your own, because fuck if I’ve ever had this much of a good time being this miserable.
And I’ve made a reputation being a hilariously fun fuck-up, so you know this has to be epic.
Joey Diamonte isn’t just handing me my ass, she’s handing me my nuts and my mangled, chewed-up, useless stick too. She almost hit a hole in one with her lemon. She cost me my favorite hockey stick. I can’t use the damn thing when someone else outshot me with it. And she’s about to cost me my pride, because I can’t fucking quit this woman.
“Designated flyer,” Panther declares as we stand arguing on the last tee.
“Whoever’s flying, Fireball’s going last,” Manning says. “We only have the one drone, and I don’t want her plucking it out of the sky before I get my turn to try.”
She doesn’t reply. No smile. No smirk. No coy Oh, it’s all beginner’s luck.
Nope, she’s got this straight-faced, Let’s get on with it, no-bullshit attitude as she swigs water off a bottle her caddy handed to her and checks a message on her phone.
All of the caddies are in love with her. Watching her with hearts in their eyes.
Except Bailey.
The little spitfire’s got I’m gonna be her someday written in her every move. Wouldn’t have pegged Fireball for the kid-friendly type, but there’s something to the way she’s talking to these kids that has some primal instincts deeper than my nut sack wanting to see her soft underbelly.
My instincts can go drown themselves in the fucking lake. Me and Jupiter and Attila the Tongue—Joey’s so fucking brilliant—and every other bit of me doesn’t do this obsessing over one woman shit.
Especially when she’s so good at handing me my balls.
I shove the remote at Panther and point to Manning. “Go on, you whiny baby. Take your shot.”
Panther hits a button, and the drone whirs to life. “See this, Fireball? I’m a fucking pilot too.”
“All of our mothers are going to hate you tomorrow,” Bailey tells him.
“Yeah, well, I—” Panther stops himself.
Pretty sure he was going to say he fucked all their mothers. What I would’ve said. If there weren’t kids present.
“The world really should be run by women,” Bailey tells Joey.
Her lips twitch in a smile. Can’t help
wondering if she’s just as happily miserable as I am.
Probably not on the miserable side. She’s barely acknowledging I exist.
Not that she’s ignoring me. She’s just treating me no differently from anyone else here today.
Like I haven’t seen her tits. Like she wasn’t riding me in that office last night. Like I wasn’t two seconds from setting her world on fire in that sauna when the damn smoke alarms went off.
Women ignore me all the time. They either want me or they don’t, and there are plenty enough who want me that I don’t give two thoughts to the ones that don’t.
Until there was Fireball.
I met her while I was wearing a fucking dress. Lost my shit before we even got started having a good time. And she’s kicking my ass on the golf course. We’re not even playing real golf, and she’s winning.
I can’t decide if I need to ask for her phone number or get the fuck off this course and try some kind of weird-ass hypnotherapy to forget she exists.
“Get it up there good and high,” Manning tells Panther. “Don’t make it too easy on me.”
“I’d never go easy on your pansy ass,” Panther grunts.
The drone floats up in the sky. Manning finally plops a golf ball on the tee and lines up. He’s got all the form you’d expect of a royal ninny—hips and shoulders and club all in a good line, the right thwack when his club connects with the ball, chin in the air as he watches it fly.
Damn good shot.
Nowhere near the drone.
“Damn,” he says. He’s the happiest fucking disappointed prince I’ve ever met. I put on a good show of being a happy-go-lucky dumb-as-shit fuck, but he’s got me beat by a mile.
“Panther one, His Royal Buttwipe zero,” Panther crows.
“I could make them all throw up,” I hear Joey murmur to Bailey.
“That would be so cool.”
I wouldn’t fucking puke in her plane.
“You’re up, you big brute,” Manning says to me.
Panther’s veering the drone all over the place—dude’s so drunk on helium, he probably shouldn’t even look at a golf cart. “Come and get me, you big fucker,” he says to me.
I line up my shot, eyeball that four-propellered drone, shift my stance, and give that ball the Zeus Berger treatment.
Except I miss.
I take a big old bite out of nothing but air, and come up swinging still more air on the other side. My knee twinges, my shoulder protests, and my ego all but curls up in a ball and dies.
“Better show him how it’s done, Fireball,” Bailey says.
“Everyone whiffs now and again.” Manning’s choking back a laugh like I’d like to choke him. Panther’s high as a fucking balloon, which means the princely puckhead is the best candidate for me to choke. “Have another go at it.”
My temper’s hitting danger zone levels. This time yesterday, I would’ve stuck my coconuts out and told him I missed on purpose, but I can’t work up the smirk or anything remotely close. I need to get off this course and blow off some steam. Zeus Berger doesn’t make a fool of himself. Not on the ice. Not in the bedroom. Not on a golf course.
I swing my club again, one-handed and short-tempered, and this time, it connects with the ball and sends that fucker floating a mile up in the air. It barely misses the drone, and it’s hooking to the right—toward that damn lake they just had to put on the last hole—but it’s sailing like a ball that got its ass kicked and its teeth knocked in.
That’s more like it.
It bounces and rolls to a stop just shy of the rough surrounding the lake.
“Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me,” Panther sings like a fucking five-year-old.
“Kiss this—” I start, then I remember there are kids around. I hitch my pants back up—kids probably only got a flash of my ass—and flick a look at Joey. “Your turn.”
For the record, I don’t add If you’re man enough.
And she doesn’t smirk.
Not on her face.
But I can feel it. She’s taunting me. Somewhere behind those cool-ass aviator sunglasses, somewhere deep in her soul, the woman is mocking and teasing and taunting me.
She takes a driver from her own caddy, lines up on the men’s tee, tells Panther to step back before she clocks him in the nuts, and takes aim at the drone.
Her club arches back, those beautiful boobs go out, then it’s all feline grace as she drives that stick down, smacks the shit out of the ball, and sends it spinning straight into the drone.
Straight. Into. The. Fucking. Drone.
“No fucking way,” Manning says reverently.
The drone spins ass over teakettle a few times, listing in the air while the ball veers to the right. It doesn’t bounce as far as mine when it lands, but me and Joey, we’re headed the same way.
“You hitting a ball?” I ask Panther.
He’s sunk to his knees already, and now he flops onto his back. “Life is no longer worth living.”
“That’s the helium talking,” Joey says. “You’ll feel better once there’s oxygen in your brain again.”
“You killed my spaceship.”
“For a hundred grand, I’ll take you up in my spaceship. Double it, and I’ll toss in a bouquet of balloons.”
“Fuck, I spend that on haircuts every month.”
Even I can’t help but stare at his shaggy mane.
“I believe you Americans call this getting ripped off,” Manning says.
I amble toward the golf cart. “C’mon, Fireball. Bring a club. I’ll give you a lift.”
She insisted on walking the course—of course she did, because she’s a badass who’d probably flap her arms to fly hole to hole if she could—but I also think she believes none of us have noticed her checking her watch and her phone. Like she’s got somewhere to be.
Might as well make that appointment happen for her, because it’s clear I’m getting nowhere else with this girl, and I got an appointment to get to myself.
My ego’s in need of some licking and my liver’s in need of some pickling.
I can find that at a bar downtown easy enough.
Joey doesn’t immediately move to the cart. Instead, she gives me a long, steady, silent interrogation that seems to ask everything from my driving record to my favorite book to how many times I’ve been in love.
Heat’s creeping over my scalp again, but this time, it’s not the sun, it’s not my temper, and it’s not even that sensation that I should probably hang out at home a few more minutes in case I need to drop a load, which, for the record, you should never do in public when you’re the size of a semi-truck.
But locker rooms are fair game.
No, I’m getting itchy at my roots because I know she’s weighing and measuring me behind those cool-ass pilot sunglasses. Like maybe the lady has known I’m here.
And she’s not looking for the meat.
She’s evaluating the man.
I’m about to pop off and tell her to walk her own ass when she silently climbs in the cart. She doesn’t argue about me driving. Probably because I’ll just drop her off on the way to my ball, and it’s faster for her to hop out than to switch drivers.
Faster than arguing about it too.
The cart groans under my ass, like most of these ant-sized contraptions do. Joey’s side lifts two feet in the air. She grips the roof for balance. I put the cart in gear and steer us toward our balls.
“Nice game,” I say.
“Mm,” she replies.
I’m starting to figure this chick out. And I’m not gonna let her Mm ruffle me this time.
Much.
“You play golf a lot?”
“No.”
“Hockey?”
“No.”
“Hard-ass?”
“That’s not playing.”
Water’s sparkling at the edge of the rough, mirroring that bitchin’ hot sun. I’m dripping—hard to stay cool when you’re the size of an elephant—and she’s b
arely breaking a sweat. We’re getting close. She’ll hit her ball right up on the green, probably sink it in two shots, and we’ll be done.
Goodbye, Joey Diamonte.
Thanks for the memories.
“Was it good for you at all?”
She turns her head toward me, and now my neck feels like the sun is glowing right on top of it.
I need to shut the fuck up. Now. But my fucking mouth has a mind of its own too. “The second time. Before…you know.”
She’s still not saying anything.
Of course not. She was fucking special ops. She defies gravity. She’s trained to be a badass. Can probably orgasm on command and withhold it for weeks at a time too, in case she was ever captured and put in a brothel for...for…fuck, I don’t know what for. And it doesn’t matter, because now I’m sweating at the thought of six Joey Fireballs in my own personal brothel.
Jupiter’s straining too. Him and me, we had a talk last night. I’ll stay out of the girdles if he swears to never pickle sneeze before we get our girl off.
Not sure he got the memo.
“I slept fine last night,” she says finally, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t what I asked, but now I can’t remember. “Thank you for your concern.”
Fuck fuck fuck.
I get it now.
She knuckle shuffled her nubbin. And now I’m thinking of her digits on her skittle. The over-named deity in my pants needs to hit the penalty box again before he snots my jockey shorts.
“You busy tonight? We could try it again.” Fuck, what do I have to lose? Can’t fail much more than I already have.
And it’s not because I like her.
No, I’m offering because I’m practicing being a gentleman. And learning new tricks. Not often I get to practice my moves on a chick who gets me hot enough to be a danger to ice fishing.
“Do you honestly have this much trouble finding women to warm your bed, or are you simply lazy and taking the easiest available option?”
“There’s nothing easy about you, princess.” Fuck fuck fuck again. “And I respect that about you. I do. You got balls. Not that they take away from your tits. I mean you got girl balls. The tough kind. I like girl balls.”
