by Lili Valente
“You should smile more often,” I say, nudging him with my elbow.
He nudges me back. “And you should stop wearing makeup.”
I snort. “No way. I look like a twelve-year-old without eyelashes. Or eyebrows. Or lips, unless I have a sunburn.”
“No, you don’t,” he says softly, “you’re beautiful, Freckles.”
I usually hate any mention of my smattering of offensive nose dots, but when “freckles” is used in the same sentence as “you’re beautiful”…
I shift my gaze slowly to my right and find Brendan watching me with that intense look in his eyes again, making it clear he isn’t kidding. “Well, thank you. You’re not too bad to look at, either.”
He smiles as he shifts closer. “No? Not too bad?”
I shrug. “Nah. I mean, I don’t throw up in my mouth anymore when I see you coming down the tunnel all sweaty and gross.”
He laughs, his eyes doing this sparkling thing that is completely mesmerizing, holding me in thrall as he brushes my hair over my shoulder. “Well, that’s good. I don’t like tripping a woman’s gag reflex.”
“Right.” I blush hard, pulling a Libby—my little sister excels at turning bright red at the slightest mention of anything sexual—because I’m thinking about other ways a man could trip a woman’s gag reflex.
Yes, I’m thinking about Brendan’s cock and my mouth and all the fun they could have together. Sue me! I have a dirty mind; I can’t help it. And the fact that I know he’s free-balling beneath those khakis certainly isn’t helping things.
Brendan clears his throat with a soft laugh. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Likely story.”
“I didn’t.” He’s still standing way closer to me than he ever has before, sending “gorgeous male in close proximity” alerts tickling across my skin. “I swear. I’ve been out of the game too long to be that quick with innuendo. I just meant that I enjoy not making you physically ill.”
I nod, torn between the urge to step back—hopefully clearing my head—or to lean in, bracing my hands on Brendan’s chest. Touching him is starting to seem like a good idea, a really good idea, though I know for a fact it’s not. We work together, we fight as often as we laugh, he has a daughter to consider, and my last breakup is so fresh I’m still sporting road rash.
But damn, he’s sexy, and he smells incredible, and the way he’s looking at me makes my lungs feel too small and my heart feel too large and my fingertips itch to be buried in his softly curled, dirty-blond hair.
“What are you thinking, Collins?” The husky note in his voice strikes a hard blow to my already weakening resolve.
“I was thinking about your quick change,” I confess, as he tips his head closer to mine. “What if I’d turned around too soon?”
“Then I guess you would have gotten an eyeful,” he says, his arm wrapping slowly around my waist. “But better bare than wearing your underwear, right?”
“Yes.” My pulse spikes as my breasts flatten against his chest, and my body celebrates how incredibly good it feels to be close to this man. I tip my head back, bringing my lips mere inches from Brendan’s as I whisper, “I like that you’re proceeding cautiously. Giving me plenty of time to come to my senses.”
His nose brushes against mine, and his breath is warm on my lips as he asks, “Are you going to come to your senses?”
“I don’t think so. That doesn’t sound very interesting.”
“And what does sound interesting?” His arm tightens around me. “Maybe something like this?”
Before I can respond, his mouth is on mine, and a relieved, elated, dizzily wonderful wow feeling rolls through me with a sharp snap. The snap is like a light flicked on in a dark room, a horn blaring on a silent street, the sudden dump of adrenaline into the bloodstream when you start to step off a curb and a car you didn’t see coming rushes past a second before your foot leaves the concrete.
The snap shouts, “Pay attention! Something unexpected and potentially dangerous but also exciting is happening!”
And it is.
Cranky, pain-in-my-butt Brendan is kissing me, and it is the most incredible kiss of my entire life. The sweetest, sexiest, most intense kiss, one that turns my bones to jelly and sets off an electrical storm in my nervous system. His tongue strokes against mine, hungry and demanding, asking for what he needs, and I can’t help but wrap my arms around his neck and give it to him.
Because what he needs is me—my touch, my kiss, my body welcoming him in as he allows himself to get close to someone for the first time in so long.
Later that night, after we skip the cocktail party to spend a few hours naked and lost in each other in the big bed in Brendan’s ocean-view room, he holds me close and confesses that it was his first time since his wife died.
“Three years,” I whisper, breath rushing out. “Wow.”
“Almost three. Three next month.”
I press a kiss to his chest, right above his heart. “I’m sorry. And I’m so sorry you and Chloe lost her.” I didn’t know his wife Maryanne personally—I didn’t start working intimately with team members until after the car accident that killed her and put Chloe in the hospital for nearly a month—but I’ve heard wonderful things about her, this woman who was taken from her family way too soon.
“Thanks.” Brendan hugs me closer, eliminating the sliver of air between his skin and mine. “And thank you for this. I was beginning to think I’d never be with someone again. It just felt so wrong every time I tried. But not tonight. Tonight was…good.”
I smile grimly. I have no illusions about this being anything but a physical thing, but a girl likes to hear something better than “good.”
But I don’t let my bruised ego do the talking. I may have a temper sometimes, but I know when to put petty things aside. This man has just slept with a woman for the first time since his wife’s death, and that woman is me. And though I had no idea those were the fraught waters I was wading into when I said yes to coming up to his room, that is reality, and I’m big on reality.
And kindness, especially when people are as vulnerable as Brendan is right now.
So I simply kiss his chest again and say, “It was good for me, too.”
“Good enough to let me make you come again, Freckles?” He pulls me on top of him, guiding my legs to either side of his hips.
The second my most intimate places brush against his, lightning strikes all over again, and all I can say is, “Yes.”
Yes, as he fists one hand in my hair, holding me captive as he kisses me deep and slow while he moves inside me, shooting my soul full of light and bliss. Yes, as he carries me into the shower and we go again with my legs wrapped tight around his hips and my body pinned between the cool tile and his warm skin. Yes, as we fall asleep later with his arm tight around my waist and his voice soft in my ear, telling me he’s so glad I decided to stay.
Yes, as one night turns into two and then three, and we secretly stay at the hotel after the rest of the team has left. Yes, as we laugh and talk and take long walks on the beach and have sex like a meteor is on a collision course with earth and we only have two days left to orgasm.
By the time Monday morning rolls around, I wake up feeling so relaxed, happy, and well-fucked that I’m pretty sure nothing can bring me down.
And then I look up to see Brendan already dressed and tucking his carefully folded dirty clothes into his duffle bag.
“Hey.” He smiles the awkward smile of a guy who has decided the fun is over. “I didn’t want to wake you. You don’t need a ride back to the city, do you?”
“No, I have my car.” I try not to be hurt by the relief that flashes across his tense features. We’ve been together constantly for the past three days. It’s perfectly natural that he’s ready for some alone time.
“Cool. I have practice in two hours. It’s already going to be tight getting there on time.”
“Right.” I tuck the sheet around my chest as I sit up, leani
ng back against the headboard. “So, will I see you again? I mean, I know I’ll see you but…” My throat tightens as I await his response, because sometime in the past two days I stopped thinking of this as a one-weekend stand and started thinking I would like to keep laughing and talking and being with Brendan, to see where this might lead.
“I don’t know,” he says after a long, uncomfortable beat, his gaze fixed on the duvet we kicked to the end of the bed last night when the room got too hot. “The past few days have been amazing, Laura. But things are…complicated.”
Ouch. Complicated. Which means he isn’t interested in making an effort to work through the complications so he can keep fucking me on a regular basis. “Right. I get it.”
“You’re incredible.” He finally makes eye contact, though the regret in his gaze makes me wish he hadn’t. “You’re beautiful and fun and so insanely sexy. But I’m not a twenty-five-year-old kid anymore. I can’t let myself get swept up in something just because I’m having a good time. I need stability, for Chloe and for myself. I’m all she’s got. I can’t start thinking with my dick and let her down.”
I nod and keep nodding for way too long, while a hundred different things race through my brain. The possible responses are various shades of hurt, sad, angry, and offended, but what finally comes out is an only slightly wounded-sounding, “I care about Chloe, you know. And if you kept being the very not annoying person I’ve been with this weekend, I could care about you, too. It doesn’t have to be just sex.”
He presses his lips together, and in that endless second between my words and his, I die a little inside. “I’m sorry, Laura, I can’t.”
Okay, I die a lot.
Because no one has ever made me feel as wonderful—or as terrible—as Brendan Daniels.
He took me to sexy new highs and introduced me to excruciatingly embarrassing new lows. I’m probably lucky that this is the first time a man I wanted more than sex from doesn’t want more than sex from me. At least for a little while, until he gets tired of me or we realize we hate each other or I discover him dressed in my underwear.
I’m twenty-seven years old, for God’s sake. A killer rejection like this had to happen sooner or later, right?
As Brendan slips out the door, I huddle under the covers, trying to forget I ever made close, intimate friends with Mr. Daniel’s lovely, talented cock. I intend to sleep late, lick my wounds, and move on, foolishly thinking that will be the end of the pain.
I have no clue that the situation is so much worse than I’ve assumed.
It takes a couple of weeks to realize that I don’t simply miss pouncing Brendan’s gorgeous body. I miss the way we talked, the way we laughed, the way he pulled me close in the dark and held me like I was the only thing tethering him to our swiftly spinning planet.
By the time I come to terms with the fact that I’m in love with a man who wants nothing more to do with me, Brendan has moved on.
We’re back to acting like friends who occasionally irritate the shit out of each other. Except now, every time he looks at me, I feel simultaneously elated and miserable, and I wish I could rewind time so I would never know how right it feels to sleep in his arms.
So, yeah…
So far that fresh start stuff is working out really fucking well.
Chapter One
Brendan
Four months later…
I’m too old for this.
I am too goddamned old to be smuggling a mannequin wearing a hot pink thong-kini in through the back door to the locker room, while my friend Justin motions for me to move faster and Wallace and Saunders giggle like third graders somewhere behind me.
I have bigger things to worry about than whether or not Nowicki’s rookie initiation prank is the “dopest shit ever,” or if we’ll get caught by Coach Swindle, who is even older than I am and has even less patience for the constant, adolescent pranking that has become so deeply engrained in the culture of professional hockey that I doubt I’ll ever make it through a season without having mayonnaise smeared on my shoes or a plastic snake hidden in my locker.
My only comfort is that this should be over pretty quickly and then I’ll be able to move on to the next unpleasant task on my agenda.
At least that one involves a beautiful woman who isn’t made of fiberglass.
But the thought offers no comfort. Yes, Laura is a beautiful woman, and yes, simply being in the same room with her is enough to make my blood rush and my skin prickle with awareness, but we’re just friends now. Just friends, even though every time I lay eyes on her, all I can think about is how much I want to kiss her and keep kissing her until she’s hot and eager and begging me to take her on her desk.
Or up against the wall in her office. Or—
“He’s coming. Maybe a minute behind me,” Petrov whispers, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder as he ducks into the locker room from the tunnel.
“Quick, get her in there!” Justin hisses, helping me shove the mannequin into Nowicki’s open locker. Jus arranges the arms, while I stuff the legs in among Nowicki’s copious collection of moldy-smelling tennis shoes. Justin shuts the door softly and with a final fist-pump of victory, relaxes onto the bench in front of his own locker, an utterly bored expression on his face.
“You’re too good at that,” I mutter.
“I’m going to take up acting after I retire.” His lips quirk before settling back into an indifferent line. “Now scram. Your prank face sucks. Go pack your bag or something.”
“My bag’s already packed,” I grumble as I wander over to the couches on the other side of the room, pretending to watch Sports Center while I replay the script I wrote for myself last night when I realized I had no choice but to ask Laura for help.
I think it’s good. Respectful, with some quid pro quo offered to make it clear I’m trying not to be a selfish bastard.
But asking her for a favor like this is still going to be awkward and uncomfortable, whether she says “yes” or “hell no.”
Fuck. If she says no, I don’t know what I’m going to do…
She has to say yes. I have to convince her, even if I have to grovel on my hands and knees to do it.
I’m dimly aware of the too-loud conversation on the other side of the locker room as Saunders and Wallace do a shitty job of playing it cool, and the rush of the showers someone turned on so it wouldn’t be too quiet in here when Nowicki walks in, but somehow I miss the rookie’s entrance. When he suddenly screams like someone grabbed his arm and plunged it into the center of a fire pit, I flinch hard enough to make my teeth knock together and my heart jerk roughly in my chest.
I spin to see Nowicki scrambling away from his locker as the mannequin falls stiffly to the ground, revealing the pink scrap of fabric threaded up the center of her crack-less ass.
“What the fuck?” Nowicki thumps a fist into his chest, his shoulders heaving as he continues to retreat across the room, which is now filled with rich laughter, Petrov’s bass rumble, and Saunders weirdly high-pitched giggles. “What the unholy fuck, you fucks? Who put that in there?”
“Happy Rookie Prank Day.” Justin claps his hands as he rises from the bench with a shit-eating grin. “God, you should see your face! You’re even whiter than usual, Wickster.”
“That’s because I have a thing about mannequins, dude!” Nowicki scowls as he continues to thump his fist against his sternum, presumably to ensure his heart keeps beating. “It’s a phobia, you asswipes.”
His genuine rage sends a second wave of laughter through the rest of the team, all of whom suffered through their own rookie prank, most of which were messier and/or more disturbing than finding a mannequin stuffed in their locker. Suffice it to say, sympathy levels are low, though, when Nowicki’s usually smooth voice breaks as he adds—
“I’m serious. I feel like I’m having a fucking heart attack just standing here looking at that thing.”
—I almost feel bad about the part I played in the prank.
I�
��m the one who told Justin that Nowicki was terrified of mannequins, information gleaned from a heart-to-heart Nowicki and I had not long after he joined the team. Yes, it’s a ridiculous fear, but we all have our own peculiar shit that trips us up for no reason other than our brains decide to get their wrinkles in a twist.
I don’t have any phobias, but I’ve got my share of psychic baggage, enough that after Nowicki leaves the locker room in a huff, I refrain from following the rest of the team outside. If Nowicki is that upset about his locker, I don’t want to see how he responds when he sees that his convertible is filled with four more mannequins, all dressed in lingerie and holding signs that read “We want to eat your face, Nowicki!”
Five years ago, I would have found a rookie’s mannequin-phobia-induced meltdown as amusing as Jus and the rest of them, but I’m not that person anymore.
Now I’m thirty-two going on fifty, a single dad, and in over my head most of the time. Now I know what it feels like for my dreams to turn to dust in my mouth. I’ve lived with that taste since the day I got the call from the police about the accident, and nothing has been the same since.
Yes, I still laugh—usually at Chloe because my daughter, in addition to being my reason for living, is also hysterical—but I don’t feel joy the way I used to.
But I don’t hurt the way I did in the early days, either. I don’t get high, I don’t get low, I get by. Get through. Get to the end of one day and brace myself for the start of another. And it is…good.
Good enough. Better than I thought it ever could be the morning I realized I’d lost Maryanne.
Still, there are moments, when I’m drifting off to sleep and mental stills of that long weekend with Laura drift through my head, reminding me of how close I got to something more than good enough, that I wish I wasn’t such a rational son of a bitch. When I wish I believed that people could change and hearts could melt and reform into a different shape than they were before.
