Hot on Ice: A Hockey Romance Anthology
Page 99
Two cops got out of the cruiser.
Curling her hand around Flynn's bicep and clinging to him like a woman scared out of her mind—it wasn't a huge stretch—Gillie kept her voice low enough so only Flynn would hear her words, "You can't tell them anything about the Cup.”
Flynn
She wanted him to lie to the cops. Again. Flynn wanted to shake Gillie off his arm and wrap both of them around her at the same time. It wasn't fucking fair. Too bad that didn't matter. Even as the cops hustled up to his porch, the half-truths were already on the tip of his tongue.
No officer, I don't know who the men were.
No officer, I have no idea why they would grab Gillie.
No officer, I am not a complete moron.
And that's just about how it worked out with Officer Snyder who'd said everyone on the Snow Bay Police Department was on the look out for the SUV and that they'd sent out a statewide BOLO. Then, the rookie cop ended their interview with an autograph request. Flynn signed every scrap the guy put in front of him without his usual growl, even when the guy handed him a hot pink Gatorade water bottle.
"Where'd you find this?" Flynn asked. He always kept one just like it on top of his net. Whenever the biscuit slid past him and the goal siren went off, he slipped his helmet back on his head, took a drink, and then had a profanity-laced conversation with it that would teach a sailor a few new words. The bottle had become a favorite joke for the hockey commentators—paid and unpaid. "I didn't think they made them anymore."
"Ebay," Snyder said, his cheeks burning bright enough to only be a few shades off the bottle's color. "Don't suppose you'd share the story behind it?"
"Nope." Flynn shook his head but signed the damn thing anyway.
No one knew the story behind that bottle. They'd asked and he'd kept his big trap shut tight, which had only made the fans and the press more curious because he was fucking cursed.
The cop shrugged. "Worth a try."
"Understood." He handed back the bottle, tension creeping up his spine as Gillie slipped her hand into his, playing her part of damsel in distress to perfection.
But he didn't shake off her touch. Not when Officer Snyder left. Not when they walked inside together. Not when he shut the door and locked it. Not when she tried to pull away. Instead, he whirled her around so her back was against the closet door and he blocked her in with his body, his free hand palm flat against the oak on one side of her face, his other hand still holding hers. It was the only place they touched, but it was almost too much. Anticipation, anxiety and anger sizzled between them and he forced himself to loosen his hold on her hand, but she didn't pull free. She could have dipped underneath his arm and he wouldn't have stopped her. But she didn't. Not his Gillie. She'd tell the world to go fuck itself before she gave an inch. He fucking loved that about her.
He fought the urge to step closer, to lower his mouth to hers and physically reassure himself she was okay. The men in the SUV. The Cup he'd spent his life trying to win that might just be the end of his career. The woman he'd never been able to forget. All of it gut punched him, leaving his lungs screaming for air.
"What in the fuck is going on Gillie?" he asked, the words coming out rough and hard.
Her gaze remained straight. "I told you last night."
"And the guy in the SUV?" The one he should have kept hitting with the bat until he wouldn't have been able to get up again, but all Flynn had been able to think about at the time was getting Gillie to safety.
"It must be whoever hired Orlando," she said. "I pushed Orlando for answers on who he was. My guess is the money man decided to push back."
"Exactly why we should have told the cops."
"No." She shook her head. "Exactly why we need to call Marko, so let me go so I can call in the big brother guns."
And without waiting to see what he'd say next, she ducked under his arm, strolled farther into the living room, and pulled out her phone from her purse. While she dialed, Flynn glowered from his spot by the closet. The fact that she needed to call for outside help burned. Yeah, he knew he was out of his depth with these guys—hell, he was a hockey player not a security expert like Marko or a professional like the cops—but that fact didn't lessen the inborn, testosterone-driven instinct that he needed to protect what was his at all cost. That Gillie wasn't his didn't seem to factor into that primitive part of his brain's analysis of the situation.
"About time you answered, Mar—" Gillie's voice cut off and she rolled her eyes before jumping back into the conversation. "I'm in trouble and I need your help." She paused, listening. "I'm in Michigan with Flynn—"
The muffled sound of Marko's voice grew louder. Flynn couldn't pick out all of what the other man was saying but "last asshole you should be with" came out pretty damn clear. Flynn couldn't disagree with the assessment. There was a reason why he and Gillie hadn't ever told Marko that they'd been doing what they'd been doing back in Dallas. Flynn's reputation for indiscriminately banging the hockey bunnies he'd never set eyes on again was well earned.
"That's a great way to talk about one of your best friends," Gillie snapped back. "Shit, I can't imagine what you say about me. Are you coming up to Snow Bay or do I have to light a fuse to this situation myself?"
Marko's voice dropped in volume and Flynn couldn't pick out anything, but Gillie's thousand-watt smile and wink was more than a small hint about the direction the conversation had taken.
"Great, I'll see you tomorrow morning." She hung up and slipped her phone into her purse. "He's coming."
"I picked that up," he said, a little harsher than he meant but the annoyance tightening his shoulders wouldn't abate. "I'm quick that way."
Her smile dimmed, but she froze it before it went out completely. "No reason to get all snarly."
"This isn't snarly." He was an asshole on the ice, this was just normal. "Go search the Internet, you can find plenty of better examples than that."
"Jesus." She let out a big huff and glared at him. "I'm trying to do you a solid and all you can do is be an asshole."
As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, she was right. And what had she gotten for her trouble? Treated like shit by him and almost kidnapped off the street by some douche with a hard-on to fuck up Flynn's life. No matter what had happened between them three years ago, she deserved better than that. He was being a total fucking dick but he had no idea how else to deal with how seeing her had churned up things he'd thought were buried six feet deep and covered by concrete.
"You could have gotten hurt." It came out before he could stop it and as if saying it out loud made it more real, he fisted his hands to distract from the pain.
"Yeah." She shrugged, the move a little too practiced to be sincere. "It wouldn't be the first time."
She didn't mention him by name. She didn't have to. It took weeks after he left Dallas not to picture her rigid and beautiful standing in the driveway as he drove away to start a new life in New Orleans without her. He coped with booze, bunnies and hockey. It had been the only way he'd known how to deal with the fact that the woman he'd fallen in love with was a thief who lied about almost everything and had used him for a job.
"I never hurt you." At least not like she'd wrecked him.
"Oh, honey," she said, raising her chin and turning her head away almost fast enough to make him miss the wet glimmer in her eyes. "You just about broke me into a million pieces, but don't worry, I'm all better now."
Had it all been lies between them? For the past three years he'd believed so, he'd had to. Now, he wasn't so sure.
"Look," she said. "I need to get back to my hotel, how about you forget about that giant chip on your shoulder and drive me back so I can shower and change."
"You can't stay at your hotel." No fucking way was she getting out of his sight.
She snorted dismissively. "Why not?"
"Because the HideAway isn't exactly the most secure of places and we don't know when this guy will show up again."
"Is that why you were about half a minute from getting pulled into the SUV when I knocked that guy out?"
Her chin went up again. "I'm not staying here."
"Fine." He turned and yanked open the closet door and grabbed the duffel already packed with a few changes of clothes—a habit from a life spent going from hotel to hotel on road trips across the country. "I'm coming with you."
"Why would you do that?"
"To keep you safe." He spouted a lot of bullshit in his life, those words didn't make that list.
He said them for the same reason why he'd lied to the detective in Dallas and why he'd sprinted from his house the moment he'd heard her scream. There was something about the two of them together, with all their jagged little pieces fitting together, that had taken away any choice he had in the matter. She may not be his, may never be his, but she still was. No matter what she'd done or would do, like a pathetic sap he still loved her.
After a survey of the street confirmed no one was lingering outside, he opened the door. "Come on, let's go."
She looked like she was about to argue, but didn't. Instead, she followed him outside to his truck and they took off toward her hotel.
6
Gillie
After a few hours stuck in her tiny motel room with Mr. Personality, Gillie was ready to agree to just about anything to get out of there. Lucky for her she didn't have to go to extreme measures thanks to Flynn's growling stomach. A quick glance out the window—from which she could see the entire four-block downtown—confirmed that the choice for dinner came down to fast food or Bear's Diner.
She peeked out the peephole in the motel door and confirmed neither the black SUV nor the asshole in a suit were in sight and then opened it. "Come on, we need food."
"No, we don't," Flynn said, his gaze never wavering from the sliver of window he was looking out of.
"Fine." She shrugged. "You sit here and starve."
Like that was going to happen. His stomach was louder than Texans at a Friday night high school football game. Confident he'd follow, Gillie took a right turn out of the hotel room and started the one-block trek to the diner. Today called for comfort food more substantial than frozen hamburger patties and mystery sauce.
"We won't have any privacy," Flynn said, his long legs making catching up with her easy.
"Is there anything we need privacy for?" she asked, unbidden, an image of his naked body from last night flashed across her mind’s eye.
His jaw squared. "No."
Bear's Diner lived up to its name with a nearly seven foot brown bear stuffed and mounted on a pedestal right inside the front door. Gillie wasn't sure if she wanted to pet it or scream or both. She and Flynn wound their way through the crowded tables to a booth in the back that faced the doors and the windows. Keeping her attention on the windows that gave a perfect view of Main Street, she reached for the laminated menu propped up behind the napkin dispenser.
"You don't need that," he said, his tone gruff.
Her stomach picked that moment to rumble. "I'm starving too."
"Trust me." He plucked the menu from her grasp and put it back. "This is my town. I've been eating at The Brown Bear since I could chew solid food. I won't steer you wrong."
She settled back against the booth, scanning his face for any hint of assholery and came up with zilch. Now that was a change from how he'd been acting since she'd showed up in town—well, except for when they were naked together. "That's almost nice of you."
He shrugged. "Consider it a truce."
"So you finally believe that I'm not here as a whore to set you up?" she asked, still hating how much those words had hurt.
His gaze dropped and a rush of pink colored his cheeks. "I shouldn't have said that."
Finally, something they could agree on that didn't involve orgasms. "Nope, you shouldn't have."
Before Flynn could say anything else, a man with shaggy salt and pepper hair wearing jeans, a green Bear's Diner T-shirt and holding an order pad stopped at the end of their booth.
His craggy face broke into a wide grin. "Hey ya, Kazakov."
Flynn smiled back. "Bear."
Gillie glanced from the stuffed grizzly by the entrance and the bear of a man in front of her. "You're Bear?"
He nodded, sending a curtain of chin-length hair in front of his eyes before he tucked it behind his ear. "Yep."
"So is the place named after you or the bear?" she asked.
"We share custody." He winked at her. "So what can I get you two?"
Flynn didn't even glance at the laminated menu stuck between the ketchup and mustard bottles. "Garlic fries, meatloaf and dessert pretzels."
Bear scribbled on the pad. "You want a pastie to start off?"
All the tension evaporated from Flynn's shoulders and he looked about ten years younger. "God yes."
As soon as Bear left to deliver their order to the kitchen, Gillie leaned forward and propped her chin on her hand. She wasn't a fan of having anyone order for her, but she also wasn't a dumb enough girl to turn down meatloaf and garlic fries that sounded downright delicious.
"What's a pastie?" she asked.
Flynn turned his full attention to her and she almost melted on the spot.
"Heaven," he said.
Turns out it wasn't, but it was damn close. The two-bite sized pastries looked like her favorite empanadas from the hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant down the block from The Back Beat. Except instead of ground meat and seasoning inside, the pasties were filled with kielbasa, potatoes, carrots, rutabaga and onions. Pinching her final bite of crust between her thumb and first finger, Gillie soaked up the last drops of mushroom gravy before popping the whole thing in her mouth.
"Is Bear married," she asked after she'd devoured the last bite of yumminess. "Because if not I might be willing to change that if it meant I'd get to eat as many of those as I wanted."
Flynn laughed. "He is and you've got the wrong equipment to be his husband."
"Damn." She sighed dramatically. "A girl can dream."
"I never pictured you as someone who wanted to get married."
"That makes two of us." At least not until about three years ago when she met this hockey player who made her rethink a lot about her life. "Of course, it's not like I have time to date much as it is."
"A life of crime keeps you running, eh?" he asked, the teasing grin on his face softening his words.
"More like my jazz club, The Back Beat, does that. The rest, I retired from."
"You have a club?"
Her gut twisted as visions of her accounts ledger danced in her head. "Probably not for much longer, but as of this moment, yes. I was happily sinking in debt and listening to Billie Holiday when Orlando called."
"One last job to pay the bills?" Flynn raised his hand and spoke before she could tell him just how right he almost was. "That was out of line."
It wasn't because he was right. She'd put it out in the universe that she'd needed something—anything—that could keep the club afloat and the universe, that bitch, had answered with a ghost from the past she'd hoped to never hear from again.
"I haven't worked with Orlando since the night you saved me from the cops." She talked fast over the hurt that always surfaced when she thought of that night. "Instead, I left a lucrative, if illegal, life to start a jazz bar in the heart of country and western fandom because I'm obviously a business genius."
A V of concern appeared between his eyes. "It's not going well?"
He reached across the table and took her hand in his, that all too familiar frisson of connection burning across her skin. Damn this man. It was easier to keep an emotional distance when he was being an asshole.
"Not in the least." She went for light, but her words landed heavy. "I should
have listened to Marko and located it in Dallas instead of Fort Worth."
"Why didn't you?"
The image of his face so angry and hurt right before he got in his truck and drove away rushed to the forefront and she took a deep breath. "I don't do Dallas anymore."
Flynn cocked his head. "You used to love it there."
No. She'd loved being with him in Dallas. Cheering him on during the games. Laughing over dinner when they'd find a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where he could go to without him being recognized. Sneaking around together to avoid the ever-watchful eye of her older brother. The ache that never seemed to completely disappear thrummed to life inside her.
"That was a long time ago," she said and pulled her hand away from his, unable to stand being so close and so far away from him.
Bear broke the awkward silence that fell by delivering the rest of their food. The meatloaf and side of thick, potato wedge-sized garlic fries were just what she needed at the moment. Now this was comfort food. And, thankfully, it tasted just as good as it looked. She was halfway through her plate before she slowed long enough to ask a question that had been lingering in her mind since the cops pulled away from Flynn's house.
"So what was the deal with the Gatorade bottle?"
Flynn's big hand stilled with the fork heavy with ketchup-soaked meatloaf halfway between his plate and his mouth.
"It's a thing," he muttered before shoving the bite into his mouth.
She knew she shouldn't dig—it wasn't like it was any of her business—but… "Like a superstitious thing?"
"No." He washed the bite down with half a glass of water. "More like motivation."
That was almost an answer. At least it was close enough to make her forget her food for the moment. "Spill."
Flynn gave her a hard look. It probably worked with other people, but she'd butted heads with Marko since the day she was born and he was closer to a pissed off cyborg than a human being so she wasn't impressed. So she winked at Flynn and then gave him an exaggerated besotted look complete with batting her eyelashes. It worked. He laughed and relaxed against the booth.