Knock Me for a Loop

by Heidi Betts

  There. Success. He was safe, as long as he kept his other leg bent so she would think that was the only thing tenting the sheets.

  Pay no attention to the “little man” behind the curtain, he thought, the scene from The Wizard of Oz playing through his mind. Nothing to see here, nothing to worry about. It’s just a knee.

  Yeah, right.

  “I brought everything,” she told him without looking up from whatever it was she was knitting. “Three quarters of my luggage and what’s packed in the car is for Bruiser.”

  He waited a beat, considering that. And then he said, “You’re a good doggie mama, you know that?”

  Her fingers slowed, and she cocked her head, watching him for a moment before replying. “Thanks,” she said softly, a slow smile slipping over her face.

  Okay, compliments were a bad idea. Or at least saying stuff that would make her smile like that was a bad idea.

  Because now there was a fist-sized knot of desire sitting in the pit of his stomach, his balls were tightening, and he wasn’t sure a knee the size of the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota was going to distract her from noticing the occasional wiggle around the area of his lap.

  Yet even knowing all that, and mentally reciting hockey scores, couldn’t keep his next words from tripping right off the tip of his tongue.

  “A good nurse, too.”

  Damn tongue! Not good for anything but sucking his foot into his mouth. And, okay, yeah—once in a while, cunnilingus.

  “Thanks,” she said again, looking slightly confused now.

  Join the club, he thought.

  All right, time for a much-needed change of subject.

  “So what are you knitting?” he asked.

  Her lips twisted. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said, sounding oddly reluctant.

  He snorted. “Why not? Is it something slinky and sexy…or naughty and embarrassing?”

  Shit. Why the hell couldn’t he shut up? Why the hell did he keep muttering such suggestive stuff, when all it did was put pictures in his head? Dirty, naked pictures that were not helping the situation down below.

  Grace laughed and reached out to elbow him in the arm without ever dropping a stitch. “No, nothing like that, you big perv.”

  Oh, if she only knew.

  “I’m just afraid you’ll be upset when you find out.”

  He turned his head, studying what she was doing more closely. What would he be upset about?

  It was a pretty, Neceo-wafer pink, which was quickly becoming one of his least favorite colors, thanks to how often she dressed his dog—his big, tough, male dog, thank you very much—in sissy outfits of that shade.

  But other than that, he couldn’t figure out why he would care what she was making. Unless it was a jockstrap or banana hammock or something equally embarrassing that she expected him to prance around in.

  “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t get why that thing—whatever it is—is supposed to bother me.”

  Taking a deep breath, she let her hands and the yarn fall to her lap. “Promise not to be angry,” she said.

  Um…yeah, he could pretty much guarantee that one, since he was sitting here as clueless as an earthworm.

  “I won’t be angry,” he assured her.

  “All right,” she said slowly, “it’s a doggie sweater for Bruiser.” She cringed—actually cringed—after spitting the words out like bullets from a Gatling gun.

  For a second, he remained silent, looking at the pile of pink on top of her multicolored pajama bottoms and seeing it in a whole different light.

  “God,” he groaned, rubbing a hand over his face in disgust, “not another one.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Grace apologized. “I didn’t plan it, I swear.”

  Laying what she had done so far out on her lap, she smoothed her hands over the snugly woven stitches, careful to keep them from slipping off the needles. He could see the shape more clearly now and how the piece would eventually form a Bruiser-sized sweater.

  “Charlotte gave me this skein of yarn a couple of months ago. I’d forgotten all about it, to be honest, but the other night at our meeting, she asked if I’d used it yet.” She made a humorous, ashamed face. “Thank goodness I still had it tucked into my knitting tote, because it would have broken her heart if she’d thought I didn’t appreciate her gift. So I was kind of stuck starting something with it right then and there, and this was the only pattern I could think of on the spot.”

  Surprisingly, he actually wasn’t angry or upset. He supposed he wasn’t thrilled she was adding Pink Sweater #42 to his Saint Bernard’s already too-feminine wardrobe (God, a dog with a wardrobe—was there anything more ridiculous on the planet?), but in the scheme of things, what did it matter?

  Instead, he found himself eyeing the simplicity of the pattern, imagining what it could look like, and how he’d do it if it were his project.

  “You know,” he murmured, reaching over to lift the half-sweater by where the yarn was connected to the long metal needles, “you could give that a lot more texture if you switched to a knit-purl or maybe even a checkerboard pattern.”

  For the space of a full minute, possibly going on two, the room was completely silent except for the background noise of the television, which she’d turned down to a low hum when he’d first come back from the bathroom.

  When she didn’t say anything for such a long time, he lifted his head to meet her eyes. She was staring at him like a zombie, gaze blank, mouth open wide enough to catch flies.

  He realized his mistake almost immediately…but also sixty seconds too damn late. Licking his lips, he swallowed hard and dropped the sweater back to her lap, pulling away to his own side of the bed.

  “Just a thought. Not that I know anything about knitting,” he rushed to say, hoping it would be enough to cover up his idiotic comment, throw her off track, and appease any blatant curiosity she might have.

  But why should anything start going right in his life at this point, when “freaking disaster” seemed to be working so well for him these days?

  “Oh, no,” she said, sending the mattress bouncing as she folded her legs and turned to face him more fully. “You’re not getting out of this that easily.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Keep your voice steady. Avoid eye contact. Hope she buys it.

  The mattress bounced again as she shifted around even more, moving closer. A grin that reminded him a bit too much of Jack Nicholson’s the Joker in Batman or Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s IT stretched across her face, sending a shiver of anxiety skating down his spine.

  Up on her knees now, still springing a bit as she towered over him, she rapped him lightly on the chest with the back of her hand, right in the center of his plain white Hanes undershirt.

  “Tell me how you know all that.”

  “All what?” When in doubt, play dumb.

  She rapped him again.

  “Ouch,” he complained, rubbing the spot she kept smacking. Not that it really hurt. A tiny sting, maybe, but he was a six-foot-four Rockets goalie…If he couldn’t take a little slapping from a blond-haired, blue-eyed, hundred-and-twenty-five pound girl, he didn’t deserve to be back on the ice.

  “Don’t ‘all what?’, aw shucks, I’m-just-a-good-ol’-boy-without-a-brain-in-his-head me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. How do you know about knitting, purling, and checkerboard patterns?”

  She sat back on her heels, crossing her arms over her chest. It was a nice pose. Except for the annoyed tilt of her head, it framed her breasts nicely and tugged the hem of her pajama top up to reveal a slim line of bare skin at her waist.

  “And don’t make me smack you again,” she threatened with a scowl.

  She would do it, too. Not just crack him in the chest again, but pummel him, if she needed to. Straddle him and put him in a frontal choke hold—which, come to think of it, might not be so bad. The straddling part, anyway; he was pretty sure he could take h
er on the choke-hold thing.

  And he shouldn’t forget that she had a pair of sharp metal knitting needles within reach.

  Inhaling sharply, he made the difficult decision to come clean. “Okay, okay,” he sighed. “But you have to promise not to laugh. And not to tell anyone else. Ever.”

  “You’re not messing with me, are you?”

  He raised a brow. “Why would I mess with you?” he asked.

  “Because you think you’re funny. And sticking a bag of dog poop in a teammate’s locker is your idea of adult hilarity.”

  He gave a snicker. She made a good point, he supposed. That had been pretty funny. So had the time he and a couple other guys from the team took a dump in Lubov’s litter box. The Russian defenseman had come home from a weekend away, seen the gigantic turds, and rushed his poor cat to the vet, certain the tabby had some dread disease and needed immediate medical attention.

  So his sense of humor was warped—sue him.

  But what he said was, “I’m not yanking you.”

  She waited a beat longer, then said, “All right. As long as you aren’t jerking me around, then I won’t laugh or repeat to anyone what you’re about to tell me. Deal?” She held out her hand to shake on it.

  He took her hand, squeezing tight and holding on a fraction longer than was probably necessary. “Deal,” he murmured softly.

  Shrugging a shoulder and refusing to meet her gaze, he admitted in a low voice, “I taught myself to knit.”

  He said it quickly, matter-of-factly, like tearing off a Band-Aid so it would hurt less. It would be better if she were suddenly struck deaf, but he figured he had about as much chance of getting lucky in that department as in buying a scratch-off lottery ticket and winning the million-dollar jackpot.

  True to her word, she didn’t laugh. Actually, she didn’t react much at all.

  He waited, still expecting something, because never in her life had Grace Fisher been left speechless for long.

  Finally, she cocked her head in the opposite direction, and in a tone dripping with skepticism, said, “You did not.”

  Okay, that wasn’t quite the reaction he’d envisioned. Bemusement, ridicule, the start of embarrassing rumors he might never live down, sure. But disbelief?

  “I can’t believe I bare my soul and admit something like that, and you think I’m lying.”

  Reaching behind her, she grabbed the sweater-in-progress and shoved it at him. “Prove it.”

  He caught it before the tips of the needles could jab him in the stomach and held it a few inches away from his body. “Excuse me?”

  “Prove it,” she repeated. “If you taught yourself to knit, then let’s see how good you are. Show me what you learned.”

  He held her gaze a second longer, then lowered his attention to the knitting in his hands. He tugged the large skein of Charlotte’s bright pink yarn closer, rearranged the needles in his fingers, and shifted around on the bed to find a more comfortable position.

  Then, without missing a beat, he picked up where she’d left off, finishing her row and beginning one of his own. He did a couple more in a straight knit stitch, just to show her he did, indeed, know what he was doing.

  He glanced up, pleased to find her once again looking like a deer caught in headlights—eyes wide, mouth open in shock. Ha! That would teach her to doubt him.

  And now, to rub it in…

  “This is nice,” he said, “don’t get me wrong. But I think it might add a touch of flair and uniqueness if you mixed it up a bit.”

  He started a simple checkerboard pattern, just as he’d suggested earlier. Knit five stitches, purl five stitches. Knit five stitches, purl five stitches. “Do this for five rows, then reverse and do the exact opposite, and when you’re done, you’ll have these cute little checks that stand out. You can even switch back to a plain knit stitch for the rest of the sweater, and the checked section will just be in the center like an extra special segment of the design.”

  When he lifted his head, he found Grace still staring as though he’d sprouted a second head or announced he wanted to leave the Rockets to join the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall as soon as his knee was fully healed.

  “What?” he asked.

  Oh, he knew what had her gaping like a guppy, he just wasn’t sure exactly what was going through that labyrinthine mind of hers.

  She shook her head, and the movement seemed to ripple down her entire body. “I can’t believe you know how to knit,” she said, sounding truly astounded. “When did you…? How did you…? Why did you …?”

  Her eyes widened in frustration and she waved a hand at him in a rolling, fill-in-the-blanks gesture.

  “Who? What? Where? When? Why? Fill in the blanks,” she ordered. “Right now. I want to know everything.”

  Finishing the row he was working on, he set the needles and yarn aside before meeting her gaze. “Truth?” he asked.

  She nodded, forgoing a typical smart-ass retort.

  “I missed you,” he said simply. “You thought I was the Spawn of Satan, believed I’d done the unthinkable, and after you left”—his brow creased in remembrance—”wrecking my apartment, destroying my Hummer, and taking my dog with you, I needed something to take my mind off my misery.”

  His gaze skittered away for a moment, and he rolled a shoulder, slightly embarrassed by what he was about to admit. “And I thought maybe, after you’d calmed down some and realized there was a chance I hadn’t cheated on you, that my knowing how to knit might impress you, since it’s such a big part of your life.”

  The minutes ticked by while she absorbed his explanation, and he waited for her reaction, good or bad.

  “You learned to knit for me,” she said, her voice tinged with stark incredulity and something else. Surprise? Confusion? Awe?

  He blinked and swallowed, his heart pounding in his chest—pa-thump-pa-thump-pa-thump—feeling more and more awkward the longer her gaze bored into him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he mumbled self-consciously.

  Grace’s lashes fluttered over the cerulean blue of her eyes. Her mouth loosened into a soft, open O the color of rose petals. And before he knew what was happening, before he could even register the movement, she’d thrown herself at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and was kissing him like a soldier newly home from war.

  Row 18

  This time, Grace was kissing Zack, no doubt about it.

  Whether she should or shouldn’t…whether it was right or wrong …whether she would regret it in the morning or was giving him false hope…she just didn’t care.

  Hearing that he’d learned to knit, that he’d taught himself in secret to impress her and as a possible means of winning her back …

  Oh, my gosh, had there ever been such a sweet, wonderful, amazing, thoughtful, or romantic man on the face of the planet?

  She didn’t want to think about what had driven her away from him to begin with. Didn’t want to remember the pain and anguish of thinking he’d cheated on her.

  What if he hadn’t? What if his protestations of innocence were all true and her friends—and her friends’ significant others—were right about him deserving another chance?

  For once, she wanted to believe it. Really and truly believe it, not simply wish that were the case.

  Just for a few hours.

  Just for tonight.

  So before she could talk herself out of it, before doubts and fears and old hurts could rear up and make her run for the hills, she let her instincts take over. She closed her eyes, opened her arms, and launched herself at him hard enough to knock them both back against the headboard.

  He grunted as she hit him square in the chest, hands coming up to catch her by the waist. But he didn’t resist, didn’t falter for even a moment in accepting her weight, accepting her offer, and accepting her kiss.

  She opened her mouth over his, tasting his lips and coaxing him to open with her tongue. And if there was one thing Zack had never needed when it came to int
imacy, it was prodding.

  He tugged her closer, until her breasts flattened against his hard chest and they were belly to belly. Oh, how she wished she weren’t wearing pajamas so her skin could press flush to his. As it was, she could feel the heat of his bare skin radiating through the fabric of his undershirt and her top, slowly raising her temperature and causing a flush to wash over her from head to toe, as though she were trapped inside a tanning bed cranked to “extra crispy.”

  From the waist down, he was covered in cotton boxer shorts and three layers of hotel-provided covers—the sheet, a blanket, and the thick, quilted comforter. Not for long, though; not if she had anything to say about it.

  Moving her hands to his face, she deepened the kiss, letting him know she was more than willing, and not calling a halt anytime soon. At the same time, she used her legs and feet to kick the blankets down, moving them slowly inch by inch until she hit Bruiser’s immovable bulk.

  The dog didn’t budge an inch, didn’t even act as though he noticed her piling the covers on top of him. If he hadn’t been there, she’d have pushed them off the end of the bed entirely, but at least this gave her better access to Zack’s remarkable body.

  Almost belatedly, she remembered his knee—remembered their last kiss, and how one wrong move had stopped things cold.

  Tearing her mouth away from his, she gulped in oxygen like a fish too long out of water. They were both panting, chests heaving, lips (and several other vital body parts) swollen and throbbing.

  “How’s your leg?” she asked, voice thick and ragged.

  “Good. Fine. Don’t worry about my leg,” he replied, his own tone none too steady as his fingers tightened on her waist and he tried to tug her back against his chest.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she told him, leaning forward, wanting to go back and return to that soul-stealing kiss.

  “You won’t. You can’t,” he said, sitting up to get closer, reaching for her mouth.

  She kissed him because she simply couldn’t resist any longer. A brief, fleeting brush of lips before drawing away again.