“How’s it feel to just accept a compliment?” Layla teased.
“Actually, pretty good.” Callie tipped back another beer and turned to Max. “It’s not a skill I get a lot of practice at.”
“Accepting compliments?”
“Yeah. Apparently, the proper response to ‘good curling’ is ‘thank you,’ or maybe ‘you, too.’”
“What do you usually say?”
“I usually tell them in great detail how I could’ve curled better.”
Max laughed. “I understand the impulse. How are you holding it at bay tonight?”
Callie’s smile widened. “I’m not. I couldn’t have curled any better today if I’d been Wonder Woman.”
“You were Wonder Woman,” Ella said, genuine awe in her voice.
“Even your misses hit,” Brooke added. “That one in the third end was off line from what you called, but you adjusted the sweepers before I even saw the problem.”
Callie didn’t brush off the praise this time. “I knew it was a possibility before I threw. All I had to do was switch to plan B.”
“Do you always have a plan B?” Max asked, sitting forward and pulling out her phone.
Layla shot a hand across the table and covered the lens. “Yes, she does, and no, you don’t get an interview tonight.”
“Oh.” Max withdrew the phone. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to turn your celebration into a work function. It’s a bad habit I have.”
“Something else you two have in common.” Layla motioned between her and Callie. “But, it’s not just our celebration, Pencil Pusher. I heard you working on your little highlight videos during the game. You were legit calling the points back there.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Brooke said, in a tone that still held a little grudging. “You didn’t suck today.”
She tried to withhold her smile. The compliment wasn’t exactly enthusiastic praise, but she appreciated it all the more. She hadn’t sucked today. It was a huge step up, and one she was inordinately proud to take with these women. “Okay, so how does a non-curler celebrate a non-embarrassing performance around here?”
Layla, Brooke, and Ella all answered in unison. “Dance!”
“No,” Callie and Max said in stereo.
Everyone laughed.
“Come on.” Layla hopped up. “You win, you dance. Curling rule.”
Max turned to Callie, eyebrows raised. “Is it really one of those unwritten curling rules?”
Callie’s smile widened. “No, but she’s not wrong. We’re both winners again. Might be time to loosen up on the rules a bit.”
Max returned Callie’s smile. How could she not? Electric, magnetic, contagious—all the good and elemental forces passed between them. Callie thought she was a winner. She wasn’t sure she believed it, but in this moment the fact that Callie did meant more.
“Okay.” She pushed back from the table and rose slowly. Extending her hand, she said, “If winners dance, I guess we better boogie.”
Callie accepted the pronouncement, and slid smooth fingers along the length of Max’s palm and then tugged them both toward the dance floor.
Somewhere behind them, Ella blew out a low whistle. “I think those people in heck might be about to get some ice water.”
Max moved much better than expected. Callie blushed at the thought. She hadn’t realized she’d given any actual thought to how Max would move, much less held expectations on the subject. And yet she apparently had, because as Max twirled her playfully in a circle, she found herself pleasantly surprised.
“I can’t remember the last time I danced like this,” Max said, loud enough to be heard over the band currently butchering an Allman Brothers cover.
“I can’t remember the last time I actually had fun while dancing,” Callie admitted.
“Well, I suppose winning goes a long way toward lightening the mood.”
Callie thought about that as she moved her feet to the beat, shifting a little farther away from Max to merge with the large crowd. The winning certainly didn’t hurt her mood. A weight had been lifted off her shoulders halfway through their final match, and while she knew it would resettle on her eventually, it hadn’t done so yet.
“You had fun out there today,” Max said, as she danced closer once more.
“I did,” she admitted, “from about the fourth end on, and I think I may actually have you to thank for that.”
“Me?” Max raised her brows, and her gray eyes reflected the little flashes of light around them.
“I was on the fence about whether to take the safe shot or try to make my move when I heard you explaining the concept to your camera.”
“Really? You could hear me?”
She nodded her head to the rhythm of the bass guitar. “I could, and that’s unusual for me. Normally, I’ve got a complete cone of silence around me when I’m in the zone.”
“You’d have to. The crowd was so close today, they were, like, literally breathing down your neck.”
Callie grinned. “And yet, I didn’t hear them. I heard you.”
“Was I a distraction?” Max frowned.
“No,” she said quickly, “or maybe you were in the strictest sense, but in a good way. You were so coolly competent. You stated my options in this really concise way, and you had this matter-of-fact kind of confidence that they were all valid.”
“Weren’t they?”
She laughed, a spark of joy in her chest. “They were! Like, both options had pros and cons, and both options could’ve been right or wrong depending on how we executed, but when you’re out there in the heat of it all with so many people looking to you for some magic answer, it’s easy to forget that.”
Max nodded thoughtfully.
“Either way I was going to have to execute eventually, right? Either in the fourth or the fifth or the eighth end, I would need to steal an end, and when you just said so, like it was a foregone conclusion, I realized what I’d known all along and got the job done then. So, thank you.”
“You do know I didn’t actually do anything, right? I’m still no expert on curling. I didn’t even manage any truly enlightened commentary. Everyone in that arena was thinking what I said.”
“Yes. Myself included, but we were all caught up in the tension. You were stating facts.”
The song ended and the strobe lights slowed as a female singer stepped close to the mic, and a fiddle vibrated out a long, low note. All around them, people made split decisions to either move closer or exit the floor. Max and Callie both froze, seemingly the only two left rooted in their indecision as a ballad took hold.
They stared at each other, eyes locked in question. Max had amazing eyes, unlike any Callie had ever seen before, almost the color of cloudy ice, but warmer, deeper, softer, like her perfectly smooth complexion. Everything about Max was smooth, her cheeks, her lips, the sheen and cut of her always unruffled hair. The symmetry was almost too much to bear, and for way too many beats, Callie got so lost in the sight of her, she forgot the unspoken question between them. Max finally broke the stalemate. “We’ve reached that awkward moment where the Patch turns into a middle-school dance.”
Blinking, she turned to see everyone had either paired up or was looking on from the sidelines. “And all our friends are watching.”
“All your friends,” Max corrected. “Half the people here want me drawn and quartered.”
Callie shook her head. “Way more than half the people here have no idea who you are.”
“Ouch.” Max flattened a hand across her chest. “It burns.”
Callie stepped closer, placing one hand over Max’s and the other on her hip. Together, they began to sway to the music.
“Thanks,” Max whispered, “for saving my pride.”
“Thanks for putting your pride aside enough to follow curling for a while. I’m glad you’re still with us.”
“Me too,” Max admitted, “but in the name of journalistic integrity, I do have to fess up about somethin
g.”
“What’s that?”
“Earlier you said I stayed analytical while everyone else got swept up in the tension.”
“Yeah.”
“I have to admit, I got kind of swept up, too.”
“What?” she asked, not fully processing.
“I did, and it still surprises me a little, but when you made your last shot, I held my breath the whole time.”
A slow smile stretched Callie’s cheeks, and something harder to define stretched in her chest. “You like curling!”
Max laughed, and the low, easy sound shook through the points where their bodies connected along their chests, stomachs, and thighs. “I don’t know if I’d go quite so far.”
“No, don’t backtrack now. You were making real progress.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to regress,” Max said playfully.
“You like curling. You can tell me. You can tell the whole world,” Callie teased. “Max Laurens, the curling convert. I can’t wait to read that article and—”
“Hey now—”
“Go on, admit it.”
“I’ll admit I saw some of the appeal in today’s match.”
“Seriously? That’s all I get? You can’t say, ‘Hi, my name is Max, and I like curling’?”
Max shook her head and pushed her lips tightly together.
Callie’s shoulders sagged.
“I’m not ready to commit to the full shebang yet.”
She sighed and looked down at Max’s loafers, not sure why it mattered. She didn’t need Max’s unwavering approval or validation. She loved her job. She loved the sport. She loved knowing she’d played a damn-near flawless game. And still, as she took slow, steady breaths filled with the scent of Max’s cologne, her body and her mind both seemed to be waiting for something more.
“Hey,” Max whispered, wrapping her arm around her waist a little tighter until there was no more space between them.
Callie glanced up, her gaze connecting with those gray eyes once more, and her heart gave a little flutter.
“I might not be ready for the full-time commitment to the game of curling as a whole,” Max said softly, her tone almost intimate even in the crowded room, “but I will gladly tell anyone who asks that I genuinely loved watching you curl today.”
All the breath left Callie’s lungs. She probably should’ve focused on the curling aspect of that statement. Max the sports reporter had enjoyed a single game of curling. It was a big step in the right direction, professionally speaking. And yet, there in Max’s arms, their bodies warm and flush, Callie’s reaction felt anything but professional, because all she’d heard was Max enjoyed watching her.
“Does that still count as good progress?” Max asked, close enough that her breath ran warm across Callie’s neck.
She nodded, and rested her chin on Max’s shoulder, not sure what they were progressing toward, but certain it did feel good. When was the last time she’d just let herself feel good? When was the last time she’d let go? When was the last time she’d let herself want something that didn’t involve ice or a broom? She ran through years of memories but couldn’t isolate a single one. She’d had so many accomplishments, so many experiences. Why hadn’t any of them have made her feel as purely happy as she felt right now? She didn’t have the answer, and she didn’t even know what she should question more, the sum total of all those other moments or the magnitude of just this one.
The song faded to a stop, and Max slackened her hold but didn’t break the contact between them. “Want another drink?”
“No.” She closed her eyes, not wanting the moment to end, and yet knowing it had to. “I think I better call it a night. I’m feeling a little lightheaded.”
“From the beer?” Max leaned back only enough to read her expression. “I have a car here. I could drive you back to the hotel.”
“No, not from the beer, from, well . . .” Her cheeks flushed hot. “Maybe from you.”
“Oh.” Max’s eyes went a little wide, the emotion in them shifting from concern to something that caused her pupils to expand. “In that case . . .”
“You have a car here and you could drive me back to the hotel?” Callie asked, unable to hide a small smile.
Max’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead, she managed only a half shrug and then a nod. The move was endearing, and when paired with the heat radiating between them, Callie didn’t know how she could resist the fire building within her. More importantly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Chapter Eleven
She’d played it cool while Callie had collected her things and assured her team they need not cut their celebration short on her account.
She’d played it cool on the five-minute drive back to the hotel.
She’d played it cool through the lobby, and on the elevator, and during the damn interminable walk down an absurdly long hallway.
At no point in that entire process had Max actually felt cool, though. Honestly, her cool had vanished the moment Callie touched her on the dance floor. She didn’t know what had come over her. She’s wasn’t some teenager at prom. She’d been with plenty of women, and moved a lot faster with them, too, but much like the game Callie loved, she had an uncanny ability to stoke tension in some wonderfully unexpected ways that left Max off balance. When she’d placed her hand over Max’s own and stepped so deliciously close, every thought blurred. Now it seemed like their boundaries were about to do the same.
“This is my room,” Max managed as they reached the end of the hall. “I don’t have anything to offer you for a nightcap. I didn’t really expect to do any hosting while I was here.”
Callie smiled with that wonderful mix of amusement and confidence she’d used on the ice earlier. Then she kissed her. If Max had had trouble thinking clearly before, she lost all ability to do so when Callie’s lips touched hers. Thankfully, what her brain lost in the ability to think, her body made up for with the ability to feel. Every sense and nerve ending went into overdrive as the kiss escalated. Cold noses and hot breath, soft lips and skilled hands, she registered all of them at once. Callie’s hands on her hips held them close, and Max appreciated the anchor as she began to melt into her.
Callie’s tongue swept across her own in a brief, testing pass, and Max parted her lips more fully, welcoming the exploration. Maybe it was just that she hadn’t been kissed in so long, but everything about this was better than she remembered. Callie’s mouth moved with purpose from a full-frontal approach to feathery brushes at the corners, to a little nip with her teeth on Max’s lower lip, then back again with a deep, soulful press that left her certain she couldn’t remember being kissed like this because she never had been. How was this woman so good at everything?
She’d always heard people talk about not rushing the foreplay or spending hours making out without going any further, and she’d never understood those impulses until right now. She wondered briefly what else she’d never understood until Callie kissed her, but then their tongues tangled once more, and a soft moan replaced any remnants of conscious thought. She wanted to live in this kiss. She wanted to crawl deeper into it, deeper into Callie and all the feelings she inspired. She wanted, oh how she wanted. It surged up in her like a fire or a beast, or a fire-breathing beast.
She barely had time to even smile at the absurdity of that image, because before she fully processed it, it consumed her. Instinct, raw and hungry, took hold, and she cupped Callie’s face in her hands. Callie had been kissing her, and Max had gleefully accepted the gift, but now she was engaged in returning it. Running her fingers along smooth cheeks and into soft tendrils of honeyed hair falling down around her temples, she pulled Callie even closer. They stole the same breath and echoed the same rapid heartbeat.
Fleetingly, she became aware they were doing all of this in the hallway of a Best Western, but as all her brain cells were occupied with processing more sensory information, she had little wherewithal to determine what to do about that until Callie
’s hands worked their way around her waist and into the back pockets of her slacks.
“Hmm.” She hummed a little noise of encouragement, and Callie responded by pulling them so tightly together their hips gave a satisfactory little grind, seemingly of their own accord. That hadn’t been what she’d intended, but she wasn’t complaining. Still, if she wanted to get any closer, she would have to shift more than her hips.
“Key,” she managed to mutter with her next quick intake of breath.
Callie slowed, as if trying to make sense of the word.
“Room key.” She gasped again and then on her next pass added, “Back pocket.”
Callie smiled against Max’s mouth and clasped the wallet she’d already been so close to. Extracting it skillfully, she handed it to Max. Together they fumbled on the exchange, nearly spilling all the contents before Max found the strength to break the kiss and then, snagging the key card, jammed it in the lock.
She swung open the door, and with a nod to Callie managed to pant, “Inside.”
Callie froze, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.”
“I got no ideas,” Max said, her head spinning with the abrupt withdrawal. Had she gone too fast? Too far? Had she misread where they were headed? It wouldn’t be the first time. Her stomach clenched at the thought, but her libido didn’t fully release her either, causing a mental and physical tug-of-war inside her. “I honestly don’t even have any coherent thoughts right now.”
Callie laughed and stepped into the room, pulling the door shut behind her. “Good. For a moment there, I worried you thought you might be in control.”
“I don’t know what gave you that impression. I haven’t felt fully in control of anything since the day I met you and my feet went right out from under me.”
She shook her head. “You know those two things weren’t actually related.”
“They totally were.”
“Well, they didn’t have to be. You could’ve done this the easy way if you’d made different choices.”
“The story of my life.” Max frowned as an old fear curled like smoke rising through her chest. “Actually, I’ve made a lot of poor choices in my life, Callie. Maybe you should—”
Fire & Ice Page 15
