Twisted Wrister: A Next-Door-Neighbor Sports Romance (The Playmakers Series Hockey Romances Book 7)

by G. K. Brady

  Delicate eyebrows arched above her eyes. “The brunette the other morning …” she prompted.

  “She, ah—”

  “Michaela?” Paige appeared with a dark-haired guy in tow and sent Blake a rueful smile. “Sorry, Blake. I didn’t mean to interrupt. There’s someone I’d like Michaela to meet.” Blake stepped to the side, making room for Paige and her belly. He’d stick around long enough to be polite, then make himself scarce.

  Michaela’s posture, which he just realized had been comfortably relaxed, suddenly snapped to as if a hockey stick had been shoved down her back. She smoothed her curls, and her expression morphed into marble coolness as she regarded first Paige, then the dude beside Paige.

  “Scott Newburn, I’d like you to meet my attorney, Michaela Wagner.” Paige’s eyes sparkled with something Blake couldn’t interpret. What he could interpret was the interest lighting up Scott’s face as his eyes made a slow sweep of Michaela’s … assets. Apparently, the guy liked what he saw—not that Blake could blame him because she looked … Wow! She’d been hot in workout clothes, but this was an entirely different side of her he wholly appreciated … or, more accurately, admired on Ferguson’s behalf. Yeah, that was it. And now Blake would suss out the guy … for Ferguson, of course. It’s what good wingmen did.

  In the next instant, Paige was called away, and Scott turned his attention to Blake, sticking his hand out and giving him a curious once-over. Blake automatically responded in kind, offering his hand in a gripping handshake. Before he could introduce himself, Michaela laid her hand on his forearm. The light touch of her small fingers reminded him of feathers and sent tendrils of warmth snaking up to his shoulder.

  “Scott, this is my neighbor Blake Barrett.” She withdrew her hand, and his skin turned oddly cold.

  Scott’s face split into a shit-eating grin. “Center for the Blizzard, right?”

  When Blake nodded, Scott ran on about a play Blake had made last week, ignoring Michaela and making Blake squirm with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. To her credit, Michaela gently interjected from time to time, trying to work her way into the conversation, but Scott ran over her like a motor grader would run over a bug. Even Blake couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and while he loved geeking out on the sport himself, the guy was a little over the top.

  Noticing her martini glass was empty, Blake held up his hand. “Can I get you a refill?” She handed it to him with a grateful nod.

  Scott smacked his forehead and leveled his gaze at Michaela. “God, I am so sorry! I’ve been yammering on and on about hockey, and what I really want to talk about is you.” He shrugged sheepishly. “Guess I’m a little nervous.”

  While Blake might have pegged the guy for a putz, his confession earned him a beaming smile from Michaela that curdled Blake’s insides. What if she liked this guy? Fergs could miss out.

  When he returned with her fresh cocktail, she and Scott seemed to be sharing an intimate conversation while being hemmed in by a press of guests. Scott’s arm was parked on the wall above her head, and judging by Michaela’s body language, she didn’t mind the closeness.

  Blake muscled his way in and handed her the drink. “Hey, Micky. Here’s your martini. I asked him to make it just the way you like it.” He had absolutely no clue how she liked it, but thank God the bartender remembered the “pretty lady with the curls” and was able to recreate whatever he’d mixed up for her before.

  Her eyes widened, and a crease pinched her brows as her posture stiffened. Scott backed up. She flashed Blake a fake smile. “Thank you, Blakey. You always take such good care of me.”

  Scott gaped at her. “I didn’t realize—Paige said you were single.” He grimaced at Blake. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t,” Michaela piped up and waved a hand between her and Blake. “We’re not … He’s just my neighbor.”

  True, but ouch! And why did it bother him to be referred to as “just my neighbor”?

  Scott’s shoulders seemed to ease, and he opened his mouth but quickly closed it when his phone rang. “Kids,” he muttered and excused himself.

  Her eyes followed his retreat, and Blake couldn’t stop himself. “You like that guy?”

  “He seems nice. He just became single, so it’s got to be tough, especially when you’re sharing a couple of kids. I bet he’s lonely.”

  Blake frowned at her, though her eyes were still aimed in the direction Scott had gone. “So you feel sorry for him.”

  She puffed her cheeks and let out an extended exhale, then raised her eyes to his. “A little, yes.”

  Scott’s sudden reappearance cut the conversation short.

  “I’m so sorry,” Scott said to Michaela. “I have the kids tonight, and one of them just started throwing up. I told the babysitter I’m on my way. Normally, I don’t get sitters when it’s my time with them, but Paige insisted I come. Now I understand why, and I’m glad she did.” He flashed her a big smile. “Maybe I could take you out for coffee next week?”

  Blake tried not to roll his eyes while Scott tapped Michaela’s number into his phone. Why did he find this guy so irritating?

  Scott took a few steps back and pointed at Blake. “Nice to meet you.” He swung his finger to Michaela. “I’ll text you next week.” He sent her another huge smile, making Blake wonder if he was showing off new dental work.

  A prickling sensation in the pit of Blake’s stomach had him giving in to his dick side after Scott was gone. “There’s probably a good reason he’s single and lonely.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m also feeling sorry for myself.”

  He didn’t bother hiding his surprise. “Why?”

  Her eyes shifted in the direction Scott had gone. “He was my best chance for the plus-one I need for an important event, and it turns out he’s got his kids that night.”

  “So you asked him?” Blake spluttered.

  “Mm-hmm.” She raised her glass to her lips once more, and the holes in the sleeves of her shirt gave him a tantalizing peek at her flowery tattoo. His mind leapt to how far up that tattoo went, and what else it curled around.

  He cleared his throat. “What kind of event?”

  Her eyes locked on his. They were big, beautiful eyes that reminded him of liquid silver. Ferguson was a lucky man. “The big cheese of all cheeses in my firm is throwing a dinner party for us mini-cheeses and our dates. I, um, sorta led my boss to believe I had someone to bring.”

  “Seriously?” His spirits lifted a few feet.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Did you know that cheese is the most stolen food item in the world?”

  She gave him a very satisfactory eye-roll. “Maybe I can steal a date. Or a cheese. Maybe I should just hire an escort.”

  “You mean, like … an escort escort?”

  She blinked at him and frowned in confusion.

  “A gigolo?” he explained. A brilliant idea struck him, and without waiting for her answer, he ran on. “Ditch the gigolo idea. I have a better one.”

  She cocked an expectant eyebrow and took another sip.

  “What if one of us, let’s say Owen, was your date for the cheese wheel get-together?”

  Her eyes rounded in mock surprise. “Are you guys even old enough to date?”

  Wincing, he covered his heart with both hands. “Ouch! Wait. Let me dig out the arrow before I answer.” Was he insulted? He should have been, but talking to her was the most fun he’d had all night—all month, if he were being honest.

  She beamed a self-satisfied smile that scrambled his brain. She was adorable. Wait. Were attorneys adorable? But she wasn’t just an attorney. No, she was way more than her job title, and he was intrigued by what else lay behind her façade.

  Christ! No, you’re not! With an inner head slap, he barreled ahead.

  “Yeah, pretty sure dating’s allowed now that I can grow a beard, Mom.”

  Her dazzling smile turned embarrassed. “Come to think of it, after what I witn
essed, I guess you are old enough. Or else you’re practicing the big-boy stuff and pulling it off.”

  Casually propping his arm the same way Scott had, he frowned down at her. “Just how old do you think we are?”

  “We?”

  “Owen and me.” Gotta keep Ferguson’s name front and center.

  A little shoulder shrug. “Nineteen? Twenty? Is that why you don’t drink?” Her expression telegraphed she was absolutely serious. Suddenly, he felt like a squirt again.

  “Someday I’m going to take your guess as a compliment.”

  “But not today, huh?” A little grimace of contrition decorated her full mouth, and his mind made the inconvenient leap to kissing her the previous week. Non-thinking parts of him wanted to start that session all over again.

  He shook his head in answer to her question but more so to shake out the errant thoughts bombarding his brain. “But not today. As for my not drinking, age has nothing to do with it. For your information, I’ll be twenty-five in about six weeks.”

  Her eyes startled wide. Maybe he was insulted after all. Did he really look that young?

  “Oh! You look so … so … youthful,” she stammered. “I just turned twenty-five a few weeks ago. October fourth.”

  Now it was his turn to be surprised. “No kidding? I thought you were—” She narrowed her eyes menacingly. He held up his free hand in surrender. “I wasn’t going to say older. I was going to say … never mind. Aren’t attorneys … Doesn’t it take a long time to become an attorney? Or are you one of those super-achievers who was done with high school when you were eleven?”

  She seemed to ease, and the twinkle returned to her eyes, which made him relax a tic too. “Nice recovery, ace.”

  “Honestly,” he argued, “my assumption about your, uh, maturity had to do with your profession, not your appearance.” Sensing he was losing ground, he fell back on his bag of trivia facts. “Did you know the age difference in thirty-four percent of heterosexual married couples in the US is only within one year?” Shit. And now he was blathering about marriage.

  That cute little smirk of hers made another appearance, and the tiniest of dimples appeared on her right cheek. “I have a feeling it’s time I saved you from yourself.”

  He hung his head dramatically. “Please. Someone has to.”

  Her eyes lifted to the ceiling as if she was looking for words up there, then leveled on his once more. “We’ve established there’s a two-month age difference between us, and I’m the oldest.” Her chin lifted a few inches, and her tone had taken on an appealing kind of brattiness. What was it Fergs had called her? Sassy. Yeah, that. “We also established you’re a Sagittarius and I’m a Libra,” she added.

  “We did? Wait. Is that a horoscope thing?” She nodded, and he jumped at the chance to steer the conversation in a different direction—hopefully one where he wasn’t so damn off balance and could bring the focus back to Fergs. “What sign is February fifth?”

  “Aquarius. Why? Who’s that?”

  “Owen, who’s older than me. Us. Are those signs compatible?”

  “Which signs? Road work ahead? Stop? Merge with traffic?”

  Chuckling, he barely avoided saying, “Yours and his,” going instead with, “Libra and Aquarius.”

  “Supposedly, but personally I find Aquarius men pretty intolerable. Give me an air or fire sign any day.”

  Something akin to disappointment—for Ferguson—and confusion welled inside him. “Intolerable how? And what’s a fire sign? And more importantly, how does a hardworking attorney know these things?”

  “I used to do friends’ horoscopes in high school. Fire signs are Leo, Aries, and Sagittarius—like you. As for Aquarians of the male variety, they’re always right”—she put air quotes around the last two words—“and they know everything.” The last word she dragged out. “Just ask them, and they’ll tell you. They’re extremely smug in their self-righteousness. Plus, they’re aloof. Not affectionate at all.”

  “So no PDA, I take it?” Come to think of it, he’d never seen Fergs slobber all over a girl like some of their teammates did. Then again, neither did Blake. He wasn’t anti-PDA; he’d just never been around anyone who made it hard to keep his hands to himself.

  “No, but it’s not only public displays. It’s private ones too.” A faraway look passed through her eyes, like clouds silvered by moonlight.

  “Speaking from experience?” Why had he asked? He didn’t want to know, and he sipped his club soda to mask his discomfort.

  “Unfortunately, yes. But it was a long time ago, and water under the bridge and all that.”

  Shifting uneasily, he blurted out the first thing to pop into his brain. “Did you know the idiom ‘water under the bridge’ derives from ancient Greece? It went something like ‘you cannot step twice in the same river.’”

  The bartender materialized from out of nowhere and offered her a fresh martini and a grin.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  Bartender guy jerked his head toward somewhere behind him. “From the gentleman who had to leave, with his apologies.” He lifted her nearly empty glass from her grasp and, with a wink, pivoted and marched back to his station.

  “Thank you,” she called after him. She took a tiny sip, then looked up at Blake. “See? Scott’s a nice guy.”

  Blake glanced over his shoulder before looking back down at her. “About this date to your boss’s dinner.”

  Her eyes shot to his, and mischief transformed her features. “Are you angling to be my date?”

  Surprised for the umpteenth time that night, he jabbed his thumb against his chest. “Me? I was thinking Owen.”

  “Oh, right. I should have considered the fact you have a girlfriend … er, girlfriends. How’s the kissing going, by the way?” Her eyes stay locked on his as she raised the rim of the glass to those lips he couldn’t stop looking at.

  “It’s not going because I don’t have any girlfriends,” he huffed.

  “Oh. You just … get around a lot.”

  “No, I don’t!” A few people nearby stopped talking and threw him a glance, so he dropped his voice and delved into her eyes, as if he could more forcefully convey what he wanted to say. Why her belief he was an indiscriminate manwhore bugged him, he had little clue, but there it was. “I can see where you might get that idea, but it’s not true.”

  “So the redhead you were kissing stopped by to sell you Girl Scout cookies? Not that it’s any of my business, of course.” Her eyes sparkled like the frost on her glass.

  “Are you always this …”

  “Annoying? Pretty much. Probably explains why I can’t get a date.”

  He let loose a pent-up laugh. “I was going to say ‘tenacious,’ but ‘annoying’ works too.” Silence ripened between them, and he rushed to fill it. “The thing is … this is embarrassing.”

  “How so?”

  “Because the redhead, Sherry, was … I picked her up. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was the other way around.” Not that that makes it any better. And why in the hell am I telling you this in the first place?

  “Ah. So a one-nighter. Or were you planning on seeing her again, hence the kissing lessons?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” But he did know. He just didn’t want to admit what a bastard he was by admitting the truth that no, he didn’t plan on seeing her again. That when she’d approached him with that wiggle walk of hers, he’d been caught in a particularly weak moment because he’d desperately needed the release, the connection to someone. But pursue her? A solid no. Matter of fact, he had yet to meet a woman he wanted to pursue. God, maybe he was more like Ferguson than he realized. Better that or be played like his dad had been? Of course, the very fact his dad had been worked so badly by his mom might explain why Blake hadn’t found anyone worth pursuing—he hadn’t looked. Survival kept him from repeating his father’s mistakes and opening himself up to heartbroken misery.

  “And the brunette?” Michaela’s words jarred him back to
the present.

  He swallowed the truth dangling from the tip of his tongue. “She needed a place to crash, so she stayed over. Nothing happened between her and me.” He winced inside. Michaela was a smart girl who could easily connect the dots and figure out Tracy was with Ferguson, which didn’t paint his friend in the best light. Hell, neither of them was shining at their finest at the moment.

  “Well, you’re a hockey player. That explains it.”

  His defense mechanisms flared into action. “Explains what?”

  She swept him with cool assessment. His defenses were locked and loaded.

  Except a disarming gleam lit her pretty quicksilver eyes. “I was referring to … You must get that a lot. You’re in good shape.”

  His defensive systems collapsed. Not only had she noticed the body he worked on constantly, but she wasn’t judging him, and what he was sure was a goofy grin broke out. “Uh, yeah. I have to work out a lot.”

  “I bet.” A cute smirk quirked her perfect bow mouth.

  Was that a blush staining her freckled cheekbones? And why was he noticing every minute detail? Fuck. He was blowing it. He needed to get a grip. No, wait. He couldn’t blow anything because he had no intention of getting close to her. Unless it was on Ferguson’s behalf, of course. The fact he’d gotten himself tangled in the truth about the brunette was proof. But a little voice told him he needed to remind himself Michaela was in Ferguson’s crosshairs and was totally off-limits.

  Chapter 11

  Cheese and Martinis

  Michaela should have been horrified by her behavior and her pushy pokes and prods—not to mention the BS about the astrology—but the little devil on her shoulder kept whispering in her ear, and she kept listening. She was having too much fun to stop, even if it was at this poor guy’s expense. Besides, she always found the varied ways people handled pressure utterly fascinating. Blake Barrett was taking her ribbing with unexpected ease and grace, as he had with the embarrassingly forgettable pepper-spray incident.