by Avery Flynn
“Yeah,” Caleb said, standing up and flashing a grin at her that almost reached his eyes. “We’re completely well adjusted.”
Okay, she could play along. “Which is why your mom picked out your date and my best friend blackmailed me into coming.”
“Do you regret it?” he asked, dropping the act, his gaze searching her face.
They were on some sort of edge here; one move either way and they’d go straight over. He wasn’t hers to fall for, though. They were total opposites in more than just mashed potatoes or dog training philosophies. They were opposites where it counted. He went by his gut and trusted his instincts. She couldn’t help but admire that faith in the universe he seemed to have, but that wasn’t her. It never would be. They couldn’t work, and she needed to remember that. They both did.
“No. It’s been fun,” she said, putting enough cheer in her tone that it almost sounded genuine. “Now we have to get to teaching Anchovy the basics of rolling over.”
She went straight to the handout the trainer had given them with step-by-step directions. Caleb, however, dropped into a plank position on the grass next to Anchovy. The dog, no doubt sensing fun was afoot, immediately did his best to copy the move. Then Caleb rolled over and the dog did the same.
“Sometimes you have to take a chance on something fun,” he said. “It almost always works out.”
And as they got back to getting Anchovy to work for his treat biscuits, she couldn’t shake the idea that he might be right. How many times had she heard the same advice from Gemma or her dad? Maybe this time, taking a chance on something fun was just what her rigid, workaholic self needed—if only for the date and a half of time that was left with Caleb. As long as she kept remembering that, she’d be okay after it was all over.
…
Caleb spent the next forty-five minutes with Zara trying to teach Anchovy some manners. It went about as well as could be expected for a dog who thought he was a human and didn’t need any learning. The best part was watching him think around the trainer’s tricks and doing just what needed to be done long enough to get a biscuit and a pet before going back to trying to start a mutiny among the other dogs to get back to the play park. By the time the session was up, even the trainer was laughing as Anchovy led the rest of the dogs in a game of chase.
“I definitely went wrong somewhere,” she said, shaking her head.
“No way, that dog is golden.” And so was this opportunity.
This time he took Zara’s hand as they walked back toward the bench near the play park, but instead of stopping there, he led her behind a tree next to it. Hands on either side of her hips, he bent down to kiss her, but she stopped him with the palm of her hand against his chest.
“Hold on.” She stepped up onto a gnarled exposed root that gave her a few more inches off the ground. “Now you need to make up for making me wait so long to properly welcome you home.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice—especially not with that look on her face. Closing the distance between them, he dipped his head down and captured her mouth in a kiss that was the best he could do considering they were both dressed and in public. Her lips parted, and he slipped his tongue inside, tasting her, teasing her until she was pressed against him. It wasn’t that the rest of the park disappeared, it was that it didn’t matter anymore. He had Zara and she was making those sweet, needy sounds, and he could give her exactly what she wanted.
But not here.
He couldn’t afford the bad headline of Hockey Player Arrested For Public Indecency, but more importantly, she didn’t deserve to be at the center of all that. It took just about every last ounce of his self-control, but he pulled back from the edge. They were both sucking in deep breaths as they disentangled from each other.
“Welcome home,” she said, her voice breathy.
Unable to stop himself from touching her, he brushed a strand of bright-red hair behind her ear. “Glad to be back.”
Holding hands again, they walked back around the tree to the bench. Judging by the looks the other dog owners gave them, they hadn’t been as discreet as he’d been hoping. Some people were amused, others openly curious, and a handful were staring hard, looking at him as if they knew him but just couldn’t place how. All the attention made the back of his head itch and his lungs tighten.
All of a sudden, Zara’s grip on his hand tightened and he looked down. Her face was serene, the sun highlighting the sixty billion freckles covering her face, but the tight lines of her mouth told him she’d noticed.
“So, what’s the post-date video plan for this one?” she asked as they sat down on the bench with a perfect view of Anchovy playing with another dog. “Do you know?”
The question yanked him out of the panic zone, and he tapped his fingertip against his thigh three times, the old routine settling him.
“The instructions Bramble sent the team PR guru about this date was that we were supposed to do a casual video of ourselves, talking about the process and what we were hoping to get out of date five and beyond.”
The last word hung in the air between them, a finish line he really didn’t want to cross anymore.
“I guess it would be kinda mean to let them in on our rule number one of no actual relationship after all this,” she said. “They really do have something cool here. I might try it again after the ball next week. Gemma is never going to let me hear the end of that, though, after she and a regrettable amount of tequila got me here in the first place.”
If any part of him had been wondering—and to be truthful, all of him had—about what was beyond date five for them, that pretty much answered it. There would be no more adjusting the rules—and he fucking hated it.
Chapter Fourteen
Oh yeah, going on camera was exactly what Zara wanted right now. She couldn’t wait to see if she could fake this smile long enough to get through a video where she had to listen to Caleb say all the things she wished were true.
“So how are we going to do this?” she asked, her spine stiff and her shoulders tight with tension.
“Why don’t you start.” He scooted down a bit on the bench, turning so he faced her as he held up his phone. “I’ll ask the questions.”
Deep breaths. It’s just for fun. It doesn’t mean a thing, even if it’s starting to feel like it.
“Perfect.” Her jaw was going to ache later from clamping it together like this. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
“So what were your thoughts before that first date?”
Oh man, that seemed like a billion years ago and yesterday all at the same time. It had been hot, and she’d been annoyed, and there was that couple from out of town.
“That the whole thing would be a disaster.” She chuckled remembering how she’d tried to speed-walk past the lollygaggers and had ended up eating the sidewalk. At the time, not funny. Now? Kinda funny. “I got tangled up in a pair of tourists on my way to the restaurant and I didn’t want to be on the date in the first place.”
He turned the phone around so the camera faced him, then pulled a funny face. “Sounds promising.”
“Oh yeah, very.” Especially considering she’d looked a total mess and had walked into the café and spotted him in all of his sexy pro-athlete glory. “Anyway, so I got there and you’re, like, a billion miles tall and hot, and I figured this was going to be a giant waste of my time.”
He lowered the phone enough that she could see the self-satisfied smirk on his face. “So you think I’m hot, huh?”
“That’s what you’re going to get stuck on?” She rolled her eyes. Men. “That part?” She swiped the phone away from him while he was trying to come up with an answer for that. “Okay, same question. What were your expectations for date one?”
“Someone taller,” he teased.
Giggling, she flipped him off from behind the camera.
The smart-ass grin on his face faltered as he leaned forward into the camera, resting his elbows on his hard thighs. “And definitely no
t someone who was as funny as she was smart and gorgeous. With my mom picking my date, I was expecting someone who was type-A, a hockey fanatic, and probably could beat me in the forty-yard dash.”
“Would that have been bad?”
“No.” He looked right at her then, not at the phone’s camera lens but at her. “But it wouldn’t have been you.”
Hello, heart, there is no reason to go into overdrive right now. Her heart didn’t listen. Instead, it pounded a hectic beat against her ribs while she tried to figure out what to say to that.
No doubt taking advantage of the moment, he snagged his phone back. “Then, we went on date two, where I found out you were just as competitive as the initial date I’d expected.”
Okay, neutral ground. She could talk about that. “That obstacle course was fun.”
“You know,” he said, his focus going from the screen to her, his dark eyes serious. “That’s when I knew you were going to always keep me on my toes, never knowing exactly what to expect.”
It wasn’t fair that he kept doing that, putting her at ease and then ramping things up again with words he didn’t mean but she so wanted to hear. How had that happened? How had she gotten lost in a fantasy of fake dates? This was why she’d made the rules, kept mostly to her usual routine, and refused to consider the possibilities. The last thing she needed was another man in her life who acted like he could be Prince Charming only to leave time after time.
Needing desperately to regain a foothold, she reclaimed the phone, surprised her hand didn’t shake when she did so.
“I wouldn’t have guessed judging by how well you did on our cooking date that you didn’t spend much time in the kitchen,” she said.
Reaching out, he toyed with the string hanging from the rip in her jeans just above her knee, his thumb occasionally brushing the bare patch of her skin. “When it comes to getting to hang out with you, I’m pretty much willing to try anything.”
“And you loved the food.” The words came out in a rush as she tried not to melt under the most minimal of touches.
“Somehow I missed out on keeping any of the leftovers, though.” He looked up at her, everything about him taking on an air of dangerous promise and sensual teasing. “I have no idea how that happened. Do you?”
The images came one after another. Being naked above him. The scratch of his beard against her thighs. Coming so hard she’d nearly collapsed on top of him.
“One of the great mysteries of life,” she managed to squeak out before taking a deep breath and releasing it in an attempt to focus on the video at hand and not what she wanted his hands to do. “And now we just finished with date number four: trying to teach my dog some much-needed manners.”
“Is the date over already?” He grinned, obviously aware of exactly what he’d done to her with that comment. “There should be more later. It’s a gorgeous day. I know Anchovy would approve.” He gave a whistle, and the dog came rushing over.
In the chaos of Anchovy getting onto the bench with them, finding a way to squeeze his big self in the small space between them, Caleb retook his phone. This time, though, instead of staying behind the lens, he stayed in the frame with her and Anchovy.
“Now this is a good-looking picture,” Caleb said. “Thanks to you two.”
As if he understood a single word, Anchovy let out a little doggie sigh of happiness and laid his fuzzy chin down on Caleb’s shoulder. Was it possible to be jealous of her own dog? Because at that moment she was.
“So, that’s it for us,” Caleb said, addressing the people who’d be watching the video. “Four Bramble dates down with the amazing woman my mom picked out and with only one more to go before this parental-guidance experiment ends. Be sure to catch up with us after date number five.”
He gave a little wave, but Zara just didn’t have it in her to do the same. The realization hit her square in the heart that walking away from Caleb after one last date was going to hurt like a bitch.
The question was, could she take the pain—because even though it was all but guaranteed, she couldn’t help but hope it just might work out.
…
An hour later, they’d brought Anchovy back to Zara’s apartment along with a takeout bag’s worth of fragrant Thai food from the place on the corner. Caleb followed her inside, using his elbow to shut the door behind him. Per usual, her space was clean and everything was in its place.
Almost a dozen miniature scenes were on her long worktable. He set the food down on her kitchen island and went over. They were as detailed and perfect as her work displayed at Hot Thang Review, but they were more fantasy than family, with tiny elephants and kittens climbing out of a bag. It was hard to look at them and not be in awe of how talented she was.
“You didn’t have to buy dinner.” Zara took out a couple of plates from the cupboard and silverware from a drawer. “The app was pretty clear about the date parameters, and you have officially completed them for date number four.”
“True, but we were both hungry, and there’s no harm in a good meal.”
She raised an eyebrow in question as she added a generous amount of the stir-fried rice noodles to each plate.
“No one can resist pouring their stories out over good food. It’s the key to good team bonding.” He crossed over into the kitchen area. “Trust me, there’s a reason why Peppers has us go out for team meals.”
It was always fun to watch the rookies try not to geek out at being at a table with their heroes—especially since not that long ago, every veteran at the table had been a wide-eyed rookie. The longer the season went on, the more relaxed the meals got, until it was like eating with family.
“In that case,” Zara said, handing him a plate, “you can go first.”
“Not yet. First we demolish all this amazing food.”
And that’s what they did. They sat on the windowsill leading out to her tiny balcony that was really more of a glorified fire escape and ate pad Thai, sitting so close together that their knees touched as they held their plates on their laps. As it was warm for late September, they basked in the sun, ate, and laughed at Anchovy’s attempts to garner enough pity to get him a bowl of noodles.
He laid his fork down on his plate and let out a satisfied sigh. “I’m gonna have to move to your neighborhood just so I can be closer to that takeout.”
Zara chuckled as she wound the last of her noodles around her fork. “I’m sure your team nutritionist would approve.”
“The bigger problem would be our trainer, Smitty. He’s a hard-ass.” And whatever plan he came up with always worked. All he had to do was take a look at Petrov’s faster-than-expected comeback to understand that.
“But you still love playing hockey.”
It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be. “For as long as I can do it.”
“And after?” She took his plate, stacked it on top of hers, and set them both down on the little table near the open window they’d crawled out of. “Or is that verboten to talk about?”
“Some guys are superstitious about it, but I’m not. It’ll happen; I’d rather prepare for it. There are benefits to being Britany Stuckey’s son, and that’s one of them.”
“You want to go into coaching?” she asked, making the logical deduction.
“Hell no.” Even the idea of it made his entire chest seize up. “My plan, which I’ve had since high school, is to go into sports management. Being raised by a woman—who I love—but who is a giant pain in the ass always driving each of us kids to be more, do more, get better grades, try for harder classes, leave it all out on the ice, doesn’t really give you room to take things as they come—especially not if half your class thought the only thing getting you from one grade level to the next was your hockey skill.”
She got that snarly look to her again, one that, if he was facing off against her on the ice, would have him thinking twice before he dropped the gloves. “What a bunch of jerks.”
“We were kids.” He shrugged, more intere
sted in the patch of skin above her knee that was visible thanks to the very convenient hole in her jeans than in talking about the bad old days. “We were dumb.”
“You’re a helluva lot nicer about it than I would be.”
He took a long pull from his beer, trying to figure out how to put it into words that didn’t make him sound like a total whiner. “That’s only because the worst part wasn’t the other kids, it was coming home with that report card, knowing I was going to disappoint the woman who sacrificed so much to get food on our tables and keep the rent paid and had the drive to become the only female boys’ hockey coach in the state and one of the few in the nation.”
“You’re right.” Zara’s shoulders slumped, and she seemed to sink into herself. “I have no idea what that’s like, not with my dad.”
“You haven’t told me the story. Honestly, he comes off as a pretty nice guy.” In the few times he’d met her dad, Jasper had seemed like a guy who loved his daughter, wanted the best for her, and had a pretty good sense of humor.
“He does—and he is,” she said, a bone-deep weariness seeping into her thousand-mile gaze. “Everyone who meets him loves him, and for good reason. You need a shirt? He’ll take the one off his back to give to you. Need a little bit of cash to make it through until payday? He’ll cover you without a second thought. The problem was that growing up, he did that without regard to whether we had enough in the bank for rent or utilities or groceries. It was kind of like being out on the ocean in a dinghy, never knowing when a giant wave was going to crash down on you and take you under.”
What did he say to that? How did he make up for a dad who seemed to prioritize his own daughter below the rest of the neighborhood? The reality was that no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t. All he could do was pull her close, picking her up enough to slide her onto his lap so she could rest her head against his chest.
“So I’m warning you now that I’m a fuckup,” he said, letting the words come out before he could think better of it. “The viral video that started this whole thing? I almost got one of my teammates traded because of it.”