Irresistible You
Page 29
“That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it? Three years—” He cut off, his anger a cloud that practically stung her eyes. “All because you put me in your crosshairs, Isobel. Well, forgive me if I would rather not trust my professional future to you.”
She swallowed, her cheeks heating furiously. Of course, he would see it that way. She had been young, immature, more sheltered than the average eighteen-year-old. All she knew was hockey. It was her life, and then Vadim had skated into it and she’d seen something else. Her eyes had opened to beauty and passion and—hell, she’d been a teenage nightmare.
He was so close, close enough for her to view rings of blue-green fire around his irises as well as a smudge of lipstick tinting his jaw. It was hard being Vadim Petrov.
Regularly bombarded by photos of him in magazines and on billboards over the years, she wanted to think it was easier to look at him objectively now. As a perfectly formed machine of mass and muscle. As a chiseled Renaissance sculpture that was cool to the touch. She wanted to think it, but she remembered too much about the last time she had been this close to him.
Her infatuation. Her embarrassment. Her shame.
She should apologize for how it all went down because it would make things easier.
Well, not exactly easier.
They had to work together, put aside their differences for the sake of the team. But she didn’t like his assumptions about how she’d landed this job.
Or maybe she didn’t like that she half-agreed with him.
Doubts that she had right completely on her side put her on the defensive. “These late nights at the club will have to stop.” She curved her gaze around his broad shoulder to the ever-increasing line of women waiting to sit on his lap. “You’re going to need your sleep for the extra practice you have to put in.”
He didn’t respond to that, but if he had, it was easy to guess what he’d say. What every athlete would say.
I know my limits. I know what my body can take.
Athletes were consummate liars.
Vadim leaned in again, smelling of fame, privilege, and raw sex appeal. Discomfort at his proximity edged out the hormonal sparks dancing through her body.
“Does Moretti know that we have history? Does he know you are the last person I wish to work with?”
Before she could respond, someone squealed, “Vadim!” A blond, skinny, buxom someone who was now wrapping herself around Vadim in a very possessive manner. “You said you’d be back with a dwinkie!”
A dwinkie?
Drawing back, Vadim circled the squealer’s waist and pulled her into his hard body. “Kotyonok, I did not mean to be so long.” He dropped a kiss on her lips, needing to bend considerably because she was just so darn petite! Not like big-boned Isobel, who could have eaten this chick and her five supermodel Playmates for a midmorning snack. A group of them stood off to the side, clearly waiting for the signal to start the orgy. And Vadim clearly wanted to give it, except he had to deal with the annoying fly in the sex ointment.
Why did the lumberjack hotties always go for twigs instead of branches? Did it make them feel more virile to screw a pocket-sized Barbie?
Yep, feeling like a schlub.
But he didn’t need to know that. All he needed to know was that she had the power to get him back on competitive ice. This was her best shot at making a difference and getting the Rebels to a coveted playoff spot. Vadim Petrov and his butt-hurt feelings would not stand in her way.
“Do you need to talk about it, Russian?”
She infused as much derision into the question as possible, so that the idea of “talking about it” made him sound a touch less than manly. Big, bad, brick house Russians didn’t need to talk about the women who done them wrong.
“There is nothing to talk about,” he uttered in that voice that used to send Siberian shivers down her back. Now? Nothing more than a Muscovian flurry.
“Excellent!” Super-scary cheerful face. “Regular practice tomorrow is at ten, so I’ll see you on the ice at nine a.m. Don’t be late.”
Pretty happy with her exit line, she walked away.
Far too easy.
A brute hand curled around hers and pulled her to the other side of the bar, out of the sight line of most of the VIP room. She found her back against a wall—literally and figuratively—as two hundred and thirty pounds of Slavic muscle loomed over her.
He still held her hand.
If she weren’t so annoyed, she’d think it was kind of nice.
She yanked it away. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Who am I?” he boomed, and she prayed it was rhetorical. Unfortunately, no. “I am Vadim Petrov. Leading goal scorer for my first two years in the NHL. Winner of both the Kontinental and the Gagarin Cups. A man not to be trifled with. And you are who exactly? The daughter of a hockey great who was not so great when it came to running a team. The woman who can no longer play, yet thinks she can offer ‘tips’ to me. To me! You may have pedigree, Isobel, but there is nothing I can learn from you.”
This arrogant, douchewaffle piece of shit!
She straightened, pulling herself millimeters from the wall, which had the effect of putting her eye to eye with him. Or eye to chin. Close enough.
Too close.
He was breathing hard, and so was she, the lift of her breasts teasing, tantalizing brushes against his chest.
“One conversation and you’re out of breath, Vaddy? We’re going to need to work on your conditioning.”
More of the dark and broody. More of the nipple pops against her sweater. Stop being so Russian, Russian!
“My conditioning regimen is fine.”
A glance over to the bar found “Dwinkie” biting her lip in concern, checking in with her gal pals, and possibly planning an extraction with SEAL Team: Boobs Are Our Weapons.
“Getting your exercise with puck bunnies and Vesna groupies doesn’t count.” Isobel slid her hand between their bodies and brushed his abs. Good God, hard as ice and hot as sin. “As I suspected, a bit flabby with all your time off. We’ll take care of that with your recovery program.”
He stepped back, as though burned by her touch, and she willed away the ping of hurt in her chest. At least she knew where they stood on that issue.
“I will discuss this with Moretti and Coach Calhoun tomorrow.”
“You do that, but do it early, because I’m still expecting you in full gear at nine a.m. And, Vadim? I’d suggest you quit with the trail of women looking to sit on your . . . knee. We don’t want to weaken it or any other parts of your anatomy. Keep that up and you won’t even have a shot at Dancing with the Stars.”
Then with the reflexes that once accorded her MVP status on the ice, she escaped his orbit and headed back into the crowd.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATE MEADER was raised on romance. An Irish girl, she started with Catherine Cookson and Jilly Cooper novels, and spiced it up with some Harlequins. Now based in Chicago, she writes romances of her own, where sexy contemporary alpha heroes and strong heroines match each other quip for quip. When not immersed in tales of brooding mill owners, oversexed equestrians, and men who can rock an apron or a fire hose, Kate lives on the web, at www.katemeader.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Kate Meader
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition August 2017
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ISBN 978-1-5011-6855-0