by Avery Flynn
Especially since he hates your guts—and not exactly without cause.
Oh yeah, thanks for that little reminder, asshole who lives in my head.
Pulling herself back from the edge of making a complete fool of herself, Shelby let go of his hand and then sat on hers. It never hurt to be extra careful.
“Ian,” she said, not having any kind of clue what should come next.
He grunted in acknowledgment and God help her, she had to squeeze her thighs together for some kind of momentary release because good dinner plus fireplace plus hot man equaled horny times to her completely unhinged id.
Focus, Shelby.
“I’m sorry about how the story of Alex being your brother got out and my part in it. I hope someday you won’t hate me for it.” The words came out in a rush and without even a hint of forethought because why should her nonexistent filter make an appearance now?
He sat back suddenly, as if she’d stuffed a fresh-made snowball down the back of his shirt and looked over at the fire. The muscles in his jaw flexed as he ground his teeth together before letting out a deep breath.
“Okay, so I’m just gonna turn in now,” she said as she hustled over to the part of the couch were all her stuff was. “Night, Ian.”
He didn’t say anything as she grabbed her toiletry bag and went into the main-floor bathroom to brush her teeth. By the time she got back, he was brushing over the kitchen sink and watching the snow continue to fall outside the big bay window in the breakfast nook. He’d swapped out of his jeans and Henley for a pair of track pants.
She didn’t mean to look so long at his back but damn, it was hard not to take it in. Broad shoulders topped off a muscular back that tapered down to narrow hips and a hockey butt to beat all hockey butts. The man had to get special pants made just for him. Catching herself just as he started to turn around, she dove under the covers on her side of the couch and closed her eyes so he might maybe think she was done talking and ready for sleep.
The floorboards creaked and the covers rustled at the opposite end of the sectional, where she did not picture Ian stretched out with the blanket down at his waist. Shirtless. It really needed to stop snowing outside so she could shovel out her car and get gone.
“Hey, Shelby,” Ian called out, a raspy edge to his voice.
She swallowed. “Yeah?”
“I don’t hate you,” he said.
Every thought in her head skittered to a stop. She would have formed words if she could have, but an apology from Mr. Sexy Grunts was pretty much the last thing she’d been expecting. Ever. Like she would go work for the hated Cajun Rage before laying even a dollar on the chance he’d say he’d been wrong about being pissed at the messenger—even an accidental one.
“Wake me up if the fire goes out.” Then he rolled over, and all of fifteen seconds later, his breath had steadied and he was asleep.
Meanwhile, Shelby was left staring at the shadows from the fire flickering on the ceiling and wondering if she would ever sleep again. Verdict? Probably not until she left this cabin, because if she was that attracted to Ian when she’d figured he was mad at her, finding out that he wasn’t was going to give her sexual-frustration insomnia to the twelfth degree.
Chapter Five
Ian couldn’t sleep. He’d faked it long enough for Shelby to crash out, but not even the soothing crackle of the fire could help lull him under. He was too aware of her. He couldn’t see a lot of her in the light of the fire, but he could see enough that his imagination could fill in all the details, which had left him with a head full of Shelby and half a hard-on.
Fuck, he needed to cool off. Since throwing himself into one of the snowdrifts outside wasn’t an option unless he wanted to freeze his dick off, he got up and went into the kitchen. He grabbed one of the water bottles from the pantry and took a huge gulp as he scrolled on his phone in vain, looking for hockey updates when he didn’t have shit for a signal.
It wasn’t the best use of his battery, but it was better than sitting on the couch thinking about Shelby, because she was very much off-limits.
When the new owner had come in, he’d gone over in great detail how there was to be no fraternization, as he put it, between players and anyone else involved with the team. With his busted thumb, the drama in the locker room, and the fact that the Ice Knights were in a fight for their playoff lives, the last thing Ian needed was to make more waves for the team. All he wanted was to keep his head down, do his job, and stay the fuck away from Christensen.
As long as that happened, he could finish out his contract in Harbor City and then transition into a career in coaching.
He was a man with a plan, and he was sticking with it no matter how tempting Shelby was.
Water finished, he set his phone down on the edge of the counter and then crumpled the plastic bottle before shooting it basketball-style into the recycling bin on the opposite end of the counter. During the day, the sound would hardly register, but in the middle of the night with the wind finally calmed down, it boomed in the open space. He whipped around to make sure he didn’t wake Shelby, accidentally hip-checking his phone off the counter. It crashed down onto the hard tile floor, hitting just right so that his screen cracked in three places.
Fucking A.
He jerked his gaze over to Shelby on the couch, but she was still—amazingly—dead to the world. Curled up on her side, her breathing steady and the occasional mumbled word coming from her lips.
Instead of looking softer in her sleep, she managed to still look badass, even with that stupid bear-covered comforter pulled all the way up under her chin. It was her lips that really got to him, though. Full, pale pink, and slightly parted in sleep. His cock started to thicken against his thigh and he forced himself to pivot from thinking about her mouth to rehashing every missed pass he’d ever had in his career—yes, he remembered them all.
He’d been an ass to her enough as it was without adding in her waking up and spotting him sporting a tent in his pants as he watched her sleep. She’d probably go after him again with her Taser, and he wouldn’t blame her.
Making his way over to the fireplace, he grabbed a couple of logs and put them on the fire, using the poker to push them in place so the blaze would continue through the night. Waking up in an icebox wasn’t something he wanted to deal with. Of course, he’d have to fall asleep first. That wouldn’t be an easy task even if Shelby wasn’t here.
He was a man with a sleeping routine and without it, he was a man without sleep. He needed mostly quiet, total darkness, his white-noise app, and a solid hour of staring at his ceiling.
“Robber baron moose on a train,” Shelby said. “Look out.”
Ian jerked around. “What?”
Shelby’s eyes were still closed and she was half in a ball like before. She was talking, but there was no way she was awake.
“Orgasms give you endorphins; that’s what I told the conductor.” She shoved her comforter down to her waist. “I love to dance, don’t you?” She sat up, her eyes open but her face blank. “The moose is waiting for you.”
He knew she was just talking in her sleep, but Ian still looked over his shoulder at the huge kitchen window. Just a few months ago, there’d been a story in the Harbor City Post about a seven-hundred-pound moose (a small one, the article had noted) that had busted into a cabin to get out of a snowstorm. It had taken a massive tranquilizer to knock it out so it could be treated for injuries from going through the glass and relocated back out in the wild. Luckily there wasn’t a moose out on the porch that he could see, but still it was one more thing that his brain would be directing as he tried to get it to shut up long enough for him to go to sleep.
“This is my song.” Shelby shoved more at the comforter, as if she was going to get up. “I’ve never slow danced with a moose before. Don’t step on my feet.”
Worried she’d hurt herself, Ian rus
hed over to the couch and gently pushed her back down, adjusting the covers so they were back up at her chin. Then, pulling a move from his mom’s playbook when he was a kid and couldn’t sleep, he ran his fingers over Shelby’s hair. Brushing over the prickly buzz of the close-cropped side to the silky smooth waves over and over slowed the spinning of his thoughts, and relaxing back into the couch cushions, he closed his eyes.
Suddenly, she jolted into a sitting position, completely awake, and scooted away from him, her eyes wide and not even a little bit sleepy. “Why are you petting me?”
He held up his hands, palms forward. “It’s not what you think.”
“You weren’t petting me while I slept?”
“You started talking about a moose on a train.” The words came out as fast as a slap shot. He did not want her freaked out that she was trapped with a hair-petting weirdo. “And then dancing and then you tried to get up and I thought you’d trip over the coffee table or something. I was trying to get you to go back to sleep, and the whole hair thing was one of the tricks my mom used to use on me.”
“Oh God, I haven’t done that in years.” She let out an embarrassed groan and slumped against the couch. “Did I wake you up?”
He shook his head. “I’m not a good sleeper, and I can’t without the white-noise app on my phone.”
“Lay down.” She grabbed one of the decorative couch pillows covered in silhouettes of deer, put it near her, and patted it. “You heard me—grab your covers and come put your head here and I’ll teach you the secret to falling asleep.”
That sounded very unlikely but he did it, spreading out lengthwise on the couch instead of on the chaise so his head was close to hers. As soon as he did, she got back into her previous position, snuggled upon her side facing him so that together they formed an L.
“Close your eyes and picture a porch swing,” she said, her voice more of a whisper than its usual volume.
“This isn’t going to work.” None of it ever did.
She flicked him in the shoulder with her fingers. “Not if you’re talking.”
“Fine.” He closed his eyes and his mouth.
“With each inhale, the swing goes back and with each exhale it goes forward,” she said, each word calm and deliberate, without sounding like a carnival hypnotist. “Keep your breaths slow and steady so it just gently swings in the breeze. Back and forth and back and forth.”
He’d tried meditation and visualizations before. None had worked, but there was something about Shelby and the higher pitch of her voice that settled him. It didn’t make any sense. It was supposed to be lower voices that soothed, but he couldn’t deny that his eyes were getting heavy the longer they lay there, their breaths syncing as he imagined a white porch swing moving back and forth.
“I like listening to you talk,” he said, the words coming out before he could second-guess.
“No one likes that,” she said, her voice soft and sleepy. “There’s a reason why I do most of my talking from a keyboard, because otherwise I’m The Squeaker.”
Her voice wasn’t that high-pitched. Jesus. “People are assholes.”
A barely there scoff in agreement. “They can be.”
In and out, he concentrated on the sound of his breathing, making sure to match her inhales and exhales, as the fire crackled in the distance. It was better than any option on his white-noise app.
“Shelby?”
She mumbled something that might have been an acknowledgment that she was still sort of awake, or it could have been a half snore—he had no fucking clue.
“Thank you.”
If she was still awake to hear it, he couldn’t tell, and he was about half a second from joining her anyway.
…
It was still way-too-damn-early-o’clock, according to her body, when Shelby woke up trying to figure out who she was, let alone where she was. It came back to her in bits and pieces as she blinked the room into focus. Ian was hunkered down in front of the fireplace, a cast-iron pan in his oven-mitt grip and the unmistakable scent of bacon in the air. Suddenly, some parts of her were more awake than others.
Sure, she could pretend it was because of the bacon—who didn’t love bacon?—but that wasn’t it. Thank God he was turned away from her, because if he could see her face right now, she had no doubts he’d know every single one of the dirty thoughts she was having about him.
Maybe you should have stuck with Mediocre Matt for longer so you wouldn’t be perving off seeing a guy cooking over an open fire.
Nah, the whole line about how sex was like pizza, even when it was bad it was good, pretty much applied only to the bro-dudes-in-finance kind of person. Six months of occasional orgasms while banging Mediocre Matt on the regular had taught her that. There was no way she was going to rethink her decision to send him packing.
Ian put the skillet down on a grate in the fireplace and turned around. Her brain hollered at her to play it cool, but her whole body did a hello-good-morning-to-me shiver of appreciation.
“Are you cold?” he asked as he stretched his arms and rolled his neck from side to side.
No, she most definitely was not; watching the way his muscles moved as he lifted his arms and brought them across his chest was mesmerizing. “I’m good. You like to cook?”
“I like to eat, so cooking is part of it.” He turned back to the skillet, flipping the bacon and then cracking two eggs into the pan.
“What can I do?” she asked, throwing back the covers and getting up before she realized her sleep pants had worked their way down—waaaaaaaay down—in the middle of the night.
Ian glanced back over his shoulder at her and froze. His gaze dropped to her exposed lower belly and lingered for two breaths too long as he worked his jaw back and forth before his focus traveled slowly up her body.
Her breath caught as she stood there, feeling naked under his attention, as electricity zinged through her and touched every nerve ending. Her nipples pebbled under her thermal underwear that left pretty much nothing to the imagination when it came to her high beams. She had to clasp her hands together to resist the urge to touch them, to roll their peaks between her fingers to dull the building ache inside her.
Ian turned back around, his shoulders stiff, then said, “You can get the plates.”
Hitching up her pants while trying to make it look like she wasn’t, she crossed the living room. “From the kitchen? Yeah, sure, sure, the kitchen. I will get them.”
Way to sound like you aren’t a giant weirdo, Shelby girl.
Like there was any hope of that around Ian Petrov.
Beyond his scruffy hotness, he was from hockey royalty. She knew his stats, his pregame meal preferences, and she’d let slip his deepest secret—one he hadn’t even known he had. So yeah, she would never be able to just act normal around him. And with that reminder, the idea of breakfast became totally unappealing.
After delivering a plate, bottle of water, napkin, and utensils, she gathered up some clothes in a bundle and headed toward the bathroom. “You go ahead without me.”
He looked down at the single place setting on the coffee table. “You’re not eating?”
“The snow stopped, so I’m gonna go see if I can shovel my car out and get out of your hair.” And yeah, she needed to get out of here before she made an idiot of herself by getting caught ogling him.
“The roads aren’t safe,” he said as he took the cast-iron skillet off the grate and slid the eggs and bacon onto the waiting plate.
“Well, once they are, I’ll be all ready.” Yeah, that sounded totally believable and not at all like she needed a snowbank between them to get her wayward body back under control.
He let out a rumbling sigh. “Is it because being here alone with me makes you uncomfortable?”
Not in the way he was thinking. She caught herself staring at the vee lines that disapp
eared under his waistband and jerked her focus back up to his face where it should have been the whole time.
“It’s not that.” She started toward the bathroom again. “Lucy obviously made a mistake, and I’m the one who should leave when the roads are better. You had plans that didn’t involve me, and I’ll let you get back to them.”
“And I can’t change your mind?”
She plastered on a cheery smile that she hoped didn’t look totally off-kilter. “Nope.”
Nodding, he shrugged. “Okay, then.”
She hadn’t expected him to give in so easily, but she’d take the victory. Making good on her win, she hurried off to the bathroom to change. By the time she got back, Ian was nowhere to be seen. A frigid blast of air hit her as soon as she stepped out onto the porch and reached for where the shovel had been the night before. It was gone. That’s when she spotted Ian still in those shouldn’t-be-sexy-but-were blue pants and a thick parka shoveling out his car.
Victory? More like total subterfuge!
Oh no. That is not how this is supposed to go. I’m the one who should be shoveling out my car.
She marched over, sticking to the narrow path he’d cleared between the porch and the vehicles, and held out her hand. “My shovel, please.”
He lifted it above his head where she had no hopes of reaching it unless she climbed him like a tree, which—as tempting as it was—she was not going to do because she had some pride left.
“The roads aren’t safe yet,” he said, as if that explained his overprotective-bordering-on-patronizing actions.
“What, you think I’m going to squeal off, leaving nothing but burned rubber on the snowpack?” She planted her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I don’t have a death wish.”
“Good, then I’ll clear out my car, and I’ll leave when the roads clear up so you don’t have to drive on the roads.”
She held out her hand again, just like last night when she’d checked his thumb. “Give me the shovel.”