by Flynn, Avery
“Why?” she asked, setting a bowl in front of him filled with soup that smelled like heaven, a massive endorsement deal, and the best orgasm of his life. “Are you asking?”
It took a second for his brain to make sense of her words. The soup really did smell that good. He wasn’t asking. He didn’t ask. He hadn’t asked since before he’d gotten a four-year ride at Michigan. The women just sort of appeared by his side when it was time to leave the bar or asked him to go out. The idea of having to ask a woman out on a date was almost as weird as actually going out on one. He didn’t do that. He hooked up.
Still… “Would you go?”
“Do I look like I have a head injury?” She rolled her eyes and marched back to the island, where her own bowl waited. “Hell, no.”
The fuck? Sure, he was an asshole, but in his experience, that didn’t stop people from wanting to be close to him. Turned out that was because they wanted something from him—money, their name in bold letters on a gossip site, bragging rights for having banged a pro hockey player—but a hard no was basically unheard of.
He sat up straighter on the folding chair. “Why not?”
She didn’t even bother to look up from her bowl. “You’re not my type,” she said before putting a spoonful of soup in her mouth.
“What is your type?” And why did he care? Damned if he could answer either one.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re annoying when you aren’t throwing up?” she asked.
He shrugged and had his first spoonful of the soup she’d made from a can and some random veggies she’d found in his fridge. Damn, it was good. “Do you really think there’s an insult that hasn’t been lobbed my way?”
Those pale-pink lips of hers curled into a smile. “Probably not.”
The woman was as cold as the ice he usually skated on. “If I had feelings, they’d be hurt right now.”
“Uh-huh. I’m very worried,” she said, putting down her spoon and giving him an assessing look before walking back over to him at the card table. “Okay, let me feel your cheek just to make sure the food poisoning is just that. I still don’t understand how you don’t have a thermometer.”
“Any preference on which set of cheeks?” The words were out before he could stop them—even if he wanted to. His goal was, after all, to get this woman out of his house.
“Do you know how many times patients have said things like that to me? Or worse? Or accidentally let their paper gown slip? You’d think someone being injured enough to go to the emergency room would impede their wandering hands. You’d be wrong.”
By the time she’d finished, a red splotch had appeared at the base of her throat. Zach was beyond used to being the goat in any situation. He asked for it. He relished it. He craved it as a kind of defiant defensiveness. Usually, any evidence of a verbal bomb’s direct hit loosened some of the tension stringing him tight—at least for a few moments. But with Fallon? It kinda felt like kicking a puppy—one that was a snarling, snipping cur, sure, but a puppy all the same.
“I’m sorry,” he said before shoving another spoonful of soup in his mouth and swallowing as soon as the hot brew hit his tongue, so that it burned all the way down his throat. “Won’t happen again.”
“Good,” she said, her voice curt. “Now, let me feel your cheek.”
Grudgingly, he turned his face to the side and upward. There wasn’t a reason why he was holding his breath, but he was as she pressed the back of her hand against his cheek. It wasn’t that no one touched him. That puck bunny from the club had touched him a lot before leaving him a basket of adulterated muffins. Trainers had their hands on him, checking out a tweaked ankle or easing sore muscles. This was different, though, more intimate. She didn’t care about how quickly he could get out on the ice or how he could get her name in the paper or how much he could line her pockets. And that made it awkward. Everyone always wanted something from him. If there was one thing he could count on in life, it was that. From his parents to agents to fans to puck bunnies, everyone just wanted to use him for their own benefit.
She moved her hand to his forehead, her touch reassuring, and he let out the breath he’d been holding.
“Looks like you’ll live.” Fallon took a step back, the color in her cheeks a little deeper than it had been a minute ago, and cleared her throat. “Lucky for you, you had a somewhat mild case of food poisoning. As long as you stop banging Cajun Rage fans, you should be all right.”
The doorbell rang before he could say anything. Annoyed at the interruption, he slid his thumb across his phone screen and brought up his security system’s app. As soon as he spotted the woman wearing a tight, tiny nurse’s uniform, unbuttoned enough to show off her damn impressive rack, he let out a groan.
Fallon glanced down at his screen. “Is that Miss Muffin?”
His gut rumbled in remembered agony. “Yes.”
Coming in closer, so they were practically cheek to cheek, she stared harder at his phone and then sucked in a harsh breath. “Is she wearing a nurse costume?” she asked in a tone that set off every alarm bell in his head.
Glancing down as if he needed to confirm it, he said, “Looks like it.”
Fallon straightened with a huff and jammed her hands on her hips, grumbling something under her breath that he didn’t quite catch.
“Well,” she said, turning away from him. “That takes the guesswork out of whether or not she gave you food poisoning on purpose.”
His gut clenched hard enough to make the soup in his belly slosh around. Of all the things for someone to do to him, trying to poison him wasn’t the worst. Still, it was a pretty crappy thing to do to a person on purpose. “Are you shitting me?”
Fallon didn’t answer his rhetorical question. She was already halfway down the hall, marching toward his front door.
Zach figured he had two options—watch the whole thing go down on his screen via his security app, or go see what would happen next, live and in person. Yeah. It wasn’t even really a choice.
…
Fallon flung open Zach’s front door and made a beeline for the security gate, determined to get to it before the idiot inside decided to open it and let Miss Hemlock back in.
The woman on the other side of the gate must have heard the door because she turned away from a schlubby guy who stood next to her with his cell phone out. Her eyes went wide with surprise for all of a whole millisecond before narrowing into two perfectly-lined slits of displeasure. Well, that was too damn bad because Fallon was thrilled to see the other woman.
“You’ve got some gall to show up here after the stunt you pulled. You could have seriously hurt him,” Fallon said through the wrought iron arms of the security gate.
The other woman tossed her long, pin-straight, impossibly shiny black hair over one shoulder. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Really, then why the cheap costume?”
“This was not cheap.” The other woman put her hands on her hips, and her hot-pink–painted lips formed a perfect O of offense. “How dare you.”
Fallon crossed her arms and gave Miss Hemlock a chilly smile. “As easily as you dare to purposefully give someone food poisoning.”
The other woman’s gaze slid over to the guy hanging off to the side, so far away that he was practically squashed between the shrubs lining the driveway. In addition to the cell phone in his hand, he had a camera with a telephoto lens hanging from a strap around his neck. Miss Hemlock curled her lips into a confident smile, but she couldn’t stop twisting the string of the micro apron tied around her waist.
“You have no proof that it was on purpose,” she said.
Fallon scoffed. “So you’re pretending you just happened to show up here dressed like that after Zach puked his guts up for almost two days?”
Even with her impeccable makeup, there was no missing the way the other woman’s face lost its color. “He wasn’t supposed to actually throw up,” she said, doubt seeping into her tone. “It was more o
f a joke, really.”
“Well, he was throwing up too much to laugh,” Fallon said.
She no more than got the words out before the photographer and the just-for-fun poisoner both looked past her. No need to guess who had walked up behind her because Miss Hemlock’s bent posture had straightened and the oh-fuck-what-did-I-do look on her face transformed into a sexy pout.
“Oh my God, Zachy,” she said, more flirt than apology. “I’m so sorry.”
Zachy? Fallon turned and looked at the guy who, even at a few pounds lighter after losing his breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past forty-eight hours, still didn’t look like a Zachy. Nope. Not even close. Even the idea of it made Fallon bite back a laugh.
Zach rubbed his square jaw and asked, “What was the plan, Shelly?”
That was exactly what Fallon wanted to know, too, and she mentally gave Zach a high-five before giving the other woman her full attention. This should be good.
Shelly leaned forward in some kind of magic girlie-girl move that showcased her cleavage, and trailed a hot-pink–painted fingernail up one of the security gate bars, looking at Zach from beneath mile-long eyelashes. “Why don’t you let me in where we can talk all about it, and I can show you just how bad I feel about the whole thing.”
There was no way Zach would fall for that load of claptrap. No way. Fallon snorted and glanced over at Zach, who was not looking at her with a can-you-believe-this-shit look on his face. Nope. His gaze was on Shelly—or, more correctly, on her boobs. It took everything Fallon had not to thwack her palm on the back of his head. Men!
He finally tore his focus away from Shelly’s cups that raneth over and up to her face. “We both know you don’t really feel bad. If you did, you wouldn’t have brought the press with you.” He glanced over at the photog. “Hey, Marty.”
The photographer lifted his chin in greeting. “Blackburn.”
Shelly let out a huff that sent her bangs flying upward. “You know how this works, Zachy. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement for everyone—you, me, and Marty.”
“No,” he said, sounding more tired than he had a minute ago. “It’s a way for you to use me to lengthen your fifteen minutes and for Marty to get an extra freelance check. Normally I wouldn’t mind so much, but you went too far, Shelly. I have a game tomorrow night.”
“But, Zachy,” she said with an exaggerated pout.
“No, Shelly.” The vein in his temple pulsed, the only tell that this whole thing was pissing him off. “Go home.”
That’s right, and think about how damn lucky you are that he’s not pressing charges, Fallon mentally added.
“Fine.” Shelly straightened, smoothed away any hint of repentance from her face. “But don’t go blaming me if you have a shit night on the ice again. You’ve been a bust since you got here, and my muffins had nothing to do with that.”
Final poisoned arrow delivered, she turned and flounced on her spiked heels back to her shiny red sports car, yanked the door open, got in, revved the engine, and took off with her tires squealing. Fallon didn’t like the woman, but she had to admit that Shelly wasn’t wrong on the state of Zach’s play. Plus, the other woman sure knew how to make one hell of an exit.
Once the only thing that remained of Shelly was the scent of burnt rubber hanging in the air, the photographer gave Fallon a piercing once-over, brought up his camera, and snapped a few shots. “So who’s the new one, Blackburn?”
Zach took a step forward, partially blocking her from Marty’s view. “It’s a secret.”
“Oh, really?” Marty asked, still clicking away. “What’s your name, honey?”
There were two people in the world who could call her anything close to a pet name: her granny and her dad. Anyone else who tried it was playing Russian roulette with his gonads. Marty was lucky there was a fence between them.
“I am not your honey,” she said with enough ice in her voice to reverse climate change.
“Feisty,” Marty said, seemingly unperturbed. “I like it. So how’d you manage to swoop in and snag Blackburn from the sharpened talons of Harbor City’s favorite party girl?”
Because that’s totally what she’d done.
“She didn’t.”
“Really, Blackburn?” Marty lowered his camera, an incredulous look on his face as he turned his attention to Zach. “Does she realize the innocent-me ploy hasn’t worked since the invention of social media? I like the tomboy without makeup thing she’s got going, though.”
“Hello,” Fallon said, waving her hand, the annoyance at being talked about instead of talked to making her skin prickly. “I’m right here, and I can hear you.”
What sounded like a smothered laugh came from Zach. She turned her glare on him as he stood there with his muscular arms loose at his side as if this was just another day ending in Y.
“And don’t you”—she pointed a finger at Zach—“even think about answering for me.”
He raised a pierced eyebrow, and his lips twitched as if he was trying not to smile, but he kept his mouth shut.
Marty let his camera down so it hung on the strap around his neck and swiped his thumb across his phone, opening an app. “Okay Mystery Lady, why don’t you start by telling me who you are and how long you’ve been…” he paused, the creepy look on his face making her skin crawl, “with Blackburn.”
There was no missing what the guy meant by “with”—and it wasn’t dating. “I am not fucking him.”
“Really?” The photog turned to Zach. “That’s the story you’re going with? No one’s gonna believe that, even if she’s a little…rustic compared to your normal hookups.”
Fallon was about two seconds from opening the security gate just so she could strangle the photographer. What an asshole.
Rustic? So she didn’t have a girlie-girl card or a VIB membership to Sephora or a shoe addiction, and so she only made it to the salon twice a year for a quick trim of her ends (no blow-outs, no stupid head massage). That didn’t make her “rustic,” as if she was a dilapidated cabin in the middle of the woods desperate for a makeover. It just meant the idea of glitter eyeshadow or spending more than twenty minutes getting ready in the morning made her break out in hives. But for this guy—and, to be honest, so many other people—her lack of girlie-girl ways meant she had less value in the only thing he thought mattered when it came to women: fuckability.
She turned to Zach. “Would you just tell him?”
He gave her a considering look and then shook his head. “No way, you told me not to speak for you.” And with a grin, he lifted his hand to his mouth, mimed a key turning in a lock, and tossed the invisible key over his shoulder.
Then, because that wasn’t bad enough, he turned and started back up the driveway as if he hadn’t just all but told the photographer that they were fucking.
“I guess that answers that,” Marty said, clicking off a few shots with his camera before starting toward the older-model sedan parked on the street. Of course, he didn’t get in the car without tossing a parting shot over his shoulder. “See you in tomorrow’s Harbor City Post.”
Fallon closed her eyes and counted to twenty. She should have told Lucy no. She should have let Zach puke his guts up in solitary. She should have welcomed Shelly the fake nurse who couldn’t button her uniform all the way up. But no. She’d gotten suckered into caring for someone who couldn’t give a shit about the fact that she’d given up her very limited free time to help a virtual stranger or that she didn’t want to be plastered all over the tabloids as the most-hated man in Harbor City’s latest bang babe.
Suddenly, it seemed like Shelly had been on to something because the idea of poisoning Zach Blackburn didn’t seem like such a bad one.
…
Zach wasn’t skulking—it was his driveway, how could he be? Instead he was just hanging out on the porch with his back to his front door, watching Fallon as she turned to face him and stood there with her eyes closed, her jaw clamped shut, and her fists clenched. He knew wh
at that pose meant, he made it happen enough—she’d reached her limit, and it was only a matter of time until she said some version of fuck this shit and left.
Good. The last thing he needed in his life was some do-gooder—even if she did have a snarly disposition he could totally identify with and an ass that made his hands itch to squeeze—taking him on as a charity case.
He didn’t need help and he’d been a dumbass for letting Fallon in his house in the first place. Of course, watching her go full righteous fury on Shelly had been pretty fucking entertaining. It was kind of refreshing to be around someone who still thought they could shame someone out of behaving like a selfish ass. Too bad that couldn’t be done. It was a use or be used world, and if she didn’t know that already, it was beyond time she learned.
As if she could feel his gaze on her, Fallon finally opened her eyes and gave him another dirty look. At least he figured it was her version of a glare. He couldn’t count the number of times in his career that he’d stared down the I’m-gonna-tear-your-head-off fury of a guy skating straight toward him after Zach had delivered what may or may not have been a completely deserved hard check to some prima donna player. After years of that, Fallon’s little narrowing of her eyes and tightening of her jaw didn’t make much of an impact.
She marched up the driveway, stopping at the bottom of the steps leading up to his porch, enough energy spiking off her to short out the city. “Are you going to just hide there on your porch or are you going to explain to me why you just pulled that shit.”
“What shit?” he asked, keeping the don’t-give-a-fuck attitude in his voice.
“Using your silence to confirm to that bloodsucker that we were sleeping together.”
Yeah. Once he got Fallon to leave, he was going to have to call Lucy, even though she was on vacation, and have her kill Marty’s story. Lucy was going to be thrilled he’d messed with her friend like that, even though there wasn’t a damn thing he could have done to have stopped it. His ass was about to be a few bite sizes lighter after Lucy got done, but there wasn’t a choice. He wasn’t going to put Fallon through the Harbor City media wringer when there wasn’t a good reason for it. Not that he’d admit that out loud.