Anatomy of a Player (Taking Shots #2)

by Cindi Madsen

  I was curious, but I’d also been thinking about my future more than usual the past few days, and whether it would involve New York City and the image I’d always had of living there, working for one of the big newspapers.

  “Not really. Most people picture Time’s Square and fancy high rises when they think of New York. I lived in the roughest part of the Bronx, and you know enough to know that I don’t have a lot of warm cuddly memories.”

  “I get that. But didn’t you ever go into the city?”

  “Times Square’s a tourist trap—not a fan. But there are some cool areas, and of course there’s great food, every kind you could think of.” One corner of his mouth curved up. “There was also this time when Dane and I decided to cause a little trouble in Rockefeller Center—the other skaters on the ice that night had no idea what they were in for. It’s stupid expensive to skate there, so it’s mostly rich people and tourists. Dane and I skated onto the rink with our hockey gear and started playing a little one and one.”

  I could see it in my mind now, all these couples in fuzzy sweaters and scarves, skating together and enjoying their romantic night on the famous rink, and then Dane and Hudson whizzing by them, hockey sticks slamming together.

  “We went late so there wouldn’t be kids, and we were careful not to run into anyone, but they still set a police officer on us. He told us we could either go home or go in the back of his cop car.” Hudson chuckled. “Fuckin’ Dane asked for a refund, and I had to drag him off the ice before the cop followed through with his threat.”

  I shook my head and laughed. If I’d heard that story before I knew the guys better, I would’ve probably sided with the appalled skaters, but there was something loveable about the way they lived their lives all out, unapologetically.

  Or maybe I was blinded by the guy next to me. Hudson had his sleeves pushed up on his forearms, exposing a few inches of tattoos, and the dressy meeting with the black ink was giving me serious hormone surges.

  Where were we? Oh yeah. Rockefeller Center. “I’ve always wanted to go skating there. When I was a teenager, I might’ve even had visions of being on a date, all bundled up against the cold. I’d slip, the guy would catch me, our faces would inevitably drift closer until we kissed… Oh, and the Christmas tree would be lit up, the perfect backdrop to it all. Was the tree up when you were there?”

  Hudson drew me to him and wrapped his hands around the sides of my waist. “Yeah. The tree was somewhere in the background.”

  “More than a half a million people pass by it every day—I saw this thing on it last Christmas, and I thought, someday, I’m going to be at the tree-lighting ceremony. Did you know the star is over ten feet tall and weighs over five hundred pounds? It’s made up of twenty-five thousand Swarovski crystals that are illuminated with over seven hundred energy-efficient LED bulbs. I can’t even imagine all that sparkle in real life.”

  With every fact, the amusement filling Hudson’s features grew.

  “What?” I asked, but then I remembered that the fact spewing was supposed to be for keeping guys away, not date talk. Oops.

  “Your mouth says brainiac but your body says vixen.” Hudson slid his hands behind my back. One of his thumbs slipped underneath the hem of my shirt and brushed across my skin, sending a zip of electricity up my spine. “The combination is turning me on.”

  I placed a hand on his chest. “Well, your mouth says dirty talker, and your body says…” I cut myself off, once again wishing I could get better control of my mouth when I was around him.

  “My body says what?” He wrapped his arms even tighter, until that body was flush against mine.

  “That it can deliver,” I whispered.

  “Oh, it can.” He kissed me, and I got so caught up in it that I barely registered the sound of a throat clearing.

  “Your table’s ready,” the hostess said. “If you’ll just follow me.”

  My cheeks flamed, but Hudson didn’t miss a beat. Keeping me tucked next to him, we wove our way around tables covered in thick white tablecloths and more dishes than I knew what to do with, to one in a back corner.

  I picked up the menu the hostess had left and scanned the selection. If impressed was what he was going for, this place, with all of its tempting options and herbs and glazes definitely brought it.

  “What about you?” Hudson asked. “Do you miss Kentucky?”

  “It makes me feel guilty, but I really don’t. I’ve dreamed of living in a big city pretty much ever since I can remember, and I love Boston. I do miss my daddy, and I worry about him getting too lonely.”

  Hudson lowered his menu, peering at me over it. “Is it weird that I wish my mom was lonely, because it’d mean she wasn’t back with the asshole?”

  “Not weird. Maybe wish for a non-asshole to come into the picture.”

  “I’ll work on that. But she’s hell-bent on this wedding idea, so…” He shook his head. “And that’s enough talk about parents.” He opened his mouth, but then a girl approached our table.

  “Hudson. Hey.”

  He blinked at her. “Hey. Imagine running into you here.”

  “I work here. Just started last week actually. That’s why I haven’t called you back. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She stood there, looking as awkward as this whole situation suddenly felt. She didn’t even glance my way, just continued to stare at Hudson. “Anyway, I’ll catch you later?”

  “Sure.”

  My stomach bottomed out, the same emptiness filling it as when my teasing had gone wrong in the truck. When the girl turned away, I couldn’t help it—the words came out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I want to be carefree and fun, and I’m trying. I really am. But I also want to know that you’re not sleeping with ten other women.”

  “So nine’s okay?”

  I could tell he was trying to turn it into a joke, but I couldn’t bring myself to laugh. He reached across the table and took my hand. “Baby, I’m teasing. Right now, there’s just you—that girl is in my sociology statistics study group, and I called for help when I was studying. The truth is, I don’t really date.”

  Internally I flinched, and maybe even a little externally, too.

  “But here I am.” He rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. “I put on a nice shirt—I only do that for game day, and even then, it’s under duress.”

  I cracked a smile. “Well, you certainly fill it out nicely.”

  “I know,” he said, which was funny, but also part of the problem. Again, I wanted to be cool. But I’d tried that method before, and I found that guys translated “easygoing” to “doormat.”

  “It’s just that…” My brain searched for a good way to explain the doubts stirring up a mess of emotions without sounding like a crazy clingy girl. “Remember that guy at the Halloween party?”

  “I remember not liking seeing you near him,” Hudson said between clenched teeth, “and liking him even less when I could tell he made you feel bad.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought he and I were dating, but I caught him with another girl, and when I confronted him, he told me we never said we were officially a couple, and that I was too needy for expecting him to not sleep with other girls.”

  “Clearly he’s a douchebag.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is. But I don’t want to assume something and then end up feeling stupid.”

  Oh my gosh, am I really doing this? My heart pounded in my chest and I twisted the linen napkin in my lap. Lyla’s right. I can’t go into this casually, not worried about strings. I’ve done it for too long, and I’m on a different path now. I can’t jump ship simply because sleeping with Hudson would be fun.

  Whether or not it bit me in the butt, for once I wasn’t going to wait and see where we stood just because I was too afraid to find out or to communicate what I wanted. “I’m trying not to be that needy girl, but here I am, starting to have feelings for you, and I want to know if I’m the only girl you’re seeing right now.” I’d
almost said sleeping with, but we hadn’t quite gotten there yet.

  Of course the waitress showed up just then to ask for our drinks. I asked for a Coke, and Hudson told her he’d stick with water. Then he asked her if she could hold off on bringing the drinks until he signaled for them.

  When she left, he scooted his chair closer to mine. “I like you, Whitney. I’m not gonna lie, I’ll probably screw up a lot. I won’t say the right thing sometimes, it’s not easy for me to let people in, and I tend to get in my own head a lot, so you might have to give me a nudge here and there, and just tell me what you’re thinking and how you feel—I’ll never guess right. I’ll be crazy busy, and hockey will sometimes come first.”

  “Believe me,” I said with a half-laugh. “I know all about that.”

  He gave me a crooked smile, then reached down and ran his thumb across my thigh, just under the hem of my skirt. “Don’t worry. You’ll come next.” His thumb moved up an inch higher, and the suggestive brush made a swirl of heat unfurl low in my stomach. “But I promise you, I’ll give you everything I can. I won’t sleep with other girls, and I sure as hell don’t want you to sleep with other guys. Or talk to them. Or look at them.”

  I laughed, and then he leaned in, so close that I could see the dark brown rim surrounding his lighter colored irises. “What do you say?”

  Was I hallucinating, or had Hudson Decker just said he wanted to be with me? To have a real relationship where I could call him my boyfriend? Hope rose up, but doubt tried to slam it back down.

  “Have you ever had a girlfriend? Like, you know what it means?” Despite my need to dig for information, I’d usually held back on this talk with guys, but this time I didn’t want to make the same mistake. I wanted crystal clear, no more sitting at home wondering if I had a boyfriend.

  “I’m going to try to ignore that incredulous tone—”

  “And I’m going to pretend you using the word ‘incredulous’ didn’t just turn me on.”

  His hand tightened on my thigh. “See. This is why I want to do this. Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of experience in this area. But you’re different from other girls, and I’m different when I’m with you. I’m better when I’m with you.”

  “While we’re putting everything out there, I like ‘baby,’ but I hate it when you call me ‘sweetheart,’ because I know you use it when you can’t remember a girl’s name.”

  His expression made it clear I’d surprised him. “Noted. For the record, though, I’d never forget your name. It’s been burned into my mind since the day I met you.”

  Just as I was about to shout, “Let’s do this, then,” and fling myself at him, I realized I couldn’t exactly go all in, despite wanting to do just that. “I can’t.”

  His face dropped and his hand stilled on my thigh.

  “I mean, I want to. And we can be together, but we can’t let people know yet. Because of my job.” Oh, jeez, Lyla was right again. How could I ever write my article if I was in a relationship with Hudson?

  Maybe I could buy some time. Follow other leads. Convince Lindsay I’d have a bigger story if she gave me till the end of the semester—by then I’d have tons of ways to spin and amp up the story in a better way, I was sure of it.

  I’d have to be careful, though, because if anyone on the paper found out about Hudson and me, Lindsay would totally freak.

  Since that line of thinking would ruin the mood, I shoved everything involving my job back to be worried over later. Hudson had just asked me to be his girlfriend, and that was cause for celebration. “So I’m saying yes I want to be with you, and no I won’t date anyone else, and I don’t want you to, but we can’t let people know we’re together until at least the end of the semester, maybe even the end of hockey season. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. We can sneak around. But once you let me announce it, I’m going to shout it from the rooftops.”

  I threw my arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his lips. I couldn’t wait to announce it. To claim him and let it be known that this hockey player was mine.

  “You ready to eat now?” he asked, and I nodded. “Good. Because I’m anxious to get you back to your place and finish what we started the other day.”

  I almost teased him that he meant “eager,” not “anxious,” but as I thought about where the night was going to end up, nerves pirouetted across my stomach, and I decided both words fit pretty well.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Hudson

  Whitney frowned at her phone. I’d heard the chime and hoped it didn’t mean that our plans were about to be interrupted. After yesterday’s make out session, I’d practically exploded at the thought of waiting until tonight, and I didn’t think I could wait another hour, much less a day.

  “Don’t tell me there’s an emergency,” I said.

  “It’s not an emergency, per se.”

  Whatever the “per se” was, I didn’t trust it. I glanced at her, trying to gauge how much I was going to hate what she said next.

  “It’s just work stuff,” she said, her voice quiet. “The tech guy at the newspaper office…I can call him back later.” She put the phone away, but she fidgeted the rest of the drive.

  The temperature had dropped several degrees since I’d picked her up, the cool air like a slap to the face, so I wrapped my arm around Whitney’s shoulders and rushed her upstairs to her apartment, trying to keep her and those sexy legs as warm as possible.

  As soon as the door closed behind us, I wanted to push her against it and kiss her like I had yesterday—especially since she’d already mentioned we’d have the place to ourselves—but I could tell her thoughts were elsewhere. I thought I could rid her of them fairly quickly, but I’d just promised I’d give everything I had to this relationship.

  Holy shit, I’m in a relationship.

  Regardless of the fact that I cared about Whitney, and that I didn’t even have words to express how badly I wanted her—every single part of her—panic had initially led the pack of my emotions when she’d asked for more at the restaurant. A hint of it remained, but I’d warned her of my shortcomings, so at least there was that, right?

  If only I knew how to do the relationship thing, maybe I could rid myself of the last of the panic and dare to hope that it would actually work out. The last time I’d tried, though, I’d failed miserably, and I didn’t want to do that again, not with Whitney.

  I rubbed my hands up and down her arms, wishing I could be more optimistic that we’d figure it out, no matter what life threw at us. Even though I wasn’t there quite yet, I resolved to try harder this time around. “You okay? Need to talk about anything?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  “If you need to call that guy back…” I suddenly realized that it was pretty late for work calls.

  Jealousy rose up, but keeping my goal to try harder in mind, I shoved it aside. It wasn’t even as hard to do as I’d expected.

  Because I trusted her.

  That thought hit me like a ton of bricks. I trusted this girl. It had been so long since I’d trusted anyone but Dane or the rest of the guys on the team. I couldn’t even trust my own mom.

  That glimmer of hope called to me, making me think maybe this time it really could be different. I grabbed Whitney’s hand and kissed the back of it, needing to hold on to her, on to this. “I can tell you’re stressed. Talk to me.”

  Her blue eyes slowly lifted to my face. “I’ve wanted to be a journalist for so long. I swore I’d do whatever it takes.”

  “So do it. If you need to take care of something tonight, I can wait.” It’d be torturous, and I’d be frustrated as hell, but I could do it.

  Sadness edged her smile. “It’s not just tonight. It’s… I’m learning that writing stories and digging deep…” She released a long breath that seemed to have a lot of frustration behind it. “Sometimes you find out things you don’t want to know. Things that might hurt people. A serious journalist would probably expose them in the name o
f the truth, and I know that’s what my editor wants, and what I need to do to get ahead… It’s just dirtier work than I thought it’d be.”

  “Look, the truth’s the truth. It comes out. If it’ll help you get the job you need, you expose it.”

  There was something about the way she looked at me that made me feel like I was missing pieces of the puzzle. “If you want something badly enough, you do whatever it takes,” I said. “It’s how I got good at hockey. It’s how we won playoffs last year. No mercy, Reporter Girl.” I chucked her on the chin. “If the big news is too stupid to see how amazing you are, you can always get a job covering sports.”

  “Ha-ha,” she said, and at least this smile was genuine.

  “I’m serious. A little more tutoring on sports terms—tutoring I’d be happy to provide. And you’re certainly opinionated enough…”

  Her mouth dropped open and she moved to smack my chest with the back of her hand, but I caught her wrist just before contact. “I like that you’re opinionated. I’m surprised as anyone, but I do.”

  “Yeah, but what if there was something huge we disagreed on. Like strongly disagreed.”

  “I think we could find a way to work it out.” I pulled her closer and ran my hands down her back, cupping her ass and pulling her tight to me. Then I waggled my eyebrows.

  It had started out as a playful, joking move, but with her against me, I grew hard, my body remembering all the things I wanted to do to hers. Yeah, we could work out any differences, I was sure of it.

  A shallow breath escaped those perfect lips, and I decided we’d talked enough. Time to show her exactly what I meant. I walked her backward until her back met the wall, and crushed my lips to hers.

  She gasped into my mouth, and I took advantage, plunging my tongue inside for a taste. She clung to me, her nails digging into my arms, and I ground my hips against hers.

  “I see what you mean,” she said on an exhale, then she dragged her nails up my arms and neck and drove her fingers into my hair, sending tiny electric sparks across my scalp.