by Maria Luis
“Hey, my man,” Sam gushes, a warm blush roasting his cheeks. “You ready for tomorrow’s game against Toronto?”
Duke’s smile slips a little. “As ready as I can be,” he says in the same tone that I recall from our double date. The bland, I’m-giving-nothing-away tone that truly is impenetrable.
Is he still upset after his loss against the Red Wings?
Sam rattles away, oblivious to Duke’s mood shift. “You’re gonna obliterate them. Man, I wish I was gonna be at the game tomorrow. It’s gonna be one for the books, a wicked good game.” He pauses while lifting our skates to the counter, as well as two hockey sticks. “Any chance you have a ticket laying around like last time? That was cool of you.”
Silently, Duke hooks his fingers under the laces. “I’ll pay on the way out. That okay, Sam?”
“Oh, oh yeah.” The kid waves his hand in the air. “Not a problem. Honestly, I wouldn’t even charge you but you know how my uncle is. No one goes in for free, not even his own flesh and blood. I’m talking about myself on that one.”
“I got it, Sam.”
Duke glances down at me, a look of impatience glittering in his blue eyes. “You ready, Charlie?”
“Sure, sure, I’ll be right there. Just have to use the restroom first.”
He nods, and his gaze takes on the look of a man who isn’t all quite present in the here and now. “I’ll wait for you by the vending machines over there.”
“Okay.”
I wait until he’s out of earshot before pulling my wallet out of my purse and sliding my credit card across the counter. Duke may be a millionaire—hockey players of his caliber always are—but something about the way he shuts down while talking about his career calls for me to . . . to want to take care of him.
It’s stupid, I know. The man is thirty-four, as he’s told me plenty of times, and probably needs no one. But if paying for his skates can put a smile on his face, even ever so briefly, then it’s worth it.
Sam’s hero-worship act has died off now that Duke is no longer with us, and the impassive mask is back in place. “You paying for both pairs?” he mutters, taking my credit card and tapping away at the iPad with the corner of the card. “You a friend of his or something? I’ve never seen you here before.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I’m Duke’s girlfriend, but that’s not exactly true. For that reason alone, I merely shrug my shoulders. “Yeah, I’m just a friend.”
The words don’t feel right.
Sam hands over my card and the paper receipt. “Have fun,” he says, already turning his attention to the TV above my head.
Well, isn’t he a charmer.
I find Duke by the vending machines, as promised. We climb onto the first row of bleachers, settling in beside each other as we start unwinding the laces of our skates, with our sticks by our feet. There’s no missing the unhappiness that now cloaks Duke like a finely worn jacket.
There’s definitely something going on there.
The journalist in me itches to push for answers, but the woman in me, for once, realizes the benefits of sitting tight and allowing him to speak when he’s ready. Wasn’t that exactly how I was, when my mother left and when Dad passed away? Jenny was my sole confidante for years, and even that open communication didn’t come easily.
As if reading my thoughts, he mutters, “Sometimes it’s nice not to have people ask you for favors.”
My gaze drops to my skates, and I try to hide my surprise at his admission. “Like people asking you for free tickets all the time?”
His knee bumps mine. “Among other things.”
Is he referring to me? I glance over at his face, and decide that no, for once he isn’t throwing jabs in my direction.
“You ready to go?” he finally says, after we’re both laced and ready to hit the ice.
I fall back into our regular routine, hoping to cheer him up in the face of a little competition. “Ready to lose, Mr. Harrison?”
His hand slides down my back before cupping my butt. His palm is as big as one cheek, and he squeezes playfully. “No dirty tricks out there, Charlie Denton.”
Lifting my stick, I point the stick’s toe at him. “I make no promises.”
Blue eyes narrow in warning. “Thought you were over playing games?”
I choose not to answer verbally. As it always has, the ice calls to me, and it’s been so long since I’ve had the chance to play the game. I slip through the partition in the low-framing boards, sucking in a deep breath the moment that my blades hit the recently shaved ice.
God, it feels amazing.
For the first few minutes, Duke and I do nothing but skate casually around the rink. We’re the only ones here, seeing as how it’s late afternoon on a Wednesday. He moves like a predator, hips slung low, broad shoulders barely shifting as he lets his powerful legs do all of the hard work.
It’s fascinating to watch him breeze around, considering that for most of his career he’s been stationed in the net, a warrior bent on keeping the enemy out. It’s easy to forget that at one point in his career, goaltending was not his main priority.
Every so often, his head turns my way. He’s assessing my form. Checking out the strength in my ankles and my grip on my stick. He watches when I pull my shoulders down, darting straight for the net, swooshing my stick back and forth as though a rubber puck is actually being carried down the length of the rink.
“We going to play anytime soon?” he calls out, pulling out a puck from his sweatshirt pocket. He drops the biscuit on the ice, drawing my gaze down the length of his massive body. In his skates, he’s nearly a head and a half taller than me.
I tilt my chin up to get a better look at him. “You just going to let me shoot on you?”
“Open net,” he counters, flicking the puck off the ice with his stick in a show-off move. “Let’s see what you’re made of, Denton.”
I like the sound of that, mainly because I’m perfectly capable of holding my own.
We face off at the blue line.
“Who’s going to drop the puck?” My hands grip the butt end of the stick, and I force myself to loosen my hold. Rule Number Whatever in Hockey: Never clutch the shaft like you’re choking it to death. A loose wrist is everything.
Duke motions for me to hold out my hand, and then he drops the puck in it. “I’ll let you do the honors.”
“How sweet.” My fingers curl around the cool rubber. “Feeling chivalrous again?”
“It’s bound to pass soon. Enjoy the moment while you can.”
Sensing that his mood is back on the upswing, I chuckle and position myself at the ready. “You’re not going to let me win, are you?”
His gaze catches mine. “No way, Denton. I plan to savor this victory until the end of my days.”
We’ll see about that. Without giving him time to adjust, I drop the puck, make a bzzzing sound with my tongue and teeth (no whistle, you know?) and hack away at the black rubber, sneaking it away from him.
I let out a little whoop as I skate toward his net, leveraging my weight forward to keep my momentum going. One of the reasons that I love this sport is because of the burn. The burn in my calves and the burn in my thighs as I push to gain more speed. The burn in my eyes as I zero in on the net, disregarding all other distractions. The burn in my lungs, when I—
The puck’s gone.
I twist around abruptly, years of practice allowing me to turn gracefully on the thin blades without falling flat on my face. Duke’s joyous laughter reaches my ears at the same second that I see him swing back and send the puck flying at the five-hole.
My net.
Meanwhile, I’m all the way down on the other end of the rink.
This is not okay.
I protest this out loud when he does a small victory lap around the net.
“That was dirty,” I mutter when we meet at the blue line again. “Your days of chivalry are over.”
He reaches out and cups my face sweetly,
then kills the moment when he quips, “I told you to enjoy the moment, honey.”
I brush away his hand, now more focused on the match at hand than any sort of romantic canoodling. I’m not a good loser. Never have been and seriously doubt that I’ll one day learn that particular skill.
My hands tighten around the butt end, and I bend my knees in preparation to push off against the ice. “Let’s play.”
And so we do.
The game isn’t pretty, that’s for sure.
We battle over ownership of the puck, our sticks jockeying for control. No matter the fact that Duke usually spends his time in the net, he’s amazing on the ice. And he’s way better than I am—not that I let him know this.
We exchange trash talk like true professionals, delivering commentary about anything under the sun. He disses my stick handling. I insult the way he’s too scared to hip check me, in fear of taking on a woman.
He promptly thwacks the puck away, and I misjudge the distance I have to reach for it, and go down on my knees. My teeth clash together at the bruising contact.
When Duke offers me a gentlemanly hand up, I take advantage, yanking him down when he’s least expecting it, and drive the puck down the ice for a victory goal while he’s still down.
He promises me retribution.
I promise to take him out for dinner after he loses.
We meet at the boards, shoulders jostling, crude language falling from our lips as we swipe at the puck. We throw our hands up in the air, in celebration of scoring.
But then something happens—the trash talk becomes a little more sensual, a little more like foreplay. Our battle for the puck at the boards becomes a little more personal, Duke’s muscular arm wrapping around my waist as he pulls me away, or his hard chest pressing into my back when I wiggle my butt against his crotch in an attempt to throw him off his game.
“You keep doing that, I’ll be introducing you to a completely different type of stick,” Duke says in a rough voice by my ear.
“Is it still considered an introduction if I’m already closely acquainted with your . . . stick?” I push my butt back against him again, and his free hand clamps down on my hip.
“It will be if I’m aiming to take you in a different position this time.”
My breath hitches at the provocative image his words have evoked. “Which position is that?”
His low chuckle rustles my hair. “Let’s just say that I like the view from behind.”
Oh boy. My knees? They’re wet noodles after hearing that.
The whole Ice Queen has never been further than the truth than it is right now—which is to say that I don’t have a sheet of ice left in my body. Despite the regulated cool air in the rink, Duke’s close proximity is firing me up.
I sharply inhale at the feel of his hand curling around to my front and flattening against my belly. “How about we call it quits on this game?” he murmurs, tugging me against him. “We’ll pretend that you won.”
My hand drapes over his. “I did win. Don’t forget who scored last.”
“I can’t forget something that didn’t happen.”
Whatever he might have said next is interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing. He uses a hand against the board to propel him back, and I twist around, still feeling winded with lust. It’s a strange sensation, and not one that I’m accustomed to, but as I watch Duke’s brows furrow as he answers his phone, I decide that there’s nothing more than I want than to date this man.
It’s probably a far-fetched idea, seeing as how we live two completely different lives. Not to mention the fact that I’m probably getting the can tomorrow morning after Josh realizes that I didn’t deliver on his dream of tabloid trash.
Still . . . I suck in a deep breath when Duke lifts his index finger and mouths “sorry” to me. He doesn’t seem to be biding his time before dumping me and chasing after the next puck bunny.
I wave away his apology and busy myself with skating figure eights in our area of the rink.
“Hey Gwen,” Duke says, his voice a deep grumble that does funny things to my girl parts. “What can I help you with?” The space between his brows puckers a little. “Am I sitting? Why, you planning on dumping the motherload of bad news on me?”
Drawing my hockey stick to waist-level, I slow to a stop. My ears perk up at the troubled note in his voice. It’s the journalist in me. Curiosity isn’t just a threat to cats in my line of profession.
But I’m also worried, too. The idea of something bothering Duke bothers me, which is terrifying, to say the least.
Duke turns away, just enough so that all I see is his profile. “No, I haven’t looked at TMZ. It’s not my usual day-to-day reading—okay, fine, I’ll pull it up right now on my phone. Hold on.”
Pulling the phone away from his ear, he taps away at the screen and I can hear Gwen’s shrill voice through the receiver. It’s jumbled and totally unintelligible, but, yep, she’s howling on about something. As badly as I want to make a quip about untwisting her panties, I resist.
And then Duke’s head jerks up, his hard blue gaze landing on me.
The look he’s giving me? It’s not the annoyed exasperation from our double date, nor is it the bewildered want from the night we met up at The Box. It’s not even the flirtatious lust that has widened his smile and darkened his gaze each time he’s looked at me since we hooked up on the Omni’s rooftop garden.
No. Right now, he looks . . . betrayed.
My heart begins to thump erratically in my chest, so loud that I barely hear him say, “Handle this however you see fit, Gwen,” before he hangs up his cell phone.
“Is everything okay? I ask slowly, wanting desperately to skate backward and away from him.
Thankfully, he seems to be on the same wavelength as I am. “We’re not doing this here.”
Not doing what here?
I watch as he skates angrily toward the partition in the boards, and I scurry to catch up with him. “Duke,” I say, just as he drops to the bleachers and starts unlacing his skates, “What’s wrong?”
“Outside,” he grunts stiffly. “We’ll do this outside.”
In near silence, we remove our skates and pull on our street shoes. Nike sneakers for him and Converses for me. He snags both sets of skates and hooks the sticks over his shoulder. I’m dying to ask him what happened, but I keep quiet on our way to where Sam is sleeping at the counter.
Duke lifts a hand to thump on the wall, but I put a hand to his closed fist, stilling him. “If you’re waking him up to pay, don’t worry about it. I already covered us.”
If anything, my words darken his expression even further.
I have no fucking idea what’s going on.
I manage to keep a rein on my need to chatter until we make it to my Prius.
And then Duke, who is notoriously tight-lipped, comes unhinged.
Chapter Fourteen
Duke’s hands fly into his hair, raking through the dark blond strands.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, this time more forcefully. “What did Gwen say to you?”
It’s difficult to tell if Duke’s eyes are blue anymore. The pupils have enlarged and his irises appear almost completely black. “What did Gwen say to me?” he explodes. “How ‘bout I show you exactly what she told me to look up.”
I don’t think I’m going to like this very much. Still, I nod jerkily, realizing that his question is more rhetorical than anything else. “If you want.”
“If I want?” A burst of incredulous laughter leaves him. “This isn’t about what I want, Charlie. No, this is all—” He cuts off, a closed fist pressing against his mouth as he bites down on his knuckle. “You’ve been playing me from the very first second that you DM’ed me on Twitter. Fuck me for thinking otherwise—oh, right, you did that already too.”
Confusion laces with worry as I stare up at his handsome face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Duke. Could you give me a little more information?”
“
I’ll give you all the information you need.” He whips out his phone, angrily swipes at the screen, and thrusts the device in my face. “But, wait, I’ve already done that, too.”
My eyes adjust to the screen’s brightness.
And then my stomach drops, this time straight to hell.
Oh, my God.
The headline, printed in bold red, typical of TMZ, reads: NHL’s Golden Boy might not have squeaky-clean image after all? Local Boston newspaper claims that Duke Harrison has hooked up with personal PR Agent, Gwen James.
My first thought at reading this goes something like: Fuck me.
The second, more rationale version, proceeds with: How in the world did anyone discover this when I . . .
Oh.
Oh, no.
Josh.
The discarded article that I quite literally dumped into the trashcan just this afternoon.
Which means that . . . My boss didn’t print the finalized version I sent him. No one has read the version which paints an accurate portrait of the Duke Harrison, Hockey Player Extraordinaire, while still lending both light and shadows to the man behind the pads and the caged mask.
The version that not only speaks to my skills as a top-notch journalist, but also doesn’t spread untruths about the guy in front of me.
I’m going to be sick.
I actually press my fist to my mouth to make sure bile doesn’t inch its way up my throat for an impromptu visit.
“Nothing to say?” Duke clips out, shoving the cell phone into his jeans pocket with a look of disgust. “Or did you get it all out in this article?”
Weakly, I whisper, “It’s not what it looks like.”
The oldest line in the book, and yet I can think of nothing else to say.
“No?” Duke shakes his head. “You know what’s the fucked up part about this, Charlie? It’s not the goddamned article and the fact that you’ve dragged two people down with you in your quest for fame. No, it’s the fact that even while I knew you only wanted me for information, I didn’t give a damn and still went after you anyway.”
My lips part on a shaky exhale. “I’m not sure that I understand.”