There was only one potential problem with his newfound cohesion. A tall blond problem with the last name Kowalsky. As far as he could tell, her life was one big drama after another, and he’d managed to get himself tangled up in it.
When he’d first returned from Sandspit, he’d tried to get ahold of her in an effort to avoid adding even more drama when she inevitably learned he played for the Chinooks. He couldn’t exactly ask her dad for her phone number. He’d asked Jimmy, but the number he’d been given went straight to voice mail. He’d left her a message and e-mailed his number via her business Web site. She hadn’t contacted him, and he figured she didn’t want to see him again. That was her choice, and after their picture appeared on the cover of the Enquirer, he was more than fine with that, too. He didn’t want the part of “mystery man” in her never-ending drama.
“Knoxy.” Team captain Stephen “Stony” Davis hung one wrist over Sean’s shoulder. “Some of the guys are meeting at Quinn’s Pub. You should come.”
Stony had gotten his nickname because he hit like he had stones in his gloves. Sean could attest to the accuracy of the nickname and was secretly relieved that he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of Stony’s right hook this season. “Where’s Quinn’s Pub?” He’d been in Seattle only three months, and half of that had been spent on the road. One of these days soon, he’d have to figure out his way around the city.
“Tenth and Pike.”
Sean didn’t live far from the Key Arena. He had a fair idea of the city’s layout and had a navigation system in his Land Rover. “Sounds good.” He grabbed his duffel and moved with Stony through the locker room and lounge and out into the tunnel.
“Quinn’s has some cheese fries I’m dying to try.”
Sean looked across his shoulder at his teammate. “Are cheese fries on Trina’s meal plan?” he asked, referring to the team’s nutritionist.
“Not on your plan,” Stony said through a laugh. “I’m a defender. I can bulk up now and again.”
Probably not on cheese fries. They talked about several bad calls and questioned the referee’s eyesight. “Chucky’s toe wasn’t anywhere near the crease,” Sean said as he turned left toward the outside doors. “Even a blind man could have seen that.”
Near the doorway, a woman separated herself from the wall and turned toward him. She wore a gray turtleneck beneath a Chinooks jersey. Gray jeans so tight they looked shrink-wrapped around her long legs, and she was just as gorgeous as he recalled. As one, a surprising mix of lust and dread rolled through him, twisting and fighting and landing in his gut like a ball of hot lead. He’d figured they’d see each other sooner or later, but after the Enquirer photo splashed around the world, he would have preferred later rather than sooner.
“Hey there, Lexie,” Stony called out to her.
Her deep blue eyes watched Sean approach before she turned her attention to the team captain. “Hey there, Stephen.”
Stony opened up his big arms and she stepped inside. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” He pulled back and looked down into her face. “At least not in person. I’ve seen a lot of you on the TV.”
Her ponytail brushed the back of her Chinooks jersey as she shook her head. “Unfortunately, it seems like the entire planet has seen a lot of me on TV.”
“Your dad didn’t like those shorts you wore on that show.”
“I don’t want to talk about that show.” Over Stony’s shoulder, her icy gaze met Sean’s.
“No one liked that guy, anyway. Paul’s the only one who bet on you making it to the altar.”
She took a scandalized breath and stepped out of Stony’s embrace. “You all were betting on my wedding?” Her lips turned upside down in an unconvincing frown. “I’m not surprised.”
The last time Sean had seen her, she’d been wrapped up in a white bedsheet, her blond hair a mess and one leg hanging off the bed. All warm and sensual, like she was about to pass out after great sex. Her blue gaze warm and satisfied.
Stony waved a hand in his direction. “Have you met our newest right wing, Sean Knox?” She turned her face toward him, her eyes as cold and hard as sapphires. So different from the night she’d played rodeo queen.
“No. I’ve never met Mr. Knox,” she said, and he wondered if Stony heard the slight emphasis on his last name. “I’ve heard my father talk of him, though.”
Yeah. John had called him a nancy-pants and probably worse. He held out his hand, waiting for her next move.
“Sean, this is John’s oldest daughter, Lexie Kowalsky.”
A big smile split her full lips and her white teeth dazzled like a Crest commercial. He waited to see if she’d expose their connection or not.
“We’re all family.” She took a step forward and made a point of giving him a big hug. He automatically closed his arms around her. She smelled different this time, too. Like flowery soap and earthy shampoo. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Knox,” she said, her warm breath brushing his ear.
She felt the same, though. Like soft, sweet woman, and his body reacted. “Thank you.”
Beneath his blazer, her hand slid across his chest, and for one insane second he wondered if she was going to unbutton his shirt like she had a week ago. For one insane second, he wondered if he should let her, right there in the concrete tunnel of the Key Arena. Instead of undressing him, she slipped something in the pocket of his dress shirt. She gave his chest a pat for good measure before she stepped away, taking with her the scent of her skin and feel of her body. A week ago, he would have pulled her right back against his chest. A week ago, they’d been strangers in a strange environment, under strange circumstances.
“You might have seen Lexie on TV,” Stony said, as if he hadn’t noticed the exchange or the slight pull of Lexie’s brow.
“Maybe a time or two.” Although he knew her body intimately, they were still strangers.
“I said I don’t want to talk about that.” She folded her arms across her jersey.
Kevin Olsen rounded the corner and laughed when he saw Lexie. “There’s our little runaway bride!” His voice boomed through the tunnel.
“Shhhh.” She tried and failed not to smile. “Stop shouting, and before you get started, I don’t want to talk about Gettin’ Hitched.”
“I don’t blame you.” Brody gave her a quick hug and kept one big hand on her shoulder as he bent forward to look into her eyes. “No one liked that Pete guy. Paul’s the only one who bet on you making it all the way to the altar.”
“That’s what I heard. You boys will bet on anything.”
“Next time, go on American Ninja Warrior. You’d kick butt on that one.” He straightened. “Win yourself some cash instead of a wuss.”
Her arms fell to her sides. “Tell the guys to get a new hobby because I’m not signing up for any more television shows or interviews. No more magazine articles.” Her brows lowered and she looked at Sean out of the corners of her eyes. “Or pictures in a gossip paper for the world to talk about.”
He’d have to be deaf not to have heard the widespread speculation regarding that photo; everything from she’d run off with a lover to she’d been kidnapped. The corner of his mouth twisted up. Kidnapped. Yeah, fucking right. That was funny given that she’d dived headfirst into the Sea Hopper.
“Me and Chucky talked about it,” Kevin said as he dramatically slammed one meaty fist into an equally meaty palm. “You just give us the word, and we’ll find that guy and shove a stick up his ass.”
Sean turned his attention to the two big men next to him. There was nothing funny about the fire in his teammates’ eyes. They were actually serious, and he asked, although he was afraid he already knew, “What guy?”
“The guy in that photo. The one who’d coerced Lexie.”
Now it was his turn to look at her from the corners of his eyes. “Coerced?”
Lexie raised a hand and covered the top half of her face. “I don’t want to talk about that, either.”
“Jesus, KO. You’re an in
sensitive jerk.” Once again Stony wrapped his protective arms around Lexie. “She’s been through enough without you bringing up that jackass who forced himself on her.”
Jackass? Forced? What the hell?
“Sorry, Lexie. I just want you to know that I’m right here. If you ever see that guy again, promise you’ll call me. I have a hockey stick with his name on it.”
Sean looked at her, waiting for her to correct his teammates. To clear things up and set the record straight.
Instead, a slight smile curved her pink lips. “I promise.” She patted Stony on the shoulder and stepped away. “But I doubt I’ll be seeing much of Mr. Brown.” She turned to Sean. “Meeting you was . . . interesting. I have a strange feeling we’ve met before.”
He looked into her blue eyes and the crease across her smooth forehead as if she was deep in thought, trying to solve a mystery. Was she going to point an accusing finger at him now that KO was dying to shove an Easton up his ass, or was she playing a game? “I have one of those faces.” The only game he liked to play was played on ice.
“That must be it.” She gave another dazzling smile, and he had his answer. She was playing with him, and he didn’t like it. “See you guys around,” she said as she turned on her heels and moved toward the door. As the others watched her walk away, Sean dug into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He glanced at the address and the code to a secure elevator written in blue. The word “tonight” was underlined. By the chill in her eyes, he doubted she wanted to scream in ecstasy and call him a cement head again.
“She’s such a sweetheart,” Stony said as she disappeared out the door.
That was not the first word Sean would have used to describe Lexie. He crumpled the note in his fist and shoved it into the pocket of his blazer. “I’m going to have to take a rain check on those cheese fries.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sean entered the elevator of a swanky apartment building in Belltown. His anger shot up incrementally with the rise of each floor. He hadn’t coerced or forced himself on Lexie. He’d never coerced or forced himself on anyone. Ever. He’d never even thought about it. If she said no, then she meant no. He had plenty of offers of yes. Women threw themselves at him, or in Lexie’s case, fell at his feet.
She wanted to meet and he wanted to know her plans. No games. No manipulations. No implied innocence on her part while condemning him with her silence and pouty lips.
The elevator doors opened and he stepped into an open space constructed of walnut floors and glass, stone, and overstuffed purple furniture with big fuzzy pillows. The far wall consisted of a window so big and clear it appeared as if he could just step from the white carpets and into the lights of the Seattle skyline.
“Hello, Sean.” She stood in the middle of the room, the city behind her, lighting her up as if she’d walked in from the skyline. She’d removed her team jersey and held some sort of creature in her arms. It might be a dog, but he wasn’t certain. The only thing he could tell for sure was that it wore something pink and fluffy. “Your name is Sean, right?”
“Right.” She still had on those tight gray jeans he’d noticed earlier, and her feet were bare. Unlike the last time he’d seen her, her toes were painted red instead of pink. “The kidnapping, rapist jackass.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I’m dramatic?” He put a hand on the front of his jacket. “You’re crazy as a bunny boiler.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She laughed and turned toward the kitchen. “Relax. I would never boil a bunny, and I never said you were a rapist.”
“If you tell people you were coerced and forced against your will, that’s rape.”
“I never told anyone that.” On closer inspection, the thing in her arms was indeed a dog. A hairless dog, and she set it on the floor by her feet. “I guess they just assumed it from that picture.” A black tongue snaked out and licked the pink tutu around its naked body.
“Do you know who took the photo?” If he hadn’t been preoccupied, he would have noticed the flash.
“Not a clue.” She opened a stainless-steel refrigerator and pulled out two beers. “I never knew it was you, the real you, in the photo until a few hours ago.” The door shut behind her and she looked downward. “Watch out, Yum Yum precious baby.”
Yum Yum precious baby? He might have taken a moment to swallow back some vomit if he wasn’t so pissed. “Then who made up that coercion bullshit?”
“Not me!” She shrugged one shoulder and reached into a drawer for a bottle opener. “People just filled in the blanks.” She popped the tops and handed him a beer without asking if he needed one. “I didn’t correct them.”
Obviously.
“Kind of like when I thought your last name was Brown and you didn’t correct me.” She clinked her bottleneck against his. “Cheers.”
“I’m not feeling the cheer.”
She chuckled and raised the beer to her lips.
“And I’m not laughing.”
“No?” Her deep blue eyes watched him over the brown bottle as she drank. She lowered the Molson and bent down to pick up her ugly dog. “But I bet you had a real good laugh in Sandspit when I thought you were a super secret spy like Perry.”
From Phineas and Ferb? “I never told you I was a spy.”
“I never told anyone to shove a hockey stick up your ass, either.” She looked down at her dog and said, “I never would have slept with you if I’d known you’re a hockey player.”
“But sleeping with Perry the spy is okay with you?” Were they really talking about a cartoon platypus? She nodded as she took a drink, and it was his turn to laugh. “I was there that night. You can’t lie to me or yourself. When you had your legs around my waist, you wouldn’t have cared if I was a serial killer.”
She lowered the bottle and said, “I never lied to you.”
“I didn’t lie to you, either.”
“Maybe not outright.” She shrugged one shoulder and looked down at her dog. “A lie by omission is still a lie.”
“Exactly.”
With her dog cradled against her big breasts, she walked from the kitchen. “You knew who I was the moment we met. I didn’t keep it a secret.”
“Princess, it was obvious the moment Jimmy shoved you into his seaplane.” He pointed his bottle at her. “No way you could keep that a secret.”
“KO is right about you. You are a jackass.”
“Then why am I here?” He took a long drink, irritated with people calling him a jackass. Irritated by his inability to control his gaze from wandering from the swing of her ponytail, down her back, to the curve of her waist and nice round butt. Irritated by the pure lust pouring through his stomach and sloshing around in the bottom of his gut. Mostly, irritated by the chaos she created below his waist, specifically, and his life in general. “If you want to pick up where we left off in Sandspit, we need to get busy. I have a four a.m. flight to Arizona,” he said, not bothering to keep the irritation from his voice.
“Don’t flatter yourself. It wasn’t that memorable.”
He could remind her that he’d made her scream from pleasure, but he wasn’t that big a jackass. Instead he smiled and walked across the room. “Who’s lying now, sweetheart?” He took a seat on a purple velvet sofa, cluttered with fussy pillows.
She set her beer on a glass coffee table, sat down, then pulled one bare foot beneath her thigh. Her fingers ran through a patch of long hair on her dog’s head, her red cheeks the only indication she’d heard him. “Why didn’t you tell me you play for the Chinooks?”
If she wanted to change the subject away from that night, fine with him. “It never came up.”
She finally looked up at him. “That’s a deke, not an answer, but you’re good at it.” Her ugly dog jumped up on the top of the couch and shook out its tutu. “Much better at it than your wrister.”
He was good at both and chose to ignore her comment. “I didn’t realize that you had no idea I p
layed for the Chinooks until we were somewhere over Vancouver.” The dog stretched out on its belly with its furry paws in front. The thing had black beady eyes that stared at him through strands of white and black hair falling from the wild topknot on its head.
“That was the first hour.”
The little dog scooted toward him. “At the time, I thought it was probably best if your father never found out I’d ripped your wedding dress off of you. Even if it was at your request.” That was half the truth. He took a drink, then set the bottle on the coffee table.
“Believe me, that’s something I never want Dad to find out about, either. You still should have told me.”
He looked at the dog as it inched toward him. Its big furry ears and Flock of Seagulls hair, combined with wrinkly skin and a sharp pointed nose, made probably the ugliest dog he’d ever seen. Certainly the most bizarre.
“You could have mentioned it the next morning at the Waffle Hut or later at your mother’s when she was dying to call Wendy.” A frown wrinkled her brow. “Or when I brought you lunch in your weight room and stuck around to clear my head of the description of your mother’s bowels. Or when I told you that my dad thinks you’re a nancy-pants.”
“Which time?”
“Any of those times.” Another wrinkle creased her forehead as if she couldn’t recall talking about it more than once. “Or when you had your hand down my shirt.”
“I wasn’t thinking about it when I had my hand down your shirt.” He was focused on the soft weight of her breast in his palm.
“You could have mentioned it before you snuck out of the hotel room in the middle of the night.”
“I didn’t sneak. I thought I’d see you on the Sea Hopper, later that morning.” He glanced at her shifty-eyed dog, then back at her. “It shouldn’t have even gotten to that point, but the whole situation just kept snowballing until it got out of control. You have experience with something snowballing out of control.”
The Art of Running in Heels Page 13