by RJ Scott
Ryan wanted to talk about that now? The one thing they never mentioned. Here? Outside the hotel at midnight?
“I remember.” She’d been mortified that her date to the senior prom had taken one look at Nicky and Ryan and slunk away. The two idiots had been all played up their intimidating roles and warning her date to take care of her, and he’d just left.
So she and Nicky had gotten into a fight. She’d called him on his protective shit, said he wasn’t her dad. The fight had been bad, and Ryan had tried to get in the middle of them before too much hurt had been thrown around. Nicky had left—Ryan told him to go, to cool the fuck down, to get his shit together.
And Kat had burst into hot, shameful tears. She’d been in her senior year, and her life as she knew it, including dating the captain of the baseball team, had ended at that moment. At the time, she’d been sure of it.
“Nicky didn’t know any better back then. He was looking out for you. When your parents died, you were the only thing he had left.”
“I know that.” It was the story she told anyone who asked. She’d long ago made peace with the dynamics between her and Nicky. On rare occasions it grated that he was always so concerned about her, that they couldn’t seem to see each other without him commenting on her life choices.
Ryan cleared his throat. “I couldn’t stand to see you cry, and you were saying all these things about how you wanted to feel special. And you wanted a kiss.”
“And you kissed me.”
“To get you to stop crying.”
“I know that was all it was.” Didn’t matter, though. She’d still gone from hero-worshipping Ryan to falling straight into puppy love.
She remembered every touch of him, the scent of him, the way he held her as though she was precious to him. Gone was the boy who was her idiot brother’s friend, and in his place was a young man filled with compassion.
He traced his thumb beneath her eye and down her cheek, skimming it over lips that parted at the touch. Was he going to kiss her again? Now? “Ryan?”
He crowded her a little, tilting her face until he was happy with the angle, pressing his warm lips to hers and teasing her with the tip of his tongue.
She jerked back, but he only let her go so far.
“God help me, but I want to kiss you again,” he murmured.
“But I’m not crying now,” she said, then groaned inwardly. What the hell was her brain doing sending her such shitty lines? When she was in a potential lip-lock with the man who’d owned her heart since her prom?
“Good. Then we know this is real.”
He kissed her again, and this time it was the easiest thing in the world to go with whatever was happening here. She was up on tiptoes, he was stooping to kiss her, they were in full view of the public eye, but none of that mattered. She wanted him to lift her up; she wanted to wrap her legs around him, but for now she would be content with the kiss.
Fire and need pooled inside her, and she whimpered, tangling her tongue with his, tasting him for the first time in so many years. He overwhelmed her, held her, and she wriggled closer, linking her hands behind his head and holding on for the ride.
“Taxi for Flynn?”
The words separated them.
Kat liked to think that they stepped away and neither was affected, but she’d be lying. His hazel eyes were wide, his lips glossy with her lipstick, his face flushed, and he looked so damned serious.
She dropped back on her heels, and stepped back. “Ryan?”
For the longest time, he looked at her, considered her, and then he slipped his hand into hers and tugged her toward the taxi.
He told the driver her address as they slid inside and buckled up.
Fifteen minutes to her house, and they should be talking. She wanted to know what this meant but refused to ask the question. And Ryan? He held her hand, and with his thumb traced patterns on her fingers, but he didn’t say a word. He stared out of the window, and she looked at his profile. From this angle she could see the slight crookedness in his nose, where a puck had slammed up and under his face shield in the second period of his first-ever NHL game. The skin had split, there’d been so much blood, but he’d had medical attention and gotten butterfly stitches, and he was back on the ice for the third period. The bump that injury left was part of his character.
Kat caught sight of the other parts of his face that made her breath hitch. The smoothness of his skin, the spray of freckles barely there over his cheekbones, his lashes, and the warmth in his eyes—that curious mix of brown and green with flecks of amber.
“Ryan?” she said again when the word refused to stay inside her.
He half turned, not entirely looking at her, his generous lips pressed into a thin line. “Don’t,” he murmured. “I can’t.”
She didn’t know what that meant, didn’t even want to analyze it, but the soft syllables had her sitting back in her seat and staring out of her side of the cab.
And all the time, they held hands, as if he couldn’t let go of her.
He walked her to her door, cradled her face. For a moment she thought he would kiss her again.
He did, but it was nothing more than a heated press of lips to her forehead, and then he stepped back, waiting for her to go inside.
“Night, Ryan.”
“Night, Kat.”
Inside, with the door shut, she listened to the sound of the taxi leaving, and then allowed herself the freak-out she deserved.
Ryan Flynn had kissed her, and somehow the loop in her head that had started her senior year had finished. She didn’t have to wonder about how she felt about Ryan anymore.
This wasn’t puppy love, or awe, or hero worship.
This was sex and lust and need.
And hell, maybe it was even a bigger love than best friends.
Maybe, this love was real.
The text arrived at a little after seven in the morning. She picked up her cell, expecting anything but what she saw.
Morning, gorgeous.
She closed the text, even though she knew who had sent it. After all, his name was at the top. But she needed to see again, on the list of incoming messages. Just to make sure.
Nope. No doubt.
The text wasn’t from Evan, nor was it one of the stupidly creepy ones that Bennett sent. It wasn’t a joke text from her brother.
This one was from Ryan, and it read Morning, gorgeous.
Morning, she typed and then stopped. Could she casually add an endearment? She added a kiss, deleted it, added a smiley face, deleted that. Then, with irritation at her indecision, she pressed Send.
The reply was instant.
I’m at the airport. Going to Oahu.
Oh, okay. So was this Ryan wanting to talk? About his vacation, about last night, about what the fuck anything?
Have a great time, she sent back.
Wish you were here.
He sent it with a frustratingly ambiguous x on the end for a kiss.
She didn’t know what to say back. Was that something he said just because he didn’t know what else to say? He’d started the conversation, but she could end it.
A shower first, and then she’d call Ally, because Ally was good at this kind of thing.
By the time she came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, she had four messages waiting.
They called my flight. x.
Ten days of sunshine. We probably need to talk. xx.
The next text was from Cody James, thanking her for last night. And seconds after, a text from his twin, with almost exactly the same words.
There was no point in texting Ryan if he was on the plane, so she concentrated on thanking the James twins and then getting dressed.
After pulling her hair back into a functional ponytail, she grabbed her bag and left the house. Work and Ally would take the edge off of how she was feeling.
Ally took one look at her and grinned like a Cheshire cat. “You got some,” she said and poked Kat in the chest.
&nb
sp; “No, I didn’t.” Because in Kat’s books, a kiss wasn’t ‘getting some.’
Getting some was Ryan taking Kat back to her place, picking her up, pushing her against the nearest wall, and making her scream his name. At that thought, she could feel a flush redden her face.
“Spill,” Ally insisted. She was on inventory, checking stocks against the master list, already in her uniform of dark pants and white shirt.
Kat held up a finger to indicate one minute, went to the lockers, and changed into her paramedic gear, curling her ponytail into a knot and feeding it back through the band in her hair. She closed her locker, tapping it twice as she always did. You couldn’t be the sister of a hockey player with all their obsessional tics for good luck without picking some up yourself.
At least her two taps took seconds; Nicky had routines that lasted an entire game day.
Finally, back at the ambulance, Kat found Ally in deep discussion with the station captain.
Then a call came in, too close to allow them to talk much; an unconscious man down outside the Starbucks closest to the station they were attached to. He’d had some kind of panic attack, which the owner had thought was a heart attack. As calls went it was pretty tame.
On the way back to the hospital, the questions started. All Kat could think was that thank God she was driving because it gave her time to think. She tuned back in to Ally’s voice.
“…Prime steak.”
“Sorry?”
“He was looking at you all night, couldn’t take his eyes off you. So spill. Did you do the nasty? Was it good? Because he’s so big and you’re not. Did he manhandle you? God, I love that shit.”
Kat let her friend ramble on about hot hockey players and was it possible that she could get an introduction to any of the team, because she was so over her worries about hockey and she really liked the look of the captain, or the Russian one who didn’t talk much in interviews but wasn’t there at the event—
They got sent right back out before the engine could be turned off. This time it was a more serious call alongside fire and police at a multivehicle accident, and before Kat knew it, the shift was nearly done and she’d somehow avoided giving Ally the details her friend had initially demanded.
Kat couldn’t get her head around why she didn’t want to talk about Ryan, but she wasn’t sure what the hell had happened last night. That had to be it.
A text came in from him.
Here. Sun, sand, sea, and… beer. Attached was a photo of his feet in the water.
Was it wrong to think that he had very nice feet?
She groaned so loud that Ally looked up at her sharply from where she was rummaging in her backpack in the locker room.
“You okay?”
“Event work,” she lied. “Nicky’s charity.”
The next text was an image of a cocktail, pink and orange with an umbrella and fruit chunks over ice.
Turning in my man card was the message that came with it. You’ll have to help me get it back.
That there was flirting. Because even with her at her most clueless, the added winky face and the kisses, and the next picture—a selfie with the beach behind him—added up to just one thing.
This was a step past friends. A breath past what they’d been before.
This shit was getting real.
CHAPTER 10
Training camp was Ryan’s excuse to focus back on hockey in his texts to Kat. They’d been exchanging ever more sarcastic messages, some with overtones that he could only describe as flirting.
Well, his were all flirting. Kat’s had been a little more reluctant, but he’d persevered. Today he’d focused in on the fact that both Kat and Loki were Leaf fans. He knew she owned a Sundin jersey, the same as Loki did.
In his fantasies she wore his jersey, his number, his name on her back, but how the hell could he do that and not tell Loki that he had crossed the line with his friend’s sister? She’d worn one by accident the night he’d collected her from the station, and she’d looked so good, her dark hair against the red and black, the sleeves too long, the material in loose layers around her….
So how would Loki react to this blatant advertisement that he wanted her to wear his number?
This isn’t school. It’s just a sweater.
He could imagine that conversation. “Oh yeah, Loki, just wanted to say I’m in lust with your sister. It’s not a new thing, but now I want it to be more than a fantasy and for it to be real.”
Because he’d end up on the floor, his face split and his friendship severely bent out of shape.
He’d do it, though, because he’d set his sights on her, and he was utterly determined. And if Loki wanted to pummel him into the ground, then he’d take it like a man and they’d move on. He wasn’t afraid of Loki.
“Who you texting?” Loki asked, casually looking over at Ryan’s screen with the picture he’d taken of his jersey to send to Kat.
“No one.”
He could have died when he realized what he’d done. Why didn’t he just say it was for his mom, or another player, or hell, anyone? The only reason you said “no one” was to hide what you were doing.
“Tell Uncle Loki everything.” Loki leaned right into him; he sat down on the bench, reaching for the phone all in one go.
Ryan was faster, holding the phone away from him and using his other hand to keep Loki back.
“Phones away!” Coach Barton shouted over the noise of the room.
After making sure the screen locked, Ryan slipped the phone in his gym bag. At least the coach’s intervention had killed Loki’s interrogation.
At least, that was what Ryan thought, but Loki wasn’t dropping it.
“Blonde? Brunette?” he asked as they waited by the weights bench, stretching out their aching limbs.
“What?”
“This mystery girl. Blonde or brunette?
”Blonde,” Ryan lied, imagining the opposite of Kat.
“Nice,” Loki said, then concentrated on spotting Cody, which meant Ryan could sidle away.
When they walked over to refill their water bottles, Loki asked, “Blue?”
“Blue what?” Ryan was in a different headspace, his legs aching from squats.
“Eyes.”
“Blue, yeah.”
“Is she gorgeous? Of course she is. I bet she’s tall, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jeez, Loki.”
“Just her name,” Loki wheedled.
“Jay,” he snapped, because that was the first name that came to mind. Loki looked at him thoughtfully, and then gave a quick nod, like he approved of the name? What the hell?
Ryan moved away, determined to be at the opposite end of the huge custom-built gym. But Loki followed. He was limping, still not working as hard as the other guys here on conditioning, but on healing and strengthening. At least he wasn’t on crutches anymore, although he was still wrapping it in ice. No one knew for definite if he’d be ready for the October season, fit enough to take up the role he’d been paid for. Equally no one talked about anything else other than how good it was to have him working out and how he would be starting in game one.
They had rink time today—focused drills to get the guys working, and Ryan concentrated on the sensation of blades on ice and pushed all thoughts of Kat and Loki to the back of his head. On the ice he could think with clarity; even in the wildest of games he focused.
But no one wanted him to have a moment to himself today.
“So, Loki says you have new arm candy,” Simba said as he halted right in front of Ryan.
“You dating a hottie called Jay?” Karly asked as Ryan stopped for water at the bench.
“Think you can give me pointers to getting a girl to stay for more than a night?” Arkin asked, the rookie looking excessively earnest with that question.
And so it went. By the time their first session of camp was ending, Ryan had fielded questions from the twins, Simba, Drago�
�who had to come all the way out of the net to ask about Ryan’s mystery girl—and Karly, who smirked more than once over the fact that Ryan was texting, in his words, like a teenage girl.
Oh, and Loki, of course.
Chirping about blondes and big tits, and asses, and sex, and fuck, this was getting on his last nerve.
He texted Kat. I hate my team.
She didn’t answer until early the next morning because, as she explained, her shifts were all over the place. Even though it was a simple LOL it was enough to tell him that she was off shift now. Which led him to the most impetuous thing he’d done in his entire damn life. Determined, he sorted through the jerseys he’d been sent: scarlet, white, and black with the 17 and his name right there in big letters.
“It’s 6:00 a.m. Where are you going?” Loki asked, looking from him to the jersey.
“What are you, my dad?” he snapped.
Loki simply smirked. “Jay must be good if you get up early.”
“Fuck you.”
“Glove up, and don’t miss practice.”
He threw Loki the dirtiest look he could muster as he shut the door behind him. Sometimes he really thought he should be getting his own place, but then it came to looking for somewhere and he couldn’t find anything he really liked. He didn’t want flashy, he didn’t really want permanent. Loki might have landed a long contract, but Ryan wasn’t up for renewal until the end of this season, and he wasn’t ready to dip into his healthy bank balance yet. He had plans for the future and he wasn’t blowing his money on things he didn’t really need.
He kind of wanted to find the girl first.
Only she’d been in front of his face since day one.
And hell, he and Loki were good together in this place.
Right. You’re just scared to commit to your own place in case you jinx your position on the roster for the Dragons.
He pulled up behind Kat’s Toyota, cutting the engine and simply sitting there for at least five minutes. The jersey was on the seat next to him. His intentions were real, or at least he thought they were. If he got out of this car and walked up to her door, if he pushed this past the texting, flirting thing they had, then they wouldn’t be friends anymore.