by Heidi Betts
Jumping to her feet, she hurried to shrug into her coat and sidle up to Grace before anyone else could join them.
“I have a surprise for you, dear,” she said quietly, reaching into her bag for the carefully woven skein of silky-soft pink yarn.
Grace’s gaze lowered as she reached to accept Charlotte’s gift, and Charlotte noticed that the polish on Grace’s perfectly manicured nails matched the tint of the yarn.
Oooh, this was wonderful! She’d known pink was one of the young woman’s favorite colors, but having it match her nails had to be a sign. A sign that this particular skein of magic yarn was, indeed, meant for Grace.
“That’s so sweet. Thank you, Charlotte.”
The words were sincere enough, but they didn’t carry Grace’s usual flare of enthusiasm. Everything about her these days was muted, as though a bubble of unhappiness surrounded her.
“Make yourself something special with it,” Charlotte suggested, wanting to press and make sure Grace started using the yarn as soon as possible. “Maybe after you finish that pretty sweater you’re working on now.” Which only had one more sleeve and some trim work to go.
Lips curving in a halfhearted smile, Grace leaned down to buss Charlotte’s cheek. “I will. Thank you again.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly a blood oath to begin knitting with the new yarn before the clock struck midnight, Charlotte thought with a mental sigh, but it would have to do. Now all she could do was cross her fingers and her toes and hope to heaven the enchantment of the ancient spinning wheel held true and worked its wonderful magic once again.
Row 1
The spray of hot water from the hotel’s fixed-mount shower head hit Zack Hoolihan between the shoulder blades, soothing stiff muscles as it rolled the rest of the way down his body.
He shouldn’t be this damn sore after a couple hours on the ice for charity. It wasn’t like he’d been out there giving it his all in a grudge match. But that hadn’t made their opponents launch the puck in his direction with any less force or hit the ice any less hard when he’d smacked into it time and again.
This wasn’t a good sign, though. He was only thirty-six…too damn young to be feeling this damn old, and nowhere near ready to be skating toward retirement. If his body didn’t cut out the stiff-and-sore bullshit and get with the program, though, pretty soon he’d be out there trying to block goals with a walker.
With a sigh, he turned around and let the water pelt his face and chest, then reached for the soap and started lathering up.
The guys had mentioned going out for pizza and beer later, but Zack knew from past experience that plans for a simple dinner with the rest of the team often turned into an all-night tour of every bar and strip club in whatever city they happened to be visiting. He wasn’t much up for that tonight.
Instead he figured he’d stay in, maybe order some room service or see if his friend Dylan, who was currently traveling with the Rockets as a team reporter, wanted to grab a bite at one of the hotel’s on-site restaurants.
Rinsing off, Zack turned off the water and pulled back the shower curtain, reaching for a towel from the rack on the wall as he stepped out of the tub. He dried off quickly, then used the towel to wipe the steam from the wide mirror above the sink and countertop before wrapping the strip of terry cloth around his waist and knotting it over his right hipbone.
With a sigh, he rested his palms on either side of the sink basin and leaned forward to study his reflection. Yeah, he was a good-lookin’ guy. It was no surprise women swarmed all over him.
Of course, ninety percent of those women were puck bunnies, which meant he could have had three eyes and an ass where his mouth was supposed to be, and they still would have thrown themselves at him.
Too bad he felt like shit. It wasn’t the aches from exerting himself on the ice or the bruises that would cover him like graffiti by morning from stopping three-inch disks of vulcanized rubber flying at eighty miles per hour with his body.
No, the lack of sparkle in his eyes and enthusiasm in his spirit came from the fact that he hated being on the road. What used to be the best part of his job as star goalie for the Cleveland Rockets, he now considered nothing more than a hassle. Whether playing an away game or doing the off-season practice and good-will charity stuff like now, he would have much preferred to be back home and closer to Grace.
Going on the road. Hanging out with the guys. Partying until all hours and getting more tail than any man had a right to. Reasons one, two, and three—aside from a genuine love of the game—that he’d decided to play hockey professionally in the first place.
Then he’d met Grace, and “the road” turned into nothing more than a long, lonely highway dotted with indistinguishable hotel rooms and games he barely remembered by the time he got home. Hanging out with the guys paled in comparison to spending a quiet night on the couch, watching old movies with Grace wrapped in his arms.
And forget about other women—blond, brunette, redhead; tall or short; built like a supermodel or the girl next door…not a one of them had the power to turn his head anymore. Not when he was engaged to the funniest, smartest, sassiest, most beautiful woman in the world.
He wished she were here now. He’d walk into the other room, drop the towel, and show her how appreciative he was of her willingness to follow him from city to city. Or maybe he’d simply crawl under the covers with her and hold her close while they flipped channels looking for one old movie or another.
The black-and-whites were her favorites. Maybe because Grace herself looked so much like a fifties starlet. She was a Marilyn Monroe of the twenty-first century, all platinum curls, pouty lips, and a figure that made him want to fall to his knees and thank God for creating womanly curves.
Or maybe Grace had somehow taken on the characteristics of a fifties starlet because she spent so many hours admiring them.
Pushing away from the bathroom counter, Zack ran his fingers through his still-damp blond hair. He’d be back in Cleveland by the end of next week. He could survive that long moving from hotel to hotel, putting on the rough-and-tumble playboy act for fans, and playing his heart out on the ice.
But when he did get home, he was heading straight to Grace’s apartment, and he didn’t intend to let her out of bed for a week.
He was just reaching for the knob when a knock sounded on the outside door. Couldn’t be room service, he thought, since he hadn’t called in an order yet. Maybe it was someone from hotel maintenance to work on the faulty heating and air system he’d reported earlier. Or better yet, Dylan, which would save him having to call his buddy’s room about getting together for dinner.
Since he didn’t think a maintenance guy or even Dylan would appreciate a half-naked greeting, he yanked open the bathroom door with the intention of grabbing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before answering. Lord knew there were enough discarded clothes scattered around the floor to dress a third-world country. Grace got on his case all the time about his abysmal housekeeping skills. But then, that’s why he’d hired a housekeeper.
On the way out of the bathroom, he stubbed his toe on the heavy metal door and cracked his shoulder into the jamb. Muttering a low oath and cursing minuscule hotel rooms that weren’t designed to accommodate professional athletes who topped six feet and pushed the scales at two hundred fifty pounds—most of it muscle—he changed his mind about scrounging around for something to wear and went straight to the hallway door instead, where whoever was on the other side continued to rap.
Bad mood etched clearly on his face, he yanked the door open…and froze when he found Grace staring up at him. He blinked in surprise, wondering if his earlier fantasy about having her on the road with him had conjured her out of thin air. Or maybe he’d slipped on the slick tile of the bathroom floor, cracked his skull on the edge of the tub, and was hallucinating.
Nice hallucination, though. She looked amazing, her hair a mass of sexy curls and her lips a glossy rose bow on her heart-shaped face.
“Hey,” he said, running his fingers through his wet hair as he tried to absorb the fact that she was actually standing in front of him. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here?” she replied saucily. Her grin widened as she stepped into the room and pressed herself against his tall frame. “I came to rock your world, big boy.”
At that declaration, his lips curled and the fog cleared from his brain. He didn’t know how she’d gotten here or why she’d decided to drop in on him, but at the moment, he didn’t particularly care.
“Well, okay, then,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Come on in. Don’t mind the mess.” Shifting them both out of the way, he let the door swing closed.
“I never do,” she shot back with a chuckle.
Pulling away slightly, she leaned back against the wall running between the bathroom and the rest of the suite. She raked him from head to toe with a hot gaze, using two manicured nails to tug at the towel he was still holding low on his hips.
“I think I’m overdressed,” she murmured, a wicked glimmer shining in her ice-blue eyes.
As far as he was concerned, if she was wearing anything more than him and a smile, she was overdressed.
“I should say so.” He let his gaze wander over her curvaceous figure and felt his temperature spike. “You need any help remedying that fact?”
“Oh, I think I can handle it,” she teased.
Slipping away from the wall, she continued to face him as she walked backward into the main area of the room. Step by slow step, while her fingers worked to free the buttons running down the front of her blouse.
Her heel caught on something and she stumbled. They both glanced down to find her standing in the leg hole of a pair of discarded BVDs.
“Nice,” she said, shaking her foot and kicking the briefs aside.
Zack expected her to return to her little striptease. Was salivating for it, actually. The small terry-cloth towel at his waist didn’t act as much of a cover to begin with, but with the front taking on a telltale tenting with his growing hard-on, he might as well have been naked.
Instead, Grace slowly turned her head to the side, focusing on the king-size bed. He had no doubt that’s where they’d end up, but he was in no rush. He was fine with watching her undress, then maybe taking her up against the dresser, on top of the round table in the corner, in the chair currently tucked under the small desk …
When Grace returned her attention to him, her eyes no longer glittered with smoldering desire. Her mouth was no longer tipped up seductively at the corners. In fact, she looked downright angry.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” she asked, her previously sultry tone replaced with icicles sharp enough to maim.
His brows knit. “Huh?”
Zack was used to his fiancée’s rapid-fire changes in mood. Women in general were mercurial, he’d found, able to go from laughing to yelling to crying in two seconds flat. And Grace, he knew, could be more emotional than most.
Having her launch into an hour-long tirade because of some injustice she read about in the newspaper or tear up over a Hallmark commercial had taken some getting used to. His favorite, though, was when she started laughing over the silliest things, like a joke she’d heard at the studio or a remembered scene from a movie she’d seen months before.
He’d never known her to go from hot-for-his-bod to rip-his-face-off in the blink of an eye, though. And damned if he knew what he’d done to piss her off.
She cocked her head to the right, and he followed her gaze. Shock like a blast of cold air hit him full in the chest and had his heart plummeting to his gut.
The blonde in his bed climbed to her knees and let the sheet drop, revealing a skimpy pink bra-and-panty set.
“Hi,” she chirped with a too-sweet smile. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Zack couldn’t have been more surprised if a band of rodeo clowns had jumped up and started dancing around the room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped.
“You know, I was just asking myself the same question.”
Unfortunately, this response came from Grace, not the puck bunny who’d somehow sneaked into his room while he was in the shower.
Fingers flying, Grace rebuttoned her blouse, then charged for the door, pushing past a still-stunned Zack before he had a chance to stop her.
“Grace, wait.”
This was unbelievable. How the hell had this woman gotten in? And how the hell could Grace believe he’d invited her?
Hand on the knob, not bothering to turn around, she shot back, “Fuck you. Or better yet, let your bimbo do it.”
“Grace!”
Heedless of his near-naked state, Zack caught the door before it closed and raced after her. The towel flapped around his legs as his bare feet pounded down the carpeted hallway. She was already several yards ahead of him, ignoring his repeated calls for her to stop, to listen.
“Shit,” he muttered as she slammed through the stairwell door.
Tucking his chin into his chest, he put on an extra burst of speed, determined to catch her…then came to a screeching halt as the elevator to his right whispered open and an elderly couple stepped out. The woman’s eyes went round as golf balls and she gasped, turning seven shades of red.
Glancing down, Zack’s own face flared with heat as he realized he’d lost his towel and was now standing bare-ass naked in the middle of a Marriott hallway, scaring the bejeezus out of two people who looked old enough to be his grandparents.
In his estimation, he had three choices: keep running after Grace in the buff and risk blowing out pacemakers or shocking mothers and small children—not to mention having his picture wind up on the front page of every tabloid in the country; go back for his towel, then take off after Grace again, pretty much risking the same three results—albeit on a slightly smaller scale; or return to his room, put on some clothes, and hope Grace hadn’t disappeared from the hotel completely before he could catch up with her.
He didn’t think any of those options would work out a hundred percent in his favor, and Grace had likely hit the lobby already at the rate she was going.
Releasing a sigh of defeat and pent-up frustration, Zack offered a wave of apology to the couple still standing frozen in shock a few feet in front of him and spun around to head back the way he’d come. He grabbed up the fallen towel as he passed, but didn’t bother using it to cover up again. Instead, he let it dangle from his tightly clenched fist as he stalked to his room and punched the door open so hard, it crashed into the wall behind.
The woman—the scheming little tramp who had started all this—was still perched on his mattress, batting overly mascaraed lashes at him in what he supposed was meant to be a look of innocence.
Letting the damp towel fall to the floor, he found the nearest pair of earlier-discarded jeans and yanked them on.
“I don’t know who you are or how you got into my room,” he bit out, not bothering to glance in her direction as he grabbed a wrinkled T-shirt from the top of the bureau and pulled it over his head, “but if you aren’t out of here in three seconds, I’m calling the cops.”
“But—”
This time, he did look at her. Hands on hips, nostrils flaring, and teeth grinding so hard he expected to shatter a molar, he began to count.
“Three.”
Her eyes went wide and she twisted her head, searching desperately for her clothes. Zack almost hoped she wouldn’t find them. He would relish calling both hotel security and the local police and having her hauled away in handcuffs.
Aside from breaking and entering, he didn’t know what the hell he could have her charged with, but he’d come up with something. Attempted robbery. Sexual harassment. And just plain fucking up his life.
“Two.”
She slipped a short, low-cut black dress over her head and tugged until it covered her ass. Or most of it, anyway. Grabbing up a small clutch purse, she stepped int
o a pair of heels tall enough to give her a nosebleed, and rushed toward the door.
With her hand on the knob, she turned to cast a glance at him over her shoulder, moisture beading on her lashes.
Normally, a woman on the verge of tears would have had his throat going dry and his stomach twisting in knots. But if this particular woman didn’t disappear at the speed of light, he was very much afraid he’d give her something to cry about.
He’d never in his life laid his hands on a woman in anger, and he wasn’t about to start now. If she were a man, though, she’d have been eating his fist by now. Or maybe dangling by an ankle outside the hotel room window.
“I just—”
“One.”
The single word must have carried enough threat, enough menace, to let her know he meant business, because in the next second, she was gone, the door whooshing closed behind her.
Zack stood in the empty, silent room for long minutes, not moving, barely breathing. He was so pissed, he was shaking. And damned if he wasn’t scared, too.
Scared Grace would be gone by the time he managed to get downstairs.
Scared Grace wasn’t going to believe he hadn’t invited that woman to his room, even though he’d been as shocked as anyone at her sudden appearance.
Scared that no matter what he said or did, his ass was in a sling and he was going to lose her.
Scrubbing his hands over his face, he took a deep breath, then moved to the nightstand and picked up the phone. He dialed Dylan’s room and waited for his friend to answer.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, it’s me,” Zack said without preamble. “I’ve got a problem.”
“Boy, do you ever.”
Zack tensed, his fingers tightening on the handset. “She’s there?”
“She was. Dragged Ronnie out of here like her feet were on fire. Just when things were starting to get good, too,” he mumbled only half under his breath. Then, in a near-accusatory tone, he asked, “Did you really have another woman in your room?”
“No!” Zack snapped. “I mean, yes.” He shook his head, confusion warring with his rising temper. “I’ll explain later. Do you think I can catch her?”