by Heidi Betts
Zack frowned, his light blond brows dipping down. “Definitely not.”
“But what about all the adorable accessories I’ve bought for him that already say Muffin?” she asked, fighting the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. It was cruel to tease him this way, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
She could almost hear his teeth grinding together before he said, “I’ll pay you back. And buy new.”
“But if you buy him all new stuff, it will be in Rockets red or blue, or some other ugly, manly colors.”
“I don’t know what’s so wrong with manly colors,” he grumbled, turning his head down and to the side for a brief second. Then he raised his gaze to hers once again and grated out, “You know how much I hate that frilly, girly shit you put on him. You painted his nails red, white, and pink for Valentine’s Day, for Christ’s sake. But if you let me change his name back to Bruiser—and use it yourself—” he stressed, “then you can continue to dress him up however you like. I won’t say anything about the pussy sweaters and booties, or even the nail polish and trips to the doggie day spa.”
Grace was torn. Letting him change her sweet bran Muffin’s name back to Bruiser was a small price to pay to get him to let her drive him to New York instead of flying …not to mention his agreement to go along with the deal in the first place when he didn’t have to.
But yanking his chain was so damn fun!
“Okay,” she agreed, deciding to let him off the hook. “It might take me some time to get used to the idea and remember to start calling him …” She let out a put-upon sigh. “Bruiser again, but I’ll try.”
He inclined his head, apparently willing to accept that as good enough for him. “Then set it up. We’ll drive to New York for the photo and commercial shoots. Not like I have anything better to do until I’m fit to get back on the ice, anyway.”
“Thank you.” Without thinking, she stepped forward, closing the distance between them and going up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his slightly stubbled cheek.
Her hand brushed down the hard line of his forearm as she shifted away again, her heart racing and her stomach doing cartwheels as she both realized what she’d done…and realized how much she’d missed touching him, kissing him, being close to him.
She started to retreat, hoping he wouldn’t read too much into her actions or think the one quick peck meant more than it did, when he grabbed her by the elbows and hauled her against his chest. Her eyes widened in surprise a fraction of a second before his mouth swooped down to capture hers.
The kiss was electrifying. Like a direct lightning strike, it zapped her from head to toe and scalded every centimeter, every cell, every nerve ending along the way.
His lips were soft but firm, just as she remembered them. Also just like she remembered, he didn’t bother keeping them closed to tease and tempt, but immediately used his tongue to delve into her mouth.
She let him wrap his arms around her waist and tip her back, one of his wide strong hands at the very base of her spine. Let him tangle his tongue with hers, swirling, sucking, exploring.
Let him? Ha!
Everything he did to her, she did right back. Her hands drifted up to lock behind his neck, fingers braiding into the longish strands of his sandy blond hair.
Her brain told her to pull away, to slap him for his boldness and storm off before he got any other funny ideas.
But her body…oh, her body didn’t agree with her brain at all. Her bones were melting under her skin, everything turning thick and hot and flowing like molten lava through her veins.
She moaned and made tiny mewling sounds that she would kick herself for later. He tasted so good, though. Of salty chips and the sweet, fizzy bite of cola, making Grace’s stomach growl. She was suddenly ravenous, either for food or—much more likely—what Zack, and only Zack, could give her.
Running a hand over the swell of her bottom, he cupped one of the rounded cheeks and squeezed, drawing her even closer so that she could feel the hard ridge of his erection low against her abdomen.
She wanted to reach down and stroke him through the thick denim of his jeans, but was too busy stroking his neck and toying with his hair. So she settled instead for rubbing herself up and down the length of his body like an amorous cat, adding extra pressure where she knew he would appreciate it most. Where she needed it most, the gentle friction making her wet and completely willing.
With a low groan, Zack grasped her waist and turned her so that she was the one with her back to the counter. His crutches clattered to the floor and he leaned into her, deepening the kiss…
And then pulled back, sucking in a sharp breath as he cursed, his face contorted in pain.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Balancing on one leg—his good leg—he gripped the counter on either side of her, knuckles and lips going white.
Though her chest was heaving, heart fluttering like a hummingbird and lungs gasping for air, she moved quickly, darting under his arm and grabbing the crutches. She shoved them at him, helping him to get propped and steady before whispering a quick, “Hold on,” and rushing into the other room.
She returned less than a second later with a chair from the dining room set and arranged it behind him, helping him to carefully lower himself onto the cushioned seat.
Moving the crutches out of the way again, she hunkered down beside him while he rubbed his knee.
“Are you all right?” she asked, still slightly out of breath and thoroughly concerned.
“Yeah,” he grated, sounding both pained and annoyed. “I put my weight on it. Too much too soon, I guess.”
“Maybe we should call the doctor. You might have torn something or caused further damage. You could need X-rays or more surgery.”
Lifting his head, he shot her a half-amused, half-annoyed glare. “Way to look on the bright side, Pollyanna.”
She licked her lips and made a concerted effort to steady her breathing. “Forgive me for being concerned,” she shot back. “You’ve been doing so well, though. And a setback will cause even more problems with the I.O.U. deal and the advertising shoots in New York.”
In all honesty, those were not the biggest worries currently topping her list, but she was already starting to feel awkward and regretful of the kiss.
The Big Kiss.
The Bad Kiss.
The Kiss That Never Should Have Happened Even Though It Turned Her Brain to Mush.
The Kiss That Would Not Happen Again. Ever.
Better to let him think she was only being overly cautious out of fear for how his condition might impact her career.
“I’m fine. A couple aspirin, an ice pack, and a nap on the couch should fix me right up.”
“And if it doesn’t?” she pressed.
“Then we’ll call the doctor, and you can take me in to get checked out,” he acquiesced. With more than a hint of mockery in his tone, but he acquiesced. “Happy, Nurse Ratched?”
“If I were playing Nurse Ratched,” she tossed back, “I’d be kicking you in the knee and withholding pain medication. Not getting you a chair and hovering over you like an anxious mother.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. Quickly enough to make her suspicious. “You’re definitely more the Florence Nightingale type. Care to tuck me into bed and mop my brow?”
He flashed her one of his charming, disarming grins, shifting on the chair so that he leaned forward a bit, bringing their faces closer together.
“If you’re not careful, I might push you out the window instead.”
Rather than putting him in his place, her threat only widened his grin. “Goddamn, I’ve missed you,” he murmured.
For a moment, she thought she’d misheard him. But those had seemed to be the words his mouth formed, and he still looked inordinately pleased with himself.
She swallowed hard and pushed to her feet, nervously wiping her palms up and down her thighs.
Maybe this had been a mistake. Coming here, taking care of him, getting h
im involved in the Insides Out deal.
Letting him kiss her.
Kissing him back.
Oy. No maybe about that one. Of all the stupid, idiotic, boneheaded things she’d done in her life, it ranked right up there.
“Don’t get up on my account,” he said as she started to move away.
He waggled his brows, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing out loud. Leave it to Zack to crack jokes and have sex on the brain while she was in the middle of a crisis of conscience.
“This was a bad idea,” she said—for his benefit or her own, she wasn’t sure.
“A woman on her knees in front of me is never a bad idea,” he quipped.
She frowned. “Keep it up, Hoolihan, and you’ll be walking with a limp for another reason entirely.”
“No doubt. And you know I’ve never had a problem keeping it up.”
He was still wearing that shit-eating grin, thinking they were joking around. Thinking that because of the kiss, and her response to it, their relationship had moved to a new level. One where he could flirt and tease, and she’d take it all good-naturedly.
Unfortunately for him, she so was not there yet.
“Is that what you told the bimbo in your hotel room?”
The question was spoken in a low tone, as short and cold as she felt. And it wiped the smile from Zack’s face faster than a bucket of cold ice water down his pants.
Sitting up straighter, he scrubbed a hand across his eyes and muttered, “Jesus, are we back to that?”
Back to it? He’d ripped her heart out and stomped it into the ground. That wasn’t exactly something a woman got over or moved on from in the space of only a few months…or a few centuries.
“I wasn’t aware we’d ever left,” she told him truthfully.
He muttered a few more creative oaths beneath his breath, injured leg stretched out in front of him, but forgotten in the seriousness of the matter at hand.
“I swear to God…to Buddha, to Allah, to the god of ice hockey and the Stanley Cup, that I didn’t know she was in my room. She wasn’t there when I went into the bathroom to shower, and the first time I saw her was right after you did. What the hell is it going to take for you to believe I didn’t cheat on you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, moving back a few steps to lean against the refrigerator door, arms across her chest. And for the first time since it had happened, she admitted, “I don’t know if I’ll ever believe you. If there’s anything you could say or do to make me believe you.”
“So my word means nothing,” he challenged. A statement, not a question.
“I guess not,” she admitted. “I wish it did, but how many cheating spouses do you think there are out there who swear their infidelity meant nothing and promise it will never happen again? Of course it does, because once a cheater, always a cheater. They just learn to become better liars and pray they won’t get caught again.”
“And what about the poor schmucks out there who are faithful to their wives and girlfriends, but find themselves in dubious situations that make them look guilty when they’re not? They just—what?—have to pay the tab for the guilt of others and their partners’ suspicious minds?”
He was right. Put that way, it sounded decidedly unfair. But every time she thought about it, remembered and relived it, she kept coming right back around to being the betrayed party, and not knowing what to think or believe.
And when it came right down to it, fair or unfair, she chose to err on the side of caution because she was not going to be hurt again. She was not going to be some man’s patsy or doormat. She was not going to be blind, deaf, and dumb to reality, the “little woman” who stayed home while he was out banging anything that moved.
She’d seen enough of that in her lifetime. Being a victim might have been good enough for her mother, but it sure as hell was not enough for her. She would rather be alone than be with someone who didn’t truly love her, didn’t respect her, and wasn’t willing to forsake all others to be with her.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said with a shrug, not quite able to meet his gaze. “I guess the answer is yes. Unless I can be absolutely, one hundred percent certain you’ve never cheated on me, I can’t live with the question mark. And I’m not sure how you could ever assure me of that without taking a polygraph test or something. And the kiss…” she added, almost as an afterthought. “That can’t happen again, either.”
He didn’t respond, merely stared at her as though the intensity of his ice-blue gaze could burrow beneath her skin, into her heart and soul, and change the way she felt.
“If you’re still willing to drive to New York, I’ll call Quentin and get things set in motion.”
Jaw set, he nodded, just one short jerk of his head.
“I’ve got a knitting meeting tonight at The Yarn Barn, too. The girls will probably go for a drink afterward at The Penalty Box, so if you’d like to get together with the guys, I’d be happy to drop you off there on my way.”
Clearing his throat before he spoke, Zack said, “I’ll have to call Dylan and Gage, see if they’re interested.”
It was her turn to nod. “Just let me know.”
Turning, she opened the freezer door and took out a bag of frozen peas. As she passed, she set them carefully on his swollen knee, waiting to let go until he took hold of them himself so they wouldn’t slide to the floor.
“Make sure your knee is up to it, though,” she told him. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a setback in your recovery.”
Row 13
“It’s good to see you, man.”
“Yeah. For a while, we thought we were going to be stuck buying rounds for ourselves.”
Zack shot his friends a crooked ha-ha smirk, but deep down, he appreciated their concern. If they hadn’t been so worried about him, they wouldn’t have gotten Grace involved, and he wouldn’t be sitting here now.
He’d missed this place, he realized. Missed feeling more alive than dead, being with his friends, getting around—more or less—on his own two feet.
But he’d really screwed the pooch where Grace was concerned. He’d thought they were getting closer, getting past some of the things that had come between them to begin with.
And the kiss…Holy Moses, the kiss had been amazing. Any hotter and smoke would have poured out of his ears. For all he knew, it had, and he just hadn’t noticed.
She’d been into it, too. She could deny it now all she wanted, but he knew damn well that if he hadn’t twisted his freaking knee and cried out like a pussy instead of pushing through the pain, she’d have let him peel down her pants and take her right there against the counter, pounding into her with six months’ worth of pent-up passion.
God, how he wanted that. Had wanted it, did want it…He could make love to Grace twenty-six hours a day, eight days a week, and never get tired of it, never get tired of her.
Yet she still believed there was a possibility he’d cheated on her.
She’d have a better chance of going out to Lake Erie and walking across the water without getting her feet wet.
The kiss had seemed like a good idea at the time. And, Jesus, he’d wanted it more than he’d wanted his next breath.
But he admitted now that he’d rushed it. He should have held back, waited until they were on the road and had spent time together in the really close quarters of his Hummer and a hotel room or two.
So he had some making up to do. Some backtracking and reassessing. He would have to tread lightly for a while, lull her back into a false sense of security. And most importantly, seduce her into being with him again.
Of course, there was still the small matter of her distrust of him, so he would have to come up with a way of convincing her he was trustworthy and hadn’t betrayed her with another woman.
Not such a tall order. He should be able to squeeze it in between devising a plan for world peace and inventing a cheap, alternative fossil fuel to gasoline.
/> A waitress, dressed in the skimpy Penalty Box “uniform” of blue hot pants and tight white tank top with red lettering, stopped at their table to take their orders. She tossed her long brown hair and batted heavily lined doe eyes at first Zack, then Gage, and finally Dylan.
Not that Dylan was the ugliest of their bunch by any means. He just happened to be the boy-next-door type while Zack was a local celebrity with a very recognizable face, and Gage was built like a professional wrestler with the face of a cover model. So while he got noticed, it just maybe wasn’t first when the other two were nearby.
This wasn’t the waitress’s lucky night, though, because Gage and Dylan were very firmly taken…so taken that even the brunette’s firm ass and double Ds, which she was doing her best to shake right under their noses, didn’t turn their heads.
And though Zack noticed—he, after all, was not taken, though not for lack of trying—they didn’t really turn his head, either. He had someone else’s tits and ass on his mind at the moment.
They ordered a pitcher of beer to split between them, and because it was Zack’s first time at the bar—hell, out of the apartment—in quite some time, the guys even let him pick the brand. Nice, since the three of them had three different preferences, and normally they’d have argued a bit, then resorted to flipping a coin or playing a quick round of rochambeau.
“So tell us what’s been going on with you,” Dylan pressed once the waitress had sauntered off to fill their order. “Last time we saw you, you looked like something the cat had hawked up. Now you look great. And you’re getting around a lot better on that leg.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand absently over his knee. It was still a little sore from the incident in the kitchen, but they were right about it being a lot better than before. Not a hundred percent better, but hovering around eighty or ninety, that was for sure, at least when compared to where he’d been only two short weeks ago, or where he might be now if it hadn’t been for Grace’s interference and cattle-prod mentality.