I stop at the doorway and watch Wozzy ruffle the dark curls falling around Natalie’s smiling face. Swatting at his hand with another laugh, she turns around and stops dead when our eyes lock.
Wozzy follows her stare, brows digging deep as they land on me. “Vassar. Didn’t know you’d be here today.”
Yeah, and based on that half-stunned look, neither did Natalie.
He slings an arm over her shoulder, like he’s going to protect her from me or something. “Hey, don’t worry about this guy. He wouldn’t be dumb enough to mess with you, but if you don’t feel comfortable, I can take you home.”
Christ. Does this dickweed seriously think I’d give her a hard time? Even without the history between us, I’m not a total ass. Just a guy who’d had enough of Baxter’s bullshit and was dumb enough to let him bait me into a punch.
Natalie laughs, stepping out from under his arm. “Give me a break, Martin. Vaughn’s here for the book drive—doing something nice—same as you and me.” She’s talking to him, but her eyes are still locked with mine and damned if I can look away. “Thanks for coming today. We’re happy to have you.”
I want to ask her what she’s doing here. How many places she volunteers her time. Whether she knows that for all the big-brothering treatment Wozniewicz is giving her, the guy’s into her.
But Erik barrels back into the room, skidding to a stop between us with his stick held up in front of him, all eager and anxious. “Vaughn, I got it!” Then glancing around at Natalie and Wozzy, he adds, “I mean, if you still have time.”
“Absolutely, man.” I bend to one knee and sign it for him. He’s beaming, and I clap him on the shoulder just as the camera crew and organizers come in.
“Oh, perfect timing. Let’s get a shot of Mr. Vassar signing this young man’s stick. Or maybe his shirt!” I’m not sure who the guy waving his people toward me is, but apparently he’s in charge.
Erik’s eyes shoot to mine and I shake my head. “No worries, kid, I won’t sign your Baxter shirt. It’d probably burst into flames, right?” He laughs and stands a little closer to me. “But how about this, I’ll sign one of mine and send it to you for your collection.”
A blonde with no expression and lips pursed so tight I wonder if she needs a coffee stirrer to sip her drinks, moves in to start futzing with my hair and collar. It’s torture, but as much as I don’t like having this stranger’s hands all over me, the fact that Natalie is here makes me feel like I just scored the winning goal.
Grinning wide, she holds out a hand for the kid. “Come on, Erik, you can give me your address and I’ll make sure Vaughn gets it before he leaves.”
The volume in the room goes up as directions are issued in rapid fire.
Natalie cuts me a glance over her shoulder that has me wanting to follow and lift heavy objects for her. Pull out chairs and open doors. Tease her into laughing just for me.
But she’s fucking Baxter’s little sister.
And while I gotta outweigh this little PA picking at me by more than a hundred pounds, I’m pretty sure she’d have my balls if I didn’t let her finish. So I stay where I am while Natalie chats with Erik, asking about his team and what he thought of that play in the third against the Sharks two nights ago, because it gave her chills.
This girl is killing me.
And I’m pretty sure Erik’s as much of a goner as I am by the time she’s done with him. Poor kid.
I may be player-non-grata for the Slayers and city of Chicago in general, but I do my part for the drive, taking pictures and signing everything from hats, to phone cases, to jerseys made for a dog. Normally, I’d be one giant knot of strained muscles, but this time it’s different.
She’s here.
She’s flashing me her mischievous smile while the PR guy coordinates shots and positions us for “candids” that pop.
She’s watching me when no one is watching her.
And she’s brightening every damn thing about today.
Wozniewicz took off about twenty minutes ago, but not until he pulled Natalie into a longer-than-necessary hug and told her to call him if I gave her any trouble.
What an ass.
When the last of the camera gear is packed up and the doors to the public are closed, and Natalie helps sort books and label boxes, I head out to my car and back it up to the walk. I tell myself not to think about hanging around while she finishes. Not to offer her a ride home again. Shit. That’s the dead last place my mind needs to be going right now. We’ve got a game tonight, and demolishing the Bruins is the only thing I ought to be thinking about.
Rounding the car, I pop the trunk and pull out the dolly before stacking it with four boxes I’ve got to donate. When I get to the door, Natalie is the one waiting there, her eyes narrowed on me.
“What’s this?”
“A few books I wanted to add.”
“In addition to the check you wrote? The very generous check.” The door swings closed behind us and her hand wraps around my wrist, butterfly light, but it stops me as effectively as if I’d walked into a brick wall. “And oh my God, are you blushing?”
No. No, I am not fucking blushing. It’s hot in here and I spend my life on the ice. Or maybe I’ve got a touch of the plague.
“Big burly guys don’t blush,” I grumble, cutting a look over to where she’s leaned up against the wall beside me, her eyes delighted, her smile breathtaking.
“So you’re overexerted then, from all this heavy rolling?” It’s a taunt, only the way she says it, sort of low and breathy, has my thoughts spiraling into a place I keep trying not to go to with her.
Too late. I’m staring at her mouth thinking about what it was like kissing her. Remembering how she bit my bottom lip, lightly, just enough to hold me where she wanted me while she licked it.
I’m thinking about her short nails at my shoulders and how her lips felt against my ear— “Okay, I’m blushing.”
I need to stop looking at her jeans and thinking about how sweet it would be to get inside them, or to hear her breath hitch while I played with her. Right here. Against this wall.
I could have her coming against my hand in less than five minutes. I did last time.
Christ, my heart starts to jack and I’m about a quarter second from sporting wood. “I ought to get these with the other donations.”
Those neat white teeth sink into her bottom lip, and pretty soon I’m going to need more than this stack of boxes to keep her from seeing what it’s doing to me.
“Yeah, of course. You’ve got a game tonight.” She glances around and then asks, “Why wouldn’t you have brought this stuff in while the PR guys were here? They would have eaten it up. I know you’re trying to work on your image. This is just the kind of thing that would help. Same with that kid, Erik. He was beside himself when you signed his stick. But the minute the cameras came out you clammed up.”
I could brush her off with some non-answer, but when she’s looking up at me with those big blue eyes, I don’t want to put a bunch of bullshit between us. I like that she’s curious enough to ask me something. So I give her the truth. “Guess I just want to feel like some of what I do here is for me and for the charities I’m supporting. Not for my image.”
“But if the reason you decided to donate all these books and tablets is because you wanted to make a difference, I don’t see how letting someone take your picture could diminish that? I mean, you know what’s in your heart, right?”
I stop the dolly next to a pile of boxes, and Natalie immediately grabs the top one off the stack. I grab it back, laughing. “Christ, first with the blushing and now you want to help me carry my boxes? You trying to drive my ego into the ground here?”
“Something tells me that thing wouldn’t stay down for long. But no, just helping.”
I shake my head because now she’s got another box. I set the first one aside and reach for the one in her hands. Our fingers touch and it’s like someone plugged me into a socket. I feel the heat from that ac
cidental touch like lightning through my nervous system, like a fucking current beneath my skin. But a good one.
Her eyes cut to mine, going wide before darting away.
And now I’m not the only one with pink cheeks.
Chapter 9
Vaughn
Her fingers slide free of mine. I set the box aside as she takes a few steps away and then turns back to meet my eyes.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if things were different?” She gives me a small shrug. “If we could be friends?”
“Friends?” I’d like to be the kind of good guy where that would be enough, but all it takes is looking at her to know it wouldn’t.
Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, she walks through the piles of boxes. Her fingers trail across cardboard before she stops at a foldout table set up with a laptop and the clipboards the volunteers were using during the event. Leaning back on it, she looks up at me, her eyes soft.
“That would be something, huh? If we were friends. Can you imagine it?”
There’s something about the way she says it. A vulnerability that won’t allow me to let her down. So even though I know I’d want more, I take a couple steps in her direction and nod. “Sure, I can. I’d be lucky to have a friend like you.” I jut my chin at her. “You could give me some pointers on my slap shot.”
Christ, that smile. But then it’s gone, and it feels like the sun just set for the last time. “Allie—”
“What if it didn’t have to be such a big deal, Vaughn?” Her eyes search mine. “I mean, would it really be that big of a deal?”
It would. No one would believe that a friendship with Natalie Baxter was about anything but me fucking with her brother. Which means a friendship with her would cost me my season and that could cost me my career. She knows it. This girl understands the world I live in almost better than I do. But for whatever reason, in this moment, the reality of that world isn’t where she wants to be. And so I cross my arms and listen.
“We’ve bumped into each other enough times that it makes sense we’d say hello after the games, right? Have a few private jokes between us about that time at the book drive,” she says, a soft plea in her too-blue eyes.
A plea I can’t resist. “And at the rink.” The memory of finding her there, sweaty and pink-cheeked, so fucking pretty, pulls at the corner of my mouth. “All the kids.”
She nods, pleased that I’m playing along. “So we talk a little.”
“But not too much.” I step up to the table, leaning into it beside her. “Not too long.”
“Because Greg will hate it, but if it’s just a minute here and there, what’s he really going to say, right?”
Baxter? He’ll have plenty to say and my guess is that it wouldn’t be with words. It would be with his fists.
But that’s not what I tell her, because the smile this game of what if is earning me is too sweet to give up. And maybe I want to see the kind of ending Natalie would write us, even if it’s only within this bubble in the back room of the book drive. So I take another step into the shared fantasy. “Nothing. He wouldn’t say anything. Because we’re just talking about volunteering.”
Her voice softens. “And little by little our talks last longer.”
“And it’s no big deal, because it would be a gradual thing.”
She nods. “Slow.”
“And then when I leave?” Because I will. I have to. I want to.
“You’ll have a few people meet you at Belfast for a goodbye drink. And by then everyone will know we’re friends, so it won’t be any big deal at all when I give you a hug goodbye.”
I can practically feel her chest pressed against mine, her slim frame filling my arms. “For a minute. And then I’ll let you go.”
She nods once, some of the light in her eyes dimming as she stares at the floor. It ought to be the end of the story except I don’t want it to be. Turning into her, I reach for her, tipping her face toward mine. “And then maybe one day, because we’re friends, I’d fly you out to one of my games.”
“In Oregon?”
“Yeah.” I shouldn’t be touching her, but her skin is so soft I can’t make myself stop. “And this time, you’ll be wearing a jersey with my name on it.” Christ, just the idea of having her wrapped up in my number sparks something in my chest that shouldn’t be there. Something hot and possessive.
“I’d cheer for you and you’d knock the glass as you skated past.”
“After the win—” because if she was there, there’s no fucking way we wouldn’t win, “—I’d take you to dinner so we could catch up.”
“We’d talk. For as long as we liked, because it wouldn’t matter anymore if anyone saw.”
“I’d make you laugh so you were smiling just for me.”
“And after, you’d take me back to my hotel,” she whispers.
I should. But even in the context of this friendly fantasy that’s more than a year off and will never actually happen, I know that’s not the way it would go. Giving in to the pull inside me, the one I feel every time this woman is within sight, I plant one hand on the table beside her hip. I’m crowding her. Standing so close I can smell the faint scent of her shampoo. Her pupils are blown wide and I can hear the change in her breathing. See the flush across her chest and neck.
“That’s not what I’d do,” I say, my voice gravelly low.
Her lips part and then she asks quietly, “Why not?”
The shyness that gets to me in ways nothing and no one else can is there, goading me on. Making me take it further.
“Because after dinner, I’d take your hand to help you up. And even though I’m trying to be good, even though I know better—” my fingers slide around the back of her neck, weaving into her dark curls, “—something happens when we touch.”
“What?” she asks, breathless and beautiful.
“You look at me like you are right now.” I bow my head toward hers. “And all the good intentions in the world aren’t enough to stop me.”
“Vaughn…”
But whatever she’s about to say next gets lost in the brush of my mouth against hers. This wasn’t part of the plan. It’s a mistake and we both know it, but when her hand moves to my chest, her fingers closing in the fabric, all I can think is this is right.
I kiss her again, groaning as I sink into the softness of her mouth, tasting the quake of her breath and the give of her lips opening beneath mine. The tentative stroke of her tongue against mine. Shy and bold.
Perfect.
My arm tightens around her waist, gathering her closer until she’s pressing into me with all those sweet curves and light touches. Clinging and holding. She feels so good.
“Allie,” I rasp against the skin along her neck, breathing her in while I try to hold myself back.
We’re not alone. Not really.
She tugs me closer, and the part of me that’s been waiting for her since Vancouver snaps. I’m all over her. My hands are in her hair, on her ass, and—when I hear that soft whimper that matches the one that’s been haunting my dreams for the better part of a year—pulling at the back of her knee so it’s hitched against my side and I can feel where she’s warm and soft against my thigh.
More. I angle her head back to deepen my kiss, thrusting with my tongue the way I want to be with my dick. And holy hell, the way she moans around me has my hands fisting in her jeans as her hips rock into mine.
Snapshots of every fuckable surface in the room flash through my mind. The table, wall, and door… The hip-high stack of boxes to my left—
A clatter sounds from the hall, and Natalie jerks back with a yelp.
I reach for her hand, not caring who’s there, if it’s her brother or my coach or fucking TMZ. But she skirts away, checking her clothes and touching her mouth with shaking hands like she’s trying to erase the evidence of our kiss.
“Hey, it’s okay.”
She nods tightly, eyes shooting to the empty doorway where there’s more rus
tling from the hall and some muffled cursing. “I don’t think anyone saw us.” She takes another step back. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.”
Whoa. Shaking my head, I cut another glance at the door and, stepping closer, lower my voice. “The hell it was. Allie, we could—”
A guy in a red volunteer shirt steps through the doorway, stops, and pales.
“Oh shi— Umm, Mr. Vassar, I didn’t realize you were still here,” he says, juggling a box that looks like he took it bowling.
“Vaughn had a couple of donations he forgot to bring in earlier,” Natalie says too quickly, putting a few more feet between us. But the guy hasn’t taken his eyes off me.
Forcing my feet to move, I meet him and take the box before he dumps it again.
“Th-thanks.” He sounds like he’s afraid I’m going to pull his shirt over his head and sock him. “You know you can take off, right?”
I don’t want to take off. I want to take Natalie in my arms and bury my face in her hair while she breathes against my neck. I want to carry her heavy boxes and then give her a ride back to my place so I can lose myself in her body, so deep and so good, she forgets all the reasons this is a mistake. We both do.
Natalie shoves her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “Yeah, you’ve got a game tonight. You ought to get some sleep… or whatever you do.” Then, like she knows I’m going to try to get her to come with me, she directs her next words to the guy. “I’ve got some paperwork to wrap up, you want to make sure Vaughn gets out okay?”
He looks like he’s going to swallow his tongue, so I hold up a hand. “I know my way. Nice job today. Thanks for your help, Natalie.” I wait until her eyes meet mine. “See you after the game.”
Chapter 10
Natalie
My stomach is in knots, and it’s not because we’re 2-2 with a minute left in the third and Boston has control of the puck. No, it’s the man ready to vault into the action that has me all tied up.
DIRTY SECRET: A Slayers Hockey Novel Page 6