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“Ladies,” a deep voice cut off the verbal lashing I was about to give her and we turned to find one of the other athletes approaching us.
“Connor!” Maeve trilled, her attention leaving me so completely that it nearly made me dizzy with whiplash.
She’d spent the past month obsessed with the burly Scottish curler, but had always been too afraid to actually talk to him.
Connor was six-foot-four and loomed even over me as he came to join us with the rest of the curlers in tow. If Brynn had been here she would have leaned over with a giggle and called him a real beefcake.
“Am I interrupting something?” Connor asked, dark eyes moving from Maeve to me and back to Maeve again. Apparently, Maeve had been doing something right, because Connor’s full attention was on the omega figure skater.
Maeve’s freckled cheeks flushed a bright red and she shook her head, shooting me a strange look. “No, we were just talking about our practice, right Ceer?”
I didn’t like when she used the nickname my family called me, but I barely heard it as my eyes met a pair of green ones over Connor’s left shoulder.
That same curler who’d laughed the loudest earlier was now hovering just behind his teammate, his red-gold beard twitching with a smile as our gazes met.
He was certainly handsome. Gold freckles splashed across his sharp nose before disappearing entirely in his neatly trimmed facial hair. The hair on his head, which was a shade lighter and more red than his beard, floated in wild waves around his face like a lion’s mane.
He was a hair shorter than the mountain that was Connor, but wider in the shoulders as he shot me a half-smile that made something flutter deep in my stomach.
I hadn’t felt attracted to someone since before leaving Norway. It had been like Brynn’s accident had numbed me for everything but skating. But now those deadened nerve endings seemed to be lighting right back up as the curler and I locked gazes, oblivious to Connor’s friendly rumble and Maeve’s nervous squeak.
“We’d love to come out tonight.” Maeve looked as if she was about to vibrate right out of her skin as she spoke.
“We?” I asked, looking away from the intense eyes still locked on to my face and over at my friend. “Where are we going?”
Maeve looped her arm back through mine and yanked me down so that she could whisper into my ear. “To the pub, Ceer, weren’t you paying attention?”
I frowned and whispered back to her: “I don’t want to go to the pub.”
“Please,” Maeve begged, giving my arm a shake. “I’ll never make another peep about your family again.”
I really just wanted to go back to the hotel, curl up into a ball, and watch one of my musicals. It had been my routine since arriving in Scotland after the Olympics.
Hairspray was definitely calling my name, but Maeve’s pleading look and the promise of not talking about my family anymore was too good a carrot to pass up.
“For one drink,” I finally gave in, but Maeve was barely listening.
“We’re in!” she said, already turning back to a grinning Connor.
One drink would be fine, and then I would let Link Larkin and Tracy Turnblad put me right to sleep afterward.
My plan to leave early lasted all of an hour.
Pints at the pub quickly turned into the entire group that was made up of speed skaters, figure skaters, and led by the curlers, heading for the club.
Lights flashed red, purple, and blue as I watched the dancers writhe together on the dance floor in their skimpy clubbing outfits.
Normally, I’d be right in there with them. There was nothing I loved more than the pulse of music and the slide of skin as the electricity of it made everyone feel alive.
But I couldn’t find it in myself tonight, so instead I sat at the bar watching as Maeve and Connor danced close enough to start a house fire and sipped on a poorly mixed lemon drop.
In the few hours since practice had ended, I’d gotten two more texts from my family. One from a still confused Brynn asking what she’d done to make me leave and one from Aurelia telling me she misses me and to make sure I was eating regularly.
Each one made me feel guiltier than the last and I very nearly called Brynn to apologize and explain everything to her, but then I remembered the dads’ decision to let her get her memory back on her own.
It had been the last thing we’d argued about at the Olympic village as we packed to go our separate ways and I wasn’t about to make them even more disappointed in me than they already were.
“Is that as disgusting as it looks?” a deep voice with a thick Scottish burr asked over the thump of the music.
