What was the point of a semiprivate booth if they didn’t do anything you couldn’t do in public?
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said after accepting the menu from the hostess and asking for a glass of ice water.
“To say it sounded important would be an understatement.”
“Yeah.”
Their server appeared with his water, and Will downed a third of it while Kristen ordered a bowl of soup. She wasn’t sure she’d have much of an appetite after Will told her whatever he had to say, based on the tension emanating from him in waves, but this was the only lunch break she’d have. And as close as they were to the kitchen, there would be no wait for the soup.
“I’ll have the same thing,” he told the server, but Kristen wasn’t sure he’d even heard her order.
“So, what’s going on?”
He took a deep breath. “Something happened today, and I want you to hear it from me first.”
A frisson of fear made her spine tingle. “You didn’t hurt Erik, did you?”
“No.” The look on his face when she said her brother’s name made it clear he’d like to, though. “I got a little ambushed by a sports reporter today and told him you and I have been dating for a while.”
Her mind went blank, because of all the things he could have said to her, confessing to lying about them being a couple was the last thing she would have expected.
The server chose that moment to show up with her tray, of course, and Kristen stared silently at Will while she set their soup bowls down and asked if they needed anything else.
“We’re good, thanks,” Will said, before snapping his napkin open and draping it across his lap. Once the server walked away, he looked back at Kristen. “On second thought, maybe I should have discouraged you from ordering the large bowl of very hot liquid you might want to throw in my face.”
“You told a sports reporter you and I are dating. And have been dating for a while.”
“Yes.”
She unfolded her napkin and smoothed it across her lap, turning this unexpected development over and over in her head, trying to make sense of it. The most obvious explanation was that this man wasn’t well, was going to fixate on her, and she was going to end up at the police station, starting a paper trail.
The gut instinct she’d always believed in had possibly let her down this time.
“The reporter knew about you and me. He knew Burke did this.” He waved a dismissive hand toward his jaw. “He had the story of Cross Lecroix having sex with Erik Burke’s sister and being punched before he showed up all in my face.”
That made no sense to her. “How did he know?”
“I don’t know. Somebody in your building? Maybe Burke went out with his buddies all pissed off and ranting about it and somebody talked. But he knew about us. And when he asked me about it, I could only think about what you said about your boss and your promotion. I couldn’t do anything about the story being out, but I could kill the one-night stand angle and make the story less…”
“Sordid. Salacious. Scandalous.” She could come up with all kinds of s-words for it.
“Sensational. Sexy. Satisfying.” When he grinned at her, she couldn’t help grinning back. “I guess I went off the theme there.”
She picked up her spoon and drifted it through the vegetable soup, watching the chunks swirl in the dark broth. “You couldn’t just deny it?”
“Since the source was most likely somebody very close to your brother and I was standing there with a pretty noticeable bruise on my jaw, I thought that might make the whole thing worse. I didn’t want them trying to get a statement from you or digging through our garbage or showing up at Firewall or your job, asking questions.”
“You’re a hockey player, not a movie star.”
“True. But even though you try to ignore hockey, you’re a Burke.” He paused to grimace dramatically to make her laugh. “Sorry. That’s just hard to say. Anyway, Burke and I make headlines on the ice. This would definitely make headlines because they’ll get site traffic out of it, even if we’re not plastered on tabloid covers. It might be on a smaller scale, but how much coverage would it take to get back to your boss?”
“Not a lot,” she muttered.
“So I figure your boss might not be super impressed you’re dating a professional athlete, but at least you’re dating him and didn’t just drag him back to your apartment for one night of the best sex of his life.”
Hers too, though she wasn’t in the mood to stroke his ego or any other part of him right now. He was right about her boss. Stan wouldn’t approve of a hockey player, but as long as she played to misogyny and let him believe she was just trying to get a husband and babies, she might not have to kiss the promotion goodbye.
Her phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her bag. It was from Erik, of course.What the hell, Kris?
