Page 67 of The Puck Bunny

“It’s easy to make you look good,” she says. If any other woman said those words, they’d sound fake or cheesy, but the way she says them, infused with her passionate brand of sincerity, sends a rush through my body that chases away any residual tension I have.

“This is my car,” I announce, clicking open the doors, glad to have something to say besides what’s on my mind. Like Spend the night with me. Shit.

“It’s you—I mean, the real you, not the Hollywood version,” she says as she gets inside my tooled-out Jeep Rubicon.

I’d duplicated Finn’s custom version but in steel gray. I did it partly to annoy him and hear him give me shit and partly because it spoke to me—because it feels like the real me.

“Thank you.” A rare, no-holds-barred grin takes over my face automatically.

We get to route 1A north and the silence is tense and calm at the same time. I want to talk to her, but I can’t trust myself to keep inside the lines we’ve drawn—the lines I’ve drawn for her benefit. Mine, too. Remember hockey. Family.

“How’s your family?” she asks as I pull off the highway and wind around the side streets toward her house. Thank God for navigation.

“My mom joined a widow support group and I think it’s helping her. I haven’t talked to my brother. But I text with my nephews and they can’t wait to go to another game.”

“They’re so fun.”

“You like kids.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“You’d be surprised. Just about every woman I’ve dated for the past ten years.” The truth of the words silences me. The slicing pain through my shoulder blades returns in full force.

She looks at me, shocked. “Seriously? That’s so… unusual. I don’t know any women who don’t like children. I can’t wait to have—” She turns away and waves a hand. “Don’t mind me. Off topic.”

“No, it’s not. I asked, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but—

“No buts. Don’t apologize for who you are. Own it. You’re a child lover and you’d beat the old woman in the shoe in a child-rearing competition any day. I’d put my money on you.”

She laughs. “I don’t think it would be hard to beat that old woman seeing as how she didn’t know what to do.”

I laugh and pull up in front of a double-decker house with a tiny well-kept front yard. “Your house?”

“Yes. Such as it is.” She sighs. “Better than an old shoe, I suppose.” She smiles apologetically.

“Own it, Sara. It looks warm and genuine.” Like you. Like home. “You live upstairs or down?”

“I’m downstairs with my parents. Grandma Zanetti and Aunt Yolanda live upstairs. I know—it should be the other way around since Grandma has a hard time with the steps, but we can’t get her to move.”

I smile at the family picture she paints and my chest tightens. “Sounds like a great place to live, surrounded by family. No wonder you haven’t moved out into the cold, cruel world.”

She snorts. “I’d be out of here in a nanosecond if I could afford it.” Her smile goes soft and she sighs. “But you’re right. I wouldn’t go far. I’d miss them too much.”

“Amen to that.”

She puts a hand on the door latch and looks at me. “Thank you for the ride—and for the company.” Then she turns away and shoves the door open.

“Not so fast.” I pull her back into the seat before her feet hit the ground. Glad those lightening reflexes are good for something these days, because they’ve been failing me on the ice.

She turns and lets her face ask the question. What are you doing?

I give her my answer, leaning in, without thinking, my heart rate kicking up and blood rushing as my mouth touches hers, pushing into the soft warm cushion of her lips and tasting… parting them with my tongue and taking what I can in the moment I allow myself.

Then I pull back, watching the dark pools of her eyes and stroking her soft, smooth cheek with the back of my hand.

“Something to remember,” I say.