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The short term was beyond any fantasy I could have conjured. It was so perfectly incredible, it physically hurt to walk away.
Reluctantly, my attention drifts back to Vaughn. Powerful and focused. That firm mouth and strong jaw. The eyes that look harder and colder than the ice beneath him.
Only I’ve seen them melt. I’ve seen them burn.
I remember what is was like having all that intensity focused on me. Those powerful muscles holding me like I weighed nothing. His mouth at my ear. “Allie, I need to hear you come.”Lower.“I need to taste it.”
I blink and suddenly it’s there. Eye contact. Vaughn’s impenetrable stare meeting mine like somehow he heard my thoughts.
My belly dips, hard, my breath shallowing out as my hand starts coming up in a wave before I think to stop it. Before I notice my brother cutting into my line of sight, wearing a goofy kind of confused expression as he looks back toward the pile of guys from his team. To where Vaughn’s suddenly engaged with Doug Shore, one of the older guys on the team with a solid rep for playmaking, and a wife, Dee, who I adore almost as much as he does. Greg skates up to the glass, hits it with his gloved fist and points to the two of us, a wide grin stretched around his mouthguard.
My heart’s beating so hard I wonder if Julia can feel it where our shoulders meet. But the look in her eyes as she watches Greg take another lap says she’s not seeing anything but him.
The game starts, and the Slayers take an early lead in the first.
We talk about the players, the stats, and Rux’s shot we both thought was going in. Between periods we grab a couple more beers and laugh about my mother’s less-than-subtle hints to Julia and Greg about starting a family. But too soon, Julia circles back to the guy I don’t want my brother to know about. And even though I try to keep my answers short and vague, I end up giving away more than I mean to.
“He’s not even from Chicago. And trust me, he’s probably less interested in anything happening between us again than I am.”
Her lips purse as we watch center ice where a few fans have been pulled from the audience for a shootout to win five hundred bucks. “But he looked you up when he got here?”
I shake my head. “We bumped into each other. We made a little conversation, but nobody’s getting the wrong idea.”
“What, is he just in town for business?”
“Exactly,” I say, thinking that’ll be the end of an awkward conversation. But less than five minutes into the second she leans in.
“So you won’t be seeing him again, huh?” When I don’t answer right away—because what can I say when I’m literally watching him right now—she gives me a smug smile. “I had a guy like that once, where I knew going in it didn’t have a chance.”
“Yeah, what happened?”
Taking a drink, she shrugs. “I married him.”
The fact that I didn’t see that coming is seriously disappointing, but before I can beat myself up too badly, Vaughn’s off the bench, launching himself in the play. My skin starts to tingle as he picks up a pass from Popov and carries it down the ice.
O’Brian is open, and Vaughn fires between the legs of an opposing defenseman. A cut, a dodge, and when it comes back, he’s in position to bury the puck with a one-timer that has the entire arena on their feet, jumping up and down with me.
I’m watching for that instant when he’s in his own head, wanting to see it live and this close, but instead his eyes cut unerringly to mine and hold for the single beat that leaves my breath stalled in my throat before the guys are on him, knocking shoulders, bumping fists and slapping pads as he rounds the bench.
Julia cocks her head my way. “Damn, that guy is good. Too bad he’s such a total asshole.”
Chapter 4
Vaughn
“Jesus, is that what you’re doing here?” O’Brian scowls across the crowded bar to where Natalie is standing between her brother and Rux, talking a mile a minute. Her cheeks are pink, eyes bright, and her smile—damn, it lights up the whole room.
“Give me a break. My agent wants more of an effort to bond with the team.” Technically, it’s true. Travis Haybourn has been pushing me to make nice from the start. But if I hadn’t overheard Baxter telling Rux that Julia and Natalie were meeting him at the Five Hole with the team after the game, no fucking way I’d be dicking around here dodging bunnies and ignoring nervous glances and too-loud whispers about my temper fromfans.
“You sure about that, because the way you were looking at Baxter’s sister…” O’Brian rubs a hand behind his neck and looks up at the ceiling like he might be praying. “Dude’s going to tear my arms off if he finds out I told you where she lives.”
Quinn O’Brian isn’t a pussy. The guy’s almost as tall as I am, a little leaner through the shoulders maybe, but I’ve seen what he can do to an opposing player who crosses him wrong. He doesn’t want to get on Baxter’s bad side, and he really doesn’t like the position I’ve put him in. I get it.
“There’s nothing to find out.” This is the only player who gives me the time of day off the ice, so I don’t want to make him sweat. “And even if there was, it’s not coming back on you.”
“You sure?”
I nod and change the subject. “Sweet win tonight, yeah?”
