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That’s not how he was looking at me tonight. But eight months ago…man, I don’t want to think about how it was. What it felt like having his hands tightening in my hair and around my thigh. The way he looked at me when he groaned my name and—
Knock, knock, knock.
The remote flies out of my hands, clattering across the floor as I jerk up from the couch and stare at the front door like there’s a poltergeist on the other side. Or worse…my brother.
He knows. It’s the only reason he’d show up here without calling or texting first. So he can tell me that I just cost the team a top player midseason because I couldn’t—
Knock, knock, knock.
Mouth dry and a sick feeling in my belly, I walk to the door.
I’m twenty-seven years old. Too old to be freaking out about Greg yelling at me, but I’m shaking like a leaf. Not because he’d ever lay a finger on me, or even because he’s going to blow up… it’s the disappointment I don’t want to see. It’s the letting him down and knowing that some selfish stupid act from eight months ago in freaking Vancouver might have implications for an entire team of guys I care about. For a team that means everything to my brother.
The knob is cool in my hand and I take a deep breath before bucking up and turning it.
I’m already apologizing when I open the door to six-foot-five, two hundred twenty-five pounds of bristling hockey player with one powerful arm braced at either side of the door. Only instead of meeting blue eyes that match mine, I’m confronted by the same steely stare I left back at Belfast.
“Vaughn.”
“Just exactly what kind of game are you playing,Natalie?”
* * *
Vaughn
No denial.Not that I really expected one. O’Brian wasn’t exactly uncertain. And then there was the way Allie—Nataliehad been hanging around with the guys from the team. Baxter’s guys. The way she knew me on sight in Vancouver. Like she’d known me for years… or maybe seen me going up against her brother from all the way back in high school.
I mutter a curse, and she bites her lip, looking away. Guilty.
“No game, Vaughn.” A quiet sigh. “I just—I never thought I’d see you again. I never in a million years thought you’d be playing here.”
No. She just thought she’d use me as a quietfuck-youto her brother.
Jesus, how did I not see this?
Yeah, I met her in another damn country after a game her brother wasn’t even playing in. And I’ve never seen them together, but those blue eyes that haunted me for months… they’re his too. Same with the hair. Dark brown with waves that are just a little wild.
Then there’s the name.
To me she’s Allie. But Baxter talks aboutNatalieat least once a week in the locker room.
Right about now, I’m wishing my go-to reaction for the past few months hasn’t been to plug some noise-canceling headphones in the second the guy opens his trap. Maybe I would’ve learned something real about the chick who blinked out of my life as fast as she came in. Or maybe not, since I’d bet my left nut Greg fucking Baxter doesn’t have the first fucking clue about Vancouver.
Natalie’s looking me over, her brows pinched with concern as she studies my face, my hands.
Her breath shudders out, and that stiff posture eases a bit. “He doesn’t know.”
Ahh. Giving in to a humorless laugh, I hold up my knuckles for her examination.
“Nah, babe. He doesn’t know.”
Her visible relief pisses me off, because as much as this is about who her brother is, it’snot about her fucking brother. It’s about her and me, and a night that ended too soon. It’s about why she didn’t say who she was and what she was thinking when she gave me that half-shy and half-determined look that got me harder than I’ve ever been in my life. Why she kissed me, pushing up to her toes and apologizing a second before those cherry ChapStick lips met mine in the softest, sweetest, hottest damn kiss of my life.
I shouldn’t have a single fuck to give about this girl or her brother. I don’t want to. But here I am practically twitching with the need to know. To understand.
It makes me nuts to think I could have been so wrong about her. About what was happening between us. Almost as nuts as it makes me to know fucking Baxter’s got a claim on something else I thought was mine.
I’ve got my own history with the guy. We didn’t go to the same high school or play on the same team, but even back then, the gloves came off often enough that the first interview I ever scored started with a question about the rivalry between us.
