Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(17)

Her uncle and cousin both looked away. For some reason, the automatic denial of a safe spot seemed to settle her nerves. Let’s hear it for the familiarity of familial rejection. Yeah. She wasn’t going to be couch surfing with them. A few days in a hotel she could do no problem, but a few weeks when she didn’t have rental insurance on the apartment, only business insurance on the shop? She’d have to find a way to make the money stretch—the idea blossomed quickly like a time-lapse video—unless…

“I can sleep on the couch in the shop’s office and just use the bathroom down there,” she said, relief making her lungs unclench enough to take in a full breath.

“That violates city zoning rules,” her uncle said. “You’ll get me hauled into court for letting someone live in a business.”

Tess had no idea what all her uncle got up to, but it wasn’t always squeaky clean and he took pains to keep anyone attached to the city as far away from his properties as possible. Probably because most of them were only a few steps up from being declared fire hazards. Still, it wasn’t like she really wanted anyone to find out she was couch surfing in her office.

“It’s temporary,” she said. “No one will know.”

Her uncle crossed his arms and shook his head, his jaw set in a stubborn line. “I’m not going to court for you when I finally have someone on the line to buy this busted-up building—as long as it’s not literally under water. You’re not staying here. Find somewhere else to live until Paul patches this up.”

Great. So not only was her apartment uninhabitable, her uncle actually had someone lined up to buy the building—which more than likely meant higher rent prices for her apartment and her shop—and she had to find a place to live for the next few weeks. At least the news couldn’t get worse. Right?

…

Cole wasn’t hiding in the hallway. He didn’t hide. He was a grown man, a professional hockey player, and now a giant chickenshit. Therefore, he was not hiding or skulking or anything else Ice Knights defenseman and team captain Zach Blackburn’s eyes were accusing him of at this moment. Uh-uh.

Cole was being smart. Since Tess had all but kicked him out of her tiny car and driven away after informing him he was going to be a daddy, they hadn’t talked, texted, or set eyes on each other. Now he was lurking—not lurking, hanging out, which was a totally normal thing to do—in the narrow hallway outside her apartment because she hadn’t invited him over.

No one had. He’d been volun-told to get his ass to Waterbury.

A half hour ago, he’d been in the Ice Knights weight room doing alternate leg-weighted squats while Blackburn and Stuckey proved on the sprinting area that defensemen—even first-line defensemen—were never going to be mistaken for forwards when it came to speed. He was about to tell them both that, because then they’d just try and run faster and it would crack up fellow forward Christensen and center Petrov, when Blackburn’s girlfriend, Fallon, had burst into the weight room.

There had been a rush of discussion about Tess and a massive water leak and the fact that she had to move out of her apartment for at least two to three weeks. And when Fallon left to go help Tess pack up what she needed, Blackburn had told her he’d be along in about five minutes with help—not to help, with help. That’s when Cole should have known.

“You’re the help,” Blackburn said, giving him a look that would have scared Cole back in the days when the team captain had been the most hated man in Harbor City for good reason. “Let’s go.”

And that’s how Cole had ended up in Tess’s hallway, where he was waiting to be invited in and not shifting nervously from foot to foot like a scaredy-cat.

Blackburn came out of the apartment with a neon-rainbow duffel bag and shoved it into Cole’s arms. “So you’re just going to let the woman who’s having your baby camp out at my and Fallon’s house for the next few weeks?”

Cole adjusted his grip on the bag. Had Tess asked to stay at his house? No. Had anyone suggested that Tess stay at his house? No. Had he even made it into her apartment yet to say hi? No. Was he a chickenshit? Yes.

Fuck.

“Your place is bigger than mine,” Cole said, still arguing even though he knew he was one, wrong, and two, going to give in anyway. “You have guest rooms.”

“Don’t change the subject.” Blackburn glared at him. “You’re gonna let the woman pregnant with your child stay at our house rather than yours?”

Cole peeked inside Tess’s apartment. It was like an explosion of disarray and color. Every single surface was covered in flowers or plants or knickknacks devoted to some fandom or another. Then there were the books. They were stacked up on the counters and the floor, and in one case there was an empty plastic water bottle balancing on the top of one tower.

And it wasn’t that they’d been moved out of the bedroom because of the leak.

All of it had the lived-in look of something that had been there for weeks if not months.

Compare all of that to his house, where everything was always in its place, the color scheme throughout the entire four-thousand-square-foot space variations on eggshell white and tan with the occasional plant—fake, of course—to break up the visual plane. Yeah, the neon duffel was never going to mesh in his off-white world.

“She’s Fallon’s best friend.” And he was a giant lame-ass.