Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(26)

“What, you know her so well?” Defensive? Him? Fuck yeah.

“You don’t even know her. That’s your problem.”

“She’s only going to be here for a few weeks.” His brain was counting them down while his cock was trying to make them last. “What does it matter?”

“Because there is a baby, you dumb-ass,” Petrov all but yelled at him. “Tess might only be in your guest room for a limited time, but she and that baby are in your life forever. That’s one change you can’t just ignore or try to strong-arm into going back to the old way of things. You’re going to be a dad.”

Yeah. That was the part Cole kept trying to ignore. It wasn’t that he didn’t accept the situation; it just seemed so unreal and far away. Of course, that didn’t excuse him being an unwelcoming asshole.

“So I’ll encourage her to unpack,” he said.

“You’re a fucking moron, Phillips.” Petrov rolled his eyes. “If you can pull your head out of your ass, how about we go over those new plays that—believe it or not—are going to take your game up about a thousand notches. Not that you care about being the best or not losing your edge or anything.”

Petrov stalked out of the room, his middle finger raised.

Cole returned the salute while the little engine that shed purred loud enough that Cole could almost block out the doubts kicking his metaphorical ass.

As much as it physically pained him to admit, Petrov was correct. He hadn’t done anything to welcome Tess, he hadn’t given Coach’s new plays a chance, and his knee-jerk answer to anything new was always no.

Maybe he could give in a little to the changes—baby steps, nothing crazy like actually starting to like Fuzzy Beelzebub the Purring Impaler. After all, the cat was anchoring himself onto Cole’s shoulder by embedding his claws into Cole’s shirt and—a little bit—into his shoulder. The play clock was definitely ticking down on living with that. Oblivious to his future, Kahn rubbed his head against Cole’s neck and purred louder.

He put a protective hand over the fur ball so he wouldn’t fall off and headed toward the door. “I’ll get her to unpack,” he said, refusing to admit to himself that he was talking to a kitten. “But don’t you go getting comfortable. This is still a no-pets, no-mess, no-change home. This is only a temporary adjustment.”

…

It was after ten at night when Tess finally walked inside Cole’s house still riding the nonalcoholic-sparkling-white-grape-juice high. Considering her sole delivery driver had just told her via text that he was quitting and not giving any notice, it was a miracle she was managing to feel pretty damn giddy. But that was the usual end result of a night with her girls.

The click of her disengaging the dead bolt on Cole’s front door boomed in the quiet museum of a house. She held her breath, waiting, but no one called out. It wasn’t like she was actually expecting him to be waiting up for her, but it wasn’t three in the morning, either.

Shoving the unexplained sense of disappointment down deep into a dark hole, she carried her night’s work down the hall and into the living room. Cole’s fireplace mantel was depressingly bare, but not for much longer. Grinning like a woman up to no good—which, okay, she kinda was—Tess crossed over to the fireplace and set her latest Paint and Sip canvas on the mantel. She didn’t notice Cole until she turned around and spotted him sitting in one of the chairs with Kahn at his feet attacking his shoelaces, but then she really took notice.

She’d never been a thigh woman, but she was when she looked at him sitting there in a T-shirt and basketball shorts that had inched upward, exposing thick and solid muscles promising that all sorts of exertions were not only possible but probable. Her pulse picked up speed and she forced herself to look higher. That was a mistake. It just put her attention firmly on the part of him that she knew for a fact was long, thick, and fucking magnificent. And the things he knew to do with it? Suddenly it was way too hot and she had on way too many layers of clothes.

Sweet saffron crocus, pull it together!

“Is that a werewolf riding a dinosaur in the middle of a lake?” He nodded toward the painting she’d put on the mantel as if he didn’t notice her all but drooling at the sight of him.

“Bigfoot wrestling the Loch Ness Monster.” She tilted her head to the side and squinted, using the move as cover to get herself under control so she didn’t run across the room and jump into his lap. “But I could see where you got dinosaur. Nessy does have the whole apatosaurus look. Did you know that it wasn’t until 1903 that scientists decided that the differences between a brontosaurus and apatosaurus were so small that they might as well be in the same genus?”

And there it was, the random factoid freak-out defense mechanism whenever she had to talk to anyone other than a select group of people she’d known forever. Great.

“I did not know that,” he said, nothing in his tone reminding her of oh-you’re-so-awk-weird reaction her outburst usually got from people. “But I do know that thing can’t stay there.”

“I know, Larry’s ideas are a little out there, but this one was really fun to paint.” She left off the part about the desperate need in here for some color. His house may be the place most of the color wheel had forgotten, but she didn’t need to point that out. “It’s so much better than the wilting lettuce when he was reading that book on food waste.”