Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(30)

Determined not to let her awkward show—at least not in zoom—she leaned her phone against the art books on her coffee table and tried to slyly wipe her mouth.

“So, what was with playing up your fake admiration during the interview?” she asked as the detectives on the screen started to question a stalker who turned out to be another cop on a case where all the fraud clues pointed to the not-so-grieving daughter.

“Fake?” He scoffed, the sound drawing Anchovy’s attention. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

Uh-huh. Yeah. “You were laying it on pretty thick. I know you’re the one who needs to fix your shit reputation and all, so you have to play the guy who’s open to finding love, but maybe don’t layer it on so heavy next time.” No one was going to buy it if he kept saying things like he was lucky and she was amazing. Not to mention it made the what-if part of her brain wake up, and she learned a long time ago that dreams weren’t worth the mental bandwidth. “So, how was training camp?”

“Good,” he said, setting his phone down on something and walking away, giving her a view of his bedroom with not a single dirty sock or crumpled T-shirt in sight. The sound of Law & Order was low in the background. “We’ve got two preseason road games and then one at home this week.”

Zara was about to tell him that seemed like a lot when he whipped off his shirt and her brain hiccupped. Caleb’s attention was focused on the TV hanging from the wall across from his absolutely humongous bed. Her attention? It was on the muscled expanse of his chest. It was even better than the photo—or twelve—that she’d seen online. And by seen, she meant stared at for an embarrassingly long time wondering what it would be like to run her fingertips over the hard ridges and valleys of his six-pack.

“I knew it!” Caleb raised his right arm and did a fist pump. “That woman has murderer written all over her.”

Murderer?

Woman?

What?

Holy shit, Zara. Stop eye fucking the off-limits man and try to remember what in the hell this episode had been about so he doesn’t know you’re definitely going to be breaking out your favorite vibrator tonight because you’ve obviously lost your damn mind from a lack of regular orgasms.

Desperate to recover, she pulled out a safe observation that any Law & Order viewer knew was true. “Well yeah, any time an actor who everyone knows is on the show, they are the murderer.”

“Not every time,” he said, tossing his shirt into a laundry basket next to the closet and then walking back toward the phone.

“Nine and a half out of ten.” The words came out more like a croak. She needed to end this call before she asked him to do push-ups or something.

“Okay, you got me,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort.

That was a blessing, because as he made his way across his bedroom, back to where he’d left his phone, the little barriers she’d erected to block out his hotness started to fall. Okay, they’d already been crumbling like an ice wall under the melting fire of a White Walker’s dragon. The miles of muscles, the clueless-about-what-he-was-doing-to-her attitude, the way his been-broken-more-than-once nose shouldn’t work to make him look even hotter but somehow did? All of it combined to remind her exactly how long it had been since she’d gotten herself off.

Caleb picked up the phone just as she let out a panic yawn because her body had to let the energy out somehow and why not with an embarrassingly gigantic yawn that probably gave him a good look at her tonsils?

“Am I boring you?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Some of us have been up since five working on an art piece.” Okay, that came out super prickly, but her panties were damp, her nipples were hard, and there was nothing she could do about it until she got off this damn call.

He picked up his phone, once again giving her a close-up of his hotness. “I wanna see what you’ve got.”

Welcome to the club, buddy.

Way too grateful that she hadn’t actually said that out loud, she floundered for something to say. “You’re not really interested.”

“Wrong. I checked you out online. Your Etsy shop is the stuff of my sister’s dreams, and your art pieces are amazing. I really liked the sky pirates one.”

She sat up straight and grabbed her phone from the coffee table. “You really looked me up? That wasn’t BS before?”

“You saying you didn’t Google me?” He paused, extended his arm so the phone was far away from his face, and then brought it back in fast, as if he were zooming in on the knowing look on his face. “Are you blushing, Zara? You must be, because otherwise all those freckles on your face just turned pink for no reason. You did look me up. What did you find?”

Stupid, stupid, stupid blushing. She got up, hoping walking around her studio apartment would cool her off. “There are some message boards.” She gulped, remembering some of the posts about his ass. “And some news reports.” Truth? It had been more like watching gifs of snippets of locker room interviews where his shirt was off and he ran his fingers through his wet hair, which really showed off his biceps. “And a few Tumblr fan pages.” Those? Oh God, those she couldn’t even think about right now.

He raised an eyebrow, no doubt giving her his best The Rock impression. “Is it wrong of me to ask if you liked what you saw?”