Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(72)

“More.” A lot more, but he didn’t need to put that out there.

“Oh,” she said, surprise lifting her tone. “Are you a really good player?”

Maybe he was a little more than off-kilter because he couldn’t wrap his brain around the fact that she didn’t know the answer to that. He did have a billboard up in the middle of Harbor City’s touristy hot spot, he had a contract with Under Armour, he was in the sports news pretty much all the time. “You know the league minimum but not if I’m any good at hockey?”

“People aren’t really my thing.” She played with the tail of the bow holding the straps of her dress in place. “And the other guys, some of them are rookies so they make a lot less?”

If he hadn’t been so distracted by the way she toyed with the bow, wondering if it was going to hold, he would have caught on to her plan sooner. “You’re not thinking…”

She nodded. “I am.”

His wallet cried out in metaphorical protest, but how was he supposed to say no to that face? “You are a horrible influence.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth.” She smiled, showing off a dimple that could probably cause cavities. “I’m completely harmless.”

He didn’t believe that, not even for a second.

“You’re sure?” she asked, turning serious.

When he nodded, she smiled, and it gave him the same buzz he’d gotten when they’d made the playoffs.

Turning back so she faced the table, Tess said in a loud, clear voice, “While I disagree, my partner insists he’s right. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was from Australia.”

“Wrong,” Ian said, smacking his palm down on the table for emphasis. “He was born in Scotland.”

Cole couldn’t believe it. She’d gotten him to pay the bar tab and thrown him under the bus. Australian? That wasn’t even in the right hemisphere of the correct answer, and she knew it. There was definitely some tart to her sweetness.

While the other players erupted in high fives and smack talk, Cole wrapped his fingers around the arm of her chair and tugged it close. “That was not very nice.”

“True,” she said, not looking the least bit sorry. “But look how happy you’ve made them.”

Of course they would. The lucky bastards were going to be drinking on him all weekend—and he wasn’t going to hear the end of it pretty much ever. In fact, Christensen had that look that always preceded enough shit talking to fertilize every cornfield in Nebraska.

“But now you have to figure out a way to get me out of here without it looking like a retreat so I don’t have to deal with all of that.” He waved a hand at the celebratory dance moves Christensen and Svoboda were trying to pull off. “That would be cruel and unusual punishment on top of that bar bill.”

She looked guilty for about three seconds, then said as she stood, “Well, we may have lost, but at least we don’t have to dance or anything like that.”

His fellow Ice Knights players clamped on to what she’d made sound like a throwaway line that most definitely wasn’t.

“Dance! Dance! Dance!” they chanted in unison.

Not laughing wasn’t an option, so he gave in to what had lately been a foreign reaction. “What have you done?”

Given the fact that he’d had to almost yell to be heard over his idiot teammates, he wasn’t surprised when instead of hollering back, she raised herself up on her tiptoes and leaned in close.

“Giving you an escape,” she said, her lips nearly touching his ear. “Come on, once around the dance floor and we can go out through the conservatory doors.”

He glanced over at the door on the other side of the mostly packed dance floor. It would take some weaving and skill to get through the crowd without looking like they were running, but he was a guy used to taking the puck through a line of professional athletes paid highly to take it away by stick or by check, so this would be easy.

Grinning down at her, he took her hand. “Good plan.”

And it was, right up until they stepped onto the dance floor and he had her in his arms. His steps were half a beat too slow but more due to his own inability to dance than the scotch. His hand spanned the small of her back, resting against the smooth silk of her skin exposed by the backless dress, and her head fit against the pocket of his shoulder, because of course it had changed to a slow song as soon as they stepped on the parquet.

He noticed everything about her as they swayed to the beat: the hitch of her breath when he brushed his thumb against her skin, the way she moved closer as they made their way across the floor, and the tease of her curly hair against his neck. All of it combined into a heady mix of anticipation and desire that had him searching for the door before he did something stupid like give in to the urge to kiss her in the middle of the dance floor. Then she looked up at him, her full lips slightly parted and desire on full display in her eyes. Suddenly, doing something stupid seemed like a very good idea.

“On the count of three, we make a break for the door,” he said, forcing the words to almost sound normal.

And what came after that? Hell if he couldn’t wait to find out.



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