Right Man, Right Time (The Vancouver Agitators, #3)(24)

“Can’t wait,” I say right before shutting the door on him.

Jesus, they treat me like an absolute child. There will be explaining, though I owe them nothing. Although I know they’re going to harass me until I do explain, so . . . something to look forward to.

Slightly embarrassed, I turn toward Ollie and push my hand through my hair. “Sorry about that.”

“Why are you apologizing? That was a lot of fun.”

“For you,” I say. “Not really the way I wanted to greet you into my home.”

“I don’t know. It had some pizzazz that I wasn’t expecting.” She kicks her shoes off at the door and takes her backpack off, which she sets down next to her shoes. “Wow, your view is incredible.”

“Thanks,” I say, grateful she’s so easygoing. And clearly not a hockey fan. When was the last time a college student had been among my teammates and not swooned with a thousand oh my Gods spilling from their lips? Ah, that would be never. Until Ollie. So weird.

“Is your place always this clean? Or is this all for me?”

“Usually this clean, especially during the season when I’m not here that much.”

“Hmm, fake dating an older man does have its pluses. Nice, fancy apartment with a gym, clean, smells good.” She turns toward me. “It’s a real step up from what I’m used to when it comes to men.”

“Men . . . or boys?”

“Good point.” She moves over to my couch and sits cross-legged. “So what’s for dinner? That pizza smelled good. Should have asked them to leave it.”

“I can order some. I wasn’t really sure what you would want.”

“Pizza now.”

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I sit on the couch as well and pull up my delivery app. “Do you want just pizza, or do you want a salad too?”

“Salad would be amazing. Italian dressing, please.”

“Got it.” I finish putting the order in, then set my phone on the coffee table before turning to face her.

She turns toward me as well and smiles brightly. “So . . . those are your teammates?”

“Yeah. They’re evasive as fuck.”

“I don’t know about that. They seemed like a good time,” she says with a cute smile.

“Not when they’re up my ass.”

“Why were they here? Seemed like they were planning a guys’ night.”

“They were here because they thought I was depressed and needed some cheering up.”

“Are you depressed?” she asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “I’ve been occupied with our agreement and bolted from practice today so I could shower and make sure everything was ready before you came over. They took that as I was avoiding them because of the whole Sarah thing.”

“I could see the correlation. But that wasn’t the case?”

“Not even a little.”

“So Sarah working at your arena doesn’t make you want to run for shelter?”

I shake my head. “Not really. I’m dreading seeing her, that’s for damn sure, but I’m a man, so I can face her.”

“At least you can admit that.” She folds her hands in her lap. “So how did we meet?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, confused.

She rolls her eyes. “Dude, we need a story to tell everyone. People will ask how we met, and if we’re not on the same page, we’ll look like fools. People will be able to see right through us.”

“Ah, I see. Why don’t we just say we met at a bar? That’s true, so it won’t be hard to remember.”

“Kind of boring, though, don’t you think? We have an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. We could say something like . . . we were both at a deli, you got the roast beef, I got the meatball sub. You took too large of a bite, started choking, and I was there to save you. To pay me back for giving you a proper Heimlich, you asked me out to dinner, and the rest is history.”

I feel my brow crease as I stare at her. “That doesn’t sound appealing to me.”

“You know, it doesn’t make you less of a man to admit being saved by a woman.”

“I understand that, but I also don’t want to put choking out there in the universe.”

“Aw,” she coos. “You’re one of those guys. Superstitious, are we?”

“Sure,” I answer.

“Okay, then you come up with the way we met.”

“Easy. At a bar. You thought I was hot, couldn’t live life another second without saying hi, so you came over to me and made the first move.”

“Ew, I would never.”

“Uh . . . you did. You’re the one who kissed me.”

“That’s different.” She dismisses me with a wave.

“How so?”

“That was an act of desperation. It wasn’t a move. It was survival instincts. Much, much different.”

“So you’re saying, if you just randomly saw me in a bar, without having to fend for your life, you wouldn’t have come up to me?”

“Never.” She shakes her head. “I don’t do that, and you would have seemed far too old for me.”

“Bullshit,” I say. “I don’t look that old. Stop using that as a thing.”