Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(40)

“Because that was a hell of a first period.” She laid her head down in the pocket of his shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut. “Think you can maintain that all game long?”

“Without a doubt.” At least, when it was Fallon in his bed.





Chapter Fourteen


The Ice Knights’ unofficial song would not stop playing while Fallon fought off an octopus armed with a machete for each of its eight tentacles. It really was the perfect background music for this kind of underwater battle, but just as she was getting her dance-fighting on, the music stopped, and the seafloor shifted under her feet.

“It’s for you.”

The booming voice came out of nowhere, and it stopped her cold. Something wasn’t right. The octopus in front of her started to fade, and it was like she was being dragged toward the ocean’s surface by a tractor beam powered by a really sexy voice. That made no sense—even after she’d been dance-fighting an octopus.

“Fallon, wake up,” the voice said. “It’s your brother, and he sounds pissed.”

Brother? Wake up? All the water disappeared in an instant, and BAM! she was up, jackknifing into a sitting position, her eyes wide open, and the Hartigan “oh shit” warning screaming in her head.

Heart hammering against her ribs, she grabbed the phone from Zach.

“Who’s hurt?” With three firefighters and a cop in the family, the phone didn’t ring without that worry hitting her hard.

“Depends on how likely it is that Mom will kill you for missing the matinee you were supposed to see together,” Finn said.

Relief whooshed out of her, and she collapsed back onto the pillows. Well, that’s what she’d meant to do but somehow had ended up with her back against Zach’s chest instead. “The movie’s not for hours.”

“Try again, sis,” he said, not bothering to keep the you-are-so-gonna-get-it chuckle out of his voice. “It’s past noon.”

“Shit.” This was not good.

In fact, it was the very definition of not good because one of the most painful places to be was in the middle of a Hartigan family gossip whirlwind, and, boy, would there ever be one. Her family lived and breathed hockey, and they’d spent entire meals discussing the man who was, right now, tracing circles on her bare hip as he kissed his way up the back of her neck. It was distracting in the best of bad ways.

“I told Mom you got called in for a work thing.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “You are the best brother ever.”

Of course, the truth of that wasn’t going to stop her from hanging up on said best-brother-ever because Mr. Kept Her Up Until the Wee Hours by Banging Her into Oblivion was ready for round six hundred and eighty-five, judging by the steel poker pressing against her left ass cheek, and she was totally in for more.

“Yeah, tell me that again when anyone is around to hear—and that person who answered your phone doesn’t count,” Finn continued, oblivious (thank God) to what was happening on her end of the line. “Please tell me it’s not Dr. Asswipe.”

Yeah, the women in the movies might fall for their work nemesis, but Fallon was much more likely to set that jerk’s car on fire than have sex with him. “His name is Dr. Anderson, and no.”

“Thank God. The only one worse would have been Zach Blackburn.”

Fallon cringed, wishing her brother had an inside voice. With the exception of Felicia, an ant scientist, none of the Hartigans did. Their voices carried like sonic booms across time and space. There was no way Zach hadn’t heard her brother’s comment.

Finn let out a frustrated huff. “Blackburn? Really, Fallon?”

She snuck a peek over her shoulder at Zach, who raised an eyebrow and shrugged. His calm acceptance of her brother’s idiot reaction, as if people said shitty things about him all the time—which they did—landed with a thud against her chest, and it pissed her off. Then she noticed the telltale tightness around Zach’s mouth. Yeah, someone was bothered by outside judgment more than he wanted to admit. Maybe she’d just set Finn’s car on fire.

“This has nothing to do with you,” she told her brother. “And you don’t get to have an opinion about it.”

“I don’t like it.”

As if that mattered.

She tossed the covers aside and got out of the very warm and very welcoming bed, the exact opposite of what she’d been planning on doing a few minutes ago, but sometimes a person just had to walk off the fury.

“Did you miss the words that just came out of my mouth?” she asked as she started to pace from one end of Zach’s all-but-empty room to the other, glad that he didn’t have any neighbors so she didn’t have to worry about being seen through the curtain-free window.

“Just be careful,” Finn said, implying with his tone that she was some sort of delicate flower just because she didn’t have a pair of testicles. “Professional athletes aren’t known for monogamy.”

Since when had she been looking for something serious? Why did everyone assume that just because she had ovaries getting married and having babies was part of the equation? Was that what having two X chromosomes automatically meant? Why did the entire world from the shitty internet trolls offering advice about how she should be more of a girlie-girl to her own brother feel it was their right to get in her business?