Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(54)

“Nah.” Marti plucked a softball from the bucket of three she must have gotten when she’d bought her dunk tank ticket. “I promised Cole I’d dunk Zach as often as I could today. I was a fast-pitch champion in college, so my arm is wicked good.” She let out an ornery laugh as she waggled her eyebrows. “That man is going down a lot.”

Giggling, Fallon looked over at the dunk tank, where Zach was climbing back up on the chair that collapsed every time someone hit the bullseye. “I almost feel bad for him.”

He sat down in the chair, and his gaze locked with hers, and a shiver went through her that had nothing to do with the fall temperatures and everything to do with the man who she definitely should not be thinking about every third second, let alone fucking in the bathroom.

“Oh, girl.” Marti shook her head. “You’ve got it bad.”

“We’re just sorta friends.” Which didn’t sound like a lame lie at all.

Marti looked from Zach, who was doing his best badass smolder that made Fallon’s nipples pucker, which was pretty impressive considering he was in a wet suit sitting on a collapsible platform, and back to Fallon. Whatever she saw, it put a sympathetic smile on her face.

“Whatever you say, Fallon.” Then she turned and walked up to the chalked throwing line and let loose with a hard pitch that landed against the bullseye with a thwack.

And as the platform collapsed and Zach went down into the water, Fallon couldn’t help but wonder if she was falling just as hard and fast.





Chapter Eighteen


Zach’s house was empty and quiet after how loud and crowded the locker room had been after the latest Ice Knights’ win.

People had been laughing, music blared, and some asshole had put a bobblehead doll of him in a plastic bin of water. A few months ago, he would have snarled at the perpetrator. Now, though, things felt different. He’d, instead, dumped the water over Petrov’s head in retaliation. Of course, the reporters in the room got a cell phone shot of it, and the scene of all of them laughing at Petrov looking half drowned made Sports Center before Stuckey even dropped him off at home.

Now, he was walking around his empty house with his post-game cheat of a pint of mint chocolate chip. The ice cream was delicious as usual, but he didn’t get his usual thought-quieting buzz. Why? Because instead of Fallon in her usual seat on the other side of the glass at the Ice Knights Arena, it had been a guy who looked like a retired accountant wearing a Lady Luck sash. Yeah, the view was definitely not as good as when Fallon was there.

He glanced at the clock on the microwave as he wound his way through the kitchen on his fourth lap around the house. Her shift had ended forty minutes ago, according to the info he’d gleaned from Lucy, who had greeted him with a hug and a don’t-fuck-with-my-girl talking-to outside the locker room.

Stopping in front of the island, he stared at his phone sitting right in the middle of it. He hadn’t talked to Fallon beyond a few hurried texts since they’d had sex in the bathroom at the clinic—right before she’d left the fundraiser early for a shift at the hospital. The urge to call her had only grown in the past two days, to the point where he’d left his phone on the island so he wouldn’t start texting. If she wanted to talk, she’d reach out to him. That was how it usually worked. Someone wanted something from him, they called or texted or waited outside a locker room to flush his day down the toilet.

Yeah, thinking of his parents was definitely not what he wanted to do at the moment. What he wanted was Fallon, but he had no idea what he was doing. She wasn’t a booty call, she wasn’t a puck bunny, and she wasn’t the single girl from college that had been his last actual relationship. Not that he wanted a relationship. He just wanted to hang out with her—but naked, and then they’d talk after, argue hockey greats, and order in food.

Christ. He made himself sound more pathetic the longer he thought about it.

Locate your balls and call her, Blackburn.

He tossed the empty pint carton in the trash, put the spoon in the dishwasher, and grabbed his phone—which he stared at in confusion for way longer than someone who used the damn thing eight billion times a day should.

Your balls. They’re currently in deep storage. How about taking them out?

Hip-checking the annoying, mocking voice in his head, he opened up his contacts. There she was under LL, which just seemed stupid. She was more than Lady Luck; he and his missing balls could both agree on that.

He tapped the edit button and added an FA in front of the LL and then an ON after. Then, a quick Google images search later, he uploaded a contact pic of her screaming bloody murder from the stands while he and Johansson traded haymakers on the ice. Like an asshole, he grinned at that shot for way too long.

Fuck this. Your gonads have been ball-napped. You’re on your own.

Ignoring the douchebag in his head, Zach hit call.

“Hey,” she said, her voice groggy and sleep-roughened.

He winced. “Sorry, I thought you’d just gotten off work a little bit ago.”

“I did,” she said. “Came home and collapsed in my bed.”

And he was the jerk keeping her up. “You shouldn’t have picked up. Go get your sleep.”

“If I didn’t want to talk to you, I wouldn’t have,” she said. “Great game tonight, I got to see a couple of minutes of highlights during my break.”