“You can’t hold a baby like that if you want her not to cry,” Christensen said, his voice having no problem cresting over the crying.
Turning to Christensen, he glared at the other man. “How do you know?”
The forward’s’s expression turned smug. “Because I babysat all through high school to pay for my hockey gear.”
“So take her.” He held the baby out to Christiansen.
Freya hollered louder.
“No way.” He held up his hands, palms forward. “Lucy said you had first shift.”
Freya wailed again. It was like an ice pick being jabbed into his ear. Ian turned to Shelby and silently offered her the kid.
Her blue-lined eyes rounded before narrowing into tiny slits. “Why, because I’m a woman?”
Ian didn’t respond. She looked like a woman who knew how to fillet a man and was getting ready to show off her skills on him—probably with a rusty knife that had a dull edge.
The sound of a fake cough that distinctly sounded like “dumbass” came from the direction of Christensen, but Ian’s gaze was locked on Shelby. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stop staring because he really thought she’d shiv him, but that he just couldn’t look away. Steel and softness wrapped up in a fuck-you package complete with leather boots and a vine tattoo he’d kissed from one thorn to the next, Shelby was turning into his fucking catnip.
Too bad she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, as she’d made plain at the sheriff’s office. The reminder had his gut twisting, and he pulled Freya in closer until her soft hair tickled his chin and she snuggled into his shoulder. Why did he do it? Because he remembered Lucy’s advice or because he needed a hug? Fuck if he knew, but the toddler’s chubby little fingers that no doubt were sticky with kid goobers immediately sought out his hair.
“Please take your seats, Ice Knights,” the pilot said over the intercom. “It’s time to get this bird in the air.”
Ian looked from the empty seat by Christensen to the one next to Shelby. There was no good choice here, but he had to make it. The devil he could ignore or the devil who made him feel like some sad-sack sucker who wanted what he couldn’t ever have? Oh yeah, that last bit sounded familiar.
Ian sat down next to Christensen and tried not to grimace as Freya went from petting his hair to straight-up trying to yank it out of his head as she sucked her thumb.
“Your turn soon, Christensen,” he said, as if that was why he’d picked that seat rather than the one next to Shelby.
“Works for me.” The other man shrugged and turned back to the window. “Babies love me.”
Of course they did. Everyone loved Alex Christensen. It was hard not to like him unless you had a massively important reason—which Ian sure as hell did.
He did the awkward moves necessary to buckle his seat belt while holding a crashed-out kid. Finally finished with the sixteen-part play, he looked up and right at Shelby. The team jet was already zooming down the runway when he realized his mistake. He’d have to spend the entire flight across the country staring right at the woman he hadn’t been able to get out of his head since she jabbed that Taser of hers into his ribs.
Just great.
…
Shelby had no interest in having kids anytime soon. Babies did nothing for her. Her ovaries did not explode when a photo of a hot guy holding a baby crossed her social media streams. She didn’t sigh and press her hand to her heart when she spotted teeny-tiny booties. The sound of an infant giggling didn’t make her want to toss her pills in the trash.
So why in the hell couldn’t she stop staring at Ian as Freya snuggled deeper agains his chest and drooled on his crisp white dress shirt? Why did it do funny things to her stomach? And why in the name of Gordie Howe did it make her all melty?
It wasn’t just the fact that his shoulders seemed broader or his hands bigger or that—
“Wanna switch seats?” Alex asked.
The question jarred her out of the hot-guy-with-a-baby trance she’d accidentally landed in and she startled, trying—and failing—to appear cool about it. “No. Why would I want to do that?”
The Ice Knights’ other first-line forward grimaced. “Because the things I’m reading on your face as you stare at him are making me uncomfortable.”
So much for not making an idiot of herself on her first official workday. Great. Fabulous. Wonderful. Why didn’t they give out parachutes when a person boarded just in case of extreme in-flight-embarrassment events like this?
“Stop making shit up to bust her chops,” Ian said, keeping his gaze focused on the empty chair in front of him as if it held the secret to winning the lotto.
“He speaks to me.” Alex let out a dramatic gasp. “Careful there, or between calling me when you used your get-out-of-jail-free card and addressing me directly, people might think you’d actually pulled your head out of your ass.”
Ian barely unclenched his jaw as he responded. “There is a baby here.”
“Freya isn’t going to repeat it.”
Even with the undeniable tension between Alex and Ian, there was something else, too—a connection that only really good friends or siblings had.
It made all of this back-and-forth idiocy tolerable because as an only child, Shelby had never experienced it. She’d only watched longingly as her friends fought with their brothers and sisters one minute and then zoomed into protector mode the next. What would that be like to have someone so firmly on your side? Ian and Alex were both morons for not seeing how lucky they were.
“Yeah, so you say.” Ian snorted, then went completely still when the baby wiggled around in his arms. The second she settled back in with a soft sigh and closed her eyes again,
