“Oh my God.” Heart beating so fast her pulse sounded like a tsunami in her ears, she looked up at him as he grimaced. “Did I break you?”
One side of his mouth shot up in a smirk. “You should definitely check me out.”
“Why? What hurts, I—” Realization hit. He was fucking with her. “I don’t get it. You’re grunting one minute and joking the next.”
He shrugged and came back out on the ice with her. “Like you said, I’m an onion.”
“Okay, Shrek.”
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to take his hand—for balance support, of course—as they slow skated around the rink.
“You don’t think I’m a man of great depth?”
He did a spin move so he was again going backward and they were face-to-face, holding hands, alone together in the practice facility. Her mom would call it romantic. She knew better. This was trouble in man form.
“What happened back there with the photographer?”
He pulled his arms in, tugging her closer but still leaving space so their skates didn’t tangle. “He was a jackass.”
She wasn’t in disagreement there. “Yeah, but I’m talking about when you went into robot mode. You just shut down completely.”
“So what? You as a member of the media are trying to get me to spill my trade secrets for surviving the media?”
“Is that how you think of me?” Ow. That landed with a big thump right against her solar plexus. “That I’m like the paparazzi guy?”
“Of course not.” Ian did a half turn so they were hip to hip, holding hands as they skated.
She glanced over at him, having instant lusty ideas about the feel of his beard scruff against her skin before yanking herself back to reality. “Then ’fess up.”
“For as long as I can remember, there has been media.” His jaw hardened and he looked up into the stands as if he expected a reporter or photographer to be up there now documenting his every move. “First it was all about my dad; then they started to actually look at me. They weren’t really doing that, though.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice one, more of a defense mechanism than a sign of happiness. “They were looking to see how I measured up against the old man. The judgment was always the same: a poor man’s David Petrov.”
Those fuckers. She wanted to find them now and she’d…well, she didn’t know what but something. “That’s not fair. You’re—”
“A journeyman player,” he interrupted. “I get that. I’ve made peace with it. I love the game, but I’m not going to be a Hall of Famer like my dad or a career that lasts decades like Christensen—the real recipient of the Petrov hockey talent.”
He said it as if it didn’t matter, but she wasn’t fooled. No one got to this level of play unless they wanted to be the best. Ian may not be good at lying to her, but he seemed to excel at lying to himself.
“I’ve got another year or two, and then I’ll go into coaching. I’m actually looking forward to it.” This time his grin was genuine, but it faded quickly. “Of course, that’s not the story the media will report. For them it will be all about my failures.”
“Change the narrative.” The ideas popped into her head one after the other. “You could—”
He lifted their hands, brushing his lips across her knuckles in a move that sent a sizzle of desire zinging through her.
“It’s not worth it.” He lowered their hands again. “There is nothing in the world worth opening myself up to everyone’s judgment and splashing myself all over the hockey sites.”
“Is that why you grunt so much?” she asked, lightening the mood with a teasing question.
“Maybe it’s because I don’t know what to say around you.”
She snorted in disbelief. “Like the girl with the voice of a ten-year-old is in the least bit intimidating.”
“I’m not intimidated,” he said, bringing them to a stop right at center ice and turning all of his attention to her. “I’m fascinated.”
Oh my.
Oh.
My.
His gaze dropped to her mouth as tactile as a touch that set her on fire and all she wanted was to get licked by the flames.
“We’d better get back to the hotel before curfew,” she said, fumbling to hold on to her better judgment. “Can’t break the rules.”
“Not that one anyway.”
Not any of them, because when it came to Ian Petrov, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to go back again to pretending there was nothing between them.
Chapter Thirteen
This was a dumb decision.
Still, here Ian was, the night before the last game of the road trip, standing outside Shelby’s Vancouver hotel room at one in the morning with a brand-new black eye and absolutely no idea what he was going to do. He should turn around and go right back to his room. He’d spent Seattle and Vegas trying to keep his distance as much as he could when they spent every meal and more together. But tonight, he’d been lying on his bed staring at the ceiling
Oh, fuck it.
He tapped lightly on her door. If she was sleeping, she wouldn’t hear and he’d go back to his room. She was probably asleep anyway and— The door opened.
Wearing a black tank top that dipped low over the upper swells of her tits and leggings that made her legs seem even longer, Shelby stood in the opening. All the racket thundering in his head since the game ended, spurred on by adrenaline and an overtime win, settled.
The TV was on behind her but there wasn’t any sound. The covers on her bed were rumpled, but the pillows were propped up on the headboard as if she’d been sitting up in bed, not
