“I’m fine,” Natalie snapped at Baldie,and he eased, a part-skeptical, part-confused look on his face.
T.J. lifted his chin toward his Hummer. “C’mon. I’ll takeyou home, get Ford, and we’ll get out of your life.”
She fisted her hands on her hips. “I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, idiot that he was. “You needa ride, and I need to get my dog.”
He reached for her arm again, but she wrenched it away.“I’ll Uber.”
A few new guys now flanked Baldie.Just what we need to add to this shit-show. Headlinesblasted in his brain: T.J. Shanstrom tries to tapKevin May’s GF, gets in brawl in restaurant parking lot.
Fucking awesome PR. Not that he cared about the PR.
“I still have to pick up Ford. No point in you paying for aride when I’m going to the same place,” he urged softly.
She didn’t move, her expression frozen in a stubborn frown,her eyes glinting with anger. And she was absolutely gorgeous. His heartsqueezed.
“No talking,” she bit out.
Sweet relief spread through his limbs like warm shots ofwhiskey, and he gave her a nod.
He had ten minutes.
CHAPTER 24
Open Kimono
Natalie stared out the Hummer’swindow without seeing a damn thing, her emotions snapping from shock to outrageto hurt to humiliation on a loop. She felt like an inflatable nylon tubeperson, whipping and cracking in the wind. Just like “Tyler” whipped from oneidentity to another.
Tyler, the devoted dog owner, aka T.J., the heartless hitman.
He’d totally played her. How had she let that happen? Because con artists are good at fooling people. He’deven stooped to blatant puppy eyes since the shocking, mortifying spectacle atthe restaurant.
He made her sick.
She glared at him as realization continued to bloom. Hertemper spiraled upward. “T.J. is short for Tyler Johnson.” Astatement, not a question.
Behind the steering wheel, Tyler-T.J. nodded his headslowly—about as slowly as he was driving. Why was the man so damn pokey?
“You must be a Gemini.” Crazy-ass Geminis and their split personalities. Notthat she believed in astrology.
He darted her a bewildered look.
“So what do I call you?” She tucked her arms across herchest. “Besides asshole,” she clarified. “Do you prefer T.J.? Tyler?What?”
A sidelong glance. “I answer tothem all, but I prefer T.J. Though I gotta admit,Tyler sounds nice when you say it.”
“Asshole it is,” Natalie grumbled and looked away. “I havequestions.”
He nodded in her peripheral. “I’m open kimono here.”
An image of Tyler-T.J. wearing nothing but thatfull-wattage, deadly smile playing on his rugged features popped into herbrain. To her consternation, tingles raced along her arms, and other partsfollowed. Damn it, Hailey!
She quickly changed her mind’s channel. “Start at thebeginning. If you weren’t playing enemy spy, then why the hell did youinsinuate yourself into my life?”
He rubbed the back of his head, thensettled his hand back on the steering wheel. “The truth?”
“That would be refreshing.”
“When I first saw you in the hospital parking lot, whenMeathead escaped … You were this—you took my breathaway.” He shifted as though nervous, his gaze focused forward. “Literally,” headded in that rumbly voice of his. “It wasn’t until that day in the cafeteriathat I figured out who you were. I didn’t know what to say. And then I saw yourcar, and I thought you could use some financial shoring up. I wanted to help. Ididn’t think you’d accept money outright, but if I became your client … As time went on, it got harder to confess. I dreaded seeingthe look you’re giving me right now. So I put it off.” He paused to expel asigh, turning his eyes to her. “I had no right, Nat, but I fell for you. Hard.Harder than I’ve fallen for anyone.”
She hadn’t anticipated this answer, and a surprising,traitorous, zing sizzled through her. His intense moss-green eyes reminded herof tourmalines, and they gleamed as though they’d just been buffed by ajeweler’s cloth. Focus, Nat. Breaking eye contact when he looked at theroad helped Natalie catch her breath.
“So you got Ford just so you couldbe a dog-sitting client? Then paid months up-front for seven-day-a-weekservice?” Who does that?
“I did.”
Stilted silence stretched between them as thoughtsricocheted in her head. She chased them as she fumed, trying to sort them, butit was like trying to catch a trout with her bare hands.
“Unbelievable,” she grumbled, looking away, unsure how to processthe contradictions bombarding her. He was a cheat. Fraud,phony, fake. Thug. The man had adopted a dog to become a client.And she’d been dazzled by that stack of cash. Of course he could afford itbecause he was a mega-million-dollar-a-year hockey player!
Realization scoured the goo from her brain cells. “Oh myGod, your job! It all makes sense now.” She erupted in an off-kilter laughbordering on hysteria. Yep, she was losing it.
Not a porn star or a drug dealer. “You overpaid fordog-sitting to make up for … I am not paying you back.”
“I don’t want you to.”
More silence. Tyler-T.J.’s voice knifed through the quiet.“You know what? It might have started as BS, but I have no regrets because Ilove that stupid dog … and then there’s you.”
“Save it.” Don’t you dare say something nice and muddlemy mad right now. “So why did you try to kill Kevin?”
His shoulders seemed to shudder. “Ice is fast. If a playeroverthinks, he screws up. It can be the difference maker in a game. So he goes oninstinct. Sometimes his instinct is wrong, and by the time he figures that out,it’s too late.”
Kevin had told her basically the same thing. Heat of thebattle, he’d called it.
“And for the record,” Tyler-T.J. added, “I wasn’t out to killhim. Not that it matters now.”
Her emotional yo-yo was spinning on a tight axis, up anddown, yanked along on a cord she wasn’t controlling. She opened her mouth tolet loose a string of words she hadn’t yet cobbled together. “Hmph.” Yep, her intelligent comeback.
She darted her eyes out the window, replaying the awful hitin her head. T.J. punching Kevin. Kevindropping to the ice. Players piling on. A stark-white jersey with
