Glove Save (Carolina Comets)

“What the hell are you doing here?”

I shove off my car, casually strolling toward the woman who is currently shooting daggers my way while holding a giant white box that’s overflowing with stuff.

“Here, let me take that,” I say, grabbing it from her before she has a chance to protest. My momma would be so proud of me in this moment, being a gentleman. “What is all this?”

“I’m not answering that until you tell me what you’re doing here first.” She looks around the almost empty parking lot. “How’d you know I worked here?”

I lift a shoulder. “I asked around.”

“So you got information from Miller again?”

I don’t answer her because the last thing I’m trying to do is get Miller into trouble for giving me information on Stevie, especially when he doesn’t know what I’m doing when I ask him about her. He’s so oblivious sometimes and gives up the information freely. It’s comical.

“I thought you said you had stuff to do today,” Stevie says.

“I said I had shit to do today, and this is it.”

“You had to stalk me at work?” She crosses her arms over her chest, glaring up at me. She seems irritated, even more so than usual.

“No. I’m here to give you that ride you requested.”

I don’t miss the way her cheeks pinken at my words or the slight hitch to her breath. She reaches up and brushes her long dark hair over her shoulder.

“Oh,” she mutters, sighing softly. “Today feels like a bad day for that.”

“Why?” I jiggle her box, looking down into it to find a few picture frames, some pencils and pencil holders, several stacks of papers, and…is that a corded phone? I haven’t seen one of those in years. “Does it have anything to do with this?”

She lets out another long sigh. “Yes. I, uh, I lost my job.”

“Shit, Stevie. I’m sorry.” No wonder she’s upset. She has Macie to take care of, and this is a blow for her.

She waves her hand. “It’s fine. I knew it was coming. Well, it was supposed to come next week, but here I am, jobless today.”

“What happened?”

“They’re merging firms, and they don’t need two secretaries. I guess my skills weren’t up to snuff, and they chose someone else.”

Just then, the door behind her is shoved open, and a woman with short red hair steps out wearing a skirt I’m pretty sure would show everything she has to offer if she bent over. Her legs are long and toned, her bright yellow heels drawing your eye just right. She’s wearing a white blouse that shows her bright red bra underneath. She almost looks like a sexy cartoon character or something.

“Did you need any help with that, Ms. Thomas?” But she’s not looking at Stevie when she asks. Instead, her eyes are trained on me, that same caught-you-staring grin I’ve seen time and time again pulling up one side of her mouth.

The brunette in front of me huffs. “No, Becky, I’m good.”

“All right,” the redhead says, not once taking her eyes off me.

She doesn’t make a move to go back inside, which irritates Stevie even more. She doesn’t have to say anything for me to know it; it’s obvious in her protective posture and the way her fists are now clenched at her sides.

Stevie’s eyes begin to fill with tears, and I hate it. I hate it so fucking much, more than I’ve ever hated anything before, and I’ve lost some well-fought games and been eliminated from the playoffs a few times. But this? Seeing Stevie so upset? It’s so much worse.

I drop her box, not caring about the items inside, vowing to replace them if anything is broken.

“What are you—”

I kiss her.

I fucking kiss her.

It takes her a second to catch on to what’s happening, but then she’s kissing me back.

Stevie is kissing me back.

Her lips are soft and pliable. She tastes like caramel candies and feels like heaven pressed against me. I grip her waist, holding her to me, angling my head so I can get a better taste. I run my tongue along the seam of her lips, and she easily opens for me. I swallow the sigh that leaves her, tugging her closer because I can’t get enough for the life of me.

I want more. I need more.

A throat clears, and it’s enough to snap Stevie out of the moment. She shoves away from me, eyes now glassy with desire instead of tears. Her chest heaves up and down, her dress a mess from my hands pulling at her. Her lips are swollen, and her cheeks are stained red.

She looks fucking gorgeous, and it makes me want to kiss her all over again.

“You can leave now, Ms. Thomas.”

Stevie tugs at her dress, righting the misaligned material, then grabs her box and marches past me.

I look the other woman right in the eyes and wink.

Then I chase after Stevie. I jog past her, popping open the trunk of my ZR1 and grabbing the box from her hands at the last moment. I try to catch her eyes to get a feel for what she’s thinking, but she won’t look at me. She just stares down at the ground as she turns and heads for the passenger door.

A soft gasp leaves her lips when she pulls it open.

“Greer…”

Finally, her summer sky blue eyes meet mine, and in that moment I’m not sure I’ve seen a more beautiful sight.

“What did you do?”

I reach around her into the car, retrieving the white box.

“Yours broke.”

“I know, but—”

“No buts. Yours broke because of me, so I replaced it.” I shove the iPhone box her way. “It’s not the same model you had, but I think you’ll like this upgrade just fine.”

“Jacob…” she whispers, marveling at the device. “I can’t accept this. It’s too much.”

“If you think that’s too much, you’re really going to hate the dress I sent over to your apartment today.”

Her gaze snaps to mine, a bit of that fire she’s so full of creeping back into her eyes. “The what? What dress?”

“I was only kidding about you going naked to the wedding.” I lean down until my lips brush against her ear. “Though I wasn’t kidding about me liking the idea of seeing you that way.”

When she pulls back, her cheeks are brighter than I’ve ever seen them.

“Come on.” I place a hand on her hip and nudge her toward the car. “Get in. We have plans.”

“We do? Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

I laugh. “You won’t hate this one. Go. In.”

This time, she doesn’t argue. She slides into the car, still staring at the new phone in her hands. She doesn’t look up until I’ve climbed into the seat next to her.

“You like it?” I ask, firing up the engine.

“This is a month’s rent for me, you know.”

“Is it?”

She nods. “Yes. I…” She slams her eyes closed and swallows thickly, her fingers running along the edges of the box. When she peels them back open, she looks over at me just as a single tear escapes down her cheek. It takes everything in me not to lean over and brush it away.

“Thank you, Jacob,” she says quietly. “For everything.”

She doesn’t just mean the phone or the dress or the lessons.

She means the bar too.

“You’re welcome, Stevie. For everything.”

Another thick swallow. A nod.

She clears her throat, then looks down at the phone. “You might have to help me set this up.”

“I think I can manage that. But first…fun.”

I rev the engine a few times, and she laughs.

It’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.

“You can’t be serious.” Stevie stares out at the space before us. “I am not properly dressed for this.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you wore a dress to work today.”

“You saw the competition I had. I had to try everything possible.”

I hate that she felt she needed to show some skin to save her job, but I don’t think she’d be up for a lecture on that right now, so I say, “I have some extra stuff in my bag you can wear.”

“That’s not going to fit me at all.”

“We can make it work.” I shuffle toward the duffle I tossed onto the bench and unzip it, root around until I find something suitable, then hold it up. “Here. This should work.”

She curls her lips at the clothes but accepts them anyway. “This is ridiculous.”

“Sure, but it’s going to be fun. I’ll get to teach you and your kid how to skate.”

“Except she was ready for this. I’m not.”

“You’ll do fine.”

“You’re not going to let me fall like you did her, are you?”

My heart drops into my stomach. “I didn’t—”

“I’m kidding, Greer. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

I’m annoyed I’m back to being called Greer, but I don’t say anything.

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so bad in my life, including when I went to the World Juniors and lost the gold medal in OT and all of Canada was pissed at me.”

“Wow. What a comparison, my kid to your hockey game.”

“Hey! World Juniors is a big thing.”

“Yeah, and so is my kid.”

“Right.” I clear my throat. “I am sorry.”

“I know. I could see how upset you were. Not as upset as me, obviously.”

“No. I think the only person topping you there was my mother when she had her freak-out over me.”

“Be nice to your mother, Greer. She loves you.”

“Yeah, yeah—whoa! What are you doing?”

She stops moving, her dress halfway up her body, leaving her bottom half in nothing but her underwear and red heels that I bet would look really fucking good wrapped around my waist.

“Uh, changing?”

“Here?”

She shrugs. “There’s nobody here. What? Have you never seen a woman in her underwear before?” She gasps. “Oh my gosh, it was never Miller—you were the virgin all along!”

I glower at her. “As if.”

“The ’90s called—they want their Valley girl talk back.”

I send her another glare, trying my best to keep my eyes trained on her face and not on her body as she peels the rest of the dress off. It’s hard, and so am I just watching her. She’s fucking beautiful, even with her mismatched baby blue bra and lacy black underwear.

“Laundry day?” I ask to distract myself.

“Nope. I’m just not fancy enough to match. Nor do I care—I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

“Good.”

She pauses for a moment, eyes focused on me and the very possessive-sounding word that just left my mouth. If she has something to say, she keeps it to herself. She just toes off her heels, grabs the pair of pants from the pile of clothes I gave her, and pulls them on.

I admit I’m sad when she slips the shirt over her head and lets it fall. It’s too long on her, but she’s got that covered, pulling the hair tie from her wrist and cinching the shirt to a wearable length.

I toss her a pair of socks, and she puts those on, then sits.

“Can you help?” she asks, batting her lashes and pointing to the skates.

It’s subtle, but I hear the shift in her breath when I drop to my knees in front of her. I don’t even have a witty one-liner to tease her with since she’s clearly enjoying this. I’m too fucking busy trying to talk my dick down because something in me loves this scene entirely too much.

Visions of a naked Stevie spreading her legs for my assault do nothing helpful for the aching cock in my jeans, and I wish we were anywhere else right now so I could bring them to fruition. What I wouldn’t give to slide my tongue along her pussy so I could hear her scream my name.

“Greer.”

I snap my head up.

“I think they’re tight enough.”

I look down, and, yep, her skates are on and all tied up. She’s ready to go.

I shove up to my feet, adjusting my cock as discreetly as I can, then plop down next to her and put on my own skates.

“You ready?” I ask once I’m all laced up.

“I guess.” She wobbles a bit as she pushes to her feet.

“You look ridiculous.” She does. But also seeing her in my clothes… I like it entirely too much.

“A good ridiculous?”

“Of course.” I grab her hand to steady her, then lead her to the ice. “All right. We’ll go slow at first, okay? I’ll keep hold of you just like I did Macie.”

“Sounds good,” she says, walking onto the ice looking like Bambi, bumbling all over the place.

“Your kid is a lot better at this than you.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She stares down at her feet as I tug her along.

We skate like that for several minutes before I ask, “Think you’re ready to try it on your own?”

She nibbles on her bottom lip, looking up at me with wary eyes. “I think so.”

“All right. Letting go in one…two…three.”

I release her, ready to reach out and catch her because I fully expect her to go tumbling down.

But she doesn’t. No, she takes off in a full stride, gliding across the ice like a fucking pro.

“What the…”

I watch in awe as she skates with ease, shifting her feet perfectly, skating backward, and even spinning in a circle. I stand there with my arms crossed over my chest, glaring at her.

“You were playing me.”

She grins from across the way, her shoulder rising. “Maybe.”

“Where’d you learn to skate like this?”

“Lowell.”

I tip my head back. “Lowell, as in my captain Lowell?”

She nods, doing another twirl and adding a small jump this time. “Yep. We went to high school together and often hung out at the skating rink. We’d go after school and mess around.”

I pull to a stop, my fists balling up at my sides. “Mess around as in…”

She rolls her eyes. “As in skating around. Nothing sexual. We weren’t into each other like that. Well, except for that one time.”

She sticks her tongue out, skating backward even farther away from me.

I chase after her, determined to make her pay for her so-not-funny joke. The thought of Stevie and Lowell together makes me furious. I know he’s madly in love with Hollis and there’s no chance of anything happening, but I hate the thought all the same.

I know I have no business hating it, which irritates me even more as I hunt Stevie down.

I’m much faster than she is and could easily catch her, but I’m enjoying our game of cat and mouse too much to let it end so soon. When I see she’s running out of steam, I pounce.

Well, not really, but I do ease her against the boards, boxing her in, and she sucks in gulps of air.

“That wasn’t a very funny joke.” I grip her waist in one hand as I help to hold her steady.

“Aw, that’s too bad. I was going to use it in my next standup routine.”

“You do standup? You’ll have to let me know when and where. I’ll make sure to bring tomatoes.”

“Nobody throws tomatoes anymore, Greer.”

“Too bad. Some people could really use a good tomato to the head.”

She laughs and loses her balance, letting out a little squeal as she starts to slip and reaches out for me, her hands curling around my biceps. It’s a familiar position—her pressed against me and nearly out of breath. It’s the same one we were in just an hour ago when I kissed her.

We haven’t said a word about it, not even on the drive over to the rink. She spent that time talking to Macie on the phone as Scout drove her to Miller’s place for a sleepover. I know she will be alone tonight, and that’s the kind of information that could get me in trouble.

So much trouble.

It’s just the kind of trouble I want to be in…the kind of trouble I want to be in with her. But if we’re going to do this, I have to know we’re on the same page.

“Steve.”

“Greer,” she responds, not even having it in her to admonish me for using her nickname. Her focus is entirely on my mouth, never wavering.

“I can’t offer you love.”

My words pull her out of her haze, and her eyes slide to mine.

She swallows once. Twice.

“I don’t believe in it,” I say.

“I know that,” she whispers.

“So, this…”

“It’s fun,” she says.

“Fun?”

“Yeah. That’s what we’re supposed to be having, right?”

I hold her gaze with mine. If I look past the heat that’s burning in her eyes, I can see something else, something I’m not sure I’m quite ready to see. There’s a niggling feeling in the back of my mind that tells me something is wrong, says something isn’t right about this and I should walk away. We had one kiss. It doesn’t have to lead to more.

But I’m not sure I can walk away. Not now, not when I know what she tastes like. Not when I know how perfectly she fits against me, like it was always meant to be.

I can’t walk away, even though I should because I know there’s no way I’m going to be able to give her what she’s inevitably going to want.

It’s stupid. It’s dangerous.

Knowing all those things? It changes nothing.

I feel myself nod, and I hear myself say, “Yeah…fun.”

Her tongue pokes out to wet her lips. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

We stare at each other for several moments, and I’m not sure either of us even blinks in that time. I want to be sure she understands what I’m telling her. I can’t love her. It’s not who I am. This, what’s happening between us, it’s purely physical. It’s fun.

When she has no objections, when I don’t see any second-guessing, I ask, “Can I kiss you now?”

“Oh, are you asking now? Because earlier, you weren’t a gentleman at all. You just—”

I don’t let her finish that sentence. I crash my lips to hers, stealing away her smartass comment and her breath.

This time she doesn’t hesitate to kiss me back. She gives me everything she has in her as she throws her arms around my neck and tugs me closer.

It’s still not enough.

I haul her up and into my arms, loving it when she hooks her legs around my waist like it’s right where they belong. It’s a bad idea, holding her and kissing her like this on the ice, but dammit, I’m a professional hockey player who lives on the ice. I can handle this, especially for her.

She lets out a soft moan, pressing against me as I drop my hands to her ass. It’s just so I can get a better grip, I tell myself. It’s a lie, though. I can’t resist touching her, can’t deny how good she feels beneath my exploring palms.

This moment…it’s fucking magical. I can’t imagine a place I’d rather be, a person I’d rather be with.

Her. Her. Her.

It’s all I want.

All I need.

I have no clue how long our tongues stroke together as we paw at one another, but it’s long enough for her to begin shivering in my arms. I miss her touch the second I finally convince myself to pull away.

“How’s that for being a gentleman?” I ask, setting her back down on her legs.

She wobbles a bit—something I really fucking love—and grins up at me. “You might be the most gentlemanly gentleman I know.”

“That so?”

She nods. “Th-That’s so.”

I want to push her against the boards and kiss her again, but she’s shaking right in front of me, and I want to shield her from that even more.

“Come on.” I grab her and tug her back across the ice.

“Where are we going now?”

“My place.”

“Greer.” She tugs on my hand until I stop. “I can’t just go home with you.”

“Why not?”

“Um, because I have a kid.”

“She’s with your sister for the weekend.”

I know because Miller was excited about the spa night he has planned for all of them, which I mercilessly teased him about earlier.

“I know, but…” Her tongue darts out to wet her lips. “I can’t. I’d like to go home.”

If I said those words didn’t hurt like a puck to the nuts, I’d be a liar.

“Okay. I can take you home.”

I turn back to keep going, but she tugs on me again.

“What?” I ask, turning back around, trying to mask the hurt I’m definitely feeling but have no right to.

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“Home,” she says. “Come home with me.”