Georgia’s eyebrows rose. “What’s that?”
“I want a child. I’ll be thirty next year, damn it. I was hoping things with Vince would get better so that we could start a family.”
“But you’re still young!” Georgia squeezed her hand. “Five years from now you could have a husband and two kids. Lots of people don’t have kids until their thirties. This isn’t 1950.”
“I’m just so annoyed with myself. When I teach a yoga class, I’m standing there asking everyone in the room to become mindful of their surroundings. But it turns out I wasn’t doing such a great job of that myself.”
“I don’t know,” Georgia said kindly. “You got the hell away from him the moment it mattered most.”
“That’s what Patrick said.” Below them a whistle blew on the ice, and another drill started. Ari watched the captain skate. There was no hesitation when he powered down the rink. Were his strained muscles better? Or was the man just stubborn?
“So, wait,” Georgia said, nudging her. “Back up a second. You stayed with Doulie in his apartment?”
“Sure? Where else would I stay with him?”
Georgia’s eyes danced. “See, this is gossip! Nobody has ever been to O’Doul’s apartment.”
“What do you mean, nobody? I have.”
“I know! But he’s never invited his teammates over. Ever. What was it like in there? Castro has this theory that O’Doul has a sex dungeon that he doesn’t want anyone to see. They tease him about it sometimes, but he doesn’t react.”
Ari laughed for the first time all day. “That’s ridiculous. O’Doul’s place is lovely. It’s a loft space, though. All one room. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like to entertain? The bed is right there in the room.”
Georgia tossed her chopsticks into her empty carton and frowned. “Maybe the secret chamber is hidden behind a bookshelf. There could be a special brick—push it and the wall swings open.”
“That must be it,” Ari joked, and Georgia gave her a smile. Hell, she was pretty sure there were secret places—in O’Doul’s mind. He seemed to keep a pretty tight lid on himself, and again she wondered why.
Today wouldn’t be the day she learned, though. O’Doul was not on her schedule for massage that afternoon. Maybe the trainers believed he was recovering. That was good news for the captain, but as she worked through a long afternoon treating five other players, she found herself thinking about him, anyway.
“You’re marrying me someday, right?” Castro asked as she massaged his instep.
“Mmm?” she asked, shaking off her private thoughts.
“Just my usual proposal,” her client said. “But you seem distracted today. I’m gonna get offended.”
She patted his calf and asked him to flip over, which he did without hesitation. All her clients were easier to treat than O’Doul. But none were as interesting.
After a long afternoon at work, Ari spent a few minutes texting with Maddy. She told her about the brick through the window, and apologized profusely for any drama that might come her way. Please be vigilant, Ari begged. I’m trying not to be paranoid, but the man is pissed at me.
I’ll keep my phone charged, Maddy promised. Don’t worry about me.
She did, though.
That night, Ari fell asleep easily in the hotel, safely three hundred miles away from Vince. The next morning she conducted an eight o’clock yoga session in the hotel health club.
Every yoga class had a different rhythm, and that morning the players seemed to bring a lot of nervous energy with them into the room. It was game night, and they were under so much pressure to make the play-offs.
As she paced the front of the room asking for different poses, they watched her with intense eyes. So she gave them an ambitious yoga experience to feed and center all that energy, with a fast flow including lots of chaturangas. Then she brought them into eagle pose and made them hold it for several minutes.
When it was over, she had two dozen men dripping with sweat, lying in corpse pose for their final breathing exercise, and probably cursing her name.
As they shuffled out afterward, Patrick gave her a wink. “Trying to kill us today?”
“That wouldn’t be good for my job security,” she pointed out. “I’m only trying to make it possible for you to rest before the game.”
“I think it worked.”
“Go right upstairs and nap,” she ordered.
He gave her a warmer smile than she’d ever seen on his face. And then he went.
* * *
The game that night was down and dirty. Players on both teams began racking up penalties right away. She sat beside Georgia, who could barely keep still. She wasn’t the type to yell at the ref, but she did a fair amount of screaming Leo’s name.
Ari knew just from the sin bin stats that O’Doul would have to fight tonight. She was only surprised that it didn’t happen until late in the second period, when he and another big guy from the other team began circling each other. She held her breath. And when they started swinging, she watched his movements closely.
He worked hard to keep his stance loose and his lower body out of the fray. But it made him tentative. She could see it all the way across the rink. A second later, that caution cost him. The Canadian player grabbed him in a headlock and started pounding on him.
Ari had to look away. She did not want to see Patrick at the wrong end of a bludgeoning fist.
The crowd made a satisfied noise, and she was afraid to look. On the ice, Patrick lay very still.
“Jesus,” Georgia whispered.
Get up, Ari inwardly ordered him. Right now.
When he finally stirred some seconds later, she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Relief only lasted a little longer, though. Because moments later she happened to see Maddy’s name light up the screen of her phone.
Honey, I’m so sorry, the message began.
NINE
O’Doul didn’t remember picking himself up from the surface of the ice. As he skated toward the bench, his ankles wobbled in an unfamiliar way. He sat down heavily, and was vaguely aware of people talking to him. The trainer hovered, asking him questions.
It’s just that he wasn’t ready to take questions just yet. Someone handed him his helmet, and only then did he realize he wasn’t wearing it.
“Let me see your face,” the trainer said.
O’Doul turned his chin to allow it because that seemed easier than arguing. He heard the sound of the velcro giving way on his neck guard. Hands probed his skin, and he gritted his teeth.
“That hurts?” Henry asked.
“No.” I just don’t like your hands on me.
“Doesn’t look too bad. We’ll need to check for concussion symptoms. How’s the hip?”
“Fine.” And it was. He’d protected his hip, and gotten slammed onto the ice for his trouble. Fuck. He hadn’t even seen it coming. That’s what he got for fighting scared.
“Come on. The doc needs to evaluate you.” Henry beckoned.
“I’m not leaving the game.”
Henry looked at the clock. There were two minutes left. “You need to be evaluated. If the doctor is impressed, you’ll be back when the overtime period starts.”
* * *
He was not back when the OT started. The doctor found his concussion exam inconclusive and kept him off the ice.
What happened next was open to interpretation. According to the news stories that would run the next day, their opponents got a lucky bounce off of Beacon’s leg into the net, winning the game 3–2. But O’Doul saw it differently. When he lost that fight and then left the game, he handed all the momentum over to the other guys.
Two hours later he boarded the jet for the short flight home. His head ached a little, but his ego hurt worse.
“Can’t win ’em all,” Coach Worth
ington had said about the fight. That’s how he knew it looked bad. Words of pity from the coach were scarce.
The first open seat on the jet was next to Ari. He took it because she wasn’t likely to update him on his score at HockeyBrawls.com. “Hi,” he said with a sigh.
“Are you . . . ?”
He held up a hand. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Looked like it hurt.”
“I’ve had better days.”
She laughed, but then her face sank into her hands. “Yeah. Do they have whiskey on the jet?”
“Why?” He reached up and pulled her hands away from her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, but her eyes darted nervously to the side.
“Sweetheart,” he warned. “Come on. You look freaked.” Her eyes were red, too.
“I’m tired of being freaked.”
“Sing it, sister. But we don’t always get what we want. Just tell me what happened.”
She pointed at her phone. “My tenant had to call the cops earlier. Vince showed up to saw the basement door off its hinges. I thought he might try something. All he had to do to know I wasn’t home was read the game schedule.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“He was removing stuff from the storage room when the cops showed, but Maddy thinks they didn’t catch him. So now I have a broken window and a broken door. I need to follow up with the police. And my first appointment is supposed to be at nine in the morning and I just . . .” She put her head in her hands again.
“Hey, don’t worry. Henry will understand if you need a couple extra hours tomorrow. There’s no single-malt on the jet, but . . .” He waved down the flight attendant. “Jill, how are you?”
“Excellent, Doulie! What can I bring you?”
“Everyone in this row has had a shit day. We need something fun to drink.”
“Like a margarita?” the young woman asked. “That’s what I drink when I need more fun in my life.”
“How do you feel about margaritas?” he asked Ari.
“I’m a lifelong fan,” she said.
“Two of those, please.” O’Doul passed the attendant some cash.
“Thank you,” Ari said. “I say that a lot lately. But I mean it.”
“I know,” he said lightly. “This too shall pass. And in the meantime, there’s tequila.”
* * *
It was after midnight by the time the cab pulled up in front of Ari’s house on Hudson Ave.
“Thank you for dropping me off,” she said, looking with trepidation up at her house, her hand hesitating on the door’s lever.
O’Doul paid the driver and got out, removing both their bags from the back.
She pointed at the cab just as it began to pull away from the curb. “Don’t you need him to wait for you?”
“Nah. It’s just a couple of blocks. I want to make sure you’re okay here.”
The look of relief on her face was pretty hard to miss. “Well, thanks. It’s not like I expect to find him lurking in the shadows, but . . .”
He could be lurking in the shadows. Even though Ari had sworn her ex had been a good guy at some point, now he was acting like a desperate guy. Desperate guys did stupid shit. Ari was right to be cautious. “Do you want to take a look around back, first?”
She swallowed hard. “Sure.”
He used his phone to give them a little extra light, and followed her around to the rear door. The door—such as it was—had been leaned back into place. It was currently sealed with police tape. A note stuck to the door read: Do Not Enter by Order of the NYPD.
“All right,” Ari said, her voice shaky. “I guess I’m not looking in there tonight.”
They walked back to the street. “The door can be fixed pretty easily,” O’Doul offered uselessly.
“I know,” she sighed.
He walked her through the nighttime silence to the front door, where she took out a set of keys with shaking hands. He was pleased to see that she had two dead bolts on her door. That would slow down an unwelcome visitor for sure. After the second lock clicked open, he followed her inside.
She flipped on an overhead light, her eyes darting around the room.
“Look okay?” he asked.
“So far, so good. I don’t think anyone was here.”
“Let’s just have a look.” He stepped around her into the tidy living room. If her ex had broken in here, he hadn’t left a trace. Aside from a paperback book face down on the coffee table, there was nothing out of place. He walked toward the back of the house, past an old-fashioned dining table, into a small kitchen. There was nobody there.
“Is there access from the basement into your apartment?”
“Yes and no. I’ll show you.” She led him over to a six-panel wooden door at the juncture between the dining room and the kitchen. It had an old-fashioned metal sliding-bolt lock on it. “This is the basement door. I never open it because there’s no light over the stairs.”
“Okay. And nobody came through here tonight. You’d know.”
“Right. I’d have another broken door. So it looks like he didn’t try to get inside the house. Or he didn’t have enough time.” She turned and walked toward the front of the house, still looking warily into every corner.
He followed her, catching up to where she stood eyeing the stairs to the second floor. “You hear anything up there?”
She shook her head.
He stepped around her and climbed the stairs, flipping on a light switch at the top. He scanned each of the two bedrooms and the generous en suite bathroom with the old claw-foot tub. Ari’s room was just as they’d left it two days ago—the board still in place at the window.
“Does it look okay?” she asked, coming up behind him.
“Sure, sweetheart.” He scanned the corners. “Except we missed this chunk of glass.” He set down both their travel bags for a second to fetch a rather large shard from against the baseboard. Then he tossed it into the same wastepaper basket they’d used to clean up the first time. The action of straightening up again gave his head a stab of pain, damn it. He scrubbed his forehead.
Ari’s face fell. “Are you all right?” She reached for his head as if on instinct, and a second later her massage-therapist’s fingers were smoothing his brow line.
I’m fine. The words didn’t quite make it out, though, because he was suddenly overwhelmed by how near Ari was, and by her big brown eyes looking right into his.
Her hand stilled, the palm warming his face.
The moment yawned open between them, and it suddenly seemed as if everything had already been decided. When he leaned toward Ari, she didn’t even look surprised. As he lowered his lips to brush against hers, he had the sensation that the first kiss had been planned sometime between his fall on the ice and the pouring of their drinks on the plane. And that the sweet little gasp she made now had been decided the minute she’d lifted her bag into the taxi they’d decided to share at the airport.
He pressed his lips against her softer ones, leaning in to deepen the kiss. She tasted like lime juice and sweetness. Her hands slid down from his achy head to the back of his neck, her body pressing closer. He parted her lips with the force of his kiss, and she opened for him immediately.
The moan she made when their tongues touched was better therapy than anything she’d ever done for him on a massage table.
TEN
Yoga was all about living in the moment, and focusing one’s attention on the body. Ari found herself suddenly very motivated by both the moment and the body.
Two bodies.
All the pent-up stress of the last few hours was like dry tinder for the sudden spark of Patrick’s kiss. She gripped the lapels of his jacket and dove right in. He was warm and solid against her. A sudden thunderclap of lust blossomed between the two of them. She
ran a hand down his chest, over the buttons of his shirt, wishing she could touch more of him.
When her palm came to rest on Patrick’s tight stomach just over his belt buckle, he shivered. When he softened their kiss, she found herself holding her breath, waiting to find out what he’d do next. For a moment, they stared into each other’s eyes, their foreheads tipped together. Then he palmed the back of her head and began kissing a path down her jaw and onto her neck. When his tongue touched her collarbone, chills rose up on her chest. And there was nothing on earth she wanted more than his hands and his mouth on her body.
There was no doubt in her mind that they’d be naked and on her bed before she could say impulsive much?
Not all impulses were bad.
Patrick’s hands skimmed down her back, cupping her derrière. He yanked her hips against his body. Then his mouth was back on hers, kissing her so deeply that she tasted only him. He made a needy, hungry grunt from the back of his throat, and the sound caused her pulse to jump again.
“Tell me to stop,” he said between kisses. His hand traveled downward still, lifting her thigh and tucking it against his leg, opening her body to him. That naughty hand slipped under the hem of her dress, the heat of his palm searing her as it traveled across her bottom. “Tell me to stop,” he repeated.
She did not tell him to stop.
Instead, she took a half step back, then hooked two fingers in his belt and towed him toward the bed until the backs of her thighs hit the mattress. She sat down, lifting her eyes to check his expression.
The heat in his gaze as he shrugged off his suit coat could burn the little house right down. “So I’m staying?” he asked, his voice pure gravel.
Instead of answering, she grasped the fabric of her dress and lifted it over her head, leaving only a lacy black bra and the tights she was wearing.
His lustful expression said, challenge accepted.
He tossed his jacket onto a chair without a glance, then leaned over to kiss her, his hand landing on her breast. The rough pad of his thumb stroked the sensitive skin just above her bra.