Tomboy

“About time,” he said, his voice a mellow, low rumble. “I’ve been ringing for you for almost ten minutes.”

He dropped his phone on the small table next to the bed and then lounged against the headboard, managing somehow to look down his nose at her even with their current height differential.

Forget killing him, she was going to go after her bestie. It was Lucy’s fault Fallon was even here.

She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten as she recalled all the reasons why the man was a menace and not the solution to her three-month-long sexual dry spell.

He was a selfish player.

He was surly to the press, to the fans, and probably to his neighbor’s dog.

He’d banged a puck bunny tattooed with the logo of the Ice Knights’ most-hated rival.

She counted to another ten while rememberi

ng why she couldn’t off him.

He was Lucy’s client.

He was, for some incomprehensible reason, one of her bestie’s friends.

He had the skills to turn around the Ice Knights’ so-far shitty season if he could remove the giant chip from his shoulder and start playing as if he actually liked hockey again.

Exhaling a deep breath, she reopened her eyes and barely noticed his muscular shoulders this time as she moved away from the door.

There. All better.

She’d managed to pack away the Hartigan attitude, and her temper hadn’t even made an appearance. Bully for her. Now to get back to that cool, clinical demeanor she strove for whenever she was on the clock.

“You rang?” she asked, managing to keep a good 73 percent of her annoyance out of her tone as she walked farther into the room.

…

Yeah, he’d rang for mercy.

Every part of Zach Blackburn ached as if an oversize green muscle-man had plucked him up from the sidewalk and smashed him against one of Harbor City’s skyscrapers.

Some of the biggest names in professional hockey had threatened to tear the defenseman’s head off—several of them were even justified in doing so. Then there were the fans. The last poll of Knights fans had his approval rating at 3 percent. There were bloodthirsty dictators who ranked higher than that. And the media? They’d circled him like vultures waiting to pick the meat off his bones as soon as he’d signed his contract, reporting his every move and mistake.

But it hadn’t been any of those who’d made him wish for death. Sitting up in bed hurt his tortured gut enough that he couldn’t bite back his groan, but he tried to cover it with a cough. He needed to get Fallon out of his house. Something about the woman’s I-will-call-you-on-all-of-your-bullshit attitude got to him.

“I’m fine now, so you can take off,” he grumbled, shoving his hands through his hair, pushing back the part that flopped over his forehead and got in his eyes.

“Not gonna happen,” she said, taking a few more steps inside his bedroom. “I promised Lucy I’d stay until I was sure you were on the mend.”

“And last night was such a good time you wanted to stay here for more? That’s your idea of fun?” It looked like it just might be. Nothing about her, from her no-nonsense braid to her oversize T-shirt and joggers combo, screamed party girl, puck bunny, or anything else close to the women that had surrounded him since it became apparent he was designated for hockey’s big time.

“Since I usually see much worse on a daily basis, I’ll live. Today, it looks like you might, too.” Her gaze flickered down from his face before speeding back up to somewhere just north of his head, her eyes wide. “You need to pull up your covers.”

That made him bristle. The last people who told him that he needed to do something were his folks, who’d gotten him to unknowingly sign contracts for huge loans they’d taken out in his name. They’d called it boring minutiae that he didn’t need to worry about. And because he’d been a trusting moron, he’d believed them. After all, they were, at the time, both his parents and his managers. Who else would better watch out for him? Well, it had turned out the answer to that question was: just about anyone else in the world. The accountant he’d finally hired when he couldn’t shake his suspicions called what his parents had done embezzlement and financial ruin. So long, humiliating, shitty story short, he could give two shits what anyone felt he “needed to do” ever again.

However, something about the pink staining her cheeks had him looking downward. The basketball shorts he’d been wearing when he’d finally collapsed last night onto his king-size bed, the only piece of furniture in the huge bedroom, had worked their way down, waaaaaay down. And Fallon had noticed.

He glanced over at her and caught her snapping her attention back up to his face again as she approached his bed. But her gaze kept dipping back down, her blush deepening with each look. And for the first time in two days, he stopped thinking about how miserable he felt. Fallon Hartigan couldn’t stop looking, even though it was obvious from her grimace that she didn’t want to.

Well, this could be useful. All he wanted was to deal with the grossness of food poisoning on his own. Alone. No one seeing any crack in his defenses. That’s how he lived his life now. He probably always should have. All he had to do was make Fallon want to leave, and acting like a total dickhead would be the fastest way to do that.

“Pull up my covers?” he asked, knowing he was about to put a skate across the line of decency even if he had absolutely zero plans of following through. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time he fought dirty, as many of his opponents on the ice would attest. “If I do that, how are you going to give me a sponge bath before you leave?”