“Occasionally just to freak people out.” She opened the bathroom door a crack and peeked out. “Coast is clear.”
They walked out into what he assumed was a break room of some sort. There were windows on one end of the room, and he peeked through the closed blinds. There had to be a hundred people out there already. His boys were already set up working the booths. Phillips was handing out miniature fishing poles to kids trying to hook floating rings that would earn them a goldfish swimming in a plastic baggie.
“So we have to go out there?” he asked as he turned around to face her.
Fallon gave him a sassy grin and picked up the wet suit. “Your public awaits.”
Yeah, he was not looking forward to putting that thing on. In fact, he didn’t remember agreeing to a dunk tank. He was about to open his mouth and point that fact out, but the smile on Fallon’s mouth shut him straight up. He didn’t want to do anything to ruin that.
Hell. He was fucked. She was his Lady Luck. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew it was just a superstition, but without that, what draw would he have to keep talking to her and touching her and being with her? Even if she was the type to go for him for the money, she knew his secret that he didn’t have any. She sure wasn’t drawn to him because of his fame or his personality. The sex, though—they both enjoyed the hell out of that. Maybe if he could figure out how to keep that going, he could ensure she’d stay interested—not forever, his parents had driven that message home with a Mack truck, but for a while. Was that too much to ask?
Clearing his throat, he shook all the touchy-feely, old wounds shit out of his head. “I’m pretty sure your brothers are out there fighting with my teammates to see who gets to be first at throwing softballs at the bullseye to send me into the dunk tank.”
“Probably.” She held out the suit.
It took him all of three steps to cross the room and take it from her when what he really wanted to do was toss the suit down to the table again, throw her over his shoulder, and take her back to his place. “And what are you going to be doing while I’m doing that?”
Rising up on her tiptoes, she gave him a soft kiss that packed a harder punch than any he’d taken on the ice. “I’m going to sneak to the front of the line while all the boys are arguing amongst themselves.”
Now that sounded exactly like something Fallon would do. She really was nobody’s fool. “We need to talk after this.”
She cocked her head to one side. “About what?”
“Us.” Shit, he hadn’t meant to say that; it just sort of came out.
Concern flittered across her face, and she took a step back. “Zach—”
“Don’t say anything now,” he cut her off, hating the way her hesitation twisted his gut into a knot. “Just hear me out later. That’s all I ask.”
“I can do that.” She gave him another kiss that sent a shockwave straight to his dick and walked over to the door before pausing halfway through it. “Remember to watch out when you’re in that dunk tank because I’ve got a mean fastball.”
And with that, she disappeared out the door.
All the oxygen in the room came back in a hot blast, nearly knocking him on his ass. This was insanity—and yet he couldn’t get the very unnatural-feeling grin off his face, one that remained on his face when he walked out of the break room in the wet suit a few minutes later and ran smack into Marty. The photographer was leaning up against the wall, a single camera strung around his neck.
Unease slithered up Zach’s spine, and he fought the urge to stop in his tracks. If Marty was here, there was a reason for it, and it wasn’t to cover the clinic’s fundraiser.
“You trolling the charity beat now, man?” Zach asked, keeping his tone friendly as he started down the hall toward the door leading to the back parking lot where the booths were set up.
“I go where the story is,” the photographer said, keeping step with Zach. “Word is your parents are making a comeback.”
Bile rose in his throat, burning the back of his mouth, but he managed not to falter in his steps. “What do you mean?”
“They’re trying—so far unsuccessfully—to lock down other hockey players as management clients, using you as an example of what they can do,” Marty said. “Of course, they aren’t your managers anymore. Why is that?”
Zach stopped and pivoted until he was face-to-face with the photographer. Marty might work the gossip side of the business now, but he’d supposedly been an award-winning investigative journalist at one point. According to Lucy, the man could smell a good story and fear—which were kind of the same thing. That meant Zach’s only option was to brazen it out, as if the idea of his parents getting their claws into some rookie wasn’t the most terrifying thing he’d ever heard in his life—one he’d have to find a way to stop. There was no way his parents could ever be allowed to do to some kid what they’d done to him.
Looking down, Zach gave the other man a smile that wasn’t the least bit friendly. “You really should stick to gossip photos. You’re starting to see stories where there aren’t any.”
“That’s not what my sources say.”
“Are your sources Bobby and Donna Blackburn?” It wouldn’t surprise him. Honestly, he hoped they were, because they were just the sort of people to make up mystery players they couldn’t name out loud because they didn’t exist.
Marty shrugged. “A journalist never tells.”
The happy screams of kids filtered in from outside as they fished for prizes and tossed balls into milk jugs for stuffed animals. Through the door’s window, he spotted Stuckey sitting at the autograph booth putting a kid up on his shoulders and making a goofy face while the kid’s mom took their picture. It was all so fucking wholesome it made his gut twitch.
Yeah, your parents didn’t fuck your head at all, did they, Blackburn?