Hot Puck (Rough Riders Hockey 2)

sistance look like a toddler’s tantrum.”

He laughed and stroked her face, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love that tough streak. I just wish it wasn’t over a safety issue. Have you always had it?”

“Born that way. Unfortunately, most of the people in my past life didn’t even like it, let alone love it.”

“Is that why your family’s not helping you now? Or can’t they afford it?”

She snorted a laugh. “Oh, they could afford it. But what they spent their money on always held an element of self-benefit. My father would have paid for a business degree. Nothing but a business degree. I got into a handful of top schools out of high school, including his alma mater, Columbia. The funny part is that I wasn’t the one who applied. He did. And when I refused to go for business, well…”

She shrugged and sighed. “Doesn’t matter now. One of the most important things this job has taught me is how incredibly fragile life is. And how short. How you can be alive one moment and dead the next. Just…gone. No second chances, no coming back. That’s it.”

Her voice held a deeply emotional note Beckett couldn’t quite place. There was a sort of realistic sadness there, but something else too. Something painful.

“So I’m glad I didn’t cave,” she went on. “But even though I have a tough streak, I have an even wider pleaser streak, and I did spend too many years trying to find ways to make up for that huge failure in my father’s eyes. And that turned out way worse.”

So he’d been right about her coming from money too. That wasn’t making him feel good about the other hunches he’d developed. “Is that why you don’t talk to them now?”

“One of many reasons. After two and a half decades of their control, disapproval, and impossible standards, I cut ties. Came here. Started over.”

That might be part of the story, but Beckett heard a huge gap between the impossible standards and cutting ties. He was sure what she was telling him now was the tip of the iceberg.

“And you’re doing everything yourself?” he asked. “Paying for school, expenses, on your own? With the money you make at the ambulance company?”

“Mmm-hmm. It’s tight, but I manage. I don’t need much.”

No, she certainly didn’t need much. She demanded even less. “Do you miss it? The money, the comfort? I didn’t go to college, barely made it out of high school, but this doesn’t seem comfortable or safe or conducive to studying. Or even life, for that matter. It’s not like you could exactly hang with friends here.”

“Depends on the friends.” She lifted her face to his again, and a smile curled her lips. “You’re here.”

He laughed. “Good point.”

She stroked her thumb across his jaw. “I prefer this sparse, autonomous life to luxuries that come with a price tag in the form of emotional blackmail. And no, I don’t miss material things. Those equate to confinement at best, imprisonment at worst. Material things don’t hold any more importance to me than title or fame or money.” She shot him a grin. “Sorry, hotshot. I’m pretty crazy about you for you. And, come to think of it, in spite of all your trappings.”

The thrill that cut through Beckett shocked him. He pulled her closer, lifted her chin, and covered her mouth with his. She opened to him, kissing him with a hunger that mirrored the one stirring in his body again.

Beckett pulled away with a groan. “What I would give for a few uninterrupted days with you.”

She thought that was funny. “That’s so far out of my realm of reality, I don’t even know what that would look like. I like to think I’d be able to take some time off after school, between jobs, but that’s probably not realistic.”

“You’re not staying at Capital Ambulance?”

“They don’t offer advanced life support. They’re a basic haul-and-drop outfit. As a paramedic, my base rate will double what I make now.”

“So, where will you work?”

“I can either work for another ambulance company that employs paramedics or get onto a paramedic rig with a fire department. I’ll stay at Capital until I find a paramedic job, but the good ones aren’t all that common. I don’t want to work for a transporter, where all I do is move people from one place to another. I want a job where I’m working directly with people who need the help.”

“The front lines.”

“Exactly.”

He chuckled. “You’ve got a little adrenaline junkie in you.”

“I guess I never thought about it that way.”

“I live it, so I recognize the signs of illness.”

She grinned. “I’m nowhere near as sick as you.”