Wild Zone (Rough Riders Hockey 4)

“Do they do four year programs there?” Beckett asked.

Forget it. He wasn’t staying for this conversation, blocked path or no blocked path. He started toward the exit.

“No. Three months to two years depending on the program. The scholarship is for the one-year track. Tate,” she said as he headed toward the door at her left. “I need to talk to you a minute, please.”

Beckett glided over to Tate and pushed him back a ways. “Let me take your gear.” His friend reached out and grabbed Tate’s hockey stick, but grabbed Tate’s glove as well, holding him there. He met Tate’s gaze deliberately, and kept his voice low. “She’s real. She may not be perfect, but no one is. Including you, bro. But she’s real. She’s got a good heart. And she is two hundred percent zeroed in on you.”

He didn’t want to hear that. Beckett was one of those guys who could get a sense of a person within five or ten minutes of meeting them. He could read their true nature through things like eye contact, word choice, body language, facial cues, voice tone and other intangible, unquantifiable characteristics. And he’d been so dead on accurate over the years, guys on the team often asked him to vet women before they invested emotionally or financially in them.

Beckett had told Tate several times he didn’t think Tate should marry Lisa. But he’d never mentioned it again once they were married. And never once rubbed the breakup in Tate’s face.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tate told him. “Remember? The whole France thing?”

Beckett jerked the stick out of Tate’s hand. “Get. Over. It. Get over it or you’re going to spend your whole goddamned life alone and miserable. Is that what you want?”

“No. But I don’t want to spend it getting fucked over either.”

“Then put up some fucking walls, take the hits, get a few scars and get your ass back in the game, just like you do out here. This is only half your life. Don’t live only half your life. Stop being a pussy and take some control.”

He skated off the ice, said goodbye to Olivia and disappeared into the locker room, leaving Tate and Olivia alone in a huge arena, staring across the ice at each other. And Tate got that sick feeling in his gut, the one he got right before he and Lisa had always started fighting.

So he did what Beckett told him to do. He put his head down, planted his hands at his hips and glided her direction while he shored up the skeletal barriers he’d put in place over the last week. Because he knew how freakishly sophomoric it was to be twisted over a woman he’d known, what? A day? Could he even say he’d known her a week when they’d only spent one night together?

He was disgusted with himself when he slowed near the wall where she was standing with her hands piled on the ledge. When he met her gaze, he found her grinning, A silly little grin that lit up her pretty eyes with a familiar mischief. One that did all sorts of crazy things to him, heart, body, and soul.

“Hi,” she said, soft, but chipper. Then she pulled the corner of her lip between her teeth and bent over the wall, grabbing for his jersey.

“Whoa…“ Tate shot backward hands up, then realized how stupid he looked, and skated a circle as if he hadn’t just acted like a first grader trying to get away from a girl. He huffed a laugh, “No, no, no. Been there, done that. Learned my lesson.”

“Tate,” she complained, leaning on the wall with her forearms. “Come here. I just want to say hello.”

He skated random slow patterns just out of her reach. “You say ‘I just want to say hello’, I hear ‘I just want to fuck you up’.”

She sagged, propped one elbow on the wall and dropped her chin in her hand. “I’m sorry about what happened with Quinn.”

“So am I.” He still felt the mortification of the moment burn

in his gut. “And she wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“Pffft. She couldn’t wait to ream me.”

“Is that all?” he asked, trying really hard to keep his voice even, cool, unemotional. “Cause I’ve been working all day. I really want to take a shower, get food and pass out.”

She straightened and frowned at him. He could have handled it if that damned pouty lip of hers hadn’t come out. “Can’t we talk a minute?”

“I don’t want to cut into the little time you have left here.” He started toward the exit again.

And, sonofabitch, she stepped in his path. “You know we need to talk.”

Fuuuuuuuuuck. They did need to talk. It was inevitable. But he didn’t want to do it now. He skated backward to put some distance between them, then made a small circle trying to get his emotions under control.

When he turned toward her again, he found her sitting on the half wall, her legs hanging into the rink, plain white Keds with no laces on her feet. He had no damned idea why he found that so freakin’ adorable, but it pulled at his heart in half a dozen different ways.

He scraped his skates to a halt, put his hands at his hips, met her gaze and waited. Memories pressed in from all sides. Split second video clips of their night. Olivia arching into him as he sucked her nipple into his mouth, moaning and riding him faster. Calling out his name and driving her hands into his hair as he bit down. Sprawled out on his stomach, still panting when Olivia sauntered back from the bathroom, draped her still-sweaty body across his back and released a handful of condoms on the mattress in front of his face with, “Catch your breath, stud. I want more of what you’re dishing tonight.”

Olivia’s exasperated exhale pulled Tate back as she glanced toward the hundred foot ceiling and straightened. “Can we, I don’t know, go for a drink or something?”

He frowned. “Really?”