Loud Mouth Read online

  Clink of his glass to Christensen’s: You should do this.

  They both got up while Shelby looked from one of them to the other. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m taking you ice-skating,” he said as he got up. “It’ll be fun. I’ll hold on to you and everything so you don’t have to worry about falling.”

  As she stood up, a nervous giggle squeaked out and she slapped her palm over her mouth as if to hold in any more high-pitched noises. Her cheeks turned pink and she immediately looked over at the big table of Ice Knights players. It wasn’t the first time she’d reacted like that whenever her volume went above the minimum. For someone who looked like such a badass, she seemed to just want to only be heard at the keyboard when she was writing for The Biscuit.

  He couldn’t explain the urge that had him reaching out to bring her hand down; he just went with it. “You have a great laugh.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, but it seemed to do the trick and the tension in her shoulders seeped out.

  He and Shelby said their goodbyes to the rest of the team and walked out of the restaurant right into the blinding flash of the lone photographer lying in wait outside the door.

  “So what’s the story?” asked a guy with drips from today’s lunch mixed in with the bright flowers of his Hawaiian shirt. “A little brotherly sharing?”

  Ian had Shelby behind him and was in the other man’s face in an instant. “Fuck you.”

  “Go ahead, big boy.” The photographer took a few steps back as he lifted his camera and grabbed a few quick shots. “I’ll get the whole thing in pics and sue you for all you’ve got.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Ian snarled, an angry fire eating its way up from his gut.

  “That may be,” the other man said as he walked away. “But at least I don’t have to fight for the scraps left by my dad and brother.”

  And that’s when all of Ian’s locks clicked into place, one after the other, dead bolts turning closed so that the anger was shut away behind layers of steel and titanium. His breaths became longer, slower, his gaze cleared as all the red fury dissipated, and everything inside him went icy cold. It was exactly what had happened when he’d heard that he and Christensen shared half their DNA, exactly what had happened the first time in college when a national sports reporter said he was a cheap copy of the old man, and exactly what happened every time his dad stood on the other side of the wall at the rink and watched Ian’s practices with barely concealed disappointment.

  Shelby stepped closer, slipping her fingers between his and squeezing. “We can just head back to the hotel.”

  “No, that asshole isn’t going to stop us.” He’d learned that early. People would talk, they’d try to cut him open and take a peek inside, but he’d never really let them see. He refused to open up in front of them. It’s how he stayed safe. He wasn’t about to forget that lesson and let the gawkers win now. “Come on—it’ll be fun.”

  …

  Shelby and Ian obviously had different definitions of fun. His was balancing on teeny-tiny blades without letting his ankles wobble while going backward. Hers was eating store-bought raw cookie dough from a bucket.

  “You’ve got this,” Ian said, his hands holding hers in a strong, steady grip as he guided her around the practice facility’s ice. “Just keep it steady.”

  That was easy for him to say—he didn’t feel like a newborn calf out here all jelly legs and lurching from foot to foot.

  “You’re doing great,” Ian said, clearly in his element. He hadn’t teetered once.

  Keeping her eyes on her borrowed skates—who knew the team trainer and she had the same size feet?—she did a shuffle sorta glide thing to move forward. “You’re a horrible liar.”

  “I don’t do it often.”

  “I know. That’s what I like about you.”

  They took one more half turn around the ice before he led her back over to the wall so she could clutch the top of the divider between the rink and the bench. Meanwhile, he went over it like he was hopping a fence. Show-off.

  Yeah, one you can’t take your eyes off now that you aren’t afraid of face-planting.

  She could look. It was touching that was the problem. She was totally in control about that. Nothing to worry about. Nope. Which was why she was ignoring the “danger, danger” siren blaring in her head and her breath caught when he lifted his arms to stretch and the hem of his shirt went up, showing off the bottom half of a six pack she desperately wanted to lick.

  That is very much not a good idea, Shelby, no matter how tempting.

  And it was so very, very tempting.

  “So your parents never took you to a rink?” Ian asked as he unscrewed the thermos he’d brought from the visitors’ locker room along with the skates.

  “My mom was usually working a couple of jobs and hunting for her next husband in her off time.” The drama, the excitement, the loosey-goosey thrill of first falling for someone, that’s the part that had always been addictive for her mom. “There has never been a person who loved love like my mom. It was her hobby.”

  “Not yours?” He handed her the thermos.

  The smell of hot chocolate wafted up from the opening, and she took a small sip before answering. “No, I went in for peach schnapps and then cheap gin.”

  “Started early?”

  Did freshman year of high school count as early? Probably. “Quit early, too.”

  “What happened?”

  Usually people danced around the subject. Not Ian. He went at it head-on, just like a face-off in the circle. It might annoy some people, but she appreciated the honesty of it. Somehow it made whatever was sizzling between them feel more solid, possible. That way was dangerous thinking, but she couldn’t seem to help it around him.

  “I went to rehab after hitting rock bottom.” More like landing with a hard splat against it. “I’d lied to myself about not having a problem. I woke up one morning in the drunk tank, no money, no apartment anymore, and no friends who weren’t sick of my self-destructive behavior. I went back home. I thought that would fix everything.” Naive? Hopeful? Delusional? Probably a mix of all three. “Can you believe it didn’t? It went badly. My mom got a counselor and staged an intervention. It sure wasn’t pretty, but we got through it. I went to rehab. Then I went again a few months later—relapses are no joke. And now here I am, six years later flirting with disaster again.”

  “My name’s Ian, not disaster.”

  Oh God. The man was bad at jokes. Still, she was chuckling even as she attempted to glide back from the wall while maintaining her balance. “I’m talking about this job. It changed everything for me, gave The Biscuit some legitimacy. Do you know how hard that can be for a woman-led hockey blog?”

  She wobbled left and then right and threw her arms outward to grab hold of the wall, but she missed it. Instead she clamped on to a strong forearm right as she tipped backward. The motion pulled him forward and he let out a loud “oof” as he hit the half wall in front of the bench. Fast as a heartbeat, he grabbed her flailing free hand and pulled her to the wall so she could grasp it and get her balance back.

  “Oh my God.” Heart beating so fast her pulse sounded like a tsunami in her ears, she looked up at him as he grimaced. “Did I break you?”

  One side of his mouth shot up in a smirk. “You should definitely check me out.”

  “Why? What hurts, I—” Realization hit. He was fucking with her. “I don’t get it. You’re grunting one minute and joking the next.”

  He shrugged and came back out on the ice with her. “Like you said, I’m an onion.”

  “Okay, Shrek.”

  It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to take his hand—for balance support, of course—as they slow skated around the rink.

  “You don’t think I’m a man of great depth?”

  He did a spin
move so he was again going backward and they were face-to-face, holding hands, alone together in the practice facility. Her mom would call it romantic. She knew better. This was trouble in man form.

  “What happened back there with the photographer?”

  He pulled his arms in, tugging her closer but still leaving space so their skates didn’t tangle. “He was a jackass.”

  She wasn’t in disagreement there. “Yeah, but I’m talking about when you went into robot mode. You just shut down completely.”

  “So what? You as a member of the media are trying to get me to spill my trade secrets for surviving the media?”

  “Is that how you think of me?” Ow. That landed with a big thump right against her solar plexus. “That I’m like the paparazzi guy?”

  “Of course not.” Ian did a half turn so they were hip to hip, holding hands as they skated.

  She glanced over at him, having instant lusty ideas about the feel of his beard scruff against her skin before yanking herself back to reality. “Then ’fess up.”

  “For as long as I can remember, there has been media.” His jaw hardened and he looked up into the stands as if he expected a reporter or photographer to be up there now documenting his every move. “First it was all about my dad; then they started to actually look at me. They weren’t really doing that, though.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice one, more of a defense mechanism than a sign of happiness. “They were looking to see how I measured up against the old man. The judgment was always the same: a poor man’s David Petrov.”

  Those fuckers. She wanted to find them now and she’d…well, she didn’t know what but something. “That’s not fair. You’re—”

  “A journeyman player,” he interrupted. “I get that. I’ve made peace with it. I love the game, but I’m not going to be a Hall of Famer like my dad or a career that lasts decades like Christensen—the real recipient of the Petrov hockey talent.”

  He said it as if it didn’t matter, but she wasn’t fooled. No one got to this level of play unless they wanted to be the best. Ian may not be good at lying to her, but he seemed to excel at lying to himself.

  “I’ve got another year or two, and then I’ll go into coaching. I’m actually looking forward to it.” This time his grin was genuine, but it faded quickly. “Of course, that’s not the story the media will report. For them it will be all about my failures.”

  “Change the narrative.” The ideas popped into her head one after the other. “You could—”

  He lifted their hands, brushing his lips across her knuckles in a move that sent a sizzle of desire zinging through her.

  “It’s not worth it.” He lowered their hands again. “There is nothing in the world worth opening myself up to everyone’s judgment and splashing myself all over the hockey sites.”

  “Is that why you grunt so much?” she asked, lightening the mood with a teasing question.

  “Maybe it’s because I don’t know what to say around you.”

  She snorted in disbelief. “Like the girl with the voice of a ten-year-old is in the least bit intimidating.”

  “I’m not intimidated,” he said, bringing them to a stop right at center ice and turning all of his attention to her. “I’m fascinated.”

  Oh my.

  Oh.

  My.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth as tactile as a touch that set her on fire and all she wanted was to get licked by the flames.

  “We’d better get back to the hotel before curfew,” she said, fumbling to hold on to her better judgment. “Can’t break the rules.”

  “Not that one anyway.”

  Not any of them, because when it came to Ian Petrov, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to go back again to pretending there was nothing between them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  This was a dumb decision.

  Still, here Ian was, the night before the last game of the road trip, standing outside Shelby’s Vancouver hotel room at one in the morning with a brand-new black eye and absolutely no idea what he was going to do. He should turn around and go right back to his room. He’d spent Seattle and Vegas trying to keep his distance as much as he could when they spent every meal and more together. But tonight, he’d been lying on his bed staring at the ceiling

  Oh, fuck it.

  He tapped lightly on her door. If she was sleeping, she wouldn’t hear and he’d go back to his room. She was probably asleep anyway and— The door opened.

  Wearing a black tank top that dipped low over the upper swells of her tits and leggings that made her legs seem even longer, Shelby stood in the opening. All the racket thundering in his head since the game ended, spurred on by adrenaline and an overtime win, settled.

  The TV was on behind her but there wasn’t any sound. The covers on her bed were rumpled, but the pillows were propped up on the headboard as if she’d been sitting up in bed, not lying down trying to sleep.

  “Is everything okay?” She stepped close, looking up at him with concern, her attention focusing in on his latest injury. “Do you need help? Is it your eye? That was such a cheap shot from Evanston. Total high stick.”

  “I’m fine.” He managed to stifle the urge to touch the heart of the bruise where Doc had given him two quick stitches before sending him back out for the second period. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  She crossed her arms and narrowed her gaze, the little vee of worry wrinkling her forehead smoothing out into are-you-kidding-me annoyance. “I am not currently accepting booty calls.”

  Way to go, Petrov. So smooth. Amazing. How are women not falling at your feet wherever you go?

  “It’s not that.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. If I invite you in, the next step in the plan is to tell me that you just want to stretch out and we’d both be more comfortable on the bed?”

  “Is that the kind of guy you think I am?” He wasn’t. He was a grown-ass man, not a frat boy.

  She looked down at her bare wrist as if she were wearing a watch. “It’s after midnight and you just knocked on my hotel door to tell me you couldn’t sleep.”

  Okay, she had a point. And if he understood why in the hell he was there instead of watching episodes of The Office that he’d seen a million times already, per usual for a road trip, he would have told her. Instead, the best he could do was try not to sound as lame as he felt at the moment.

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “These will stay here the whole time.”

  She sighed and shook her head, but instead of closing the door in his face, she opened it up farther and stepped back. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  “Never.”

  At least not on purpose.

  …

  Shelby had just hit post on her latest dispatch for The Biscuit, so everything was scattered in her room—yeah, that was definitely her bra in the middle of the bed—and her head was equally a mess, which was the only sorta reasonable explanation she could give for letting Ian into her hotel room at one in the morning.

  There was no way this was a good idea, but there was no way she was turning him away.

  The truth was that she didn’t want to.

  It was their last night on the road. Tomorrow after the game, they’d be back on the team plane and headed to reality and Harbor City. No more late-night ice-skating lessons or dinners together or riding up in hotel elevators so close that they could touch but keeping their distance because once they did, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop.

  Hands stuffed in his pockets, Ian glanced over at her silent TV with the captions turned on. “The Office?”

  “Comfort watch.” She needed something in the background to distract her or else she would have been thinking about him instead of finishing her last post from the road.

  He nodded, then his attention was centered back on her—hot and intense. “It�
��s what I had on, too.”

  “So tomorrow night after the game, we fly home,” she said, floundering for something to talk about when chitchat was the last thing she wanted with Ian in her room.

  “No more dinners at the kiddie table.”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  Wow. Amazing repartee, Shelby.

  Really, it was the best she could do under the circumstances. Ian Petrov was here in her hotel room and all she wanted was to finish what he’d started with that kiss.

  Because I like you.

  Who said that and then walked away? Ian Petrov, the hottest and most frustrating man she knew.

  They stood next to each other, barely a few steps apart. His hands were still stuffed in his hoodie pockets, but that didn’t make a difference. Every nerve in her body was tuned in to him. The urge to be closer to him had her taking another step toward him before she realized what she was doing. His hands were still in his pockets. Hers should be, too.

  Instead, her fingertips burned with the need to touch him—to trace the line of his jaw, glide over the hard planes of his chest, to stroke and feel and memorize him. It was all she could do to ignore that need building inside her, making her whole body melt when all he was doing was looking at her.

  “We can’t,” she said, sounding as if it wasn’t a statement but a breathy question even to her own ears.

  He stood still as a statue while the air between them was heavy with anticipation. “I know.”

  “I want to.” Like a scuba diver needed an oxygen tank. Her lungs were tight as desire whipped through her, a wildfire on the verge of getting out of control.

  He nearly closed the distance between them, still not touching her but coming oh so close, and gave her a half grin. “My hands have to stay in my pockets.”

  That was all it took to break her. The smart-ass response accompanied by the small lift of one side of his lips into that crooked smile of his—cocky and teasing all at once. It gave a glimpse of the man beneath the grunts and the growly attitude he tried to project as his true self. But she knew better. It was a cover, just like going cold around the media. The real Ian Petrov had layers.