I blink up from the pavement, heart pounding, and immediately wish I could crawl into the gutter. Because I know this jogger, and the dog at his side wagging his tail.
Logan Miller. Defenseman for the Colorado Storm, my brother’s teammate, and member of our unofficial Sunday brunch club. Affectionately known asPookieto those who can get away with it.
Dusty, his golden retriever, yips happily as Miso rockets toward him, squeaking with joy. But the second Logan leans down, Miso switches from adoration to war cry, snapping at his shoelace.
I flop back on my elbows, stare up at the sky, and wonder if faking my death would be too dramatic.
“…and that’s why you need to stop prioritizing his orgasm over yours, babe. You deserve the fireworks, the whole damn parade! The yesyesYESSS!”
My arm darts out to grope for the phone in the hedge, smacking my hand against twigs until I finally grab it and stab at the volume button.
Logan looks down at me, one brow raised over steady brown eyes, his light sandy brown hair darkened with sweat and plastered to his forehead. His shadow cuts over me, the sunlight haloing the edges of his shoulders in a way that makes my chest feel inconveniently warm.
My eyes wander to his sculpted torso, then lower to those ridges of thigh muscle that every hockey player seems to have peeking out from under their shorts.
“You good, Lu?”
Shit.
The way he says my name does ridiculous things to my stomach.
I lurch up and clear my throat, feeling as flustered as roadkill Barbie. “Define good.”
He glances at his shirt, now sopping in the irony of Green Goddess Explosion, and his mouth does that twitch thing that Iswearis him trying not to laugh. As his eyes lift back to mine, they skim lower. Just a flicker, quick enough he could blame it on checking me for injuries, but the heat that prickles across my chest says otherwise.
“This your breakfast?”
“Itwas,” I mutter, scrambling to my feet and wiping my leggings. “May it rest in peace.”
I pat myself down with what’s left of my dignity. My blonde hair’s falling out of its scrunchie, my baby blue crop top has a green handprint on the boob, and I still have the ghost of the sex-positive podcast haunting my ears.
Logan bends to untangle Miso’s leash from around Dusty’s leg, not flinching when Miso bares her teeth at him, a tiny gargoyle on red alert.
He’s so calm. So casual. So annoyingly competent. I have an almost uncontrollable urge to mess up that composure just to see what happens.
“Eli and Tamara leave you in charge of this psycho again?” he asks, nodding toward Miso.
“Yep.” I shimmy the waistband of my matching leggings. “Off on another pre-season sex romp. Told me to take care of the house and keep Miso from starting fights with passing wildlife.”
His eyes slide back to Miso, who is now trying to dominate Dusty via an aggressive butt-sniffing ritual. “She’s doing great.”
“Thank you, I’ve been training her in diplomacy.”
The corners of his mouth curl, Logan’s version of a grin. A beat of silence follows, which isn’t awkward, just charged—as ifhe’s waiting for me to say something. Or maybehewants to say something, but he won’t.
He didn’t used to be like this. When I first met him at Eli and Tamara’s wedding last summer, he was a bit gruff, but not this tense or unreadable.
Back then, he teased me. Made dry comments in that deep voice of his. Rolled his eyes when I made him hold my purse at brunch, got flustered if I dared to flirt in his direction.
And god help me, I liked it.
But I’m starting to think maybe I imagined it. The teasing. The flicker. The thing that sparked in my chest any time he looked at me and held my gaze for a moment too long.
With the boys, he jokes. But with me, he’s polite. Distant and irritatingly immune to my charms. I suspect I’ve been placed in theEli’s Little Sisterbox and locked away for safety.
Which means I’ve obviously developed a raging crush on him.
“I’m also walking here because I’m—uh—looking at a house nearby.”
