Patch Donnelly should have knocked by now.
She wiped her hands on her favorite cat-faced LulaRoe leggings and chanted her favorite mantra. “Say no to stress and yes to ease.” Simple and effective. She repeated it again, and then a third time for good measure.
This was silly. There was no reason to go palm sweaty over a hockey player. After all, her two best friends were marrying the former Hellions captain and the Hellions head coach, respectively. Jed and Tor were just men. More attractive than the average bears, yes. But men just the same.
And even if Patch was a freakishly delicious genetic merging of Chris Hemsworth, Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy, it didn’t matter, because she was a professional. There was to be no mixing business and pleasure. Her lady parts had gone on furlough for this assignment—one-hundred percent out of commission.
Plus he was a ginger.
Red hair returned her to seventeen, and to her senior homecoming dance and the backseat of Chad Taylor’s Toyota Tundra.
She raised her chin and swallowed back a surge of bile. Right now was not the time to skip down memory lane. She had to get her head in the game.
She had one job. Help Patch find his way around a yoga mat. Give him a few skills so that the next time an opponent lit his fuse, he’d calm his tits rather than blow his stack.
She was going to help him discover his best self, and there was a privilege in that, from the point of being a fan. Because Patch Donnelly played hockey the same way Mozart must have worked over the ivories. Every movement was fluid, instinctive. Lightning-quick perfection. Undeniable genius. When at the top of his game, he was a force of nature.
Unstoppable. Unbreakable. Unbeatable.
She wandered to the kitchen counter, picked up a water glass and rubbed her thumb over a trickling drop before setting it back down again.
She braced her hands on the kitchen counter and sucked in a shaky breath. Tor was counting on her to help get his goalie’s head screwed on. And if she succeeded, Breezy was right. This could well be the boost she needed to get on the path to launch her own business.
Squeezing her eyes shut she visualized theSanctuary: Grand Openingbanner hanging over a front door.
She opened one eye and peered at the front door.
Still no knock.
She’d texted Patch her address, but he could have misread it. What if he was at her neighbor’s place, that ob-gyn who worked long hours. What if he thought she wasn’t home, and left, and...
“Shit!” She scurried to the front door. Flinging it open, she rushed out to hunt him down.
White light exploded behind her eyes as the cartilage in her nose pulverized against a sternum.
“Ooof.”She reeled backward, clutching her nose, the sickening crunch ringing in her ears. She loved a rock-hard man chest as much as the next gal, but this was ridiculous. She screwed her eyes shut and dropped her hands. “Is it broken?” she squeaked.
The ions in the air did a subtle shift, ushering in a sensual hint of sun-warm wood, leather and cinnamon chewing gum. Behind the throbbing pain came the unsettling sense of male physical proximity.
Abigmale.
Later, she’d blame the goose bumps peppering the sensitive skin between her shoulder blades as a physiological reaction to the wintry wind gusting through the open door.
“No blood. No bruising.” The low answer was considered and grave, the voice containing more gravel than a backcountry road. “Does it hurt to breathe?”
She took a tentative sniff. “Not really. No.” All seemed well in that department. “I don’t look like a bulldog with a squished-up face?” Her sense of humor returned as the pain began to ebb.
“Bulldog?” That earned her a snort. “Nah, you don’t have the jowls. But just in case, let’s slap something cold on it.”
She opened her eyes just in time to see the backside of the most infamous goalie in the NHL making a beeline for her shoebox kitchen. His straight-cut jeans fit nicely in the seat. Provided the perfect amount of room for a set of seriously well-developed quads.
She trailed in his wake. Common courtesy demanded that she look away, but it took more willpower than she possessed to refocus her attention on herLet That Shit Goframed poster above her floor cushions, or Nibbles, her bubble-eyed goldfish.
He glanced over one shoulder. “Do you mind?”
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted. “I didn’t mean to stare but...” Her voice faded because a) there was no good way to end that sentence and b) his brow furrowed into a genuinely puzzled expression.
“I mean... do you mind if I grab a frozen veggie bag out of your freezer? I don’t want to go busting in like I own the joint.”
