Which was completely the wrong way to feel.
She shoved all thoughts of Tank from her head, pretending it was just another Friday and mentally going over her daily agenda at work. She had a couple of meetings this morning. She usually hated meetings, but today, they would be a welcome distraction.
Grabbing her things, she locked her townhouse door and walked to her car.
It wasn’t until she was halfway to work that her hormones vanished completely and her frantic brain finally kicked back in.
That was when she realized just how bad this was.
The piper had arrived. And he wanted payment in full. Because she only had two hard-and-fast rules she’d sworn to live by since leaving Columbus.
No hockey players.
No one from work.
God, hadn’t she even said those words to Tank during their first meeting at his house? She’d sworn to him she would never date either.
Well, it looked like never had arrived.
And she was fucked.
Chapter Nine
Tank rubbed his eyes wearily, as he dragged himself to yet another boring-ass team meeting.
It had been one week since he’d driven McKenna home from the pub, taken her to her bed—and her couch and her bathroom sink—and had the greatest sex of his life.
He’d woken up the morning after feeling like a million bucks, because McKenna had said she didn’t regret what they’d done. More than that, he genuinely believed she felt the same things he did. That what they’d shared hadn’t been “just sex.”
Or at least that’s what he had believed.
Clearly, the morning after had revealed different things to McKenna, who’d taken avoiding him to the next fucking level. The woman must have been a CIA operative or jewel thief in a previous life, because she was damn good at disappearing whenever he was nearby.
He’d sent countless texts and left an embarrassing number of voicemails asking if she wanted to get together to “advance their fake relationship,” but her responding texts—what few there had been—were brief and all business, claiming everything from “too much work” to “headache” to “Mom in town.” He didn’t think that last one was a lie, because she told him that her mom visited once a month.
The only excuse she hadn’t hit him with was the “staying in to wash my hair” crap.
She’d even managed to avoid their last road trip by convincing Benny to take some intern to their away game in L.A. so the woman could get travel experience.
It had been seven days—and Tank had hit his limit. If he’d felt a little more confident about where she stood, he might have caved and broached the subject about what the sex meant over a text thread, but he decided his only hope for navigating whatever came next was if he waited until they were together, alone, and he could read her expressions and hear her words in person. Interpreting tone of voice in a text was fucking impossible. Too many nuances in word choice and punctuation.
They hadn’t said enough the morning after, and a lot of that was his fault because he’d pulled his punches, stupidly thinking slow and steady was the way to go.
She’d made a couple comments in bed that morning that indicated she still considered things between them to be fake. Unsure how to convince her otherwise, he’d decided to see how things played out the next time they were together. He didn’t realize the next time wasn’t going to happen for a full fucking week.
Today, he was putting his foot down. Even without words, she’d made it perfectly clear she was avoiding him because she regretted sleeping with him.
That hurt. But it wasn’t all that surprising, either. McKenna had only ever slept with men she was in love with, and obviously, the two of them weren’t at that level…yet. Add that to the fact that up until six weeks ago, she viewed him as a manwhore who fucked with reckless abandon, and it was no wonder she was probably kicking herself.
Tank wasn’t sure how to convince her she was NOT another notch on his bedpost, but his history wasn’t working in his favor. Which was why he’d decided to stay the course as far as allowing her to think this was a fake relationship. Actions spoke louder than words, so he needed to show her that he’d changed rather than simply telling her.
Earlier in the week, when she refused to take his calls, Tank had worried that McKenna would convince Benny to drop the fake dating thing. However, as the week wore on and the team’s social media pages made a point of pushing their relationship to the foreground, he started to relax. He didn’t know if those posts were McKenna’s or Roger’s doing, but photos and short snippets about them had appeared almost daily.
There’d been pictures of her with the other wives and girlfriends, cheering in the team box. Several of the photos snapped by the paparazzi outside Pat’s Pub had made their way to the team’s Instagram and Facebook pages. The team had also tagged themselves on the Peewee mom’s video of him chasing McKenna around the ice rink, and the comments accompanying it had been mostly favorable, a lot of people agreeing they were a cute couple.
Of course, there’d been too many cruel ones from catty women claiming he could do better. Trolling comments like that usually rolled off Tank’s back, but that was when they were directed toward him. Hearing people disparage McKenna had him seeing red.
Now, Tank leaned against the wall just outside the large conference room, waiting for his prey. He grinned when he spotted her walking between Benny and Roger. He imagined her purposely placing herself there, fashioning them as her bodyguards.
