She didn’t showruns on a loop in my brain, and by the time I find the signs pointing toward the restrooms, tears are streaming out of my eyes and down my cheeks.
As I go to blink them back, they keep coming. I take off my glasses and march toward the lit Ladies’ sign like it can save me from drowning.
I’m nearly there—I can see the sign a few feet in front of me—when I drop my purse. The heel of my combat boot catches on the shoulder strap.
I go headlong into space and slam into someone.
Someone solid.
An arm comes around my back and steadies me as I flail my arms, wildly looking for purchase.
My glasses leave my hand as the aroma of man plus…goldfish crackers?...hits my nose.
“Daddy, is she okay?”
Oh, God.
I’ve landed in the arms of a dad.
How utterly humiliating. He’s probably laden down with kids, and his wife’s going to be feeling sorry for me and…
I step back from his solid chest, swipe at my eyes, and look up.
Straight into the eyes of Liam Storm.
The hot single dad who also happens to be a huge hockey star for the New Orleans Fire. His twin brothers are engaged to my two friends; one is my bestie, and the other, my coworker.
Which makes avoiding Liam next to impossible.
But I try.
Oh, do I try.
It helps that he lives in New Orleans and I’m in Montana.
But this morning, I’m in New Orleans. And…
I may not be wearing my glasses, but I’m only two feet away from my savior, and I’d recognize those laser-green eyes anywhere.
Like this day could get any worse.
Liam’s face is half-hidden beneath a ball cap, and his dark hair peeking out beneath matches his neatly-trimmed goatee. He’s dressed casually in worn blue jeans and a long-sleeved forest green shirt that shows off his gorgeous eyes.
He’s holding tightly to the hand of a blond little girl with the bluest eyes.
I suck in a mortified breath.
Liam and I had a rocky start, mostly due to my big mouth, and we never really recovered.
I was at a bar with my girlfriends when Liam showed up with his brothers after a hockey game he was in town for. Everyone was laughing about how Liam got hit on outside the restroom by a woman who asked him to sign her bra. Everyone except for me. The flash of jealousy that cut through me shocked the heck out of me, and I opened my big mouth.
“Gross,” I couldn’t help saying.
“Then, she slipped him her number,” my friend, Jamie Beth, said laughing.
Liam shrugged in a way that irritated me even more. “She called herself a super fan.”
“More like a super flirt,” I muttered.
