Page 43 of The Big Puck

Not that I’m contemplating doing anything. Shonda can’t get here too soon.

I click the remote to play the clip from practice, and the TV comes on. Then I promptly ignore her with all my concentration on my job until she slips away and leaves me to my work.

* * *

Friday night, I get home before seven on the off chance that Shonda arrives on time. I bring home flowers for her because she loves them, and I figure I owe her an effort since she’s going out of her way to take time off and drive down.

Today, I run up the front walk to enter through the front door to make sure everything is right for Shonda. I pull the stroller inside and put it in the closet. Lainey meets me in the living room and greets me. The house smells delicious, and she’s wearing a hot pink skin-tight dress that shows every curve, making me wonder how I ever thought she looked waiflike.

I stand mute and staring until I pull my eyes away, holding the flowers and hoping she doesn’t think they’re for her.

“These are beautiful, Spencer. For Shonda?”

I nod, relieved. And annoyed. Not sure why. Maybe because Lainey deserves to have someone bring her flowers.

“Let me put them in water,” she says, stepping close to take the flowers from me. Our hands touch, and our gazes latch onto each other, setting off all kinds of sparks like I’m made of tinder and she’s a lit match.

The door bangs open, and I automatically turn into her, wrapping an arm around her to protect her automatically from a possible unexpected threat. Her hand comes up to clutch my shoulder, and we both stare as a man I don’t know walks into my house and every cell in me is on alert.

“Moe!” she squeaks.

My heart thunders. Moe? Who the hell is Moe?

Chapter 15

LAINEY

Popping away from Spencer, guilt rushes through me as I realize how we look, even when there’s no reason to feel guilt at all except for how the brush of Spence’s hand and the intensity of his hazel eyes make me want him. Bad.

“What the hell’s going on here, Lainey? Who is this man?” He glares at Spence with such rage that I’m shocked into speechlessness. “What the fuck is he doing here with you, in your house?”

“It’s not my house. This is Spencer. It’s his house.”

“You live here with him?” Moe throws a glare at Spence like it’s a punch.

Spence stands rigid and ready like a center waiting for the puck drop, holding back volumes of energy until the biscuit hits the ice. I can feel the vibration of barely contained energy in heart-palpitating proportions seething in his tightly muscled body.

“Yes, I do live here with him.” I use my stern school teacher voice reserved for the most calcitrant of kindergartners. “I’m a live-in nanny to his baby girl. He’s my boss.”

“You were in his arms. Don’t lie to me. I can feel the fucking tension in the room, like clawing need. I can almost smell the sex—”

Red-hot outrage blows up inside me in blurring the moment, slowing time. How dare he accuse me as if he has the right? My instant reflexes take over.

My hand lifts sharply and swings as I slap Moe across the face. Hard. So hard that my hand stings. But it’s a good sting.

Moe’s face goes red, and he raises a hand, but in my mind where time is slow, I’d swear he has no intentions of hitting me back, that it’s his instinctive self-preservation making him move, and I have no fear. He’s only defending himself from my assault.

My assault. Clarity returns, and horror at the reality of my unprecedented violence against humanity stuns me as my hands fly to cover the yelp that comes from my mouth. Not a split-second passes when Spence jumps in, grabbing Moe from behind and yanking him away from me. But Moe doesn’t react well.

Moe—Maurice Borelli—is no slouch when it comes to aggressive male hormones. He was a star athlete in high school, though nowhere near Jason’s league. Any record he attained, my brother broke a few years later.

But now, all those dormant alpha juices rise up, and he swings around to throw a punch at his new attacker, one fiercely alpha hockey guy, my new hero, Spence the hunk.

I’m still too stunned to say or do anything useful—not that I could necessarily stop them. Plus, there’s that teeny, tiny bit inside me—the devil—who likes that a man is fighting to protect me.

God almighty, Lainey Hall—when did you descend to this level of pathetic neediness of male attention?

Probably about the time Moe disillusioned me about the value of his particular attention, when I’d thought he adored me, thought we were the perfect couple, destined to be together forever and raise a passel of kids and have the perfect family.