Page 9

She glances up, finally. Her gaze is sharp, slicing right through me. “I wanted to know more about you.”

Fucking hell. That’s promising.

“Anything you want to know, ask. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets,” she teases.

This is it. “Well,” I start, “I don’t bring out the skeletons in my closet until the third date.”

“Then I’ll settle for the boring old stuff.” She laughs.

“I’m from a little town on the coast of Maine called Smitten Harbor.”

Her eyes don’t leave mine. “I looked it up, actually. Your Wikipedia page says ‘quaint fishing village,’ which I’m assuming is code for ‘the middle of nowhere’.”

I laugh. She’s not wrong. “Pretty much. The main street’s two blocks long, and you’ll miss it if you so much as blink.”

Daisy’s stares into my eyes. “Growing up there was… fine. Boring as hell. I spent my whole life planning how I’d get out. And hockey did that for me.”

“What about your family?”

“I have an older brother who’s the police chief, and my parents still live in town.” I give her the bare-bones edition because, honestly, there isn’t much to tell. Before now, I didn’t really have a life besides hockey.

She blinks, absorbing that. No snark, just quiet curiosity. “You close with your folks?”

I nod, not bothering to dress it up. “Yeah. They worked their asses off so I could play hockey. Once I joined the pros, they both retired.”

Before she can respond, the waiter reappears and sets our drinks down, then drops a basket so full of breadsticks the thing sags in the middle. I swear, Daisy lights up at the sight of them. “Oh, man. I could live on breadsticks alone.” She groans and shoves half a stick into her mouth.

Goddamn. Her moan goes straight to my cock. Watching her eat causes my blood pressure to spike.

I tear my eyes off her mouth long enough to take a sip of my beer.

“So, what’s the wildest thing you did in your hometown?” she asks.

I want to impress her, but my real adolescence was a lot less Animal House and a lot more midnight skating on the town pond.

I finally settle on, “Once, when I was sixteen, I dared a buddy to icefish a keg out of the harbor on New Year’s. Tide went out, so did the keg. Whole operation was a bust, but we spent twelve hours freezing our balls off, drunk on water-logged beer and humiliation.”

She actually laughs. “That’s the most Maine thing I’ve ever heard.”

I point my fork at her. “You can mock, but at least we have seasons back there. You people just get ‘hot as balls’ and ‘slightly less hot as balls.’”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure I’d like freezing my bits off half the year.”

I’m tempted to offer to keep her bits warm, but I hold the words behind my tongue. There’s this comfort in the way she owns every opinion, never hedging, always calling her shot.

I let my knee drift under the table, anchoring against the leg to keep from fidgeting. I want to reach across, drag her close, see what she’d do if I just forgot about all the unspoken rules.

Instead, I polish off the last bite and wipe my mouth, giving her a quick, unscripted grin.

She watches, waiting.

The waiter drops the check between us. Daisy’s hand flashes out, but I’m faster. I slide the folder toward me.

I hold eye contact and give her a grin. “It’s my turn to pay.”

Her gaze lingers on me, sharp and searching, but she doesn’t fight it.