This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

Bury the Hatchet

Copyright © 2015 by Catherine Gayle

Cover Design by Kim Killion, The Killion Group

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

For more information: catherinegayle.author@gmail.com

Dedication

About this Book

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

Roster

About the Author

Exclusive Preview: Smoke Signals

Other Books by Catherine Gayle

For Jenny.

He was poised to be an elite goalie for a contending team.

Hunter Fielding has long since proven himself to be one of the best goaltenders in the NHL. The problem? His former team had another (slightly better) backstop. They left Hunter out to dry, the upstart Tulsa Thunderbirds claimed him in the expansion draft, and he made a few stupid comments about backasswards Oklahomans. Now the T-Birds say the only way he can redeem himself is to make nice for the media with some local goody two shoes who’s made some mistakes of her own.

Oklahoma’s sweetheart could do no wrong until she could do no right.

Tallulah Belle Roth was the reigning Miss Oklahoma USA until a night of out-of-control drinking, a naked foray in a hot tub with very bad boy, and a bunch of lowlights on TMZ. Now she’s been stripped of her crown and is facing the censure of the same people who made her out to be Little Miss Perfect. Tallie won’t ever get her title back, but her life is another matter—and the only way the public will allow her to do that is if she presents herself as happily settled with someone else under Oklahoma’s eye.

The marriage is to be in name only—one year of sickeningly-sweet lovey-dovey PDA, all to get their detractors to bury the hatchet. Those kisses and tender moments for the cameras take an emotional toll, though. Can in name only be enough?

BURY THE HATCHET is Book 1 in the Tulsa Thunderbirds hockey romance series, a spin-off from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm. Look for Book 2, SMOKE SIGNALS, on October 22, 2015. Book 3, GHOST DANCE, will release on May 5, 2016.

Want to join in the Tulsa Thunderbirds discussion? Join the Facebook reader group.

If you enjoy this book and want to try more of the same, be sure to look for the Portland Storm books: BREAKAWAY, ON THE FLY, TAKING A SHOT, LIGHT THE LAMP, DELAY OF GAME, DOUBLE MAJOR, IN THE ZONE, HOLIDAY HAT TRICK, COMEBACK, and DROPPING GLOVES. HOME ICE will release on August 13, 2015. LOSING AN EDGE will release on February 18, 2016. Also, join Catherine Gayle’s mailing list to receive ICE BREAKER, a Portland Storm short story prequel that you can’t get anywhere else.

There is also a reader group on Facebook for the Portland Storm series.

THE AUGUST SUN in Tulsa was intense enough to melt my bones, hotter even than the water I’d recently found myself in after making a few drunken, pissed-off, and ill-advised comments in Vegas last month. I’d been there for the NHL Awards, hoping to celebrate one of my buddies from the goalie guild winning the Vezina Trophy.

I didn’t quite make it to that part of the awards presentation because my agent, John Stine, had slipped over to whisper some unwelcome news in my ear. An expansion draft had taken place earlier in the day so the league’s new team, the Tulsa Thunderbirds, could stock up on players for their debut season. I’d known that was going on, of course. Everyone did. I also knew my team had left me unprotected, meaning it was almost guaranteed that I’d get claimed by the new team since I was far and away the best goaltender left in limbo. Sure enough, I was the first player the Thunderbirds selected.

So instead of battling it out for the starting gig against Nicky Ericsson, another goalie with the Portland Storm, I was heading to Oklahoma to play for a team that would unquestionably be appallingly bad for many years to come. The Storm were a legitimate threat to win the Stanley Cup these days. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly excited about this latest development in my career.

After getting the news and being assured there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, I’d spent the rest of the night in the hotel bar, drowning my sorrows in an unending series of tequila shots. It was just my luck that half the contingent of hockey media present was hanging out just outside the bar. They stopped me when John finally hauled my sorry ass out of there, blinding my bleary eyes with their lights and shoving their damn microphones in my face.

Hunter, what do you think about the news that you’ll be playing for the Thunderbirds next season? they’d asked. It’s a real coup that they were able to claim a star goaltender like you in the expansion draft.

John should have jerked my ass away from them right then and there and said something along the lines of Mr. Fielding isn’t taking any questions right now. But he’d been distracted by a phone call from one of his other clients who’d been plucked up in the expansion draft, and I’d shoved my foot so far down my own throat that I should have choked on it and died.

Who the fuck wants to play in a goddamned backasswards place like Tulsa, and for a fucking upstart, no less? I’d replied, ignoring the fact that it might be aired on live TV and the censors would have to bleep me out, oblivious to the harm I was causing myself with a few simple words. Truth or not, sometimes it was better to bite your tongue.

At that point, John disconnected his call and shoved the mics away from me. Too late. The damage had already been done. The words had left my mouth and been caught on film. I couldn’t take them back. I was just going to have to face the consequences.

That was a little over a month ago, and now I had to pay the piper for my inebriated lack of common sense. That was why I was here now. I’d come to Tulsa to meet with the Thunderbirds brass. They wanted to figure out a plan for getting the fans—as if there were any fans to be found here—on my side. Or so they said. I was just waiting to hear what my penance would be for my perceived crimes, and the team’s executives and coaches were apparently my judge and jury.

The second I stepped outside the airport into the blistering heat—fully expecting farmers to rush me with pitchforks—I wished I could walk right back in again, get on a plane, and fly the hell out of here. But I couldn’t. There was no getting out of this unless I intended to walk away from what was left of my career. I was only twenty-nine years old. Way too young to hang up my skates and pads and call it a day. Hell, twenty-nine was when goaltenders tended to hit their prime. I had many years of hockey left in me, and I didn’t have the first clue what I’d do with myself if it was taken away so soon.

I just wished I wasn’t going to have to spend them in this hellhole.

John pulled up to the curb in a rental car and waved me over. He put the car in park and climbed out, as dressed down as ever: shorts, a T-shirt, a Thunderbirds ball cap, and sunglasses. I squinted and wished I had a pair of shades handy, myself. Just one of many adjustments I would have to make if I was going to live here. I got the sense that there was a hell of an education about life in the south in store. He grinned, tossed me a pair of sunglasses that matched his, and popped open the trunk.

“It’s hotter than the underside of Hades,” I grumbled.

He grabbed one of my bags and tossed it in. “You’ll get used to it. You’ll probably like it someday, actually. Especially in October and November when it’s still nice enough to go out without having to shovel a few feet of snow to get your car out. Spring will arrive here nice and early, too. Short winters; long summers. There are a lot of good things in Tulsa.”

I didn’t want to get used to it and John damn well knew it. He wasn’t just my agent. He was a lifelong friend, a guy a few years older than me. I’d grown up with his younger brother, Darren, and played hockey with both of them when we were kids. Darren and I had both been drafted while John was in college. Darren had never panned out with the NHL. He’d played a few years in Europe before deciding to go home and start his family. While the two of us had been playing hockey, John had decided to go on to law school. He’d been ready to start his career as a sports agent by the time the Storm wanted to sign me to my first pro contract.

There was no chance I would end up liking it here, and he knew it, so trying to sell me on the city was a waste of his breath. I knew I should have made him fight harder to get the no-movement clause when we’d signed the seven-year extension with Portland before the beginning of last season. Granted, I doubted even that would have kept me with the Storm instead of landing with the team that would be rock bottom in the league.

I glared at him to shut him up on all the supposed good things about life in Tulsa.

He tossed in my other bag, shut the trunk, and went around to get in the driver’s seat, not bothering to respond. I climbed in and slammed the door, a good dose of surliness taking over. At least he had the sense to have the AC going full blast.

Good thing he let the matter drop. Instead of selling me on the positives, he started shooting the breeze, catching me up on all the goings-on at home since I’d hardly been back to Prince George over the summer. I sat back and listened to him prattle, occasionally tossing in a question to keep the conversation flowing. The more I could get him to talk about that kind of thing, the less I would have to think about my predicament. But when the car came to a stop, we weren’t at a hotel. We were in a parking garage in a big complex that screamed of being the Thunderbirds’ main office.

“Already?” I grumbled. “You’re not going to at least let me settle in first?” I’d hoped to have the opportunity to shower and change into something more comfortable in this heat before dealing with the clusterfuck I’d created.

John shut off the engine. “The Jernigans want to get things moving in the right direction as soon as possible. They said to bring you over the second you landed.”

I ground my jaw. The Jernigans were the team’s owners. Tom Jernigan was a minister at some huge church here in Tulsa, one of those massive congregations that aired on television and they had to hold four or five services over the course of the weekend because there wasn’t enough room in the building to fit everyone in a single sitting. He and his wife, Sharon, were all over the place with Bible study books and videos. I was sure they didn’t know the first fucking thing about hockey. At least they’d had the forethought to hire a few guys who, combined, boasted several decades of experience running NHL teams.

Still sulking, I ambled out and followed John inside. He led me through a series of halls, all decked out with various items bearing the Thunderbirds logo and colors—a Native American warbird with hockey sticks done in turquoise and terra cotta—before stopping at a board room.

A few familiar faces were waiting in there: Alan Krause, the team president who had been around the league longer than I’d been alive; Gary Asher, the general manager who had overseen the Blues for their one and only Cup a few years back; Tim Harvey, a former NHL defenseman who had been an assistant coach for two other NHL teams and would do the same here; Chuck Warren, who’d been a goalie in the league for a while—a backup goalie, no less, and who had never come close to my level of play—who was supposed to be my fucking goalie coach. There were a bunch of other guys in Thunderbirds golf shirts and the like, too. Maybe they were the other coaches, or else some of the PR people.

Off in the corner of the room near the windows, a slim, gray-haired man in a full three-piece suit stood next to a blond woman in the sort of conservative women’s suit that only politicians and clergymen’s wives tended to wear. Her shockingly blond hair looked like a helmet. She probably used a whole can of hairspray to keep it like that. No doubt these two were the team owners, the Jernigans.

It was the group huddled together near them that caught my attention, though: a knockout gorgeous brunette who looked like she should be on the cover of a fashion magazine, an older woman who could only be her mother, and a couple of older men. All three of her companions were currently eyeing me. One of the men seemed curious. The other, along with the mother, were both glaring at me like I was the devil incarnate. But the young woman? I couldn’t figure out what she was thinking because she wouldn’t look at me.

On top of that, I had no clue about the purpose of their presence. It was supposed to be a meeting about me being an ass and learning what I would have to do to appease the team’s brass after letting my idiocy show. What the hell did these people have to do with that?

Alan and Gary came over to shake my hand. They took me through the room, introducing me around to most of the new faces before we headed over to the big board table. I grabbed a bottle of water from a cart along the wall before taking my seat. Alan sat at the head of the table, folding his hands in front of him. He looked as intense as I’d always known him to be. Maybe more at present than usual. His stress had to be at an all-time high right now, trying to get ready for the Thunderbirds’ debut season, and my issues had only added to it. “All right,” he said once everyone settled into place and talk died off. “Let’s get down to business.”

Alan picked up a coffee cup and drank from it. “There’s no point in beating around the bush. We have twelve thousand new season ticket holders and a whole host of other potential Thunderbirds fans here in Tulsa who are up in arms over some comments made by our new star goaltender. They didn’t take kindly to being called backasswards, and they aren’t keen about one of their players not being fully on board with being a key part of this team. So now we need to figure out how to win them over.”

“You mean we need to figure out how I can win them over,” I said.

Alan nodded, a scowl marring his features.

Mollifying people wasn’t my strong suit and it never had been. I picked up my water, focusing more on it than I did on the conversation going on around me. Gary and the coaches all tossed out suggestions like getting me involved in some sort of community service project with some schools in the area or trying to get a grassroots youth hockey program started so that the locals could love and grow the sport here—with me at the forefront of it, of course.

These were exactly the sorts of things I’d been expecting, but they didn’t seem to be what Alan was looking for. He didn’t even like the idea of me starting up a charity here, or at the very least, he seemed to think there needed to be something more to go along with it. He kept brushing their suggestions off, telling them it wasn’t enough. What I’d done was going to take a lot more than a bit of community involvement to rectify, if Alan’s reactions were a good indication.

As for me? I kept my head down and my mouth shut while the rest of them batted ideas around, since John had already made it abundantly clear that I was going to have to play along with whatever they suggested, no matter how much I might not like it. I didn’t get a say since I’d already flapped my jaw too much. But then John kicked my ankle under the table. I shot my head up to find Mrs. Jernigan looking expectantly at me, a too-perfect smile plastered on her face.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “I’ve got the perfect solution. In fact, that’s why we invited the Roths to join us today, as they’ve got a part to play.”

The foursome in the corner met my gaze when I passed a skeptical glance in their direction. Well, three of the four did. The brunette ducked her head and stared at the floor after giving me the briefest glimpse of her honey-colored eyes and button nose. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing a long, slender neck that looked perfect for nibbling on. That was absolutely the wrong thing for me to be thinking about, though—nibbling on her neck. Or other parts of her, like her pert breasts.

“The perfect solution?” I repeated slowly, one hundred percent positive that whatever whack-job idea this lady had, it would be the complete opposite of what I thought appropriate.

Mrs. Jernigan didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm in my tone. Either that or she was an expert at ignoring things she didn’t want to acknowledge. “You see, the Roths have been members of our church since Tallulah Belle was just a sweet little baby. We always want to help members of our congregation out where we can, and Tallulah’s found herself in a bit of a pickle, too, sort of like you have. There was a dust-up last month while she was in Cancun with her sorority sisters, and now that she’s been stripped of her crown—”

“Her crown?” I interrupted. Who the hell wore a crown? And more importantly, why?

This was quickly devolving into a nightmare.

One of the men in the corner rolled his eyes. He, like Mrs. Roth, had been eyeing me since I’d arrived as if I were a child pornographer or something. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea, Sharon,” he said emphatically. He spoke slowly with a slight lisp, drawing out his words so that they seemed to have grown by a few syllables each. Even in this heat, he had on a blue turtleneck, not to mention a tweed jacket over it, and he waved his hands with every word he uttered. “The Neanderthal doesn’t even know who our Tallulah is,” the arm-waving dude bemoaned.

“Don’t call him that, Lance,” the brunette pleaded. For the first time since they’d been introduced into the conversation, she truly met my gaze, her expression a visual apology. Her face was also quite possibly the most flawless one I’d ever seen. She looked as though she’d stepped out of the pages of a magazine, without a single blemish in sight. Lightly tanned skin. High cheekbones. Impeccably arched, full eyebrows. And that was just her face. Her body? Made me think all kinds of things that I had no business thinking about a woman whose name I didn’t even know. She looked too good to be real, but damn if she wasn’t hot.

He ignored her, gesticulating so much he nearly whacked her in the face, which made me want to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and teach him a thing or two about how Neanderthals expected a man to treat a lady. I stayed put, though, and Lance was oblivious to anything but his own agenda. “He won’t work out. He doesn’t understand the pressure she’s under. The hooligan couldn’t even bother to get his hair cut before making an appearance. He’s exactly the opposite of the sort of man we need her to marry.”

My head snapped back upon hearing the word marry, and I pushed my chair away from the table. “Back the fuck up for a second,” I said. The movement unsettled my water, and the bottle fell over, rolled to the table’s edge, and dropped to the floor, narrowly missing my toes. “Who the hell said anything about getting married? I’m willing to do whatever you need me to do to make up for my perceived crimes—community outreach, volunteering, whatever—but how the fuck is getting married—”

“Which is precisely the point,” Mr. Jernigan cut in, his voice rising over mine. He arched an eyebrow in my direction, either daring me to interrupt or putting me back in my place, one of the two. “You’ll do whatever we need you to do—John assured us you would—and we need you to marry Tallulah. She’s gotten into a scrape. She needs a way out of it. You’re it, son. On top of that, she’s the best way to get the people here in Tulsa on your side.”

“How is marrying her supposed to help me make things up to all the people I pissed off?” I demanded.

“Would you please watch your language?” Mrs. Jernigan demanded, and I just about fell out of my chair. Of all the things to get worked up over, she was getting her panties in a twist over me uttering the words pissed off? How on earth was she going to handle being around a whole team of hockey players? It might be better if she was one of those hands-off team owners like we’d had in Portland, but so far it didn’t look like that would be the case.

She put her hands on her hips, prim, proper, and as incensed as I’d ever seen a woman. “Really, there’s no reason for all that foul stuff. Your mama should have taught you better than that.”

“Let’s leave his mama out of it, Sharon,” her husband said, never removing his gaze from me. No doubt he sensed that I was about to lose my shit, and he wanted to defuse the situation before I did something else I would regret. I might not like his wife, but so far he was okay. Well, except for the fact that he thought I needed to marry some random chick I’d never met before.

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Here’s the deal, son.”

I gritted my teeth. “I’m not your son.”

He ignored me. “Tallulah won Miss Teen Oklahoma USA several years back, and then she won Miss Teen USA. She’s the reigning Miss Oklahoma USA, or she was until they stripped her of her crown last month because of a slight indiscretion. She was expecting to contend for Miss USA, and most likely Miss Universe after that. She’s been competing in and winning pageants for years, including some very high-profile ones. The fact is that Oklahomans love her. We adore her. But now her image has been tarnished, and she needs a husband so she can repair her image in the public eye. She fell down a few pegs when…well, never mind that. The point is that they want Tallulah to appear to be the role model they always assumed she was, and to do that, she needs to give the impression that she’s growing up, settling down, and doing the things they’ve expected of her all along.”

“Which is exactly why you can’t just shove her in with him,” the hand-waving man interrupted, pointing a finger in my direction so hard it seemed he might be attempting to jab me in the eye. “He’ll ruin her worse than she already is.”

Mr. Jernigan closed his eyes, shook his head, and sighed. “He’s not going to ruin her. They’ll rescue each other.”

I wasn’t in the mood to play knight in shining armor to anyone, even if she had legs for days and killer curves like this Tallulah chick did, and I’d be damned if I needed anyone to rescue me. I’d dug my own hole; I could damned well figure out a way to climb out of it myself. “I’m not marrying anyone,” I said, loud and clear enough to be heard over everyone else.

“You are.” This time it was John speaking.

I spun my head to glare at him. “You knew this was going on and you didn’t say a word about it?”

“Had to be sure you were going to show up,” he said, shrugging. Like this was no big deal. Like he wasn’t trying to tell me that my life as I had it planned was all being tossed out, and I was going to have to bend to someone else’s rules. Like I should have expected it since I’d been dumb enough to make an ass of myself, and this was my due penance. “We already discussed this. You’ve got to play by their rules, at least for a while. Things are different down here. You’re going to be living and playing in the Bible belt, and there are different expectations. Besides, it’s not forever,” he added sheepishly.

“You expect me to believe that a preacher”—I pointed in the general direction of the Jernigans—“is going to suggest a marriage that will end up in divorce in order to cover up some silly scandal.”

“Well, really, honey pie,” Mrs. Jernigan said. “It’ll be more like an annulment. It’s just for a year.”

“A year?” I scoffed. I didn’t know American marriage law very well, but this didn’t sound like the sort of thing a judge would consider appropriate annulment material. “And I’m not your honey pie. Either way, doesn’t matter since I’m not doing it.”

“Yes,” John said, more emphatically than before, “you are.”

I shot him a go-to-hell look. “No one can make me get fake married for a year. Not even you, and don’t fool yourself into thinking you can. Besides, that would mean I’d have to be celibate the whole damn time.” If the entire fucking state loved this Tallulah chick, the second I was seen with some other girl, hoping to scratch an itch, I’d be the bastard who cheated on Oklahoma’s sweetheart.

“Language!” Mrs. J shouted at me. The woman reminded me more and more of Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games movies, only minus the pink hair.

“Sorry if the mention of sex offends you,” I spouted off, and I didn’t even feel bad about the offended gasp she let out. The longer I was in this room, the shorter my fuse grew. I’d be lucky if I got out of here without them threatening to find a way to void my contract.

Hell, maybe I should really let loose. Maybe then they would try to void it, and then I could sign with some other team. Anything would be better than being stuck here and getting forced into some sham of a marriage.

“You wouldn’t…” Tallulah had spoken up again, drawing my attention, but she clammed up the second her mother and Lance shot looks in her direction.

“I wouldn’t what?” I asked, more out of curiosity than anything.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lance interjected. He reached across and put a hand over Tallulah’s, as though to prevent her from saying another word. The guy seriously needed a good throat-punching, and I was itching to be the one to have that honor. Not to rescue her. More to fuck with him because the half hour or so I’d spent in his company was more than anyone should have to bear in a lifetime. The guy was a serious ass. He met my glare. “No Neatherthals allowed near Tallulah Belle. Not now. Not ever.”

She tugged her hand free, and my esteem for her went up a few notches. She scowled at him before turning to me. “You wouldn’t necessarily have to be celibate the whole time,” she said, staring straight at me. “I mean, I’m not sure I’d want to stay—”

“Tallulah Belle Roth!” her mother interrupted before turning her hateful glare on me. “There will be no hanky-panky, not with Tallulah or anyone else. Just enough hand-holding and light kisses for the cameras, but when you’re not putting on a show for the media, you’ll be keeping your hands to yourself and your little thing tucked away in your pants.”

“It ain’t little, sweetheart,” I said before I could think better of it.

“Well, I never.” She shut up after that, though, crossing her arms and turning her back to me.

Tallulah didn’t keep quiet. “Mama, you can’t speak to him like that. And it’s none of your business—”

“My daughter isn’t my business?”

“—what happens behind closed doors,” she continued, ignoring her mother’s interruption. “The fact is, we will be married. And soon.”

Soon? I was about to speak up again, but the other man—the one who, so far, had kept his mouth shut and merely looked on, mildly amused by the proceedings—leaned forward and locked his gaze on me. “Saturday, actually,” he said, answering my unasked question. “And I’ve already got the prenup lined out. I’ll just need you and my Tallie to drop by my office later this afternoon to go over it so we can get it finalized.”

I pressed my fingers to my eyes, wishing I could push hard enough that my whole head would explode like the dude on Game of Thrones. My head hurt enough that it might explode from the internal pressure without any outside forces.

“Not him,” Lance tossed in. “We’ll find someone else.”

“By Saturday?” Mrs. Jernigan asked. “Everything’s already in place for this weekend, and we’ve already wasted too much time. They’re hounding Tallulah everywhere she goes.”

“Find someone else,” I ground out.

“There is no one else,” the father insisted at the same time as John said, “Whether you want to do this or not, you’re going to have to.”

“Why?” I roared. “Why this? What the hell is this supposed to do that couldn’t be accomplished some way that doesn’t involve fucking getting married?”

Tallulah stood up, planting both hands on her hips and drawing my eye exactly there. “Now you look here,” she said, suddenly turning sassy in a way that turned me on despite my better judgment—further proof that hormones had nothing to do with the part of the brain that processed thought. “I’m not any happier about this than you are, and clearly my mama and Lance don’t think you’re up to snuff, but they’re right about this one part. Whether you want to hear it or not, they’re right. The two of us getting married—at least long enough for all of this to blow over—is the best solution for both of our problems. So we’re going to do it. We’re getting married on Saturday, so you’d better just accept the fact that it’s happening. And you should probably call your mama. They don’t like finding these things out after the fact.”

Well, holy hell. Even Tallulah wanted to go along with it. Apparently, Tulsa wasn’t just hell; it was also the Twilight Zone, only the people I was surrounded by didn’t realize it.

FOR WHATEVER REASON, he said he would go along with it. I was still dumbfounded that Mama and Mrs. Jernigan had come up with the idea of us getting married to begin with, and I wasn’t positive that I was fully on board, but Hunter Fielding had agreed to marry me, and now everything was moving at the speed of light. I needed to make up my mind, once and for all, before it was too late. Yes, Mama and Lance insisted that I had no choice and was going to have to marry someone, but I was a grown woman. An adult. I had choices. And marriage? That was a big decision to make, even if it was essentially to be in name only and would have an expiration date.

The meeting with the Thunderbirds brass took place on Tuesday morning. That afternoon, Daddy and I sat down in his office with Hunter and his agent and hammered out the details for the prenuptial agreement.

“You’ll live together as husband and wife for one year,” Daddy explained to the other men. He’d already gone over all of it with me, Mama, and Lance well before now. He and I were seated on one side of the long board table at Roth & Rainier, the law firm where he was one of the two primary partners, while Hunter and John sat across from us. “All money and possessions that started out being Hunter’s will remain Hunter’s. The same will go for Tallie. Upon your divorce, everything that she comes into the marriage with will leave the marriage as hers. You’ll maintain a single residence but separate bank accounts.”

“Who will own the house?” the agent asked.

“Hunter buys a house,” Daddy answered before I could interject. “He’ll need one to live in after this all washes over, anyway, since he’ll still be on the team. You’ll live in it together to give the impression of being as completely head-over-heels in love as possible. What happens inside that house with the doors closed is your business and yours only, no matter what her mother and that ass Lance may have to say on that matter.”

Heat raced to my cheeks as I remembered what I’d said earlier about not necessarily remaining celibate. The fact was, Hunter was hot. Seriously gorgeous. He was about half a foot taller than me and solid muscle. His dark hair was too long and curled a little where it hit his shoulders, and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, with a bit of scruff lining his square jaw. Everything about him screamed Man, with a capital M, from the defined muscles of his forearms to the deep, gravelly sound of his voice. He’d been wreaking havoc on my girly parts since the moment he’d walked into the Thunderbirds offices earlier, and I couldn’t seem to get my hormones under control. At least not while he was staring at me like he was right now. Something told me he was remembering what I’d impetuously said, as well.

“Speaking of Lance,” Hunter said. There was a surly, grumbly tone to his words that shot straight through me and made my temperature rise again. “Who the hell is that guy and what does he have to do with anything?”

I blinked, but Daddy didn’t say anything to answer him. I supposed that meant it was going to be on me to explain. Daddy and Lance had never gotten along. The sooner he could get Lance out of my life, the better. I was almost positive that was why, out of everyone involved, Daddy was the least upset about my mishap in Cancun and the most receptive to the idea of me getting married. No more pageants. He assumed that would mean no more Lance. I wasn’t so positive about that, considering the way Mama was pulling Lance along to participate in every aspect of the aftermath.

“Lance Benton. He’s my pageant guru,” I said feebly. Anyone who’d been involved in the pageant world would understand in a heartbeat, but to the rest of the world, a guru was sort of a mystery. Mama had hired him when I was still just a baby and too young to voice an opinion on the matter, and she’d kept him regardless of whatever complaints I might have about him because he was the best. He got results, and he was the reason I’d succeeded. That was what Mama said, at least.

Sure enough, Hunter just raised a brow in question, his sexy-as-sin face a mass of confusion.

I sighed. “He oversees everything for me, training me in every aspect of my presentation and supervising all of the people who help out—my designer, my hair and makeup people. He runs the show.” Whether I liked it or not, and for a great many years now I’d been leaning toward the side of not. Hunter still didn’t look like he followed, so I added, “He’s kind of like my coach, I guess.”

“Your coach?” Hunter scoffed.

I nodded.

“For pageants? You need a coach for a beauty pageant?” He raised and lowered his gaze, giving me a thorough and disbelieving once-over.

“They’re about a lot more than just physical appearances,” I groused, sick to death of having to explain pageants to people who weren’t part of this community.

He narrowed his eyes at me, seeming to analyze every minuscule bit of my appearance. “Mm-hmm,” he said, making me feel all of an inch tall. “So what the fuck does he have to do with any of this?” he asked, scowling and waving an arm across Daddy’s desk and the papers littered all over it. “This is a marriage, sweetheart. It isn’t a pageant. The guru stays out of it.”

There was no masking the grin that swallowed up Daddy’s face. “You know, son, I think I’m going to like you. I think I’m going to like you a hell of a lot.”

“I might be marrying your daughter, Mr. Roth, but I’m not your son, and you and everyone else around here had better get that through your thick fucking skulls.”

Daddy just chuckled and sifted through the stack of papers to find another one to go over. “Got it. Noted. Not my son.” He winked at me. I had no clue how he could be laughing and winking at a time like this. My whole world was changing. Everything I’d known my whole life had been ripped out from under me the day I’d returned from a summer vacation with my sorority sisters and had to face the scandal of being stripped of my crown.

Hunter met my gaze from across the table, almost staring through me. “You understand what I said about Lance? He has no place in our marriage. At all. Not ever, regardless of how short or long this marriage may be.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” I readily agreed.

I didn’t mention the fact that a wedding was not a marriage, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that I could convince Mama that Lance couldn’t be involved in the planning for the ceremony. He had already started working on it, and she would have a serious conniption fit if I tried to put down my foot about it. The fit that Lance would throw would be big enough to cause the Gulf of Mexico to swell up so far it would cover the entire state of Oklahoma. Whether I was happy about it or not, and no matter what Hunter thought on the matter, Lance’s fingerprints would be all over the wedding and reception. Heck, he’d already made the executive decision that I would be walking down the aisle in my competition ball gown, despite the fact that it wasn’t even close to being appropriate for a wedding. It was white, there wasn’t time to get something else more wedding appropriate made, and it would look stunning on camera, especially after they added some more pizzazz to it. Those were all the reasons he needed to lay down that particular law.

Daddy finally found the sheet he’d been searching for and drew it forward, passing it across so Hunter and John could see it. “This one is more specific to finances. I set up a trust fund for Tallie years ago. It allows her to have access to the funds upon her marriage at a set dollar amount per year, so that should cover all her living expenses during the course of your marriage. In other words, while she’ll be living in your house, she won’t be touching your money. There won’t be any need for it. Additionally, I’ll be paying for the wedding since you’re buying the house.”

“The wedding shouldn’t cost too much, though,” Hunter said, narrowing his eyes. “Not like a house. I mean, maybe if we were waiting a few months and could plan it properly—”

“I promise you,” Daddy interrupted, “my wife can spend money like you wouldn’t believe, on short notice or otherwise.” He passed over another sheet of paper and pointed toward a line so he could explain the terms outlined on it, effectively putting an end to that part of the conversation for the moment.

John took each sheet of paper as Daddy discussed it, poring over it with a fine-toothed comb while the explanation continued. For the most part, it was just Daddy talking. Every now and then, either Hunter or John would pipe up with another question, or John would point out a section of wording that he wanted to have changed before he would advise Hunter to sign on the dotted line. I decided to leave them to it. Daddy and I had already gone over every single detail in these documents even before my husband-to-be had been decided upon, so there wasn’t much for me to contribute.

The basic gist of the rest of our meeting was that Hunter and I would publicly play the parts of a loving couple, putting off the impression that we were exuberantly happy newlyweds. The story we would feed the press was that we’d met at an event while Hunter was in town to meet with his new team, and we’d both been so instantly smitten that we knew this was it. We couldn’t wait, so we’d dropped everything and married as soon as it could all be arranged. In that way, we were revealing things as truthfully as possible without letting the whole truth out. Once we decided to go our separate ways after the requisite year, we would simply state that we’d rushed into things and hadn’t thought it through, that love at first sight had turned out to be just a myth, not reality.

Everything about this marriage business felt cold and calculated, which I supposed it should. That was the truth of it. It was all being decided and arranged in an almost mercenary manner. The craziest part of it all was that Daddy—the one who was most in line with the idea of Hunter Fielding being the man I married for this farce—was also the one who was most able to keep emotion out of the arrangements. Maybe that was to be expected since he was a lawyer. I supposed it came with the territory.

Anyway, once everything was hammered out, the contract was drawn up, agreed upon, and signed by all parties involved. Hunter pushed back his chair and stood, his agent following suit. I glanced up to find Hunter’s eyes trained on me. I’d never seen eyes quite like his. They were light, and on first glance, they seemed to be some sort of blue, almost too crystal clear to be human. But when I looked closer, I realized they were a silvery sage green unlike any I’d observed before, both magnetic and impenetrable. Every time I’d caught him looking at me, his expression had been unreadable, but it grew more and more heated with each glance. Not an angry sort of heat but more along the lines of sexy and sensual, causing tingles to race to every nerve in my body.

“So you’re coming to dinner with me tonight then,” he said.

“Dinner?” That was enough to take me by surprise, and I sat back in my seat, eyes wide. “Why do you think I am coming to dinner with you?”

“Because we’re supposed to be putting on a show for everyone,” he said, aggravation coming through in his tone. “If we wait until after the wedding to start that, there are going to be even more questions than there already will be. Might as well get started now. See and be seen, right?”

I took a gander at Daddy, but he was no help. At the moment, he was gathering up all of the documents that we had just gone over and sorting them into stacks. Traitor. “Maybe we can start in a few days. Mama expects to go over wedding details with me tonight.” I honestly didn’t know if Mama expected anything of the sort, but there were a lot of details that needed to be seen to, and she wouldn’t want to put them off any longer than necessary. Not to mention Lance, but I didn’t see any reason to bring him into the equation right now. The less Hunter knew about Lance’s involvement, the better, at least for the time being.

“How many wedding details can there be? There are only so many things that can be put together at the last minute like this.”

At that, Daddy snorted in laughter. “Son, you’ve got a lot to learn about Southern women and what they can accomplish on short notice.”

I was sure that Hunter was about to gripe that Daddy had called him son again, and I was prepared to interject, but John beat me to it.

“We should really get out of here,” he said. He took Hunter by the arm and started guiding him toward the door. “We still haven’t had time to check in at the hotel, let alone change clothes. Hunter needs to get a rental car. We can work the rest of this out tomorrow, can’t we?”

Hunter would not be deterred so easily. He stopped and turned, narrowing those silky green eyes at me. “Seriously, dinner?”

“Pick her up at six thirty,” Daddy said. “My secretary will give you the address, and she’ll make reservations for you at Giovanni’s Trattoria.”

I did a double take. “Giovanni’s?” Not only was my father blatantly ignoring everything I had said about needing to work on wedding details with Mama but Giovanni’s was one of the swankiest restaurants in town, easily one of the most expensive places we could possibly go. Getting in there at the last minute was next to impossible. I loved their food as much as I loved anything, and I wasn’t worried about the cost, but it seemed like a bit much for the first time we went out together.

Daddy raised a brow in my direction, continuing to sort his papers into stacks. “The goal is to start putting it out there that you two are an item, isn’t it? There’s no better place for that in Tulsa.”

Hunter quirked up a grin, a rarity in the brief time I’d known him and an action that made my heart go pitter patter, and he winked at me. “I’ll see you at six thirty.”

“With a ring, like we outlined earlier,” Daddy said. “Size five. Make sure it’s big enough to draw notice.”

“Got it,” Hunter said, catching John’s eye and jerking his head toward the door. With that, his agent preceded him out of the board room, and Hunter snaked his way out behind him, leaving me with a stunning view of his very tight ass, my jaw nearly hitting the floor at the perfection of it. His jeans hugged every blessed inch of him, defining all the muscle there and in his thighs.

Daddy chuckled after the door closed. “Just be glad your mama isn’t around to see you gawking at him like that.”

“She’ll be seeing plenty of it soon enough,” I muttered. If all went according to plan, everyone in Oklahoma would soon be seeing a lot more than me gaping at Hunter as he walked away. I picked up my purse from the floor, tossing my copies of the pre-nuptial agreement inside before pushing my chair back from the board table. “Daddy, tell me something,” I said as I stood.

“What’s that?”

“Why is it that you’re so hunky dory with all of this? Why aren’t you getting worked up?” Lord knew worked up didn’t even begin to cover it where I was concerned.

The entire structure of my life until this point had been ripped away from me, just because of one night’s worth of poor choices. Now my future looked so different than it had only a few weeks ago that I couldn’t even recognize it. I’d been so close to achieving the goals I’d been working toward since before I’d understood what they were, but that was all gone. No chance. I couldn’t be Miss USA. I couldn’t compete for Miss Universe. At this point, I didn’t even know who I was anymore, or what my life should be about. I’d always had direction and a narrowly defined purpose. Now, all I could do was go along with what I was told. That wasn’t much different from any other time in my life, really. I was good at doing what I was told. That was how I’d gone as far as I had in the pageants I’d competed in over the years, so it came naturally to me.

Still, even with everyone agreeing that I was going to have to marry in order to help my misadventures in Cancun wash over, Mama and Lance were spitting mad over Hunter being the man we’d settled upon. They hadn’t had any better suggestions, and Daddy’s firm had run a thorough background check on him and come up with nothing worse than a brother with some drug and legal issues that had nothing to do with Hunter, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to them. They thought I deserved better for my fake husband and short-term marriage. They thought he should be someone who Oklahoma loved, not someone the people in the state hated with the fire of a thousand suns. They wanted him to sweep in on a white charger and save the day, not be dragged in kicking and screaming like Hunter was. They wanted the impossible.

But Daddy? I wasn’t at all sure what he wanted, and that left me feeling as if I stood on shaky ground. He’d always been my rock, my safe place amid the colliding fronts of Mama and Lance.

Those two pushed me harder and told me I was never going to be good enough if I didn’t do exactly as they said; he smiled and told me he loved me just as I was. They plucked and waxed and airbrushed me, obsessing over my every flaw; he looked at me when I had bedhead and a seaweed mask covering my face and told me I was beautiful. They regimented everything I ate, putting me on fad diets that only allowed for canned tuna and green vegetables one week and hard-boiled eggs and steamed carrots the next week; he brought home Subway sandwiches and cupcakes and sneaked them into my room, winking as he backed out with his finger pressed to his lips.

He winked in that same way now, shoving the stacks of paper aside and placing his entire focus on me. “I’m not getting worked up because, for the first time since you were six months old and your mother informed me she was going to enter you in a baby pageant whether I liked it or not, I’m not worried about the damage she’s going to do to you. You’re going to get out from under her thumb, and you’ll be all the better for it.”

“Out from under Mama’s thumb?” I repeated after him, dumbfounded. It was Lance who had always ruled every aspect of my life as far as I could figure it, dictating everything to Mama from my diet to my bedtime, and even the electives I should sign up for in school. He had determined that I should be in Delta Delta Delta. He’d been the one to decide that I should major in communications at the University of Oklahoma. He’d hired and fired the various designers, makeup artists, and coaches I’d had over the years. It had always been Lance, not Mama, making those decisions for my life. She’d just been the one to enforce my compliance.

Daddy smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Tallie, I tried to fire Lance at least a dozen times over the years, but your mother wouldn’t have it. He’s been the one deciding how you needed to do things, but it was your mother who insisted he be in your life at all. She’s ultimately the one behind it, and I couldn’t be happier to have you finally coming to a point where the two of them can’t dictate your life.”

My life.

But if I went along with the plan and married Hunter, just as I’d been told to do, it wasn’t really my life, was it? I’d just be going along with what they told me to do, and maybe instead of Mama and Lance dictating everything now, it would be Hunter taking on that role. Or maybe they would find a way to wheedle their way in to keep going as they had been.

It wasn’t my life. Or at the very least, it wasn’t the life I wanted. Now I needed to figure out what to do about it.

EVEN AFTER SHOWERING and changing clothes, I still felt like I was going to melt and drip down the drainage system on the Tulsa streets. I didn’t know how anyone could live in heat like this, and I wasn’t even remotely thrilled about the fact that I was going to have to figure it out, and soon. After my fuckup, I’d thought that I was only going to be here for a week or maybe two right now, long enough to work out a plan with the team for dealing with the media, and then I would go home for the rest of my off-season. That was all I had planned for when I’d packed for this trip. I should have been able to head back to Prince George for a month or so to finish up my summer training regimen before settling in here in preparation for the new season, but I was quickly learning that life didn’t always turn out the way I’d planned or expected. I wasn’t supposed to have to stick around in this heat—not with the way I’d mapped everything out in my head—but here I was.

Not only that, but I couldn’t exactly run to Canada if I was getting married this weekend and making a show of being unable to keep my hands off Tallulah. I was going to have to suffer through this heat—both the literal and the figurative versions of it—while I trained for the new season. That meant I’d have to find a good gym and a personal trainer here, and I’d have to cancel with my usual guy back home.

And then there was the small matter of filling in my parents about all of this. I hadn’t even picked up the phone yet because of all the running around I’d been doing since leaving the Thunderbirds offices, but I could already hear the dismay in Mom’s tone. What do you mean, you’re getting married? Who is she? What’s her family like? What kind of name is Tallulah? What about Carrie? There wasn’t a chance in hell Mom would leave Carrie out of it. And then there was the fact that I would have to break it to Carrie, too, which was no small matter.

She and I had been in an on-and-off relationship for the last decade or more. We had spent a lot more time in the off phase than in the on phase, especially in the last five years or so. Our relationship was complicated, made more so because of issues between her sister, my brother, and our niece. More than anything, Carrie was the girl I knew I could hook up with when I went home if I needed a release for some pent-up frustration. We’d been friends with benefits since just after high school, a relationship that had worked well for both of us. She had a career of her own. She’d never wanted to leave home, and I’d had to for my career. And now she had Kaylee to think about, too.

The only problem was that our mothers didn’t want to accept it. They’d been trying to get the two of us together since we were about seven years old. I was pretty sure Mom thought I was going to come home after I washed out of the NHL and marry Carrie, maybe make some babies with her. Carrie and I had never wanted that, but it didn’t stop Mom and Mrs. Schuster from trying to make it happen.

Anyway, talking to either Mom or Carrie would have to wait until tomorrow. Whether I wanted plans or not, I had them for tonight.

After renting a car, buying a fucking ring that would meet Mr. Roth’s requirements, and getting cleaned up at the hotel, I didn’t have a lot of time left before the Roths would expect me to pick up Tallulah for dinner. Besides, I hadn’t sorted out what I wanted to tell anyone, and it might not be a bad idea to work that out with my bride-to-be in advance of breaking the news to everyone at home.

So instead of picking up my phone, I put some gel in my hair to tame it somewhat, pulled on a pair of slacks and the only shirt and tie I’d brought with me for this supposedly brief visit, and headed out to pick her up.

I followed the directions dictated by my GPS and drove into a gated community. It was full of big, old houses, the sort that made me think they must be part of a historical district. As Mr. Roth’s secretary had informed me, there was another gate at the driveway to the house. I put my car in park and rolled down the window to identify myself on the speaker. A beep sounded and the gate opened.

By the time I pulled up to the circular drive in front of the main entry, Tallulah was halfway down the steps, hurrying toward me. She had on a turquoise sundress made out of some fluttering material that whipped around her legs in the wind. She held down her skirt with one hand, a designer bag in the other. I put the car in park and unfastened my seat belt, but she yanked the door open before I could get out to assist her.

“Let’s go before Mama and Lance realize I’m already gone,” she said, slamming the car door behind her.

I ground my jaw at the mention of that asshole’s name, but I refastened my belt and put the car in gear. I’d thought we agreed he would take no part in our marriage? But then again, that had only been decided upon earlier today, and she would have to have time to tell him to butt out. Since I hadn’t informed my parents about any of this yet, I supposed I’d better bite my tongue for now. Sure enough, I glanced in my rearview mirror as I drove toward the main street to find Lance waving wild arms in the air and shouting after us, Tallulah’s mother hot on his heels with a scowl that seemed permanently affixed to her face.

“I take it they aren’t happy you won’t be taking part in wedding planning tonight,” I murmured.

She tucked her bag between her thigh and the center console and sighed. “Among other things.”

I chuckled at the resignation in her tone. “Still not warming up to me, huh?”

“You could say that.”

My guess was that I could say a lot more without hitting too far from the mark. The next year of my life was going to be quite the ordeal, and I got the sense that Mrs. Roth would only be the tip of the iceberg as far as daily frustrations were concerned.

The GPS instructed me to turn left at the next light, so I moved into the turn lane and dug the jewelry box out of my pocket. The light was red so I stopped the car and handed the box to Tallulah. “Here. You might as well put that on now so it’ll be noticed by anyone who matters.”

She took the box, her perfectly manicured fingers curling around the velvet-wrapped casing, but she neither opened it nor took the ring out. She just held it out in front of her, staring down at it as if it were alive.

“It’s not going to bite you,” I said.

“I know.” She didn’t sound like she believed what she was saying. “It’s just…”

Several seconds passed in silence. The light turned green, and I pulled out into the intersection. “It’s just what?” I finally asked, unable to bear the echoing emptiness between us. We didn’t know each other at all yet, and the less we spoke, the greater the chasm between us grew.

She still didn’t answer me. She stared out the window on her side of the car, rotating the jewelry box between her fingers. It was only when we pulled into the parking lot at the restaurant that she turned to me and said, “It’s nothing.” Her eyes had taken on a vacant expression, lifeless amber orbs in a too-perfect face. She opened the box, took out the ring, and placed it on her finger without any reaction whatsoever to the ring itself. It was a big fucking ring, and one that deserved some sort of reaction. She seemed oblivious to it, though, lost in whatever thoughts were running through her head.

It damn well wasn’t nothing, but hell if I knew what it was. I shut off the ignition and took the box from her, reaching across her body to place it in the glove box. “This has to be the worst proposal known to man,” I said, trying to laugh it off and hoping she would do the same. We were going to have to loosen up.

“We’ll have to come up with something better to tell people,” she said. The hint of a smile crept to her lips. “Maybe we can talk about that over dinner. Come up with something outrageous. They’re bound to ask, and we need to get our stories straight.”

It seemed as good as anywhere to start.

I unfolded myself out of the car and made my way around to help her out. As we crossed the parking lot, I took great care in being sure I walked with my hand on the small of her back, drawing her close enough to me that the scent of her perfume wafted up and tickled my nostrils, making me want to tug her even closer. Sure enough, just as everyone had made clear would happen, eyes followed our every move.

The hostess greeted us at the door and took us straight to a semi-secluded area near the back of the restaurant—far enough away from other diners that we wouldn’t be overheard but close enough that they would definitely be able to see everything that went on between us. No doubt Mr. Roth’s secretary had requested this spot specifically. The table was raised up on a dais of sorts and had been set for two, with elegant china, delicate champagne glasses, fresh flowers, and candles. Mirrors lined the wall behind the bench, reflecting candlelight. A bottle of expensive bubbly was waiting for us in a bucket of ice. I helped Tallulah into her seat and slid in beside her, taking care to move closer than was necessary.

She flinched slightly when my thigh brushed hers.

“Too close?” I whispered in her ear. My lips hovered close enough that her body heat reached them.

Her eyes flickered up to meet mine, her cheeks slightly flushed. She shook her head.

“Congratulations to you both on your engagement,” the hostess said. She didn’t hand us any menus, though, which threw me for a loop. “The chef will be out momentarily to discuss your selections for this evening. Should I open that now, or would you like to wait?” she asked, pointing to the champagne.

Personal attention from the chef was not something I’d experienced very often in my life, at least not counting the chef hired by the teams I’d played for who cooked for us on the road and made sure the younger guys were eating solid meals when we were at home instead of constantly ordering pizza and eating fast food burgers. I made a lot of money, and people tended to suck up to me because of that, but this was an entirely different level of sucking up. Maybe Tallulah really was as big of a deal around here as they wanted me to believe.

“We’ll wait,” I said. It was only after the hostess nodded and backed away that I realized I should have asked if Tallulah was on board with that. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head. “Whatever you think is best.”

She acquiesced too easily. I’d only known her for hours, but I was already starting to pick up on that, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. She did what she was told to do, and she did it without much complaint. Her mother and Lance had probably been the root cause of the lack of decisiveness on her part, but I doubted her father was faultless where that behavior was concerned. Even with him, she jumped to do his bidding. Was she going to be like that with me, too? I hoped not, but at least it would only be for a year.

She fidgeted with her ring, which drew my eye to her hand. The ring fit her perfectly, but it was huge. They’d insisted that it had to be big, though. They wanted it seen. I glanced up to scan the dining room. Dozens of eyes were on us, taking in the whole scene. Heads were bent over tables, and they whispered heatedly back and forth, their gazes wandering back over to us time and again.

I reached across the table and put my hand over hers in a protective—slightly possessive—gesture. I made sure the ring was visible, though. Her eyes shot up to meet mine in question.

“We’re putting on a show, remember, Tallulah?” I nudged my head toward the sea of people watching our every move.

Her head whipped around. “Please don’t call me that.”

“All right, I won’t call you by your name, sweetheart. What should I call you instead?”

“I’m not your sweetheart any more than you’re Daddy’s son,” she said pointedly.

I swallowed a laugh, mainly because she was giving me a flash of the sassy young woman who’d put me in my place earlier today when we’d first met. There was no stopping my grin, though. “Duly noted.” The urge to give her a salute was overwhelming, but I kept myself from doing that by tightening my grip on her hand. “Any other suggestions?” I asked wryly.

She narrowed her eyes on me, the cutest pout turning the corners of her lips down. “You can call me Tallie, like Daddy does. That’s what most people call me. The only ones who ever call me Tallulah are Mama, Lance, and other people like them.”

Other people like them. Then she did recognize the stranglehold they had over her, at least to some extent. “Tallie it is, then,” I said. “Anyway, back to this show we’re putting on for people. So whatever we talk about, we need to be looking at each other with doe eyes and touching like we can’t keep our hands off each other, not even for long enough to get through a simple meal.”

She batted those gorgeous amber eyes at me, and in a snap, she pasted a seductive smile on her face. She relaxed her hand beneath mine, her expression heating up enough that it should fool everyone around us even if it didn’t come close to convincing me.

Her response reassured me, but at the same time, it caused my gut to sink. Was this a sign that I was right, that she would do whatever I told her to without question? I didn’t want to be married to some chick who was going to rush to do my bidding. I liked the version of Tallie who gave me flashes of fire, who put me in my place with the kind of authority that made it seem like she believed she could keep me there. Thank God this farce of a marriage was only going to last a year, because I didn’t think I could take even a day longer than that, at least not unless the sassy Tallie was the one I’d be living with. I liked being with women who were confident within themselves and went after what they wanted, not the sort who snapped to attention the second you said boo.

The chef came up before I could put my foot in my mouth and say anything to that effect. He went over a few options he could make especially for us, things that weren’t on the regular menu but he wanted to make available to his valued guests on a momentous occasion such as an engagement. The way he simpered over us made me want to snarl, but I held that urge in check. I was supposed to be a man so deeply in love with this woman that nothing would distract me from fawning over her in every way, not even chefs who wanted to cater to our every whim simply because of who we were. That kind of treatment didn’t go over well with me.

When he finished outlining our options, I waited for Tallie to order.

She blinked at me a couple of times. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Whatever I’m having,” I grumbled. I thought this was supposed to be one of her favorite restaurants, which should mean that she had an idea of what she wanted to eat.

She just blinked again and smiled.

This year was going to be hell.

THROUGHOUT DINNER, HUNTER kept casually—yet, in reality, not at all casually—touching my hand and trailing fingers along my arm, all the while sending heated glances in my direction. And calling them heated wasn’t an exaggeration in the slightest. They were the sorts of looks that made my girly parts zing and caused my body temperature to rise about thirty degrees or so, meaning I was just this side of spontaneous combustion caused by sexy green fire. I tried to rein my body in, but it was no use. My response was happening even with the knowledge that those looks were only for show and the touches weren’t meant to be anything more than an exhibition for anyone who cared to see. He had a job to do, and the man meant business. He wasn’t messing around.

The longer we sat at that table, eating course after course, I had to keep reminding myself that what we were doing here wasn’t real. There was nothing meaningful or lasting about what was going on.

Damn, but he was good at this, which only reinforced the idea that I had a lot of work to do before I would be capable of pulling off the kind of trickery he was managing as easily as snapping his fingers. I’d thought he was supposed to be a hockey player, not an actor, but he was nearly fooling me, and I knew exactly what was going on. Or at least I thought I did. It was difficult to convince myself I was right about that since his actions were having such a decided and potent effect on me.

Every time he looked deep into my eyes, I felt the intensity of it all the way to my toes. Each brush of his fingers along my bare skin left goose bumps in its wake.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. The relationship between us was supposed to be strictly business, or at least that was how it had been drawn up. There wasn’t supposed to be any true attraction here, and my feelings had no business showing up in anything we did. I needed to keep my head in it and my heart out of it, plain and simple. That wasn’t happening, though.

I must be hormonal, or possibly the events of the day had simply left me overwhelmed and vulnerable to the charm he was expertly exerting upon me. Either way, I knew I needed to take this as a learning experience. Now I knew the kind of effect he could have upon me, so it was up to me to find a way to gird myself against it.

With my thumb, I spun the ring on my finger, twirling it around and around as I debated my options for guarding my heart against his sensual assault. This whole marriage was going to prove to be a challenge for me, as I had always had a tendency to link physical contact with my emotions, and the plan was to be all over each other in public.

Like he was doing right now.

Hunter slid a finger down the length of my forearm again, and when he reached my hand, he took it in his and twined our fingers together, trapping the diamond I’d been spinning between our palms. My heart fluttered, my pulse skipping the occasional beat and doubling up on some others, and I bit down on my tongue in an attempt to regain control over my body and its unruly response. This wasn’t going well. Not at all. And it was only the first day.

Hell’s bells, how was I going to come out of this with my heart intact?

“So you’re in college?” he asked me, seemingly oblivious to the insanity he was causing to race through my veins.

“Taking this year off, for obvious reasons.” Not that I was happy about it. The break from school was something Mama and Lance had insisted upon, saying that I needed to put all my efforts in clearing up my name. Finishing up my degree would have to wait.

Hunter scowled at my admission, but he schooled his features so that no one but me could see it. His hand tightened over mine, though, digging the ring into the meaty part of my palm. It didn’t really hurt, but it was more than enough for me to sense his displeasure. I tried to loosen my hand from his grip so I could shift the ring back into the position it ought to be in, but he held it firm, never removing his gaze from me.

“I’m a communications major at OU,” I forced out through gritted teeth.

He finally relaxed his grip some, but he didn’t let me go. Instead, he started teasing my skin with the pad of his thumb, tracing circles over the inside of my wrist, the super-sensitive flesh that covered my rampant pulse. Surely, those circles were designed to drive me wild. Heat raced to the spots he touched, and my nerves went into overdrive. He might as well have been branding me with his mark.

“You could keep going to school while we do this,” he said. “I’m going to be on the road with the team half the season, anyway.”

“Everyone thinks it’s for the best,” I said, consciously avoiding mentioning the specific people included in everybody.

“I wouldn’t say everybody thinks that,” he grumbled.

“Close enough for government work.”

“Hmm.”

There wasn’t any hiding how much he disagreed, but at least he let it drop for the time being. “So, communications?” He took another sip of champagne, teasing the back of my hand by ghosting his thumb over the skin repeatedly. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Do with it?” I raised a brow in question. I’d been willfully ignoring the fact that I didn’t have a plan for after I finished with my degree. It was just one more thing that Lance would inform me of, no doubt.

“After you graduate. What kind of career do you want to have?”

I shrugged, as if that would bring an answer to my lips. “I haven’t really thought about it.” Yes, it was an outright lie I was feeding him, but I didn’t want him to think I was as pathetic as I knew I was. Getting a communications degree was just what pageant girls tended to do. Most of them married some rich guy and never needed a degree or a career, anyway. Mama always made light of it, saying, What Tallulah Belle is really working toward is her MRS degree. Meaning she intended for me to do what everyone else did. That was just one more plan of hers that I’d screwed up. I mentally tossed that on the ever-growing pile.

Yes, I was getting married to Hunter, and he totally fit the bill in terms of the money he made and the fact that I wouldn’t have to do anything. That was only true if we stayed married, though, and everyone who mattered knew that wasn’t going to happen.

The teasing circles Hunter had been tracing on my flesh stopped, and there was a lot of tension in his grip. He didn’t get it. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure I always understood it, but Mama had planned everything out from before I was even born.

“So you’re not going to go to school while we’re married. You don’t have a degree or a career lined up. Just what, exactly, are you going to be doing for an entire year?”

I shrugged again, which brought out a tic in Hunter’s jaw.

“Being the best wife I can be for you?” I suggested helplessly. “Seeing and being seen so we can change what the press is saying about us?”

“That’s not much to fill a year with,” he groused. “I’m going to be playing hockey. I’ve got a job to do that’s going to eat up a lot of my time. I’ll be gone half the time, on the road with the team.”

I’d already been dreading the coming year, but the way he was looking at me now caused me to lose my appetite completely. His eyes were still boring through me, but there was a crease between his brows to go along with the twitching jaw, and it seemed as though every word I said only upset him further. The subtle cues I was getting to his thoughts were so completely counterpoint to the ways he was touching me that my head was a bigger mess than it had been before the day had gotten started.

I pushed my plate away, unable to think about eating another bite because I had no clue what I was going to do with my life, and it killed me. Hunter was right. He had his job. He had the team. He would be required to go to practices and play in games, and they’d be gone on the road quite a bit. That was one of the selling points in choosing him, supposedly. He had a life to live.

But me? My entire life had been built around becoming Miss USA. There was no Plan B. There wasn’t a backup plan for when that fell through. And I didn’t have the first clue what to do with myself. All my friends were my sorority sisters and other girls who competed in pageants, and I wasn’t going to be around them. The Delta Delta Delta girls were honestly the first people in my life in a very long time who I could call friends. Mama and Lance had kept me in poise classes, dance classes, singing lessons, wardrobe fittings, speech training, and a thousand other pursuits that were designed to help me reach one goal, and one only, so there had been no time for anything along the lines of creating friendships of the sort that would last. I had acquaintances, and many of them likely claimed I was their friend, but how many of them knew me? Even my major in college had been decided for me with no thought as to what I might want or what I would do with it when my pageant days were done. Now I was facing a future that scared the life out of me because it was so open and full of possibility that it made me want to cry.

Because all of a sudden, I had choices. But I’d be damned if I had the first clue how to make decisions for myself, and the thought of it made terror creep through my veins like ice, leaving me shivering.

“Are you cold?” Hunter asked, narrowing his eyes.

I shook my head, not sure how to explain. The air conditioning in this restaurant was working overtime, but that was a necessity at this time of year. My body was used to going from intense heat outside to full blast AC inside. It wasn’t the temperature. Not at all.

The waitress came to clear away our plates before Hunter could question me further. “Do you want me to box the rest of this up for you?” she asked, indicating my nearly full dish.

I shook my head. The thoughts racing through my mind were going to make eating the rest of it later as impossible as eating it now. “Unless you want to take it back to your hotel?” I suggested to Hunter once the idea struck me. He might want something to eat later, and there was no good reason to let it go to waste.

“Take it,” he said, schooling his features. “And we’re ready for the check.”

“Oh, but the chef was making dessert—”

“We’re ready for the check,” he repeated firmly.

She gave him a nod as she scurried away.

“I’m sorry,” I said out of habit.

He reached up and brushed a tendril of hair out of my face, tucking it gently behind my ear and making me shiver even harder than I already was from the tenderness of his touch. “Why the hell are you sorry?” he demanded, his tone so thoroughly incongruous with the way he was touching me that I felt breathless, like I was running and couldn’t keep up. My head sure couldn’t.

“I don’t know,” I forced myself to say. “It just seems like I’ve done something to upset you, so I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t apologize for something unless you know what the fuck you’re sorry for.”

Apologizing for everything was just part of who I was. It was as innate to me as breathing, something that came from growing up in the South just like saying Bless his little heart or putting salt on your watermelon in the summer. I bit down on my tongue to keep from apologizing again for apologizing the first time, because I got the distinct sense that another I’m sorry coming from my mouth was the last thing he wanted to hear right now.

The waitress brought the bill, and Hunter shoved a credit card in her direction. As soon as he did, she left with it, taking the not-so-subtle hint that we wanted to get out of here quickly or that he wanted us to be alone, whichever the case might be.

He didn’t say anything while she was gone, so I took his cue and kept my lips zipped. The most likely thing I might say would be to apologize again, so it was probably better all around.

She returned a moment later with a to-go bag and the payment slip. She passed the bag to me while he scribbled in a tip and his signature.

“Dessert,” she said quietly to me. “Compliments of the chef.”

I nodded and put my handbag inside the brown paper bag to make it easier to carry.

“Let’s get out of here,” Hunter said, not even sparing the waitress a second glance. He reached for my hand, and instinctively I set mine in his. He helped me slide off the bench, gently but insistently tugging me close to his side as we headed toward the exit.

A slew of photographers had come together just inside the front doors.

“Seriously?” Hunter grumbled in my ear.

I dropped my voice so only he could hear. “That’s what this was about, isn’t it? The reason we’re here?”

He gave a noncommittal grunt, sweeping me outside into the sweltering heat. It was dark out, but the parking lot was so brightly lit that we couldn’t see the stars in the sky. Instead of guiding me to his rental car, though, Hunter suddenly turned toward the side of the building. “I suppose we might as well give them the sort of show they’re hoping for, then,” he said, turning me so my back was against the wall.

That was all the warning he gave me before his lips were on mine. Hard. Hot. Possessive. His tongue slid across the seam of my lips, and I opened with a startled gasp, dropping the bag to the ground. He teased me with his tongue, his hands drawing me closer until I was completely enveloped in his heat and lost in a sea of sensation.

I wasn’t ready for this. I hadn’t yet braced myself for his sensual assault. In my head, I knew this was all for show, but my body didn’t seem to get that memo. Not at all. Every stroke of his tongue sent jolts of awareness down to my sex. Every brush of his hand—gentle even as he left no doubt as to his pure, raw, masculine strength—had my nipples beading and my panties getting wetter. Ready or not, I wanted him with an intensity that had no business in this relationship.

His lips left mine to explore the length of my neck and the curve where it met my shoulder, and I pressed my head against the wall with my eyes squeezed tight, trying to remember how to breathe. I had to find a way to get my body to stop reacting. I had to find a way to keep my heart out of this, because there was no room for an emotional attachment to this man.

But he was all man. Of that, there was no doubt. His hands weren’t the only part of him that were strong and gentle. The muscles of his chest and torso brushed against my body. He lifted me against the wall, one of his powerful thighs splitting mine as he held me in place with his hips and his hands, his erection pulsing against me through the barrier created by our clothing.

In a strange way, the realization that he was just as affected by the show we were putting on for the cameras helped to calm me, aided me in distancing myself from what was happening. If we were going to be convincing with what we wanted the world to see, we were going to have to be convincing for ourselves, I supposed. I wasn’t alone in this. Hunter was as hot and bothered as I was, and we were barely getting started.

Gathering my wits enough to remember why we were doing this in the first place, I put both my hands on his broad shoulders, holding on while he continued his assault on my senses. When I peeked through my lashes, I found photographers snapping away, just as expected. It was working. We were going to be all over the local news tomorrow. I eased my left hand over Hunter’s shoulder so it rested on his back and they would get a clear shot of the engagement ring, even as he raised his head again and met my lips for another kiss. This one was soft and slow, a delicious counterpoint to the visceral attack the first kiss had been.

He lifted his head from mine, his lips still a hair’s breadth away. “Is it working?” he murmured.

While I knew he was referring to the cameramen, asking if they’d followed us out to invade our privacy, there was a part of me that wondered if he didn’t also want to know if it was having an effect upon me. There wasn’t really any way to hide my body’s reaction to him. No point in trying. I bit down on my lower lip, still tasting the essence of him there, and nodded. My answer would be the same no matter which of those questions he was truly asking.

He kissed me again, just a tease that wasn’t anywhere close to enough, and said, “Good.” Then he lowered me to my feet, picked up the bag I’d dropped, and took my hand in his. I walked along beside him on wobbly legs, slipping past the throng of reporters who were blinding us with their flashes, until we reached his car. He helped me inside and kissed me again, his tongue gliding over the spot I’d just bitten, before closing the door and waving to the cameras.

One year. I could get through one year of this. I might go through a mountain of batteries and wear out my vibrator, but I could do it.

THIS WAS DEFINITELY hell, this place in life where I existed now. To be clear, I no longer thought that simply because of how hot it was all the time. Had to be hell. I must have fucked up even more royally than I’d realized, and someone had decided to put me in a permanent state of misery, and I’d ended up in purgatory. There was no other reasonable explanation. I’d survived telling both Mom and Carrie about the upcoming nuptials, but I wasn’t sure the hearing in my left ear would ever be the same after Mom told me exactly what she thought of it all. Carrie had been far more understanding. Maybe too understanding. Shouldn’t she have been bothered by it, at least to an extent? But all she’d said was that she understood, and she’d see if she could come. Those two calls had hardly touched the surface of the hell my life had become, though.

For one thing, I was being bombarded at every turn by jackasses shoving cameras and microphones in my face. That wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal, playing hockey in the South. I mean, if I were in Montreal or Toronto, maybe New York or Chicago, then sure. That was just how it tended to go in the big-time hockey hotbeds. But in Oklahoma? I was supposed to be able to live like the masses, to go places and not be recognized as someone important enough to care about. Or at least not important enough for them to shove a mic in my face. I was supposed to be able to blend in even better down here than I had in Portland. Instead, the complete opposite was happening, and I hated every second of it.

In general, I was a private person. I preferred to keep my personal life personal, but right now I was having to broadcast it to anyone who cared to see it…and there were a surprisingly large number of people who cared. They were doing the same thing to Tallie, but she seemed resigned to it, so much so that I was beginning to understand her better. All indications pointed to the fact that this had been her life for quite some time, and she expected it to be part and parcel of her life going forward. It wasn’t her choice, but for some reason she allowed it to happen.

The one good thing to come of it was that our efforts seemed to be having the desired effect, at least as far as we could tell from such a small sample size. Already, I’d seen pictures of the two of us popping up in the local newspaper’s gossip and celebrity section, and there’d even been a brief article on the sports page. Tallie said that she’d seen positive talk along with some video on one of the websites she visits regularly, and there was quite a bit of buzz going on social media sites. We were making an impact. So far, no one was exactly sure what to make of us, but the fact was they were talking. So there was a start.

If the fact that the media was following us around constantly wasn’t bad enough, now we could add to it that every time some obnoxious camera guy focused in on the pair of us, I had to be all over Tallie. Getting cozy with her, in and of itself, wasn’t a horrible thing, beyond the fact that I liked to keep things like that behind closed doors. Tallie was sexy as sin, and I was about a hundred times more physically attracted to her than I wanted to be. The problem came from the knowledge that no matter how turned on I got while we played our parts, there wasn’t ever going to be anything permanent between us.

Don’t get me wrong. I was down with the idea of a one-night stand under the right circumstances. But nothing between us would allow for it to be just one night. It would be awkward when I would be taking her home with me every night for a year but then we’d be parting ways once we shut the cameras out. Was there such a thing as a one-year stand?

She’d said up front that maybe I wouldn’t have to be celibate the whole time we were together, but I wasn’t sure she meant it or had thought through the implications of what she’d hinted at, and I was less sure it was a good idea. For either of us. The further we took things once we were alone, the greater the likelihood that one of the two of us—if not both—would end up getting our feelings hurt in the end. It would be a hell of a lot safer to just keep our hands to ourselves, like Mrs. Roth insisted upon, other than in those moments when we were playing things up for the media.

And finally, despite the fact that I’d insisted that Lance had no place in our marriage, I couldn’t seem to get rid of the jackass. He was overseeing every aspect of the wedding, presiding over things like he was the goddamned king or something, and butting in where he needed to butt out. Once we’re married, it’ll be different, Tallie kept telling me. She insisted that he wouldn’t be involved at that point, but a wedding wasn’t a marriage, and it seemed as though she had no say in things where that was concerned.

I wanted her to put her foot down, to stand up for herself, but that seemed to be more and more unlikely.

Today was Friday. The wedding was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and my parents were flying in early this evening. My brother, Kade, was supposed to be staying wherever the hell he was these days. I hadn’t asked, and Mom hadn’t offered to tell me. I’d made her swear that she wasn’t going to say a word to him about any of this, that he could find out later once the wedding was over, the camera crews were gone, and he couldn’t cause any problems. He might resent me for keeping him in the dark. Lord knew it wasn’t the first thing he would resent me for, and I doubted it would be the last, but I didn’t need him here getting high and falling into the fucking wedding cake while a hundred cameras caught the whole thing. For some reason, I doubted that would go over well with any of the Thunderbirds executives, let alone all of Tallie’s people.

Kade was supposed to stay put, but Carrie might be coming. She’d said she would think about it when I’d called, and I knew it was a huge imposition for her because it wasn’t just herself she had to sort out. She had Kaylee to worry about, too, and Kaylee was a hell of a lot more important than my fake marriage. I had a feeling Mom was “helping” Carrie come up with ways to put an end to this wedding before it ever happened.

No matter how many times I chewed it over, I couldn’t make up my mind whether it would be better for Carrie to stay home or come. She wanted to support me as a friend, but how would it go over with Tallie’s family, particularly if they figured out what sort of relationship Carrie and I had always had? How would I explain Kaylee? And what would Tallie think, herself? I couldn’t worry about that until and if it became an issue, though, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I would get married and not invite Carrie. She’d been my friend through everything, more of a friend than my brother had ever been. Yeah, we fucked sometimes. We were still just friends. It worked for us even if no one else understood it and our mothers wanted there to be more.

Whether Carrie came to Tulsa or not, I still had a shitload of things to do before anyone arrived this evening, not the least of which was pick Tallie up at her parents’ house so we could finalize paperwork on my new house. For a couple of reasons, I’d included her in the whole process even though it was technically going to be my house. It got us out and about so we could spend time together, get to know each other, and potentially be seen by people who supposedly mattered, and it got her away from Lance and her mother.

When I arrived at the Roths’ house, their frazzled housekeeper showed me into their audacious family room that looked like it had popped straight out of Southern Living magazine, where Tallie was standing on a pedestal. She was wearing a gauzy white thing while half a dozen people poked at it with needle and thread.

The bodice fit her like a glove, in lace that I could practically see through, and they were sewing hundreds or thousands of glittery beads on it. It was cut so low I could almost see her belly button. The skirt was made of some light-as-air fabric that would easily fall to the floor even if she wore five-inch heels, and it had a slit in front high enough that it almost revealed her pussy. She was gorgeous in it, but I had a hard time imagining she could look anything less than gorgeous in anything. My only problem with it was I had a feeling this was what Lance wanted to send her down the aisle wearing when, in my opinion, something like that shouldn’t ever leave the confines of her bedroom. It was a hell of a lot better suited to a wedding night than a wedding. Granted, I didn’t think the two of us would be having a traditional wedding night.

Even now, Lance was marching around the circle of seamstresses and barking out orders. “I think we need to go a little lower here,” he said, pointing to the dip in the bodice.

If it went any lower, it might as well be completely open in the front, showing off everything for the world to see. Tallie put a hand over the vee, as though to cover herself, and shook her head slightly. I couldn’t agree with her more, but Lance either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“About another inch,” he told the woman who seemed to be in charge of the beading. “And more sparkle up on her shoulders. The lighting is going to be amazing, but we want Tallulah to shine even more than she already does.”

None of them had noticed my presence, so I cleared my throat. Lance whipped his head around to glare at me, and Tallie looked up, covering herself even more.

“You’re not supposed to see the dress until the wedding,” Lance groused.

I chose to ignore that bit of superstition, focusing instead on what seemed to be the bigger issue at hand. “Is that what you call that thing? A dress? Looks more like lingerie.” Lingerie that I could easily imagine myself taking off her, an inch at a time. Damn, but I needed to stop thinking along those lines.

“Then it’s a good thing we won’t be listening to you for advice on how to dress Tallulah Belle,” he shot back. “Uppity Neanderthal,” he muttered loud enough for me to hear.

My blood was boiling, and this was only the first time today I’d had to deal with him. It wouldn’t be my last, though, since my final fitting for my tux was this afternoon before my parents arrived and we held the rehearsal dinner. If he survived the day, it would be a miracle.

Pointedly ignoring him, I looked at Tallie. “Is this what you want?” I asked her. She might not think she could voice her opinions. I wanted her to know that she could. That it was all right for her to make a decision and tell him to stick it where the sun didn’t shine. I wanted her to stand up for herself.

Lance rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what—”

“If you dare finish uttering those words, they might be your last,” I interrupted him, putting the full force of my displeasure into my glare. Between him and Mrs. Roth, there was no wonder Tallie seemed to always comply. It had to end. “It does matter what Tallie wants. She’s the one who’s fucking getting married. It’s her wedding. Her dress. Not yours, so you’d just better back the fuck off unless you want me to put that thing on you and cut the slit up high enough that your limp dick flaps.”

That was probably taking it too far.

“Well, I never…” Lance muttered, looking thoroughly scandalized.

There were several audible gasps coming from throughout the room, and a glance at Tallie revealed she was either blushing in deep embarrassment or attempting to prevent herself from bursting out laughing. I couldn’t be sure which it was. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have just bitten my tongue about the damn dress and gone about my business, but the more I was around this imbecile, the less I seemed capable of doing what I should. But it was too late to take my words back—something that was becoming a habit, it seemed—and I honestly didn’t want to. Someone needed to put this asshole in his place, and no one else was stepping up to the plate, not Tallie and not even her father. I supposed that left it for me.

I met Tallie’s gaze again, ignoring Lance’s outrage. “Is this what you want?” I repeated more forcefully.

She smoothed her hands over her sides, the fabric ruffling from her light touch. Then one hand slid upward to the deep vee between her insanely perfect breasts as she glanced down. “I think its fine as it is,” she finally said. “We’re getting married in a church, after all. I don’t want it to be too revealing. Maybe a bit more beadwork, but there’s no reason to cut it any lower.”

The corners of my lips twitched. She’d made a decision, but it seemed to me that she was just attempting to appease everyone involved, to find middle ground that didn’t offend anyone too much. I wasn’t sold on that being the decision she would have made if she thought it were truly up to her. Still, she’d made the call. In my opinion, that was that. Time to move on.

“All right, you heard her,” I said to all the workers hovering around her with needles in hand. “More beads, but leave the cut how it is. Now”—I met her eyes again—“we have an appointment with my realtor and the bank. Why don’t you go put something else on and leave them to it? Unless you’d rather stay here for more of this.”

She nodded. “I can be ready in ten minutes.” Then she stepped down from the pedestal, acquiescing again. This time it was me she was going along with, but I couldn’t say I liked it any better. In fact, I might like it less.

“Well, I never,” Lance repeated with an indignant huff.

“Yeah,” I said. “We know.” I placed my hand on Tallie’s waist and guided her out to the foyer. “I’ll be here when you’re ready,” I said quietly to her when we reached the ornate staircase. She nodded and went up, holding the fabric of her dress out of her way with practiced ease. Then I made my way back to the family room.

The seamstresses were packing up their things, which included boxes and boxes of those beads. I wouldn’t be surprised to find every single one of them sewn to the dress by tomorrow afternoon.

I found an armchair near the hearth that looked like it might be sturdy enough to support me, all the while wondering why in hell anyone would think they needed a fireplace around here, with Lance eyeing me the whole time.

Slinky as a cat, he came over and took one of the seats across from me, crossing one leg over the other and lacing the fingers of both hands together, pulling back over the higher knee. “While I’ve got your full attention,” he said.

I scowled and raised a brow.

“There’s no call for you to be so surly,” he complained.

There was every reason for me to be surly. “Just get on with it. What the hell do you think you need to talk to me about?”

“One of the networks came to me and offered Tallulah a reality show—the same ones who will be filming and producing your wedding.”

I still wasn’t happy about that, but at this point it was out of my hands. “What did she have to say about it?”

He blinked. “I haven’t mentioned it to her yet because they want it to follow both of you.”

“No.”

“Now hear me out—”

“No,” I repeated more emphatically. “If they’re going to follow me during the season, they’d have to get permission from both the Thunderbirds and the league. Not only would I have to consent, which is not going to happen in this lifetime, but any of my teammates or opponents who would be included would have to give their permission, too. It’s not going to happen.”

He huffed again. “They’re willing to keep the focus entirely on Tallulah, of course, but you’d have to agree—”

“I’m not agreeing to shit, and frankly I’d be surprised if Tallie agrees to do this, either.”

“Oh.” He waved a hand through the air, as if my objections were nothing more than an annoying fly. “She’ll agree to whatever I tell her to do.”

“What am I agreeing to?” Tallie asked as she breezed through the door carrying the dress in one hand and her bag in the other.

“Not a goddamned thing that this asshole wants, that’s for sure,” I said, coming to my feet. I crossed over to her, took the dress, tossed it to one of the seamstresses, and offered her my hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before I lose my cool and do what I’ve been dreaming of since I first met him.” Because Lance could really stand to have a few less teeth, and I thought he might look better with his nose in a different place.

“SHOULDN’T WE BE getting back soon?” I asked. I hated bringing it up, because I was really enjoying spending some time with Hunter without having to put on a show for anyone else. It was just the two of us getting to know each other, which was something we definitely needed to do if we were going to spend the next year together as husband and wife, whether it was a real marriage or not.

We’d already been here for hours, though, and Hunter still needed to have his final fitting before his parents arrived. Not only that, but I was sure there were a thousand things that Lance expected of me in that time span. He was probably blowing up my phone even now, asking where I was and demanding I come home immediately so he could put me through something else in preparation for tomorrow. I didn’t know that for sure, though, because I’d intentionally left my phone in Hunter’s car so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I needed a break from it all, and Hunter was giving me one.

After leaving my parents’ house, the two of us had gone to the bank so he could officially close on the house, and after we left there, we’d picked up some takeout food—fried chicken and a bunch of other stuff that Lance would have an absolute conniption fit if he knew about—and we’d gone to the new place to eat. Hunter had brought in a couple of grocery bags full of pantry items, too, so that the cabinets wouldn’t be entirely bare.

Right now, we were lying on the empty hardwood floors of the living room while the afternoon sun shone down on us through the massive picture windows along the back wall of the house.

It was a brand new house in the Southern Hills district, right across the street from the country club and golf course. Mama had always wanted to live in this part of town, but that was one thing Daddy had put his foot down over. He didn’t want the commute. Hunter’s new house was almost as far away from Mama and Daddy’s downtown river-view home as he could get without leaving the Tulsa city limits. It was the complete opposite of theirs in every way, with light colors on the walls, open spaces, and tons of natural light.

Even though it was in Southern Hills, Mama would hate it. She loved traditional Southern design, with bold colors, rich woods, lots of crown molding, elaborate chandeliers in every room, and so many gold accents they would blind you if you weren’t careful. Even the furniture looked like it had come out of another century.

I loved Hunter’s house, though, which was further proof of how different I was, not only from Mama but from what she wanted me to be. I hadn’t encouraged him one way or the other when we’d been house hunting, telling him I’d be fine with whatever he thought was best and encouraging him to choose the house that he wanted without worrying about my thoughts on the matter, but there was a part of me that would be glad to have some distance. Maybe even a big part of me. Mama and Lance could be smothering at the best of times, and having them across town could only help me figure out what I wanted to do with my life after this year ended. Whether they liked it or not, I’d decided that was going to be my focus for the time I spent as Hunter’s wife. I was going to use it to make my own decisions about where I wanted to go from here.

Hunter rolled to his side, facing me, and propped his head up on one hand. He shrugged. “I’m sure Lance thinks we should have been back hours ago, but I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass what he wants.”

I couldn’t hide the smile that curved up my lips. There had never been anyone in my life who’d put his foot down where Lance was concerned. Not even Daddy. My father had done his best to allow me to lead a normal life, but Mama and Lance had never listened to him as far as anything to do with pageants was concerned. Not at all. And to hear them talk about it, every single aspect of my life was related to pageants. Lance had been overseeing everything since before I could remember, from extracurricular activities to my diet, to how many hours I spent in the gym, to what colors I should wear and when, and even to who would be in charge of my hair and makeup. If he knew I’d just eaten fried chicken…

But he didn’t have to know. And if Hunter was serious about keeping our faux marriage a Lance-free zone, then maybe I could start to live a somewhat normal life, whatever that might be. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with him at all.” I put a hand behind my head to act as a pillow. “What was he saying I would agree to do when I walked in earlier?” The question had been niggling at the back of my mind ever since we’d left my parents’ house, but I’d been trying to avoid the Lance issue. Since Hunter had already brought him up again, though, I decided to run with it.

“He seems to think that you’ll happily agree to starring on a reality show. That you’re fine with having every aspect of our lives broadcast to anyone who cares to watch.”

“Oh.” Something along those lines would be exactly what Lance would want. The best defense is a good offense, and the best way to go on the offensive is to put yourself out there in every way you can. I couldn’t remember how many times he’d told me something along those lines, pounding it into my brain. The more exposure, the better.

The only time he hadn’t agreed with that particular tactic was when TMZ had caught me naked in a hot tub with Leo Brunetti’s hands all over me when I was in Cancun last month. The Brunetti family was famous more for being rich than for anything they’d done. Well, other than playing fast and loose. And honestly, Lance would have been all over that if not for the fact that it had cost me my chance at ever winning Miss USA. Now, I supposed he was changing his focus, although I wasn’t sure what his new tack would be. What was he pushing me toward? Who was he trying to make me become?

“Was he right?” Hunter asked. “Would you agree to it?”

“I…” That was a loaded question, and I wasn’t sure how to go about explaining just how loaded it was.

“You’re awfully hesitant.”

“It’s just that what I would agree to and what I want aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

Hunter sat up, drawing his knees toward his chest and resting his arms around them. “You’d do it even though you don’t want to? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I don’t know that I’d have much choice.”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you have a choice? You’re an adult. You can make your own decisions. He can’t control every aspect of your life for you unless you let him.”

But I’d been letting him control everything for my entire life, because that was what I’d always known, and changing things wasn’t as easy as snapping my fingers or wrinkling my nose. There were no magic wands in real life. I didn’t know how to break free of Lance’s control over even the simplest aspects of my life, how to put my foot down and demand what I wanted.

“I don’t know how to start,” I said, hating how pathetic that made me seem. This wasn’t what Daddy wanted for me. When it got right down to it, I didn’t think this was what Mama would have wanted, either. I wasn’t positive I understood everything involved in why she was so intent upon sending me to pageant after pageant, but I knew it wasn’t because she wanted to suffocate me.

But Hunter was right. I was an adult. I didn’t have to go along with everything I was told to do, but hell if I knew how to set healthy boundaries and learn to live my life the way I wanted it to be.

He smiled, and I had to wonder how he could be smiling at a time like this. But then he held out a hand to assist me up. I stumbled slightly and fell toward him. He steadied me by putting his other hand on my waist and drawing me in toward him. Too close. Just like every time we kissed for the cameras, awareness danced through my veins like fireflies flitting around after dark. My lips were suddenly dry, and I licked them. Hunter’s gaze followed my tongue, and I swallowed hard, trying to force my body to stop reacting to his presence.

“Well,” he said, easing me away from him and acting as though he hadn’t noticed the crazy heat between us, “you could start by telling Lance that as soon as the wedding is over, he doesn’t get to make decisions for you anymore.”

“I don’t think he’ll like that.”

“Does it matter?”

Hunter headed toward the kitchen after asking me that, so I assumed it was a rhetorical question. Did it matter to me what Lance thought? Was it important for Mama to approve of every decision I made? Those were the sorts of questions bouncing around in my head as I trudged along behind him. He had a jar of Nutella open on the counter, and he held out a plastic spoon for me. There wasn’t anything in sight to put it on.

I took the spoon, and he dunked another one in for a bite.

“Straight out of the jar?” I asked.

He popped the spoon in his mouth and raised a brow. “Something else Lance might not like?” he asked after a moment, when I still hadn’t followed suit.

It wasn’t just that. We were getting married tomorrow, and I had to be able to wear that dress in front of the lights and cameras. Thousands of people would see me in it at home, and that thing fit me like a glove. I couldn’t afford to gain so much as a pound or it would show, and Lance always said that anything with sugar or fat in it would go straight to my hips and make everything look awful. That was why he was constantly putting me on those crazy fad diets, keeping me from…

Keeping me from living life like a normal person. That was the crux of it. That was the heart of the matter, when I got right down to it.

I dug my spoon into the spread and came up with it heaping. Then I put it in my mouth. It tasted like heaven, only too sinful to possibly be heaven. It was perfect. I closed my eyes, savoring every bit of it as it melted over my tongue. I might have even let out a humming sound of pure joy.

“Good?” Hunter asked.

When I looked up at him, it was to find his silver-green eyes smiling back at me even though his lips weren’t. I took the spoon out and licked my lips. “Better than good.”

“You’ve got—” He reached out a hand toward my lips, but instead of brushing away the drop of Nutella with his finger, he dipped down his head and licked.

My breath caught in my throat as he backed away.

His eyes weren’t smiling anymore. They were dark and intense, sharp enough to pierce my lungs. “I guess we should be getting back, then.”

OTHER THAN JOHN and Darren having to physically restrain me from throat-punching Lance because the asshole was so intent on making sure Tallie’s hair and makeup were perfect that the whole damned thing started late—the wedding wasn’t until the next day, for fuck’s sake, so who cared what she looked like right now?—the rehearsal dinner went off without a hitch.

Mom had informed me when she and Dad arrived that Carrie would be coming for the wedding but that she wouldn’t catch a flight until the next morning. In other words, I’d see her at the wedding but not before. No time to figure out where she stood on things beyond the brief phone call we’d had earlier in the week. It was probably for the best, all things considered, but it definitely left me on edge.

But now, the rehearsal was over, dinner was finished, and everyone was starting to trickle off to their homes or hotels for the evening. Instead of having a bachelor party, I was going to spend my time with John, Darren, and my parents. It would be a good opportunity for Tallie to do the same, particularly since we were going on a honeymoon of sorts in Hawaii almost as soon as the wedding was over. It might be the only chance she would have to spend any quality time with my family since they’d be heading back to Prince George after the ceremony was over, and they might not be able to come down for a visit during the season.

I supposed Tallie didn’t really need to get to know them, especially since this was all a farce and it’d be over almost before it began, but there was still a part of me that wanted her to spend some time in their company. Maybe I just wanted her to see what a real family ought to be like, to give her more incentive to get out from the clutches that her mother and Lance had over her once it was all said and done. My family wasn’t perfect—one look at Kade and all the shit he’d been into since his late teens was more than enough for anyone to realize that—but if you ignored him, like I tended to do, we were no different from the average Canadian family. Well, apart from the fact that I was in the NHL, at least. There might be a lot of Canadians in the league, but that didn’t mean that most Canadian families could claim that.

The thing was, I was positive that Tallie’s family was anything but normal. I’d spent more than enough time with them this week to have removed any doubts I might have held on that score. Her father might be all right, but her mother? Not even close. Not only that, but joining me and my family would get her away from Lance for a few hours. That, in and of itself, was more than reason enough for me to want her to join us, so I drew her aside as everyone trickled out of the restaurant.

“Any chance you want to come hang out with my parents this evening? I promise I’ll get you home before too late.” I winked as I added the last part, with a meaningful glance off to the side, where Mrs. Roth and Lance were loudly discussing something to do with the flowers for the ceremony tomorrow, complete with exuberant gesticulation.

She followed my gaze before looking at me again with a sense of longing. “You have no idea how much I’d like that, but—”

But she was going to let Lance make the ultimate call. Again. Just like she always did. As if that wasn’t enough, the asshole was making his way over to us with a purposeful stride, arms flailing at his sides with the effort of making haste. I knew he was coming because that was where Tallie’s resigned eyes had strayed, and I’d turned to see what she was looking at with such long-suffering acceptance.

That was the last thing I wanted to hear right now, so I cut her off. “It’s all right. I’m sure Lance has plenty of things for you to do tonight, anyway. Maybe some other time.” I intentionally ignored the fact that there wasn’t much chance of there being some other time. She was an adult. She needed to make her own choices in life, and right now she was doing exactly that, whether she realized it or not.

“That’s right, I do,” he said, coming up alongside us. He glanced down at a clipboard in his hands and tucked a pen behind his ear. “You need your beauty sleep, and we’re going to have to start putting you together at five a.m., so that means an early bedtime.”

“What the fuck do you need to do to her that you have to start so early?” The wedding wasn’t scheduled to start until two in the afternoon, and she was a knockout even on a bad day. If she had bad days. I wasn’t so certain.

He gave me a snooty look, waving a hand in Tallie’s general direction as though to encompass every aspect of her. “Hello? Do you think she gets out of bed looking like this? She’s got to be waxed, plucked, spray tanned, airbrushed—”

“Airbrushed,” I repeated, my tone full of acid. I turned my gaze to Tallie, and she shrugged apologetically. I’d known all along that she looked too good to be real, but that was taking things a bit too far. Hell, it was taking things a lot too far. Someone as gorgeous as Tallie should be able to roll out of bed, brush her teeth, run a comb through her hair, and head out the door, and she’d still look like a she’d just stepped out of the pages of a magazine. There wasn’t any good reason to put her through all of that.

“Yes, airbrushed,” Lance said, rolling his eyes toward the sky. “Honestly, you have a lot to learn about what it takes to make Tallulah look presentable. You’re going to have a rude awakening once you’re living with her and you see what all goes into it.”

“Oh, you mean when you’re not there to run the ship?” I spouted off. “I’m sure she’ll be able to manage on her own just fine.” The one who was about to have a rude awakening about things was Lance, but telling him so right now wouldn’t serve any purpose, and I’d likely already said too much, as per usual.

He looked affronted at the mention that he wouldn’t be involved. Tallie had promised me she would be sure he stayed out of things, but there wasn’t a doubt that he wasn’t taking kindly to the demotion. “Honey,” he said to me, drawing out the word and clearly not ready to let it drop.

Lance calling me honey was a hell of a lot worse than Mr. Roth and Mr. Jernigan calling me son all the time, and I was this close to seriously losing my shit on him—a lot worse than I already had. This would be a good time for John or Darren to walk over and pull me away, but they were both in conversation with my parents and Mr. Roth. I was going to have to control my reaction to Lance right now without any assistance from my agent or friend. They might as well ask me to do a pirouette on the moon for all the good it’d do me. It would be more likely, anyway.

Lance nudged his head in Tallie’s direction when I glared at him. “It takes a heck of a lot of money to look this cheap, and it takes even more time than money to make everything seem effortless. I’m good at what I do. Leave me to do my job. You go run along to do…well, to do whatever it is Neanderthals are good for. Lord knows I haven’t figured that one out yet.”

Tallie winced. Understandably. Throat punching was too good for this slimy weasel of a douche canoe, but I was as close to following through with it as I’d ever been. In a moment of extreme stupidity, I felt the last vestiges of my self-control snapping, almost like a bone breaking. My mouth was open, ready for my foot to enter it without a thought so I could tell the son of a bitch exactly where he could take his bony, meddling, sagging, self-righteous ass, when Tallie stepped forward and put one of her hands right in the center of my chest. It was a gentle touch, nowhere near enough to physically restrain me, but it did the trick. I forced myself to breathe and look down at her, to find those honey-colored eyes imploring me.

“One more day,” was all she said. Meaning one more day of having to put up with Lance and all the ridiculous things he thought he needed to put Tallie through. One more day of his interference. One more day, and I could do whatever the fuck it took to convince myself I’d never met him, would never have to deal with him again, never had to bite my tongue while he called me a Neanderthal or a hooligan. He wouldn’t be able to control every single aspect of Tallie’s life right down to how many fucking breaths she should take in a minute.

Lance let out a nasally, wheezing, harrumphing sound.

Ignoring him, I bit down on the inside of my cheek and nodded, holding Tallie’s gaze. “I should go, then,” I bit off before forcing myself to lighten my tone. It wasn’t Tallie I was mad at, and she deserved better than to have me taking it out on her. “I’ll see you at the church.”

She smiled so brightly it nearly left me blind. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

“I don’t doubt it.” In fact, now that Lance had the idea, he might try to dress her in bells and nothing more.

She stretched up on her toes and kissed my cheek before I turned to leave.

As I walked away, the sound of Lance’s latest haranguing flitted behind me. I ignored his diatribe about her kissing the Neanderthal when there was no good reason for it since the cameras weren’t around, about how she had messed up her makeup by doing so, about how she was going to have to be far more cautious tomorrow because they were filming it, and high-definition cameras revealed every tiny flaw… I pushed it all from my mind and made my way out to my car.

One more day. I only had to put up with him for one more day, and then I could pretend he didn’t even exist, just like I did with Kade.

For some reason, even though Tallie had assured me time and again that she would kick him to the curb once we got past the wedding, I had a sinking suspicion that I wouldn’t see the last of Lance Benton once we boarded our flight for Hawaii.

Maybe I really should throat-punch him tomorrow.

THE BIG DAY was here. Sometime in the next couple of hours, I would be a married man. But not before I headed to the airport to pick Carrie up.

Mom had given me her flight information last night when I’d insisted I wanted to be the one to greet her. She’d tried to deflect me, saying I would be too busy getting ready for the ceremony, but I’d eventually worn her down. It wasn’t like putting on a tux took that much time. I’d been doing it for years, every time my current team held a formal function. I could tie a bowtie with the best of them. So, even though Mom seemed seriously hesitant about it, I was at baggage claim waiting for Carrie and scanning my phone to see what the latest word on me and Tallie was.

I’d just found the latest news on Twitter—a pic of me kissing her like there was no tomorrow, with an overly enthusiastic caption about the hottest couple in town—when the passengers from her flight started to trickle over. I put away my phone and got up from the bench I’d been waiting on to watch for her more closely. I was tall enough to be able to see over the sea of people pouring through the open space, even if Carrie wasn’t all that tall. There was no chance I’d be able to miss her bright red hair, though, and I’d probably hear Kaylee’s squeals once they reached the escalator.

I was so consumed by watching for them that I didn’t notice Kade walking toward me until he punched me on my shoulder.

“Hey,” he said.

I was busy rubbing the spot on my arm where he’d hit me. I glared back at him. “Hey. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Hell of a way to greet your only brother.”

Hell of an only brother he’d always been. I ground my jaw.

“Mom told me,” he said when I didn’t respond. “Paid for my ticket. I thought she was going to pick me up so we could surprise you at the wedding.”

“The wedding you’re not welcome at? That one?” I love my mother. I love my mother. I love my mother. I repeated it in my head over and over again, hoping maybe it would be enough to keep me from strangling her when I saw her next. Now it made a hell of a lot more sense why she’d been so insistent about being the one to come pick up Carrie and Kaylee. And now that I thought about it, where were they? I glanced around, but there wasn’t a sign of them anywhere. More people were still flooding into the baggage claim area, though. Maybe she’d been near the back of the plane, or they might have stopped to use the restroom before making their way out.

Except…Kade was here. Which meant they couldn’t be. I pressed my eyes closed, repeating my previous refrain over and over again. I love my mother. I love my mother. I needed the reminder.

“You’d seriously try to keep me away from your wedding when I flew all the way here?” Kade scowled as he walked past me to the luggage carousel.

“You might as well just book a return flight and go home,” I said, following after him. “No need to get comfortable. You’re not welcome here.” I leaned my head in and sniffed him, as if that would give me a sense of what he was on right now. His drugs of choice had always been the types he could swallow or shoot into his veins with a needle, though, not something he could smoke.

He batted me away from him and hefted a suitcase off the carousel. “I’m not on anything.”

“No? So what’d you bring with you? How’d you get it past security this time?” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done something like that. My brother was a walking time bomb, thanks to addiction. He’d do anything to get his fix, including risking prison time by doing something stupid like shoving a balloon of the stuff up his ass or sneaking a vial of something into his checked bag by disguising it as a perfume bottle. Hell, once he’d taped a baggie of something to his balls and tried to get through security like that. Not even Kaylee had been enough of a reason for him to get his act together. If his own daughter wasn’t a good enough reason to get clean, nothing was. Years ago, I’d resigned myself to the fact that my brother would never successfully quit. He was going to remain an addict for the rest of his days. It would likely kill him.

“Doesn’t matter how many times I clean up my act, does it?” Kade asked. He set his suitcase on the floor and pulled up the handle. “You’re always going to assume I’m some piece of shit—”

“So prove me wrong,” I interrupted. I crossed my arms, planting my feet even as I recognized it as a defensive posture. Somewhere in the back of my head, there was a niggling sense of hope that maybe he was right. Maybe he’d gotten clean and it had stuck. Maybe that was where he’d been—at some treatment facility or another—and why he hadn’t been around in a while. Maybe that was why Mom had invited him behind my back.

Some people managed to stay sober. Hell, I even knew some people who’d been able to conquer their demons and go on to lead normal lives. Nicky Ericsson, the goaltender the Storm had decided to keep instead of me, had kept himself clean and sober all of last season even though his personal life had gone to hell in a handbasket.

I just didn’t think my older brother, Kade, had the kind of mental fortitude that getting clean and staying clean required. Maybe I was wrong about that, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to give in to hope.

He was looking at me in that older-brother way he always had, like I was a dumb kid who just didn’t get it. With one hand, he reached up to scratch his head, and that was when I saw it: an oversized Band-Aid on his forearm.

“Suboxone strips? You tell them you had staph so they wouldn’t check closer?” I’d heard that some people were doing that these days. Apparently, Kade had, too.

“It’s how I’m getting clean, Hunter.”

“If you had a legitimate prescription, you wouldn’t be hiding that shit under a fucking Band-Aid.” I spun around and scanned the crowd again for Carrie’s bright red hair, even though I knew she wouldn’t have come if she knew Kade would be here. She would have stayed home with Kaylee, and keeping that little girl away from my brother was a hell of a lot more important than watching me get married to some chick I didn’t even know. Kade came up alongside me. I figured I might as well make use of the fact that he was here, even if I was going to kick his ass back to B.C. the second I had collected Carrie and Kaylee. “Were they at the back of the plane? Where are they?”

“Who the hell are you looking for?”

“Carrie and Kaylee,” I bit off. “Who the fuck else?”

“They’re not here. She didn’t come.” Kade wheeled his bag ahead of me, making for the exit. “You coming or what? I thought you had a wedding to get to.”

I couldn’t move. It was as if the soles of my shoes were massive magnets, tied to a metal floor. Carrie hadn’t come, but Kade had. I supposed if it wasn’t going to be one disaster, it would be another. Any blowup that might have occurred when Tallie met Carrie, though, would be mild in comparison to whatever was bound to happen if my brother stepped foot near my wedding.

WE’D BARELY PASSED the You may now kiss the bride part—Hunter’s lips were still on mine, actually—when all hell broke loose with the cameras still rolling.

It took the two of us a few moments to realize anything out of the ordinary was going on since we were still putting on a good show for the audience, both the ones in the auditorium and the others who’d be watching at home once it aired. Hunter recognized there was an issue before I did, breaking off the kiss and spinning toward the sea of faces behind us.

Even through the overwrought ordeal that had been the ceremony, I hadn’t recovered from the verbal attacks on Hunter that Lance had been tossing around all the while my beauty team had been preparing me for the big day. The things he said when Hunter was present couldn’t hold a candle to the language he used in private, and listening to the string of vileness had taken a physical toll on me, leaving me stunned and shaking. Needless to say, my head was still swimming from all of that, not to mention the toe-curling kiss Hunter had just planted on me, so it took me a minute to gather my thoughts and piece together what was going on around us.

And there was a lot going on back in the rows of seats. Mama would call it a commotion—shouting, maybe a tussle—but whatever name you put on it, it was big. And bad. My gut clenched as Hunter took off down the steps without a second glance at me, diving into the fray in a way that made me expect him to rip off his tux and reveal a Superman costume. Most everyone was on their feet, particularly the small group on Hunter’s side of the aisle.

His mother was in the hub of it all, her face ghostly pale. “Call 9-1-1. Oh, God. Someone call 9-1-1.”

Hunter was heading straight for her, pushing people out of his way like a man on a mission. It didn’t matter how many of them there were, they weren’t going to keep him from getting to his mother right now. Enough of the crowd cleared away that I could see Hunter’s brother on the floor at Mrs. Fielding’s feet. But then she passed out. Mr. Fielding caught her by the shoulders as she dropped. He lowered her into a chair, and the camera crew closed in on them and Hunter as he leaped over two rows of seats.

I couldn’t just stand up here gaping. This was my husband and his family—whether the marriage was meant to last or not—and I ought to be by his side, whatever was happening. It didn’t matter that I barely knew him and I’d only had long enough with the rest of them for a brief hello prior to the ceremony. Before I had an inkling as to what I could do to help, I was on my way to join him. I didn’t know how to do anything. Nothing useful, at least. I didn’t even have my cell phone with me to call for paramedics. It was in the dressing room along with everything else I’d brought to the church that hadn’t been put on my person, which, considering how skimpy my gown was, wasn’t much at all.

I’d barely gotten down the steps when Lance grabbed my arm hard enough to leave a mark and jerked me to a stop. “Stay right here,” he demanded. “You’ll mess up your hair or ruin your dress.”

Tears sparked to my eyes from the pain of his grasp, and I tugged myself free. “It’s just a dress. It doesn’t matter.” None of it mattered—the dress, my hair, my makeup, whether I could walk straight enough to keep a book on my head or answer pageant questions with enough polite but meaningless babble to satisfy the judges. I couldn’t do anything with any of those pointless skills, but at the very least I could get over there with my new family and hold Hunter’s mama’s hand or something. Any buffoon could do that, unless that buffoon’s name was Lance, it seemed.

He grabbed hold of my arm again. “Now you listen here—”

“No, you listen,” I interrupted him, surprising even myself with the force of my conviction. I never interrupted him. Not ever, not for any reason. Mama would tell me it was rude and unseemly, and she’d smack my wrists and demand that I apologize. But I was done apologizing to him. I was done doing everything he wanted of me without question. There were no more pageants in my future, so there wasn’t any more need for a pageant guru to run every facet of my life. One at a time, I pried his surprisingly strong fingers free and jerked my arm back to my side. “Today’s it. The wedding is the end of your reign over my life. I get to decide what I want to do and how I want to do it.”

“Your mama—”

“My mama isn’t in control of me anymore, either, and I don’t care what she has to say about this, Lance. I’m done letting you run roughshod over me every minute of every day. You should find someone else to micromanage, because it ain’t going to be me anymore.”

With that, I left him staring at me with his jaw on the floor and headed down the aisle, shaking the ache out of my arm where he’d grabbed me. A couple of tears were still pricking behind my eyes from the force of his grip, but I willed them away. Now wasn’t the time for me to fall apart. I could do that later, when the cameras were gone. I gently touched people on the back or arm to get them to move out of my way so I could get through the gathered crowd without having to leap tall buildings in a single bound the way Hunter had done moments before. When they saw it was me, they parted like the Red Sea, opening up a clearing for me to pass.

When I reached Hunter, the stench of fresh vomit slammed into me like a semi. I covered my mouth and nose as I took in everything in front of me. Hunter’s brother was lying in a puddle of fluids, passed out cold even as his body convulsed.

I blinked a couple more times, forcing myself to stay calm. I didn’t even know his brother’s name. The realization hit me as hard as the smell.

Hunter’s agent was on his cell phone with the 9-1-1 operator. Another man who looked a lot like him was trying to sort out the brother on the floor by dragging him away from the mess and into a clearing. That was probably best, for when the paramedics arrived. Hunter and his father sat on either side of his mother, supporting her as she started to come around. They both seemed to be completely oblivious to what was going on with the brother.

He started to vomit again, but the man trying to move him was still dragging him by the feet and didn’t notice. Hunter’s brother was still on his back. He might drown in it if no one noticed. But someone had noticed. Me. I needed to somehow get him rolled over on his side. I remembered that much from sorority parties when some of the girls had had a bit too much to drink.

I sank to the floor and fought against his bulk to turn him, until the man who’d been moving him figured out what I was doing and dropped his legs so he could help me. After a couple of hard tugs with the other man pushing from behind, he finally rolled. I lost my balance and fell back on my butt, landing just inches away from a putrid puddle that gave me the heebie-jeebies because I knew exactly what it was.

I pressed my eyes closed and groaned inwardly. Somewhere off in the distance, I could hear Lance and Mama having a scandalized shouting contest about my ridiculous behavior and how I was bound to ruin my dress and all because of some drunkard relative of Hunter’s crashing the wedding. Daddy’s calming voice joined in the mix—probably trying to calm them both down so they didn’t turn it into a bigger scene than it already was. But it was the quieter, deep tone of Hunter’s voice that really got through to me.

“Kade isn’t worth the trouble, Tallie.”

He stood above me, holding down a hand to help me up from the heap I’d become on the floor.

I blinked again, those damn tears not giving up their efforts to pour down my cheeks and ruin my makeup. It’d fit with the way the day was suddenly going, so maybe I should just give in. For now, though, I pushed them down with every blessed ounce of gumption I could muster.

“But he’s your brother,” I said disbelievingly. I’d never had a sibling but I’d always wanted one. Mama went on and on about how she’d tried to get pregnant again and never could, so I was just going to have to be enough, even though Daddy told me that Mama had been on the pill the entire time they’d been married since not long after I was born. He said she’d refused to have another baby because the stretch marks I’d caused had been more than enough for one lifetime, thank you very much. Their stories conflicted, but I knew which one was easier to believe, whether it was the absolute truth or not.

He took the hand I lifted and helped me to my feet. I winced at the tightness in my biceps from where Lance had grabbed me, and I might have hissed as well, because Hunter narrowed his eyes and looked down at my bare arm. “Who did this?” he asked, his voice low and menacing.

I glanced down at the tender spot on my arm, shocked to find deep red marks from Lance’s fingers, and shook my head, trying to brush it off because there were more important things going on than Lance being Lance. Even as I did that, the paramedics rushed in with a gurney and started working on Kade.

Hunter eased me away from them so they could do their work, guiding me toward an alcove in the church, well away from all the onlookers who were busy gawking at the goings-on. “Don’t brush me off on this,” he grumbled. “Lance did it, didn’t he?” he added when I didn’t respond.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. The bastard calls me a fucking Neanderthal, and then he goes and bruises your arm the second I take my eyes off you?”

“It’s not as bad as—”

“Isn’t it?” His green eyes, as piercing as any I’d ever seen up close, were pinprick sharp. “Explain to me how that asswipe leaving bruises on your skin isn’t as bad as I think it is, because I’m leaning toward it being worse.”

“I meant it isn’t as bad as what’s going on with your brother,” I shouted at him. Actually, it wasn’t quite a shout. It was definitely louder than I should have been talking, though, because at least a dozen people spun around to gawk at us, including one of the camera guys. I probably should have kept my voice down and acted like a lady, like Mama was always telling me, but this was getting so far out of hand it was ridiculous, and I had lost all sense of self-control after everything Lance had put me through today. I was over it. Done. I’d had enough, and Hunter was just going to have to accept that I had no intention of being a meek little miss, sitting around and waiting for someone to give me permission to speak. I planted my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes on him. “Now I don’t know how your mama raised you, but something tells me you know family is the most important thing you’ll ever have in your life, so you’d just better get it in your head right now that—”

He took my hand and tugged until I followed him, stumbling, out the closest exit. “You’d better get it in your head that we’re not doing this in public with all of those cameras on us. And that you don’t know everything there is to know about me and my family, let alone my asshole brother who’s already made his choices in life and proven he isn’t ever going to change. He doesn’t want anyone’s help, and even if he did, he doesn’t deserve it. Not yours, at least.”

He didn’t stop, despite the fact that I was practically running in my heavy, clunky, bedazzled high heels in order to keep up with his long stride, until we’d nearly reached the church’s nursery. He threw open the door, flipped on the light, checked to be sure we were alone, and shut it behind us.

His big body was too close to me, leaving me lightheaded with awareness, so I backed up a few steps. Then I bumped into the wall. Hunter followed me, bracing his arms on either side of me and leaning in so close I could feel the heat of his anger. But that heat mixed with something else between us, and it bounced around like hot, yearning, burning need. I couldn’t take a breath without my breasts brushing against the fine wool of his tux, couldn’t hold on to a thought because he was looking at me like he wanted to eat me alive, and Lord Jesus help me but I wanted to let him. I wanted to do more than let him devour me. I wanted to tear him apart a piece at a time and let him melt on my tongue, savoring every single tasty bite I could get. I wanted it so much I thought I might burst from the wanting if something didn’t happen to break this crazy, animalistic tension between us, and soon.

My breaths were ragged, falling off with each exhalation. At least he seemed to have it just as bad as me, his chest dusting mine at an increasing pace. But somehow his eyes were even more intense than before. With the tip of one finger, he teased the line of my collarbone until I was a shuddering, goose-bump-riddled mess.

One of his eyes twitched a couple of times. “And you’re not going to tell me it’s unimportant that that bastard laid his hands on you,” he added.

“It won’t happen again,” I said. I would have said more than that, but my voice failed me even worse than my lungs had. Hunter was too sexy, too male, too potent. Way too close. He was just all-around too much.

His fingertip trailed down to the valley between my breasts, his eyes following along the path he traced.

I gave up any attempt to remember how to breathe.

“No,” he said softly. “It won’t happen again. Because if it does, I’m going to be having a conversation with him instead of with you, and it will involve my fists instead of words.”

I shook my head, ready to implore him not to do anything drastic, but he cut me off with a scorching kiss. Briefly, I realized this was the first time—the only time—he’d kissed me without witnesses. No one to care what we were doing or why. No one filming it or photographing it. No one to report it to all the gossip sites. I couldn’t wonder about it for long, though, because his tongue slid along the seam of my lips just a moment before his kiss turned harder, more demanding. I opened for him without hesitation, welcoming him in and seeking more.

This wasn’t a good idea. This wasn’t part of the bargain.

There was no convincing my body of the wrongness of what we were doing, though. My head knew it was wrong, but my body swore it was so very, very right. All I could do was go along for the ride and hold on for all I had in me. So I stretched up on my toes, and I put both my arms around his neck, drawing him down closer to me, and I surrendered absolutely.

It didn’t take long to realize that Hunter had good hands. Big palms. Strong arms. Deft fingers. He knew how to use them, and he made quick use of his knowledge. I melted into him, holding on for dear life as those hands played my body like an antique, hand-me-down fiddle. But for as strong as he was, he never came close to hurting me. Not like Lance had done. He brushed and caressed, teased and tickled, but it was all done with a gentle reverence that made my girlie parts quiver with anticipation.

I was lost in a fog of sensation. It took everything I had just to remain upright. There wasn’t anything left over for me to fortify my resolve or guard my heart.

The blaring siren from the ambulance finally cut through my fog long enough for me to shove Hunter’s shoulders and force him back from me.

He looked as lost as I felt. “I’m sorry,” he grumbled. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not that,” I interrupted him. I stepped free from those delicious arms, trying to get enough distance between us that maybe my brain would start to cooperate sometime in the next century. I pointed out the nursery window, where the ambulance was heading out of the parking lot, lights flashing. “It’s your brother. We should go to the hospital.”

“I’m not going to the fucking hospital. Not for him. I’ve sat by his side at the hospital too many times already. I’m not doing it again.”

I couldn’t even come close to understanding what had happened between those two for Hunter to feel that way, but that would have to wait for another day. I crossed my arms in front of me, wishing that would be enough to quell all the jumping jacks going on in my veins. “Well, if we aren’t going to the hospital, I guess we’d better go to the reception so we can explain why we aren’t there. I don’t think people will understand, and I know Lance has a bunch of things planned…”

Two minutes later, we were in Hunter’s car and heading for the hospital, still wearing our wedding attire.

ONE OF THE very few reasons, as far as I could tell, to have an older brother was supposedly to have someone to look up to. He was supposed to be the guy who taught you about life, and maybe he would make a few mistakes along the way, but then he’d show you how to avoid those same pitfalls.

Kade had made more than his fair share of mistakes along the way, and you can bet your ass I’d learned from them…but there wasn’t a chance in hell that I could look up to him. How could I do that when most of the times I saw him, it was when he was in the hospital having his stomach pumped because of some overdose or another, or maybe from mixing up a combination of drugs that should never be mixed? How could I respect him when he was doing everything he could to tear our family apart? How could I want to follow his example when he had a kid, but the courts wouldn’t even allow him near her? How could I look at what he was putting our mother through, time and again, and forgive him for it?

It had been close to two decades now that he’d been ripping Mom’s heart out with his addictions and all the bullshit that came along with them, and at this point, there was at least a tiny part of me that hoped he would take it past the point of no return. That he would overdose and no one would be able to save him.

That he would die.

Maybe I was a callous son of a bitch to think along those lines, but that was the truth of it. Around the time I got drafted, I’d realized that Kade was too far gone with the addiction. They say that people have to hit rock bottom before they’re ready and willing to make changes. Well, he’d already hit what would have been any normal person’s rock bottom at least a few times by then, and he hadn’t changed a damn thing for the better. He’d had countless drug busts. He’d been to prison. He’d been forced into drug rehab and counseling. None of it had taken root for him because he wasn’t ready to move on. He didn’t want to give any part of his lifestyle up. He was so deep in it that he couldn’t imagine a life without getting a fix when he needed or wanted one, so he didn’t try beyond what he was forced to do when he was in treatment.

Even in those rare moments when he was clean and sober, he never recognized the strain he put on the rest of his family. He didn’t care that he was ripping Mom’s heart out repeatedly. He didn’t see that he had pushed our parents into depleting their savings in order to get him the help he needed. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that he’d destroyed his relationship with me when he’d dragged Chantel, Carrie’s twin sister, into his hellhole of addiction along with him. That had happened when I left home to play college hockey. It might have been the thing that had driven me and Carrie apart, actually. Before that had happened, our mothers might have had their way. Hell, it didn’t even bother him that he’d destroyed Chantel’s life and caused the same sorts of strain for their family, or that they’d taken Kaylee away from him and he would never get her back.

No, in Kade’s world, the only thing that mattered was Kade.

Which was why it pissed me off to no end that Tallie and I were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital while, once again, they were probably pumping his stomach to save his sorry life. I doubted he wanted to be saved at this point. It would be even harder for Mom to take if he died right in front of her, though, so I supposed it would be best if he came out of it. Maybe next time he OD’d, he’d be all alone somewhere, and by the time someone found him, it would be too late. A morbid thought, yes, but that was how much things had deteriorated between us. It would probably be easier for Mom to mourn him than it would be for her to keep hoping he would straighten up, because he wasn’t ready for that. It was sure to be easier for Kaylee if she grew up without either parent alive instead of wondering why they loved their drugs more than they loved her.

I wasn’t fully convinced that any addict could ever move past his addictions—something that made me question the Storm’s decision to keep Nicky Ericsson as their goalie instead of me—but even those who made strides in that direction tended to have setbacks. Kade didn’t just have setbacks. He had brief moments during which he was forced to keep his act together, but in the end he kept following the same broken path he’d been on for years. I wished there was a way Mom could harden herself to him like Dad and I had done, but I’d come to learn it just wasn’t in her makeup.

I took my phone out of my pocket and opened Twitter, out of curiosity. It was like the Internet had exploded. Our wedding was both a hashtag and a trending topic in North America, and all because of Kade overdosing. It was exactly the wrong sort of publicity. Now there were more questions to be answered, more negative publicity to counter. I doubted the team would be happy about any of this, and I knew for a fact that the Roths were going to regret the decision of bringing me into Tallie’s life.

She shivered beside me, drawing me out of my bad mood. I glanced over at her. The red marks on her arm hadn’t faded even the tiniest bit, and they were starting to turn a bluish-purple. The bastard had grabbed her hard enough to leave bruises. I might murder him the next time I saw him, so he’d better keep his ass well away from me.

But beyond the bruises, she was cold. For as hot as it was outside, it was like ice inside. That dress couldn’t possibly be enough to combat the hospital’s air conditioning, which must be set to arctic. I took off the tuxedo jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“We don’t have to stay. There’s nothing we can do here.”

“But we’re staying for your parents, if not for your brother. You should be here for your mama, at least.”

I grunted in response. I didn’t understand how she could be so insistent upon looking after my mom when her own mother was the Wicked Witch of the West incarnate. Mrs. Roth couldn’t be anything less, since she had hired a son of a bitch like Lance to be around her daughter. Tallie had brushed off the way he’d hurt her so readily that I had to wonder if he’d ever hurt her before. Was it just what she did when that happened? It seemed almost rote.

“You seem awfully quiet,” Tallie said after a minute passed.

“What’s that old saying about if you don’t have anything nice to say?”

She made a soft sound and fell silent again, tugging on the lapels of my jacket to keep them tight around her.

John and Darren had followed us to the hospital and hung around for an hour or two, but I’d sent them back to the hotel a while ago. There wasn’t anything they could do here, and there was no point in them hanging around twiddling their thumbs. The Roths and Lance had handled thanking everyone for coming to the reception and sent them on their way since Tallie and I weren’t going to be showing up there. Mom and Dad were in the room with Kade, but only two family members were allowed in at a time, and I had no intention of going in there, anyway. We were still here, though, and a fucking cameraman was seated across the waiting room from us, his video camera pointed straight at us. I had no clue what the hell kind of footage he thought he was going to get from this, but I didn’t have the energy to fight it. Not right now. I just wanted today to be over.

“So he overdosed?” Tallie asked after a while. “Kade did?”

“Probably mixed suboxone with something he shouldn’t have used it with.” Methodone wouldn’t surprise me, or OxyContin. The only thing I didn’t know was if he’d managed to get it here with him on the flight or if he’d had someone hook him up after he’d arrived. “Maybe used too much of one or both.” Any amount was too much if you asked me. Once I’d seen the way drugs fucked with my older brother, I’d done everything in my power to stay the hell away from all of them. When I had injuries, I just bit my tongue and fought through the pain instead of taking a pill to combat it. I didn’t want anything to do with drugs of any sort. I didn’t even want to take a fucking aspirin. I hated the fact that they put me under anesthesia if I had to have surgery. Even that was more than I wanted. The only thing I allowed myself was coffee and the occasional beer, and even with those, I was careful not to go too far.

Tallie shifted in her seat, turning toward me more. She toed off her stilettos and tucked her feet up beside her, and the split of her dress gave me an insanely nice view of her thighs. They were smooth as a baby’s butt, with just the right amount of flesh to make them shapely. She didn’t seem to notice that her legs were exposed, so I should probably do something to cover her…but I was enjoying the view too much. I was really an asshole sometimes.

She leaned in toward me, and I got a whiff of her perfume. “Accidentally?”

“You’d have to ask him that,” I muttered. I didn’t want to talk about my brother. Not now. Not ever. It didn’t matter that he was the reason we were here. All I wanted to do was take Tallie, get the hell out of this hospital, and not look back.

“You think he might have done it on purpose?”

I shrugged. Hell if I knew what went on inside Kade’s head at this point.

“There’s got to be a way we can help him,” she said.

We. She said it as if there were such a thing as an us. Hunter and Tallie Fielding were only a couple on paper and in the public eye, though, and it didn’t matter how fucking sexy she was and how long her legs went on, that wasn’t going to change.

“I don’t have it in me to try to help him anymore,” I said.

“Well, I could try.”

“What do you think you could do to help my brother?” I didn’t want her having anything to do with Kade. I wanted her as far away from him as possible, the same as I wanted her to keep her distance from Lance. There was no reason for her to drag herself into the mess that was my brother’s life. I shook my head. “It’s better to just let him slink off to whatever slum he’s living in these days and rot. Don’t worry about him.”

“I just thought it would be something I could do… You know, now that we’re married.”

“There will be a lot of things you can do. The team will want all the guys’ wives and girlfriends to get involved. Community involvement, charity work… You could probably head some of that up, get the other girls organized. Besides, it would be one more way for us to stay in the public eye to continue our charade.” And it would keep her the fuck away from Lance. Granted, I didn’t know most of the guys on this team, let alone their wives, so I had no clue what sort of hornet’s nest she might be walking into there.

“Well, I could do all of those things, too.” She straightened out her legs, and the fabric of her dress fell back down to cover her thighs. Too bad. I had been enjoying the view, probably too much for my own good. She tugged the jacket closer around her shoulders. “I’m going to have quite a bit of time on my hands. I could do a lot of things.”

“Kade doesn’t need to be on your to-do list. He needs to go back home.” And the sooner he did that, the better.

Mom and Dad came through the swinging double doors of the emergency room, and Tallie immediately got to her feet and went over to them. I moved a hell of a lot more slowly.

“They’re admitting him and keeping him for at least a couple of days,” Dad said once I’d trudged across the waiting room to join them. “Same as usual. Pumped his stomach, pushing fluids through him.”

“They’ll send a drug counselor in to talk to him once he comes around,” Mom added. “In the meanwhile, there’s not much to do but wait.”

Which was something we could do anywhere.

Tallie reached for Mom’s hand and squeezed it. “Tell me what I can do.”

“The best thing you can do is exactly what you two had already planned,” Dad said to her. He nodded in my direction. “You’ve got a flight to Hawaii tomorrow morning. You have a honeymoon to enjoy.”

He said it without even a hint of irony. I’d filled in both of my parents on the transience of the relationship. Dad knew the honeymoon was just for show, the same as the rest of it. We were only going because it would keep people from questioning why we hadn’t.

That said, the trip to Hawaii was a good excuse for getting the hell out of here and taking Tallie away from my brother. Maybe everything to do with Kade would blow over by the time we returned. I could get John to try to fight things off for a while, do what he could with the media to get them to forget about my fucked-up brother. Maybe Tallie would forget all about the idea of trying to help him out by the time we got back. She could get some real sun instead of her spray tan, spend some time at the beach, and put everything to do with Kade out of mind. Like I was going to do.

I didn’t know why my protective instincts were flaring to life as far as Tallie was concerned. It had started because of the way Lance treated her, but now I felt the urge to keep her as far away from my brother as I could, which was a different situation entirely. I wasn’t particularly keen on exploring any of it right now, so I decided to ignore it. I could deal with that later. Or maybe I could ignore it long enough that it would go away.

“Oh,” Tallie said, obviously deflating. “I’d just thought—”

“Dad’s right,” I cut in. Might as well seize the opportunity that had presented itself. I didn’t have the first clue how our trip to Hawaii would end up, but there wasn’t a single good fucking reason to stick around here. I just wished we could get on the plane right now instead of waiting for tomorrow. “We should get out of here. Let’s go to the hotel.”

John had made all the arrangements already. We were staying in a suite at one of the nicest hotels in town. Tallie could have her own room tonight if she wanted. Or not. It was completely up to her. And we had a suite waiting for us at our Maui hotel, too. Once we were there, no one would be following us around to see how head-over-heels in love we supposedly were. We could just have a vacation. Free from Lance’s influence. Free from Mrs. Roth’s interference. Free from any distraction my brother and his addiction might cause. Free from the fucking cameras for the first time since I’d arrived in Tulsa.

It would be heaven, or at the very least, it would get me temporarily out of hell. That would have to be enough.

OUR TIME IN Maui might have ended up being one of my favorite weeks of all time, if not for the lingering worries I had over Kade and the rest of Hunter’s family. I probably wouldn’t be quite so bothered if Hunter would talk and let me know what was going on with them, but he didn’t want to, and I didn’t think it was something I should push him about at this point in our relationship. It might not ever be. Whatever had happened between him and his brother was none of my business, and even though we were married, I didn’t know how to act around a husband who was still a complete stranger. I wasn’t part of his family on anything more than a highly temporary basis.

Maybe it was silly of me to worry when Hunter had as good as pushed them out of his mind the instant we’d stepped off the plane and into the tropical air. He was the one who knew them, after all, and he was acting as though nothing was out of the ordinary. No matter what sort of airs he might try to give off for the world to see, I knew he wasn’t cold and callous. One glance at him flying toward his mother when all the commotion had started was all I needed to grasp just how much he loved his family, even if there were issues.

And what family didn’t have issues? Lord knew mine did, so why should his be any different? I just wasn’t sure how deep the problems ran, let alone if there was any chance to repair them, so all I could do was sit and wait. If there was something I could do to help, I’d figure it out soon enough. More than likely, there wasn’t anything beyond keeping my head down and my nose in my own matters, where it belonged.

For now, we were on vacation together in Hawaii. This was my chance to get to know Hunter as well as I could before we returned to Tulsa to face the year ahead of us.

Other than the fact that we were sleeping in separate rooms in our suite instead of sharing a bed, no one would know that we weren’t exactly like any other honeymooning couple in paradise. Everything seemed normal on the surface. We had romantic dinners on the beach with nothing but candles or the light of the moon helping us to see. We spent our days walking along the beach and getting to know each other, sometimes going out into the ocean, and other times just dipping our toes in the crashing waves.

After a few days of it being just the two of us, we had started to feel more comfortable together, to the point that he would even pick me up and toss me in the water, making me squeal. Once, he’d made a big splash and gotten my hair wet even though I’d begged him not to—because it would take me forever to get it looking right again without my team to help me—winking at me when I huffed in protest.

Actually, every time I mentioned my beauty team, he gave me a you-know-you’re-crazy look. “Do you not have any idea how gorgeous you are? You already look sexier than any woman should have a right to the second you roll out of bed in the morning,” he told me on multiple occasions.

I always felt so conflicted when he said things like that to me, despite the fact that I was gradually spending less time getting ready and more time with him, styling and makeup be damned. There was a part of me that knew there had to be at least a kernel of truth to his words. But there was another part of me that still heard Mama and Lance nattering on in the background, analyzing every aspect of my appearance and how they could fix it. Even when I’d gone off to college, I hadn’t been free from it. Lance had ensured I had a team there to prepare me every day. My sorority sisters had given me such a hard time about it, but the only time I’d done without my team in the three years of my college education had been when we’d gone to Cancun, just the girls.

Maybe if I spent enough time with Hunter, I would hear his voice rising above Mama’s and Lance’s. Maybe the insecurities I felt after years of being told I wasn’t up to snuff could fade until they were just background noise, like the chatter at a restaurant. I doubted it, but there was at least a glimmer of hope now.

Anything to do with Lance quickly became a taboo topic of conversation between Hunter and me. Since he associated my stylists and makeup artists with my former pageant guru, it didn’t take long before I stopped mentioning them altogether, stopped worrying about getting through my beauty routine on my own, stopped wondering if my hair was out of place or searching the mirror for stray hairs that needed to be plucked. Instead, I began to revel in the freedom of readying myself within minutes instead of spending hours in the chair each day. It was amazing to be able to do nothing more than dust a bit of powder on my cheeks, slip on some lip gloss, drag my hair into a ponytail, and head out to do whatever we wanted to do.

With no cameras around to document our every moment, we both started to let go of the pretense we had been putting on for the world to see. It wasn’t long before we weren’t trying to pull up Twitter to see what was being said about us while we were gone. We could just be a guy and a girl having a good time together. And we were having a good time. I couldn’t deny it surprised me. A lot. I’d been attracted to Hunter since the moment we’d first met, but I never expected that physical attraction to turn into something more. But it had. I was getting the sense that it was becoming more on his part, too.

Now that there was a good bit of distance between us and our families—and maybe more specifically between Hunter and Lance—Hunter seemed to finally be loosening up. Not enough that he would tell me about his relationship with his brother. We weren’t there yet, but I thought maybe we were getting closer. The only time he’d even mentioned Kade since we’d gotten off the plane was after he’d received a text message from his father, letting us know that Kade had been released from the hospital and was at the hotel resting. I was pretty sure Hunter had only mentioned that because I’d asked him who was texting him, half expecting a non-answer or a brush-off. But instead of either of those things, he’d filled me in and then closed off that line of questioning by asking me about some of the classes I’d taken in college.

Since our arrival in Maui, I’d picked up the habit of watching Hunter when he didn’t realize I was looking. From that I’d started to get a good feel for his sense of humor. It was as dry as an Oklahoma summer and full of sarcasm. I realized now, while we were alone, that his sarcasm had been revealing itself as surliness when he was around my family. Without them here, though, he made me smile more often than not, particularly once I’d picked up on the way the left side of his mouth would curl up when he was making jokes. When he was being serious, though, that hint of a smile evaporated. Now that I knew to look for it, I saw it more often than not. He liked to tease me, and I liked to let him. Every now and again, I teased him in return. He took it all in stride, letting things roll off his shoulders the way Daddy always had. In so many ways, Hunter was the complete opposite of Lance, and I was starting to appreciate him for it.

It was little things, really, that showed me his lighter side. He wasn’t going around cracking jokes. Hunter was far more subtle with his humor.

Like today. It was Tuesday, and we’d been lounging on the beach for a while this afternoon. I was reading a swoon-worthy romance novel on my tablet, and he’d been busy playing some game or another on his phone, both of us idly passing the time and having a few drinks. Or really, more than a few drinks.

Every time he got up and went to the bar, he came back with a beer for himself and a fruity cocktail for me—something Lance would have had a conniption fit over because of all the calories in them. I didn’t care what Lance thought right now, though. Those things were amazing. Delicious. And every time Hunter brought me one of them, I thanked him and drank it. Yeah, I was a little tipsy right now. Maybe a lot tipsy. It was a good thing we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, and I wasn’t in a hot tub with a bad boy in Cancun, or I might really find myself in trouble. Again.

I wasn’t entirely convinced I wasn’t in trouble now, with Hunter.

He snorted out loud at one point, so I looked over and raised a brow in question. He shook his head with a shrug, drawing my eye to the fire-breathing dragon tattoo on his shoulder and arm, but there was no denying the fact that a smirk was curling up the corners of his lips, apparently against his will. I kept trying to surreptitiously peek at his tattoo to see it better. It was bold and colorful, and the dragon’s tail was curled around something in a protective manner, but I couldn’t tell what. I wanted to know what the dragon was protecting, and if he was supposed to be the dragon. But I couldn’t tell. I would have to come out and ask him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him knowing I’d been looking that close.

“No, really,” I drawled. “What’s so funny?” It was only fair for him to tell me since every time I’d let out a happy sigh over something I’d just read, he’d insisted I tell him why. Lord knew he had to be sick of hearing about my romance novel. Either that or he was a closet romance lover, too. I giggled, thinking about him reading romance novels in the locker room and his teammates finding out, what they might say to him about it.

“It’s nothing important,” he said, putting me off again. “Just thinking about our good friend, Lance.”

I pouted. He tended to only avoid talking to me when it was something to do with his family, particularly Kade, so I was taken aback by his refusal to explain his laughter. Then I scratched my head, trying to sort out what he’d said. I was just about to question when Lance had become anything close to a man Hunter would consider a good friend when he decided he wanted another beer.

He tossed the phone on his beach chair to go to the bar, and I snuck a glance at the screen. He’d left it unlocked, clearly trusting I wouldn’t take a peek. It was open to a word scramble game, and he’d solved the puzzle including at least half a dozen words I’d never heard before. Or I didn’t think I had. My eyes were crossing a bit, so it was hard to be sure. I should maybe let my last drink settle before I had anything else. The longest word from that particular scramble was one that I absolutely knew, though, no matter how dizzy I might be from drink. Bastard. Well, that explained the Lance comment. I hid my grin behind my e-reader when he returned carrying a beer for himself and a mai tai for me.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, repeating my earlier question, as dry as ever.

I must not have hidden my reaction as well as I’d hoped, then. “It’s nothing important,” I mimicked, shaking my head. That made my head swim, though. I shouldn’t do that again anytime soon.

I took the drink from him, giving the glass the side-eye. I shouldn’t drink it. I really shouldn’t drink it. At least not for a while.

He quirked up a brow, smirking. Then I shrugged and took a big sip from my drink, ignoring my own advice and swallowing my own laughter along with the fruity liquor. Hot damn, that was good, like liquid candy. I smacked my lips.

He narrowed his eyes at me, glancing over at the now locked screen of his phone. The smirk from before turned into a full chuckle, though. He picked up the tube of sunscreen from the table between us, setting his beer where it had been, and squeezed some into the palm of his hand. “Need to reapply so you don’t burn, or you’ll be miserable later.”

He should know, since he’d burned up his back like a lobster on our first day here. I supposed he didn’t get a lot of sun up in Canada. It was sweet of him to want to take care of me, but I could take care of myself. I shook my head, instantly regretting it, and held out my hand. He raised a brow and passed the tube over to me before kneeling down in the sand beside my chair. He rubbed the lotion into my shoulders and back while I took care of the tops of my legs. Kind of. The lotion didn’t seem to be cooperating with me. Neither were my hands. I needed to stop drinking.

His touch was firm but gentle, as I was coming to expect, but it was also starting to feel familiar. He hadn’t kissed me since that moment in the church nursery during the immediate aftermath of our wedding. Here, without anyone to perform for, I supposed there was no reason for him to keep up the show. But that hadn’t stopped him from touching me in other ways.

When we sat beside each other at dinner, talking about our friends or our childhoods—but never about Kade—often his fingers would casually brush against the back of my hand. When we walked along the tideline, the pulsing of the waves washing over our bare feet, his palm remained securely in place where the dip of my waist met the swell of my hip.

Maybe it was for the best that we touched occasionally, even when no one was looking. That sort of casual contact could only help us to be convincing when we needed to be.

Regardless, I couldn’t complain about it. I liked it more than I should. I was beginning to crave his touch, a lot more than was good for me. I wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping my heart out of our relationship. Soon, I would need to redouble my efforts, but I supposed that could wait until we returned to Oklahoma. It was at least going to have to wait until I sobered up. For now, I would just allow myself to enjoy his touch. To enjoy him.

Each night, when we said good night before going to our separate rooms in the resort suite, he gave me a look. It was one I wasn’t sure how to interpret but which made it seem as though he wanted to reach out and caress my cheek or maybe even something more. All of those touches, those looks, left my belly doing flip-flops and my pulse racing like a NASCAR engine, but I never got up the gumption to do anything about it. I never asked him to stop so I could better gird myself against it, and I never searched for something more.

The same things were happening now, and this time I needed to draw a line in the sand. I either needed less or more, one of the two, and I honestly wasn’t sure which direction I was going to go. It would probably be better if I waited until my cocktails wore off, but I kind of doubted that would happen.

Hunter wasn’t just rubbing the sunscreen into my skin; his thumbs and fingers pressed in, massaging my neck and shoulders, kneading the muscles and making me want to go limp and lean back into him. I focused on taking slow, deep breaths, concentrating on the strength of his hands and the warmth of his body behind me.

He smelled good, like sun and air and the ocean, making me wish I could burrow up against him. I wanted to nestle my head in the space between his neck and shoulder, breathing him in. Every connection between us only seemed to make me long for more of his touch.

He worked his way down from my shoulders to my biceps, an inch at a time. He reached my fading bruises, and I winced, hoping he wouldn’t notice. They didn’t hurt—not like they had in the beginning, at least—but there was still some tenderness I couldn’t ignore, particularly in my slightly inebriated state.

Apparently, he couldn’t ignore it either. Almost at once, he moved his hands to work on my back instead. “I’m sorry. I should have been more gentle.” The way he was touching me had changed, though, growing more clinical and less intimate, focusing more of his efforts on actually rubbing the sunscreen into my skin and less on the things that made me wish I could crawl up alongside him and hold on tight.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “You’re always gentle with me.” Too gentle. Those hands were strong enough to do all sorts of things with them. Delicious things. Sexy things. Naughty things. His hands gave me all sorts of inappropriate thoughts, but I supposed they weren’t exactly inappropriate if he was my husband.

“Not gentle enough.” His voice was gruff, having lost the hint of humor. I wished we could go back in time so I could brace myself better for when he touched my arms. If I hadn’t winced, I wouldn’t have reminded him of Lance and all the things that took Hunter from sarcastic and laughing to sullen and grumpy.

It was a shock to discover that his mood could change so quickly based on things to do with me. Not only did it appear that I mattered to him, maybe more than he would like, but I was far more concerned with the things going on in his head than I should be if our union was truly going to be in name only, as it had been laid out. We were only a few days into this marriage. I needed to do a better job of protecting my heart, because that was all on me. This wasn’t a good sign of things to come. Even though I knew it wasn’t a good idea, I found myself turning toward him, letting my legs fall off the side of the beach chair so my toes could play in the hot sand.

He must not have been prepared for me to turn, because his hand grazed my boob, which felt amazing. I bumped into him more and giggled.

Hunter dropped his hands to his sides.

I didn’t want them at his sides. I wanted them on me. I picked up the tube of sunscreen and took one of his hands, turning it over so I could squeeze some into his palm. His eyes were on the swell of my breasts, the place where my bikini top ended and my skin began.

My hand circled his wrist, and I held it there until his eyes flitted up to meet mine. Breathing harder than I should be considering I was sitting still, I drew his hand in toward my chest. I pressed his palm flat over my heart, holding it in place, still laughing a little. My laughter died off pretty fast because of the look in his eyes. It was hot. Needy, like me. “You don’t always have to be gentle with me, you know. I’m not going to break too easily. You’re not going to hurt me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” I wasn’t sure why I was so certain of that other than the fact that Hunter was so concerned about the possibility that I trusted he would never do anything to deliberately harm me. Even though I barely knew him, there was a part of me that trusted him not only with my body but possibly even with the deeper parts of me. My heart thundered in my chest, pounding against his palm, but he maintained the connection.

“He hurt you.”

“Yes.” There wasn’t any point denying it. Not when there was visible proof. I leaned in closer, breathing in the scent of him. The malty scent of his beer floated in the air between us, making me feel even tipsier than I was.

“You let him hurt you. You didn’t do anything to stop him.”

“I…” I didn’t have the first clue how to respond to that. I shrugged, and Hunter’s palm slid downward slightly. Closer to where I wanted it. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I walked away. Isn’t that enough?”

He brought his other hand up to join the first, slowly spreading the sunscreen over my exposed skin. Every tiny bit of contact made my nerves zing. His hands moved dangerously low over my breasts, but I couldn’t complain. I’d been the one to initiate this. He was only going where I’d taken him, and if I was being honest with myself, I wanted to take him further.

“But you tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “When a man leaves bruises on you, it’s a big fucking deal.”

“I know that, but—”

“I don’t care what else was going on at the time. It’s not all right. Don’t ever try to make out as though someone hurting you is all right.”

“Okay. I won’t.” I felt another pout coming on. This wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him touching me. I wanted him kissing me. I wasn’t sure what to do with this protective streak coming out of him, and the way he was massaging lotion into my chest left me feeling heady. I needed more. I needed his hands to drop lower, his fingers to dip beneath my bikini top. I needed him to touch me in ways few men had ever touched me before, like how he was already touching my heart.

He put more sunscreen in his palm and applied it to my belly, and I wondered if he could feel the bumblebees buzzing around in there. His touch made me wish we were alone and in private instead of out on a beach where someone could walk up and interrupt us at any moment.

“Are you agreeing because that’s just what you do? Or do you really mean it?”

“I mean it,” I said, my voice cracking with my sincerity. Or maybe it was all the liquor.

The tips of his fingers rested on my ribs, just beneath my breasts. If he moved them up slightly, he’d be cupping me. I fought the temptation to contort my body to make it happen.

“Has he ever hurt you before?”

I shook my swimming head, unable to move my gaze from his even though that left me swaying.

“You swear it? Because if he has…” Hunter let his voice trail off, leaving me to fill in the blanks of his threat.

“He’s never hurt me before.” Not physically, at least. Sometimes I thought that the things he’d said to me were ten times more hurtful than any sort of physical harm he could have caused. Bruises healed. Scars faded. But all the ways he’d made me feel inadequate over the years, all the times he’d told me that I didn’t measure up had taken their toll. I didn’t want to feel the ways Lance had made me feel anymore, like I wasn’t ever going to be good enough, like everything I did fell short. With Hunter, I didn’t feel that way. Being with him gave me a confidence I couldn’t explain any more than I could explain my suddenly insatiable desire to have more of his touch. “Hunter?” I said after a moment.

“Hmm?” His fingertips traced patterns on my skin and tickled me.

“Will you kiss me again? I really want you to kiss me right now.”

Hunter searched my eyes for so long he must have been looking for a sign. That I’d lied about Lance? That I was telling the truth? That I really wanted what I’d asked him for? I couldn’t be sure, but then he moved one of his hands up to cup the back of my head, and his mouth was on mine.

It was a greedy kiss—not even remotely gentle—his tongue demanding entrance against the seam of my lips until I opened for him. He delved inside, our tongues tangling until I could do nothing more than hold on for the ride. I wrapped my arms around his neck, bracing myself against his assault even as I drew him closer. My nipples peaked, hardened nubs pressing into his muscled chest, and I could feel wetness accumulating in my bikini bottoms.

I let out a sigh, much like the ones I’d released as I’d read earlier. I couldn’t help it. That only seemed to goad him further. He growled from somewhere deep in his chest, drawing me off the beach chair until I was on my knees in the sand in front of him, our bodies pressed tightly together.

He nipped my lower lip, and I gasped at the sharp sensation. It was more surprising than painful, just a slight sting that turned to a deprived throb a second later. I could feel his male grin against my skin as he kissed the line of my jaw and down my neck, nibbling just often enough to keep me on my toes.

I splayed my hands over his shoulders, marveling at the corded strength under my touch. Everything about him was hard. Everything. Especially his cock. It was hot, pressing into my belly. I stretched up as far as I could, instinctively grinding my hips into him, trying to get my heat lined up with his.

And just like that, he broke it off, separating himself from me like I’d struck him.

Still in a daze, I stared at him while I tried to steady myself. His chest was rising and falling, his breathing as harsh and ragged as mine. His pupils were dilated, more black than green visible in his eyes. He wanted me. He wanted me as much as I wanted him, but he didn’t want to. That much was obvious.

I pushed up from the sand, wobbling slightly as I brushed it from my legs before I sat on the beach chair again.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice full of gravel.

Not nearly as sorry as I was.

I FUCKING LOVE eating pussy.

There are few things in life I enjoy more than going down on a chick and hearing her sounds of pleasure, feeling her hands fisting in my hair as she directs me where she wants me, and tasting the fruits of my labor. Watching a woman come? Feeling her sex clench around my fingers, my tongue, my cock? It’s fucking heaven. There are times I’d rather take a woman to orgasm than find my own.

And right now? Tallie was aroused as all hell. I could tell. She was hot and ready, so much so that I could feel her heat and smell the evidence. If I wanted to take her back to our suite, strip her down, and lick her pussy until she experienced climax after mind-blowing climax, I had no doubt she would let me. She wouldn’t stop me if I wanted to fuck her afterward, either. I had no doubt I could pound into her as long as I could keep it up, and considering I was harder than steel right now, I knew I could go a long fucking time.

I was ready. She was ready. More than that, she was willing. I’d done that to her.

She was also drunk as all hell.

I’d done that to her, too.

We’d been sitting by the bar on the beach for hours, and I’d brought her cocktail after cocktail even though she’d long since had more than enough. I couldn’t seem to help myself. After I’d brought her the first one, and she’d acted like I’d just handed her the keys to the castle, I’d just wanted to do whatever would make her happy. Her face had lit up like a fucking fireworks display the second she’d taken a sip of that fruity drink, brighter than the sun overhead. It was like she’d never had a cocktail before.

And once I thought about that, I realized that might very well be the case. She might not have ever had a cocktail in her life, or if she had it had likely only been on extremely rare occasions. Lance probably didn’t let her drink because alcohol had too many calories or some other shit like that.

Thinking about him had only pissed me off. I was even more pissed off because I’d finally had the opportunity to talk to Carrie since the wedding. Just as I’d expected, she’d thought it was for the best to stay home with Kaylee once she’d found out that Kade would be there. I couldn’t disagree with that. Keeping Kaylee away from her father needed to be the number one thing any of the responsible adults in her life would do.

The fact that, once again, my brother had put himself and what he wanted before everyone else—at Mom’s urging, no less—made me see red, so I’d tried to drown my anger in my beer. Then I wanted another, and every time I’d gone back to get myself a beer, I’d brought her another umbrella drink. She’d downed each and every one of them with the same sweet glee, but she was well past her limit right now, and that meant I should have kept my fucking hands and mouth to myself, no matter what she asked me to do.

It didn’t matter that she was technically my wife; consent from a drunk didn’t count as consent. If I took her back to the hotel and fucked her now, I would be no better than Kade with the way he’d treated Chantel. I’d be damned if I was going to stoop to his fucking level. Not going to happen.

Tallie’s sexy pout was going to kill me, though. I wanted to kiss it right off her lips. “Come on,” I said, reaching out a hand for her to take. “We should go inside.” She needed to sleep her drunk off, and I needed a cold shower.

“But you just put more sunscreen on me.”

That had been part of the problem. Once I’d gotten my hands on her skin, I hadn’t wanted to stop. It was like silk beneath my touch. I didn’t know how someone could get to be a teenager, even, with skin as perfect as hers, let alone someone who spent so much time caked with makeup and all sorts of other shit that she didn’t need at all. It was smooth to the touch, though, and hot. Not just from being out in the sun, either. Apparently, Tallie’s libido liked booze.

And mine liked Tallie.

I helped her to her feet, putting my arm around her waist to keep her upright. That only caused her scent to waft up to my nostrils and taunt me. She smelled like fruity drinks and sex, a potent combination.

I gathered up my phone and her iPad, tossed them in the beach bag with our towels and sandals, and slung the bag over my shoulder. Then I started hauling her back toward the hotel.

“You’re no fun,” she said, coming along beside me.

“Too bad you’re stuck with me for the next year.”

She took a deep, sighing breath. “I’m going to need a lot more mai tais to get through a whole year of you being so cranky all the time.”

Was I cranky? She probably wasn’t too far off the mark, and the fact that I wanted to toss her on the bed and relieve all the sexual tension between us likely only intensified the effect, since that wasn’t going to happen. Not any time soon. Particularly not while she was so toasted.

I dug the key card out of the pocket in my swim trunks and swiped the door handle, pushing it open. Our suite had a door that opened out right onto the beach, so we never had to go too far for some fun and sun. Tallie nearly tripped on her way across the threshold, so I picked her up to carry her inside.

She put an arm around my shoulder, her face mere inches from mine. The look in her amber eyes was just as heated and needy as before, and her lips were parted. Ready. Waiting.

Fucking hell, she was going to kill me.

I kicked the door closed behind us and tossed the bag on the closest chair before carrying her to her room. Then I set her down on the edge of the bed.

She’d tangled her hand in my hair, apparently, and she tried to tug me down with her, lying flat on her back and drawing her legs up around my waist.

“Touch me,” she said, her voice all sultry and husky and slurred.

“I can’t tell you how bad I want to do exactly that,” I muttered.

“So do it. I want to feel your hands on me.”

She was using hers to great effect, one gripping my hair and keeping me trapped, the other trailing down my chest and exploring my pecs. She kept moving lower with it, too, and I had to grab her wrist to stop her before she reached my cock. She pouted, trying to free herself, but I held on tight. If I gave in, if I let her touch me like that, I’d be a goner, no matter how fucking noble my intentions might be.

“Hunter,” she whined. “I want you to fuck me. I want to feel you inside me.”

Methodically, I worked myself free from her grasp, one determined limb at a time. “I bet you say that to all the boys.”

She shook her head, eyes serious as a heart attack. “Mama would kill me. She wouldn’t let me date. Said my reputation was too important for pageants, and pageants were everything. And Lance kept me busy with all my training so there wasn’t time for it, anyway. I didn’t even go to prom.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a virgin,” I ground out. The thought that she might never have been touched intimately by another man did crazy things to the fucking protective streak that had reared its ugly head recently, but at the same time, I wasn’t in the business of fucking virgins. I liked a woman who knew what she wanted in bed and wasn’t afraid to ask for it. Tallie was asking for it, but that didn’t mean she knew what she needed.

She squirmed and got one of her hands free from my grip, immediately reaching for the waistband of my trunks. “Not a virgin,” she said. “Not since Cancun.”

Well, that was just perfect. So she’d gotten drunk and naked in a hot tub with some asswipe who hadn’t understood the basic fact that a drunk woman couldn’t consent, no matter how horny she might be.

I felt her fingers beneath my shorts, reaching for my straining cock. He definitely wanted to take her up on whatever she was offering. Desperate times called for desperate measures, though, so I decided to throw my weight into my efforts. I dragged her hand up from between us, stretched it overhead to join her other hand, and flattened myself over her, letting my bulk push her down into the mattress.

Bad call. Seriously bad fucking call. She snaked her legs up and around me, locking her ankles together behind my waist. My cock was nestled right at her sex, with only our beach wear stopping me from being inside her. The hard peaks of her nipples strained against my chest, driving me wild as she squirmed beneath me. And those eyes. Good God, those eyes. They were like liquid gold, glazed with lust.

“Please,” she whispered, grinding her hips up into me, and it nearly did me in.

“Not like this.” I tried to lift some of my weight off her so I wouldn’t crush her, but her legs were scissoring so tight around me it was almost impossible. I ignored the deflated look on her face. “I will fuck you,” I said, “but it’s going to be sometime when you’re sober. When you know it’s me inside you. When you’re wild with need, and I know it’s because of me and the things I’m doing and not because of how much you’ve had to drink.” At least I would if she still wanted me to. Right now, I wasn’t sure if it was just the booze talking or if she really, truly wanted it. Wanted me.

“I don’t want to wait.”

Neither did I, but telling her so wouldn’t help anything. I kissed her again, the taste of her lips even more intoxicating than all the beers I’d had since we’d arrived in Hawaii. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but her pout was too fucking sexy for me to ignore.

When I broke away from her, she bit down on her lower lip.

“You’re too damn hot for my own good,” I grumbled, finally extricating myself from her grasp.

“Then why won’t you fuck me?” she demanded, rolling to her side as though trying to follow me as I stood. She propped her head up on one hand, and the top of her bikini shifted, almost exposing her breasts to my hungry eyes.

I forced myself to look away and adjusted my painfully hard cock. If I didn’t get out of there soon, I was likely to forget about everything I’d been telling myself.

“Sleep it off,” I said. “We can talk about it later.” Not that I expected her to remember any of this after her drunk wore off. If I told her, she’d probably be mortified. No, better to just pretend none of this had ever happened, because, unless I got her drunk like this again, she probably wouldn’t remember a bit of it later.

I closed her door and headed for my shower, turning the spray as close to ice as I could get it. Not that it helped. I ended up jerking myself off, images of her lithe body swirling in my mind and the fruity rum taste of her on my lips.

When I finished, I put on some clothes and cracked open the door to her room to be sure she was all right. She was passed out, sprawled across the bed exactly as I’d left her. Moving quietly, I went inside and pulled a sheet up over her.

In her sleep, she curled closer to me, grabbing hold of my hand and murmuring something unintelligible.

How the hell was I going to get through a year of this? My balls were already blue, and it had only been a few days.

JUST AS I expected, Tallie didn’t remember anything about the way she’d tried to drag me into her bed that afternoon once the liquor wore off. At least, if she did remember it, she never said anything about it. Maybe she was embarrassed. There wasn’t a fucking thing for her to be embarrassed about, so I hoped that wasn’t it. More likely, it was the mai tais that had caused not only her lapse in decorum but also her faulty memory.

Whatever the reason, I did my best to put it out of my mind. She didn’t try to jump my bones again during the remainder of our stay in Hawaii, so I tried to ignore how hard I got every time I looked at her in one of those bikinis.

They weren’t the skimpiest I’d ever seen before—not by a longshot. They were perfectly respectable, just like everything else about her, an adequate amount of skin covered to leave some things to the imagination, but plenty out in the open for me to ogle.

And I did. A lot. We spent most of our honeymoon out on the beach or in the ocean, and I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off her the whole time.

Which led to a lot of time alone in my room buffing my banana. By the time we flew back to Tulsa, I was positive the hotel was short on cold water due to all the icy showers I’d been taking, and I was ready to get back to some semblance of a normal life, where it wasn’t just the two of us all the time. I figured I could get into the gym and determine where I could get some ice time in preparation for the upcoming season, and Tallie could find something to do that she would enjoy, and we could settle into whatever our life together was going to look like.

Mom, Dad, and Kade hadn’t gone back home yet by the time we returned, though, which threw a wrench into things right off the bat. The problem was that the hospital insisted on putting Kade into a rehab program, but he wasn’t cooperating, so my parents were still here trying to force him to get the help he didn’t want. Mom couldn’t let go, and Dad wouldn’t leave without Mom.

With Tallie and me effectively out of the spotlight for a week, apparently the local news outlets had focused in on Kade after his overdose at the wedding. That meant we returned to Tulsa and walked into a hornet’s nest.

John and Darren met us at the airport when we landed. They’d stayed behind to get my new house set up so Tallie and I could move in as soon as we returned. Before too much longer, Darren would have to head home so he could go back to work. John’s work was dealing with shit for me, though, so I didn’t mind asking him to do things like that. I’d asked him to do damage control while they were at it, but from the look on his face when I found him at baggage claim, that hadn’t gone too well.

He reached for Tallie’s carry-on bag and gave me a look that spelled trouble. “I don’t suppose you’ve talked to your parents much since you left?” He sounded hopeful even though he should know better.

I raised a brow in response, a scowl finding its way to my mouth, and Darren took one of the bags from me.

“Didn’t think so,” John said. He sighed. “So you should both know that things here haven’t gone as smoothly as everyone had hoped. Of course, half the state watched the wedding live as it was happening.”

“So everyone saw Kade’s meltdown,” I added for him.

He nodded. “And with the two of you out of the limelight for a week…”

“Has Kade done anything else stupid?” I asked even though I knew that was absolutely what this was about. No real point in asking if something had happened. I should have just asked what had happened. Better to cut to the chase and get it over with.

“Not exactly,” Darren said.

“What does that mean?”

John gave his younger brother a let-me-handle-this look. “It means that without you two here to follow around, the media decided they’d hound Kade instead. He’s been all over the papers, social media… Everything he’s done, or not done, they’ve blasted it everywhere.”

“So basically, everything that they’d hoped would happen by the two of you getting hitched, Kade’s presence is having the opposite effect.”

Which just meant that I needed to kick his ass out of my life once and for all, only I didn’t have the first clue if I could get Mom to go along with it.

Tallie had been quiet since we’d landed, her arms crossed over her chest as she took in everything my friends said. She leaned over and reached for her bag as it came around the carousel, but I grabbed it before she could, setting it at her feet.

“Thanks,” she murmured. Then she eyed each of the three of us before settling her gaze on me. “I guess that just means we’re going to have to step up our efforts even more than we already had been now that we’re home.”

That wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind, but there were worse ways to spend my time than putting on a massive PDA show with Tallie for all of Tulsa to see. If not for the fact that I would still be going to bed alone.

My hand should get a good workout, even if the rest of me didn’t.

HUNTER AND I had been back in Tulsa for a week now and—surprisingly—I hadn’t heard from either Mama or Lance once. Without their interference, we were starting to settle into a pattern, one which I supposed we’d follow for the rest of our year together, more or less.

Every morning after breakfast, we went to the gym together. He’d hired a personal trainer named Easton, who was putting Hunter through some of the craziest workouts I’d ever seen to help him prepare for the upcoming season. Easton had him jumping up on wooden crates and running with a huge tire chained to his waist, and dozens of other things I’d never dreamed of doing.

I had no clue how they were supposed to help him prepare for his job as a goaltender, either, but then again I didn’t really know the first thing about hockey. I knew Hunter was a goalie, but watching all of this made me really curious about what a goalie did. I’d always thought they just stood there and waited for the puck to come their way. If that was the case, though, why would he need to do anything beyond be as big as possible, so there wasn’t much room for the puck to slip past him? It was beyond me, that was for sure.

While he was busy doing that, I went through my regular workout consisting of enough time on the elliptical machine to work up a good sweat, a couple of strength training circuits, and some laps in the pool to cool down. I was usually done well before he was. He suggested I go get a massage or a facial while I waited for him to finish, since they had a spa area here at the gym. I did once, but most days I found a quiet corner in the snack bar, drank a smoothie, and read a book.

After that, we would go out and have lunch somewhere that we’d be seen together. It was all about appearances, after all, and we were doing our best to be seen out and about as often as possible. We kept up the lovey-dovey hand-holding stuff the whole time we were out, whispering in one another’s ears. Occasionally he would kiss my cheek. I thought we were pulling the charade off well. Maybe too well, but now the gossip sites were focusing on the two of us again instead of delving into Kade’s life, according to John. Hunter had put his agent in charge of keeping tabs on all that so we wouldn’t have to, because it was really weird paying so much attention to the way the media portrayed us.

In the afternoons, Hunter was hauling his skates and other hockey gear and heading up to Thunderbirds Headquarters so he could spend some time on the ice. As if the crazy workouts in the gym weren’t enough. He wasn’t alone out there, either. Since the school year was about to start, his teammates who had school-aged children were showing up and getting settled in their new homes. I kept thinking maybe he would introduce me to the guys, or to their wives and kids at the very least, but so far that hadn’t happened. I was beginning to wonder if it ever would happen. But maybe he didn’t want to share that part of his life with me. Maybe that would feel too much like we were developing a real relationship.

While he was at the rink, I devoted my time to figuring out what the heck I was going to do with myself for the next year. I didn’t have classes to go to. I didn’t have my girlfriends from Delta Delta Delta to hang out with. I wasn’t busy preparing for my next pageant, so all the things Lance would prefer to have me doing were pointless now. I’d never gotten too close to any of the people I’d gone to school with, because Mama and Lance had kept me so busy there hadn’t been time for friends or extracurricular activities. So unless I was going to hang out with Mama and Lance—which would not go over well, in addition to the fact that I had no interest in doing so—I had to find some hobbies.

I wasn’t used to having free time. Throughout my entire life, every moment of my day had been laid out for me, strictly regimented. In my teens, I’d even had to resort to reading with the lights out after I’d gone to bed because Lance had insisted upon a specific amount of beauty sleep every night. It was the only way I was able to sneak any time for myself.

For the first few days after we returned, I did a lot of reading during those hours when Hunter was gone. While I enjoyed that freedom, it wasn’t long before I started to feel like I was wasting time that would be better spent doing something useful.

One day, I bought a cookbook and attempted to make a recipe from it for our dinner. I even invited Hunter’s parents and brother to join us. They declined, and it was probably for the best that they did, because I made a massive mess of it. By the time Hunter returned home, I’d managed to air out most of the smoke and other horrid smells, but there wasn’t anything salvageable from what I’d cooked. He took it in stride, even trying to get me to laugh it off. We left and ate dinner at a swanky downtown restaurant instead. Clearly, cooking was not going to be my forte, and there was no chance it would prove to be useful to anyone.

Another day, I decided to try a different tack. I went to one of the women’s shelters in the area, hoping to find some way I could help out. During my pageant years, women’s education had been the cause I was most vocal about. I thought I could keep going with something along those lines. But when I got to the shelter, they didn’t want me to help educate the women. They wanted someone to work in the kitchen or to donate items like tampons and condoms.

“Education is a great idea,” one of the workers told me, “but we’re still trying to focus on the immediate needs. We have to meet those before we can even begin to worry about the rest.”

I could do those things, of course, but they weren’t what I felt called to do. Still, I stuck around for a few hours, but by the time I left, I felt more defeated than ever. What could I do if no one wanted my help? Daddy had said that the player wives would get involved with some charitable events once the season got underway, but the season was still a ways off. Not only that, but so far, Hunter hadn’t been including me in anything to do with the Thunderbirds. He said it was because he didn’t even really know his teammates yet, so he couldn’t exactly introduce me to their wives. I started to wonder if he just didn’t want me to be involved in any part of his life, though. And I couldn’t blame him, I supposed. The less we got tangled up in one another’s lives, the easier it would be to end things when the time came for our impending divorce.

I couldn’t seem to help myself, though. That night at dinner, I asked Hunter if I could spend the next afternoon with his mother.

“She’s got her hands full trying to deal with Kade,” he said. He reached for the bottle of water the waiter had left at our table and refilled both of our glasses.

I already knew that, of course. It was the reason they’d given me when they’d turned down my dinner invitation the night I’d nearly burned Hunter’s new house to the ground, but there was no good reason I couldn’t help Hunter’s parents out. I could do that without getting too attached if that was what he was worried about. I took a sip, letting the thoughts swirl in my head in the same way the water was swirling in my mouth.

“Why couldn’t I give her a hand with him?”

Hunter’s head shot up. “I don’t want you having anything to do with my brother.” No upturned lip. He was dead serious and ready to snap.

This wasn’t going well.

I nearly shot something back at him, about him having made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want to share any part of his life with me, but he didn’t need to be such a grump about it, but I managed to bite down on my tongue instead. You win more flies with honey, I reminded myself, letting Mama’s words run over and over in my head.

“All right,” I said calmly. “But I’ve got to find something to do with myself or I’ll go crazy. If I’m not careful, I’ll be running to Lance and asking him what I should do.” I was used to always having something to do, even if that something was sitting still for an hour of airbrushing or whatever. All this idleness, where I didn’t have a specific time to be doing a specific thing, was getting to me.

He immediately softened, as though he’d remembered we were in public and supposed to be head-over-heels in love with each other. He reached across and caressed the back of my hand like a man utterly devoted to his wife, like he was completely wrapped around my little finger. If people could see the truth of things… “Do me a favor. Don’t go to Lance. I’m positive you can figure something out without resorting to that.”

“Glad one of us is so sure of that.” I made up my mind to come up with a plan, though, because whether I believed I could think of something to do with myself on my own or not, I didn’t want to take a step backward in my life. I’d finally gotten out from under Lance’s thumb. Now I had to figure out a way to stay out from under it. “Maybe I could get together with some of the guys’ wives?” I suggested. It couldn’t hurt to plant the thought in his mind, in case he didn’t remember what he’d told me before. “We could maybe—”

“Not yet,” he cut in. “Soon. I already told you I barely know any of these guys yet, let alone their wives. Half the team hasn’t even shown up in Tulsa. Once training camp starts, it’ll be easier to plan something along those lines. I’m sure Zee’s wife can introduce you around, show you the ropes.”

Zee was one of the guys on the team that Hunter already knew, but he hadn’t arrived yet. He apparently had toddlers, not kids old enough to go to school, so they didn’t need to be here until time for training camp to open.

I tried not to let my disappointment show since I expected people were watching us. And then I had to wonder—was he really keeping me from the other guys’ wives because of the reasons he’d told me, or was he just trying to shut me out of that part of his life? I honestly wasn’t sure at this point.

Hunter’s fingers teased the skin on my arm, and soon we fell into a conversation about a quirk Easton had of doing everything in sets of thirteen and whether that meant he was superstitious, a topic that was more in line with our body language than the earlier tension between us. We’d both realized that it was easier to act like lovebirds when we weren’t talking about things that made one or both of us uncomfortable. In no time, we were cozied up next to each other again, making sure everyone around us caught on to all the vibes we were giving off.

Those little touches were getting to be too much, particularly after what had happened that day on the beach. Hunter had never said another word about it, so I hadn’t either. If he’d had any interest in following through with what we’d started, he could have. That day was all it had taken to show me that, for him, the act we were putting on for the world was just an act. Nothing more. He didn’t want to be with me, and I wasn’t going to beg, no matter how desperate I was for him to do more than just touch me. I’d made it pretty clear where I stood on that matter that day on the beach; the ball was in his court now. Not only had he rejected my overtures when I’d made them, he hadn’t done a damn thing since.

It was good that the girls had introduced me to vibrators while I’d been in college, because every time Hunter got me all hot and bothered only to leave me to my own devices, I gave that baby a good workout. By the time we left the restaurant and headed for his car, his arm wrapped snug around my waist so that his scent was pouring over me in waves, I knew I needed to be sure that sucker was well charged tonight. I was going to need him once Hunter and I got home and we headed our separate ways.

The restaurant wasn’t far from home, so it didn’t take long before he had parked in the garage and we were heading inside. He held the door open for me, his arm up above for me to pass underneath. I accidentally brushed up against him as I entered the house, my bare shoulder gliding along the smooth fabric covering his chest muscles. The hint of his cologne tickled my nostrils.

“Sorry,” I murmured. I was way too attuned to him for my own good, but damn if I had a clue what to do about it.

I moved into the kitchen and set my purse down on the bar. When I turned around, Hunter was right there. In my space. Leaning in close to me, so near it startled me, and I backed up until my butt bumped into the counter.

“Why are you sorry? You don’t have anything to be sorry about.” He placed his hands on the edge of the counter on either side of me, and my pulse kicked into overdrive.

“I just… I don’t…” I couldn’t think straight.

His eyes roved over me, making me feel as if he were undressing me. Like he could see straight through my clothes. Straight through my skin, even.

I couldn’t look anywhere but at his mouth, a subconscious thing on my part because I was imagining those lips being on me like they hadn’t been since that afternoon in Maui. Not when we were alone, like this. Not when we weren’t putting on a show for whomever needed to see it.

He came a half step closer, so close he was practically inside me. “What do you want, Tallie?” he asked, his words coming out smooth and low.

I shook my head. I couldn’t bear to tell him what I wanted, because he didn’t want to hear it. If he wanted what I did, then he would have come to bed with me that day in Maui. He would have tried to get in my pants since we’d been back in Tulsa. He didn’t want what I did. Not a chance.

But he was still crowding into my space and making me want it more than I should, even though there was no one here to witness it.

“Tell me,” he said. “Or show me if you can’t.”

Instinctively, I put a hand on his chest. The pounding of his heart tattooed my fingertips, and his chest rose and fell at a rate almost as rapid as mine. Maybe I’d been wrong. But if I had been, why hadn’t he kissed me or touched me or taken me to bed in all this time? It didn’t make any sense.

He dropped his head down to me, and his lips pressed softly against mine. Too softly. It was just a whisper, light as a feather, just enough to make my body burn for more. I lifted up toward him, seeking more, but he moved on to kiss me with the same barely there brush of his lips on my chin, my cheek, my eyelid, the lobe of my ear, the fluttering pulse in my neck…so many places I couldn’t keep track of them, only wanting there to be more. I wanted him to lean into me, to press his length against me. I wanted to feel the weight of his body holding me in place.

But I couldn’t seem to ask for what I wanted or to grab hold of him and take it. I wanted these things, but the fear of repeated rejection kept me locked in a trance. If he wanted me, why wouldn’t he take what I had offered when we were on our honeymoon?

In my experience, when a man wanted something, he reached out and took it. That was what Leo Brunetti had done with me in Cancun. It was what I’d seen so many times with my sorority sisters. Their boyfriends just went for it, but Hunter wasn’t doing anything of the sort. His kisses were soft, gentle, almost apologetic. I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand this. Not at all.

He backed away, his eyes glazed and his lips parted as he met my gaze. “Maybe there’s something to doing things in thirteens,” he said, his voice husky.

I shook my head, not following.

The corner of his lips quirked up in a grin. “Thirteen kisses.” He brushed a fingertip over each of the places he’d just kissed me, thirteen in all, his touch nothing more than a tickle.

I’d rather have thirteen kisses where he was ravaging me, plundering, taking as much as he gave.

He gave me a curious look, his brows furrowing together. “What’s going on in your head?”

“I want you to really kiss me,” I said before I could stop the words from coming out. I didn’t have a lot of pride, but asking him almost made me feel like I was begging, like I was desperate. I kind of was desperate, but that was beside the point. I didn’t want to come across as needy. Not when he didn’t want the same things I wanted, and when I wasn’t even sure I had a good grasp on that myself. Not when he could just walk away again.

“To really kiss you?” he repeated, his voice dropping down an octave.

I still had my hand on his chest, and I pressed my palm flat. His heart stuttered against my touch. I didn’t want to wait around for him to tell me no. Not again. That would be too humiliating to bear. I twisted his shirt in my fist, dragging him down to me.

A humming sound came from somewhere in his chest, and he slid his tongue along the seam of my lips. I opened readily, greedily, welcoming him in.

And then his hands weren’t on the edge of the counter anymore; they were on me. One went to cup my bottom and draw me closer. The other slipped up my side, teasing my rib cage with his fingers before trailing them over my breast.

I gasped for air, tossing my head back. His mouth went to the soft underside of my jaw. He nibbled, and I wrapped both arms around his neck and back, reeling him in. He was hard, his cock pulsing against my belly.

“Hunter,” I said, no longer caring that it sounded like I was begging. Because I was. And I was too needy to give a damn how pathetic it made me.

In a snap, he put both hands on my waist, lifted me up, and set me on the countertop. I opened my legs, and he moved between them. His heat melded with mine. He leaned over me, angling me back against the cool granite until I had to put my arms behind me and lock my elbows to hold myself up, or else I would be on my back.

But then again, that might not be so bad.

Hunter put just enough distance between us that he could look down at me. He slid a hand down the center of my chest, directly between my breasts, watching his progress. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might as well jump out of my body. There was no chance I’d be able to keep it contained inside me much longer. One at a time, he undid the buttons of my blouse. It fell open, slipping down my arms until it pooled on the countertop and my hands, leaving nothing but my bra between me and his gaze.

“Teal,” he murmured, outlining the edges of the silky fabric with his thumb.

“Lance always says it’s my color.” I wished I could take the words back as soon as they left my mouth.

Hunter’s gaze came back into focus, sharp as pinpricks, and he dropped his hands to his side. “Fuck, Tallie. I don’t want to hear his name when I’m touching you,” he ground out.

“I know.” I drew his hand up to cup me again, but he let it drop away. I didn’t want this to end just because I’d been stupid and stopped thinking. That response had popped into my head and out of my mouth in one fell swoop. I straightened myself briefly so I could reach behind my back and unclasp my bra, desperate to get the mood back to what it had been. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Forget I ever mentioned—”

Hunter’s cell beeped with a text message before I could finish what I was saying or release the hooks behind my back.

“Don’t,” I begged, reaching for his hand. “Check it later.”

But he dug his phone out of his pocket, releasing his hold on me. I glanced over as he checked the message. It was from John.

Kade’s back in the hospital. Camera crews everywhere. You’d better get over here, pronto.

Hunter tensed up so much I was tangled in his knot. “I’d better go deal with this.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said, already shrugging my shoulders back into my shirt. I knew Hunter didn’t want me to be involved with his family, but he needed someone there for him, whatever this latest issue might bring, and if anything was going to interrupt what we’d had going on just now, I wanted to be part of it.

“I’d rather you not get messed up with my asshole brother and all the shit he brings to the table.”

“I’ll just follow you to the hospital, so you might as well take me with you when you go,” I countered.

In the end, Hunter gave in. He was silent the whole way to the hospital. John and Darren met us at the door to the ER. Hunter said something quietly to the two brothers before heading through some double doors with Darren, leaving me behind with John. He glanced over his shoulder just before the two of them disappeared, his eyes imploring me.

Hunter’s agent filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee and brought it over, passing it to me. “He asked me to take you home.”

“I’m not going home.”

He winked. “That’s why I brought you the coffee.”

I laughed, which seemed like an insensitive thing to do at a time like this, but I couldn’t help it.

“He just doesn’t want you to get dragged down,” he said after I had taken a sip. “He wants to keep you out of it. To protect you.”

Could that really be what was behind the way he was treating me in regard to his family? Was he trying to protect me, to put bubble wrap around me and insulate me from the world? If so, I wished he would just tell me.

“Maybe I don’t want to be protected,” I said after a moment. It might already have been too late for me to protect my heart where Hunter was concerned, so I might as well learn all there was to know about his family.

“Maybe you don’t.”

“Maybe he should let me help him.”

John eyed me for a long time. “Maybe he should. Hunter isn’t very good at letting people help him, though. He’s a lot like Kade in that way. He digs his own holes and then insists on climbing out of them by himself even when someone else offers to lower a ladder for him.”

I felt a smile creep up to my lips. “I can respect that. I think I can be like that, too.”

“But you’re both helping each other right now. At least with some things.”

“Yes. With some things.” Just not with this.

John rested his elbows on his knees and propped his head on his hands. “This could be another long one.”

“I don’t have anywhere I need to be.” Nowhere but here.

WE LEFT THE hospital sometime after three in the morning, making sure Hunter’s parents made it safely back to their hotel before returning to the house. I’d stayed in the waiting room the whole night, and I was utterly exhausted on both a physical and an emotional level, sometimes sitting with John, with Darren, with Mrs. Fielding… They took turns updating me on Kade’s condition. Hunter hadn’t come out until they’d discharged his brother, though. For someone who had argued so vehemently against going to the hospital at all when this had happened at the wedding, saying he didn’t want to stay by his brother’s side through it, the fact that he hadn’t left that room for hours seemed out of character. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Once we were home, it was clear we would be going down our separate hallways instead of continuing what we’d started before receiving that text message. Hunter kissed the top of my head. “You’d be much better off if you just stayed out of it, you know,” he murmured into my hair.

“I don’t want to stay out of it.” The more time I spent with Hunter, the more I wanted to be with him. I wanted to get to know him and his family. I wanted things he would probably never be able to give me, but the knowledge didn’t take the wanting away. The effect he had on me, this magnetic pull, only grew stronger with each day we spent together. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I couldn’t get out from under its pull no matter how hard I tried. I was afraid I was falling in love with Hunter, and that scared me.

Because he wasn’t falling in love with me. In lust, maybe, but not in love. And because the clock kept ticking, and what we had was going to come to an end. And because once it was over, I didn’t know who I would be.

He separated himself from me, effectively brushing me off. “I’m going to have to skip the gym in the morning,” he said. “There’s something I have to do.”

“Can I help?”

He shook his head. “You can help by sleeping in and getting some rest. I don’t want you to have to worry about any of this.”

Little did he know, I was going to worry whether he wanted me to or not.

By the time I got up in the morning, he was gone. I fixed a bagel and spread Nutella on it, grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter, and took it to the table to eat with my morning coffee. I’d finished without a word from him, and I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I grabbed the jar of Nutella and a spoon, and I curled up on the couch with it.

Hours later, Hunter came back with his parents. I had showered and put clothes on by then, and I jumped to my feet when they came through the door. Hunter headed straight for the kitchen and fixed a couple of baggies with ice. His nose was bent, and there were cuts and bruises on his hand. He passed one of the baggies to his father, who was in similar shape. Mrs. Fielding was just standing there crying hysterically.

There was no sign of Kade, but I had no doubt he was at the center of all this. I just didn’t know what any of it meant. Wordlessly, I went to the bathroom and found a first aid kit, bringing it out to tend to their cuts.

“I’ve got this,” Hunter said when I took out an alcohol pad to clean the blood off his knuckles. He took the first aid supplies from me, shoving some in Mr. Fielding’s direction across the bar. “Thanks,” Hunter added as an afterthought.

I nodded, backing away. The two men weren’t going to let me help them, but I could at least comfort Hunter’s mother. She was still sobbing uncontrollably, so I put my arm around her shoulder and led her into the living room. I eased her down to sit beside me on the couch and passed a box of tissues over to her, and I let her cry on my shoulder until the tears turned to hiccups. Around the same time, Hunter and Mr. Fielding joined us in the living room.

“We took Kade to Horizons. It’s a rehab facility along the outskirts of town,” Hunter said after a long silence filled only with his mother’s sniffles. “He wasn’t happy about it,” he added, flexing his hand, as though that was enough to explain everything. I supposed, in a way, it was. I still didn’t understand Hunter’s relationship with his brother, but Kade needed help, and Hunter apparently still cared enough to insist that he get it. That was a starting point. It was my way in. I just needed to figure out what to do with it.

We chitchatted for a while, never delving into the subject that they seemed to want to keep strictly in the family.

The next day, Mr. and Mrs. Fielding flew back to Canada.

Once they were gone, Hunter didn’t say another word about Kade. He never went to visit his brother. He never called him or accepted a call. Almost two more weeks went by with Hunter attempting to pretend it had never happened. We spent that time doing what everyone expected of us—we went out in public together, hand in hand and arm in arm, holding on to each other, kissing each other, and generally making sure every news source in the area caught us in the act of being disgustingly happy together. Then we went home and turned our separate ways.

It was as if that day on the beach had never happened. The evening in the kitchen, before getting the text about Kade being back in the hospital? That might as well have not existed, either. Hunter was trying to push me away, the same way he was attempting to push his brother away, and I couldn’t let that happen.

Tomorrow, Hunter would be reporting for the first day of the Thunderbirds’ training camp. “You’re probably going to be seeing a lot less of me for a while,” he told me just before we headed down our separate hallways to call it a night. I couldn’t make out how he felt about that. He’d been keeping his sarcasm in check lately, and I rarely saw the smiles and smirks that had been so readily available back when we’d been on our honeymoon not so terribly long ago.

“That’s all right,” I said, putting the last of the day’s dishes in the dishwasher so I could run it overnight. “I’ll be fine.” I’d be better than fine, actually. Because over the course of the last couple of weeks, I’d formed an idea of how I could fill my time, and it would be much easier to do what I wanted to if Hunter wasn’t around to realize what it was. If he didn’t know, he couldn’t attempt to stop me.

HORIZONS, THE REHAB facility where they’d taken Kade, looked like a miserable place to live. The building had brick walls boasting very few windows, surrounded by a dry, brown yard with a high steel fence keeping everything private. I parked in one of the few open visitor spaces and had to pass through a group of smokers and the cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding them to reach the entry, holding my breath as I walked.

A harried receptionist glanced up at me from the desk just inside the door and shoved a sign-in clipboard in my direction. “ID?” she said tersely, holding out her hand. “And you’ll have to empty your pockets and check your purse with the office. You can’t take anything in beyond the clothes on your back. You’ll be going through a metal detector before going in, too.” She narrowed her eyes at my hair, as though trying to determine if I’d somehow tried to put something in it that I could give to Kade.

I took the ponytail holder out and shook my hair free, raising my brow in question as I did so. She scowled but kept quiet about it, so I figured that was her way of giving me the go-ahead.

The whole place felt cold, clinical, and seriously closed in. Good thing I’d never had issues with claustrophobia. Just standing here with the antiseptic smell of the place assaulting my nose, the wood paneling on the walls and the gray folding chairs in austere rows jarring my vision, I wanted to get the heck out of Dodge as fast as I could. The thought of spending any more than the maximum-allowable thirty-minute family visit gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I dug my driver’s license out of my wallet and passed it over to her, putting my cell phone and keys in my purse and zipping it shut before filling in my name, Kade’s name, and his patient ID number on the form.

She keyed a few things into her computer and handed my license back to me.

“Thank you,” I murmured, not that she had any reaction to my common courtesy. For a moment, I wondered if her parents just hadn’t taught her how to be polite or if she’d ignored their teachings. It wasn’t that difficult to be a decent human being, though. Even Lance could say please and thank you. I slipped my license into one of the outside pockets and double-checked to be sure I didn’t have anything else hidden on me anywhere. All clear.

“Visits are limited to exactly half an hour, no longer,” she said, not even looking up at me as she spoke, “and you can’t be alone with your family member. You’ll be in a big room along with all the other patients and visitors. No trying to slip anything to anyone or you won’t be allowed back.”

I wasn’t going to slip Kade anything other than maybe a dose of compassion. He didn’t even know I was coming, but I’d still never said more to him than a brief hello immediately before the wedding. Considering he had likely been high as a kite when that had happened, and quite a bit of time had passed since then, I wasn’t sure he would even remember me. I supposed I’d find out soon enough.

The only reason I was getting in to see him at all was that I’d insisted on having John send me the details a couple of days ago, once Thunderbirds training camp had started. At that point, I still hadn’t found a good use for my free time, but here it was, staring me in the face. I could figure out a way to help Kade, and maybe in the process, I could do something to help repair the relationship between him and Hunter. I might not succeed, but I could damn well try. The only thing it would cost me was my time, and that was something I had in abundance these days.

At least that was how I was looking at it. I wasn’t so sure Hunter would agree with my assessment, and I knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t be happy about me being here at all, but I hadn’t mentioned my plan to him. There wasn’t any point. He would just shut me down before I got started, determined to keep me as far away from his brother as possible.

Today, I intended to discover why he was so insistent on protecting me from his brother’s influence.

John had proven to be a little more willing to involve me, even promising to keep it from my husband. Darren had gone back home to his job after helping us settle in the new house, but John’s job was here right now, helping Hunter prepare for the season and overseeing our efforts for a media makeover. Here’s Kade’s patient ID number, he’d said to me the other day when Hunter was gone to practice. You’re going to have to tell them you’re immediate family or they won’t let you through the door. You’re his sister now. Don’t forget it. I’d had him brief me on the process of checking in, making sure I knew the answers to any pertinent family questions they might ask, just in case getting in wasn’t as easy as we hoped it would be.

In all fairness, he had tried to talk me out of coming. I hadn’t let him. It was just a gut feeling, this sense that I needed to involve myself with Kade in some way, but I knew I had to do something. Only I didn’t know what that something would end up being. Hunter always clammed up the second I mentioned his brother’s name, so I had decided to take things into my own hands. Make my own decisions. Stand on my own two feet.

And now I was here.

I nodded my understanding to the receptionist. I’d gone over all the facility’s rules before I’d made the decision to come. The only real problem was that, beyond the visitation rules, I didn’t have a clue. I’d never known a drug addict before. All things considered, I’d led a sheltered existence. Mama and Lance had practically kept me under lock and key. I knew this, but Hunter had unlocked that door. Now it was up to me whether I was going to go through the door or stay where I’d been. I had the key in my hand. I could turn the lock again or toss the key away… There were any number of choices I could make, so many that I wasn’t sure where to start.

Other than here.

“Turn in your purse and take a seat,” the receptionist said. “They’ll take everyone back in a group at three o’clock on the dot.”

“Where do I take it?”

She rolled her eyes and pointed at the opposite wall, where a woman worked behind a glass partition with a drawer like they had at the bank’s drive-through window. About a dozen other people were standing in line in front of her.

I crossed the lobby and waited for my opportunity. When I got to the front of the line, the woman took my purse, locked it in a cubby on her side of the partition, and passed the key to me through the sliding drawer.

Then I took a seat and waited, worrying my lower lip. I wished I still had my phone with me so at least I’d have something to do other than obsess over whether I’d made the right decision. Playing Bejeweled Blitz would at least pass the time, and maybe it would numb my brain some.

I didn’t have to wait too much longer. A door opened opposite the front entryway, and a woman in scrubs ushered us all back. We went into another holding room and, one at a time, walked through the metal detector. Once the entire group of thirty or so of us had been cleared, we were led through a series of long halls.

Finally, we reached our destination, a room filled with patients, with dozens of chairs and couches scattered around a few coffee tables. Several of the patients looked up when we entered, some getting up to rush over and hug their loved ones. A flat-screen TV was airing a Rangers baseball game overhead. Many of them were watching the game, but a few had their noses buried in books.

The patients who’d already met up with their visitors took them to quieter corners to find a place to sit together. I scanned the room, searching for Kade. He had the same dark hair and green eyes as Hunter, although his had seemed cold to me that one time we’d met, not warm like his brother’s, and his hair was shorter. It didn’t take me too long to find him. He was sitting off by himself in a corner, staring out one of the few windows, and completely oblivious to me and everyone else.

Since he hadn’t seen me yet, I took a moment to compose myself, taking a breath and tucking my hair behind my ears, all in an effort to build up my courage. Then I headed his way.

When I reached him, I cleared my throat.

He glanced up, thoroughly agitated. That was easy to tell. His annoyed face could be an exact match of Hunter’s. They both scrunched their eyebrows together and scowled.

“You can take the chair,” he said offhandedly, waving a hand to hurry me along.

I knew he meant for me to pick up the chair and go, but I decided to take him a little more literally. I plopped down in the seat next to him.

His scowl turned to a full-on glare, but then I caught the moment that he recognized me. Well, that was good. It would be easier to get this conversation moving if he at least knew who I was.

He pushed back from the table as though he was trying to get away from me. That was when I noticed the tattoos on his arms. Red and black nautical stars, one on the inside of each arm near his elbows. They both had a ribbon across the top point. The one on the right arm read Chantel. On the left, it read Kaylee.

He crossed his arms in front of him when he saw me looking at his tattoos, but it was too late to hide them from me. I’d already seen them and read the names, not that I knew what any of it meant.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

“Well, I did.”

“Does Hunter know you’re here?”

“No.” I settled in, trying to make myself comfortable in the folding chair even though my butt was almost numb already. I rested my arms on the card table between us.

He was working on a jigsaw puzzle. The image on the box said it was 5,000 pieces, and it showed the Oklahoma City skyline. He shoved some pieces aside before crossing his arms again. “He wouldn’t be very happy about it if he knew. You should go.”

“At the moment, I’m not particularly worried about what he thinks I should and shouldn’t do. What matters is what I want to do. And I want to be here. I want to talk to you.”

“Why?” He narrowed his eyes at me.

I shrugged. Heck if I knew. “You’re his brother,” I said feebly.

“He doesn’t give a fuck about that, so why should you?”

That was a fair question. “I think he gives more of a fuck than you think he does.” I would normally never use language like that, but it seemed like a good idea in dealing with Kade for some reason. Maybe it would help him to feel as if we were on the same level. Maybe it would help him trust me.

“He wishes I was dead,” Kade scoffed. “Said so himself when they dumped me here.”

Since I hadn’t been there, I couldn’t confirm or deny that claim. I wouldn’t be terribly shocked, considering some of the things Hunter had said to me about Kade, but I doubted he’d meant any of it. Better to move on than dwell on that subject.

“What about you?” I asked. His green eyes flickered up to meet my gaze, a question hanging there, before he looked down again. I picked up a puzzle piece and placed it where it belonged. “Do you wish you were dead?” I clarified.

He followed my lead, going back to his puzzle-making, but he didn’t answer. Not for a long time. I let my question hang in the air between us until he finally gave in. “Sometimes,” he said.

“But not always?”

“Not always.”

“Right now?”

He took a sip of water from a bottle, mulling it over. Then he shook his head. “No.”

“Why not? Why not now, I mean, when you do sometimes?” I clarified.

He traced a finger over the tattooed ribbon on his left arm, where the name Kaylee stood out in bold, black lettering. The corners of his lips twitched up, and I could tell he was trying to hide the smile that wanted to come forward. In that moment, he looked so much like Hunter it was eerie. Both of them fought against their smiles, almost as though they didn’t deserve to smile. Kade didn’t say anything, though. He picked up the same puzzle piece he’d been holding when I’d first sat down with him, twisting and turning it while his hand hovered over the table.

“Who’s Kaylee?” I asked.

“The only good thing I’ve ever done with my life.”

“And she’s why you don’t want to die right now?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, using the same sarcastic tone Hunter used so often. “It won’t last long. I’m clean enough to remember I’ve got a daughter, but reality is already setting in again.”

I knew I was pushing my luck, but I had more questions that needed answers. In fact, the more he talked, the less I understood. I was here, and he was talking, so I had to keep pushing until he pushed back. “What reality is that?” I asked softly.

“The reality that I’ll never see her again. And if I can’t have my baby girl in my life, I’m not sure there’s any point in trying to live.”

“Do you think she’d agree with that?”

Kade shrugged.

“Where is she now? With her mother?”

“Chantel’s dead. That’s my fault, too.” This time, he lifted his head and stared so hard I shivered and felt gooseflesh pop up along my arms. He narrowed his eyes. “You really shouldn’t be here. Hunter could answer all of these questions for you, and you could do it without being in a place like this. You should go be the sweet thing he married and forget you ever met me. I’m trouble with a capital T, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Probably not ever.”

“I don’t believe you. And I’m not leaving.” Not until time was up and they made me go. I still didn’t have a good grasp of what I was doing here, but Kade needed someone to listen. Maybe someone to believe in him. Someone who wouldn’t give up on him but who wasn’t his mother. I got the sense that she had been enabling him for a long time, and that was definitely not something in my plans…but I could listen. I could care.

Right now, caring seemed like just what the doctor ordered.

Kade let out a mirthless laugh. “Do you put your foot down with my brother like that? I’d love to see that someday. He’d either shit himself or get so turned on he wouldn’t know what to do about it.”

“Well, then I guess you’ll just have to make up your mind to live, won’t you? Straighten up and fly right, because you can’t very well see anything if you’re not around to see it.”

His lips quirked up again. “Fair enough.”

Now that he was loosening up with me a bit, I wanted to delve a little deeper. I bit down on my lower lip, saying a silent prayer that he’d tell me what I wanted to know. “If Kaylee isn’t with her mother, where is she?”

“With Carrie. Chantel’s twin.” He lifted a brow. “You know—Hunter’s fuck buddy back home. That was who he was expecting when he picked me up at the airport, actually—the two of them. Probably hoping he could get in a quick fuck before the ceremony or some shit like that.”

For the first time since I’d sat down at this table, I wished I’d never come.

“ALL RIGHT, BOYS, let’s get some business out of the way,” Gary Asher said. He was the team’s general manager, and we’d just come out of the gym following our final preseason workout session before the first exhibition game tomorrow. All I wanted to do was hit the showers and get the fuck out of here, but now we had to sit through a meeting. Although, if Gary was running it, at least we weren’t talking about systems and other shit like that. It was sure to be pure business.

There were still about fifty guys in camp, all of us currently milling around the big, open locker room at Thunderbirds headquarters. They would have to cut us down to twenty-three before opening night in a couple of weeks. I knew I was going to make the cut, along with about a dozen of the other guys I could name off the top of my head, but several of the slots were still very much up in the air. That meant a lot of the men in this room would be trying to show off as much as possible over the next ten days or so, hoping to make an impression and—ultimately—make the team.

I remained at a loss as to why anyone would want to be part of this ragtag team, but I kept that thought to myself. I supposed I was finally learning to keep my trap shut, to think before I spoke. At least I hoped I was.

They’d set up rows of chairs, so I took a seat in the one nearest to me close to the aisle, guzzling my Gatorade. No matter how much time I’d spent in the gym over the summer, these preseason workouts were always grueling.

Ray “Razor” Chambers—a guy I knew from his days with the Storm organization back before he’d been traded to the Sabres—took the seat on my right, grumbling something under his breath about fucking long-winded speeches. We weren’t exactly friends, but I didn’t hate the guy. So there was that. I supposed he felt the same way about me or he would have sat somewhere else.

There were a number of other familiar faces in the room, but I couldn’t say I knew any of them well.

Like Zee. Maybe I should know him well, but I didn’t. Eric Zellinger took a seat in the front row, much as I would expect. He’d been the captain of the Storm the whole time I’d played in Portland, but we’d never exactly hit it off. Probably because he was just too fucking perfect, and I was about as far from perfect as you could get. He was on the wrong side of thirty now, though, and his age was starting to catch up with him on the ice. I wasn’t sure how many more years of hockey he had left in him. But he’d been claimed in the expansion draft, just like I was.

Branislav Reznik was another guy I halfway knew. Bran, a Slovakian winger around my age, was a guy I’d played against in the minors quite a bit before we got called up to play for our NHL clubs. I’d never liked him. The last few days of training camp hadn’t changed my mind on him. He talked too much and focused too little, always shooting off his mouth with nothing to back it up. He sat down on the opposite side of the room from me, keeping his distance.

Dmitri Nazarenko took the seat on my other side, flexing his right hand until I glanced down at it to find another tattoo, this one some Russian phrase in Cyrillic letters, so I didn’t know what it meant. The boys all called him Dima. He was a hotshot left wing the T-Birds had picked up from the Kings. He’d always had my number, so in a way it was good that he’d be a teammate now instead of an opponent. Still, his skill was the only thing he had going for him as far as I was concerned. He’d won the Cup with LA a few years back, and he’d gotten drunk and crashed his car in the aftermath, ending his best friend’s career. I didn’t like the guy on principle based on that alone, and I wasn’t inclined to give him the chance to win me over. Not only was he covered in tattoos but he had a piercing in his nose, and his hair was even longer than mine. His beard put his hair to shame. He never said much, so at least he had that going for him. He just ducked his head and went about his business. I could admire that, even if I didn’t have an ounce of respect for him otherwise.

Beyond those three and Razor, there were several older guys who’d been around the league a long time: Franz Ackerman, Slava Zherdev, Elvis Jansons, Jason Stewart… I knew of them more than I knew them. They were all on the wrong side of their careers, though, much like Zee. They’d been around, and maybe at one point in time, they’d been effective NHL players. These days? If not for expansion, they would all likely be playing in Europe or else they’d be hanging up their skates for good. They couldn’t really hack it at this level anymore.

And there were a lot of younger guys I didn’t know at all. These guys seemed to think they were the bomb, that they should make the cut no matter what, but what they really needed was to go back down and play a few more years in the minors. Some of them would end up there. Others would be my teammates. Probably too damned many of them would be, actually.

We were going to be absolutely awful this year. Not just awful. Disgustingly bad.

The hockey media always said that the best way for a good goalie to improve was to play in front of a bad team. I supposed I should look at things through that lens, but it was a hell of a lot easier said than done. I’d already paid my dues. I was one of the best fucking goalies playing in the best league in the world. I should be competing for the Cup, not backstopping the team that was sure to finish at the bottom of the standings when it was all said and done.

Yes, I was bitter. So fucking sue me.

The guys finally all settled in, and talk died off. Gary nodded, shoving his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. “Right. So we play our first exhibition game here tomorrow against Dallas. If you’re in the lineup, remember that we’re all watching, evaluating. We’re trying to narrow down who will be starting the season here in Tulsa and who’s heading back down to the AHL or your developmental team. Now remember, just because you get cut, don’t think of that as the end. There will be call-ups. There will be injuries. Some guys won’t pan out. You might still get your chance, and if not this year, then maybe next year. But we’re always keeping an eye on your development so we can make the best decisions about not only your present but also your future.”

Paying attention was not my forte on a good day, and I was already feeling pissed because I’d found yet another “news” article in the Tulsa media this morning focusing on Kade and all of his drug issues instead of how I’d been all over Tallie while we were out last night—further proving that our efforts weren’t doing even the slightest bit of good. Instead of getting people to forgive the two of us for our relatively minor transgressions, they were painting us in an even worse light. It was why I’d insisted we had to put Kade in treatment regardless of his opinion on the matter and whether Mom was on board or not.

Add the fact that I’d heard the same speech, or some variation of it, every year I’d been playing hockey, to all the shit running through my head about my deadbeat brother, and chances of me catching half of what Gary said were just about nil. It all started to blur together after a while.

“You think he’s going to name the captain today?” Razor whispered next to me. Only he didn’t do a very good job of whispering. “They’ve got to fucking know who it’ll be by now. They could put the C on someone before the first preseason game.”

“Not like it’s going to be you and your sorry ass,” I replied. Definitely too loudly. A few guys in front of us whipped their heads around and snorted in laughter.

“Fuck you, Hunter,” Razor said, but he was grinning. The guy was an ass, but he was a likeable ass. Hell, he might be the only guy in this room that I hadn’t thought about throat-punching for some reason or another in the last few days, so that was definitely saying something for him.

I winked in his direction. “No, thanks, but it’s a hell of an offer, I’m sure. That’s what my wife’s for.” Not that she wanted me in her bed, but damn if I was going to reveal that to any of the guys. As far as they knew, everything that had been said in public was the truth. We’d met at a function, fallen head-over-heels in love, married right away, and couldn’t keep our fucking hands off each other. Never mind the fact that my balls were now so blue they were about to dry up and fall off.

Gary spoke louder, probably because half the guys were paying attention to me and Razor instead of him. “We’ve got an Ice Breaker on Thursday afternoon at the Woodland Hills mall. This is your first opportunity to represent the Tulsa Thunderbirds organization within the community, so I expect everyone to be there ready to make an impression.” His eyes fell on me, so I straightened up and tried to focus better. “Remember, this is all new to the people of Oklahoma. Things here aren’t like they were wherever you grew up. A few of them might have been to some minor league games in the past, but likely not many. So unless they grew up somewhere else where hockey was more prevalent, they don’t get it. And we want them to get it. We want to embrace Tulsa, and we want Tulsa to embrace us. Bring your families with you to the mall if you want, and be ready to have a good time.”

Bring your families with you to the mall if you want. That was the part I knew he’d meant specifically for me, and I also caught on to the fact that—for me—it wasn’t an if you want sort of deal. It was a direct order. I needed to bring Tallie with me because they wanted us to perform for the cameras.

I nodded, holding Gary’s gaze so he’d know I’d gotten the memo.

“All right. That’s all I wanted to say to you boys right now,” Gary said. “I’m going to turn it over to Spurs, because he’s got an announcement to make.”

Spurs was what everyone called the Thunderbirds’ head coach, Doug Spurrier. He’d been a successful head coach at every lower level of the game, but he had zero experience in the NHL. The guy had never even played a game at this level, let alone coached in any capacity. He’d brought in the guy who’d been by his side as his assistant for the last fifteen years, but Kevin “Baby Face” Young didn’t have a lick of NHL experience, either. To help them out, Tim Harvey would be the other assistant. Harv had been a defenseman in the league for about a dozen years, and he’d been an assistant coach for a number of teams for another decade beyond that. I was of the opinion that Harv ought to be the head coach and maybe the other two should back him up, but I wasn’t the one being paid to make these decisions.

What little hair Spurs had was already a whitish-gray, despite the fact that he was barely fifty. At least he hadn’t resorted to attempting a comb-over, letting his bald head shine in the unforgiving lights in the locker room. Dressed in a Thunderbirds tracksuit, he took center stage and nodded, looking around the room until he’d caught the eye of just about everyone present.

“Right,” he said. He always spoke in a no-nonsense manner, cutting straight to the chase. “Time to announce the captain and assistant captains for the upcoming season.”

“Told you,” Razor whispered next to me.

“Still won’t be you,” I replied.

Baby Face and Harv headed out to stand next to Spurs. Harv passed a jersey into Spurs’s hands. The other two each held one, as well.

“Zee, why don’t you come on up here?” Spurs suggested. “Slava? Drew? You, too.”

The three guys he’d named headed up to join them. They unveiled the jerseys. Zee had the C, and Slava and Drew both got the A’s. No huge surprises there, as far as I was concerned. Like him or not, Zee was made to be a captain. Slava might not have a lot left in the tank, but he was a decent leader. Drew Nash was one of the younger guys in the room, but I had no doubt they wanted to groom him to become the captain sometime in the next few years. My guess was Zee was just a placeholder, someone who could do the job while they made sure Drew was ready.

The guys broke out into applause, several of them shouting congratulations with varying degrees of profanity mixed in. “Could’ve at least given me a fucking A,” Razor muttered.

This time, Dima snorted. Okay, so maybe the guy would end up growing on me. That remained to be seen.

Once the coaches were finished, I assumed we were done for the day and would be released to clean up and go home. I assumed wrong.

The coaches cleared out of the way, and none other than Sharon Jernigan walked up.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered.

“Who’s that?” Razor asked me.

“Owner’s wife.”

He slumped down in his seat like a kid who didn’t want to get called on in class. “Fucking hell’s right.”

Her helmet hair looked even bigger than the last time I’d seen her, at the wedding. Her smile was as forced as ever. “Welcome to Tulsa and the Thunderbirds organization,” she said, her thick drawl accented by the all-too-familiar waving arms. “Tom and I want to be sure y’all feel like a part of the family.”

I knew she meant her church family, even if the rest of the guys didn’t. Yet. They’d figure it out soon enough.

With that, I decided it was as good a time as any for me to tune out again. I leaned back, crossing my arms and my ankles, doing my best to relax without quite falling asleep. I was doing a damn good job of it, too, until Razor elbowed me in the ribs.

I hissed in a breath, rubbing the spot he’d targeted. “What the fuck was that for?”

“She can’t fucking do that, can she?”

“Do what?” Maybe I should have paid at least some attention while she was talking.

“Put a fucking swear jar in the room. She says the money’s going into the Thunderbirds Foundation fund. That’s got to be against some rule in the CBA or something. Don’t you think?”

A swear jar? I’d known since the first time I’d met her that she was going to have a rude awakening being around hockey players, considering how she’d gotten her panties in a twist over the language I’d used that first day, but this was beyond ridiculous.

Throughout the room, guys were shifting in their seats and muttering beneath their breath, talking to one another.

“I don’t have a clue,” I said quietly. “But if she can, we’re all going to be fucking broke.”

He gave me a thorough once-over, a single brow raised. “Good thing you’re paid more than you’re worth.”

“Look who’s talking,” I shot back. He was making the kind of bank a top pairing defenseman would normally earn, but on any other team, he wouldn’t be placed any higher than the third or fourth D on the team. That was probably why the Sabres had left him available in the expansion draft, come to think of it. They didn’t want to pay him that much anymore, and they knew the T-Birds would need to add some salary to meet the cap floor.

We were still debating who was being overpaid the most when Dima stood up and walked to his stall. My arguments dropped off. I couldn’t help but watch him, and apparently I wasn’t alone. At least half the guys in the room were staring in the same direction.

Dima dug his wallet out of his jeans pocket. He pulled out a wad of bills and headed for Mrs. Jernigan, pressing them into her hand. “For first fucking month,” he said, his Russian accent thick even if his English was only slightly broken.

She gaped at him as he returned to his seat next to me. “But you’re supposed to stop swearing,” she said in a daze.

I couldn’t help it. I chuckled.

The next thing I knew, every guy in the room got up and followed Dima’s example, me included. The owner’s wife could do nothing but hold out her hand and collect the bills she was handed.

I guess she still had a thing or two to learn about being around hockey players.

THE GARAGE DOOR was already opening, and I had yet to come up with a plan as to what I would—or wouldn’t—say to Hunter. He was home, and I was still nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake following my afternoon visit with Kade.

Trying to sort out my thoughts and keep my emotions on an even keel, I slipped on my oven mitts and removed the aluminum takeout containers from the oven. Then I placed them on trivets so they wouldn’t burn his brand-spanking-new countertops. I was taking out some dinner plates from the cabinet overhead when he came in.

He stopped on the other side of the bar, dropping his keys there and raising a brow in question. “I guess we’re staying in tonight, then.”

“I didn’t feel like going out. I need a break.”

“It’s all right,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m not upset by the idea. I’d actually like having a night in, too.”

Had I bitten off the words or something? I must not have done a very good job of calming myself down before he’d come in.

What I’d said wasn’t the whole truth, but it was one hundred percent true, what there was of it. I couldn’t keep up this charade we were putting on for the world every time I turned around. All the nights we’d spent out groping each other in public had long since started taking a toll on me in countless ways.

But the bigger issue right now was Kade. Or maybe it was all the things Kade had revealed to me about Hunter.

I wasn’t even sure I could put my finger on what, exactly, was bothering me so badly at the moment. I just knew I couldn’t handle a night out acting like Hunter could possibly be in love with me. Not now that I knew about Carrie.

Kade had called them fuck buddies, but I doubted that was entirely accurate. The better explanation, as far as I could see, was that Hunter was in love with her. It would explain a lot, actually—why he wouldn’t take things further with me and why he was so determined to keep me separate from the important things in his life, like his family and the team he was playing for. It could explain everything I’d had such a difficult time understanding in the last few weeks.

The way that Kade had laid it out for me was obviously meant to hurt. I got that. He might have thought that I was getting too close—I had been pushing him to reveal things that Hunter had been keeping under wraps—and so he’d struck back at me with deadly accurate aim. Just when I’d started to realize I might be falling for Hunter, his brother had made it clear Hunter would never be able to return those feelings.

Yeah, I definitely needed a night or two of staying in, away from all the media and the people who would gossip about us. In fact, I might need more than just a night or two.

I wasn’t sure I could keep going with this at all. We’d said it would be for a year, and we were only about six weeks in at this point. How could I get through another ten months of this? I should have tried harder to keep my heart out of things, but it had proved to be too difficult. Damn Hunter for being so good at our game that he’d even fooled me.

“Well,” Hunter said when I remained silent, stewing in my own thoughts, “it smells great.” He came around and took a plate from me, brushing his knuckles against my hand in the exchange.

I refrained from flinching, but barely.

“Did you have a good day today?” he asked, spooning out a serving of lasagna for himself.

I opened a bottle of wine. I hadn’t had much to drink since we’d returned from Hawaii, remembering all too well the humiliation my overindulgence had led to, but tonight called for it. “It was fine.”

He opened the plastic container of salad and filled two bowls. “So what did you do today? Doesn’t look like you tried cooking again.” He winked at me and chuckled.

I didn’t follow suit.

He hadn’t laughed much lately. I should enjoy the sound of it, but I didn’t. Right now, I doubted it was possible. Ever since leaving Horizons, I’d been examining and reexamining everything I’d thought about Hunter, all the things I felt in relation to him.

Kade’s revelation about Carrie wasn’t the only thing bothering me.

There was Kade’s claim that Hunter wished his brother was dead. Had Hunter truly said something like that? It was a definite possibility. In all the time we’d been married, Hunter had done everything possible to avoid speaking of his brother at all. He hadn’t wanted to even go to the hospital, let alone go into the room to visit with his brother and be sure he was all right. At the wedding, he’d tried to stop me from helping Kade, saying he wasn’t worth it. Hunter had put Kade in treatment and come back with bloody knuckles and a broken nose.

Their relationship was far from loving, but was it so bad that one brother would wish the other dead? I wasn’t positive anymore, and I didn’t want to be in a relationship with a man who could be so cold and callous about someone who was part of his family. But I was. And there was a big part of me that wanted to deepen that relationship, despite these developments.

But it was Carrie who really had my head spinning. Part of the problem? I was jealous, and that could only mean one thing. I was falling a lot faster and a lot harder than I’d been prepared for. Fuck buddies. I kept coming back to that turn of phrase. Only, the more Kade had said about her, the more he’d made it seem as though Carrie and Hunter were far more than just friends with benefits. They’d dated in high school. It was only after Kade and Chantel—who had apparently been Carrie’s twin sister—had been deep in their addictions that Hunter and Carrie had broken up.

It wasn’t too hard to imagine the stress their siblings’ addictions would have put on their relationship. I got it. I did. But they kept getting back together even all these years later, so they had to still love each other. None of it made sense, otherwise. And if Hunter loved Carrie but had been forced into marrying me…

I didn’t want to think about it anymore, because it only made my heart hurt. But I’d be damned if I could stop the thoughts from running rampant through my head. I took a long swallow from my wineglass, nearly finishing the whole thing in a single gulp. Then I refilled it, forcing back the tears that threatened to fall. I wasn’t going to start crying about this. He didn’t need to know that I was a wreck because I’d done the unthinkable and let myself care too much.

I was so lost in my own head that I stopped paying attention to what I was doing. I picked up a spoon in my right hand to portion out some lasagna, and without thinking, I grabbed hold of the aluminum pan with the left to hold it steady. I screamed in pain and let go immediately, allowing the spoon to clatter to the floor. Bits of pasta and meat sauce flew everywhere.

“Shit. Are you all right?” In an instant, Hunter flipped on the cold faucet and led me to it, putting my burned hand under the flow of water. He positioned himself behind me, cradling me against his frame, one hand wrapped snug around my waist. I felt his cheek, his jaw, resting on the top of my head.

It was too intimate, and I was too deep in shock to answer. I needed to step away from him, from the headiness that captured me when he was so close. I needed to put some space between us before I fell deeper into the trap of falling for him.

“Better?” he asked, his voice muffled in my hair.

It still hurt like the dickens, but I nodded, not trusting my voice. I tried to ease out of his grip, but he held me closer to him and shut off the water. He picked up a towel and put it over my injured hand. I jerked it away from him, the pain too intense still to bear even the gentlest touch.

He turned me around, scowling as he lifted the towel away and looked down at it. “Not better,” he murmured. He drew my hand up closer, holding tight to my wrist so I couldn’t snatch it away from him and angling it toward the light, his eyes narrowed as he examined my palm. “No blisters. I don’t think we need to go to the ER, but we should put some burn cream and a wrap on it.”

I chewed on my lower lip and nodded, once more attempting to tug my hand free.

His heated gaze shot up to meet mine. “Stay right here. I’ll go—”

“I can do it myself,” I forced out. “It’s not too bad.” I couldn’t bear to let him take care of me right now. I couldn’t handle his touch. Not while my gut was churning so much. One too many tender caresses would be all it took to send me over the edge, and then there would be no one to catch my fall.

It took a minute, but he let out a grunting sound and backed away, releasing my wrist at last. I hurried off to bandage my hand in private.

When I returned, he’d cleaned up the mess I’d made in the kitchen and had set two plates on the dining room table. I took a seat, fighting tears that wanted to burst free partially due to the physical pain of the burn and partially due to the deep ache that was filling my whole chest.

At least it was my left hand that I’d burned, not my right. I picked up my fork and attempted to eat, struggling against the roiling in my stomach. Hunter didn’t seem to have any such qualms. He plowed through his meal, only occasionally slowing down to look across at me with a curious expression. After a bit, he pushed his plate away and sat back, crossing his arms in front of him.

“All right, so when are you going to tell me what’s going on? What did I do wrong? What happened? How do I fix it?”

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“Because you’re hardly looking at me, you’re answering with two- and three-word sentences if you’re answering at all, you’re jumpy, and you’re generally not acting like yourself.”

“This is me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Even though he’d completely nailed me with that, I didn’t feel like playing along. “I told you, I’m fine.” I toyed with my food some more, shifting it around on my plate before giving in and shoving it all away from me.

“If you’re sick or something like that, just say so and I’ll leave you alone.”

“I’m not sick.”

He scowled. “Then tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it.”

I reached for my wine. “What makes you think it’s something you can fix?”

Hunter couldn’t fix the fact that he was in love with another woman any more than I could fix the fact that I was falling for him.

He dragged a hand through his hair and down his face. “Tallie…” He said my name like a plea.

I pushed my chair back and picked up my plate.

“I’ll clean up,” he said, coming around the table.

“I’ve got it.”

He took the plate from my hand. “You’re hurt.”

I huffed in frustration. “Hurt but not broken. I’ll manage.”

“You don’t have to. I can do this.”

“I’m perfectly capable—”

“I never said you weren’t capable.” He tossed both our plates in the sink with enough force to make a racket but not enough to break them. “You’re capable of a hell of a lot. Maybe even more than you think. No one’s questioning that. I’m just trying to help you out because something’s clearly—”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Despite myself, I actually stamped my foot on the ground just like Mama would always do whenever Daddy didn’t let her have her way on something, which was almost never. He always gave in because he didn’t want to have to deal with her temper tantrums, like the one I could feel myself gearing up to launch into. I was becoming my mother. I shuddered with horror, deciding instantly to make a change. I would do whatever it took to avoid falling into that trap. I had to. The thought that I might one day have a child and that I might treat that child in the ways she had treated me for twenty-one years… I couldn’t let that happen. I closed my eyes tight, crossing my arms while I tried to slow my pulse.

When I opened them again, Hunter was staring at me, a mix of impatience and frustration evident in the crease of his brow.

I’d put it there, the same as Mama had caused Daddy so much aggravation over the years. I had to put an end to it now, and there was only one way I knew to do it. I took a breath, then another. “I went to see Kade today,” I said slowly, watching Hunter’s expression change from frustrated to angry to concerned in the blink of an eye. But I couldn’t stop there. “He told me about Carrie.”

With those few words, Hunter’s face went completely blank.

I COULDN’T DECIDE who I was angrier with: Tallie, for having gone to see Kade even though I’d made it perfectly clear there was no reason for her to involve herself with my asshole brother, or Kade, for having said a fucking word to Tallie about Carrie. My pulse was throbbing in my temples, a frantic beat that mirrored the way I wanted to pulverize something with my fists.

It pissed me off even more because I’d come home from practice ready to talk to Tallie about going to the game tomorrow and the Ice Breaker on Thursday, getting her involved with the other guys’ wives like she’d been wanting to do. I had hoped to start introducing her to that aspect of my life, and now this other side of things had blown up in my face.

Yes, I should have brought up the subject of Carrie with Tallie before now. This marriage might not be going anywhere in the long term, but at least for the time being, Tallie was my wife. She deserved to know these things so no one could blindside her with them. If it hadn’t been Kade, someone else would have likely let that cat out of the bag sooner rather than later. It just happened to be Kade who’d let loose with it, and it happened to go down sooner than I had been ready for. So even though my brother had no business saying a fucking word to Tallie about anything, part of the fallout was on me for not getting my act together and explaining my relationship with Carrie so there could be no misunderstandings.

If I’d been upfront about things, explaining all of this before Tallie and I had even gotten married, she wouldn’t have had any reason to doubt what I told her, and she would have known enough about my brother to steer clear of him. But since I hadn’t and she’d gone to him without a full understanding of who and what he was, there was no telling who she would believe.

If Kade had felt the need to bring Carrie up, I had no doubt he’d done so to get back at me for placing him in Horizons to begin with. He’d put up a hell of a fight when Dad and I had dragged him into the center, getting a few licks in against both of us before we’d finally subdued him. That just went with the territory with my brother. Depending on the day of the week and whatever he happened to be on, he somehow possessed a superhuman strength. We’d been lucky to get him into that facility at all, and I had no doubt he had been plotting his revenge against me the entire time he’d been there. He surely blamed me. He always had, since his very first stint in prison, because I’d been the one to call the cops and have him arrested. Never mind the fact that he was the one in the wrong.

Getting mad about anything my brother had done this time around wouldn’t help anything, though. I’d learned that lesson. What he’d done was done. All I could do now was try to fix those things that could be fixed and move on with whatever I could salvage of my life. That’s what I’d been doing for years. I’d become a master at it, or at least I liked to think so.

“What did he tell you? About Carrie?” I asked Tallie once I could find my voice again. It was possible that he’d only brought up my ex to explain about Kaylee and where she was now, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath about that.

She reached for the wine bottle on the counter, carried it to the table, and refilled her glass again. If she wasn’t careful, in no time she’d be as drunk as she’d been that day on the beach, especially since she’d barely eaten a bite of her dinner. Wine and an essentially empty stomach were not a good combination. Granted, it might help with the pain of the burn, but that didn’t mean she needed to go overboard.

“Enough,” she murmured after taking another sizeable swallow.

I didn’t want her drunk, and if she stopped now, she shouldn’t get to that point. At least I hoped so, because I wanted to have a reasonable, adult conversation. We needed to clear things up, and we both knew what alcohol did to her: it sent her libido into overdrive. I absolutely wouldn’t mind having a romp in the sheets with her, but I’d be damned if I would do it while she was drunk. Not going to happen.

I crossed over and collected the bottle, popping the cork back into place and setting it in the fridge.

“I wasn’t done with that,” she said.

“I think you are.”

She set her glass down and took a seat again, frowning. “You’re acting just like Lance. Trying to tell me what to do.”

That stung, but this conversation had nothing to do with him. She was just trying to deflect my attention from whatever she didn’t want to discuss, and I refused to allow that to happen. I sat across from her, drumming my fingers over the surface of the table to distract myself from her full, sexy lips and pouting eyes. “So he told you Carrie and I used to be a couple?” I ventured.

“Used to be?” Tallie raised skeptical eyebrows at me.

Fuck. So much for the idea that he’d kept it to the parts relevant to himself. “If not that, what did he say?”

“I believe fuck buddies was the term he preferred for describing your relationship with her. I took that to mean friends with benefits, but considering the way he talked about the two of you together I’m not so sure I believe that was all it was. Seems like you’re a lot more than just friends.”

“We were. Past tense. He was just trying to get a rise out of you,” I argued.

“So you’re saying that’s not the sort of relationship you have with her? You don’t go home and sleep with her when you get a chance? You weren’t expecting her to come to—” Tallie pressed her eyes closed and shook her head. For some reason, my gaze settled on her neck. It was long and lean and utterly kissable. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter, because you and me? This is just temporary.”

To come to the wedding. I could fill that part in easily enough. And I had been expecting Carrie, but not for that reason. If this marriage was truly going to only last a year, if there was nothing more between Tallie and me than an attempt to repair our images within the Tulsa community, why the hell did it make my heart pound like a stampede of wildebeests to know Tallie had found out about my ex in the worst possible way? Why did it matter to me if she knew? And maybe equally important, why was Tallie so upset by the revelation?

We were both getting in over our heads, and all we could do was tread water and try to conserve our strength to fight the rising tide of whatever the fuck was going on between us. The terrifying thing about it was that I couldn’t put it all down to lust. Not anymore. Yes, I wanted her and had since the day we’d first met, but whatever was happening between us had moved beyond the realm of mere sexual desire and into far murkier waters.

“I think it does matter,” I suggested, taking my time and weighing my words. That wasn’t something I was used to, thinking before I spoke, but now of all times, it seemed necessary.

“If it’s so important, why didn’t you tell me yourself? It’s not like you haven’t had the opportunity,” Tallie shot back, although there wasn’t much heat behind her words. She reached for her glass and finished it off before eyeing the fridge as though she wanted to go back for more. She stayed put, at least for now, turning those amber eyes back to me in a way that made me want to wrap her up in my arms. She looked as hurt as I’d ever seen her. “The fact is that every time I’ve tried to be involved in your life in any meaningful way, you’ve closed the door before I could get one foot through it. You don’t want me to know anything about Kade. You’ve never even hinted about the fact that you’ve got a niece, let alone that you’re in love with another wom—”

“Now hold on just a minute,” I interrupted, and her eyes went wide. “I’m not in love with Carrie,” I said emphatically. I couldn’t deny that I’d been keeping Tallie in the dark, even if her interpretation as to why I’d been doing so was off the mark, but I needed to make sure she understood where things stood between me and my ex.

Tallie’s expression was pure disbelief.

The urge to kiss her until she believed I could never feel that way about my ex hit me like a snow shower from a forward racing in at my net. “I’m not in love with Carrie,” I repeated. “She’s one of my best friends in the world, and I love her in that way—”

“And you sleep with her whenever you get the chance.”

“No,” I said, sighing. I leaned back in my chair, trying to figure out how best to explain our relationship. That was the problem, though. If I’d had a clue how to explain it, then I would have already done so, and it wouldn’t have mattered what Kade had told her. “It’s complicated,” I finally said, a feeble attempt if ever there was one.

“I’m listening.” She twirled the fingers of her uninjured hand over the tablecloth, tracing the patterns and staring at her fingers. I stared, too, wishing she were tracing those patterns on my skin instead of the fabric. Yeah, she was listening. But she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, that much was clear. At least there wasn’t anywhere either of us had to be tonight.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“How about when you and Carrie started dating?”

Fair enough. I crossed my ankles, trying to relax my body even if my mind was on high alert, watching her face for every reaction, however small.

“We were sixteen,” I said. “Well, technically I was sixteen and she was still fifteen. She’d been in my classes for years, and I’d had a crush on her for a while. Her birthday was coming up, so I finally screwed up my courage and asked her out on a date. I was so nervous about asking her that I almost puked in the process, but for some reason she said yes. We went to see A Walk to Remember. Huge mistake. She cried all over me in the theater. I should have taken her to an action flick, so she wouldn’t mind if I wanted to make out—which I did—but instead, she was using my shirt as a Kleenex.”

Tallie smiled. Just a little, but enough to warm me. I took that as a good sign.

“After that, we were officially a couple. Only she had a twin—Chantel. Everywhere Carrie went, Chantel tended to tag along. On the weekends, if Carrie came to my house to hang out, her sister came with her. Kade had already started using drugs at that point. Mainly pot, but occasionally he scored some cocaine. I tried to warn Chantel to stay away from him, but she didn’t listen. Carrie was always the goody two shoes out of the pair of them, and Chantel had always had a thing for bad boys. Carrie and I tended to be absorbed with each other, leaving Chantel as a third wheel. Before long, she was sneaking off with Kade, and he was getting her into all sorts of shit that she had no business messing with. But they weren’t dating. They weren’t serious. They just messed around. Or at least that was what Carrie and I thought, in the beginning. That all changed when Carrie and I came back from one of my games and walked in on Kade fucking Chantel when she was so high she didn’t have a clue what was going on. She had passed out, but he didn’t care.”

“She wasn’t even alert?” Tallie asked quietly. Her face had been a mask up until this point, other than that hint of a smile earlier, but now it was a whirlwind of emotions. “You mean he raped her.” She stated it calmly, concisely. She didn’t ask it as a question.

It wasn’t a question as far as I was concerned, either. “When you’re drunk, high, unconscious, or otherwise indisposed, you can’t consent,” I said pointedly. Tallie didn’t appear to follow my meaning, so I moved on. This was supposed to be about me and Carrie, not Tallie and her foray in a hot tub in Cancun. “That was essentially the end of me and Carrie as a couple,” I said. “No matter how much the two of us cared about each other—and we did, there’s no denying it—Kade and Chantel were always between us. The two of them didn’t have any such problem continuing as they had been. Chantel ended up dropping out of school, and the two of them were in and out of legal trouble for years, always together except when they had one of their knock-down, drag-out breakups, usually when she’d get pregnant. The first couple of pregnancies ended in miscarriages because of her drug use. She had an abortion at one point. Maybe more than that, but Carrie and I only know about the one. They both spent time in prison for drug busts and theft and God knows what else. They were in and out of rehab, but it never clicked for either of them, just like this time won’t click for Kade.”

Tallie opened her mouth, like she was going to interrupt and tell me that maybe I was wrong, maybe this time would do the trick. She didn’t know. She hadn’t been around for all those years. She hadn’t watched the cycle of addiction repeat itself time and again.

I kept going before she could get a word out. “Through it all, Carrie and I were still friends. I was trying to get my hockey career off the ground. She went to college and became a nurse. We’d get together sometimes to lean on each other, and yes, sometimes we ended up in bed. Neither of us wanted anything but the physical in those instances. There was never anything more to it than physical release because of all the frustrations our siblings caused. Our mothers were always trying to get us back together again, but Carrie and I didn’t want that. I wanted my career. She wanted hers. We leaned on each other, and that was that. And then one day, Chantel got pregnant again. That time, she and Kade both made the decision to go to rehab. It wasn’t something they were forced into; it was their choice. We all thought—hoped—it was a signal of them finally being ready to move on with their lives. They stayed clean throughout the pregnancy. Kaylee was born, and everything was looking good. It seemed like they had finally turned the corner and were going to be able to stay clean. For a while. None of us realized they were using again until it was too late. Chantel overdosed. Kade called 9-1-1, but it didn’t matter. She was dead by the time the ambulance arrived. They arrested Kade again, and the Child Protection Division took Kaylee away.”

“To live with Carrie,” Tallie finished for me.

“Not right away, but eventually. And after that, she was busy being a mom to our niece, not to mention grieving for her twin sister. I did what I could to support them both.” I saw a suspicious look come into Tallie’s eyes, and I hurried to curb her reaction before it could fully form. “Not by jumping into her bed. By sending money. By providing what I could. By being a shoulder Carrie could cry on when she needed to, and being a good uncle to Kaylee since her father can’t have anything to do with her. Kade was right about me inviting Carrie to the wedding, but it wasn’t to get her in my bed. It was because she’s part of my family, and I wanted her and Kaylee to be here.”

“Then why didn’t she come?” The cutest frown was taking over Tallie’s features as she tried to process it all. I couldn’t blame her. It was a lot to take in. It was even more to have lived through. Some days, I wished I could forget it all and move on.

Instead of getting up to kiss her frown away, I kept talking. “Because Kade did. She couldn’t bring Kaylee and risk Kade trying to do something stupid to get his daughter back.” Which brought us back to Kade, and all the stupid things he was constantly doing, and the fact that I didn’t want Tallie to be involved in his mess. “Look, I know why you went to see him today. I get that you just wanted to help him. You’ve got a big heart. All he’ll do is trample it, though, and I don’t want to see that happen.”

The thought of her starting to care for my brother, only to see her go through what he’d been putting my family through for years, was enough to steal my breath.

She tried to sip from her empty wineglass, scowled at it, and got up. For a second, I thought she was going to the fridge to refill her glass, but instead she placed it in the sink. “I’m a big girl,” she said slowly, turning to face me again. “I can look after my own heart.”

I’d rather she let me do that. The thought came at me out of nowhere, smacking me like a flyswatter, right in the face. I wanted to look after her heart. I wanted to be the one to protect her from all the shit in the world that kept trying to rob her of her smile. Kade would do all of that and worse if she involved herself in his life.

“So what does that mean?” I asked, my insides clenching in preparation for the worst. “Are you planning to go back to see him?”

“Yes. If he’ll let me.”

Yeah, that was the worst I’d been preparing myself for. She’d decided to care about Kade, when he didn’t even care about himself. It would only bring her pain.

But Tallie had spent her whole life being told not only what to do but when and how to do it. If I insisted on putting myself between her and whatever she’d decided on, I would be shoving her back into the same position she’d finally gotten free of once she’d stepped out from under Lance’s thumb.

The truth was that simply making a decision, choosing for herself what she wanted to do with her time, was a big step toward her being able to stand on her own. I couldn’t take that away from her, even though the thought of her involving herself with Kade made my gut churn in ways I wasn’t ready to explore.

So I bit down on my tongue, stopping myself from telling her she couldn’t do it.

She hitched her hip against the counter, crossing her arms.

That small change in posture lifted her breasts, putting them on display. I forced myself to look up at her face instead of staring at the hint of cleavage peeking out over the top of her blouse.

“You’re not going to tell me I can’t?”

“You said it yourself. You’re a big girl. A grown woman. You can do what you want without me telling you what you can and can’t do, what you should and shouldn’t want.”

She licked her lips, and my eyes followed the path of her tongue. Just like that, I was rock hard. Fucking hell.

“That’s right,” she said. “I can do what I decide. I can ask for what I want.”

There was something dangerous in her tone, a cross between decisiveness and willful intent that could only mean trouble.

“What do you want?” I asked, despite the fact that I knew I shouldn’t ask her anything of the sort. Not right now, while her eyes were turning a dark gold, and her voice was dropping in tone like a sex kitten, and she was looking at me like she wanted to eat me alive.

Because I would let her. I would gladly sit back and allow her to devour me a bite at a time if that was what she wanted to do. That realization scared me, too, because I had never been one to sit back and let someone else take charge, not in any area of my life. I would do it for Tallie, though, if that was what she wanted.

“You swear you’re not in love with Carrie?” she said. “Because I know we’re married, but if you love her—”

“I’m not in love with her. She’s my friend. She’s now the mother of my niece. She’s part of my family.”

Tallie chewed hard on her lower lip, drawing my eye there and making me want to kiss it and make it better. “If I ask you for something, will you give it to me?” she asked tentatively.

“If I can.” I was really afraid I already knew what she was going to ask.

“Will you take me to bed?”

Yeah, that was what I’d been afraid she wanted. She’d had a couple of glasses of wine, but she wasn’t drunk. Maybe a little tipsy but not really. She knew what she was asking me.

And I’d be damned if I wouldn’t give her the whole fucking moon if I could.

“YOU’RE SURE THIS is what you want?” Hunter asked. His voice had gone all rough and scratchy, like the stubble lining his jaw.

I nodded, never taking my eyes off him. It was absolutely what I wanted. Maybe my priorities were all messed up, but even though I’d believed he was in love with Carrie, the whole time he’d spent telling me about the complex relationships he had with her and his brother had left me all kinds of hot and bothered. It was a sickness. Had to be. There was something about his voice that turned me on. That was only one of many reasons I’d been keeping my vibrator in regular use lately.

He got up and came into the kitchen to join me, stopping about a foot away. Close enough to touch, but he didn’t touch me. He leaned back against the bar, assuming a casual pose that was anything but casual, the hand closest to me tightly clenching the countertop. That white-knuckled grip was one of the two signs that he wasn’t as composed as the rest of his body language would have me believe. The other? His dilated pupils and irises that had turned the shade of deep moss instead of their usual silvery sage.

“I need to hear you say it,” he said. “I need to hear the words.”

After what he’d told me about Kade and Chantel, I could easily understand that, especially since I’d been making my way through a bottle of wine. I licked my lips again. My mouth was as dry as a summer drought. “Yes,” I finally croaked out. “I’m sure.”

“You want to be in my bed? You want my hands on you?”

More than I wanted air. “I want to feel you inside me,” I forced out, and it was the absolute truth. For weeks, I’d been waking up in the middle of the night, hot and wet, having been dreaming of his hands on my skin, his mouth on mine, his cock so deep I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began. Those dreams were only coming more frequently now, seeming more real.

What happens inside that house with the doors closed is your business and yours only. Daddy’s words from the day Hunter and I had first met reverberated inside my head, and I clung to them like they were the only thing tethering me to reality.

Yeah, I was in too deep now to come out of this marriage unscathed somewhere down the line. It didn’t matter. I might end up with a broken heart, but if that came to pass, at least no one would be hurt but me.

Hunter’s eyes bored into me. “Because it’s going to change things between us. You understand that, right?”

I knew that. I was counting on it, actually. That was one of the reasons I wanted to step across the invisible line in the sand that had been separating us. Now that he’d promised me he wasn’t in love with Carrie, no matter what Kade had wanted me to believe about the matter, I chose to trust Hunter. I wanted to let myself have hope that it was true. There was this crazy idea niggling at the back of my head that maybe he could fall for me the way I was falling for him.

It probably wouldn’t work out the way I wanted it to. Heck, it was really just a shot in the dark. But whether Hunter’s want for me was purely physical or if it went to some deeper part of him, I needed his heat melding with mine. There were still things we needed to hash out, and we would. But right now, none of that held any importance, not in the here and now. Nothing mattered except I was desperate for his touch.

“I do,” I finally forced out, despite the hundreds of thousands of flutters racing through my body, like butterfly wings flapping against my insides in an attempt to get free.

He snaked out an arm, wrapping it around my waist and drawing me toward him.

“Oh.” The word left my mouth of its own volition, soft and shocked-sounding. I put my hands on his biceps to steady myself, wincing slightly from the burn and hoping he didn’t notice.

His muscles flexed beneath my touch in time with the slight upturn of his lips. “Oh?” he repeated.

I shook my head, words failing me. Clearly, my brain wasn’t going to cooperate. Chances were it would be better to just take the plunge without checking to see how far I had to fall.

So I went for it. I stretched up on my tiptoes and kissed him, pressing my body to his. He was already hard, the length of his erection straining to be freed from his pants and pulsing against my body. He opened his mouth without any coaxing required on my part, allowing my tongue easy entry to tease and tangle with his.

He gave as good as he got, one hand sliding up to cup the back of my head and angle me just so, the other tugging my blouse free from the waist of my slacks. As soon as he got his hand beneath the fabric, he slid it up my side, exploring my ribs and lifting the shirt until he could reach my breast. The instant he made contact, I arched into him, an instinctive and involuntary reaction.

Hunter settled his palm over me, molding me to him, and I let out a desperate sort of sound into his mouth. My nipples were already hard before he’d touched me at all, just from listening to him speak earlier, and the gentle pressure of his hand sent waves of pleasure straight to my sex. Hooking two fingers underneath the top of the cup, he tugged it down and freed my breast. The skin of his hands was slightly rough, with a few calluses on his thumbs and fingers, like I would expect of a construction worker.

He grazed my nipple with his thumb. It was a rasping sort of touch that made me shudder, and he nipped my lower lip at the same time. I cried out. Not in pain. It was surprise and overwhelming sensation coming together at once and leaving me breathless and my panties wet.

Hunter sucked my lip into his mouth, smiling against me as he suckled. It seemed a little cocky, but he was a man who knew how to deliver what I wanted whether I knew what it was or not, and that only turned me on more. With thumb and forefinger, he rolled my nipple with just enough pressure to have me rising up as far as possible on my toes and fisting my hands in his hair, desperate for more.

The jarring clatter of his phone vibrating across the counter, alerting him to a text message, made us stop.

Briefly.

I remembered all too well the last time we’d been in this kitchen and things were heating up between us only to be interrupted in the same way. No doubt Hunter remembered it even more vividly than I did, since it had been about his brother’s last relapse.

He groaned and looked down at me with glazed eyes, shaking his head. “Not this time.” Then he clasped my good hand and took off down the hall toward his bedroom, moving along at enough of a clip that I nearly stumbled at first in my lust-fogged quest to hurry along behind him.

“But what if it’s—”

“I don’t give a fuck if it’s about Kade,” he bit off, flipping on the lights and spinning around so he could pin me against the wall with his hips pressing into mine.

There wasn’t any need for him to use his body to keep me in place; the scorching look in his eyes was more than enough. As long as he kept staring at me like that, there wasn’t a chance in hell I wanted to be anywhere but where I was, no matter who had been texting or what they wanted.

The fact was, Hunter Fielding mesmerized me. All I could do was stay in the here and now and pray for patience, because I was so turned on by the way he was looking at me—like he wanted to lick me from head to toe and back again—that my orgasm was imminent.

He still had one of my hands trapped in his, and he lifted it up over my head, pressing it back against the wall. The drywall was cool to the touch, a sharp contrast to the way my body was overheating. I half expected steam to start rising between us, dissipating into the air as it lifted away from us.

One at a time, he popped open the buttons of my blouse. My breathing was labored, erratic, the effort of filling my lungs lifting my breasts up to his view.

“So fucking pretty,” he murmured, sliding the sleeve of my blouse down my free arm until it was left hanging from the other shoulder. He lowered his head until his lips were a hairsbreadth away from my straining nipple. “Perfect, even.” The warmth of his breath whispered over my sensitive skin, leaving goose bumps behind.

I shivered.

His eyes shot up to meet mine. “Put your other arm up over your head.”

I did what he said, and he immediately grabbed that wrist and locked it together with the first, keeping both my hands trapped against the wall. It didn’t even occur to me to deny him or do anything other than what he asked of me.

I wanted his mouth on me so badly that my knees went wobbly. My heart was pounding hard enough to double as a rock band’s bass drum. He finally gave me one single swirl of his tongue right around my hardened nub—just enough to wet it. Then he blew a long stream of cool air.

That only made it tighten, straining more than it already had been. In fact, everything within me went taut as a bowstring, ready to snap. It was like my nipple had a direct line to my lady bits.

I wanted to get rid of the rest of my clothes—and his, too—so we could move on with things. But when I tried to lower my arms so I could do just that, he reinforced his grip on my wrists.

“Hunter,” I pleaded.

He flashed his eyes up again, a seductive grin on his lips. “You wanted me to take you to bed… I’m working on it.” He winked.

“So let’s get in bed.”

“Getting there’s half the fun,” he countered. With his free hand, he palmed my bare breast, pressing and releasing repeatedly. “Maybe more than half. Besides, who says we need a bed? This wall seems good to me.” He angled his hips and slipped a knee between my thighs, lifting it until he was nearly making contact with my clit. I was so ready he could probably make me come like that even with our clothes still in the way. In fact, I decided to test that theory, grinding down on the pressure he was providing. He nipped my lower lip and flicked a finger over my nose. “Patience, young grasshopper.”

“I’m not good at patience.” Not when he barely had to look at me or say a word in order to start a flood in my drawers.

“So I noticed. Christ, you’re so fucking wet I can feel it even like this.”

Keeping my arms where they were, he inched his free hand down to my pants, undoing the fly so he could slip inside. He cupped me with his palm, two fingers gliding easily between my lower lips. He eased one of his fingers inside me.

I shuddered, waves of heat pouring through me. “I’m so close. So close.” The words came out as barely more than an anguished whisper, and even though I wanted to watch him, to see his eyes and the seductive smiles that made me whimper something fierce, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

“So close, huh? So why don’t we get you there?” He added a second finger and pumped them into me, in and out, in and out, and he used the heel of his palm to rub sensuous circles over my clit.

A few well-aimed thrusts of his fingers later, along with the perfect amount of pressure on my clit, and I shattered in his arms. I don’t know if it was a more explosive orgasm than I usually had because he was an expert in how to work me or if it was simply because there was the added aphrodisiac of him and not just me and my B.O.B., but I came so hard that my muscles all went limp and my bones melted. If he hadn’t been bracing me against the wall, I would have been nothing more than a puddle on the floor.

“You’re so fucking beautiful when you come,” he said gruffly, his mouth right by my ear as he rested his cheek on the wall. His hand was still on my sex, his fingers tracing the sensitive outer folds. He shifted his position, pressing the pad of his thumb beside my button, and I nearly came off the wall.

“I’m too sensitive for more right now,” I panted. I’d always been that way. Once I climaxed, it was almost painful to continue, at least until things started to settle. I needed to rest and recover before going back for seconds, and even then, it would only be for Hunter’s sake, not mine. I was a one-and-done kind of girl. Always had been. Always would be.

“You sure about that?”

“I…” I thought I was, but he was grinning at me with a cocksure smile that made my belly do flips. Maybe I was wrong.

Hunter released my wrists. I eased my arms down to rest my hands on his shoulders and attempt to hold myself upright. That proved to be unnecessary. He lifted me by the waist and carried me to his bed. In record time, he had the rest of my clothes off me. He shifted my position on the bed, tugging me by my hips until my bottom was right at the edge of the mattress.

Then he kneeled to the floor and placed my thighs on his shoulders.

He tongued me, a long lick from my opening to my clit and back. I gasped at the sensation, digging my hands into the sheet, belatedly remembering about the burn. I let go with that hand but held on with the other. Sheer determination was the only thing keeping me on that bed. Well, that and his strong hands, his fingers pressing into my hips.

After a few more strokes of his tongue, he raised his head and met my gaze. “Still too sensitive, or do you want more?”

I was definitely too sensitive if the shudders coursing through my body with every minuscule touch were any indication, but damn if I didn’t say, “More.”

TALLIE CAME THREE more times with me going down on her before she finally let go of her inhibitions enough to direct me where she wanted me. Her good hand fisted in my hair, thighs clutching and holding me in place, hips bucking and driving that sweet pussy up toward me, she kept my focus directly on her swollen clit.

She only had a narrow triangle of hair covering her mound, dark and perfectly trimmed. Probably because of all the swimsuit portions of her pageants. I supposed it was habitual for her to keep herself groomed that way these days. I didn’t particularly care one way or another. Bare, hairy, shaved, landing strip…whatever. I didn’t care as long as it was wet and responsive. A pussy was a glorious thing, as far as I was concerned. And Tallie’s? It was one of the sweetest I’d ever come into intimate contact with. Right now, she was slick and ready.

I put my lips around her tight little bud and sucked it into my mouth, three fingers pumping into her sex and stretching her so she would be prepared to accept me. It didn’t take much of that before her pussy was clamping down on my fingers again, trying to hold them in place as the walls of her sex tremored with another release.

She let out a moan of pleasure that I felt all the way down to my toes. My dick perked up at the sound, not that he wasn’t already raring and ready to go.

There were few things in the world that turned me on more than watching a woman experience a powerful orgasm. Being the one who was giving it to her? That would be one of those few things.

Too sensitive, she’d said. Not fucking likely. The son of a bitch she’d been with before just hadn’t known what the hell he was doing, and she apparently hadn’t known enough to tell him he was full of shit. That added sensitivity just opened her up to more pleasure, only she didn’t realize it.

Now she knew better, though.

When the aftershocks of her latest climax subsided and her limbs turned soft as butter, I crept up to the bed to lie beside her. She immediately curled in toward me, tangling her long limbs with mine, seeking more contact. We definitely weren’t done yet, but I needed a moment to catch my breath.

Her hand trailed over my chest before moving lower. She tugged my T-shirt free from my waistband and then dived in to explore.

I put my hand over the top of hers, stopping her. “If you aren’t careful, this’ll be over before it begins.”

“Oh, we haven’t started yet?” she said, batting her eyes at me like a fucking tease. She wriggled her fingers to get free of my grip, inching them closer to my painfully hard cock.

I wasn’t ready for that to happen. Not yet. I might blow the second she touched me.

I rolled us over with a feral sound coming from deep within me, trapping her beneath me, my thighs on either side of her slim body to keep my weight from crushing her. “Can’t get enough?”

“Never.” She didn’t let our change in positions slow her down, dragging the fabric of my shirt up.

I decided to help her out, leaning back and finishing the job. I tossed the shirt to the floor, and she took that opportunity to splay her palm over my chest. It felt so fucking good, having her touch me. Made me want more. Made me wonder why I had waited so damned long to get her in my bed. And now that she was here, why the hell wasn’t I just flipping up her legs and plowing into her, because she sure as hell acted like that was what she wanted from me.

But I wasn’t. I couldn’t seem to make myself. With Tallie, I wanted more than just a quick fuck, more than merely a good time, and that scared the shit out of me.

I leaned over her and took my time kissing her, reveling in the sweet way she opened herself to me and the quiet sounds she made. Her hand roamed over my chest, my abs, my back, never still as she explored my body. She even reached up with her injured hand to tease my skin with her fingertips. I supposed they didn’t hurt too much. The worst of the burn had been on her palm.

I shifted my weight, and she spread her legs to accommodate me, opening to accept me as readily as she’d given me her wrists to hold against the wall earlier. If not for the fact that I’d just been licking her pussy, so I knew how very ready and willing she was, I’d worry that she was just going along because that was what she was expected to do.

But that wasn’t the case here. It was nothing of the sort.

She wanted me as badly as I wanted her, and there was no point in either one of us trying to deny just how much that was.

She rolled her hips up toward me, grinding her pelvis into mine. “Take off your pants, Hunter,” she said, panting, desperate, when I moved to kiss her collarbone. “I want you inside me.”

I wanted to savor what we had going, though, so I kept kissing her, molding her breasts to my hands. Tallie’s breasts were perfect. Slightly more than a handful. Tight nipples. Small, rosy areolas. Soft and pert, and insanely sensitive. Her body was a fucking gift to mankind, or maybe a gift to me. No clue what I’d done to deserve it, but I wasn’t in any hurry to waste what I’d been given. I broke away from her neck and shoulders, and I dipped my head to take one of her breasts into my mouth.

She took the opportunity while I was otherwise occupied to clamp her hand down on my ass and draw me in toward her, rubbing my dick against her sex through the fabric of my pants.

I groaned and increased my efforts.

“I’m running out of patience,” she groused, gasping for breath as her back arched, driving her breasts closer to me.

I couldn’t help it; I chuckled.

She smacked my ass, likely intending to get my attention with it, but she didn’t have enough force behind it for me to find it anything but playful.

Still, I couldn’t help but lift my head and raise a brow in question. “Is that how you want to play this?”

She looked at me, her mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out. She had no clue. She might not be a virgin, but she was still fucking innocent when it came to anything outside the realm of vanilla sex.

I might be into a little spanking and other light kink like that, but now was probably not the time to introduce it into our relationship. We needed to talk about it sometime when we weren’t in the heat of things. I wanted her clearheaded to make a decision like that, if we were going to go there at all. Besides, she was injured. It wasn’t something I’d even contemplated before now, assuming anything of that nature would be off-limits. The last thing I needed was for Lance, or even Mr. Roth, to get wind of us engaging in sexual activities they didn’t think were kosher, and the next thing we knew there’d be a shit storm in the media, far bigger than anything either of us had experienced with our indiscretions to date.

I shook my head. “Never mind. Not now.” Then I kissed her, hard and fast, before rolling myself away from her so I could shed the last of my clothes.

Single-minded dumbass that I was, I only realized I didn’t have any protection when I reached for the drawer in my nightstand, where—before I’d been married and under the impression that I wouldn’t be getting laid for a year—I would have kept at least a small supply of condoms. There wasn’t any point in opening the drawer, though. I knew I hadn’t bothered to buy anything since I’d arrived in Tulsa. What was the point? If I wasn’t fucking Tallie, then I wasn’t going to be fucking anyone. That much had been made clear early on.

I groaned, flopping back on the bed.

She crawled over, following me, immediately reaching for my cock with her right hand. Her fingers closed around me, and my hips responded, driving up into her grip.

“Tallie,” I warned.

“What?” Again, with the batting lashes.

“You’re playing with fire, baby.”

She slid her hand up and down my length. “Silly me. I thought I was playing with you.”

I reached for her, drew her in to place a kiss on her forehead even as I groaned. “I don’t have any condoms.”

“We were both tested before we got married,” she said matter-of-factly. “Couldn’t get the license otherwise, silly. And we both know that neither of us has been with anyone else since then.”

“But you could get pregnant.”

She licked her lips in concentration, pumping me with a fierce determination I’d rarely seen in her. “On the pill.”

“The pill doesn’t always work.”

“Neither do condoms.” She propped herself up with her free arm, leaning over me. Then she licked a circle around my nipple like I’d done to her earlier, drawing back to blow cool air over the wetness.

That was almost too much for me. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, focusing as hard as I could on holding back my orgasm. Although, I couldn’t quite figure out why. I mean, if I wasn’t going to fuck her, then I might as well come from a hand job, especially one delivered so sweetly.

I didn’t want to blow my load like this, though. I wanted to be inside her just as badly as she wanted it, but one of us had to be reasonable about this, think things through with a clear head. The head on my shoulders. Not the one being driven to the point of no return in her small-but-untiring hand.

I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to focus so I could think.

Tallie took that opportunity to straddle me.

“What are you doing?” My eyes popped open, and I stared at her. She stared back, until I finally gave a slow nod.

She lowered herself onto me, using that same hand to guide me inside. She was so wet that I just slipped right in, balls deep, despite the fact that she fit me like a glove. I could feel…everything. I’d never, not once in my life, done the deed without a condom. Never felt this sort of skin-to-skin contact, her slickness blanketing me. It felt like heaven.

“So good,” she said, putting her hand on my chest to steady herself as she rose again.

And then I was lost.

She lifted off me, dropped down to grind against me. I reached for her waist and hips, helping her balance as she rode me like she was made to be in my saddle. It wasn’t long before she tossed her head back, increasing her pace. Since I was holding on to her, she lifted her hands and teased her breasts, making the sweetest sounds of pleasure I’d ever heard.

And she clamped down on me, her pussy clenching with the beginnings of another orgasm. That was it. I couldn’t hold out any longer. I held her tight and drove up into her, hard and fast, listening as her sexy sounds turned to shouts. Or maybe I was shouting, my sounds matching the frenzied need of my body as I shot my load inside her.

She collapsed against me, her face turned to mine with the cutest smile on her lips. I brushed her hair out of her eyes so I could see all of her face. But then I couldn’t seem to stop myself from stroking her hair, easing my fingers through the tangled strands and working out the knots.

I did the same with my other hand, stroking her back. Her ass. Her thighs. She lay there, boneless, letting me do as I would.

So I did. I kept touching her, holding her, caressing her, until I recognized my mistake. I shouldn’t be doing this, because if I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall for her. That went against everything we’d agreed upon from the outset. But I couldn’t seem to make myself stop, and she sure as hell wasn’t doing anything about it.

Before I knew it, she was asleep in my arms, and I’d be damned if I wanted things to be any other way.

LIFE WITH HUNTER took a sharp and decided turn after that, much as we’d known it would. Whatever our relationship was morphing into, we weren’t just roommates putting on a show for the media anymore. Kissing and touching each other no longer had to stop the second we were in private. A whole new world was open to us now, but I still wasn’t sure how that was going to work itself out. I doubted he had a true sense of where our relationship was heading, either.

Did he think what we’d shared was meant to be for one night only? It was a hell of a single night, if that was where he stood on the matter. I’d lost count of how many times he’d brought me to ecstasy. Throughout the night, we had dozed for a while and then had sex for a while before dozing some more. We’d been wrapped up in each other all night long, unable to untangle our limbs for more than brief spurts. If he got it in his head that he wanted to end the physical side of our relationship and go back to how things had been before, I was going to have a hard time coming to grips with it.

When we got up in the morning, he showered and got ready for practice while I fixed him some breakfast. Fruit and oatmeal—not something I could screw up and not something that would require much use of my hand, which was a heck of a lot more sensitive now than it had been last night. Adrenaline? Or maybe sex endorphins. Either way, I needed more of it today, please and thanks. The whole time I worked on putting together Hunter’s breakfast, I worried about what last night would mean for us in the long run. Was he starting to feel for me the way I felt for him? Should I dare to ask?

He came into the kitchen and fixed a cup of coffee before kissing me on the cheek. He smelled good enough to eat, the scent of the coffee combining with the scent that was purely him, and I fought to keep my composure.

Then he sat down on one of the chairs across the bar and settled in to eat. “Forgot to tell you last night, with everything going on. We’ve got our first preseason game tonight, if you want to come.”

My heart fluttered to life. “Really?” This would be the first time he’d included me in anything to do with his professional life, and it sounded as if it was voluntary on his part.

“Yeah. I’ll take you in early and introduce you to Dana Zellinger. She can help you get settled.”

“I’d like that.” I’d like it more than I could ever hope to explain. There was a sense of nervous excitement bubbling up within me.

He took a bite of his banana, chewing it with pensive eyes on me. “And there’s an Ice Breaker event on Thursday afternoon. First time the team is getting out with the public, letting them see who we are. They want me to bring you, so I hope you’re not busy.”

I deflated slightly at that. For one thing, pointing out that the team wanted me to be present meant Hunter wasn’t on board with it, or at the very least, it hadn’t been his idea. For another, I’d been planning to spend time with Kade at Horizons every afternoon, even though I knew neither Hunter nor Kade was particularly keen on the idea. If I went to the Ice Breaker, I wouldn’t be able to go on Thursday. Still, it wouldn’t hurt for me to skip the one visit. Besides, that would be a great opportunity for me and Hunter to be seen together by those who mattered, other than just dinners out and things of that nature, which was probably why the team had suggested he bring me.

I skimmed my fingers over the smooth granite countertop, tracing the lines I found while I screwed up my courage. “Do you want me to be there?”

He set the banana on a plate, covering my hand with his and stopping me from my continual nervous outlining of the patterns in the stone.

I flashed my eyes up to meet his. Green. Heated. Piercing. He could melt me with nothing more than a look.

“I think after last night, you should realize I like being with you,” he said.

I flushed, lips parted, and my palms got all sweaty. How could he do that to me with nothing more than a few words and a sexy look? But I nodded. “I like being with you, too,” I said shyly. “Of course I’ll come. Whatever you need me to do.”

A slight scowl brought a crease between his brows, but it was gone before I could comment on it. He finished his breakfast, and I went off to shower—a slow process due to needing to change the bandage on my hand. By the time I was dressed, he had left for practice.

I intended to visit Kade this afternoon, and then tonight I’d be going to the game, but I still had hours to kill before either of those things came to pass. Instead of hitting the gym, since I didn’t want to aggravate the burn on my hand, I went for a jog through the neighborhood, which necessitated another shower and change once I got home. Then I didn’t know what to do with myself. At least not at first.

I pulled out my phone and tooled around, checking my email and playing a few rounds of Bejeweled Blitz before an idea came me. Then I started Googling everything I could about cooking classes in the area. A few clicks later, I found one that sounded promising and called to sign up, but the classes wouldn’t start until next week. In one sense, that was good because it would give my hand time to heal. In another sense, it was bad because it meant I had another week of mornings to fill and no good idea what to do with them.

I kept coming back to Kade, though. Hunter had his reasons for not wanting to be too involved with his brother, and I absolutely respected that. Maybe he was right, and there wasn’t any hope for Kade’s recovery. I wasn’t sure I believed that, though, and I was determined to find a way to help repair that relationship, no matter what sort of end this marriage might come to.

The idea of searching for information on drug addiction and recovery grabbed on and wouldn’t let me go, so I started searching for that in the hope it would give me some insight about what I might be getting myself into as far as Kade was concerned. Rehab, counseling, twelve-step programs... I found all sorts of information, but very little of it was anything I could play a part in.

I was still curled up on the couch, poring over the oodles of info I’d found, when Hunter returned so we could have lunch together. He tossed a box of condoms on the counter, effectively answering my unasked question from earlier. He didn’t want this new side of our relationship to be just last night any more than I did. The little seed of hope that this could become something more permanent took root inside me.

Admittedly, he had been right that the pill wasn’t completely effective. We both knew it, so ignoring the fact that we didn’t have condoms and sleeping together last night anyway was probably not the brightest decision either of us had ever made. I tried to push that thought out of my mind because worrying over it wouldn’t do any good. Either I was going to end up pregnant or I wasn’t. Going forward, we would be more careful.

I shut down the browser before shoving my phone into my pocket and getting up to greet him. He surprised me by drawing me into his arms and kissing me, a deep, sound kiss that had me rising up on my toes to meet him.

“Hi,” I said, breathless and flustered, when he released me.

“Hi, yourself. How’s the hand?” Without waiting for my answer, he gently lifted my arm so he could take a look for himself, even though there was nothing for him to see, thanks to the bandage.

“Better,” I lied.

His eyes turned to suspicious green slits.

“Okay, not better.”

“Hmm. Still no blistering, though?”

I shook my head.

“Well, are you up to going out for lunch?”

“Of course.” I’d been expecting that. We were still making sure to be seen out together as often as possible, and with the hockey season looming, that was going to be a lot less regularly than it had been so far.

“Good.” He took my good hand and led me out to his car, stopping momentarily for me to pick up my purse.

Instead of going to one of the usual swanky downtown restaurants we’d been frequenting, he stopped in front of a homey-looking Italian place I’d never been to, close to the Thunderbirds headquarters.

“Change of pace?” I asked.

He winked. “Lunch with the boys. It’s a pregame thing that Zee wants everyone to do together. If that’s all right?”

“No, it’s fine.” Better than fine. I wasn’t quite sure how to react, though. Instantly, I flipped down the sun visor and popped open the lighted mirror, checking on my appearance. Never mind the fact that I’d been prepared to have photographers following us around. The thought that I was going to be seen by Hunter’s teammates turned me suddenly self-conscious.

“Hey,” he said, settling his hand on my knee.

I looked over at him, holding in my breath. Even that small touch seemed to reach all the way into my core, drawing me to him like a beacon.

“You look amazing. Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it. Right. Much easier said than done. That was so deeply ingrained in me I doubted I’d ever be able to walk past a mirror without stopping to examine all my flaws and attempting to minimize them, if not hide them altogether.

Hunter shut down the engine and came around to help me out. By the time we got inside the restaurant, the rest of the guys were already there—a huge table of them. Big, rowdy men who seemed like giant boys with the way one of them was blowing a spitball at another, using his straw to launch it, and cackling as we approached.

“Fuck off, Razor,” the spitballee said.

The guy he’d called Razor grinned. “You fucking love me, Zee. Admit it. You missed me, and you’re so fucking glad to have me around again you just can’t contain yourself.”

So that was Eric Zellinger, then, the one whose wife was supposed to teach me the ropes tonight. He was a good-looking guy, a bit less unkempt than some of the others. Razor was good-looking, too, but in a slick, cocky, dangerous sort of way. I had no doubt he was a bad boy of the highest order, so I made a mental note to keep my distance. I already had enough of those in my life.

“He looks well contained to me,” Hunter said, and all of them whipped their heads around to look at us. “Same as always,” Hunter added, winking at me.

Zee cleared his throat, and suddenly they all straightened and tried to make themselves more presentable, no doubt because I’d joined them. Well, almost all of them. Razor blew another spitball at Zee.

I wondered if Hunter had said anything about bringing me, or if they’d found out when we’d walked up. Probably the latter, not the former, now that I looked around. There weren’t any other wives or girlfriends present. I stood out like a red rose in the middle of a Tulsa ice storm.

Hunter took it all in stride, holding out a chair for me across from Zee and down the row from Razor. “Boys, this is my wife, Tallie. Her family’s good friends with the Jernigans.”

“Which means watch your mouths,” one of the men I hadn’t been introduced to yet said with a foreign accent I couldn’t place. On first glance, he looked too old to be a player. He was fully gray and starting to go bald. But he had the skin and other features of a man Hunter’s age or thereabouts, so I couldn’t be sure. He winked at me before adding, “Or you’ll be adding more money to Mrs. J’s swear jar.”

I nearly choked on my own laughter. “Swear jar?”

“Hunter didn’t fill you in on that one, huh? That was one of the first things I told my wife.”

“Can’t say he did.” It was just one more thing about his life he hadn’t wanted to share with me.

Hunter shrugged.

“My lips are sealed,” I said. “I promise not to say a word to Mrs. Jernigan about any slipups you all might have.”

“Doesn’t mean anyone needs to go crazy with the language, though,” Zee said.

The gray-haired man reached across the table to shake my hand. “Franz Ackerman. The boys all call me Grandpa.”

I tried not to laugh but couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

“He’s about to be one, too,” Hunter said. “So we’re not just being dicks about his hair.”

“My oldest didn’t waste any time. For that matter, my wife and I didn’t, either,” Franz said, winking at me and drawing my attention to his smiling eyes. The lines around them were the only sense out of all his facial features that he had passed thirty, which made the idea of calling him Grandpa even odder than it was at face value. I just couldn’t let myself think of him as that. I knew he’d told me to call him that, and he might technically be about to become one, but it felt…wrong, somehow.

A waiter brought menus and a round of water, and before long they all fell into talking again, as if I hadn’t intruded on their guy time. In no time, there was talk on one side of me about the dirty things a girl had allowed one of them to do in bed, and on the other side of me, it focused more on a new sports car that one of the guys wanted to buy. Franz and Zee both made an effort to engage me in conversation, telling me about their wives and kids and asking about the sorts of things I liked to do around town. Soon, they were making plans for their wives to get together with me.

The whole time we spent making those plans, I had other thoughts swirling through my mind about how I would fit that in alongside whatever I intended to do with Kade.

Hunter didn’t say much. He answered when needed and interjected a question every now and then, but for the most part, he sat there and watched me with a curious expression on his face. Every now and then, he would rest his hand on my thigh, or he’d put an arm behind my back. It seemed almost casual, if not for the fact that it caused waves of tingles to course through my body. Especially because there were no cameras on us here. This wasn’t a show he was putting on for anyone, unless he felt we needed to convince his teammates that we were madly in love, the same as we were trying to convince the rest of the world.

I tried not to get my hopes up. There were so many questions still unanswered between us, and now wasn’t a time we could truly talk.

Zee was just telling a group of us that his wife was pregnant with their third child when a loud snort from the end of the table caught my attention.

I turned toward Hunter to see what was going on, glass of water in hand.

“You fucking wish, Dima,” Razor said loudly to a bearded, tattooed man to his left. “You’re so full of shit not even an enema could help.”

I shouldn’t have just taken a sip, because I ended up spewing my water and only getting my hand in the way soon enough to block about half of it. The rest ended up sprayed all over my husband.

The whole table erupted in laughter and lewd comments. I blushed.

Hunter wiped his face with his napkin and leaned down close to my ear, stretching his arm around my shoulders to draw me closer. “Remind me to pull out before I come, since you’re not a fan of swallowing.”

Franz let out a snort of his own before turning his head away, pretending to be invested in another conversation.

I’d only thought I was blushing before. I was pretty sure I was going to die of burning to a crisp from embarrassment.

TALLIE WAS GONE when I woke from my pregame nap. Probably off visiting my brother. Some idiotic part of me had hoped that taking her to lunch with the guys and exposing her to that part of my life would convince her there were other things she could do with her time rather than spend it with Kade, but I’d known better. There had been something in her eyes yesterday when she’d informed me of her decision to go back to see him—a fierce sense of determination or something. No point in me getting my hopes up that she would come to her senses just because I took her to hang out with a bunch of crass guys she didn’t know.

I fixed myself a toasted bagel with peanut butter while I waited for her to come home. I was still sitting at the bar, eating, when she came in through the garage door, head down. And fucking sniffling.

“What happened?” I demanded. My right hand clenched into a fist, almost of its own volition. The next time I saw Kade…

Tallie shook her head.

That wasn’t good enough for me. Not by a mile. I tossed what was left of my bagel back on the saucer, got up, and went to her, tipping her chin up so she had to look at me. Her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying the whole way home from the rehab center. Every protective bone in my body was on high alert. I wanted to bash my brother’s face in for whatever he’d done to my wife.

But first, I needed to know what that was. “Tell me,” I coaxed.

“It’s not important.” Even as she said it, a fat tear welled in her eye and dripped down her cheek.

Anything that made her cry was important to me. That was another worrying thought. I seemed to be having those more and more frequently. Was I getting that close to her, or was it just because I knew that—whatever the specifics behind her tears might be—Kade was involved? This was exactly why I’d wanted to keep her away from him, exactly why I’d wanted to prevent him from being able to hurt her the way he’d hurt everyone else in his sorry life.

I brushed her tear away with the pad of my thumb, debating what to do. “Did he tell you more lies about me and Carrie?” I asked. That had to be it, didn’t it? I knew he’d fill her head with all sorts of things that I’d have to clear up later.

“No, it wasn’t Kade at all. I barely even made it in to see him.”

That threw me so much that my muscles went tense from the surprise. “Then what?”

Tallie shook her head and tried to shove past me. Her purse slipped down from her shoulder, hooking on her elbow and jerking her arm down, and she flinched. I couldn’t handle her walking away from me right now without knowing what was behind her tears. I reached out to stop her, putting a hand on her upper arm.

“Oh!” she cried out. It was a sharp, pained sound, and she ripped her arm away from me in a move of self-preservation if ever I’d seen one.

I hadn’t put very much force at all in my grip—only enough to slow her down—but she’d acted like I’d bruised her.

And I knew someone who had bruised her arms before. Lance Motherfucking Benton.

“Tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” I said, my voice low and far more controlled than I felt on the inside. Inside, I was a ticking time bomb, ready to blow.

She went into the kitchen and put her bag on the counter, silent other than her sniffles.

“Can I see your arm?” I asked, following her.

“Do you need to?”

Yes, I damned well needed to. So I could catalog every fucking fingerprint he’d left on her body. So I could memorize every detail of how he’d grabbed her. So I could be sure my rage ratcheted up to an appropriate level the next time I saw his scrawny ass.

But I supposed that could wait until later. It didn’t have to be right this instant.

Gently, I touched her with nothing more than my fingertips, trailing them down her biceps. She shivered, and goose bumps popped up on her forearms.

“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked.

“I will.” But she didn’t start talking.

Dropping my hands to her waist, I turned her so she was facing me again, questioning her wordlessly.

“Later,” she promised. “I need to get my head together.”

And I needed to get to the arena, but this was something worth being late for if there were ever such a thing. But she said she would tell me later, so I made up my mind that it was good enough, even though I didn’t believe anything of the goddamned sort.

I ground my teeth together, attempting to put a damper on my anger. “You still coming tonight? Zee wants to introduce you to Dana.” And maybe Dana could get Tallie started talking. Dana had always had a way about her that made other women trust her, from what I’d seen.

Tallie took a moment to think about it, but then she nodded. “We still have to see and be seen, right? I’m sure there will be cameras there. Let me just go fix my face.”

ELIAS VIRTANEN, THE guy who would most likely be my backup this season, had played the first half of the game against the Stars. With the massive breakdowns going on in front of Eli, it was a small miracle that he’d come off the ice at the halfway point of the game having only allowed six goals. In all fairness, he’d made some spectacular stops and probably should have given up a few more goals in that stint.

Now he was guzzling Gatorade on the bench, sweating like he’d just run a marathon in Tulsa’s summer heat, and I was the one facing the fire.

That honestly wasn’t much of an exaggeration, either. In my half of the second period alone, Dallas had peppered me with more than fifteen shots, and our D had done little more than look over their shoulders at me and slink away each time the red light flashed.

I couldn’t blame it all on them, either. My head wasn’t in the game. Not at all. I kept thinking about Tallie and Lance, wondering how he’d gotten his hands on her again and why she wouldn’t just tell me about it. What was so bad she needed to think about it first? Why didn’t she trust me enough to tell me about whatever the hell it was?

Now that only five minutes remained in the game, and I’d let in four more goals to go along with the six that had gotten past Eli, there wasn’t any chance the Thunderbirds would come back to win this one. The guys had yet to score a goal, so I wasn’t going to hold my breath. That said, I knew I needed to get my shit together. One glance over at the bench to see the scowl on Spurs’s face as he glared at me was enough to know he expected more of me. I expected more of myself, but tonight just wasn’t my night on multiple levels.

After a stoppage in play, Spurs sent out some fresh players—an odd mix of two young D who had a snowball’s chance in hell of making an NHL team anytime in the next decade and whose names I couldn’t bother to remember, alongside Zee, Dima, and Seth McCormick, a journeyman winger—to take the next face-off.

They were down in the Stars’ zone, for once, and somehow Zee ripped the puck away from Stars’ captain, Jamie Benn. One of the Stars’ D lost an edge and went down, which left Dima free to break for the net. Zee passed the puck to Mac, who somehow got a seeing-eye pass through to Dima. All Dima had to do was tap it in, since the Stars’ goalie had pulled himself fully out of position.

The light flashed, but instead of the expected goal horn, some fucking war drums started pounding, scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. For that matter, nearly everyone in the jam-packed arena jumped out of their skins at the sound.

I scanned the crowd, trying to find the sons of bitches responsible, because those damned drums wouldn’t stop. Finally found them right behind me. It took a supreme effort to refrain from giving them the finger, but no doubt I’d have to put a few thousand dollars in the swear jar over a move like that, not to mention, the league might decide to fine me, too. Better to bite my tongue and try to ignore it.

Although I made a mental note to be sure I wasn’t biting my tongue anytime there was a possibility the T-Birds could score when we were at home, at least as long as they insisted on those damn drums. I’d probably end up biting my tongue clear off if they started up when I wasn’t prepared. I had every intention of talking to anyone and everyone I could about getting rid of the drums, though. The thought of having to hear them every time someone scored at home was enough to give me the shakes.

The players on the ice changed after the goal, and a new line came out to take the face-off at center ice. This time, Razor was one of our D. He looked back at me and shouted something, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I could hear him over the drumming. I just nodded, letting him know I was ready, regardless of whatever he’d said.

After the puck dropped, the drums finally stopped. I shook my head, trying to clear the reverberating sound from between my ears.

Shouldn’t have done that.

Benn and his linemate, Tyler Seguin, were bearing down on me. Those two might very well have been the most lethal twosome in the whole fucking league at the moment, and only Razor was anywhere close to catching them. Razor took a diving pass at knocking the puck free from Benn’s stick. He missed. I had to decide which of those two was the bigger threat. I skated out from my crease, cutting down Benn’s angle and trying to poke-check the puck away from him. I missed. He passed it to Seguin. I flailed, trying to contort my body back into position. Too late. Seguin snapped off a wrister, and the puck just grazed my glove hand before flying beneath the crossbar and in.

Razor skated up to me, tapping his stick on my pads. “Sorry, bro.”

“How about you try to fucking do your job instead of being sorry next time?”

“How about you try to fucking take a pregame nap instead of boning your wifey before the next game?” he shot back before skating back to the bench.

If only that was what had me off my game.

DANA’S LITTLE BOY, Ryan, was squirming around in my arms. He kept trying to contort his body so he could put a Thunderbirds sticker on my cheek—never mind the fact that he’d already put six others on me in various places by then—when Hunter came up to the wives’ room to collect me after the game.

Dana was a tall, athletic blonde, a little bit on the tomboy side of things, but absolutely gorgeous and as sweet as could be, if slightly shy. She was also the mother of two toddlers, who kept her on her toes. Ryan, in particular, being all of fifteen months old, had a rambunctious streak a mile wide, not to mention some seriously sticky fingers. I wasn’t sure what he’d been into, but it was now all over me, too.

When Hunter looked down at me, he seemed as dour as I’d ever seen him. That was probably to be expected after the team had been thoroughly trounced, twelve to one, in the game. Dana had reassured me when we returned to the wives’ room to wait for our husbands that tonight’s game wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but I doubted Hunter’s ego would agree with that assessment.

Dana glanced at Hunter when he reached us, stretching out her arms for the squirming toddler. “Come on, buddy. Back to Mommy. Looks like Hunter and Tallie are ready to go.”

Ryan apparently didn’t want to give up yet. He grabbed on to my upper arm, digging in his fingers over my fresh bruises.

I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out in pain. Dana’s eyes shot up to mine, worried. Apparently, I didn’t do such a good job of keeping my face a mask. She tugged him over to her lap.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing between me and Hunter and back. “He’s got quite a grip. Taking after his daddy.”

“It’s all right, really. He’s just a little boy.” And Ryan hadn’t been trying to hurt me. Not like Lance.

“You ready?” Hunter asked me. He held out a hand. I took it and got to my feet, fighting back a grimace at the pain in my upper arms. He didn’t say anything, and his face betrayed nothing, but his barely contained anger was seething just beneath the surface, crackling between us where we touched.

I nodded, gathering up my purse and phone, but Dana practically leapt to her feet before we could go.

“I forgot. There’s one more thing I need to talk to you about before you go.” She gave Hunter an apologetic look. “Do you mind?” Without waiting for him to respond, she plopped Ryan over into Hunter’s arms and guided me away with a gentle but insistent hand on my elbow. She didn’t stop until we were together in a quiet corner of the room. Her legs were long, and I had worn heels—a habit that was hard to break, particularly since there might be an opportunity for Hunter and I to perform for the cameras while we were out—so I’d had to hurry to keep up with her.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to come off nonchalant even though I was almost positive I’d interpreted her behavior correctly. She thought Hunter was hurting me. There wasn’t a better explanation for her reaction.

She and I had already made plans, along with a few of the other Thunderbirds’ wives and girlfriends, to get together later in the week for lunch and an afternoon of girl time and charity event planning. Dana had spearheaded it all, but I’d agreed to be her backup in everything since I’d been involved in so many other charitable endeavors through the pageants I’d been part of over the years. It looked like she was going to need my assistance to get all of these women on the same page, too. I’d rarely seen such a catty group, and that was saying something considering I’d spent all of my twenty-one years as part of the pageant world.

Regardless of all that, I’d already given Dana my phone number, and we were planning to see each other again in a few days. I didn’t understand what the problem was or why she couldn’t talk about it in front of Hunter unless she believed he was the one behind the pain in my biceps.

She eyed me up and down, as if she was assessing every inch of me. In an overly subconscious move, I crossed my arms. Not that it would do any good. My face always gave everything away. Couldn’t hide a darned thing unless it was airbrushed, but even then, they could only conceal so much. Photographers always told me it was because I had such expressive eyes, which I found to be both a blessing and a curse. Plus, crossing my arms like that only reminded her of my injured hand by bringing that bandage back to the forefront for a moment.

Finally, Dana frowned, her brows coming together over her nose, but she blurted it out. “Look, I know you don’t really know me yet, so you don’t have any good reason to tell me this, and I honestly don’t want to think anything bad of Hunter because Eric and I have known him for several years now, and I would never have believed it of him based on that, but is he hurting you? Because if he is, you’re not leaving here with him. I won’t let you. You’re coming home with us and—”

“He’s not hurting me,” I cut in. I took her hand and squeezed, trying to reassure her.

She narrowed her eyes at me, scowling. “You may not have bruises I can see, but I saw how you reacted when Ryan dug in. Don’t get me wrong. I know those little fingers can pack a punch, but your response wasn’t normal unless you’re hiding something. You can’t ask me to pretend I didn’t see it.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that. And I’m not denying that I’m hurt, either. But it wasn’t Hunter. He would never do anything like that.”

“Then who?” Dana clearly had no intention of letting the subject drop. “Does Hunter know? Of course he knows. You’re married. There’s no way he hasn’t seen whatever you’ve got going on. What’s he doing about it?” She kept scanning me, as if she could see through my clothes to everything hidden underneath.

“We’re going to talk about it when we get home,” I replied.

“Why haven’t you told him yet?” she asked, suspicion creeping back into her tone.

“Because it happened right before we had to leave to come here. I didn’t want him to be late for the game, and I needed time to process it.” Not to mention, I needed time to figure out how to tell Hunter what had happened without him killing my former pageant guru, but Dana didn’t need to know that part. The less anyone else knew, the better. “I promise, that’s the first thing we’re going to do when we get home.”

“You won’t tell me who did it, though? You won’t let me help? Because I’m ready to take you home with me and Eric right now, especially if you’re trying to cover it up and it really is Hunter. We can wait until Eric and a few of the other guys get up here. We can get security involved. We can get you out of here safely.” Her eyes flickered over to the security guard standing at the door.

“It wasn’t Hunter, but I think he deserves to hear the story first.” Once I’d finished figuring out how much to tell him. Then I could keep all the details the same whenever I told anyone else, if it came to that. I supposed I would have to tell Dana now, since she’d already learned this much, but I’d rather keep it from anyone else if at all possible.

She chewed on her lower lip. “You swear it wasn’t him?”

I nodded.

Then her eyes strayed over to where we’d left Hunter with her son, indecision making her tap her fingers on her crossed forearms. I followed her gaze to find Hunter’s suit now covered with the same Thunderbirds stickers I was wearing. He didn’t seem to mind too much.

Might as well bring Dana’s son into the equation. “If you really believed he had hurt me or anyone else, would you have left Ryan with him?” I pointed out. “I mean, like you said, you’ve known him a long time. You never thought he was dangerous before now, huh?”

“No.” She gave me a half smile. “Not a chance.”

“Exactly.”

“Have you at least called the police?” she asked, finally starting to relent. “Filed a report? Gotten a restraining order against whoever did this?”

“Not yet,” I hedged.

Going to the police hadn’t been in my plans. That was why I’d been so worried about telling Hunter what had happened, because I had no doubt it would be one of many things on his to-do list, right after hunting down Lance and rearranging a few of my former guru’s features. But going to the police would only lead to the wrong sort of exposure, just like allowing Hunter to go full caveman on Lance would end up being. Either of those things would be counterproductive in terms of getting the public to see the pair of us in a different light.

“Well”—Dana gave me another thorough once-over—“if Hunter doesn’t go with you before practice tomorrow, you call me and I will. You can’t let whoever did this to you get away with it. All right?”

I agreed more to get her to let me leave than because I had any intention of calling her for a girl’s day at police headquarters. Once she’d collected her son from Hunter—an exercise requiring all three of the adults involved prying his sticky fingers free from my husband’s hair—Hunter and I headed out to the car, peeling stickers off as we went.

He didn’t say a word until we were halfway home, and my guts were tied up into a knot the size of a bowling ball. There was so much emotion roiling off him. It poured over me and filled every crevice in the car until I thought I would choke on it. I wanted to roll down the window so I could breathe, but I couldn’t bring myself to even move a finger toward the control panel. I needed to get a sense of where Hunter stood on things so I knew what direction to go in.

“So Dana thinks I’m beating you?” he finally spit out.

I drew in a deep breath, releasing it slowly as I weighed my words. “That was her initial gut reaction, yes, but she never really thought that or she wouldn’t have left Ryan with you. I told her it wasn’t you.”

“And you think that’s going to be enough, do you? Women deny their boyfriends and husbands are beating them all the time, especially when there’s something they think they need to hide.”

“But you haven’t ever laid a finger on me, and you wouldn’t, so there’s nothing to worry about there.”

“You think she’s going to take your word for it?” he asked, his tone loaded with sarcasm.

“Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise. Is there any reason she shouldn’t?” I shot back, quickly losing any semblance of patience. If I wasn’t careful, a big dose of Southern sass was liable to work its way out of my mouth, and that was the last thing I needed right now. When I lost control of my filter, all sorts of things came out of my mouth without me thinking through them first. That was what had happened the day we’d first met, and I’d been doing everything I could to keep it in check since then. Mama always told me it wasn’t fitting for a lady to speak like that.

Hunter grunted. “Did you happen to tell her who it was?” he asked after a tense silence.

“No.” I studied my fingernails in my lap, determined to put a lid on my sass before it boiled over.

“You planning on telling me who it was?” His tone was softer now but no less strained.

“I think you already know.”

Hunter turned into our driveway and stopped to wait for the garage door to open. I lifted my head to find his jaw working overtime, the muscles in his neck tense. He kept a grip on the steering wheel, flexing his hands over the leather repeatedly. “You weren’t gone long enough to have filed a police report,” he finally said.

“No.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought it was for the best not to.”

The garage was open, but he didn’t pull in. He put the car in park and left the engine idling, then turned to stare at me. “In what world could it possibly be better to let that slug of a human put his hands on you and not do a damned thing about it?”

“In our world!” I snapped.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning in this world where every single move we make is reported all over the media, publically scrutinized, and dissected to the nth degree. The last thing either one of us needs is for them to have something else they can latch on to about us that’s anything less than a happy-ever-after ending. Not right now.”

“You’re giving public opinion too much fucking weight in this.”

“Or maybe you’re not giving it enough!”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone says about me,” he ground out. “Or you. Or us.”

“Well, it’s high time you started caring, then.”

“Oh, I care plenty, just not about things that don’t matter.”

“It matters to some people.”

“Who?” Hunter demanded. “Who does it matter to?”

“Your team. My family. All the people who’ve been supporting me for all these years.”

“But not you?” he pointed out.

I opened my mouth to deliver another saucy retort and quickly shut it again. Because he was right. I didn’t really care what anyone had to say about the two of us. I was only worried about it because I’d been told to worry about it.

“Exactly,” he said after a moment of silence. “You don’t give a rat’s ass. Not really. And I don’t, either. I haven’t ever before, and I’m not going to start now.”

“What the heck do you care about, then?”

“You, all right?” Hunter roared. “I care about you.” Then he whipped his head around to stare straight ahead out the windshield.

My heart thundered. I needed to touch him in order to ground myself, to remember that this was truly happening in the here and now. He’d said it in the heat of the moment, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t true. Maybe the way he felt about me was keeping pace with the way I felt about him. I couldn’t help myself. I reached across the center console and placed my hand on the back of his forearm.

He glanced down at where I was touching him before turning to face me, his eyes green pools of need. Then he closed his eyes and ground his teeth. “What happened?” he asked. “Explain it to me.”

I tried to take my hand away, but he put his over the top of it, preventing me.

My tongue was thick with dread that tasted like bile, but I swallowed it down. “Can we go inside first?” The last thing I wanted was to give him all the details, only to have him put the car in reverse and try to find Lance. That wasn’t what either of us needed, and I was almost positive that Hunter knew it even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

In lieu of answering, he put the car in gear and drove into the garage. He shut off the engine and hit the button to close the garage door.

I’d bought myself another minute or so, but that wasn’t much. I only hoped it was enough to help me get through the telling without breaking down so much that he decided to act, anyway.

“SO TELL ME why I shouldn’t go to wherever that son of a bitch is right this second and bash his face in,” I said as we headed inside. The second we stepped through the door, I removed my jacket and tie and tossed them on the counter alongside her purse. That still wasn’t enough, though. I undid the top couple of buttons on my shirt, trying to get as comfortable as I could for a conversation I knew would be anything but comfortable. She toed off her shoes, meticulously placing them just so in a corner of the kitchen, near the garage but out of the way so we wouldn’t trip on them, taking her time about it. When she shot her gaze over to me, eyes as expressive as I’d ever seen them, I kept myself as calm as I could. But given the circumstances, that wasn’t saying a hell of a lot. “Tell me why I shouldn’t wring his neck the next time I see him, because that’s what will happen if you don’t give me a damn good reason not to.”

Tallie didn’t answer immediately. She went into the living room and took a seat. I followed and sat next to her, not close enough to touch her even though I absolutely wanted to wrap her in my arms and try to forget everything we needed to talk about.

She looked so fucking fragile, sitting on the couch with one leg tucked underneath her, the other foot swaying forward and backward, constantly in motion. I couldn’t help but notice her perfectly painted toenails. Even her feet were pretty. That either meant I was falling for her harder than I wanted to acknowledge or I had a foot fetish. Either way, every bone in my body was screaming to draw her into my lap, as if that would make anything better besides potentially lowering my blood pressure. But I couldn’t protect her in reverse. I couldn’t go back in time and keep that fucking bastard from laying his hands on her.

“Talk to me,” I said. My voice cracked. I was going crazy not knowing exactly what he’d done to her and how I could fix it.

She rubbed the back of her neck, nodding slowly. “I went to Horizons in time to see Kade during visitation hours,” she finally began, her voice surprisingly steady despite the fact that she was staring at the floor instead of looking at me. “Only I never made it inside.”

I wished that spark of fire she’d shown a few minutes ago would come back. She’d been right on the verge of plopping her hands on her hips and delivering me a talking-to like she’d done once before, but then she’d stopped herself. Even though I wasn’t on board with why she was trying to stand up to me, I fucking loved the fact that she put her foot down. She was growing a spine, standing up for herself at least some of the time, and it was sexy as all hell. I could acknowledge that much once I forced myself to step back and separate from the heat of the moment, once I could see her without vision clouded by my anger and fear.

“Why didn’t you make it inside?” I asked.

“Because Lance was there waiting for me.”

A couple of tears filled her eyes but didn’t spill over. I was desperate to brush them away, but I forced my hands to stay where they were so I wouldn’t interrupt her in the telling. It was hard enough for her to get it out at all. No need for me to do anything that might cause her to slam on the brakes again.

She glanced up at me for a moment before returning her gaze to her lap. “Apparently, there had been some cameraman following me yesterday, only I didn’t pay any attention to him. The fact that I’d gone to visit Kade in rehab was all over the local gossip sites. But since we’ve been actively avoiding looking to see what they’ve been saying about us, neither of us realized it. Lance did, though. It seems they want to tell the world that I’m having an affair with Kade, that apparently I’m in love with him regardless of how in love with each other you and I have been acting. Supposedly that’s the reason he overdosed at the wedding and every time since then. That he can’t handle seeing me with you all over the place when he and I are really in love. Don’t ask me why they think I married you if I loved him. Maybe we’re in a love triangle or something else equally ridiculous, but that’s beside the point.”

Now I wished we’d been paying closer attention to everything they’d been reporting about us, monitoring how our efforts were paying off instead of letting others do that for us and report back with suggestions as to what we could do better. I inched closer to her. She kept fidgeting and twisting the ring around her finger, drawing my attention back to the bandages on her burned hand.

Slowly, cautiously, I put an arm around her shoulders. I wasn’t sure if he’d hurt her anywhere other than her upper arms. She leaned into me, though, nestling her head against my shoulder. A wave of warmth flooded me, filling my chest, because she was allowing herself to lean on me. Letting me comfort her. I was in deep, and it was too fucking late to do anything about it. Not only that, but I didn’t want to find my way out.

“Anyway,” she said, sniffling, “they filmed me going in and coming out from Horizons yesterday, and they used that footage to supposedly confirm what had previously only been speculation about my relationship with Kade. They brought up shots of your broken nose and your hands, saying you’d gone into a jealous rage, which had led to the last overdose and Kade being compelled to go to rehab, but apparently I just couldn’t stay away. Lance saw it all over the news. He knows you don’t want him to have anything to do with us now that we’re married, but he thought if he could get me alone, or at least away from you…” Tallie shook her head, pressing her eyes closed. “He guessed what I was doing, that I was just trying to find a way to help Kade because that’s what I do. You’re too soft-hearted, Tallie, he’s always said to me. So he figured I would be going back. He called Horizons and found out when visitation hours were, and he was there waiting for me, determined to put a stop to my visits since, in his opinion, I was causing more harm than good by going there. And maybe he’s right about that. I don’t know.”

As much as I wanted to agree with Lance on that—a thought I wasn’t certain how to process—the reasoning behind our opinions on the matter were complete opposites. He was overly concerned with public perception; I wanted to protect Tallie from the myriad ways Kade could hurt her. And apparently, now I needed to protect her from Lance, too—a danger I’d thought well in the past. He’d been staying out of things since the wedding, keeping a low profile. I’d thought we were done with him.

“He was there waiting for me when I arrived,” she continued, “standing outside the entry and watching for me. I didn’t see him, but he was back in the shadows behind a group of people who were outside smoking. If I’d known he was there, I would have brought my phone in, so I could threaten to call 9-1-1 if he tried to pull something. But I left everything but my keys in the trunk, since they were going to make me turn it all in anyway. I didn’t have anything. The smokers turned and went in, and that was when I saw him. I hesitated, thought about going back, but I didn’t want to allow him to keep me from doing what I’d gone to do. I kept walking. As soon as I approached, he stepped into my way and wouldn’t let me past. He said I needed to stay away from there, away from Kade. He wanted to take me to the courthouse right away and talk to a lawyer about getting an annulment from you, saying he’d made a huge mistake by letting me go through with it. I reminded him that Daddy is a lawyer, and I told him there wasn’t anything he had allowed me to do, and I wasn’t getting an annulment or anything of the sort. Then I tried to move past him.”

“And he grabbed you,” I finished for her.

She nodded, the slight movement of her head causing my shirt to drag against my chest. “I tried to jerk free, but he just dug in harder. Told me he’d made me, and now I’d ruined him. He said he can’t get any other work in the pageant world. No one wanted to hire the guru who’d let his charge get so out of control. He said I owed him.”

The only thing Lance had made her was insecure, always thinking she was somehow not good enough. How the hell would she ever owe that man a fucking thing other than a solid kick to the balls? She shuddered, and I drew her closer to me, holding her snug to my chest as if it could be enough to ward off the memory.

“You don’t owe him anything.” Her parents had paid him for all his work over the course of many years. There was nothing else that needed to happen, as far as I was concerned.

“I know that, but the way he said it…” Tallie backed away and lifted her head so she could look at me. Her eyes had turned a rich gold, sparkling with a sense of fear that I wished I could eradicate. “He’s always been over the top,” she said, “but I think Lance is losing it. I’ve never seen him like this before. He seems desperate.”

And there was no telling what a desperate man might do. Maybe the stress of his new circumstances had kicked off some internal issues. Chemical imbalances were all the same in that regard, whether it was something brought on naturally within the body, like anxiety, or if it was something introduced from external sources, like when Kade overdosed. That was the part that scared me—the unpredictability of it all.

With two fingers, I brushed Tallie’s hair out of her eyes and kissed her forehead, just over the bridge of her nose. She snuggled closer to me, resituating herself in my arms as she’d been before.

“He finally let me go when I threatened to scream,” she said after a minute. “It was the only thing I could think of that might work. I didn’t have a very good chance at being able to fight back, and he could probably outrun me even if I did manage to get away. But maybe if I screamed loudly enough, someone from inside would hear and come to help me. He finally released my arms after I threatened him, and I hurried inside and straight to the restroom to get myself sorted out.”

“And then you came home?”

“No. Then I went in to see Kade. I wasn’t going to let Lance stop me from doing what I’d planned to do.” She said it so plainly, as though there should never have been any doubt. And maybe there shouldn’t have been. Maybe I hadn’t been giving her enough credit.

“His doctor asked if there was any chance he could see Kaylee at some point,” she said, and every ounce of relief I’d been feeling turned into molten lead in my gut. She must have felt me tense up, because she kept going before I could say a fucking thing. “Not right away. He needs to get further into the program before they think it would be good for him. Or even if he couldn’t see her, maybe he could just talk to her. It wasn’t Kade’s idea. In fact, he told them that there wasn’t any possibility that would happen.”

“Not a snowball’s chance,” I agreed.

“But his doctor and his counselors think it would be really good for him. He needs something to live for.”

“It might be good for him, but what about her?” I countered. “She’s a fucking child. She doesn’t need to have anything to do with him.”

“Not even if giving him a glimmer of hope would be what it takes to turn his life around? He’s her father. If he could possibly—”

“This is exactly what I was afraid of when you said you wanted to keep seeing him. There is no hope. None. He’s never going to turn his life around, and the sooner he just goes ahead and dies—”

“So you did say that to him, then?” she interrupted, separating herself. I felt the loss of her warmth immediately. She sat back, looking at me with hurt eyes. “You told him you wished he was dead.”

Had I said the words out loud to Kade’s face? Maybe. Lord knew I’d thought it often enough, but I didn’t remember it. Then again, everything that had gone down the day we’d taken him to Horizons had blurred together into a twisting knot. “I might have,” I conceded.

“You did.” She blinked a few times, as though trying to clear her vision so she could see if it was the truth.

“I probably did,” I said. “I honestly don’t remember. I said a lot of things that day. So did Kade. It was all in the heat of the moment, just shit that came out of our mouths because things got heated. That doesn’t mean—” I stopped myself before finishing that statement. That doesn’t mean I meant it. The truth was…what? Had I meant it? Did I wish Kade, my only brother, was dead? My throat felt thick with emotion that I’d been doing my best to suppress for years. “I don’t really wish he was dead,” I choked out. “But I won’t deny that sometimes I think it would be easier for the rest of us if he was. Then we could just grieve for what we’d lost instead of losing him over and over again. And I don’t want Kaylee to have to go through that. I want her to have a father who can love her and be there for her whenever she needs him. I don’t want her to have to be the adult in the relationship, and I’m afraid that that’s exactly what she would end up being.”

Tallie looked like she wanted to cry again, but she held it in. Actually, she took it further than that. She pushed those tears back and fixed me with a sassy look. “Do you really think it’s better if she doesn’t know him at all? For her, I mean. You don’t think she should have the chance to know him at all, even if he could get clean?”

That was just the problem. I didn’t believe my brother was capable of getting clean. If he was, it would have happened before now. But Tallie looked so fucking hopeful that I couldn’t take it.

“I suppose we could talk to Kade’s doctors,” I conceded.

She immediately brightened, a smile creeping to her lips that made me want to kiss her.

“I said we could talk to them,” I added. “I didn’t promise anything more than that.”

“I know.” She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “But that’s a step.”

A step in the wrong direction. Had to be. But I nodded. “It is definitely a step.”

She didn’t back away immediately, and I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and forget all about the crap we’d been talking about all night by taking things in a different direction, but there were still things between us we needed to hash out.

No time like the present. “Will you show me your arms?” I asked.

I’d thought that she would draw up the sleeves so I could see the bruises Lance had left on her skin, but apparently Tallie had other ideas.

Keeping her eyes on mine, she reached for the buttons of her blouse and undid them one at a time. She slipped her arms out of the sleeves, letting the shirt drop behind her, revealing her pink satin bra. Her nipples were rock hard and pressing against the fabric, and my dick was in the same condition. In fact, my dick seemed to think I should go grab that box of condoms I’d bought and make use of them right this instant.

It was as if there was an internal argument going on within me, my head fighting it out with my dick to decide what needed to happen next.

But right now, I couldn’t let my cock have that much control over the situation, no matter how much I might want it. I needed to see what Lance had done. Reddish-purple marks lined both of her biceps, looking eerily similar to the marks he’d left on her before. Anger roiled through my veins. I touched her shoulder, gliding my hand down to gently trace the bruises he’d left on her.

She shivered and sucked in a soft breath of air. “Hunter?” she said quietly.

I shot my eyes up to meet hers. There was no more fear in her gaze. Only fire.

She placed her hands behind her back, and a moment later, her bra dropped forward, freeing her breasts. She slipped her arms from the straps and took my hand, drawing it to her. “I need you to touch me,” she whispered, a harsh, pleading sound.

Something told me this time, my dick was going to win the argument.

“WE’RE NOT DONE talking about this,” Hunter said. That didn’t stop him from creating the most amazing pressure on my breast, though, molding my pliable flesh to fit his strong hand.

“I know.” There were still a thousand things we needed to discuss, but I was going to go crazy if I couldn’t feel his hands on me, his skin next to mine, his heat stoking mine higher than it had ever gone before. “We can talk more about it later, but touch me now,” I pleaded. And I prayed he would go along with what I was asking of him, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to think much longer if he kept doing what I wanted him to.

The next thing I knew, he had a hold of me by the hips and I was straddling him, his hot mouth closed over one of my breasts. He swirled his tongue and suckled, and I felt an electric pull that went all the way to my sex.

“Oh, God,” I moaned, letting my head drop back.

He chuckled, not removing his mouth from me until my thighs shook and my panties were wet as all heck. “Tell me what you want, baby. Just say the word.” He made me believe he would give me anything I asked for, but the only thing I wanted right now, more than him taking me to his bed, was him. All of him. The trauma of my afternoon with Lance, and my visit with Kade, had only reinforced what I’d already begun to realize. I was past the point of no return with Hunter.

I brought my head forward again and pressed my forehead to his. “I want you.” I wanted him in more ways than he was prepared to hear. My heart felt ready to burst, and it had little to do with the way my pulse was hammering through my veins.

He gave me a cocky grin right before his lips landed on mine. He swept his tongue along the seam of my lips, gliding back and forth until I opened on a sigh. I fisted my hand in his hair and drew him deeper, steadying myself with my bandaged hand on his shoulder.

Slowly but with all the confidence in the world, Hunter eased his hands back to slide them over my butt and down my thighs. “You’re shaking,” he murmured against my lips as he broke the kiss, his eyes half-lidded.

He wasn’t exaggerating. I might as well have been in the middle of an earthquake with the surges of adrenaline coursing through me. “Anticipation,” I said.

That made him grin again.

He nibbled along my jaw, making a path to the sensitive spot just behind my ear. “Can I tell you what I want?” he whispered, and I shivered.

“Yes.”

“I want you handcuffed to my bed while I make you come so many times you won’t remember anything but my name, and the only reason you’ll know that is because you’re going to be crying it out so many times it might as well be branded on your lips.”

I ought to be offended. Any sane woman would run for the hills when the man she was falling in love with said something as crazy as that, wouldn’t she? For a moment, time froze. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but marvel at the fact that, instead of making me want to run as far and as fast as I could, I was on the verge of agreeing to what he’d suggested. In fact, there was something very appealing about the thought. It didn’t make sense. I’d spent my entire life being told what to do, how to do it, when, and for how long, and now that I had a hint of freedom and could make decisions for myself, I wanted to let my husband take what little power I had away from me. No, wanted wasn’t right. I craved it. In fact, I might even need it.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Hunter murmured. He set me back from him, far enough that he could look in my eyes. There was a worried crease between his brows, a serious set to his mouth.

“I’m just confused, is all.”

“You don’t have to agree,” he rushed to say. “We’re married, but that doesn’t mean you have to do something you don’t want to do, you know. I’ll never ask or expect you to do something you don’t want. You can say—”

“Yes,” I cut in, breathing fast and hard. “I can say yes.” Because it finally made sense in my head. All those years when Mama and Lance had controlled every aspect of my life down to the tiniest detail, it had been forced upon me. It hadn’t been my decision. But this? This was entirely up to me, and that made me feel more powerful than I ever had in twenty-one years. For the first time, I could choose what I wanted. Hunter was giving me that freedom.

“You don’t have t—”

I stopped his argument by kissing him as fiercely as I wanted him to kiss me. My tongue tangled with his, gliding back and forth in a familiar dance. A few seconds of that, and his hands were moving again, like he meant business. He had my pants undone and sliding down my hips so fast it left my head spinning.

I wasn’t a passive party by any stretch of the imagination, working the buttons of his shirt loose and pushing it down his arms so we could be skin to skin, chest to chest.

“Fuck, baby,” he said, kneading my bottom until I arched my back, thrusting my breasts up toward him. He kissed the hollow of my neck, nibbling lightly. “Have I ever told you how much I love your tits?”

“Not in words, no.” I laughed, but it came out as a sultry sound I didn’t recognize as my own.

Then he was up on his feet, drawing my legs around his waist. I put my arms around his neck and held on as he carried me first to the kitchen for the condoms and then to his bedroom. When we got there, he flipped on all the lights and lay me back on his bed. He pitched the condoms next to me and skinned my pants down my legs, dragging my panties with them, and tossed it all to the floor. Then he stripped the rest of his clothes and added them to the pile.

Hunter sat on the edge of the bed, one hand resting on my upper thigh. I wriggled closer to him, wanting his touch in a far more intimate place. With one finger, he stroked the outer lips of my sex.

My breath caught in my throat. I wanted him to do what he’d said. I wanted him to cuff me to the bed and make me come like he’d described, but he was just sitting there and caressing me with the lightest of touches in a way that left me desperate for more.

I wanted him hard and fast and now, but he didn’t give me that. Instead, he drove me wild with tender strokes and gentle kisses, his tongue tracing patterns along my overheated flesh.

“Hunter,” I whined.

He flashed his eyes up to mine, not removing his tongue from my belly button, where he was currently wreaking havoc on my senses. The muscles in my abs jumped like they had a mind of their own.

I held out my hands to him, offering them up so he could handcuff me. I was ready. I wanted it. I wanted everything he would give me and more.

He licked a line up the center of my torso, my chest, my neck, slowly and deliberately, only stopping when his mouth was over mine. But he didn’t kiss me. He held his body above me, keeping his weight fully suspended. I rocked my hips, trying to get contact, and then he flattened himself over me, crushing me to the mattress in the most perfect way. He took my arms in his hands, gliding them up and over my head and holding them in place.

“Oh,” I said, the air rushing out of my lungs.

He kissed the end of my nose, his hands drifting downward over my arms until he could tickle and tease my underarms. “We have a minor problem.”

“What’s that?” I had to force myself not to laugh. It wasn’t condoms this time. I couldn’t imagine what was keeping him from following through with all those deliciously naughty promises he’d made.

“No handcuffs. I could go buy some, but—”

“You have ties.” No chance I was going to wait around while he got dressed, went to the store, and bought something. That could happen later.

A wicked smile stole over his face, and his eyes glimmered with mischief that left me squeezing my thighs around him.

“Gonna let me up to get one?” he asked.

Reluctantly, I released my grip on him. He rolled off me and got up. As he headed for his closet, I rolled over and watched. Hunter really had the perfect body—long and lean, strong muscles that stayed just this side of being too much. He had a tight butt and sculpted thighs. I’d already known about the dragon on his arm. Now I realized he had another tattoo on his butt, a pair of manicured women’s hands, one gripping each cheek.

I bit down on my lip to keep from laughing as he disappeared into the closet. A moment later, he came back with a couple of ties in his hands.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded, trying to sound gruff but failing miserably.

“Not funny. Just surprising.”

“The hands on my ass?”

I nodded, raking him in with my eyes.

He sat on the edge of the bed again and reached for one of my hands. “Blueprints,” he said. “That’s where your hands should be when I’m inside you. If I don’t have them tied, at least.” Then he winked.

My pulse had gone rogue, starting and stopping and stuttering and sprinting, giving up all pretense of a regular rhythm. In no time, Hunter had my wrists strapped together and tied to the headboard.

“That doesn’t hurt, does it? Not too tight?” He traced a finger down my arm, tickling the inside of my wrist and elbow as he went.

I shook my head.

He put an extra pillow under my head, then picked up a couple more. “Raise your hips for me,” he said.

As soon as I did, he put the cushions beneath me, angling my hips up.

He settled himself between my thighs, spreading them apart and opening me to his view. And he didn’t just look. He devoured me with his eyes.

With the lights on like that, I suddenly felt insanely self-conscious. I was used to being meticulously examined, but only after I’d been thoroughly plucked and waxed, my makeup airbrushed, every detail of my wardrobe gone over with an exacting eye, not a single hair out of place. This was entirely different. The longer he looked, the more uncomfortable I became. I tried to bring my thighs together, but he put a hand on the inside of each knee and pressed my legs up and back, until there was nothing hidden at all.

“Keep them open for me?” He phrased it like a question. Like it was something I could do for him. And I wanted to give to him as much as I took, but I wasn’t sure I could give him this.

“Can you turn out the lights?”

He cocked his head to the side, meeting my gaze from a different angle. “I want to see you.”

“But I feel so exposed,” I said. Not to mention vulnerable. He might as well be able to see straight into my soul with the way I was laid out before him, like a feast just waiting to be eaten.

Hunter’s gaze filled with heat. “What don’t you want me to see?”

I shook my head, confused. I just wanted him to touch me. I wanted him to be inside me. I wanted him to…make love to me, I realized. I didn’t want sex; I wanted love. And that wasn’t something I knew how to ask for. Love wasn’t something I’d had a lot of. Daddy loved me. I supposed Mama had in her own way, for whatever that was worth. Hadn’t she? Did she love me now? I honestly wasn’t sure, since I’d hardly had any contact with her since Hunter and I had married. But the two of them were really the extent of my familiarity, the only experience I’d had with love. But this, whatever it was I felt for Hunter? It was big and only getting bigger, consuming me. It might swallow me whole if I let it, especially if he didn’t love me, too. The thought of telling him what I was thinking, what I was feeling, when he might not ever share that love with me, was enough to rip me into shreds.

Hunter slid a finger between my folds, my slickness easing his path. “I already know you’re wet for me, so surely you don’t need to hide that. You’ve got such a pretty pussy, Tallie. Pink and perfect.” He moved that finger up until he found my nub, tracing circles around it that had me bucking my hips toward him.

“It’s not that,” I forced out when he slowed his movements.

“Then what?”

He fell into a constant rhythm, around and around, until I couldn’t stop myself from squeezing, trying to grasp and hold on to something that wasn’t there. Hunter lowered his head and suckled my clitoris, shifting to slide his finger inside me. That was all it took. I exploded as he licked me, easing me through the reverberations of my release.

“Tell me,” he said as my orgasm subsided. “What are you trying to keep hidden?” But now his fingers were pumping inside me, working me up again. He turned his hand so his palm was facing upward, and he curved his fingers so they rubbed against a part of me I’d never known existed before. Each little touch, every sensation, brought me closer to a new crest. He kissed the inside of my thigh.

“Hunter,” I pleaded.

“You want to hide from me?” he teased.

“No.” I huffed out a breath, and the hair that had fallen into my face went flying. “I just… I need— I need to come again,” I quickly amended before admitting the truth. “But I don’t think—”

“Don’t think, baby. Just tell me. Whatever it is. Let me know what you need.”

Hunter came up over me again, staring down into my eyes while he stroked me higher and higher. He kissed me, long and deep, seeking out my clitoris with his thumb and building up the most perfect pressure that bordered on pain without falling over into that territory.

This time when I came, I shattered. It was as though everything within me broke apart, splintering into thousands of tiny shards.

Hunter broke off the kiss, raising his head and lifting his free hand to brush my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Why are you crying, baby?”

I shook my head, afraid to give it words, but it was impossible to stop them. “I need you to love me.”

He chuckled and gave me a smile just before kissing my cheek. “What did you think I was doing if not making love to you?”

But then, before I could process his words, he put on a condom and pressed his cock to my entrance, and I was lost to the sensation of being completely filled by him. It was only later, after he’d released my arms and was gently massaging them and kissing them, that I was able to think again.

What did you think I was doing if not making love to you? That was what he’d said to me. But did he equate making love with being in love, or to him was it just sex?

NOW THAT OUR relationship had turned physical, I really couldn’t seem to keep my hands off Tallie—and she didn’t appear to want me to. She was sexy and sweet, she had a heart as big as the whole fucking state, she was both responsive and giving in bed, and she was starting to ask for what she wanted without acting like it was a huge imposition. Right now, I might think she was a dream come true, if not for the fact that her arms were once again covered with bruises caused by an utter asshole.

I wasn’t satisfied with bringing her to orgasm only one or two times. For that matter, it wasn’t enough to find my own release with her only once or twice in a night. We kept coming back to each other, seeking more when we ought to be sleeping. A simple touch turned into a full round of hot, sweaty, sticky sex in no time. And her hands? She put them right where I’d encouraged her to, covering the tattoos on my ass, beckoning me for more and even taking control of the situation sometimes. She was learning what she liked, what she wanted, and just asking for it wasn’t enough; she was reaching out and grabbing the bull by the horns. That turned me on more than I could have ever imagined.

The morning after her most recent run-in with Lance, I convinced her she had to file a restraining order against him at the very least. But she didn’t consent without some serious argument. She was right that going to the police for any reason would only bring more attention down on us, and likely not the variety of attention we were supposed to be trying to get, but her safety was my bigger concern.

The man was going off the deep end, and I wasn’t on board with letting him take her along for the ride.

I got her father involved, too, since for the most part, he seemed to have Tallie’s best interests at heart.

“I always knew that little prick was trouble,” he said when I called and explained the situation. “I’m glad Tallie has you looking out for her now, son.”

He called me son again. And this time, I didn’t mind. I chose not to analyze that at the moment. Neither of us mentioned the fact that my marriage to Tallie wasn’t meant to last or that she likely wouldn’t have me looking out for her beyond the time we’d agreed upon.

He took the day off work to accompany her when she—reluctantly—filed a police report and started the process for filing the restraining order. They did all of that while I was at practice. In the afternoon, he went with her to visit Kade, waiting in the rehab center’s lobby while she was inside. I wasn’t sure what he told her mother, if anything. I had to wonder what Mrs. Roth would think, since she seemed to be under the impression that Lance Benton was practically a god.

As for me, I spent the afternoon at a security firm with John at my side, working out details for a personal bodyguard for Tallie. My job wouldn’t allow for me to be with her all the time. Hell, I would have to be out of the state—sometimes out of the country—for days at a time, maybe even longer than that. I’d be gone as often as I was at home. John had offered to stay with Tallie, but my agent wasn’t exactly security material. I felt much better trusting him to look after my business endeavors and finances than asking him to protect my wife from a crazy man.

And even though Mr. Roth was taking some time off now, he couldn’t be with her constantly, either. Besides, I honestly wasn’t convinced he was enough to protect her from Lance. The way I saw it, he hadn’t done a very good job of looking after her before I’d come along.

They were going to send some guys over for me to interview on Friday. I wanted to do it sooner, but I had the Ice Breaker coming up and another game, and there wasn’t time. Still, if we hired someone on Friday, they could get started before I had to leave with the team for our first road trip. And I would be able to feel more confident about her safety while I was gone.

That was another bone of contention between Tallie and me. She seemed to think I was going overboard with trying to protect her from Lance.

“He’s not going to try anything else,” she said that evening from across the bar, tossing some sliced cucumbers into a salad bowl. Her father had waited at my house until I returned, saying something about how he had some business to attend to with her mother as he headed out the door. She rinsed her knife and cutting board and patted them dry with a paper towel before starting work on a tomato. “He’d be stupid to, especially now that the police are going to talk to him. And there’s the restraining order.”

“Which is really just a piece of paper,” I reminded her.

“Exactly, which makes it silly that you insisted I get one.”

“You won’t think it’s silly if he does try something again, and you decide it’s time to press charges. This way you’ll have a paper trail. It’ll go a long way toward getting his ass locked up behind bars.” Which was exactly where he belonged, as far as I was concerned.

Tallie wasn’t of the same opinion. “He’s not like a common criminal,” she said, now moving on to some fresh carrots.

“Oh, isn’t he? What do you call a man who physically assaults a woman here in Oklahoma, then?” My sarcasm was back with a vengeance. I should have taken a step back from the situation, calmed down before I said something stupid as I was so apt to do.

I didn’t walk away. I stayed put, right where I was, taking a sip from my water glass.

“You’re blowing this way out of proportion, Hunter.”

“Is that so? So I’m making this into a bigger deal than it is, huh? Around here, it’s okay for a man to leave bruises on a woman—not just once, either—and everyone’s just going to brush it off? No problem here? Well, she must have been asking for it? Is that how it goes around here? No wonder all those fucking hicks had a problem with me calling them backasswards. They are, and this just proves it.”

“So I’m backasswards?” she demanded. She tossed her butcher knife on the counter so hard it rattled before settling.

“If you’re going to say stupid things, I’ll call you stupid,” I shot off.

“Now you quit being ugly, Hunter Fielding,” Tallie said, hands on her hips and eyes molten gold. “For one thing, I am not stupid. I’ve got a 4.0 GPA in college, and I was salutatorian in my high school class. Besides all that, you’re pitchin’ a fit over nothing. Lance is harmless. You’re picking at him and just making things worse.”

“How the fuck am I making things worse?”

“You don’t think getting served with a restraining order is going to rile him up? If not, you’ve never seen a gay Southern man throw a temper tantrum.”

“I may not have seen a gay Southern man throw a temper tantrum, but I’m sure as hell seeing a Southern belle throw one now.” Damn if it didn’t turn me on, too.

Tallie didn’t look like she was getting turned on, though. If anything, she was getting madder by the minute. I was glad she didn’t still have the knife in her hand—based on the look in her eyes, she might very well use it on me if she thought of it—but it was within reach. I needed to calm her down, so I moved around to her side of the bar and tried to put my arms around her waist.

She spun around and glared at me. “Don’t you be trying to get frisky with me right now, buster. I’m madder than a wet hen, so you’d better take a step back if you know what’s good for you.”

I held up my hands in surrender and backed up a few steps. “Not getting frisky.” Not that I’d be opposed to it.

“Well, you’d just better take a page from my mama’s book and keep your hands to yourself.”

“All right.” I took another step back and wondered how long it would take her to cool off and think things through rationally.

She picked up her knife again and went to town on another carrot. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” she muttered.

“So are you saying you won’t cooperate at all? No matter what, you’re going to resist the idea of letting me protect you?”

“I’m going to resist the idea of letting you make a mountain out of a molehill and exacerbate things worse than they already are,” she said, sounding petulant and dangerous all at once.

I sighed, deciding to let the subject drop for now. We clearly weren’t getting anywhere by arguing, and we were both digging in our heels, refusing to budge an inch. We ate our dinner in near silence. Afterward, we cleaned up side by side, neither of us saying much.

For a while, she sat in the living room reading a book, and I sat nearby playing mindless games on my phone, much like we had done on the beach in Hawaii. Only there, the silence between us had been comfortable and easy. Here, it was stifling.

It was still very early when she stood up, closing the cover of her tablet. “I’m tired. I think I’m going to bed,” she announced. Even though she’d spent the last two nights in my bed, she headed down the hall toward her room without another word.

“Tallie?” I called out before she disappeared completely.

She stopped and turned, wordless.

“I don’t like the idea of us going to bed mad at each other.” Letting anger like this fester was only going to cause more problems down the road.

“Well, maybe you should try not to be mad, then,” she said. Then she spun around again and disappeared.

Fuck.

THESE MEET-THE-FANS TYPES of events had always been things I simply had to suffer through. The Thunderbirds Ice Breaker wasn’t much different. If anything, it was worse than most of them because people in Tulsa didn’t know the first thing about hockey. All they knew at this point was that we’d lost our first couple of preseason games by an embarrassing margin, so therefore, we sucked.

Oh, yeah. There was one other thing. They also knew they hated me because I was an asshole. There was that.

I had a line in front of me that went out the door, but for the most part, they weren’t looking for my autograph. They wanted to tell me what they thought about my comments over the summer, that I wasn’t good enough for Tallie, that I should go rot in rehab with my brother because if he was a drugged up asshole, I must be as well, that they hoped I got cut from the team before the season started, and a thousand other things.

Like the guy in front of me now. He had a massive beer belly pressing against a Western-style shirt and bulging over an enormous belt buckle. He seemed to really want me to notice the buckle, too, if the way he was gripping it while rocking back and forth on his cowboy boots was any indication.

“Now you just listen to me real good,” the guy said. Or I thought that was what he said. I’d only thought I’d heard a true Oklahoma drawl before this moment, but Buckle Dude was putting that assumption to the test. “You git on away from Tallulah Belle before someone decides to hurt you. She’s a good Southern girl. Ain’t got no need for the likes of some loser like you bringin’ her down in life.”

I bit down on my tongue and signed a glossy five-by-seven photo from the stack the team had left on my table.

The second I handed it over to him, he ripped it in half and dropped it to the ground, rubbing it out with his toe before stomping away.

The only effect people like Buckle Dude had on me was to reinforce the fact that everything Tallie and I had been trying to do was for naught in my case. Her image was possibly being rehabilitated, but more because the people of Tulsa hated me with a blinding passion, and they wanted to protect her from me.

If only they knew I wasn’t the real threat.

Since we still hadn’t hired a bodyguard, John was sticking close to Tallie’s side throughout the event. Not only that, but I’d talked to Gary and Alan, asking if they could have the team’s security keep a close watch on her while I was otherwise occupied being berated. Once I explained about the restraining order, they had agreed. It wasn’t as good as having one of the security officers at the event focused solely on protecting her, but it was as good as I could get on such short notice.

For the most part, she’d stood off to the side with a couple of the other WAGs while I did my best to smile through having my ass repeatedly handed to me on a silver platter. I’d been searching the crowd for her every once in a while, making sure she was still where I could see her and not in any kind of trouble. I had to chuckle when I found her this time because she had a line of her own, with people who actually wanted her autograph. No doubt they were busy telling her to leave me as soon as she could get away.

The next person in my line was a young boy, probably around twelve years old, with out-of-control curly ginger hair, pimples, and braces. He had on a turquoise Thunderbirds home jersey that was easily three sizes too big for him, but maybe he’d be able to wear it for a few years before outgrowing it. If he was much like I was as a boy, he was due to hit a big growth spurt soon. I forced a smile to my lips, or I attempted to, but I feared I only managed to keep myself from grimacing as I waited to hear what he had to say.

“C-can I have y-y-y-y-y—” He stopped and turned around like he was going to walk away before he could get it out, but a man with the same hair waved an arm, encouraging him to stay and try again. The boy shrugged, and that was when I noticed his jersey had my name and number on it. He might actually be a fan, unlike almost everyone else here. So slowly it was almost painful, he spun to face me again.

This time I managed a real smile. Not because the kid might be a fan of mine but because I wanted to make him as comfortable as I could.

“Can I-I-I-I-I-I have y-y-your autograph?” he forced out.

“Sure can. Want me to sign your jersey, too, or just a picture?” I reached for the stack and took the pic from the top, scrawling my name over my image.

He grinned. “M-my jersey, too.”

I got up and walked to the front of my table, Sharpie in hand. “What’s your name, buddy?”

He turned to the side so I could sign on the white number thirty-one on his back. “Hunter, just like y-y-y-y-y-you. I p-p-play goal.”

“Is that right? You any good?” I capped the marker and patted him on the shoulder.

He turned around and grinned at me. “B-better than you. S-s-s-six goals in half a g-game? That’s pathetic.”

“Uh oh. I guess you’re gunning for my job, then, huh?”

“S-s-s-s-s-s-soon. I’m not old enough y-y-yet.”

I laughed. “Lucky for me.” I spent more time talking with Hunter and his father than I had with anyone else in my line the whole afternoon. After a few minutes of talking with them, I called over one of the Thunderbirds bigwigs and arranged to pay for a suite for Hunter’s whole peewee hockey team and some chaperones for a home game early in the season.

By the time Hunter and his father moved on, the line behind them was restless.

“It’s about time,” the next guy said. “How hard is it to ask for an autograph?”

“How hard is it for you to be a decent human being?” I replied before thinking about what I was saying. “Apparently, it’s impossible.”

“How hard is it for you to stop the damn puck?” the guy shot back.

One of the PR guys overheard me and shot a warning look in my direction. I nodded and resolved to bite my tongue. “Apparently, that’s impossible, too,” I said. Twenty more minutes and this would be over. I could get through it without ripping someone a new asshole.

I put my head down and signed my name and number on a bunch of shit. I got through that guy and the next dozen or more before I realized I hadn’t checked on Tallie in a while. I looked up, scanning the crowd.

No sign of her. Not anywhere.

I found the group of WAGs she’d been with the last time I’d found her. Tallie wasn’t among them. For that matter, I couldn’t find John, either.

But I did find Lance.

I ALMOST HAD my hands on the son of a bitch when someone grabbed me from behind and nearly tackled me to the ground to keep me from killing him.

I thrashed against their grip and I might have roared. I definitely shouted something unintelligible. That caught Lance’s attention. He’d had his head on a swivel before then, searching the crowd as if he was looking for Tallie, and he whipped his head around, eyes wide like headlights. When his gaze zeroed in on me, he yelped like a fucking dog before he took off at a run-walk in the opposite direction.

A couple of mall security guys and one of the Thunderbirds’ security team followed him, at least, but I didn’t want to leave it to them. I wanted to strangle the son of a bitch. I wanted to do to him all the things he’d done to Tallie and so much worse, but I couldn’t do a fucking thing in my current circumstances.

“Let me go, you fucking asswipe.” Not that I had a clue who had hold of me. Didn’t care.

“Calm the fuck down,” Razor grunted in my ear.

I jerked, trying to free myself, but the guy had a death-grip on me and didn’t seem inclined to loosen it. “I swear to God, Razor, if you don’t fucking—”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’m doing you a favor, whether you like it or not.”

“He’s right, Hunter,” Zee said, coming up alongside us.

The Ice Breaker crowd was starting to disperse throughout the mall, and Lance had completely disappeared into them. I couldn’t even see his head anymore. There wasn’t a chance I’d be able to catch him now. He was gone.

But so was Tallie.

“Let me go,” I repeated, calmer now but only by a few degrees. “I need to find my wife.” And get her home, where I knew she’d be safe. Now, more than before, I wished she’d pressed charges against the bastard. If she had, he might be in jail right now, and I wouldn’t have to worry about what he might have done to her. Or might still do to her if he found her first. I shuddered at the thought before reminding myself that Lance was a coward, and now he was in flight mode, not fight. He was trying to save his own ass from a vengeful Neanderthal, so she should be in the clear.

For now.

Zee narrowed his eyes, studying me, but then he nodded to Razor. “Let him go. He’s not going to do anything stupid.”

“He can’t help doing stupid things,” Razor said entirely too cheerfully, given the circumstances, but he released me. “Think he was born that way.”

I stretched my arms, making sure everything worked the way it should. “Fuck you,” I said to him. I reached for my pocket to take out my phone and call Tallie, but then I saw her come around a corner. Instead, I took off to meet her, my long strides almost keeping pace with the pounding of my pulse. John was beside her, but in my frantic state, that didn’t register as being important. All that mattered was that Tallie was there and, by all appearances, fine.

“Where were you?” I demanded the second I was close enough for her to hear without yelling. I wanted to take her by the arms and shake her almost as much as I wanted to kiss the ever-loving shit out of her, but thought better of doing either. I damned well wasn’t going to do anything to hurt her, and kissing her could wait until we were home and I could do a hell of a lot more than just kiss her. If she’d let me.

“Good gravy. Overprotective much? I just went to the bathroom.” She rolled her eyes. “John went with me. He can verify my alibi if you need that.”

The last couple of days had been miserable. She was still furious with me for trying to keep her safe, and I wasn’t about to budge on any of the things I’d insisted on. We’d been back to sleeping in separate quarters and only touching when there were cameras on us.

What had just gone down proved I’d been right, too. “I’m not being overprotective. Lance was here.”

“He wouldn’t be dumb enough—”

“He was here,” I repeated with more force in my words.

John discreetly backed away, giving us what small amount of privacy he could, considering we were in the middle of a crowded and very public mall. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a camera aimed straight for us. Of course there was. The whole purpose of having Tallie come to the event was to continue our public display of whatever the fuck they wanted us displaying. Little did they know it was going to turn into a freak show. Maybe they’d figure that one out soon, since that seemed to be happening more often than not with the two of us. We’d both brought trouble into this marriage, me with Kade and her with Lance.

I dropped my voice, hoping the guy’s mic wasn’t strong enough to pick up our conversation. “He was here, and he was looking for you. I know you don’t want to think he’s dangerous, but the guy’s unstable.”

“The only one unstable around here is you.”

“If trying to keep you safe makes me unstable, then I guess I am.”

“At least we’re in agreement on that.” Tallie crossed her arms in front of her, but the look in her eyes said she desperately wanted to plant them on her hips and give me a dose of sassy Southern whoop-ass. I could only guess she was keeping it in check because we were in public, since she hadn’t been bothering to hide that side of herself from me in private lately.

“I was just worried about you,” I said. “Is that not allowed?”

“When there’s no reason for you to worry—”

“Pardon me, ma’am,” a mall security officer cut in. “Sir,” he added, nodding in my direction. “I don’t mean to intrude on your conversation, but I needed to ask if this is the man you’ve got a protective order against. The Thunderbirds’ security guys filled us in before the event so we could all keep our eyes peeled.” He stepped back to reveal Lance being detained by a couple of other mall cops. One of them was holding a handgun carefully, as if he was trying to protect prints.

The son of a bitch had brought a gun. My knees went weak, thinking of what could have happened.

Tallie could only stare, open-mouthed and speechless.

“He is,” I answered. I dug in my pocket for my copy of the order to hand over. “He’s not supposed to be anywhere near her, but he was clearly looking for her.”

The security guard examined the paper and compared it to the ID he must have already obtained from Lance. “All right. This looks to be in order. I’ve got a call in to Tulsa PD. We’re going to hold him until they arrive.” He handed the order back to me and looked up at Tallie. “He didn’t make contact with you, ma’am? He didn’t try to talk to you or hurt you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. There were tears forming in her eyes, and she hadn’t looked away from Lance. “No, he didn’t do anything.”

“I was with her the whole time we’ve been at the mall,” John said, stepping forward again. “Other than when she was in the ladies’ room a couple of minutes ago, at least, but I think you were chasing him then. He didn’t make contact.”

“He just wanted to,” I grumbled.

The security officer took our phone numbers to turn over to the police when they arrived, and they took statements from a few of the other people who’d been around and seen what had gone down, not that anyone had understood it at the time. All they knew was I’d looked like I’d snapped and taken off after some guy, who had run away like a fucking coward. After that, he told us we could go, and the police would be in touch if they needed anything from us.

Once the rent-a-cops had hauled Lance’s scrawny ass away, a few of my teammates came over to see if we needed anything. I thanked them but sent them on their way. The only thing I needed to do was get Tallie home.

She was trembling when I put my arm around her waist, but at least she didn’t push me away. “He had a gun,” she said, her voice as shaky as her body.

I drew her closer to me, needing contact to reinforce the fact that she was all right. “Yes, he had a gun.”

“He was looking for me.”

“Yes.”

Shuddering, she buried her face against me. I wrapped her up in my arms, and I could finally breathe again, drawing in the scent of her hair and letting her take whatever strength she could from me.

When the worst of her shaking subsided, I let go so I could take her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

She nodded and walked along beside me, sliding in close and burrowing against me as we made our way out of the mall. I put an arm around her waist and held her close.

“Hunter?” she said once we were out in the parking lot.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry. You were right.” She angled her head, and I looked down into her eyes. “Just don’t get used to it.” She winked despite the fact that she was grumbling the words.

“I’ll do my best to keep my ego in check,” I said, laughing. It felt good to laugh with her again. The last couple of days had been miserable, and I didn’t want to repeat them. It wasn’t just because Tallie hadn’t been in my bed, either. I had missed a hell of a lot more than just sex. I’d missed her.

“I’m sure it’s a monumental task.” There was a hint of a smile in her voice that made my feet trip over my heart.

I hit the button on my key fob to unlock the car before opening the passenger door for her. She climbed in, but I didn’t shut the door right away.

“What?” she asked, shaking her head. “You’ve got a funny look in your eyes.”

Draping one arm on top of my car, I trailed a finger through the silky waves of her hair. She shivered again, but I knew it was a different sort of shivering than what had happened inside. Her eyes were filled with questions.

I had the answer for at least one of them. “I know you don’t want me to be overprotective of you, and I’m trying not to be. That’s hard to do, though, because I’m falling in love with you, and I can’t handle the thought of anything happening to you. Not if I can do something about it. I don’t want to take away your independence or anything like that. I just want to know that no one is hurting you. I’m not going to apologize for trying to keep you safe. Not now and not ever. You mean too much to me.”

Her jaw dropped slightly, leaving her mouth open in an O. But she didn’t say anything. Not a single fucking word.

This was a bad time to let myself get all butt-hurt over the fact that she hadn’t immediately told me she loved me, too. I shut her door and went around to the driver’s side. I fastened my belt, started the engine, and put the car in reverse. Before I could put my hand back on the wheel, Tallie took it in hers.

LANCE HAD BEEN arrested pending charges of violating the protective order and doing so while armed. For now, he was in jail, but Daddy said he’d be released on bail as soon as the next morning. And he probably wouldn’t face any significant jail time, if any. Probation was far more common in these cases. The restraining order would still be in effect, but Lance had already ignored it once. He might do so again, and it might not work out in my favor the next time.

I could still barely believe that Lance had done any of the things he’d done since the wedding. It was hard to reconcile this version of him with the man who had been in my life since I was a baby.

He’d always been demanding and authoritative, but he’d never laid a hand on me before. The change in him made me think that maybe Hunter was right about something else. Maybe Lance had gone off the deep end. Stress could change a person, and not necessarily for the better. His whole career had been built around doing whatever it took for me to become Miss USA, and now that dream had been snatched out from under him. There was a part of me that pitied him, but that part was getting smaller by the day.

Regardless of what I wanted to believe about him, the truth was that he’d bruised me on two separate occasions. Worse still, he’d shown up carrying a gun at a public event he knew I’d be attending, and his presence was in direct defiance of a court order. Maybe I hadn’t been seeing Lance clearly before, but I knew I was now. The events at the mall were more than enough to convince me Hunter was right and I needed a bodyguard.

Daddy and Hunter decided I needed two of them so one would always be with me, particularly when Hunter wasn’t around. And the when Hunter wasn’t around part was going to be here sooner than I’d like. He was leaving for a road trip with the team on Saturday and wouldn’t be back for almost a week. With all the recent events, once again, Daddy decided to take Friday off work. He came over in the morning before Hunter left for practice and was still with us all afternoon while we interviewed the various security guards.

When the last of the men headed out the front door, Daddy looked down at his cell phone. “Lance is out,” he said after scrolling through a few messages. “He took a deal. Two years of probation and court-mandated anger-management counseling. If he stays out of trouble for the probationary period, nothing goes on his record.”

“That didn’t take long,” Hunter said.

“It was just a misdemeanor and he didn’t have a prior record. The courts prefer to deal with those cases quickly and move on.” Daddy sipped from his coffee cup, setting his phone on the dining room table. “I don’t suppose either of you have seen the latest going around the news about all of this?”

I shook my head, and Hunter let out a grunting sound. We’d both been actively avoiding the news lately.

“Well, son, let’s just say they’re showing you in a slightly more sympathetic light after the events at the mall and Lance’s arrest, but that isn’t saying a lot. You two are still essentially a spectacle. A side show. I doubt you’ll be free from the gossip pages until something juicier comes along.”

And there wasn’t anything juicier than the two of us right now.

“So,” Daddy said, “let’s make a decision on these bodyguards. There’s not any time to waste.”

I sifted through the stack of files we had from each of them, complete with background checks, resumes, and photographs. There were two men who’d made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to be alone with them. I found their files and started a new pile. “These two are definite nos.”

“I liked Evan,” Daddy said, putting a hand on one of my discards. “He seemed really competent.”

“And intimidating,” I replied.

“Intimidating is good,” Hunter said.

I shook my head. “Intimidating someone who might want to hurt me is good. Intimidating me is not.”

“Good point,” he agreed. “What about this one? Dennis?” He brought forward a manila folder and flipped it open to the photo to refresh our memories.

Dennis was massive, a bodybuilder type with a bald head and covered from head to toe in tattoos. He used to travel with a rock band as part of their security team. He’d been gruff and to the point with all of his answers, but he carried around a picture of his two-year-old niece and showed her off like a giddy uncle. That made him seem a lot less scary.

“I liked him,” I said.

Daddy picked up the file and pored over the resume again before giving his go-ahead. After that, we debated the pros and cons of three other applicants before finally settling on the one named Nathan. He was the smallest and the youngest of all the men we’d seen today, but he was strong, skilled in martial arts, and he’d spent about a decade as an Army Ranger.

Hunter put in the call to the agency, and it was arranged that the two men would start work the next morning, arriving before Hunter went out of town with the team.

By the time we’d settled everything, it was late enough we needed to do something about dinner. “Are we going out tonight?” I asked Hunter. We’d wordlessly agreed to stay home the night before, but he might want to continue with our efforts now, and if he did, I needed to go put myself together so I looked presentable.

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Honestly, I think we need to forget all about that bullshit while Lance is out there.”

“Agreed,” Daddy said. “And your security guys aren’t starting until tomorrow. Play it safe for a while. Stay in, do your best to keep a low profile.”

I let out a relieved sigh. I didn’t have it in me to put on a show tonight. Then I got up and headed into the kitchen to figure out what we could eat. “Are you going to stay for dinner, Daddy?” I asked. “If Mama hasn’t already started on something—”

“Your mama and I already have plans tonight,” he said, but his voice sounded odd, like he was strangling on the words.

I closed the fridge door so I could see him. Hunter was seated at the table, trying to act like he wasn’t interested, but I knew he was taking in every word.

But it was Daddy who drew my eye. His posture was slightly hunched, and he pinched the bridge of his nose before meeting my gaze. “We split up last week. I’ve been living in a hotel, and I promised her I would come by to get the rest of my things this evening after I left work.”

“You split up?” My hands dropped to my sides, my muscles going numb. Not to mention my heart. Talk about having the rug pulled out from under my feet.

He shrugged. “I left her. It wasn’t her idea.”

“You left her a week ago, and neither of you thought to mention it to me? Not a word?”

“You’ve had a lot going on, Tallie.”

“Not too much to care about the fact that my parents are breaking up.” A hot tear spilled down my cheek and stained my blouse. “Why did you leave?”

“Honey, the only reason I stayed all these years was because I wanted to raise you, and it was the only way I would be able to be with you. You’re the best thing your mama and I ever did with our lives, but she wouldn’t let me see you if I’d left her before now. She made sure I knew it, too.” Daddy got up and put his coffee cup in the sink, and then he drew me in for a hug. “I could have fought it in court, but you know how she is—she would have made it a fight. I didn’t want to put you through that.” He set me back from him and picked up a paper towel to dab at my eyes. “But now you’re an adult. She can’t keep you from me. Plus, you’ve got a life of your own.” Daddy angled his head over to Hunter, who was clearly still absorbing every single word between us. “I don’t have to worry about protecting you from her and Lance by myself anymore. I’ve got help with that.”

I sniffled, trying to absorb everything he’d thrown at me. “But if she would have given you such a fight over me when I was a kid, why hasn’t she bothered with me at all lately?”

Thinking back, I couldn’t recall having more than a few passing conversations with my mother since Hunter and I had gotten married. Every time we had talked, she’d sneered about Hunter and pointed out all the ways I was failing to repair my image according to her standards. I hadn’t wanted to talk to her about any of that, so I’d ended those conversations quickly, and it hadn’t been long before she’d stopped calling at all. Then I’d stopped attempting to talk to her because every conversation had devolved into her berating me over something or other, so we hadn’t spoken in weeks.

Daddy sighed—a heavy, weighted sigh—and he half shrugged. “Tallie, I don’t want to speak badly about your mother to you, but you’re an adult, so you can recognize I’m not saying these things to make her look bad or anything like that. I’m only telling you because you deserve to know the truth.”

That sounded ominous. I went back to the table and sat down beside Hunter, not trusting my legs to carry the weight of whatever my father had to say. Hunter took my hand and gave me a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m ready,” I said. “I can take it.” Only I wasn’t sure I was ready, and I was almost positive I couldn’t handle whatever it was.

Daddy sat down across from me. “You know your mama was in pageants before we got married, right?” After I nodded, he kept going. “Well, she’d been working her whole life toward becoming Miss USA just like you did. And, the same as you, she made a big mistake just before she finally got her shot. She got pregnant. With you.”

I shook my head. “You got her pregnant before you two married? I thought she decided to quit pageants because she wanted to marry you.”

“I didn’t get your mama pregnant. That was another man, one who your grandparents decided was nothing but trouble. He took off, anyway, as soon as he found out you were on the way. So your mama had lost her crown, and then she was pregnant and all alone in the world. Her parents insisted she had to get married to some respectable man in the community, and I was the chosen one.”

“The chosen one? You mean you never loved her?”

“It was a lot like what happened with you and Hunter, actually,” Daddy said, waving his hand between the two of us. “Only a lot different. Your granddaddy had done me a huge favor a few years before, one that gave me my career.”

Gave him his career? I couldn’t imagine what sort of favor Granddaddy could have done for Daddy that would deserve that kind of praise.

“I owed him one in return,” Daddy said, “and he called it in. The only thing was that no one told me in advance that Janice was pregnant. I didn’t find out until one day, a month into our marriage, when she asked me to take her to the hospital for an abortion.”

“An abortion?” Hunter repeated. He tensed up, his hand tightening over mine.

I couldn’t do anything but listen. My whole body had gone numb. Mama had wanted to abort me. Daddy wasn’t my father. Everything I thought I knew about the world was caving in on me, and it was all I could do to keep breathing. The sound of blood rushing through my head reminded me that the world hadn’t actually come to an end, that I was still very much alive.

Daddy nodded, calm as could be. “And since we’d never consummated the marriage to that point, I knew you weren’t mine. At least not biologically. I didn’t care about that, though. We’d agreed to marry, that it was to be in name only, but we were going to be married. Unlike with the two of you, we’d never set an end date. I’d agreed to marry her thinking it would be forever, or at least until she decided to end it, so she was my one and only chance to have a baby, the way I saw it. I begged and pleaded with her not to have the abortion, to give birth to you so we could have a child and be a real family. She only agreed to it when I told her I’d buy her the house she wanted and promised she could keep it no matter what happened between us.”

“That godawful house was more important to her than Tallie was?” Hunter roared.

I patted the back of his hand, hoping to calm him down. “It doesn’t matter.” The truth was, I’d always known I wasn’t important to Mama, at least not on my own. My becoming Miss USA was important to Mama, but I never had been. Not truly.

Only now it was starting to all come together, to really make sense. How odd that I was the one comforting Hunter when it was my own mother who had never loved me.

“It does matter,” he grumbled. “You matter.”

“I bought the house,” Daddy said. “Tallie was born, and I fell in love. I fell so head-over-heels in love with you that I knew I would do whatever was necessary to be sure I could always be in your life. And it wasn’t long before that decision would come into play. Your mother decided you were the reason she hadn’t been able to compete for Miss USA—never mind the fact that she’d been an adult who’d made her own choices—and she got it in her head that if she couldn’t follow through with that, then you could in her stead. That became her life’s goal, and there was nothing I could do to change her mind. What I thought was best for you didn’t matter, she said, because I wasn’t your biological father. She could leave me, keep the house, keep you with her, and prevent me from being in your life. So I stayed. And I did everything I could to love you the way I knew she never could.”

“You did,” I said, smiling through tears. “You’ve always loved me and taken care of me. You’ve always made sure I knew there were more important things in life than pageants.”

“Well, I always hoped it would be enough but feared it wouldn’t be. But now, you’re out from under her control. You’ve got Hunter, and I hope I’m right about this, but it seems like maybe the two of you are hitting it off. Maybe it won’t have to be just the year you originally agreed to.”

“That’s what I’m hoping, too, sir,” Hunter said, and my heart flipped.

Daddy nodded. “Good. Good. And you’ve still got me, if you want me.”

I didn’t answer him. Not with words, at least.

I got up, walked around the table, and kissed him on the cheek.

“I guess I can take that as a yes?” he said, brushing my tears away just like he’d done since I was a little girl. He’d always been the one to comfort me when I cried, to hold me when I was sick or hurt, and to make me laugh when I was sad.

“You’re still my daddy,” I said. He would always be my daddy.

A while later, he got up and left to remove the rest of his things from the house, like he’d promised Mama he would do. After I’d closed the front door behind him, Hunter slipped both his arms around my waist from behind, snuggling me close to him.

“You okay?”

I nodded, even though I was anything but okay. I was a wreck. But somehow, I was calm about it. Did it hurt to know that my mother had never wanted me, that she’d just been using me all along to get what she’d wanted? Yes, but not as much as it should. Maybe because there was some part of me that had always known that to be the case.

“You’re a really bad liar, you know that?” Hunter said.

I laughed. “Yeah, I know.” I turned around in his arms and hugged him, resting my head on his chest.

“I meant what I said. I want this to be real between us. A real marriage, not just a show we’re putting on for the rest of the world to see for a year. Because I love you. Maybe your mother never did, and so maybe it’s hard for you to understand what love is, or what it should be. But I love you.”

I tightened my arms around him, trying to draw myself inside him. “Hunter?”

“Hmm?” He sounded nervous.

“I need you to know something.”

He tensed up, as if bracing himself for another big revelation like Daddy had just put us through. “What’s that?”

And maybe, in a sense, what I needed to tell him was a big revelation. Just one of a different sort.

“I need you to know that I love you, too. That I’ve been falling in love with you for a long time, but I was afraid you wouldn’t love me back because most people in my life haven’t loved me. Like Mama. She never loved me. I thought she did, but I realize now I was wrong. But you know what?”

“What?” he murmured, his chin resting on the top of my head and some of the tension leaving his muscles.

“I know you love me. I believe it. I know how to tell the difference because my parents showed me.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. We just stood there in the hall, holding tightly to each other. But then he took a deep breath and kissed the top of my head. “Thank God for that.”

I DOUBTED I would like leaving Tallie behind at this point even if Lance wasn’t out of jail and acting like a lunatic. But considering that was exactly what was happening, I had a hard time getting my ass to the airport with the team the next day.

But I went.

Tallie had her father, and both Dennis and Nathan were now officially on the job. She wasn’t alone, and it didn’t hurt that she was now more willing to accept that Lance had officially gone off the deep end and was out to hurt her, so she was far more likely to be aware and cautious if and when she went out.

So I left.

And it was torture.

I talked to her as often as possible while the Thunderbirds were on the road, usually multiple times a day, and definitely every night before I went to bed. I needed to hear her voice and reassure myself that she was all right or else I couldn’t get to sleep.

I talked to her father on multiple occasions, and to her bodyguards at least twice a day, too. They filled me in on anything suspicious, even the tiniest things that neither she nor I were likely to notice, such as unusual cars prowling the neighborhood. Dennis and Nathan took it a lot further than simply telling me there’d been an unfamiliar vehicle around, too. They ran the plates and did whatever background checks they could on the registered owners. I rested a bit easier at night knowing they were keeping an eye on her.

No matter how many times I talked to Tallie and her security team, though, I was a cranky bastard any time I was away from her. It was partially due to the simple fact that I missed her, but worrying about her safety was the far bigger factor in my moodiness. The guys complained about my PMS, said they hoped it was due to me being a newlywed and I’d eventually move past it because I was impossible to deal with. I told them I couldn’t make any promises about that and I might just stay a sullen bastard forever.

Weeks went by without any other reminders of Lance and his vendetta against Tallie, though, and we almost forgot about him entirely.

Almost. There was always the thought of him lurking at the back of my mind, but soon he was no longer front and center.

With the season underway, it didn’t take long before my life was overwhelmed with responsibilities surrounding the team. We started the regular season with an abysmal record of eight straight losses in October, including one against my former team, the Portland Storm. I’d never seen so many pucks get by me in such a short amount of time.

I’d been sure we would be horrible, and we absolutely were. The team was slow to catch on to Spurs’s system, and we were all still getting to know each other and how to play together. It didn’t help that only two of our top six forwards would legitimately be considered top six forwards on any other team, and the two guys who made up our best defensive pairing were far better suited as a third and fourth D. Admittedly, some of those guys had the potential to grow into the type of players who would suit their current roles, but looking at us now, it didn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. To call us mediocre would be a gross exaggeration. At this point, we didn’t even belong in this league.

We couldn’t keep the puck out of our own net, and we could hardly score. The good part about that was that it meant I wasn’t experiencing too many heart attacks every time the fucking war drums started up in home games. The bad part about it was that, instead of trying to get their shit together and play like a team, almost every guy on the ice was trying to prove his worth by fighting.

It was the same kind of shit you’d expect to see in the minor leagues. When a guy couldn’t hack it, he thought he could increase his value in the eyes of the decision makers by standing up for his teammates or some other shit like that, regardless of whether there was any good reason for the fight. Hell, even Zee—a guy who was typically as coolheaded and businesslike as possible out on the ice—fell prey to it in a game against the Blackhawks, picking a fight with Andrew Shaw. Yeah, Shaw was always willing to drop his gloves, but that wasn’t the point. There was no reason our captain needed to get into it just to spark the team. But he did.

We finally earned our first win of the season in a home game in November against the Oilers. Yeah, the same Oilers who were only one step ahead of us in the standings. If we’d been any other team in the league, that one was a game we’d simply expect to win and then move on.

Life wasn’t very good on the hockey front, which was exactly what I’d expected. At home, things were drastically better.

For one thing, Tallie and I had decided that no matter what the team and my mother-in-law might want, we weren’t going to play their game anymore. We went out when we wanted to, but we weren’t going to put ourselves on display. If the gossip pages wanted to focus on us, they were welcome to, but we weren’t intentionally giving them fodder any longer. Because of that, we were spending a hell of a lot more of our time at home, enjoying each other and truly getting to know one another.

She was still visiting Kade almost every day. She kept giving me updates on him, reporting on his progress. The program he was in was designed to last twelve weeks, so he wasn’t getting out any time soon, but he was making progress. I knew that for a fact because I’d given in and accompanied her to see him a couple of times. Kade was still surly and sarcastic when I saw him, but I would expect no less.

But there were definite improvements. I was beginning to see hints that the brother I remembered from when we were growing up together might still be in there, that maybe he wasn’t fully lost to addiction. There were just enough of those hints that Tallie even had me hoping for the best again, something I’d thought to be well in my past. In fact, there were enough improvements that I’d been thinking about asking Carrie to bring Kaylee down for a visit, after talking it over with Kade’s doctors.

The group of WAGs here were a lot different from the ones I’d been around in Portland, for the most part. This group wasn’t close. There was no cohesiveness, no matter how much Dana and Tallie tried to wrangle them. They were still putting together some plans for an annual charity event, but the women were all bitching and fighting about it instead of working together as a team. Tallie was getting close to Dana and a couple of the others, but for the most part, she was keeping her distance. I couldn’t say I blamed her, and in fact, I was glad she wasn’t getting too involved with most of them. The last thing she needed while she was finally starting to assert herself and make her life what she wanted it to be instead of what her mother had decided it should be was to get tied up in a bunch of cat fights.

Tallie had started her cooking class and was using me and her security guards as taste testers for her homework. I loved coming home and finding her puttering in the kitchen, hair drawn back and some cute apron or another tied around her waist. I’d bought her a few early on with sayings like “Requires Constant Supervision” or “Dinner is Ready When the Alarm Goes Off.” While I was gone on a road trip, she’d apparently bought a few of her own. Now she was wearing ones that said things like “Caution: Extremely Hot” and “I Keep the Best Snacks Under My Apron.”

She had to have a massive stash of aprons hidden somewhere because every time I saw her in one, it was new. I started to look forward to discovering what her apron would tell me, and I bought her more every time I saw something interesting when the team was on the road.

One day in late fall, when I returned home from morning practice and a pregame meal with the guys, I found Dennis monitoring things from his car in front of the house. I waved to him on my way in. Good thing he wasn’t inside or I would have had to kill him, because I walked through the garage door to discover Tallie in nothing but an “I Don’t Have a Dirty Mind, I Have a Sexy Imagination” apron and a skimpy piece of lingerie. She spun around, whisk and bowl in hand and a sexy grin on her face. She raised a brow.

“Want a taste?” she asked, holding out the whisk toward me. It was covered in whipped cream, but the only thing I wanted a taste of was her.

I moved in to kiss her, but she flicked her wrist and sent some of her whipped cream flying from the end of the whisk. It landed on my nose. She laughed.

“Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?” I dragged a hand down my face to clean it off. Some ended up on my lips. I licked. It tasted amazing, but not as good as she would once I got my hands on her.

“Yes.”

I made another move to grab her, but she was faster than me. She dropped the whisk, dug up a handful of whipped cream from the bowl, and smeared it all over my face. I kissed her anyway, both of us laughing as we ended up covered in the stuff.

It didn’t take me long to get her naked and on the counter, my head between her legs as I got a taste of what I really wanted.

She’d always been responsive, but lately her sensitivity was off the charts, especially when I played with her breasts. I must have been learning better how she reacted to my touch, pushing all the right buttons. Either that or she was becoming more aware of her own body and the things she liked. It had to be one of the two because I couldn’t come up with any other good reason for the way she responded to my efforts these days.

She came twice with me eating her pussy before I turned my attention to those amazing breasts. I kneaded one and suckled the other, alternating my efforts back and forth between them. It didn’t take long before she was crying out and climaxing again, from nothing more than that.

We moved the party to the bathroom and made love in the shower, and then she came to lie in bed with me during the time I should have been taking my pregame nap. Needless to say, that day there wasn’t a lot of napping going on.

That night, I earned my second win of the season. I told Tallie her sexy whipped cream act had been behind my performance, hoping she’d take that as a hint. Not that she needed a hint. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

Not long after that, the team left for a brief road trip with stops in Minnesota and Winnipeg. I got my third win of the season against the Jets before we came home a few days later.

“Who’d you bang during naptime this afternoon?” Tallie teased me when I called her after that game.

“Just me and my hand and a picture of you,” I replied. “What did you make today?”

“Brownies. Kade swore he could smell them on me when I visited him this afternoon.”

“Too bad you can’t take him any. He’s always been a sucker for chocolate.”

“That was probably torture for him, then,” she said.

“Maybe. You know, Kaylee’s just like him when it comes to chocolate.” I wasn’t sure why I’d said that. It only served to bring the topic up again at a time when we’d been having a good conversation, otherwise.

But Tallie didn’t turn the discussion around on me. “I’ll have to remember that whenever I finally meet her,” she said. “These came out really good. I’m sure I can duplicate it.”

We kept going from there, talking about life and all the things that had gone on in our day, eventually making our way back to the flirty, sexy, bedroom talk we’d started with. It always seemed to come back to the sexy talk lately, and I was more than all right with that. In fact, the longer we’d been together, the more I wanted her, and it was about a hell of a lot more than just sex. I wasn’t just falling in love with Tallie. Not anymore. I was one hundred percent in love with her, and I knew there was no going back for me.

I’d told her once, in front of her father, that I wanted our marriage to be more of a permanent union than the original year we’d agreed to. She still hadn’t given me any sense of where she stood on that other than telling me she loved me, too. I needed more than that, and I had a plan formulating in my mind for how I would go about getting a firm answer about our future.

It would have to wait for a bit, though. I needed more time so I could work out all the details. In the meanwhile, life kept going as usual.

Following our first practice after returning to Tulsa, Razor trailed me to my place. He wanted to look at a few houses in the area since he still hadn’t bothered to buy a place of his own. He’d been living in various local hotels the whole season, completely moving out every time we went on the road and moving in again—always in a different hotel—when we returned. That got old fast, although it had apparently been working for him in terms of getting women to date him and then easily moving on when he was done. And he was always done a lot sooner than they were. Setting down roots and buying a house might slow his roll, but that would probably be better for him in the long run.

When we came through the door, Tallie turned around, smiling. This time, she was wearing an apron that said “Me” across her breasts and “Mini Me” over her abdomen. She blushed when she saw us. I wasn’t sure if it was because she hadn’t been expecting anyone else to be there for her announcement or if she was nervous about what I thought.

I was too stunned to figure out what I thought. “You’re pregnant?” She was on the pill, and we’d been diligent about using condoms ever since that first night. Nothing was completely effective, though, other than abstinence. We’d both been aware of that before we’d ever taken our relationship to a physical level. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that she was pregnant, but it had stolen my ability to think beyond, “You’re serious?”

Tallie nodded, one hand on her belly. “I didn’t want to tell you until I was absolutely positive.”

“You’re positive? Really positive? How long have you suspected?” A thousand other questions raced through my head, keeping my feet rooted to the floor and my jaw gaping open.

Tallie being pregnant could definitely explain her added sensitivity that I’d been noticing. But she hadn’t started to show at all, and I hadn’t noticed any other symptoms that would give her away. And since I was out on the road as often as I was home, it would be easy for me to not realize she’d missed her time of the month.

She ducked her head. “A couple of weeks? I did a home test, but I didn’t want to trust that. I wanted to see the doctor first.”

“That’s…” Amazing didn’t even begin to cover it. I was completely lost for words.

“Good job,” Razor said, pushing past me to kiss her on the cheek. He rolled his eyes in my direction. “Maybe he’ll be less cranky as a daddy than he is as a newlywed.”

“Not likely,” she said, chuckling. “You know babies wake up at all hours of the night, right?”

I loved listening to her tease my teammate even if I was the butt of the joke. It meant she was starting to feel at home being part of my life. It gave me hope that she would agree when I asked her to make our marriage permanent.

And I had to get her to agree to that now. Tallie was having my baby, and I’d be damned if we weren’t going to be one big, happy, slightly dysfunctional family.

I HADN’T INTENDED to tell anyone but Hunter that I was pregnant, especially since I wasn’t positive how he would take the news, but since Razor had been there, we decided to go ahead and fill in the rest of the team.

Hunter was planning to tell the guys before a home game against the Rangers, so I’d decided to tell the other wives I was close to after the game—another loss—while we waited for our husbands to join us in the wives’ room. Not that there were many women up there who would give me the time of day, since according to most of them I was nothing more than an ignorant Southern belle who didn’t know the first thing about the holy grail that was hockey.

But they weren’t all like that. Dana Zellinger, Christiane Ackerman, Arianne Duclair, and I had formed a bond. Dana and Christiane were both mothers, too, and Dana was currently pregnant, so I knew they would be a lot of help for me as I navigated the waters of my first pregnancy without the aid of my own mother.

I still hadn’t talked to her after everything Daddy had revealed to me. She hadn’t made any effort, and neither had I. Why would I want to talk to a woman who had only been using me to get what she wanted my entire life? A woman who’d used me as leverage against my father, who was the only person in my life for years who had loved me just as I was? I couldn’t come up with a good reason, so I decided it wasn’t worth my time to make contact, not even for pregnancy commiseration or advice.

The four of us settled into our usual corner of the room, well away from the snooty women who only wanted to gossip. Christiane’s teenagers were looking after Dana’s toddlers—“Practice,” she’d informed us, since her oldest had gotten his seventeen-year-old girlfriend pregnant—so we would hopefully have a bit of uninterrupted talking time before our guys were ready to collect us.

I was just about to fill them in when there was a commotion at the door leading into the corridor.

We all turned to look out of curiosity. I’d just barely gotten a glimpse of Lance’s face, eyes wild, features contorted with rage, gun raised, when Nathan flew at him. A shot rang out. Dennis rushed at me, knocking me to the ground.

There were screams. Lots of screams. My vision blurred.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! All the blood.” It was Dana.

Something crashed. Might have been me. No, wait. I was already down. Must have been something else.

Couldn’t breathe. Chest hurt.

Someone took my hand. Big. Warm. Held on tight.

Everything else was cold.

I wanted Hunter.

Then there was nothing.

SPURS CAME BACK into the locker room just before I was about to leave. “Listen up!” he said loud enough that everyone would hear him over the regular postgame chatter. It took a few moments for the talk to die down, but gradually everyone realized something wasn’t right. The look on Spurs’s face was one of calm panic, if there was such a thing. The other coaches and the trainers filed in alongside him, each of them bearing a worried expression.

I dropped back down to the bench at my stall.

“Something’s happening in the building,” he said. “Not sure what, exactly, but security is locking us down in here until further notice. No one’s leaving this room until we’re given the all-clear.”

“What about our families?” Zee asked immediately. “Our wives and kids? Are they being locked down, too?”

“Gary’s doing everything he can as we speak to be sure they’re safe.”

That wasn’t good enough for me. Tallie wasn’t right by my side, and Lance was still out there…somewhere. I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. I hadn’t thought about him in a while. He’d been keeping a low profile, but he was always lurking at the back of my mind. Spurs was still talking, filling everyone in on whatever he could, but I pulled my cell out of my pocket and called Tallie’s number.

It went straight to voice mail.

Maybe her battery was dead. She got really bad service in the BOK Center. It was always low when we left games. That was probably it. I was determined to convince myself that was the only reason her phone would be off.

Razor caught my eye from his stall, directly across the room from me. He raised a brow in question. He knew all the shit that had gone down with Lance. All of the guys knew some of it, but Razor knew everything. For some reason, I was starting to like the asshole and tell him things, not that I could explain why. He had a habit of growing on people.

I shook my head. He’d know what that meant.

“Zee,” Razor shouted, interrupting whatever Spurs was saying.

Everyone turned to stare at him.

“Call Dana. Hunter can’t get Tallie to answer.”

Zee nodded and dug out his phone, and one of the coaches moved to turn on the big-screen TV at the front of the room.

“So to sum up what’s going on,” a reporter said as they showed a shot of the arena from outside, “shots have been fired at the BOK Center following tonight’s Thunderbirds game.”

My blood froze in my veins.

“We’re still working on getting all the details. They’re coming in piecemeal, but here’s what we do know. One or more gunshots were fired in one of the luxury suites or another room on that level. There is at least one injury, but we don’t know more than that at this time. We don’t know the severity of the injury. Police and arena security are working together to determine if the one shooter they have in custody is the only shooter or if they were working with someone else, and while that is being determined, the entire building is under lockdown.”

Zee looked at me and shook his head. “She’s not answering. Tried her twice.”

More of the guys took out their phones and started dialing their wives.

Gary Asher came into the locker room from the direction of the coaches’ offices, his expression grim. “It was in the wives’ room.”

That was all I needed to hear. I was on my feet and barreling through the door the second he confirmed my fears, half the guys following right behind me. A few of the coaches tried to stop us, but I wasn’t stopping until I was sure Tallie was safe or Lance Benton was dead, whichever happened first.

An arena security guard tried to stop us, but there was only one of him and a lot of us, and he wasn’t armed. We kept going straight past him. I skidded to a stop and hit the button for the elevator, but I didn’t have the patience to wait for it. Took off running again and found the stairs. I took them two at a time. Turned the corner just as a paramedic team arrived on the scene, coming off the elevator. Good thing I didn’t wait.

Cops and arena security guys were everywhere, blocking the entrance to the wives’ room. No sign of Tallie or any of the other guys’ wives. None of the kids, either. I tried to push my way through with the paramedics, but some cop put a hand on my chest.

“You can’t go in there.”

“I just need to know if my wife’s all right.”

“Hunter!”

It was a familiar voice coming from somewhere in the middle of the crush of bodies, but it wasn’t Tallie’s. I turned to find Nathan pushing his way through to me.

“Tell me she’s okay.” I was panting, but I didn’t care.

He didn’t immediately reassure me. Fucking hell. Kept looking at me like he was assessing how sane I was right now.

“Tell me,” I repeated. I could feel my teammates huddling in close behind me, as worried as I was.

After what felt like an eternity, he nodded. “He shot her.”

Everything inside me exploded, but Nathan kept talking before I could do anything stupid.

“I tackled him and deflected it enough that it just grazed her on the outside of the shoulder. Lots of blood, but nothing too serious. Dennis might have bruised her ribs in getting her down, but I doubt they’re broken. She passed out, probably from the shock. And one of the other wives fainted, too, when it all went down.”

Grazed her shoulder. I repeated it over and over in my mind, hoping it would calm me, but instead it only made me angrier. At Lance.

At myself, too, as if I could have done something more to protect her. She was my fucking wife. To have and to hold and all that shit, and to motherfucking protect.

“Who?” one of the guys behind me asked, reminding me it wasn’t just Tallie who’d been in danger this time. Lance had fucking brought a gun to an arena filled with thousands of people, taken it to a room full of our wives and girlfriends and kids. Right now, prison didn’t seem good enough for him.

“Tall, blond, athletic build,” Nathan said, looking at the other guys, his eyes scanning them. “Couple of kids and pregnant.”

Zee let out a string of expletives.

“She’s all right,” Nathan assured him, not that anything would enough to make him stop worrying until he could see her for himself. At least not if he was anything like me. I was beginning to think that this whole being in love with someone business changed a man, and not always for the better. Nathan crossed his arms. “Fell when she fainted, but one of the other women caught her and helped lower her to the ground. Scared the kids. The paramedics are talking to her about going in for a few tests, but there’s nothing serious there.”

Nothing serious, my ass.

“There’s something else,” Nathan said, meeting my eyes again.

I shook my head. What the fuck else could there be?

“Lance is in custody. They’ve already taken him to the station to book him. But he wasn’t alone.”

Now I was really confused, and I was positive it showed on my face.

“Janice Roth was hanging around. When I knocked Lance to the ground and kicked the gun away, she rushed out and grabbed it, pointing it at me. She’s in custody, too.”

“Tallie’s mother? But why…”

Nathan shook his head. “Not sure I follow it, either, but they’ll untangle it all in the trial. Based on the way those two were squawking at each other, it seems she was the mastermind behind everything he’s been doing. Seemed to think she could get more out of Mr. Roth in the divorce, or maybe convince him to come back to her, if she could convince him Tallie was better off back under her control now and for the foreseeable future. She wanted Tallie away from you and back with her, and that was that.”

Fat chance that would happen. Ever.

But then the group of cops blocking the doorway shifted, and the paramedics came through with a gurney. This time, I pushed my way through and didn’t let anyone stop me until I got to Tallie’s side. Dennis was with her, holding tight to her hand. I took it from him, and she turned her head toward me.

She smiled. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” I brushed the hair away from her face and let my hand rest on her cheek. “You’ve got to stop scaring me like this.”

“Yeah, I think I’m at my limit,” she joked. The fact that she could make a joke at a time like this made me breathe easier.

One of the paramedics made an impatient sound. “You coming with us? We have to move.”

“I’m coming.” There wasn’t a chance in hell I was letting her out of my sight for a good long while.

THE DOCTORS HAD run Tallie through a barrage of tests and stitched her up, and they had determined she was in good enough shape to go home.

The bullet had only grazed her shoulder, like Nathan had told me. She’d lost quite a bit of blood, and she would have to rehab the shoulder once everything healed, but she should be fine. None of her ribs had been broken when Dennis had flattened her to the ground, but she was a little sore there. Overall, though, she was fine, and so was the baby.

So now, we were finally home. It was a huge relief to have Tallie where I could watch her. Touch her. Her father had spent a few hours at the police station, gathering as much information as he could, before joining us to see with his own eyes that she was all right. Good thing he was a lawyer. They were a hell of a lot more likely to give him details than me.

The three of us had gotten together around the dining room table, but Mr. Roth got up and went into the kitchen to fix a pot of coffee. Made sense, because there wasn’t a chance in hell any of us would be getting to sleep any time soon. The adrenaline was going to make sure of that. When it was ready, he fixed us each a cup and brought them to the dining room table, taking a seat on Tallie’s other side. He squeezed her hand.

“You ready for some news you might not want to hear?” he asked her.

She nodded. I had to admire her courage, since I had no doubt the news her father was about to divulge had to do with Mrs. Roth and how she’d been involved with every aspect of Lance’s attacks. It couldn’t be easy to hear that her own mother wanted her hurt.

He let out a weary sigh. “Your mother was paying Lance to scare you.”

She blinked back a couple of tears, but she honestly didn’t seem too surprised by this news.

“She was determined to convince you that your marriage to Hunter wasn’t what you needed to do. She wanted you back under her thumb, and she thought if you got scared enough, you’d go running back to her—because nothing like this had ever happened on her watch. Lance was willing to go along with it because he was out a job otherwise. What he’d said to you about not being able to get other work? That was absolutely true, and he really was angry and desperate. Your mother recognized that, and she decided to use it to her advantage.”

“But what did she honestly think would come of it?” Tallie asked, bewilderment in her tone, which was completely understandable.

“She thought that Lance could scare you enough that you would see the error of your ways and come back to her. She thought she could convince you to divorce Hunter and sign on for a reality show, and then she could continue to reap the benefits you would bring to her. And with you under her control again, she thought I would come back to her. To have access to you. She knows I love you, and I would do anything for you. She was going to use that against me.”

“But why would she even want you back?” Tallie was shaking, likely more from rage than anything. “She never loved you.”

“No, but she does love money, and she loves image. If I follow through with divorcing her, she thinks I’ll be ruining her image.”

“She’s done a decent job of that, herself,” I said.

Mr. Roth’s lips twitched up in a half smile. “That she has, son. But the good thing about all of this is that now it’s all out in the open. She’s going to face charges right alongside Lance. The truth is going to come out, and you won’t ever have to worry about her having any control over you or your life again.”

“No, you won’t,” I said, agreeing. “You’re in control of your own life. You’ve taken that control.”

Tallie blinked back tears. “Have I really? I mean, all I’ve done is move from her house to yours. I’m not in control of anything.”

“Aren’t you?” I raised a brow. “You’re free to leave anytime you want, but I hope to hell you won’t. You’ve been deciding for yourself how to spend your time, taking cooking classes and devoting a lot of time and energy into making friends with my brother. You can do whatever you want to do, whatever you set your mind to. You’ve got friends you can count on. If you want to finish your degree, you can. There’s nothing stopping you but yourself.”

A wonky smile crept to her lips, like she wanted to beam at me but was afraid to let herself show a bit of pride. In the end, she couldn’t stop it, though. “I guess you’re right. I just hadn’t thought of it that way.”

Mr. Roth winked at me, which gave me an idea. He’d been filling us in on so much lately, I decided it was time we filled him in.

“You think he can handle a bit of news, too?” I asked Tallie, nudging my head in her father’s direction.

“Oh.” She blushed and nibbled on her lower lip, which made me think all sorts of inappropriate thoughts I had no business thinking in front of her father. But then she laughed and turned to him. “I guess now’s as good a time as any to let you know you’re going to be a grandfather.”

In the months that I’d known him, I’d always thought Mr. Roth to be the most unflappable man of my acquaintance. Nothing fazed him. Nothing made him lose his composure. We’d finally found the crack in his armor, though.

He started crying and laughing at the same time, and he pulled Tallie in for a gentle hug. Once he’d soaked her shirt, he let her go and looked at me, and then he did the same thing to me. I patted him on the back, not sure how to react to his sudden show of affection.

Tallie got up and went into the bathroom, bringing back a box of tissues. Her father ripped out a couple and used them to dry his eyes and blow his nose. Once he’d finally gotten himself under control again, he sat back in his chair and looked from one of us to the other.

“So,” he said, his voice still rough from crying. “What’s she going to call me?”

“Who says we’re having a girl?” I asked, laughing.

“I do,” he replied, cool as a cucumber. He met my eyes, dead on. “And I promise you, you’ll be overjoyed when she arrives. There’s nothing like having a little girl to love and protect. So what’s she going to call me?”

“What do you want her to call you?” Tallie asked.

“How about Gramps? Pops?”

He kept throwing out suggestions, going from the relatively normal to the downright absurd, keeping us all in stitches. For the first time in a long time, I let myself fully relax. It struck me, watching Tallie and her father together, that even though I’d fought tooth and nail against the idea of marrying her only a few short months ago, I wouldn’t change anything now. I wanted her to be my forever, and that made everything we’d been through worth it in the end.

“DON’T BE NERVOUS,” Hunter said. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over the back of my hand, but it wasn’t enough. There was no point in denying I was nervous as hell.

That didn’t stop me from saying, “I’m not nervous.”

“Mm-hmm.” There was a heck of a lot of sarcasm in that hum of assent.

We were sitting on a bench at baggage claim, waiting on not only Hunter’s parents but also Carrie and Kaylee to arrive. They were all coming down to celebrate Christmas with us. Daddy was going to come over, too. I was cooking a big meal for all of us. That should be the part I was most anxious about, in all honesty—cooking a holiday meal for that many people—but I couldn’t help being worried about other aspects of it, too. I was scared to death to meet Carrie, and the thought of meeting Hunter’s niece gave me heart palpitations, even if the bigger reason they were all coming to Tulsa was so Kaylee could visit her father at Horizons.

The thing was, I wanted to be part of Hunter’s family, and regardless of the fact that I was pregnant with his baby, I was almost positive that they thought of me as a temporary part of his life. I didn’t want anything to do with temporary. I wanted permanence, and I wanted them to accept me that way.

Being accepted just as I was would probably always be something I struggled to believe, thanks to everything Mama and Lance had done to me over the years. I was getting better at it, but I doubted I’d ever completely get rid of their voices whispering in the back of my mind that I wasn’t good enough. They were getting quieter, though. That was a huge improvement.

After that night when Lance had shot me, the news had blown up about the entire situation. It wasn’t just the gossip pages following us anymore but the mainstream media. It was on the front page of every paper, the cover of every magazine, the top of every news site. The best part of it all, though, was that the insanity surrounding Lance and Mama took the heat off me and Hunter. People seemed to realize there were things a lot more important than me losing my crown, and they started to give Hunter a break about the things he’d said over the summer. Everyone decided we could give up our efforts at turning the tide of opinion that had followed us around for months. All those people who’d been out to get us had finally decided to bury the hatchet. They’d moved on, so now we could, too.

I nestled into Hunter’s side, soaking up his warmth to fend off the chill coming through the sliding doors behind us. A cold snap had blown in last night, and I hadn’t been prepared for it. That was always a possibility, living in this part of the country. You couldn’t count on the weather to behave the way you expected it to. Hunter almost always behaved the way I expected him to, though, which was something I took comfort in.

He leaned back and reached into the pocket of his coat. “Before they get here…”

I glanced up at him, trying to figure out what he thought he could throw at me at the last second. I was already freaking out enough without him adding anything to the equation that I hadn’t already planned for.

“Hunter,” I said in a warning voice. Surprises were the last thing I needed right now, and he darn well knew it.

“It’s nothing bad,” he said, laughing. “At least, I hope you won’t take it that way.”

Now I was really curious.

“It’s just that I never really proposed to you. I never got down on a knee and gave you a ring and professed my undying love or anything like that. I just handed you a box, and that was that.”

“Oh.” I wanted to say more, but words were definitely failing me.

“So here’s the thing.” He drew a box out of his pocket, but it wasn’t a ring box. It was like one that had been flattened out, maybe the right size for a bracelet or an anklet. My heart swelled. He stood up and then dropped to a knee in front of me. “I’ve told you before that I don’t want us to be temporary, but I’ve never asked you. So, Tallie, will you remain my wife even after our year has come to an end?” He opened the box.

I was right that it wasn’t a ring. It was a simple silver chain with a clasp that was made to look like handcuffs. I bit down on my lower lip, blushing like crazy since we were in public. Not that anyone had a clue what would make me blush like that. The truth was, Hunter had finally gotten around to buying us a set of proper handcuffs last week, and we’d been making good use of them ever since.

A tear fell down my cheek, but I didn’t care. All I cared was that I loved this man with everything in me, and I never wanted to be apart from him. “You’d have to fight me off with a stick,” I said. “I’d be madder than a wet hen if you tried it, too. Yes, of course I want to remain your wife.”

He winked at me. “Good. Thank you for not making me beg, even though I absolutely would.” Then he reached for my left ankle, drawing it out toward him. He picked up the chain in one hand, fished in his pocket for something else with his other hand, and came out with a key. He used the key to open the clasp. Then he fixed the chain around my ankle, closing the cuffs together.

When he was done, I held out a hand for him. He came to his feet and helped me to mine. And he kissed me like he meant it.

The sound of a little girl’s giggles broke us apart. I turned to find Hunter’s parents alongside a gorgeous redheaded woman and an adorable child.

“Uncle Hunter,” the girl who could only be Kaylee said with a chastising tone, “kisses are yucky.”

He gave her an exaggerated look of shock. “Is that so?” And then he grabbed her, lifting her high in the air while he covered her face with kisses to the delightful sound of her scandalized squeals. “Kisses are yucky?”

She giggled again, rubbing her nose against his, and I just about melted into a puddle on the floor thinking about Hunter and our child rubbing noses.

“Maybe not all kisses,” she conceded.

“Just my kisses?”

She shook her head, blushing, and she whispered something in his ear.

“Ah, I see,” he said.

“Will my daddy want to kiss me?” she asked.

“Maybe. Probably,” Hunter amended. “Would that be okay?”

She thought about it for a moment, comically tapping her finger on her chin. “Maybe. Probally,” she added, grinning like the cat that got into the cream. She patted him on the cheek. “You need to shave. You’re scratchy.” Her r’s came out sounding like w’s.

He chuckled, and his eyes flickered over to me. “There’s someone I want you to meet, and she happens to like me scratchy.”

“Aunt Tallie?”

“Yep.”

“Why does she like you scratchy?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

Kaylee turned in his arms and pinned me with a very serious expression. “Why do you like Uncle Hunter scratchy?”

In a bit of a panic, I looked to Hunter for help. He studiously avoided my gaze. No help there.

“Well,” I said finally, “I like him however I can get him.”

“Oh,” Kaylee said. She nodded and started playing with his hair. “I do, too.”

“Is that so?” he said, brushing his cheek against her hand until she squealed again.

“Yep. But Uncle Hunter?” she said, turning serious, with giant crocodile tears forming in her eyes.

“What’s up, sugar?”

“What if my daddy doesn’t want me?”

“Well…” He set her down on the ground and got down on his knees so they were on the same level. “Here’s the thing about your daddy.”

I held my breath. Couldn’t help it. Things between Hunter and Kade had been slowly improving over the last few months, but it had been painfully slow. I honestly didn’t know what he would say to her, and I worried on her behalf. Because I’d been that little girl who had a parent who didn’t love her. I’d been there, and it had nearly crushed me, and I couldn’t bear to let her suffer the same kind of crushing blow.

“Your daddy loves you more than he loves anything in this world, including himself,” Hunter said, and my lungs filled again with beautiful, wonderful air. He tucked a curl behind Kaylee’s ear. “But he’s been sick. Really sick. But he’s trying to get better for you.”

“If I kiss him, will it make him better?”

“It’s sure worth a shot,” Hunter said. Then he leaned close and dropped his voice. “But he might be scratchy.”

“It’s okay,” Kaylee said. “I like him however I can get him.”

He gave her another scratchy kiss, and she giggled. We collected all their bags before heading out to the parking lot. Kaylee decided she needed to hold my hand on our way out, and she didn’t stop chattering the whole way home.

We got everyone settled in before heading up to the arena for Hunter’s game that night. It was the Thunderbirds’ last game before the Christmas break, and he got his first shutout of the season. I spent the whole game talking to his parents and Carrie, who told me she’d decided I was going to be her sister whether I liked it or not.

It was only after everyone was in bed for the night and Hunter and I were finally alone again that he and I could really talk. We were lying next to each other in bed, touching and kissing and holding each other. He slid a hand down the outside of my leg, drawing my knee up so he could reach all the way down to the chain he’d put on my ankle earlier.

He looked deep in my eyes and kissed me long and hard. “Sorry,” he said when he broke it off. “That was one of the yucky kisses.”

“I thought she said not all kisses were yucky.”

“No, not all. Just the ones with tongues involved.”

I laughed.

“You have the sexiest fucking laugh,” he said, rolling over on top of me and pinning me to the mattress with his weight.

“I have the sexiest fucking husband, and he makes me laugh.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s most definitely so.”

“Well, I have the sexiest fucking wife, and she makes me care, even when I don’t want to care.”

“We’ve both very lucky to have our sexy spouses, then,” I said.

“Lucky doesn’t even begin to cover it. Good thing we both screwed up so badly.”

Hunter slid inside me, slowly making love to me.

I put my hands on his butt, where they belonged, rocking with him until we both found our release.

He rolled off me, dragging me along with him so I could rest my head on his shoulder, exactly where I liked to be. It wasn’t just where I liked to be, though. It was where I belonged.

Catherine Gayle is a USA Today bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.

If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, her blog, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.

BURY THE HATCHET is Book 1 in the Tulsa Thunderbirds hockey romance series, a spin-off from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm. Look for Book 2, SMOKE SIGNALS, on October 22, 2015. Book 3, GHOST DANCE, will release on May 5, 2016.

If you want to read an exclusive preview of SMOKE SIGNALS, keep reading. The first chapter is included! Keep in mind that at this point, the sneak peek is unedited and subject to change.

Want to join in the Tulsa Thunderbirds discussion? Join the Facebook reader group.

If you enjoy this book and want to try more of the same, be sure to look for the Portland Storm books: BREAKAWAY, ON THE FLY, TAKING A SHOT, LIGHT THE LAMP, DELAY OF GAME, DOUBLE MAJOR, IN THE ZONE, HOLIDAY HAT TRICK, COMEBACK, and DROPPING GLOVES. HOME ICE will release on August 13, 2015. LOSING AN EDGE will release on February 18, 2016. Also, join Catherine Gayle’s mailing list to receive ICE BREAKER, a Portland Storm short story prequel that you can’t get anywhere else.

There is also a reader group on Facebook for the Portland Storm series.

I’D ONLY BEEN on the casino floor for ten minutes when I found him.

He stood at a high-roller craps table with three other men. They were big. Good looking, dressed in expensive clothes. Each man had a drink in his hand. They were laughing, talking, gambling… All but him.

He was watching me.

That was how I knew he was the one.

He said something to them every now and then, and he laughed when they did, but his eyes followed my every move as I made my way through the room. Did he recognize me? That was a possibility. I’d been in some high profile films lately, so more and more men knew my face. Well, technically they probably knew my tits or my ass, but that was beside the point.

My growing notoriety had been the issue, actually. It was the reason I was here now. And at the moment, it might very well solve my problems.

Whether he recognized me or not, he hadn’t taken his gaze off me at all as I’d circled the casino floor, debating my options. Not that there’d been much to debate. Most of the men in the room were gathered around lower limit tables, keeping close tabs on their chips and their wallets. A few had looked up at me and winked when I’d given them seductive smiles. None but him had maintained eye contact, though. They’d gone back to their games, pushing me from their minds. All but him.

When I first saw him, I’d caught his gaze and licked my lips before biting the lower one. That was my signature move, the one that they asked of me in every film I’d made over the last year. The directors always said it made me look innocently arousing. He’d raised a brow in response, so I’d crooked a finger at him, beckoning him toward me. But then he’d shrugged, waving a hand to indicate his friends. I’d shrugged, as well, before continuing my canvas of the casino.

I’d made my way through the whole place, though, and no one else had seemed a likely target. He was still watching me, very much interested, as I slid up to his side while the dealer sorted the chips into the appropriate places based on the previous roll of the dice.

“Hi,” my target said quietly by my ear.

I flickered my gaze up to him, startled by the clear blue of his eyes. They pierced me, a sharp contrast to his dark, sleek hair. Up close, I could see his nose was slightly bent, like it had been broken at some point, and he had a scar on his left cheek, a faint pink jagged line. Those two imperfections kept him from being too perfect, too sexy, but just barely. He was even bigger than I’d thought, now that I was right up next to him. Even his forearms bore lined muscles, and a tattoo peeked out from beneath the sleeve of his designer shirt. My heart thumped so hard I was sure he could hear it.

I’d expected him to reek of expensive cologne, but he didn’t. He smelled good enough to eat. That was another point in his favor. Another sign that he was the one.

My mouth went dry, and goose bumps popped up all along my arms. I couldn’t lose my courage now. It was just sex. Sex was nothing. Sex was my job, especially now. I wet my lips again, fully aware of his gaze following the path of my tongue. “Hello,” I murmured.

His friends passed more chips around the table, placing the bets they were bound to lose. I was betting on the fact that my quarry and I would be leaving the table before I needed to place a bet, and I intended to win mine.

I had no other options.

The corners of his lips curled up in the hint of a smile. “You look familiar to me.”

“Do I?” I batted my lashes, feigning innocence.

“I’d remember your voice, though. That accent. Not a chance I’d forget you.”

The accent was proving to work in my favor, much as I’d expected. That was one of the many reasons my agent, Rick, had been so eager to work with me, when I’d first sought him out. A fucking Russian ballerina with legs for miles? he’d said. Keep using that pretty little mouth like that, and you’ll have all the work you can handle and then some. I wasn’t sure, at the time, if he’d been talking about my thick Eastern European accent or the blowjob I was giving him so he could ‘sample the product.’ Actually, I still wasn’t certain. Either way, he’d held up his end of the bargain for as long as I’d been able to keep working in the porn industry. I couldn’t anymore, though. Once the directors of my school had learned of how I’d been spending my weekends, I’d been kicked out of the program—and I’d lost my green card in the process. No green card, no porn jobs. They were sticklers for following the rules, in that industry. Regular STD testing. Proper record keeping. Everything was above board.

Maybe not everything, but many things. The things people outside the industry knew about. Certain things were kept quiet.

I was trying to stay on the right side of the law now, too. That was why I’d come to Vegas. Prostitution was legal in Nevada, and I’d already been selling sex for so long it no longer made me blanch at the thought. It wouldn’t help me get my green card reinstated, but it could at least help me earn enough money to fly back to St. Petersburg. Not that I had any idea what I’d do when I got home, but that was something I would have to figure out later.

No matter how nervous I might be about what I was attempting to do right now, I refused to back down. There was no Plan B. I had to move forward. “I could give you a better reason to remember me,” I said, slowly. Deliberately. I held his gaze, stomach churning, while I waited for him to take my bait.

The craps dealer got his attention, waiting for him to place his bet.

My target held my gaze, his eyes narrowed, studying me. Then he turned to the dealer and shook his head. “I’m done, boys. Calling it a night. Here.” He shoved a pile of chips over to the man to his left. “Finish this off for me, Babs. I’ll see you all bright and early in the morning.”

“Not too fucking early,” one of the other men said.

“Too early for you,” the third added with a smirk.

“Everything’s too early for Koz,” the one called Babs said. The other guys laughed and nodded their agreement. Then he turned to my guy, checking me out briefly before giving him a questioning look. “You know what you’re doing?”

He chuckled and said something quietly to Babs, his voice muffled so I couldn’t make it out.

“All right. Just don’t be late tomorrow. You’ve got the rings, and Katie won’t hesitate to kill you if you fuck up her wedding.”

“Katie loves me. She won’t kill me.” He put an arm around my waist, drawing me to his side. I’d noted the muscle in his arms, but feeling them up close and in person was something else entirely.

“Maybe she won’t, but Webs will,” the guy they called Koz said, waggling his brows.

The four men traded a few more barbs, but then my guy backed away, tugging me with him. Once we were in the hotel lobby instead of the casino, and we could hear each other better, he dropped his voice from the jocular tone he’d used with his friends. “So what’s your name, beautiful?”

“Viktoriya,” I said. I didn’t see any need to mention my surname, Dubrovskaya. I’d never used it in my work. It had only been relevant to my future in ballet, which was now nonexistent. Rick had suggested I just go by my given name since the spelling was unique enough to be memorable in the States. He’d said I could be like Cher or Prince. Everyone would know me by my name and my accent, and that would be enough.

The man at my side let out a humming sound and nodded for a hotel worker to call the elevator. “Viktoriya, huh? Pretty name. I’m Ray. Everyone calls me Razor.” The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Razor led me onto it and pressed the button for the penthouse. Once the doors closed and we were alone, he moved in front of me, his body crowding mine back into the corner. I was used to having men in my space, though. This was nothing new. I refused to let it faze me. His eyes bored into mine, locking onto me like laser beams. “So what do you want, Viktoriya? You looking for a good, hard fuck?”

I bit down on my tongue, taking my time before answering so I could be sure I didn’t say what I was really thinking. I pasted a provocative smile on my lips, keeping my eyes flirty and playful. “You can fuck me as hard as you want…for a price.”

He didn’t respond, though. He just kept staring at me. Through me. One thing was for sure—this man was intense. My heart felt as though it would pound through my skin, and I was about to laugh it off and tell him to never mind, it was a joke, I didn’t mean it but he could still fuck me if he wanted when the elevator doors opened.

Razor took my hand and led me out into the hall. We walked to the end, and he stopped before opening the door, edging me against the wall. He leaned in toward me, one hand on either side of my head so I had no choice but to focus on him and only him.

“You know prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas, don’t you?” he finally said.

“It’s not.” I shook my head. It couldn’t be. Rick had specifically told me that I could sell my body in Nevada if I wanted to, that I wouldn’t get busted by any cops for it. It would be safe for me to do here, that I’d only have to worry about STDs and pregnancy and crazy fuckers who might want something I wasn’t quite on board with.

For the right price, I’d be on board with just about anything. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already experienced most of it already, anyway, and that was on camera.

“It is,” Razor said. “It’s legal in the state, but not in every city in the state—and it’s illegal in Vegas.”

There was only one reason I could come up with for him telling me this. I bit down on my lip. “Are you a policeman?”

“I’m not a fucking cop.”

“Then what do you want?” Why was he doing this? Why wasn’t he taking me into his room and fucking me so I could take his money and go?

He didn’t answer. He just stared at me so hard I wished I could melt into the floor and disappear.

I couldn’t take this. If he wasn’t going to buy what I was selling, I needed to move on. Find someone else. I needed to make some quick money so I could get out of this damn country before they decided to deport me, and I didn’t know how long I would have. The administrators at school had told me I would probably have a grace period of a couple of weeks or so, but that wasn’t long. I needed money, and I needed it now, and I clearly wasn’t getting it from Razor.

I tried to duck under his arm, but he reached down and took me by the elbow, stopping my progress.

“What do you want?” I repeated, aggravated and embarrassed, and wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there.

“I want you to come into my room and tell me why you’re doing this.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have time for this. I need—”

“I’ll pay you for your time,” he interrupted. “Come on.” He dug out the key card for his room and swiped it over the lock to his door. It beeped, and he opened it, gently nudging me until I preceded him in despite my better judgment.

Want to read more? SMOKE SIGNALS releases on October 22, 2015.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Dedication

About this Book

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

Roster

About the Author

Unedited Excerpt: Smoke Signals