Hooked On Her: Ice Kings, #3 Read online

  It is Sawyer’s fault for ever coming home with Jason Taylor, the boy with the hazelnut brown eyes and dark black hair that swayed and curled around the tips of his ears and the collar of his shirt. It is Sawyer’s fault for getting a kick out of teasing me in my cheerleading gear right as I grabbed sight of possibly the world’s sexiest man alive.

  There he was, standing across the kitchen from me next to my brother, shoving a potato chip into his mouth, looking drop-dead gorgeous while doing it.

  My jaw dropped, my knees went weak, and I tripped over an uneven tile in my parents’ kitchen floor, slamming my forehead into a corner of their kitchen countertop. I quickly looked like every teenage girl in a horror film with blood gushing down my face, screams piercing the air, and the cheerleader outfit to really seal the deal.

  In my defense, I’m still willing to bet that the screams were from Sawyer. He’s always been squeamish at the sight of blood. Which meant it was Jason who scooped me into his arms like every romance hero in every novel I’ve ever read and whisked me away to safety—er… the emergency room, on his brilliant, strong steed… or my brother’s rented Suburban. Whichever.

  Point is, most of my most embarrassing teenage and college-aged memories include Jason, my brother’s best friend who quickly assumed the role of my second, surrogate protective older brother. And of course they would. He with the dark hair and smoldering brown eyes. He with his body that’s only grown larger and stronger and more muscled over the years.

  I blame the wobbly knees and the skip of my heart and the knot in my stomach his mere presence causes for all of it.

  From the small scar that remains on my forehead from the first moment, to the embarrassing outfit change my dad insisted on when I was a senior in high school. From the night he held my hair back over a toilet when I visited Sawyer in college one weekend while I tried to mutter Oh my God I love you, but it came out sounding more like Oh my Gah blugh blugh blaghck as I ralphed into a toilet.

  Needless to say, our first meeting isn’t something a high school girl dreams of when meeting the hottest guy on Earth.

  It isn’t something forgotten over time when said hottie has the manners to never, ever, ever, bring it up again.

  It’s simply forgotten.

  Hell, it’s been so long he probably has forgotten.

  I’m the only fool who remembers.

  And I hate him for all of it. For his chivalry and his rakish, chiseled looks, and the happy smile he gives to everyone else but me. I hate him for his gorgeous brown eyes and the stupid little bend in his nose and the width of his chest. I hate him for his kindness and the way he’s so polite to me.

  It completely sucks.

  Jason Taylor is not only the hottest guy on Earth… he’s quite possibly the nicest. He’s also always seen me at my worst when I’ve always wanted him to see my best.

  It’s humiliating.

  Which is why, walking into Jason’s younger brother’s back yard patio for a Labor Day party, fully aware most of the team knows of what happened, my eyes are skip, skip, skipping and hopping over every male in attendance. It doesn’t take much time before I sense his presence. I’ve had over a decade to hone my Jason Taylor is near alert system. I can sniff him out like a bomb squad dog in an airport.

  And for real, people. By executive order of all women everywhere, Jason should have to walk around holding a warning sign. WARNING: MAY MAKE PANTIES WET. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

  It’s even worse seeing him in his swim trunks with a plain white, skintight T-shirt, sauntering toward us. His dark hair swooped to the side, the scruff of his unshaven beard hiding his high cheekbones but somehow illuminating the strength of his jaw.

  Jason immediately heads in our direction and I turn my focus to where Sawyer is directing me to an outdoor tiki bar. Music is popping. The sun is shining and the heat is out of this world. Laughter rings out and as we slide through the families, I stop and say hello to the women and players I already know before the man who recently starred in the best sex dream ever makes his appearance in front of us, looking so movie-star, ruggedly handsome beautiful I’d be absolutely blinded by him if I wasn’t wearing my darkest sunglasses.

  “Hey Tessa.” He sips a drink out of a red plastic cup, and I instantly want to turn away. His eyes are filled with pity and it’s the last thing I want to see when Jason looks at me.

  “Be nice today, okay?” Sawyer says and he wiggles his finger between both of us. “I need to grab Debbie something to drink.”

  I glare at Sawyer’s back as he scoots away from us before turning back. “Hey Jason.”

  “You doing okay?”

  “Peachy.” It feels like everyone’s staring, but a quick look tells me the opposite. No one cares about me or my problems. I’m almost not sure what’s worse. “How many know?”

  “He called you at practice yesterday, so my guess is…” He shrugs, grins like this doesn’t matter. Like the most humiliating day of my life is one big joke. Joke’s on him because it totally is a big joke and so am I. “Everyone. Listen, he and I talked, and if you need something, you know I’m here, right? I’m always here to help, with whatever you need.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “But you don’t have to be fine alone, either.” His jaw hardens. I’m pretty sure his chest puffs up too but I refuse to look below his chin. Sometimes it makes me dizzy.

  I know my stubbornness irritates him but I’m not trying to be stubborn. I’m trying to be safe. Between that stupid dream the other night and my lingering questions about the last time I saw him, I don’t have a firm handle on how to be around Jason right now. Not when everything else around me is falling apart.

  “Fine, then. Thanks for the offer. But really, I’ll be fine. I’ll figure everything out and move on. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear there’s a baby I have to meet.”

  I hate I feel this way around him after so many long stupid years. I’m unsettled and rattled and at the end of my rope and the person I should not want to cling to for help above anyone else is Jason Taylor.

  Lord knows he’ll probably help only because it’s ingrained in his DNA to be Mr. Nice Guy. I’m pretty sure if I peel off the white shirt clinging to his skin he’d have a Superman logo stamped on his chest.

  I pause in my pursuit of finding Mikah Lutzgo’s new baby Debbie gushed over yesterday and head to the bar. I grab a spiked lemonade from a metal tin filled with ice and drinks when I risk a look back at Jason.

  He has his head to the sky, corded throat tight and veins popping. Fingers digging into the swim trunks slung low on his hips.

  So pretty. So very, very pretty from a distance.

  So much more dangerous to my fragile heart at close range.

  Chapter Five

  Jason

  * * *

  Sawyer’s given me shit for years for not settling down. Too bad I can’t tell him why. Not that I haven’t wanted to.

  “Well, gee, mate, see… several years ago, I started realizing how hot your sister is. Then I started realizing how incredibly awesome she is to be around. And then I started realizing how much I really actually liked her. And all these years later, I still can’t stop thinking about her.”

  She might live over seven hundred fifty miles away, but she still has a grip on my dick. I’ve Google mapped the span of her reach. That’s how pathetic I am.

  For once I want to finally force her to see what’s been in front of her all along. She was eighteen and I was twenty-two the first time I really realized I was starting to like her. I’m pretty sure it came in an overprotective—okay, perhaps slightly jealous moment—when she was getting dressed to go out on a date. I had gotten a glimpse of what she was wearing and my head almost exploded so me, being the dick I am, I went and gave Mr. Chauncy a heads up so when she came prancing down the stairs on her way out the door, it was his head that almost exploded when he saw her in the tight, short black leather miniskirt.

  But there was nothing I could do abo
ut it then.

  We were young, I was just starting my professional playing career. She was in school in an entirely different country. I saw her only a handful of times during that time period. Unfortunately, every time I did see her, she kept getting more and more beautiful. I eventually slowed my trips back to Sawyer’s. I made so many excuses he finally confronted me about why I wouldn’t go back to Canada with him when before, I went every time he asked.

  So, whatever. His sister was hot. My dick wanted her. Tough freakin’ life. Puck bunnies at home and on the road became my go-to so I didn’t go crazy. Am I proud of it? No. I’m not ashamed either. I treat the women I’m with, with respect and they haven’t all been one-night stands. I’ve casually dated, but there’s been two problems keeping me from ever taking things more serious.

  One: I didn’t like anyone enough to make the effort during the season when we were traveling all the time, and

  Two: The blonde beauty in front of me who still makes my dick hard on sight like I haven’t grown past that twenty-two-year-old idiot.

  With Tessa in town, I have a limited time to set a few things straight, and I don’t care what I have to do to get her to listen, but it’s happening.

  I had every intention of walking up to Tessa this afternoon, flinging out the same shit we always do and yet when I saw her, looking so damn sexy and so damn sad… I couldn’t.

  In all the years I’ve been able to push aside my obsession with her which has been absolutely nothing brotherly, that all changed on New Year’s. The first, and only time, I’ve even attempted to approach her with how I feel.

  It was the last time I saw her at Hendrix’s place with the whole team and she was there, sans Will, whose face I will happily rearrange myself someday. And fuck… I almost kissed her then. In the hallway where it was dark and we delivered our quiet, typical barbs and yet that same electric pulse of attraction was so damn bright and intense I could see everything. Like the way her lashes fluttered at the top of her cheekbones when I leaned in.

  It took laughter and one of our defenseman, Duke Fletcher, stumbling drunkenly down the hall, bouncing off walls to regain my wits. This was Tessa, and her brother was fifteen feet away. And oh yeah… at the time, she was engaged. Which meant she wasn’t mine to have or tease or flirt with. It doesn’t matter that I‘d already heard from Debbie and Sawyer things weren’t good between them and she was already questioning breaking things off.

  Still, she wasn’t single or available and I wasn’t that kind of asshole. Ever. That night… that night was the first night I was ashamed of my attraction to her because it almost turned me into someone I never wanted to be. The kind of guy who would kiss another man’s woman.

  Jesus. I scrub a hand down my face, unable to peel my gaze off her as she grabs a drink and turns toward the women who are all in a tizzy over the baby, Hannah, our goalie and Captain Byron Maddox’s, wife, is holding. Mikah’s. Which is a crazy enough story in itself.

  Like always though, it’s Tessa who grabs my attention as she stands to the side, jaw falling open as I’m sure someone tells her the story.

  Yes! He was abandoned on Mikah’s doorstep!

  I’m probably imagining the way she smiles, glances at me before looking quickly back to the baby in Hannah’s arms. If anyone’s lucky, they’ll get to hold him at some point but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hannah hogs him all day long.

  But if Tessa is only here for a few more days, then we need to talk. There’re things I have to say.

  The last thing I want is for her to head back to Toronto not knowing when I’ll see her again and still not have her at least know my true feelings for her.

  Chapter Six

  Tessa

  * * *

  I’m over this party and this weekend and my stupid life where I’ve lost everything. I always love coming down to Charlotte to see my brother and Debbie. I love the team. I love the family atmosphere. I know not every hockey team in the country has the family-type bonds they’ve managed to create here, so these guys are pretty damn lucky. When I’m down here, I get to forget about anything bothering me at home.

  But today? It’s shaken me in a way I’m not expecting. Debbie is pregnant and shockingly doing a good job of hiding it. I’m pretty sure she’s spent the last week trying to recreate her tipsy, drunk laugh because it is on point today. And then there’s Mikah, the quiet, young player from Denmark who apparently has had his world rocked with a baby being delivered to his doorstep and his new… girlfriend? Paisley? She can barely keep her eyes off him.

  Everyone is happy.

  Of course they are. This is, after all, a family party where everyone is excited and getting ramped up for the season that starts soon. And me? I’m the twit who dated the loser who stole everything from her and next weekend I get to return to an empty apartment and then my job designing marketing brochures for the bank that brought us together. Where I get to tell all the coworkers we used to be friends with before Will was fired all the awesome things he’s done.

  Yippee.

  Setting down my drink, the only one I’ve had all day because I’m not in the mood, I grab my phone and head back into Jude’s house. Maybe a few minutes to close my eyes, breathe deep and reset my attitude will help me get through this until Sawyer and Deb are ready to head home.

  Probably where I’ll get to listen to them go at it all night.

  God. I’m sounding pathetic and I hate I can’t shake this off. So I have a failed relationship. So I need to buy new furniture. It’s not like I won’t be able to find Will and try to have him arrested. That’s the first thing I should do. Probably should have done it before I left Toronto but I was too pissed to think straight.

  I pull up my reminder app on my phone, set an alert to call the local station first thing in the morning to make a report. They’ll take care of the rest. I’m sure of it.

  A tiny sliver of hope plants itself in my chest and I inhale a deep breath.

  There’s a movie room somewhere in this house and I’m hoping it will be dark and that the leather seats will cool down my heated skin from the hours of sunshine.

  I wander down the hallway passed a library where kids’ laughter and shrieks bounce off the walls with excitement until I find the room I was looking for.

  Yes. It’s dark and quiet. Exactly what I need. A quick look down the hall tells me I’ve gone unnoticed, exactly what I was hoping for when I slunk out of the patio. Inside the dark room, keeping the lights off. The leather cinema-type recliner chairs are black, along with the walls. The only thing of color is the enormous projector screen hanging on the wall. I find a spot in a dark corner, far from the doorway in the last of the sixteen chairs and collapse into it, pulling my feet up onto the chair, knees bent, and press my forehead to them.

  The room must be well insulated because I can’t hear a thing from outside or down the hall and before I fall asleep in this dark, depressing corner that completely fits my mood, I pull up a meditation app on my phone. Usually I use it when I need to focus. Sometimes to reenergize, but right now I want to settle my mind from everything.

  My job. Will. The work ahead for me once I return home. Sawyer and Debbie. Their baby. Possible engagement. And the loudest noise bouncing in my brain, digging claws into my memory banks… Jason.

  Stupid, nice, hot guy Jason.

  “Ugh.” I press my head back into the theatre-style chair, hit the start button on the app and turn down the volume so I have to really concentrate on the voice coming from my phone.

  As the app starts, I settle in and get comfortable and listen to the soothing voice guiding me along. I’m relaxed, focusing on the words being spoken and not the thoughts racing in my mind when a shift occurs in the room.

  It’s Jason, ruining all of my calming progress. I can tell without seeing him. My Taylor-radar never fails. It’s somehow connected from the scent of his cologne to the apex of my thighs.

  I peel open one eye and yup. There he is, in that skintight whit
e T-shirt and swim trunks, standing in the doorway, one shoulder propped against it.

  “Go away,” I murmur barely loud enough for him to hear and close my eyes. He won’t listen. I know he won’t, but I’m still irritated he doesn’t.

  “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I’m not. Taking a break from happy people is all.” I can no longer focus on the voice of the app and instead, every nerve ending in my stupid body is alit with glee because yay! Jason’s here!

  Ugh. I need to find a surgeon. One willing to dig into my brain and find all memory traces of Jason in my hippocampus and dig them out. I’m certain at this point in my life it’s the only way I’ll stop feeling so freaking giddy in his presence, despite never wanting to show it.

  Who cares if I become mindless afterward. Sawyer would find me the best long-term facility where I can suck down pudding and Jell-O cups all day long.

  I ignore Jason as long as possible until the seat next to me creaks and the air heats by several degrees. I’m pretty sure his hotness radiates out from him with a three meter span of constant warmth.

  “Will’s always been a dick,” Jason says and I snort.

  “You never liked him even when he was a good guy.”

  “I’d never like any guy you introduce me to.”

  Of course he wouldn’t. He’s taken his big brother role seriously from the moment I clenched his hand in a room at the Urgent Care while a needle shot numbing medication into my scalp. I open my eyes into slits. He’s blurry in my narrowed vision and in the dark, it takes me a minute to zone in on him.

  “What do you want?”

  “I came to see if you were really okay. Saw you outside and you looked pretty miserable.”