Gauging the Player: A One-Night-Stand Sports Romance (The Playmakers Series Hockey Romance Book 3), стр. 16
Minutes later, she was gone, and he sat in his Porsche and texted her. This is my private cell number. Best way to reach me. Text me back when you’re safely home.
Lily: I will, Professor.
Gage: And don’t text while you drive.
Elation two-stepped through his entire body. He’d found her! But a somber inner voice put a kibosh on the good feels.
“Strictly business. No hanky-panky,” he muttered aloud. Never mind that his body had ideas of its own whenever he looked at her, leaving him in a constant state of semi-discomfort. Yeah, he’d probably have to work on that.
Chapter 6
Sisterhood Doesn’t Require Pants
Lily walked into her quiet home. Dead quiet. Especially in contrast with IHOP’s noise and brightness just a short while ago.
She launched a playlist over wireless speakers and flipped on hallway lights. Music played in the background while her eyes traveled over framed photos lining the walls. The rogues’ gallery, she and Jack used to call it. But tonight, instead of walking past, she stopped and studied them. Pictures of Jack as a baby. A boy. A shaggy-haired teenager playing guitar. The man he became: a young Chip Gaines lookalike with a devilish smile.
From the day she’d met Jack, Lily had known he was her future. The man she’d grow old and rickety with. Her everything. People said there was no such thing as love at first sight, but she was living, breathing proof they were wrong.
She ran her fingertips over pictures of them together: singing in the band; reciting wedding vows; opening gifts beside a pathetic Charlie Brown Christmas tree; holding Daisy when she was a newborn.
Lily’s gaze traced Jack’s awed expression as he stared at their baby. As if on cue, “Have I Told You Lately”—their favorite song and a duet they’d performed together countless times—drifted from the living room. A shaky laugh became a sob, and Lily folded over at the waist, covering her face with her hands. The familiar ache stabbed her chest, followed by the inevitable anger that came rushing up from her gut. Fists clenched, she righted herself. Life isn’t fair! She hadn’t had enough time with him! Where were the other three kids they were going to have? The house they were going to build? The trip to Fiji they’d take on their twentieth wedding anniversary? Her dreams had all died along with him.
Was she just tired, or had seeing Gage Nelson whipped up a vortex of guilt, grief, and isolation?
Wiping her wet cheeks, she padded to her little girl’s room, but the lively pinks and purples did nothing to lift her heart. She only seemed able to focus on the pictures of Jack grouped on Daisy’s dresser and the pink toy guitar propped in a corner—the guitar he’d bought when Daisy had been born five years ago.
The eerie silence closed in around Lily. An ever-present shroud when Daisy was away, it was just as oppressive late at night when Daisy was there and sleeping. As tempting as it was, Lily would find no escape from the crushing quiet in a half bottle of wine tonight. Between consuming a gallon of coffee and holding up under Gage’s blue-eyed scrutiny, she was too tightly wound to lie down. Throwing wine into the mix would guarantee a fitful doze at best.
Instead, she launched herself into her go-to therapy for bringing order to her world whenever it wobbled on its axis. She gathered up her bucket of cleaning supplies and scrubbed her two toilets to a high porcelain sheen. Next she attacked the gas range. After that, the counters. With an inner headshake, she acknowledged that her little house took the brunt of her topsy-turvy emotions. It was always spotless. Apparently, a state of calm was a nirvana as elusive as the proverbial pot of gold the damn leprechauns were constantly moving on her.
After placing a load of laundry in the washer, she glanced at the microwave’s digital clock. Three thirty. Way too early to call her sister.
In need of another distraction, she opened her laptop at her kitchen table. No better time to build a file on her new client. She skimmed over the endless positive praise heaped on by coaches and teammates—it was obvious Gage Nelson had mad ice skills. Besides the many accolades, however, Gage—aka “Nelsy,” “The Admiral,” and God-knew-what else—seemed to be a model citizen. No compromising photos; no drunken escapades; no bad-boy behavior; no supermodels. Zero dirt. Zip. Nada. Was he really that wholesome? No one was. Especially not a pro hockey player. After all, he hadn’t hesitated when she’d invited him to stay that night, turning their time together into—as Ivy so quaintly put it—an epic fuckathon.
Guilt swelled inside Lily again over her lapse. Even she agreed with Ivy that she needed to stop beating herself up. What was done was done.
She detoured back to her new client, and her jaded self scoffed at the notion Gage didn’t sleep around. He probably practiced sex as devotedly as he practiced hockey, if the experience he’d shown in her bed was any measure. Maybe he was good at being discreet. She was inclined to give credit to a dynamite PR person who knew how to bury bad press, except Gage didn’t have a PR person. Well, he hadn’t had one.
As her fingers tapped away, what little she discovered bolstered what she knew of Gage Nelson: he was smart, funny, and successful. Adored by fans and hockey pundits alike. Add polite and self-deprecating, and he was the perfect man. Never mind that he was also hotter than a pizza oven. Which begged the question: Where were his conquests? The puzzle drove Lily to mine deeper for women whose names had been linked with his. At first, she found nothing, but then she stumbled on a picture of him looking dapper in suit and tie—not unlike the night