Fire And Ice. Tori Carrington
The mystery was fine for a one-night stand. The exchange of names wasn’t really necessary in those cases, much less the details of one’s childhood. But as the nights accumulated, no matter how much time separated the first from the second, their bond was deepening. Although, he suspected, not on an emotional level. Not for Jena.
And he didn’t think it wise to explore that avenue just yet. Not knowing what he did—or didn’t—about Jena.
As he stepped under the shower’s hot spray and began to soap up with her spicy soap he suspected didn’t come off a regular store shelf, he wondered about her personal life up until now. She was, what? Around the same age as him? Thirty or pretty near to that. Had she ever been married? Ever come close?
Of course, he hadn’t told her that he had been married once. Very briefly. Back when he was still young and stupid enough to mistake lust for love. It was his first year on the circuit and one of the rink groupies who followed the team to as many as the games as they could had targeted him in her crosshairs. His career had been going like gangbusters at the same time. The new up-and-comer with a bright future. Landing the cover of Sports Illustrated hadn’t hurt.
A month later they were married.
And a month after that he returned to their hotel room after a game in Toronto to find her in bed with one of the team’s longtime heroes.
He shut off the water and scrubbed himself with a thick, black towel. The strange thing of it was that neither his ex-wife nor his fellow team member had seemed particularly shocked that he had found them. Rather, they’d been surprised that he’d cared that his friend was boinking his wife.
She’d argued that certainly he’d known of her goal to bed every major hockey star in the western hemisphere, hadn’t he? The expensive rock on her finger hadn’t changed that. And it was all right with her if he slept with groupies, she’d told him. He would anyway once the honeymoon was over.
The only thing that was over at that moment was their marriage—if there really had been a marriage to begin with.
He’d pretty much accepted life as it came after that. And had never really met anyone he wanted more than a quick roll in the hay with. Until Jena, that is.
But it was important that he get to know her if this—whatever was happening between them—was to go any further. And he found he wanted that. Very much. Or else he would have left days ago.
The sound of the doorbell pealed through the apartment. Tommy slowed his movements and stared in the direction of the front door. Too early for Paula, but maybe she had something else on tap this morning and was getting an early start. Stepping out of the tub, he wrapped the towel around his midsection then strode to stare through the peephole. A deliveryman stood in the hall holding a package, about to ring the bell again.
“Yes?” he called.
He watched the man’s gaze fix on the peephole. “Delivery for a Tommy Brodie.”
Delivery? For him?
Damn, how had Kostas found him so quickly? He raked his fingers through his damp hair and unlocked and opened the door. As he signed for the package he heard footsteps on the staircase coming from upstairs. Paula bounded to a stop as Tom handed the deliveryman back his clipboard.
He waited until the guy started out before he told Paula, “I was thinking I’d look after the little mongrel today, give you a break.”
Jena had introduced him to the preteen the morning after his arrival and since then the red-haired girl with braces had stared at him as if he walked on water. He grimaced. Hell, he’d settle for walking without a limp right now.
“Okay, Mr. Wild…I mean, Brodie.”
Tommy grinned and handed her the money she would have made for the day’s activities, then went back inside the apartment and closed the door, package in hand.
The return address was local. He frowned and ripped open the end as he walked to the kitchen and opened the swinging door with his shoulder, letting out the ecstatic pup.
His brows rose high on his forehead as he got an eyeful of the box’s contents. A tux?
He stared at the monkey suit as if it might grow legs and challenge him to a choking match even as Caramel ran circles around his ankles, yipping up a storm.
Tommy shoved the suit back into the box, then ripped the envelope from the top.
“Formal Christmas party tonight,” Jena wrote, along with an address. “Meet me there at six.”
He took the suit out again and draped it over the back of a black leather chair, a slip of paper floating to the floor by his feet. He bent over and snatched it up. It wasn’t a rental. Jena had dumped good money by buying the damn thing.
Tommy absently rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension building there. When was the last time he’d worn a tux? It didn’t take him long to remember. He’d been nineteen at his oldest sister Jamie’s wedding. And he’d completely ruined the rental by pulling and plucking and generally setting out to destroy the confining suit of clothes before it destroyed him.
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