Chapter Two

Tequila was dead to Zara. So was Anchovy. Okay, not really on that second one, but her Great Dane really needed to find a new favorite game that didn’t involve hiding one—and only one—of her shoes somewhere in the apartment.

“I buy you the good dog food and this is the thanks I get?”

The dog woofed, tilted his head, and—she’d swear to it on a Bible—grinned at her.

“This stupid date isn’t my idea of fun, either, but I gotta go, which means I need two shoes and you have to go get your leash.”

At that last word, Anchovy galloped past the couch, around the large kitchen island, and to the entryway hall tree, where he stuffed his face in the basket sitting on its bench seat and came out with his leash between his teeth. Then, as if the beast knew exactly what needed to happen next, he trotted over to the island, raised himself up on his hind legs, planted his front paws on the counter, and looked down into the sink.

“Of course.” Zara did the one-foot-in-a-four-inch-heel-and-one-not off-kilter walk to the island and grabbed her other shoe out of the sink. “Hiding my shoes is no way to deal with your separation anxiety, Anchovy.”

He just wagged his uncropped tail hard enough that the thump of it against her ass was like being spanked by a tree limb. The vet had warned her about Great Danes’ “happy tail” when she’d shown up at his office with Anchovy as an abandoned puppy, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to have the vet cut it short. That made her penchant for minimalist decorating at home even better because otherwise any knickknacks three feet off the ground would get whacked off the shelves.

“Come on, baby,” Zara said as she slipped her bare foot into her shoe. Her toes slid past a patch of wet. Ewwwwwww. Maybe she would be lucky for once and that was the result of a dripping faucet and not dog slobber. She glanced over at the sink, where there wasn’t a drop of water to be found. Gross. “You’re going to Aunty Gemma’s.”

More excited tail wagging that grew into full-body wiggles while she was trying to clip the leash to his collar. It took a few seconds, but she finally got it on. Then she and Anchovy were hustling out the door, into the building’s elevator, and out onto the sidewalk of her busy neighborhood. Gemma lived two blocks down in an apartment above a coffee shop. She met Zara and Anchovy at the side door that led to the stairwell to her place. Damn. Zara had been hoping to do a little gossip delay. That wasn’t going to happen, based on the do-not-fuck-with-the-timeline look on her bestie’s face.

Anchovy gave a happy woof as Gemma took possession of his leash. “Go, you are late.”

“You’re bossy,” Zara said, but she was already turning away.

“Takes one to know one,” Gemma said with a laugh. “Go.”

Without any other choice, she did. She hurried down Eighteenth Avenue, zipping past the tourists who insisted on slow rolling down the sidewalk. The Harbor City fall humidity—that always had a tinge of urine scent to it—had frizzed out her hair already. Not that she cared what her date thought of her, but getting a brush through it after it reached a certain level would be a nightmare. Determined not to let that happen, she wrapped her hair up in a bun, securing it with the elastic band always around her wrist, as she speed-walked through the ever-thickening crowd.

She was a half block away from her own personal Mt. Doom, AKA The Hummingbird Café, when she tried to pass a pair of tourists and her heel sank between the narrow slats of a metal grate. There was a half second of oh shit before she went down, her knees banging against the metal. Thank God she’d decided to go with the jeans she’d already been wearing or her knees would have been aching more than her twisted ankle.

“Oh my God, are you okay, honey?” one of the slow-moving tourists asked, her voice concerned.

Sucking in a deep breath, Zara blinked back the pain and started to get up. “I’m good.”

“Those shoes almost killed you,” said the other tourist, who going by his body language was married to the slow mover number one. “How y’all walk around in those things is beyond me.”

“I’ve been known to run in them.”

“Good for you, honey.” The woman reached out and offered her arm to help steady Zara as she stood on one foot and reached down to yank the embedded heel out of the grate. “Don’t listen to Steve. He’s been known to wear Crocs.”

It took the mother of all tugs, but Zara freed her shoe. “Thank you.”

“No worries,” the woman said. “Are you gonna be able to walk in that? It looks a little worse for wear.”

The stranger wasn’t wrong. The sides of the heel were all scratched up, but everything looked to still be attached. Finally, the fates might not be completely fucking with her.

“I appreciate it, but I’ll be fine.” She slid the shoe on, making sure to stand on the sidewalk proper instead of the grate before letting go of the woman’s arm. “I’m meeting someone in the café.”

“Oh good, this city is too big to be alone in,” the woman said as she slipped her arm through the crook of her husband’s, and they turned and strolled down the block as the early evening pedestrian traffic swerved around them.

Even though her ankle ached as she limped toward the café, her mood almost improved with the knowledge that delicious carbs were only a block away. Her expectations for this date were lower than a Chihuahua’s stomach, but her excitement at a basket of never-ending breadsticks was at peak levels. A woman had to have priorities.

Once inside, she made a beeline to the hostess stand—well, as much as she could with her current injury. She scanned the restaurant. Lots of guys who looked like they used too much cologne and spent half their paychecks on hair products.

“Just one?” the hostess asked as she picked up a menu.

“I’m meeting someone,” Zara said, heat rising in her cheeks at having to say the words out loud. “His name’s Caleb.”

“Oh yeah.” The hostess fanned her face. “He’s already here, and let me tell you, you’re a lucky woman. He’s right”—the hostess pointed across the restaurant to a table in the back—“over there.”

Zara followed the woman’s direction and froze.

Her date definitely fell into the broad-shouldered, muscular, giant category but was saved from being too damn perfect by a nose that looked like it had decided to go in one direction and then had changed its mind at the last minute. However, there was no denying it. Her date was hot, not in a male-model way but in a superhero movie villain way—like Loki if he had a gym membership and actually used it.

The water she’d downed before leaving the house sloshed around in her stomach. There was no turning around in the middle of her holy-shit-what-was-I-thinking panic. “Are you sure?”

The hostess nodded. “Said his name was Caleb and he was meeting a date.”

Why was she doing this? Zara pressed her hand to her stomach in a vain attempt to calm herself and grabbed ahold of her sense of self-control with both hands. Sure, it was a white-knuckle grip, but she had a plan. The fact that her date was hot didn’t change anything. She was in it for the invite and her dad’s SAG card. She could do this.

Like a brave but tragic movie heroine about to get her head whacked off by a guillotine, Zara lifted her chin, stood up, and braced her shoulders.

“Hey, Caleb,” the hostess hollered across the small restaurant. “What’s your date’s name?”

A flash of embarrassed heat blasted up from Zara’s toes, strong enough that she was surprised flames didn’t engulf every individual freckle on her face (and there were enough of them that if someone squinted, she’d look like she actually had a tan for the first time in her life). And just when it seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, her date stood up and crossed the café. What would have taken her a minute with her beyond-short legs, he cleared in all of about five strides. He stopped near the hostess stand, and his gaze went lower and lower until it finally dropped enough to be level with her face. His smile faltered and then flattened before he seemed to recover with an upward curl of his lips that looked as practiced as it was insincere.

“Zara?” he asked, sounding like he’d just been told the horrible news that his broccoli wasn’t going to be covered in delicious cheese sauce. “I’m Caleb.”

She shifted her stance, wishing she could grow about five inches in five seconds. The move put more weight on her bum ankle, the sharp jolt of pain knocking her off-balance and right into the unyielding chest of her date.

…

Caleb was used to two-hundred-and-thirty-pound men on skates slamming him against the boards—when they were lucky enough not to be on the receiving end of one of his solid hits—so having a redhead who was small enough to fit in his hockey bag with room to spare fall into him didn’t even rock him back on his heels.

He wrapped his fingers around her upper arms to help steady her as she regained her balance. “You okay?”

“Fine, thank you.” Her chin went up and the color in her cheeks nearly matched the twenty bazillion peach freckles covering her face. “My heel got caught in a grate on the walk over.”

But she wasn’t fine. There was no missing the way she favored her right leg by repositioning so most of her weight was on her left.

“You sure?” he asked as he released her and took a step back to give her some space. “Here, let me look. I’ve got experience with messed-up ankles.”

Okay, that experience mainly centered on the health of his ankles rather than anything he could do to fix them, but still, personal experience had to count for something. He squatted down and visually checked her ankle for bruising or swelling, telltale signs of a sprained ankle. There wasn’t any, but she was obviously in discomfort. The fact that she was continuing to wear shoes that had to be four inches high definitely didn’t help. He was a smart enough man not to make that observation out loud—having sisters growing up had definitely taught him a thing or twenty about how not to get kneed in the nut sack.

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

She sighed, her breath a bit shaky, and nodded. “Go ahead.”

He ran the pad of his thumb over and around her ankle, watching her face for signs he’d hit a sensitive spot. Beyond a tightness around her mouth in a few areas, she didn’t show any reaction. How many times had a trainer or a coach checked him for injury? Too many to count. This was different, though, and he couldn’t quite define how except that it made the hairs on his arms stand up.

He cleared his throat, shaking off the uncomfortable feeling. “How would you rank the pain on a ten-point scale?”

Her brown eyes narrowed as she sized him up, her gaze combing over him like he was a used car she wasn’t sure was worth the price but she was considering kicking the tires just for fun. “It’s fine. I’ll manage.”

Message received, he stood up. “Does your ankle hurt enough that you want some help walking?”

“I can manage on my own,” she said, the inflection in how she said “own” giving her away as a Harbor City native. “Let’s just get this over with.”

He and the hostess exchanged what-the-fuck looks over his salty date’s head, and he followed her back to the table where he’d been sitting. He noticed two things as they made their way through the café. One, she was definitely limping. Two, her ass in those jeans was phenomenal. The limp he could maybe do something to help with if she was open to an ankle massage—which didn’t seem likely. The ass he needed to forget before he messed up this wack-a-doo plan to redeem himself.

The reality was, his mouth, hands, and dick were going to stay untouched by his date tonight.

He gave himself a mental high five. Hell yeah!

That moment of joy faded fast, though. Why? Because this was what his life had come to—a mental fist pump that he would be going home alone to spend solitary quality time with his right hand and would continue to do so until he had five Bramble dates in the win column.

As soon as they sat down at the table, a weird what-in-the-hell-do-we-do-now moment came rushing at him full force. He should have read Zara’s dating profile when his mom offered the other day. He could have used the audible read-text option on the iPad, but he hadn’t wanted to do that in front of everyone in Lucy’s office. Instead, he’d gone onto the dating ice only to find he had no game plan.

“So,” he said, picking up his menu. Okay, he wasn’t a big dater—he did have this face, after all—but he wasn’t a noob, either. He knew how to do this. “Have you eaten here before?”

“No,” she said, tucking her bright-red hair behind one ear, her gaze locked on her menu. “I’m more of a street hot dog kind of girl.”

“Really?” Was it wrong that he liked her a little for that answer? 98 percent of the time he was on a pretty regimented nutrition plan, but on cheat days? He could eat his weight in street dogs and stadium nachos. “With or without relish?”

She looked up and wrinkled her freckle-covered nose. “What kind of horrible person skips the relish?”

Okay. Maybe this wouldn’t be a total shitshow.

“So,” Caleb said after the waiter dropped off a bread basket. “What do you do?”

She lay the menu down on the table and lifted her chin as if she was expecting a blow. “I’m a miniatures artisan.”

Okay, the jokes here just wrote themselves, and it was killing him to keep his mouth shut. Asshole? Him? Maybe.

“Go ahead and say it,” Zara said with a sigh. “I’ve heard them all.”

There was nothing “poor me” in the tone of her voice. Instead, it was more of a weary, hit me with what you’ve got, I can take it that landed like a dirty joke at a Bible study group, sucking out all the immature humor of the moment. Despite it—or maybe because of it—he edged a little closer to appreciating his mom’s choice in his Bramble date.

“What do you mean?” he asked, because admitting he’d been thinking exactly along those lines felt shitty.

“Good thing I found a job my size. It must be so much easier to build the doll furniture when you can fit inside the doll’s house,” she said with a carefully neutral delivery that instead of hiding her hurt just highlighted it. “I’ve heard both of those a million times. You got a new one?”

That would be a big no. He shook his head.

“How about you?” she asked. “What do you do?”

“I’m a defenseman for the Ice Knights.”

Her eyes widened. “The hockey team?”

He nodded. Not being one of the handful of players on the team with endorsement deals who were tailed constantly by the media meant he sometimes had to convince folks that he wasn’t kidding about his job. It was a trade-off he’d take every day and twice on Sunday.

“Then why are you on Bramble?” she asked. “Isn’t there some ultraexclusive rich-athlete dating app?”

“I have my reasons.” Yeah, and those would be because he’d been a total asshole in public. Now wasn’t that just the perfect first date talking point. Lucy would definitely not approve.

Lucky for him, the waiter picked that moment to stop by the table to take their drink order before Caleb could say anything stupid, like the truth. He ordered a water while she got a milkshake, the lift of her eyebrow just daring him to make a comment about it. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

The waiter left, leaving Caleb still trying to figure out how to answer her question. Sure, he could come up with some cover story, but that didn’t feel right. He might usually let his mouth run faster than his brain, but he was trying not to do that this time. If he was going to make this Bramble date thing work, he couldn’t be that kid who stood in front of the class and fumbled for words. Really, there was only one call to make.

“I take it you don’t follow the hockey media,” he said after the waiter left.

She tucked her hair behind her ears again, revealing a tattoo of three tiny stars at the spot where her neck met her shoulder. “Not even a little bit.”

“I got videoed with a group of my teammates who were saying stupid shit, I didn’t tell them to cut it out, and the video went viral.” That was one way to explain it.

“What kind of stupid shit?” she asked as she tore apart a roll and slathered butter all over it.

Would it be weird to ask if he could smell the white-flour, nutritionally empty carbs? Sure, he ate a three- to four-thousand-calorie diet most of the year, but he wasn’t expending in-season calories right now. That meant he was up to his eyeballs in high-quality whole-grain carbs, lean protein, steamed veggies, and fresh fruit.

Too distracted by the sight of her eating the roll to think before he spoke, the truth tumbled out. “They were running off at the mouth about puck bunnies.”

“Ohhhh,” she said before letting out a snort of disbelief. “And now you’re having to do this as some kind of punishment, or is it to look like you’re less of an ass?”

“Little of both.” He’d argue it if he could, but she wasn’t wrong. “So why are you on Bramble?”

She took another small bite from her roll before answering. “My best friend is blackmailing me, and my dad wants a SAG card.”

That was definitely not the answer he’d been expecting. “And I thought my reasoning was twisted.”

“I’m sure it all makes sense in Gemma’s head,” Zara said. “She thinks I work too much and need to loosen up. She’ll let me be her plus-one to go meet a collector if I do the Bramble five dates thing. And my dad? Well, let’s just say he’s never met an unlikely plan he didn’t think he could pull off.”

All the possibilities this created sped around inside his head until one broke free like a perfect fast break late in the third period when the game was on the line. All he had to do was put the biscuit in the net.

“So neither of us really wants to be here,” he said. “We’re each other’s solution to getting back to our regular lives as soon as possible.”

It was fucking perfect. Petrov’s job with the team would be safe for another season—well, as safe as he could be, considering he didn’t have a no-trade deal in his contract.

Zara, though, didn’t seem to be seeing the genius of it, going by the suspicious look she gave him as she took another bite of her roll. Instead of giving him a straight-up no, though, she started eating. The words—okay, begging pleas—were bubbling up inside him, but for once, he kept it on lockdown. He wasn’t about to rush this play, no matter how it had every nerve in his body jinglejangling.

Finally, she used her napkin to wipe the corners of her mouth, straightened her spine, and looked him dead in the eye. “We’d have to have ground rules.”

“Sure. Whatever you want.” Ice Knights season tickets? He’d make that happen. A photo op with her dad’s favorite player? Done. Whatever it took, he’d do it.

“This isn’t a real or fake relationship, it’s a temporary alliance,” she said without an ounce of humor in her tone. “I’m not pretending to be your girlfriend or the random chick you’re banging this week.”

“Agreed.” All of that sounded like it would cause more problems than it would solve anyway. “I’ve got a condition. Dressing up is not required. I’m not putting on a suit.”

The best thing about the off-season was not having to strangle himself with a tie multiple times a week just for a bus ride to the rink or a plane trip to another city. Coach Peppers was old-fashioned about doing things the original way.

“Fine.” Zara held up three fingers. “The third stipulation is that I’m not putting on a good attitude. If it’s been a crappy day, I don’t have to pretend to be a manic pixie dream girl.”

He snorted. “No one who’s met you would believe that. You’re a little salty.” That was putting it mildly based on her attitude when she showed up for their date.

“I have my reasons.” She added another finger, so she was holding up four. “Oh, and no making love. Sex?” She paused and looked him over quickly. “Maybe. Emotional, heartfelt, staring-each-other-in-the-eyes making love? Not gonna happen. No offense, but you’re not my type.”

What the hell? Not her type? He was a professional athlete making millions. He’d been led to believe he was everyone’s type.

“Not a problem, since I don’t think we could see eye to eye while having sex unless you magically grew a foot,” he said.

“You’re not into being creative?” Zara rolled her eyes. “I guess that’s expected for someone who has probably had women throwing themselves at him for years. You haven’t ever had to work for it.”

Caleb had no idea what to say to that. He’d been punched square in the face by the most feared goons in hockey and it hadn’t knocked him as senseless as this little five-foot-nothing of a snarky woman had done with a few choice words.

“I have one more rule,” she said, reaching for another roll. “Five dates and we’re done. Period. Do we have a deal?”