It takes two weeks for the plan to be set into motion.
Two weeks of pacing my studio apartment, gnawing on my nervousness.
Two weeks of sending out job applications to newspapers, and only getting nibbles in return.
Two weeks of pure, unadulterated silence from Duke.
But today is the day.
I’ve already run through my lines in my head, having practiced on Casey, Caleb, Mel, and Jenny more than once during the last fourteen days. At this point, they’ve done a better job of memorizing my apology to Duke than I have.
Not that I haven’t tried. It’s just my jitters. They’re making me edgy.
“You owe me for the rest of your life for this.”
I barely spare Gwen a glance because I’m suddenly not quite sure that I can do this. I’m in the conference room at her PR agency in the heart of Boston’s financial district, seated at a wooden table that could easily house fifteen people but currently holds only me.
Cue a vomiting sensation.
I don’t know if I can do this.
“Gwen, I—”
She cuts me off with a raised hand. “No. No way are you bailing on me right now. Do you know how long it took me to convince the CEO that this was a good idea? Tricking one of our clients into a fake meeting so that his frumpy girlfriend can kiss and make up with him is not in my pay grade.”
I ignore the “frumpy” comment, mainly because I look cute today. Jenny dressed me, as per usual. My fitted black skirt, off-the-shoulder blue silk top, and matching black stilettos screams professional businesswoman.
The exact look I was going for when I concocted today’s plan of action.
“What time did you say he would be here?” My gaze flits to my wristwatch. Ten-twenty.
“Ten-thirty.”
Ten minutes until show time. Holy baby Jesus, I need to sit down.
Except that I already am sitting down, which doesn’t bode well for what’s coming next.
“If you’re going to puke, do it there,” Gwen tells me, pointing at the small garbage can in the opposite corner of the room. “Otherwise, I’ll be back soon. Try to sweat a little less—you’re looking oily.”
And with that, she leaves me to my own devices.
Sunlight streams in from the window, toasting my neck and back until I worry I might start smoking.
I pull my hair off the back of my neck, and fan my face with my free hand. I am so effing nervous I’m ready to combust with anxiety.
Realistically, I know that I’m taking a big leap of faith here. There’s a very good chance that Duke’s interest in me has already waned, and that everything I’ve planned will be for naught.
It’s a risk I’m willing to take. Under an umbrella of complete honesty, I want to see what could become of Duke and I’s relationship.
My ears perk at the sound of voices on the other side of the closed door. There’s Gwen’s high-pitched tenor and Duke’s low timbre. As I struggle to regulate my breathing, I watch as the door slowly swings open like something out of a horror movie.
Cue an influx of creepy as hell zombies.
And clowns—can’t forget about the clowns.
“We have a lot to discuss today,” Gwen says, motioning for Duke to bypass her with a wave of her hand. Since I’m seated to the far right, out of sight of the doorway, he hasn’t spotted me. My cover hasn’t yet been blown. “Congratulations on the win last night, by the way. Excellent save.”
“Thanks.”
I wince. He sounds . . . hollow, chilly, if that’s even possible.
“The GQ feature will go live tomorrow, as well. I’ll send you over the URL as soon as the editor alerts me that the piece has been published.”
“Are you sure we needed to meet today, if we’re getting everything taken care before we’ve even sat down?”
There’s a small pause as Gwen positions herself opposite me, so that Duke is forced to present me with his back. I send up a silent prayer to the gods for allowing Gwen to put aside her bitchiness for the time being and to help a girl out.
“Sorry, Duke, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now, but I’ve brought in someone I would like for you to talk to about an upcoming project.”
My heart flops over in my chest. This is my moment. “Hello, Mr. Harrison.”
His shoulders visibly flinch, and I swear he stops breathing. The air stills right along with him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the temperature hasn’t dropped down into the negatives. When he does speak, his voice is tightly leashed. “I’m not doing this today.”
Bless Gwen’s heart—I’m not even kidding, this time.
To everyone’s surprise, including my own, she tosses back her red hair, lifts a key into the air, and cackles. Okay, so it’s a perfectly perfect Oprah Winfrey-show laugh. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is the way she practically prances to the door and announces, “Too bad, Duke, I made a promise. Oh, by the way. This room? There is no security video.”
And with that, she sashays out of the conference room and slams the door behind her. With an audible click, the door locks, leaving Duke and I completely alone.
I doubt he’s as thrilled about these turn of events as I am.
His back is still facing me, but I see the way his shoulders bunch under the frame of his jacket as he shoves his hands into his pockets. “Still up to your dirty tricks, then, Charlie?”
As much as I want to offer a sarcastic retort to that statement, I bite my lip and clamber to my feet. My ankle wobbles a little, thanks to the fact that I’m not accustomed to wearing such high heels.
Cutting around the corner of the desk, I move toward Duke, stopping when I get within a few feet of him.
“I wanted to talk with you,” I tell him, wishing that he would glance my way. When his gaze remains resolutely on the wall behind me, I blow out a breath. “I also wanted to apologize.”
His throat works with a hard swallow. “Apology accepted.”
“I don’t think you mean that.”
Shoulders stiffening, he slams a palm on the desk and finally turns to me. His eyes are an unholy hue of blue, almost stunning in their vibrancy. “I’m done playing games, Charlie. Especially with you.”
“Okay, great.” My hands go up, facing out in front of me. “I’m done playing games too.”
Mutely he stares at me like he’s wondering what the hell I’m doing still breathing in his presence.
Thank God Gwen thought ahead and locked us in here. I never thought I might love her to death, but here I am, considering naming my firstborn daughter after her.
I lick my lips. “I want to start by saying that I’m sorry.” My hands fall to my sides, fingers awkwardly tapping my thighs sheathed in a form-fitting skirt. “I’m sorry for betraying your trust. I’m sorry that, initially, all I wanted from you was material for my job. I’m sorry that I saw your downs as an opportunity to elevate my career to a new high.”
Though the dark expression on his face certainly hasn’t eased, his hand on the desk is no longer balled into a fist. A good sign, I hope. Since he doesn’t seem inclined to respond just yet, I lace my fingers together in front of me and force myself to continue, for better or for worse.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you what my boss wanted of me or that—”
His raspy voice cuts off my pre-rehearsed speech. “What did your boss want?”
“Celebrity gossip.” My gaze flicks away before bouncing back to the man who, in the short span of a month, has caught my attention like no one else has—ever. “Gwen was right when she said that The Tribune is one flush away from the sewer line. Josh, my boss, decided that the only way to keep the newspaper afloat was to revert to pushing gossip rags.”
Retreating to the other side of the table, Duke folds his massive frame into a leather chair. He looks impenetrable, like uncut granite. When his hands settle on the table, his sleeves hike up, exposing thick wrists and tattoos on his left forearm.
A reminder that I haven’t yet seen him fully naked. It’s a travesty, I tell you.
Refusing to accept defeat in the face of his Cold War expression, I lift my chin and prepare to march to battle. “Josh gave me an ultimatum. Either I convinced you to give me the interview, or I was fired.”
“I’m assuming you’re living a cushy lifestyle now,” he says in a low voice. The bright February sun has turned his hair to a burnished gold, though the hard planes of his face are cast in shadow. “TMZ pays a pretty penny for a salacious story.”
“I quit, actually.”
The line of his mouth tugs down. “Excuse me?”
Whelp, here goes nothing. “I quit. I admit full responsibility to writing that piece of trash that hit TMZ and then spread all over like a bad STD—”
“Is there such thing as a good STD?”
I ignore his sarcastic commentary. “I exposed information of yours that I shouldn’t have. I did all of that.” Moving to his side of the table, I push back the chair next to his and sit down gingerly, giving him time to adjust to my nearness. He doesn’t move, which I take as a good sign.
“In my defense,” I murmur, “That article was never meant to see the light of day. I wrote it, hating myself as I typed out the words. I’m not hiding from the fact that I’m ambitious or that I want to succeed, and I know that you joke about me playing dirty. But I promise you that I never gave that article to my boss. I trashed it, literally, and sent Josh something completely different.”
“How different?” His voice is like the crack of a whip in the otherwise quiet conference room.
“There’s no mention of Gwen in any other capacity than as your PR agent,” I tell him honestly, hoping that he’ll find it in himself to believe me. “I don’t bash your stats, nor do I link your personal life to the game. I focus on the sport. I focus on your influence on the game of hockey . . . It’d be easier if you just read it for yourself.”
“Charlie, I’m not interested—”
Determined to prove to him just how wrong he is about me, I pull my phone from my purse. With a few quick taps, I’m logged onto the proper website. Perfect.
Sliding the phone toward him, I wait for the realization to hit him that . . .
“What the hell is this website?” he growls, staring at the screen like he’s looking at an abomination come to life.
He’s not wrong.
“A free website,” I tell him, fighting the blush making its way to my cheeks. “Originally, I had forced Gwen to make a connection with The Boston Globe, so that the real article could make its sweep across the Internet. The article that I feel represents me, as a journalist.”
Duke holds up my cell phone, waving it about in the air. “And this thing is . . .?”
This time there’s no stopping the blush from warming my skin. I reach up and tug my hair away from neck again. Does this room not have AC? Seriously, I’m burning up right now.
Seeing no other recourse, I mutter, “I built it. It’s a free site.” I squirm in my chair under the weight of Duke’s searching gaze. “I didn’t want you to think that I was using the weird fame thing from a fake article to bolster the one you’re holding in your hands now. This is the article I turned in to Josh. This is the article I’m proud of. Please, read it.”
He sets the phone facedown on the desk, and I swear that my heart crumples at the sight.
Time to opt for Level 2 of the plan.
“Duke,” I try again, effusing warmth into my voice, “I know that your past isn’t . . . stellar, but I want you to give this another go.” I pull my hands into my lap. “Don’t lump me in with what happened with Sam.”
I don’t miss the jolt of his body. “What do you know of her?” he demands, leaping up from the chair. “Who told you anything about her?”
“Gwen mentioned it, but I—”
Large, masculine hands drag through his hair in frustration. “It wasn’t any of her business to tell you about Sam.”
Crap, crap, crap.
Wrong move.
I stand, too, mostly to even out our height as much as I can. “Gwen just wanted to help me understand.”
“Understand what?” Duke’s hands fly up into the air, and I fall back a step at his rare show of emotion. “To understand how wrong I was to place my trust in a woman I’d only just met?” He laughs, caustically, and it’s a devastating sound that rips me apart. “That I shouldn’t have expected anything more from her than a quick lay?”
A few steps in his direction doesn’t help any. He’s on the move, tracing a path along the floor-to-ceiling window that looks out on to the busy streets below. I can spot the John Hancock, Boston’s tallest skyscraper, as well as the Prudential Tower, where my father worked for a number of years.
The world beyond that window feels so very far away.
I place my hand on his arm, startled to feel the muscles in his forearm twitch under my touch.
I have no idea what I mean to say, but I’m saved from having to figure it out. To my shock, Duke covers my hand with his and . . . breathes. His eyes fall shut, and his nostrils flare with the intake of air. Blue eyes blink open, as deep and as fathomless as Boston’s harbor in the dead of summer.
“I almost made it to the Stanley Cup twice before actually pulling it off when I was twenty-four,” he says softly, his fingers brushing back and forth against the ridges of my knuckles. “It was the first season I’d played goalie. My coach . . . I don’t know. He was desperate during playoffs. Merger got injured, bad, and then the second string couldn’t find his ass from his head most days. We’re up against the Capitals one night, and Coach looks at me from across the ice. He points, tells me to gear up and get in the net.”
“Just like that?”
He gives a short, precise nod. “Just like that. I’d played goalie in high school for my first two years, had done reasonably well. Sometimes, during practice, Coach put me in the net just for shits and giggles, to keep me on my toes. That night, I was half-frozen in fear; worried I’d let in every puck that came flying my way. I was a wreck.”
“It was the year the Blades came on the map.”
A small smile lights his features, like he’s thinking back on that long ago day. “Yeah, it was. I busted my ass out there on the ice, breathing nothing but hockey. But then I met her.”
Ugly, green envy darts through my veins. I’ve never been one for jealousy. It serves no purpose, but right now, as I sit in this conference room with Duke Harrison . . . I feel its sourness filter through me. I don’t much like it. Life’s a whole lot easier when you can focus on the straight and narrow.
I nevertheless open my mouth and say, “You met Sam.”
Another short nod, accompanied by a squeeze of my hand. “Yeah. She wasn’t so much as a distraction as she was an outlet, an avenue to expend my nervous energy after long practices and even longer games. But then I started to like her, and while I was thinking of moving in together and long-term relationships, she was . . . ”
“Biding her time, waiting for the moment to strike.”
I don’t want to say the words, but I’d rather they be out in the open. And while I’d rather not throw myself into the crossfire, I have no choice if I want to bypass this hurdle. “I can see where you’d start to liken me to her, but you’d be dead wrong.”
Slipping out of my hold, Duke scrubs a hand over his jawline, then digs his knuckles into his eye sockets. He looks tired, beyond exhausted. “Whether you intended to or not, Charlie, you sold me out. You can beat around it, but the fact of the matter is, at some point you were considering submission to TMZ.”
“All right,” I snap, suddenly annoyed that he refuses to give even an inch. “So, yes, I wrote that piece. I wrote all about your personal life, Duke. But, hello! How would that be possible when you’ve barely told me anything about yourself?”
His mouth parts on what’s obviously going to be a scathing retort, so I cut him off before the damage to my heart is permanent. I approach him with a swagger to my walk, intent on showing him just how wrong he is. “You want to feel bad about yourself? That’s fine. You go and do that. But don’t think, for one second, that you’re any better than I am. Sure, I might want to be respected at my job, but you don’t even want your job.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then why,” I say quietly, “have you composed two emails regarding your retirement in the last year?”
“How do you know about that?” His voice is as chilly as Boston on a frigid, February morning.
It’s called being a Class-A Stalker when I want to be. That’s not what I say, though, because I have no intention of being labeled as a creeper. Every source I’ve used has been completely legal, I promise.
Duke’s feet carry him forward, until with his body he’s cornering me against the window. With a little jump of surprise, my back hits the glass. It’s cold against my exposed shoulders and arms. Cold enough to make the girls—I’m talking about my nipples—stand to attention.
Something Duke notices, if the way his hot blue gaze dips down to my chest is any indication. He gives a little shake of his head, dropping his hands to either side of my head on the window behind me.
Boxing me in.
Tempting me to thrust my hips forward and cradle his hard length.
“Charlie,” he warns in a deceptively soft voice, “how do you know about the retirement?”
I close my eyes and take a moment to appreciate the way his body is inadvertently pressing against mine.
“Charlie.”
All right, fine. “I spoke with The Boston Globe editor last week, before I’d decided to create my own website.”
“Sean.”
I nod. “You’ve approached him in the past about spreading the news. I may have promised him a date with Gwen if he talked, although she apparently has a boyfriend now.”
Almost incredulously, Duke’s eyes narrow. “He gave in that easily?”
“You fail to realize how many people want Gwen. Women, men, random strangers; everyone wants a piece.”
And here we are, full circle.
“I’m no longer interested in a piece of her,” he murmurs, drawing my attention to his masculine lips. I recall it pressed against mine, drawing moans from my soul and orgasms from other, more scandalous parts of my body. “I’m interested in—”
He cuts off, and I glance up at his face. He looks, dare I say it, a little bit nervous.
I can’t restrain myself anymore.
“I want to see where this goes,” I tell him fervently. “I want to see what your naked skin looks like with your tattoo, outside of the darkness of your bedroom. I want to know what your voice sounds like mid-morning, after we’ve already had sex and ate brunch in bed.”
He laughs and the sound is music to my ears. “You’re such a writer,” he says, his fingers slowly planting themselves in my chaotic hair. “Are you sure you don’t plan on switching from journalism to writing romance novels?”
“I never say never.” My hands take a leap of faith and land on his flat stomach. “Maybe you feel differently, but I’ve never been so interested in a guy before.” Time to rush through this, and hope to God I’m still left standing with my dignity at the end. My mind’s eye reads over the last few lines of my pre-rehearsed speech.
“My mom left when I was a kid. My dad, as you know, died when I was seventeen. For most of my life, I’ve been alone and I like it that way. It’s safer.” Drawing in a deep breath for fortitude, I continue, somewhat mollified to see that the glimmer of anger etching his features has receded. “But then you walked into my life, Duke, and it wasn’t meant to be anything. We met at a bachelorette party, and I wasn’t even a bridesmaid. You had what I wanted, yes, but you pushed me. You made me interested, and that’s . . . never happened before.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, and I feel his hands fall to my waist. “Are you saying that you’re in love with me, Charlie Denton?”
Maybe. I don’t know. It’s way too soon to admit anything like that, though, so I try and play it cool. “I like you, Mr. Harrison. And I’m hoping, despite my mess-ups, that you might like me back. Even if just a little.”
“I don’t mix pleasure with business,” Duke startles me by saying. When I try to yank out of his grasp, embarrassment lining my every move, he holds me still. “I’m not finished yet, honey.”
The word “honey” stops me dead in my tracks.
I glance up at his face.
“I don’t mix pleasure with business,” he reiterates. “I learned that the hard way, when I landed on every major Internet site, naked as the day I was born, for months. For years I’ve been going through the motions, hesitant to trust someone to get too close to my heart. You’re right—I’ve been ready to quit hockey for years now.”
“Then why haven’t you?” I ask.
“I don’t know, and that’s the honest to God truth. I don’t have an answer for you. Maybe it’s just a habit I don’t know how to break. Get up, head to practice, work out. Rinse and repeat. For over ten years, the life of a hockey player has been my normal. But it became a routine that no longer challenged me, or pushed me to be something greater. And then I met you.”
My heart starts to thump erratically. I’m trying to squash my hope—I really, really am—but I’m having a dreadfully hard time doing so. Since I lack patience of any kind, I whisper, “And?”
Duke laughs, pulling on a strand of my kinky hair with one finger. “And, crazy as this sounds, I met you and I felt like I had finally come alive. When you messaged me on Twitter, I stared at my phone for hours waiting for your response. You were ballsy, and your confident, take-no-prisoners attitude had me hooked from the start. I wanted to play your games. I wanted to do anything that would put you in my direct line of path.”
Screw patience. Seriously, I’m done with it.
I throw my arms around his neck, almost going so far as to link my leg around his leg. Duke doesn’t seem perturbed. He lifts me off the ground, his big hands hoisting me up into his arms, and then plops me onto the conference table without prelude.
“I haven’t forgotten our rooftop sexcapade,” he tells me, his calloused fingers thumbing the line of my silk shirt. “Have you?”
I smile. “No way. It was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
“Me too,” he murmurs. “I forgive you for the article. On one condition.”
“Anything.”
Duke leans down, pressing his weight into my body, so that my hands land on the desk to keep me steady. “Tell me, are you wearing any underwear today?”
Laughing, I playfully slap him on the chest. “You’re a dirty man.”
“I’ve got to be, if I plan on keeping up with your dirty moves.” Then, he drops forward and kisses me. It’s a different kiss than the others. This one speaks to the future and to commitment . . . and to love, I hope.
As he hikes up the hem of my skirt, his fingers flirting with the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, I say, “The answer to your question is no. I’m not wearing any panties.”
With a groan, he plants another kiss on my mouth. “Charlie Denton, you’re a keeper.”
And, as it turns out, I am.
