Fair Play (Hat Trick, Book 1) (5 page)

Her touch was hesitant. As if they stood on the edge of a
cliff, teetering. So close. He would gladly hurl himself off into space, into
the unknown. But would she?

He jolted at the brush of warm, soft lips along his,
accidentally jerking away as his entire body clenched with need. His eyes
flashed open to see her upturned face, her eyes closed, long lashes shadowing
her cheekbones, lips seeking his.

He watched her approach with a mixture of hope and elation.
Her mouth rubbed against his once more, her hand cupping his jaw to hold him
still as she nibbled along his lips. God, she was really kissing him. And all
he could do was stand there, heart pounding, brain stuttering as blood poured
south, the sweet ache of arousal burning through him.

He’d let her lead, let her take the leap. Then her tongue tentatively
brushed against his lower lip and he knew he had to charge after her. He
had
to.

Groaning, he captured her mouth and wrapped his arms around
her until her feet barely touched the ground. His lips and teeth worshipped the
full lower lip he’d dreamed about for weeks. His tongue danced into every
corner of her mouth. God, he’d wanted this. He wanted her. He shifted his legs
and she immediately slipped between them. He was so enamored with her taste,
the feel of her writhing in his arms, he was totally unsuspecting when she
checked him back against the car behind him.

Uh oh.

He grunted as his ass slammed against the cold metal, his
mind reeling, prepared to apologize, though he felt no remorse. He’d no sooner
opened his mouth when he was lost to another kiss. She slid her hip forward until
it nudged his aching cock, pinning him to the car. He gripped one firm, lush ass
cheek and held her in place as she undulated against him. He wanted to double
over as the rush of blood left him lightheaded, but he held fast. Nothing was
going to drag him away from the silky texture and cinnamon taste of Savannah’s
sweet lips.

She brought his head closer with a tug of his hair, danced her
mouth along his jaw, the stinging nip of little teeth setting his skin ablaze. He
tilted his head, granting her access, delighted by her aggression. She
fearlessly took the lead, and he relished the outright honesty of her passion.

His cock was engaged in a pitched battle with his zipper,
one he ached to end, or at least ease, but he couldn’t unwind his arms from
Savannah. Wouldn’t.

She used her long legs and his position against the car to plaster
herself against him. He could feel her heat through parka and wool and bitter
cold. He couldn’t remember any woman so determined to take what she wanted from
him. What he freely, happily gave.

She writhed and whimpered. He damn near whimpered back. She
licked and teased. He coaxed her mouth back to his and bit into the soft pillow
of her lip before sucking it into his mouth. Every parry, every return, took them
higher. Her fingers traced over his face again before threading through his
hair to clasp his head. His cock ached with every responsive jerk of her hips.

He’d spent hours imagining what it would be like to kiss
Savannah Morrison, and the reality blew his best fantasy out of the water.

He smiled, breaking the kiss, the cool air slipping into the
cocoon of heat they’d created between them. And with it came the reassertion of
his true nature.

Being taken was nice. Fun. Interesting. But good god, he
liked to
take.

Spinning, he used the hand grasping her gorgeous ass to lift
her, pulling her up to his height. She wrapped her legs around him, welcoming his
hips as he slammed her back against the car.

She groaned when his hard cock dug intimately against her.
For the first time he really appreciated those damn stretchy yoga pants.

Gasping for air, for control, he glimpsed her flushed face,
her swollen lips. He rubbed his nose against hers, then captured her lips
again. Now his hand skimmed
her
jaw, his thumb traced
her
wildly
fluttering pulse. Her low moan vibrated along his spine before setting up a
hot, teasing echo in his balls.

He pushed closer, rolling his hips. Threading his tongue
through her lips, he took complete possession of her mouth. Her response was
instant. Her acquiescence absolute.

If he hadn’t been so intent on kissing her, he would have thrown
his head back and howled. Holding her was like trying to wrap his arms around
the sea, her response surging up against him, washing over him. She liked to
play at taking control, but judging by her response, he suspected Savannah
would much rather relinquish it.

Which suited him just fine. Perfectly, in fact.

His heart hammered, his ears pounded with his blood, and his
cock leaped against the jerk of her hips. Images filled his head. Of what he
wanted to do. What he would do the moment he got her alone.

The bang of the heavy metal service door was a rude reminder
that he
didn’t
have her alone. Yet.

With a gasp, Savannah shoved him back and practically fell
out of his arms, staggering two steps away before catching herself on next car.
Cold air swept over him, chilled where her warm body had been. His arms hung
empty at his sides.
Shit
.

“Savannah, I—“

She held up her hand. “No. I’m sorry. That was my fault. I
don’t know what’s wrong with me. I shouldn’t have done that.”

He couldn’t agree
less.
“Please don’t apologize. I
wanted—“

“No!” she said quickly. “Please, don’t say anything. I’m so
sorry. That was a huge mistake.”

Not one single second of that had been a mistake.
Not one
.
He wanted to argue with her, the words choking him, but he couldn’t ignore the
pleading, the horror, in her gaze.

Just as she was capable of opening the door herself, she was
equally capable of slamming it in his face. And as usual, he was at a loss how
to deal with her.

“I hope we can still be friends,” she said quietly.

He couldn’t possibly be any more confused by this woman. “What?
Of course we can. Why wouldn’t we be?”

She grimaced, clearly not convinced. “I guess I should go
before I fuck this night up any worse.” She sighed. “Thanks again for the escort.”

“Anytime.”

When she turned toward her car, he put a hand on her arm to
stop her.

“I mean it, Savannah.
Anytime
. Don’t let what just happened
make you uncomfortable or hesitate to reach out. I’m still your friend. I still
want to help.”

She studied his face in the dim light. “Okay.” She nodded.
“Thank you. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Or at least it had been for a while there.

He stayed where he was as she ran to her car, got in, and drove
away. The sting of the cold air seeped into him while he waited for his heart
rate to return to normal for the first time since her lips had touched his.

He didn’t have a clue what the hell had just happened, or
why, but he couldn’t help thinking it was a step in the right direction, even
if she was running scared.

Savannah sat on the bus, absurdly grateful the seat next to
her was empty, and stared out the window as the beautiful countryside of the
Canadian Maritimes flew past.

What the fuck was I thinking?

She’d asked herself that question a dozen times in the last
five minutes alone, and too many times to count since the night before when
she’d totally lost her fucking mind.

Three months. Three whole months in Moncton before she’d
thrown sanity out the proverbial window.

She’d called Grace in the middle of the night, after she’d
stumbled into her apartment in tears and tried to lock out the world beyond her
slammed door. Grace had calmed her down, or had tried for the first five
minutes of the conversation until she’d gleaned enough details to figure out
what Savannah had done.

Then she’d been no help at all.

“What’s wrong with you kissing this Garrick guy? You said
he’s your friend.”

“He’s on the team!” Savannah had wailed, desperate to make
Grace understand.

“So? If he’s your friend, he’s not some blabbermouth
asshole, right?”

“No, of course not.”

“So, what’s the problem? I mean, I agree you don’t want to
advertise to the entire team, let alone management, that you’re in bed with the
guy, but if you’re discreet…”

“I’m
not
in bed with him!”

“Yet.”

“Never.”

And from there it had been twenty minutes of trying to get
Grace to understand the impossibility of the situation. Grace had relented on
some points, but when they’d gone to hang up, she’d ended the call with, “At
least think about it, Sav. And if you decide to do it, do it wholeheartedly.”

Savannah rolled her eyes. There was nothing to think about.
And there was definitely no wholeheartedly. She wasn’t going to embarrass
herself again with Garrick or anyone else. Ever.

Savannah dug her fingernails into her palms, forcing herself
not to turn around and look at Garrick, four rows back and on the opposite side
of the aisle. She swore she could feel it every time his eyes brushed along her
back.

Which, in reality, was probably happening far less often
than she was letting herself believe. When she’d bumped into Garrick while they
were loading up the bus, he’d acted as if absolutely nothing out of the
ordinary had happened last night. For which she should be grateful, not
irritated.

He was doing the right thing. Again.

Big, dependable Garrick, who wasn’t at all like his awful
reputation. In fact, now that she thought about it, she’d never once seen him
with a puck bunny, or any other woman in or around the arena. Or at any event. And
he always did those scout events with the pictures and the autographs. She’d
watched one once, and he’d been as patient and attentive to the twenty-fifth
scout as he had been to the first.

He was—she was galled to admit—a good guy. A good guy who
had apparently had one bad moment about fifteen minutes after she arrived in
the arena on her first day. His presence in the parking lot last night made up
for that ridiculous indiscretion about ten times over.

Her
indiscretion last night made his initial misstep
pale by comparison.

Once she’d stopped replaying that kiss in full Technicolor
detail, her imagination had kept her up half the night picturing a thousand
grim scenarios of what might have happened had Garrick not been there. But he
had. And she’d kissed him. She could still taste every lick, feel every touch, hear
every groan, whimper, and gasp.

God, was she ever going to stop thinking about it?

With an exasperated sigh, she threw herself back in her seat
to stare at the carpeted ceiling above her. She was being stupid. She’d made a
mistake. A huge, stinking mistake. She couldn’t change it, so she would have to
let it go.

She was about to give in to her compulsion to look back and
see if Garrick was, in fact, looking at her again, when she picked up on the
low murmur of conversation from the row in front of her.

Normally the team’s management sat at the front of the bus
so they could hold impromptu meetings and various people could give out
marching orders as needed. If they weren’t talking business, they generally
weren’t talking at all. Today, though, Mark and Rick sat with their heads bent
together, and from the tone of their voices, the subject was serious.

The gap between their seats was small enough that she
couldn’t really see them, but with their heads turned toward each other, she
could hear their conversation clearly.

“Smythe called to tell me himself,” Mark muttered.

“Did he give you a timeline?” Rick asked.

Savannah had never heard the coach sound so anxious. She
leaned forward in her seat, hoping no one would notice she wasn’t really tying
her shoe.

“No, no dates. But he was clear that if the Cats don’t sell
soon, Lamont is going to shut them down.”

Rick whispered a heartfelt f-bomb but Savannah barely heard
him as she slumped back in her seat.

Shut down the Cats? Kill the team? How soon was soon? Today?
Next week? The end of the season? All of those were too soon for her. She
didn’t have a full season under her belt yet.

And what about everyone else? Garrick wouldn’t get picked up
by another team at his age. Rhian wasn’t drafted yet, but she was sure he was
close. And Sheila? No team meant no box office.

Without a thought for the previous night’s debacle, Savannah
leaned into the aisle and looked back at Garrick. He was looking right at her.

Hell, she didn’t even have to say a word or make a gesture. Whatever
he saw in her face must have been enough. He immediately stood.

Shit
. He couldn’t come sit with her on the bus. And
even if he could, she couldn’t tell him what she’d overheard when the two
people she’d been shamelessly eavesdropping on were less than two feet away. She
stared out the front windshield and racked her brain for a means to get the
message to him.

His broad frame blocked the light from the windows on the
other side of the bus and she darted a glance up at him, shaking her head as
subtly as she could before turning to stare out the window.

She held her breath, afraid he hadn’t understood her
admittedly mixed signals and would sit down next to her. Though, his going back
to his seat with no explanation as to why he’d come to the front of the bus in
full view of the entire team wasn’t going to work much better.

She jumped when he put his hand on the seat back in front of
her and leaned forward.

“Excuse me, Coach?”

Mark and Rick immediately stopped talking and spun to face Garrick.
“Yes?” Rick asked.

Garrick’s smile didn’t falter. “I wanted to ask you about
the best shot again. I was thinking about the clips we watched last night, and
I think high and left is the way to go.”

The coach immediately entered into a debate with Garrick
about something that—judging by tone and the coach’s exasperated, “are we
really going to go through this
again
?”—was a sore issue.

At one point, Garrick casually glanced down at her and she sent
him grateful smile.

Garrick had to stare at his coach’s teeth, generally noted
for their grayish color, until the tingle in his balls that had kicked in when
Savannah smiled at him went away.

It took a few minutes, during which time he completely lost
the thread of Rick’s lecture. Something about beating horses to death and
trusting in his coach. Garrick felt bad about poking at him, particularly since
he’d already agreed to go with Rick’s wishes on this, but the endless argument
from the night before was all he’d been able to come up with on the spot.

And now, with the ball tingling issue, he was just as happy
to have Rick railing at him. It was a semi-effective countermeasure.

Once he had himself under control, and while Rick continued his
endless soliloquy on the merits of blindly following your coach’s advice, he
glanced down at Savannah again. The look she’d sent him a few minutes before
had pulled him from his seat without thinking. Now he was stuck.

She lifted one eyebrow in sympathy and mouthed, “later.”

Any excuse to spend time with her was entirely okay with him.
He nodded once, then returned his rapt attention to Rick and waited for him to
wind down. It took another five minutes, but eventually he made it back to his
seat without too much of his ass chewed off. Now he just had to sit tight until
they got to Halifax and he could get a minute alone with Savannah.

Longest two hours of his traveling career.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait once they’d unloaded at
the hotel. He was keeping one eye on Savannah, another on Bobby, and all the
while trying to retrieve his bag, when Mark came up to him.

“Hey, I need you to do me a favor.”

In the eight years Mark had managed the Cats, he’d never
once asked Garrick for a favor. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Savannah needs to check out the facilities here and at the
arena. Wants to do it all before dinner.”

Garrick kept his face perfectly straight, careful not to let
any of his internal happy-dance show. When Mark looked at him as if he should
be able to intuit what this information meant, he stared back.

He was still trying to get the hang of this friendship thing
with Savannah. Until he had it nailed down tight, he wasn’t giving one damn
thing away.

Mark sighed. “So I need you to go with her, because I don’t
want her running around alone. For now. Though, if anyone asks, it’s because
she’s never been here before and as a veteran, I thought you’d be the best
person to show her.”

Garrick pursed his lips, fighting his smile. “You tell her
all this?”

Mark grinned. “No, I’m giving you that job, too.” With a
laugh, he walked into the hotel.

An hour later, Garrick stood next to Savannah in the sultry
air of the pool room, staring down into the rather small, oddly-shaped,
azure-tiled pool.

Savannah sighed, her hands on her hips. “This pool sucks
ass.”

Garrick’s laugh echoed in the tiled box. It was good to feel
something other than the heavy dread that had been dragging at him since
Savannah had revealed what she’d overheard on the bus. She’d managed to relay
the entire conversation and have a passionate, albeit professional, freak-out in
the course of one elevator ride. Since then, neither of them had said much at
all.

Until the pool observation anyway.

“I think it’s nice.” Garrick pointed to the faux-teak chaise
lounges and white and cobalt tiled walls. “Very soothing. And the hot tub looks
good.”

Savannah glanced at the huge octagonal tub. “Yeah, well the
good news is I can probably fit three defensive lines in there.” She paused. “If
they still have their jobs tomorrow.”

Garrick put a hand on her shoulder, trying to give comfort when
there was little to be had, and ignored the zing of awareness when his finger
brushed her bare neck.

She allowed it for all of ten seconds before she shrugged him
off and got back to business. Kneeling by the pool’s edge, she dipped her hand
in the water. “Yikes!” She yanked her hand back out. “You get in there and you
won’t have to ice anything. Stay in too long and things might fall off.”

He laughed again, but this time his heart wasn’t really in
it. Frustration gnawed at him.
There has to be a way.
A buyer. Someone who
could be convinced to give the Cats a chance.
We need more time.

Staring down at the pool water rippling from Savannah’s
touch, Garrick didn’t even notice her come back to his side until she put a
hand on his arm.

Even with his thoughts on the future of his team, he enjoyed
a bolt of pleasure that she was voluntarily touching him for some reason other
than her job.

She patted him, taking a turn at offering comfort. They were
both doing a lousy job at it. “Maybe there’s a buyer in the wings. Maybe
someone will come forward soon.”

“Maybe.”
But I doubt it.

“In the meantime, I’d like to find Lamont and kick his boney
old ass.”

Garrick smiled, still staring into the water. “Yeah, well,
you’ll be in his neighborhood in about three days. Maybe you should do that.”

“What?”

Garrick stopped day dreaming and looked at Savannah. They
would
be in Lamont’s neighborhood later that week. The next game on this road trip
was on Cape Breton Island—home of the Sydney Snow Dogs, the Cabot Trail, and
Edwin Lamont.

“You’re a genius.”

“I am?”

He smiled. “Yes, you most certainly are!”

She was watching him like he was a few cards short of a full
deck. “Care to tell me why?”

“Nope,” Garrick replied, his mind already racing to what
he’d have to do to make it work. He grabbed Savannah by the upper arms, hauled
her up to him, and kissed her on the forehead before she could do more than
squeak out a feeble protest.

“Hey!”

“You
are
a genius though. I’ll explain the rest
later.” He let her go before she could even think about shoving him away.

“You better!” she called as he jogged out of the pool room,
dialing Rhian’s number to ask him to meet Savannah in the gym and escort her to
the arena.

She wouldn’t like it, but she’d survive. And so, maybe,
would the Ice Cats.