Simply Irresistible (28 page)

“I’ll help you back to the bench,” he said, and moved them toward the stone wall. He told himself to think of her as his best friend’s little sister, but thinking of her as his best friend’s little sister didn’t work. He decided to think of her as
his
sister, but a few hours later, after hitting gift shops and arcades, he gave up thinking of her as anyone’s sister. It just didn’t work.

Instead, he concentrated on his daughter. Lexie and her constant chatter provided the distraction he needed. She was like a little bucket of cold water, and all of her questions gave him the respite he needed from his thoughts of Georgeanne draped across his bed.

When he looked into Lexie’s eyes, he saw her excitement and innocence, and he was amazed that he’d helped create such a perfect little person. When he picked her up and put her on his shoulders, or held her hand, his heart thumped hard in his chest. And when she laughed, he knew that everything was worth it. Having her with him was well worth the hell of wanting her mother.

During the ride back to his house, he kept himself distracted with the sound of Lexie’s little voice raised in fervent song. He patiently listened to the same silly jokes she’d told him two weeks ago, and when they got back home, she repaid him by jumping in the bathtub. He’d listened to her singing, laughed at the jokes, and his little distraction deserted him for a tub full of water and a Skipper doll.

John grabbed a copy of
The Hockey News
and sat down at the dining room table. His eyes scanned Mike Brophy’s column, but he didn’t give it his full attention. Georgeanne stood at the kitchen counter chopping vegetables. Her hair was down and her feet were bare. He turned to a three-page article featuring Mario Lemieux. He liked Mario. He respected him, but at the moment he couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the chop-chop-chop of Georgeanne’s knife.

Finally he gave up and raised his gaze from the picture of Lemieux getting drilled into the nickel seats. “What are you doing?” he asked her.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, laid down the knife, then turned. “I thought I’d make us a nice salad to go with our lobster tails.”

He closed the magazine and stood. “I don’t want a
nice
salad.”

“Oh, then what do you want?”

He looked from her green eyes to her mouth.
Something real dirty
, he thought. She’d put some pink glossy stuff on her lips and outlined them in a darker shade. He dropped his gaze to her throat, her breasts, and then down to her feet. John had never considered feet sexy. He’d never really thought of them much, but the thin gold ring she wore around her third toe did things to his insides. She reminded him of a harem girl.

“John?”

He walked toward her and looked back up into her face. A harem girl with tilty green eyes and a voluptuous mouth asking him what he wanted. After the day in his houseboat, he knew better than to kiss her.

“What do you want?”

To hell with it, he thought as he stopped directly in front of her. Just one kiss. He could stop. He’d stopped before, and with Lexie a room away in the tub playing with her Barbies, things couldn’t go too far. Georgeanne wasn’t his buddy’s sister, or his sister, or Sister Mary Theresa either.

John slid his knuckles along her jaw. “I’ll show you what I want,” he said, and watched her eyes widen as he slowly lowered his head. His mouth brushed against hers, giving her time to pull away. “I want this.”

Her lips parted on a deep, shuddering breath and her eyes fluttered closed. She was soft and sweet and her lipstick tasted like cherries. He wanted her. He wanted to burn. Plowing his fingers into the side of her hair, he tilted her head and dove into a soul-deep kiss. The kiss was reckless and wild. He fed off her mouth, off her desire and his. He felt her hands on him, on his shoulder, his neck, and the back of his head, holding him to her as she lightly sucked his tongue deeper into her mouth. His craving for her churned deep in the pit of his stomach. He ached for more and reached for the bow holding her blouse closed. He yanked and pulled the material wide across her chest, then he drew back, away from her moist, hot mouth. Her beautiful eyes were going all sleepy with passion and her lips were wet and puffy from their kiss. He slid his gaze down her throat to her breasts. Her blouse lay open, the white lacing crisscrossing her deep cleavage. He knew he was dangerously close to the point of no return. Close, but not quite there yet. He had a little more maneuvering room before he was over the edge.

He cupped her big breasts in his palms and lowered his face to her cleavage. Her skin was warm and smelled powdery, and he felt her swift intake of breath as he kissed the scalloped border of her satin bra. He sucked air into his lungs and closed his eyes, thinking of all the things he wanted to do to her. Hot, sweaty things. Things he remembered doing to her before. He slid the tip of his tongue across her soft flesh and promised himself that he’d stop when he came up for air.

“John, we have to stop now,” she gasped, but she didn’t move away, nor did she move her hands from the sides of his head.

He knew she was right; even if it weren’t for their child in the next room, continuing any further was asinine. And while in his lifetime John had occasionally been an ass, he’d never been a stupid ass. Not for the past several years anyway.

He kissed the slope of her right breast, then with his body aching to continue, urging him to push her to the floor and give her nine inches of good wood, he drew back. When he gazed into her face, he came very close to giving in to his physical hunger. She looked a little stunned, but mostly she looked like a woman who wanted to spend the rest of the evening naked.

“Cryin‘ all night,” she whispered, and reached for the edges of her blouse, pulling them together.

With that honey-sweet accent spilling from her mouth, she reminded him of the girl he’d picked up seven years ago. He was reminded of how she’d looked wrapped up in his sheets. “I guess you like me more than a bad hair day,” he said.

She looked down and tied the bow. “I have to check on Lexie,” she said, and practically ran from the kitchen.

He watched her go. His skin felt tight, and he was hard enough to pound nails. Sexual frustration clawed at his gut and he figured he had three choices. He could hunt her down and wrestle her out of her clothes, he could take care of it himself, or he could work out his frustration in the weight room. He chose the third and healthiest option.

It took him thirty minutes on the treadmill before he’d cleared his head of her, the taste of her skin and the feel of her breasts in his palms. He did another thirty minutes on the stationary bike, then stopped to work on his strength training.

At the age of thirty-five, John figured he only had a couple more years before he retired from hockey. He wanted to make those remaining years his best, and he had to work harder than ever.

By hockey standards, he was old. He was a veteran, which meant he had to play better than he had at twenty-five or face speculation that he was too old and too slow for the game. Sportswriters and front-office management wondered about all veterans. They wondered about Gretzky, Messier, and Hull. And they wondered about Kowalsky, too. If he had a bad night, if his hits were too soft, if his shots too wide, sports-writers would openly question if he was worth his big contract. They hadn’t wondered when he’d been in his twenties, but they did now.

Perhaps some of the things they said about him were true. Maybe he was a few seconds slower, but he more than made up for it in pure physical strength. He’d understood years ago that if he wanted to survive, he would have to adapt and adjust. He still played a fairly physical game, but he played smarter now, using his other skills as well.

He’d survived last season with only minor injuries. Now, with only a few weeks before training camp, he was in the best physical condition of his life. He was healthy and fit and ready to shake out the rink rust.

He was ready for the Stanley Cup.

John worked on his legs until his muscles burned, then he did two hundred fifty stomach crunches and jumped in the shower. He changed into a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt before returning upstairs.

When he walked out onto the deck, he found Georgeanne and Lexie sitting together on the same chaise, watching the tide. Neither John nor Georgeanne spoke as he lit the grill, both obviously willing to let Lexie fill the strained silence. During dinner, Georgeanne hardly looked in his direction, and afterward, she jumped up to do the dishes. Since she seemed so eager to get away from him, he let her.

“Do you gots any games, John?” Lexie asked, holding her chin in her hands. Her hair had been braided down the back, and she wore a little purple nightgown. “Like Candy Land or somethin‘?”

“No.”

“Cards?”

“I might.”

“Do you want to play slapjack?”

Slapjack sounded like a good diversion. “Sure.” He stood and went in search of a deck of cards, but he couldn’t find any. “I guess I don’t have any cards,” he told a disappointed Lexie.

“Oh. Do you want to play Barbies then?”

He’d rather sever his left nut.

“Lexie,” Georgeanne said from the doorway of the kitchen where she stood drying her hands with a towel. “I don’t think John wants to play Barbies.”

“Please,” Lexie begged him. “I’ll let you pick out the best clothes.”

He looked into her little face with her big blue eyes and pink cheeks and he heard himself say, “Okay, but I get to be Ken.”

Lexie jumped off her chair and ran from the room. “Don’t got no Ken ‘cause his legs broke off,” she said over her shoulder.

He glanced at Georgeanne, who stood there with a pitying look in her eyes while shaking her head. At least she wasn’t avoiding him anymore.

“Are you going to play?” he asked, figuring that with Georgeanne playing, too, he could quit after a short while.

She laughed silently and walked toward the couch. “No way. You get first pick of all the good clothes.”

“You can have first pick,” he promised.

“Sorry, big boy.” She picked up a magazine and sat down. “You’re on your own.”

Lexie came back into the room loaded down with toys, and John had a bad feeling he was stuck for a while.

“You can be Jewel Hair Barbie,” Lexie said as she tossed him a naked doll, then she opened her arms and pastel plastic furnishings fell to the floor.

He moved to sit cross-legged on the floor, then he picked up the doll and quickly looked her over. As a kid, he would have given just about anything to touch a naked Barbie, but he’d never been lucky enough to get within ogling distance. Now that he was afforded a good look at her, he discovered she had a scrawny ass and her knees made weird crunching sounds.

Resigned to his fate, he sat on the floor and searched through a pile of clothes. He chose a leopard-print leotard with matching leggings. “Do I get a matching handbag?” he asked Lexie, who was busy setting up the beauty parlor.

“No, but you gots some boots.” She dug through her stuff, then handed them to him.

He looked them over. “Just what every well-dressed woman needs, a pair of hooker boots.”

“What’s hooker boots?”

“Never mind,” Georgeanne said from her position behind the magazine.

Playing with dolls was a new experience for John. He didn’t have a sister or any close female relations his age. As a kid, he’d played with action figures, but mostly he’d just played hockey. He pulled the leotard up over Barbie’s hard plastic breasts, then reached for the leggings. As he dressed the doll he realized several thing. First, getting a pair of leggings up rubber legs was a real bitch, and second, if Barbie were real, she wouldn’t be the type of woman he’d want to help dress or undress. She was skinny and hard and her feet were pointed. He realized something else, too. “Ahh, Georgeanne?”

“Hmm?”

He turned to look at her. “You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?”

She lowered the magazine a fraction and her big green eyes peered at him over the top. “What?”

“This,” he said, and pointed to the beauty parlor. “Something like this could seriously jeopardize my reputation as a badass. Oh, sorry,” he corrected himself before either of the two females had a chance. “Something like this could make my life hell.”

Her devious laughter filled the space between them and he couldn’t help but laugh, too. He imagined that he looked real stupid sitting there trying to shove boots on a Barbie doll. Then abruptly Georgeanne’s laughter died and she tossed the magazine on the end table. “I’m taking a shower,” she said as she stood.

“Do you want your perm now?” Lexie asked.

John watched the sway of Georgeanne’s hips as she walked from the room. “Do I have to get a perm?” he asked, turning his attention to his daughter.

“Yep.”

John hopped his hooker-booted Barbie over to the pink salon chair. He didn’t know much about beauty parlors, but he’d had a girlfriend or two who had spent their time and his money in them. “Could you do my nails while I’m here?” he asked, then ordered a bikini wax and an apricot facial.

Lexie laughed and told him he was funny, and suddenly playing Barbies wasn’t so bad.

* * *

Lexie lasted until ten o’clock. Exhausted, she insisted that John carry her to bed. By subjecting himself to the Barbie Beauty Parlor, he had scored serious points with his daughter.

At any other time, Georgeanne might have felt hurt by Lexie’s defection, but tonight she had other issues on her mind. Other troubles. Big troubles. After that kiss in the kitchen, John had not only moved past bad hair day, but he’d shot past eyebrow tweezing, too. Then if that hadn’t been enough, he’d sat down on the floor and played dolls with a six-year-old girl. At first he’d looked funny. A big, muscular man with big hands worrying about a matching handbag and plastic boots. A macho hockey player worrying about his reputation with the guys. Then suddenly he hadn’t looked funny at all. He’d looked like he belonged on the floor, shoving leggings on a Barbie. He’d looked like a father, and she was the mother, and suddenly they looked like a real family. Only they weren’t. And as they’d looked at each other and laughed, she’d felt a little ache in her heart.