Knock Me for a Loop (18 page)

“The bathroom’s all yours,” she said, because she couldn’t stand the silence anymore, or the way his hot stare was, indeed, making her nipples bead.

Zack blinked, swallowed, tore his eyes away as he rolled to the side and reached for his crutches.

“Right,” he said, climbing to his feet. He went to his own suitcase, which she’d arranged on top of a round table in the far corner, and began to gather a few items.

As he hobbled past her on the way to the bathroom, she said, “If you need anything, let me know.”

He gave a sharp nod, but kept walking, and she didn’t let out her pent-up breath until she heard the bathroom door click closed.

Okay, he might be in trouble here.

More trouble than in his last game when he’d gotten dog-piled while his leg went one way and the rest of his body had gone another.

More trouble than when Grace had first showed up at his apartment and dragged him out of bed, announcing that she was there to whip him into shape and get him back on his feet—literally.

Possibly even more trouble than the day Grace had walked into his hotel room in Columbus to find a strange woman in his bed.

Because he was very much afraid he was falling back in love with Grace.

Despite everything they’d been through. Despite the fact that he’d broken down and lost himself for a while after she’d left him, then pulled himself up by his bootstraps and decided he could and would move on without her. That he’d be all right without her.

His resolve had gotten a bit shaky when she’d suddenly reappeared in his life, but he’d handled it well, he thought. Even after the kiss…

Oh, man, that kiss had rocked him to his very soul. Turned him on harder than he could ever remember being turned, and made him want to sink to the floor and slide into her right then and there.

It had aroused him and brought up a lot of old memories, yeah, but even that hadn’t caused his head to spin quite as much as it was doing at this very moment.

And he wasn’t sure why. All he knew was that the minute Grace had stepped out of the bathroom and he’d turned his head to look at her, every cell of his being had seized up, frozen, refused to function. His lungs burned, his vision turned hazy, and his blood burned so hot, he wouldn’t have been surprised if steam started to seep from his skin.

The funny thing was that he shouldn’t have had that reaction given Grace’s appearance. It wasn’t like she’d sauntered out of the bathroom like Jessica Rabbit, in high heels, thigh-high stockings, and a barely there teddy. No, she was very conservatively dressed in plain cotton winter pajamas. Cute pajamas, but not exactly the stuff of wet dreams or even a Victoria’s Secret catalog page.

How she could knock him for such a loop while covered from head to toe, hair still damp from her shower, pink-tipped toes bare, he would never understand. And yet she had. He’d taken one look at her and felt his stomach drop, felt his groin tighten…felt his heart melt, slide around in his chest cavity, then re-form in the shape of Grace’s beautiful face.

Oh, yeah, he was falling, and falling fast. Falling hard, too. It was going to hurt like a son of a bitch when she let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he didn’t have a shot in hell and he hit the pavement three million stories below.

Ouch. Lifting a hand to his chest, he rubbed the spot over his already aching heart.

This was going to be brutal. Losing her the first time around had been nasty enough, but now he felt as though he’d been given a second chance…or at least a shot at a second chance.

But Grace’s mind was set where he was concerned. She thought he was a cheater, and nothing short of a message from God or Gage coming through with that lie detector idea—and Zack wasn’t holding his breath on either count—was going to change her mind.

So here he was, locked in the crapper of a Holiday Inn Express in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania, afraid to go back out into the other room because Grace was there. And if he saw her again, he’d want to touch her, hold her, tell her things that would only make his life miserable in the long run.

Leaning heavily on his crutches, he dumped his things on the closed lid of the toilet and began to undress. Once he was naked, he stepped carefully into the shower, crutches and all—though, thankfully, there was a safety bar along the wall that he could hang on to—and flipped on the water.

It was a cold shower for him tonight, unfortunately. Because if he didn’t get his Johnson under control, when he did go back into the other room, there would be no need for words. Grace would take one look at him and know exactly what was on his mind. Exactly what her presence did to him.

Then there would be a need only for explanations and possibly the ducking of objects flying at his head…or lower. It would be like opening Pandora’s box…or a big, fucking can of worms he just did not want to deal with.

So he let the water run, standing under the icy fall until he was clean, but shivering, and everything that should be drooping instead of standing at attention had dwindled back into place.

Please let her be asleep
, he thought as he climbed out of the tub and started to dry off.
Please let her be buried under the covers up to her neck, with a hundred and fifty pounds of Saint Bernard conked out between her and his side of the bed.

Otherwise, there was a good chance certain parts of his anatomy would start pointing north again, and that would be bad. Very, very bad.

Row 17

Grace wasn’t asleep, and the covers most definitely were not tucked up to her chin.

Damn.

The television and all the lights were still on, and she’d somehow managed to manipulate Bruiser to the foot of the bed so that she could turn down the sheets and the spread. Her damp hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and pillows were propped behind her against the headboard so that she could sit up straighter, legs out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. Her feet were still bare, the painted nails both adorable and sexy at the same time.

She was knitting. Something pink and girly—Jesus, not again—and in an indiscriminate shape, at least to his eyes. But it was coming along. The needles were clicking and clacking, and yarn was floating like a leaf on the wind as she wound it around her finger and one of the needles over and over with each stitch.

And just that quickly, he needed another cold shower.

Seeing her on that bed did things to him, made his mind wander in all sorts of directions it had no business wandering. Stirring up memories it had no business remembering.

Same went for his cock. If he didn’t rush across the room and dive under the covers like he was trying to stop a puck from hitting the net, he was going to be in big trouble. Ten inches of big, throbbing trouble.

Doing his best to angle his body so that she didn’t notice what was going on behind his blue striped boxers, Zack hitched his way across the room to the other side of the bed. Because, of course, she’d taken the side closest to the bathroom, closest to safety and concealment.

“You got him to move, I see,” he said once he’d turned around and dropped onto the white-sheeted mattress.

“I promised him smoochies and lured him down there with some doggie biscuits slathered in peanut butter.”

“You brought peanut butter?” he asked with a short chuckle, hoping the conversation and her knitting were enough to distract her while he eased his injured leg onto the bed and pulled the covers up to his waist.

There. Success. He was safe, as long as he kept his other leg bent so she would think
that
was the only thing tenting the sheets.

Pay no attention to the “little man” behind the curtain
, he thought, the scene from
The Wizard of Oz
playing through his mind. Nothing to see here, nothing to worry about. It’s just a knee.

Yeah, right.

“I brought
everything,”
she told him without looking up from whatever it was she was knitting. “Three quarters of my luggage and what’s packed in the car is for Bruiser.”

He waited a beat, considering that. And then he said, “You’re a good doggie mama, you know that?”

Her fingers slowed, and she cocked her head, watching him for a moment before replying. “Thanks,” she said softly, a slow smile slipping over her face.

Okay, compliments were a bad idea. Or at least saying stuff that would make her smile like that was a bad idea.

Because now there was a fist-sized knot of desire sitting in the pit of his stomach, his balls were tightening, and he wasn’t sure a knee the size of the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota was going to distract her from noticing the occasional wiggle around the area of his lap.

Yet even knowing all that, and mentally reciting hockey scores, couldn’t keep his next words from tripping right off the tip of his tongue.

“A good nurse, too.”

Damn tongue! Not good for anything but sucking his foot into his mouth. And, okay, yeah—once in a while, cunnilingus.

“Thanks,” she said again, looking slightly confused now.

Join the club, he thought.

All right, time for a much-needed change of subject.

“So what are you knitting?” he asked.

Her lips twisted. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said, sounding oddly reluctant.

He snorted. “Why not? Is it something slinky and sexy…or naughty and embarrassing?”

Shit. Why the hell couldn’t he shut up? Why the hell did he keep muttering such suggestive stuff, when all it did was put pictures in his head? Dirty, naked pictures that were
not
helping the situation down below.

Grace laughed and reached out to elbow him in the arm without ever dropping a stitch. “No, nothing like that, you big perv.”

Oh, if she only knew.

“I’m just afraid you’ll be upset when you find out.”

He turned his head, studying what she was doing more closely. What would he be upset about?

It was a pretty, Neceo-wafer pink, which was quickly becoming one of his least favorite colors, thanks to how often she dressed his dog—his big, tough,
male
dog, thank you very much—in sissy outfits of that shade.

But other than that, he couldn’t figure out why he would care what she was making. Unless it was a jockstrap or banana hammock or something equally embarrassing that she expected him to prance around in.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t get why that thing—whatever it is—is supposed to bother me.”

Taking a deep breath, she let her hands and the yarn fall to her lap. “Promise not to be angry,” she said.

Um…yeah, he could pretty much guarantee that one, since he was sitting here as clueless as an earthworm.

“I won’t be angry,” he assured her.

“All right,” she said slowly, “it’s a doggie sweater for Bruiser.” She cringed—actually cringed—after spitting the words out like bullets from a Gatling gun.

For a second, he remained silent, looking at the pile of pink on top of her multicolored pajama bottoms and seeing it in a whole different light.

“God,” he groaned, rubbing a hand over his face in disgust, “not another one.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Grace apologized. “I didn’t plan it, I swear.”

Laying what she had done so far out on her lap, she smoothed her hands over the snugly woven stitches, careful to keep them from slipping off the needles. He could see the shape more clearly now and how the piece would eventually form a Bruiser-sized sweater.

“Charlotte gave me this skein of yarn a couple of months ago. I’d forgotten all about it, to be honest, but the other night at our meeting, she asked if I’d used it yet.” She made a humorous, ashamed face. “Thank goodness I still had it tucked into my knitting tote, because it would have broken her heart if she’d thought I didn’t appreciate her gift. So I was kind of stuck starting something with it right then and there, and this was the only pattern I could think of on the spot.”

Surprisingly, he actually
wasn’t
angry or upset. He supposed he wasn’t
thrilled
she was adding Pink Sweater #42 to his Saint Bernard’s already too-feminine wardrobe (God, a dog with a wardrobe—was there anything more ridiculous on the planet?), but in the scheme of things, what did it matter?

Instead, he found himself eyeing the simplicity of the pattern, imagining what it
could
look like, and how he’d do it if it were his project.

“You know,” he murmured, reaching over to lift the half-sweater by where the yarn was connected to the long metal needles, “you could give that a lot more texture if you switched to a knit-purl or maybe even a checkerboard pattern.”

For the space of a full minute, possibly going on two, the room was completely silent except for the background noise of the television, which she’d turned down to a low hum when he’d first come back from the bathroom.

When she didn’t say anything for such a long time, he lifted his head to meet her eyes. She was staring at him like a zombie, gaze blank, mouth open wide enough to catch flies.

He realized his mistake almost immediately…but also sixty seconds too damn late. Licking his lips, he swallowed hard and dropped the sweater back to her lap, pulling away to his own side of the bed.

“Just a thought. Not that I know anything about knitting,” he rushed to say, hoping it would be enough to cover up his idiotic comment, throw her off track, and appease any blatant curiosity she might have.

But why should anything start going right in his life at this point, when “freaking disaster” seemed to be working so well for him these days?

“Oh, no,” she said, sending the mattress bouncing as she folded her legs and turned to face him more fully. “You’re not getting out of this that easily.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Keep your voice steady. Avoid eye contact. Hope she buys it.

The mattress bounced again as she shifted around even more, moving closer. A grin that reminded him a bit too much of Jack Nicholson’s the Joker in
Batman
or Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s
IT
stretched across her face, sending a shiver of anxiety skating down his spine.

Up on her knees now, still springing a bit as she towered over him, she rapped him lightly on the chest with the back of her hand, right in the center of his plain white Hanes undershirt.

“Tell me how you know all that.”

“All what?” When in doubt, play dumb.

She rapped him again.

“Ouch,” he complained, rubbing the spot she kept smacking. Not that it really hurt. A tiny sting, maybe, but he was a six-foot-four Rockets goalie…If he couldn’t take a little slapping from a blond-haired, blue-eyed, hundred-and-twenty-five pound girl, he didn’t deserve to be back on the ice.

“Don’t ‘all what?’, aw shucks, I’m-just-a-good-ol’-boy-without-a-brain-in-his-head me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. How do you know about knitting, purling, and checkerboard patterns?”

She sat back on her heels, crossing her arms over her chest. It was a nice pose. Except for the annoyed tilt of her head, it framed her breasts nicely and tugged the hem of her pajama top up to reveal a slim line of bare skin at her waist.

“And don’t make me smack you again,” she threatened with a scowl.

She would do it, too. Not just crack him in the chest again, but pummel him, if she needed to. Straddle him and put him in a frontal choke hold—which, come to think of it, might not be so bad. The straddling part, anyway; he was pretty sure he could take her on the choke-hold thing.

And he shouldn’t forget that she had a pair of sharp metal knitting needles within reach.

Inhaling sharply, he made the difficult decision to come clean. “Okay, okay,” he sighed. “But you have to promise not to laugh. And not to tell anyone else.
Ever
.”

“You’re not messing with me, are you?”

He raised a brow. “Why would I mess with you?” he asked.

“Because you think you’re funny. And sticking a bag of dog poop in a teammate’s locker is your idea of adult hilarity.”

He gave a snicker. She made a good point, he supposed. That
had
been pretty funny. So had the time he and a couple other guys from the team took a dump in Lubov’s litter box. The Russian defenseman had come home from a weekend away, seen the gigantic turds, and rushed his poor cat to the vet, certain the tabby had some dread disease and needed immediate medical attention.

So his sense of humor was warped—sue him.

But what he said was, “I’m not yanking you.”

She waited a beat longer, then said, “All right. As long as you aren’t jerking me around, then I won’t laugh or repeat to anyone what you’re about to tell me. Deal?” She held out her hand to shake on it.

He took her hand, squeezing tight and holding on a fraction longer than was probably necessary. “Deal,” he murmured softly.

Shrugging a shoulder and refusing to meet her gaze, he admitted in a low voice, “I taught myself to knit.”

He said it quickly, matter-of-factly, like tearing off a Band-Aid so it would hurt less. It would be better if she were suddenly struck deaf, but he figured he had about as much chance of getting lucky in that department as in buying a scratch-off lottery ticket and winning the million-dollar jackpot.

True to her word, she didn’t laugh. Actually, she didn’t react much at all.

He waited, still expecting something, because never in her life had Grace Fisher been left speechless for long.

Finally, she cocked her head in the opposite direction, and in a tone dripping with skepticism, said, “You did not.”

Okay, that wasn’t quite the reaction he’d envisioned. Bemusement, ridicule, the start of embarrassing rumors he might never live down, sure. But
disbelief?

“I can’t believe I bare my soul and admit something like that, and you think I’m lying.”

Reaching behind her, she grabbed the sweater-in-progress and shoved it at him. “Prove it.”

He caught it before the tips of the needles could jab him in the stomach and held it a few inches away from his body. “Excuse me?”

“Prove it,” she repeated. “If you taught yourself to knit, then let’s see how good you are. Show me what you learned.”

He held her gaze a second longer, then lowered his attention to the knitting in his hands. He tugged the large skein of Charlotte’s bright pink yarn closer, rearranged the needles in his fingers, and shifted around on the bed to find a more comfortable position.

Then, without missing a beat, he picked up where she’d left off, finishing her row and beginning one of his own. He did a couple more in a straight knit stitch, just to show her he did, indeed, know what he was doing.

He glanced up, pleased to find her once again looking like a deer caught in headlights—eyes wide, mouth open in shock. Ha! That would teach her to doubt him.

And now, to rub it in…

“This is nice,” he said, “don’t get me wrong. But I think it might add a touch of flair and uniqueness if you mixed it up a bit.”

He started a simple checkerboard pattern, just as he’d suggested earlier. Knit five stitches, purl five stitches. Knit five stitches, purl five stitches. “Do this for five rows, then reverse and do the exact opposite, and when you’re done, you’ll have these cute little checks that stand out. You can even switch back to a plain knit stitch for the rest of the sweater, and the checked section will just be in the center like an extra special segment of the design.”

When he lifted his head, he found Grace still staring as though he’d sprouted a second head or announced he wanted to leave the Rockets to join the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall as soon as his knee was fully healed.