Chapter 20
Whiplash
The air stirred, and Angie knew in a heartbeat Sam stood behind her. “Hey, angel.” His voice was low, smoky. If sex could be turned into speech, those two words were the epitome.
A steely arm snaked around her waist and pulled her to a steelier frame. His lips were on her ear, doing things that set off a series of unwelcome chills along her spinal column.
“Sam! Not here!” she ground out through clenched teeth. Though the staff had left for lunch and the clinic was empty, the doors weren’t locked. Anyone could walk in at any moment with a line of sight to her desk.
“But I’m here for my … session.” He flexed his hips, pressing them against her ass in a deliberate rhythm, leaving no doubt he was happy to see her.
“Besides, no one’s here.” His free hand gently grasped her chin and turned her head toward him.
His navy blues swirled with something besides the usual lust she saw there, something she couldn’t quite pin down.
He gave her a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Hey, beautiful. Missed you.”
Even though they’d been naked together earlier this morning.
He dropped a searing kiss on her mouth. She squirmed, but his arm banded around her tighter, his hand splaying wide and moving to her breast while he devoured her mouth. She eased and molded against him. Talented fingers slid beneath the placket of her polo shirt until they reached their target.
She let out an errant gasp, encouraging him to work his magic fingers.
He broke the kiss and nuzzled her cheek. “You are so fucking sexy in your baggy pants. I want you so bad. Bathroom break? Or I could just bend you over your desk.” The hand that wasn’t busy tending to her breast stroked her ass.
She fought against the sensations threatening to sweep her up and carry her away. “We can’t! Besides, we just had a bathroom break five hours ago.”
“Yeah, and I’m hungry all over again. You’re like Chinese food. Never can get enough.”
She bubbled with laughter.
He removed his hands and pulled away. “Not the sound a man wants to hear when he’s doing his damnedest to seduce his smoking-hot girlfriend.”
Oh, she liked the sound of that. And not just the “smoking-hot” part.
Tugging her polo back into place, she turned toward him, melting when she saw an adorable grin plastered on his handsome face. She grinned right back. “Can’t say as I’ve ever been mentioned in the same sentence as Chinese food before. Not sure how I feel about the comparison.”
He held up his index finger. “Only the best Chinese food.” He stole a glance over his shoulder before jerking his chin toward the bathroom. His hands grasped her waist, and his eyes prowled her body. “What do you say? No one will find out.”
“Until Celia wonders why you’re not on my table and comes looking for us,” she deadpanned.
“On your table? You on top?” His timbre turned sleek and sinful. “Oh yeah. I’m digging that visual.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, we’ll save the table for after hours.”
Oh, it was tempting. Getting naked with Sam had become one of her favorite pastimes, and it wasn’t only about the way he knew how to tune her body and hit all the right notes.
It was about the tender way he cuddled her after, the kisses he sprinkled over her shoulders and neck, the sweet things he whispered in her ear—that he loved the color of her eyes and the shape of her mouth and how she laughed when the shelter pets got up to their antics.
It was talking to him in the dark, laughing with him, sharing memories along with the mundane everyday things.
“I’m good with the bathroom,” he murmured. “We’ll lock the door.”
The sound of the clinic door opening made her shove his hands away. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
“It’s okay,” he assured as he stepped back and turned toward the sound.
In strolled a Blizzard player, and one side of Sam’s mouth hitched up. “Toby. What’s up?”
“There you are.” Toby’s eyes slid between them. His lips curled in a knowing smile. “Coach thought you might be down here getting some … therapy.”
Angie bristled at the innuendo. Unless Toby had seen them seconds earlier—before he’d opened the door—he could have no idea Sam had had his hands on her.
He was jumping to conclusions he had no business jumping to, conclusions he wouldn’t have jumped to if Angie had been one of the other therapists.
A little doubt niggled at the back of her brain. What if Toby had seen? What if someone else had? She and Sam needed to be less careless
Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Coach wants me?”
“Probably wants to give you the same lecture he gave the rest of us about not partying all night tonight.”
“Or maybe it’s about coming on the road trip with the team.”
Toby shrugged. “Guess you’ll find out.”
Sam cast a look Angie’s way that had so much packed behind it.
A mixture of elation that the team had won the first playoff round and sadness they’d done it without him.
Guilt that he was attending a celebration tonight he didn’t feel he’d earned.
A wish that she’d be there with him. Hope that he’d be able to join his teammates on their upcoming road trip to Nashville to take on their next opponent. Doubt that he’d make it.
Her own hope melded with his, but rather than lift to the sky, reality kept it in a state of frustrated flutter.
His progress was slower than it should have been.
He wasn’t there yet, and she couldn’t falsify her reports and say he was—not that he’d asked her.
Where her sessions with him were only a few times a week, the team trainers now worked with him daily, and they knew as well as she where he stood with his rehab.
They wouldn’t be clearing him for play in this next round. Maybe not this season.
He’d been diligent about his therapy, and she’d helped him as much as she could, but high ankle sprains were unpredictable, and this one had a stubborn streak as wide as the sheet of ice in the arena.
The longer it hampered him, the more his confidence slipped.
She could see it in his eyes anytime they discussed the injury.
He side-eyed her. “Catch up with you later?”
“I’ll be here. Don’t forget we still need to run through your exercises.”
He sent her a secret wink. “Oh, I won’t forget.”
She squelched the urge to watch him walk out the door—no need to fuel Toby’s suspicions—and turned back to her desk, her gaze landing on nothing and everything.
With a lung-cleansing breath, she tunneled her focus and got back to work.
A half hour later, finished with her morning reports, Angie sat outside, basking in the late April sun and sipping iced tea during an early lunch break, when her cell phone vibrated. She stared at the screen and chewed on her lip, debating. A text buzzed at the same time.
Answer me or I’m calling the police.
Angie picked up and braced herself.
“Are you ghosting me? Where have you been?” Jenna demanded.
Angie recoiled at the shrillness in Jenna’s voice, though she probably deserved the tongue-lashing.
She had evaded her cousin for over a week, ever since she and Sam had taken their relationship to the lover’s level.
She’d been too busy floating in her blissful bubble of Sam—the one where the rest of the world didn’t exist, where worry was light years away, and where answering to people like her cousin wasn’t a blip on Angie’s radar screen.
Sam was the brightest star in her universe, and her only desire was to bask in his rays.
But Jenna’s concern was currently poking a hole in that bubble, and Angie needed to return to reality long enough to reassure her cousin she needn’t worry.
“I’ve been busy,” she offered.
“With what?” Jenna barked.
“The usual. Work, the shelter, life.”
“A man?”
Anger flushed Angie’s cheeks. “Why would it be a man?”
“Because you always call me back. You never let this much time pass without talking to me, so I figured you were either dead or were too busy getting your hoohah serviced to return any of my calls or texts.”
Angie nearly spewed her drink.
“Aha! So it is a man,” Jenna shrieked with triumph.
“Then you’re forgiven, but you have to tell me every dirty detail.
And before you do, all I can say is thank God you found someone to distract you from sulky Sam Durbin.
” Tongue-tied, Angie sat still, trying to string together words, anything that would throw Jenna off the trail.
But her cousin was a bloodhound. “Oh shit, Angie. Please do not tell me the man is Sam Durbin. Tell me you’re not cruising down the Catastrophe Highway again! ”
Angie pulled in a fortifying breath. “We’re friends, Jenna. He’s helping me at the shelter.” Lame, but true.
Angie rushed to fill Jenna in on her time with Sam at the shelter.
“Omigod, Jenna, he’s amazing with the animals!
So patient and kind. And they’re drawn to him too.
Animals can sense that energy.” She paused, hoping for an encouraging sound, any hint she was breaking down Jenna’s walls of suspicion.
When she got no sign, she raced on. “His photography is amazing, and he’s been taking all the animals’ pictures.
He even posted pictures of the bunnies and gave them cute little sayings. You should go online and check it out.”
Scenes of Mr. Claws climbing Sam flashed through Angie’s mind.
The kitty had taken a particular liking to Sam’s curls, perching on his head like a miniature lion basking in its Kenyan kingdom.
Sam’s feigned look of annoyance while a tiny tail had swished across his face like a windshield wiper had been the icing on the cake, and Angie had barely held back a giggle.
If her heart hadn’t softened toward him before that, it would have been impossible for it to stay intact after their visits to the shelter.
It was mostly in puddle form these days.
Jenna was silent for so long Angie thought the call had dropped.
When her cousin did speak, her voice was laced with caution.
“Please tell me he’s just a temporary boy toy and that you’re not falling for him again.
Or have you forgotten what happened last time?
Now that he’s a hotshot hockey star, his ego is even bigger. ”
“What’s ego have to do with it?” Angie shot back.
“Oh. My. God. You’ve already fallen for him, haven’t you? And a bigger ego translates to a bigger crater for your heart when he up and leaves you without a word.”
“It’s not like that.” Heat rose from Angie’s chest to her cheeks, but Jenna wasn’t done.
“Then what is it like, cuz? Tell me, please, because so far you’re spending time with him outside of work—when you shouldn’t be—and you’re gushing so hard I want to puke.” The snark in Jenna’s tone raised Angie’s hackles. “Have you slept with him?”
“That’s none of your business!” Angie blurted. Unwisely. She and Jenna didn’t keep those kinds of secrets from one another.
True to Jenna’s personality, she jumped to her own—correct—conclusion. “You have been sleeping with him,” she accused, her voice ripe with judgment. “Angie, what are you doing? And for God’s sake, why?”
Angie’s heart folded in on itself. She had always trusted Jenna, looked up to her, valued her opinions.
Jenna was the first sounding board Angie turned to when she needed guidance—and usually Angie took that guidance to heart and applied at least some of it.
She had always believed her cousin’s cool logic meant she was the wiser of the two.
But right now Angie wasn’t buying what her cousin was dishing up, and a battle broke out inside her.
Her heart wanted what it wanted, and it was being pitted against Jenna’s rational mind.
The war inside Angie made her stomach flip over, squeezing bile up into her throat.
“It’s been six years,” Angie tossed back. “I’ve changed, and so has he. He’s not like that anymore.”
“Like what, exactly?”
Angie didn’t have time to think about an answer because her phone’s alarm chimed. “My lunch break’s up, Jenn. I need to get back to work.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Jenna snorted.
“And true. Look, I gotta go, Jenn. I’ll call you.” Angie disconnected before her cousin had a chance to utter another word.