Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Leo
“How was your day, dear?” I ask Mara when I hear her coming in through the kitchen.
Her answering glare is less withering than usual. I improvised a workout after she went to work earlier, the three animals watching me do push-ups, squats and lunges and licking my face anytime they saw an opening. Then we took a nap and I felt much more human after.
“Darling’s doing fine,” I say. “Caroline came over and checked on him. You don’t have to stay if you need some sleep.”
She sighs, her shoulders dropping. “No, I’ll stay. I’m too tired to drive home.”
Glancing around the room, she pinches her brows together, looking confused. “It doesn’t smell anymore. And the couch is clean.”
I lift a shoulder in a shrug, bringing back my caveman impression. “Me not dumbass.”
Her eyes glimmer with amusement. “I never said you’re a dumbass.”
“You just imply it by calling me a caveman and saying I can’t spell three-letter words.”
For once, she doesn’t argue. She must really be tired.
“I need to get out of this house,” I say. “I’ll go pick up something for dinner.”
“Okay, let me change clothes first.”
She returns a few minutes later, dressed in leggings, a red T-shirt and slippers. Guess she and Suki are the same size.
“If I give you some money, will you pick up something for me?” she asks.
She’s looking over her shoulder at me while pulling her hair back into a ponytail, the bottom of her T-shirt rising and giving me a better view of her phenomenal ass.
“Um, no.” I force my gaze away and onto her face.
“Really? You’re going to be that much of an asshole?”
“No. Sorry. What I meant was you don’t need to give me any money. Just tell me what you want. You can pick the place since you kept our community safe from speeders all day.”
Noodle is sniffing her feet, and she bends down to pick him up, snuggling him to her chest and kissing the top of his head. “At least someone around here is nice to me, Noods. Don’t be mean to women like he is.”
I smile. “Please. You’re the queen of mean. Now what do you want for dinner?”
“A cheese quesadilla and two steak tacos from that Mexican place we all went to a few weeks ago. With a big side of guac. And also a brownie.”
In addition to being hot, Mara’s also a foodie. I’ve always secretly liked that about her. She doesn’t order half salads when we go out to eat, like some women I know.
“Where do you want the brownie from?”
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. I’d rather have one with walnuts and frosting, but I’ll take what I can get.”
I’ve spent a lot of time with Mara. I’ve seen her in fancy gowns, hockey jerseys and jeans, swimsuits, and even nothing that one time for a few seconds.
But we’re always with other people. I’ve never been around her without at least Carter and Suki there, and usually, Bash, Lainey, Dex, Harry, and the girls.
Looking at her right now, in her casual after-work outfit, and talking about what we’re having for dinner feels intimate somehow.
It's been a long time since I picked up dinner for a woman. I like my single life, and I have no plans to settle down anytime soon. But for a flicker of a moment, I wonder if Mara and I could have been something different if I hadn’t walked in on her in the bathroom.
“The queen of mean is going to be a raging bitch if I don’t eat soon,” she snaps, breaking me out of my daze.
And that is why the two of us will never even be friends, let alone more. She’s edgy and self-centered. What a waste of an amazing set of tits.
“Yes, Your Highness,” I mutter.
I’m going to make the most of this break. Once I’m out of the house, I take my time walking out to my car. I don’t have any kids, but I do have a baby—my white Range Rover SV. As a kid growing up in Elkhart, Indiana, I never imagined I’d own a new car, let alone one that cost two hundred grand.
My dad was an electrician and my mom worked at a jewelry store.
With four kids, we always had what we needed, but no extras.
I didn’t have much of a social life in high school because I had to work so hard to keep my grades and hockey game at the level they needed to be for me to keep my scholarship to a private school.
It was a great feeling, paying off my parents’ house for them when I got my first big pro hockey payday. I didn’t ask them, I just did it. They would have refused if I had asked.
I squint as I approach the driver’s side of my vehicle, seeing what looks like a scratch at the very bottom of my door. When I bend down to run my fingers over it, a jolt of pain in my left knee makes me cringe.
It’s weird what does and doesn’t trigger it.
I’m pretty sure I know the cause, but it’s going to have to heal on its own.
I can’t sit out with an injury. At age twenty-nine, keeping my first-line position gets harder every season.
There are endless younger players willing to play as hard as they have to in order to take my spot.
And it wasn’t even a scratch. The mark on my car rubbed away when I brushed my fingers over it. I get in and turn on some music, glancing over at the passenger seat.
Birdie always sits there, and she’s left a little light-brown hair behind. When I brought her back from the bachelor party with me, I planned on finding her a good home. But I’m not sure how I can give her to a stranger, not knowing if they’ll take good care of her.
I use my car’s connection to my phone to call in an order to the restaurant, getting Mara what she wants and ordering ten steak tacos for myself. I’ll eat the leftovers tomorrow.
After a stop at the grocery store for a few essentials, I find a bougie bakery and get a whole pan of brownies. When I walk into the kitchen with the food, her eyes widen over the dessert.
“Holy shit, with the flaky sea salt on top of the frosting? I may need to go change my underwear.”
A corner of my mouth tilts up over her enthusiasm. “You get one now, and another one for every hour you don’t make any shitty comments about me.”
“Ha! Good one.” She holds out her hands. “That would take at least a month unless you count the hours I’m asleep.”
I unload the food from the Mexican place onto the kitchen island, and she’s eating her first bite of a brownie before I’m even done.
“That tastes better than sex feels,” she practically moans.
I furrow my brow. “Who are you having sex with?”
“Only deaf men, remember? You once said they were the only ones who would be able to stay hard during sex with me.”
I flick my gaze to hers, detecting a note of hurt in her voice. Which is weird, because she usually dishes out the insults much harder than I do.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
She lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I know I’m not for everyone.”
“What’s that like? When people don’t like you? I’ve always wondered.”
Rolling her eyes, she sets the brownie down on the counter. “Please. When I’m down, I look up Tweets about you and there’s no shortage.”
I shake my head and smile. “Did you see the one about me not being able to score in a brothel with two fists full of hundreds?”
“See it? I believe I retweeted it. And the one about trading you for a bag of used pucks is also a favorite.”
I sigh softly as I unpack the groceries I bought. “Zero goals in the last sixteen games—Abbott is nothing if not consistent. Can’t even score on an empty net. His shooting percentage would be lower than his GPA if he’d gone to college.”
“Wait. Does that stuff actually bother you?”
I glance at her. “Did you want to grab a pen and paper and write some of these down for future use?”
“Fuck the haters.”
I bark out a laugh. “You’re one of my haters. So...fuck you?”
“ What ? You got a bottle of my favorite wine?”
She just noticed me pull the bottle of red wine from one of the bags I’m unpacking. I make a show of pulling a second bottle from the bag, too.
“Whoa! Are you calling me an alcoholic? Also, where’s the corkscrew?”
I look around the kitchen, realizing something important is missing. “Shit, where’s Darling?”
I sprint into the living room, where I find him lying on the couch, Noodle curled up against his belly. They’re both asleep.
“I need to get a picture of that for Suki,” Mara says from behind me.
Birdie pads into the room from the kitchen, sitting down so she’s brushing up against the side of my shoe and ankle. She likes to always have some part of her body in contact with mine.
Mara takes a photo, then gives me a devilish grin. “We should prank Carter and Suki.”
“I’m down, what do you have in mind?”
“Let’s send them a pic of the two of us and tell them we’ve decided we like each other.”
I bust out laughing. “They’ll never buy it.”
“Maybe not, but we should at least be able to get them to wonder.”
“Carter will shit his swim trunks.”
She turns and rushes into the kitchen. “The wine will help!”
I furrow my brow. “It’ll help you, but what about me?”
When I walk back into the kitchen, Birdie on my heels, Mara is using a corkscrew to open the wine. I scoff.
“Thought you didn’t know where it was.”
“Foolish mortal. I always know. And I have an emergency corkscrew in the island just in case Suki moves this one on me.”
“Bullshit.”
Arching a brow, she sets it down, opens one of the drawers in the island, and pulls out another corkscrew.
I nod, impressed. “Your commitment to intoxication is impressive.”
“God, you’re annoying.” She glares at me. “I’m not the lush you make me out to be.”
“Sometimes you are. But I’m not judging. I’ve made an asshole out of myself while drunk before, too. Like one time I walked into a bathroom while a pretty woman was showering and now she hates me.”
A smile dances on her lips as she says, “Get over here and make it look like you like me.”
She holds up her phone, opening the camera and angling it for a selfie.
“We should kiss,” I say. “That would convince them.”
She clears her throat. “Just put your arm around me. I’ll lean in.”
I’m a lot bigger than her, so when she leans in toward my chest, my arm wraps all the way around to her stomach. I hold her close, not missing her intake of breath.
She’s soft and warm, and I think she hates me less than she did yesterday. Her closeness makes me aware of my pounding heart. I’ve always found her very attractive, but I really do find her sharpness to be a turnoff.
Tell that to my dick, though. It goes from stiff to fully hard as she moves her long, dark hair in front of one of her shoulders, exposing her neck to me.
Her scent is light and citrusy, and I can’t help drawing her in a little closer so I can smell it better.
“Ready?” There’s a smile in her voice.
I smile and she leans her face against mine, her hair soft against my jawline. I have to remind myself that it’s Mara, the queen of mean.
“Got it.”
She steps away from me, turning her phone screen to show me the photo.
“Damn.” I arch my brows. “That’s convincing.”
She pours herself a glass of wine and grabs a taco, taking both with her when she takes Darling and the dogs out to the backyard.
I stand at the island and eat several tacos, spending the entire time thinking about how addicted I could get to a softer version of Mara. When her claws are retracted, she’s breathtaking.
But most of the time, she’s prickly and downright hostile to me. This has to be a fluke I caused with the steak tacos, wine, and brownies.
Tomorrow she’ll be back to hating me.