Danielle #2
“Its fast, and when you’re out there, it feels like you’re flying. The ice is the only place in the world that makes sense, even when the game is out of my control. Knowing that I have a team who has my back feels good. ”
“The salary isn’t half bad, either,” Danielle teases.
“The salary is not half bad,” he agrees, “but even if I wasn’t getting paid what I do, I would still play. It’s a part of who I am. It’s been in my blood for so long, I don’t know what I would do without playing, or it taking up some part of my life.”
“Do you still love it?” She leans her head against his shoulder as she asks.
“I think I do,” he says, “I think right now I’m going through a crisis, but I know that it’ll be right there waiting for me once I find my way back to why I loved it so much in the first place.”
“Do you have panic attacks a lot because of it?”
He shakes his head.
“I put a lot of effort into settling, and grounding myself when it happens. I think today it was just because I haven’t had to deal with that for a while.”
“Is that what Cara meant at the beginning of the summer, when she said I shouldn’t hire you?”
“Probably. If you’re in the hockey world at all, you would know how bad it got after I missed that shot,” he says, “and she’s a huge fan, apparently. She was just looking out for you, and your store. ”
“She’s in the hockey world, alright,” she says, “her brother is in the NHL or the AHL or something.”
“What’s her last name?”
“Petrov.”
“No shit.” he says, eyes widening. “Her brother isn’t Mikhail, is he?”
“That sounds familiar,” Danielle says, looking up at him.
“No wonder she was so pissed off,” Andrew says, laughing. “If I’m right, her brother is one of my Alternate Captains, and one of my best friends. She wanted the win as bad as we did. Wow, so many things make sense now.”
He tilts his head back against the boxes, and releases a deep breath. She sees, and feels, the tension leave him before he turns and looks at her. The look in his eyes tells her the conversation is over, but only for now.
“This is probably a weird time to ask this,” he says, “but JT, Ainsley, and I are going jet-skiing this weekend. Would you want to come?”
She studies him for a minute, pretending to think about it, before breaking into a smile .
“I’d love that, actually,” she says, “it’s been a long time.”
Andrew grins and, not for the first time, she wants to kiss him. To call him hers. To hold his hand and shout from the rooftops that he’s her man, and nothing else matters because she’d found him and he’d found her.
The way he’s looking at her, she thinks he might want the same thing, and she swears that he’s leaning in, and she can’t wait to tell Emerson –
The thought of her best friend makes her look away from him, standing up before he can even say a word.
How can she even be thinking this way when that loss is still so fresh?
She holds out a hand for Andy, pretending that she’s going to do anything to help him stand. He looks at her, confused.
“The customers await, Fisher,” she says, forcing a smile, “we can’t just leave them. ”
He takes her hand, and she helps him up before heading out of the stock room and to the sales floor. She immediately jumps into a conversation with a regular who has come in, and tries to push any and all thoughts of kissing Andrew out of her mind.
If he thinks it’s weird, he doesn’t say anything, but she notices he intentionally avoids her for the rest of his shift. That is completely on her, because shutting down after someone with anxiety shares something that deep with you is not the right move.
She feels like she could kick herself for it, but she doesn’t get the chance to say anything else until the end of his shift. The store gets chaotic at around noon, and doesn’t ease off until he’s heading to the door.
“Andy,” she says as he makes his way out the door. He turns, eyes meeting hers. “I need you to know that I am not freaked out by what you said earlier.”
He releases a breath and a relieved smile lights up his eyes.
“Thank you for trusting me with it,” she adds. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Am I bringing coffee?”
“Duh. ”
On Friday, Andrew stays late to help her close for the weekend, one of the rare ones that she takes off, even though the village is swarming with people for the Fourth of July.
She promised herself that, this year, she would close so she could spend time with Harper, take her to the carnival in town, and then to the fireworks if she wanted to go.
She heads back to the stock room, a pile of returns in her arms, and her eyes land on a box that came earlier marked SOS.
Strict-on-sale titles for Tuesday that would be illegal to put out on the sales floor until Monday after closing when she put them on the shelves, so they would be ready for release day.
The box, technically, isn’t even allowed to be opened, and if she does open it to put on a shelving cart, she’s supposed to cover them so that no one can see what books they are.
But she knows , for a fact, that the latest cowboy romance book from one of her favorite authors is in that box and really, she owns the store, so she can’t be expected to just ignore that a potential five-star read is just… sitting in that box.
So, she does something that, in six years of running this place, she has never done .
She grabs a box cutter, slices through the tape, and opens up the box.
Ten copies of Roped In stare back at her, just wanting to be read. She picks one up, careful not to crack the spine as she turns to chapter one and starts reading, Tripp Walker and his mail-order bride, Josie, bounding off the page and into her heart with every word she eagerly devours.
A throat clears behind her and she jumps, hiding the book behind her back and whirling around, eyes wide.
“Whatcha got, there?” Andrew says, smirking. “That box definitely says ‘strict on sale’ and for someone who’s a rule follower, you’re certainly breaking a bunch of them.”
“It’s nothing,” she says as he strides across the room toward her. “I was just checking the packing list.”
“Your face is pretty red,” he says, raising a brow, “are you sure you haven’t been skimming?”
“Me? Skimming? A book that’s supposed to be off limits until Tuesday? I would never.” She says, shaking her head and gripping the book behind her back tighter the closer he gets .
“Riiiiiight,” he drawls, “then you shouldn’t have a problem showing me.”
He steps into her space, reaching behind her back to grab for the book. She spins back to his chest, trying to keep it from him but his arms are longer than hers and the feel of his chest against her back has her flustered enough that she loosens her grip for a split second.
That’s all the time he needs to grab it and hold it above her head, grinning in triumph as he holds the book open and skims the page she was on.
“This Tripp guy sounds like a delight,” he says as she reaches, jumping around him to try and grab it from him, “Didn’t know you’re into the cowboy type, I’ll have to work on my accent… have you gotten to this page yet?”
He turns his back to her, still holding it up in the air as she reaches for it again. His eyes widen.
“Oh, my,” he says, “you were just getting to the good stuff. The sexy times .”
“I know ,” she says, frustrated, reaching for it again. She’s not embarrassed by her choice of reading material, she’s embarrassed by the page she had been on .
She’s sure he has enough familiarity with women that he doesn’t need the help, and he definitely doesn’t need to know that cowboys make up eighty-percent of her fantasies.
“He kisses her again,” Andrew reads out loud, lowering the book and turning his back towards her as she reaches around him, grabbing for it.
“And she swears that she’s never felt more alive than she does as his lips move with hers, travelling down her neck and further still.
His hand finds hers as his lips glide down her navel, fingers tangling as his blue eyes meet hers –” He turns toward her again, stepping out of her reach.
“I don’t think I can say this out loud, for legal reasons. ”
“Andrew Cornelius Fisher, give it back !”
He lets out a startled laugh and hides the book behind his back, and she reaches for it, arms locking around his waist as she does. Her cheek presses against his chest, his breathing stutters, and now he’s the flustered one.
She grabs the book from him with a victorious cry, holds it to her chest, and looks up at him.
“For the record,” he says, looking down at her and swallowing, “my middle name is not Cornelius. ”
“It seemed ridiculous enough to work for you,” she says, tension between them filling the room, so heavy you could cut it with a knife. His arms slip down around her waist and pull her closer, book pressed between them.
“You were close with the letter,” he says quietly, clearing his throat. “It’s Callahan.”
“Andrew Callahan Fisher,” she says, liking the way it sounds. “It suits you.”
“Callahan is a family name,” he says, absently, still watching her face. His eyes dart back and forth between her eyes and her lips. She steps back from him, dropping Roped In back into the SOS box.
“You have to feel this,” he says, whispering now. She takes another step back and he reaches for her, taking her hand and pressing it against his chest. His heart is thundering against his skin. “Dani, I –”
She pulls her hand back, jumping away to create more distance between them before she darts back onto the sales floor .
She needs to think, to clear her head before she did something she wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t regret. Danielle knew that he’d seen a look that mirrored his own on her face, and she didn’t know what she was going to do.
All she is sure of is that she has never, not once in her entire life, has she ever wanted a man the way she wants Andrew Fisher.
And it scares the hell out of her.