Chapter 18
DANE
The rink was a smaller one tucked away in a quieter section of Central Park that tourists didn’t usually find. I discovered it years ago during one of my late-night hockey games with Sean and the guys. It was a hidden gem that rarely got crowded, even on weekends.
Tonight, with the snow falling steadily, it was nearly empty.
Ina sat on a bench lacing up her skates. The skates were well worn and spoke of years of use.
“Ready?” I asked, already on my feet, my own skates laced.
She looked up at me and grinned. “Are you? Because I should warn you, I’m pretty good at this.”
“I’ve been playing hockey since I was three. I think I can handle a casual skate.”
“Hockey.” She stood, testing her balance. “That’s basically just ice skating with violence, right?”
“Basically,” I said with a laugh.
She stepped onto the ice, and I followed. “Come on, let’s take it slow and easy. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
I opened my mouth to respond with something appropriately dry and sarcastic, but then Ina pushed off. And everything I’d been about to say died in my throat.
She didn’t just skate. She glided. Moved across the ice like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she’d been born doing this.
Her movements were fluid and graceful, but there was power behind them, real strength in the way she took the turns.
I watched as she built speed without seeming to try.
I’d seen professional skaters before. Had watched enough Olympic coverage to know what skill looked like. Ina wasn’t quite at that level, but she was close. Close enough that I found myself completely still on the ice, just watching her move.
She did a small spin. Nothing fancy but executed perfectly. When she came out of it, she caught me staring.
“What?” she called, skating backward without having to look where she was going. “I told you I was good!”
“You didn’t tell me you were this good.”
She laughed and spun again. The sound of it mixed with the soft hiss of her blades on ice and the silence of the falling snow sent shivers up and down my spine that had zero to do with the chill in the air.
She’s beautiful, I thought, watching her hair billow behind her as she picked up speed. Absolutely beautiful.
She was flushed with cold and joy. Snowflakes caught in her dark hair. She acted like a bird set free from its cage. The strength she usually kept hidden behind kindness and careful professionalism was on full display here, and it was mesmerizing.
She skated past me, close enough that I could have reached out and touched her. She smiled just for me.
It was just a little smug.
That warm feeling in my chest intensified, spreading through me like heat.
This is just attraction. Physical attraction. She’s turning you on. That’s all this is.
But I knew, even as I thought it, that I was lying to myself.
This was more than lust. This was something bigger and far more dangerous. It was something I’d spent my entire adult life convinced didn’t actually exist.
I pushed off, catching up to her with less grace but enough speed to get her attention. I was a hockey player. We didn’t try to be graceful. We were fast and moved with purpose.
“Show off,” I said when I pulled alongside her.
“Says the man who plays hockey.” She matched my pace easily, making it look effortless. “Don’t tell me you can’t keep up with a girl from Wyoming.”
“I’m reevaluating my assumptions about Wyoming.”
“You should. We might be a small state, but we know how to skate.” She did a little jump that somehow became a half rotation, then stuck the landing perfectly. “Winter is a lifestyle where I’m from, not just a season. We’re on the ice from November to March. Sometimes April if we’re unlucky.”
“And here I thought I was decent at this because I can skate backward and occasionally hit a puck into a goal.”
“Oh, you can skate backward?” She raised an eyebrow, challenging. “Let’s see it.”
I demonstrated, feeling slightly ridiculous because my backward skating was utilitarian at best. It was functional for hockey but not particularly elegant. Ina watched with barely concealed amusement.
“That’s not bad.” She skated circles around me, literally, while I moved backward. “You skate like you’re about to check someone into the boards. Very aggressive.”
“I am a tough guy who plays a tough sport.”
“You’re a softie who pretends to be tough.” She stopped circling and fell back into pace beside me. “I used to date guys like you all the time back home.”
That got my attention. “Guys like me? There are no guys like me.”
“Well, no. But the ‘big softie hiding under an icy mask of indifference’ thing? The tough guy act?” She gave me a playful nudge. “Yeah, I’ve been through a few of those.”
I nudged her back, gentler than she’d nudged me, and she laughed.
“I’ve never really hung out with a girl like you before,” I admitted.
“What kind of girl am I?”
“Nice. Too nice for someone like me.”
“Nice isn’t bad, Dane.” She said it seriously, the teasing edge dropping from her voice. “And you’re nicer than you want people to think you are.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just kept skating.
The snow was coming down harder now. I noticed the rink was emptying out.
The few other skaters who’d been there when we arrived had gradually disappeared, until it was just us and the falling snow and the soft glow of the lights strung around the rink’s perimeter.
“I know you’re my Secret Cupid,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them.
Ina’s rhythm faltered for just a second before she recovered. “Lucas told you?”
“No. I guess you can say I’m a little smarter than the average bear. I figured it out on my own. The gifts were too perfect. Too specific. How did you know what I’d find funny? What I would like?”
She shrugged, but I could see the faint blush on her already-cold-reddened cheeks. “It’s my job as your assistant. I should know these things. I should probably know what size boxers you wear and how hot you like your showers too.”
“That’s bordering on real relationship territory.”
“Is it?” She looked at me with a sexy smile.
We slowed without realizing it, our movements becoming more languid, less focused on skating and more focused on just being near each other.
“I bet you’re one of those guys that likes the temp a hair above freezing,” she teased.
“And you’re one of those women that likes it hot enough to peel the top layer of skin.”
She giggled. “I do love a good hot shower. Unfortunately, our building is old and only leaves me a little pink—all skin intact.”
Thinking about Ina naked in the shower was a bad idea. My body was reacting and that was very, very bad. I could not let her know I was getting a semi just thinking about her standing under water, droplets sliding between her breasts.
Fuck.
“Do you miss it?” Ina asked suddenly. “Ireland. Home.”
No one ever asked me about Ireland. No one asked about the place I’d come from or the accent I’d worked so hard to hide.
In New York, I was Dane Kavanagh, the billionaire CEO.
My past was something I referenced in carefully crafted sound bites during interviews, not something I actually talked about.
But I felt I could trust Ina with my past. She wasn’t going to run to the tabloids and reveal all my secrets. Not that my heritage was a secret. I just didn’t care to have my life story exploited.
“I did when I was young,” I said. “When we first moved here and everything felt foreign and hostile. I missed Dublin, missed my cousins and my grandmother and the way everything smelled different. But that was a long time ago. It’s an old memory now.”
“You trained the accent out.”
“I had to. Kids at school made fun of it. Teachers couldn’t understand me half the time.
And when I got to Columbia, I realized no one took you seriously in business if you sounded like you’d just stepped off a plane from Dublin.
” I felt the familiar bitterness rise up.
“So I let New York chew me up and spit me out, and I came out on top. American accent, American success story. The immigrant dream.”
“Is it lonely at the top?”
The question made me stop skating entirely. Ina glided to a stop beside me, and we stood there in the center of the rink, facing each other, alone in our little bubble of falling snow.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Very lonely.”
“Then why do you do it?” She was looking at me with those eyes that always seemed to see too much, understand too much. “Why make Cupid’s Arrow if you don’t believe in it for yourself? Why build an empire around helping other people find connection if you’re not willing to let yourself have it?”
I should have had an answer ready. I’d been asked versions of this question in interviews before, and I always had a smooth response about separating business from personal life. My canned response was always about how my job was to make the product work for others.
“The data is sound,” I said finally, and even I could hear how weak it sounded.
“Love isn’t data, Dane.” She took off her gloves and reached out, and before I realized what she was doing, her warm hand was against my cold cheek. “It’s magic.”
“Magic isn’t real.”
“Isn’t it?” She moved closer. So close I could count the individual snowflakes on her eyelashes if I wanted to.
“You built an entire company on the premise that two people can find each other against impossible odds. That’s magic.
The algorithm is just the method. The magic is in the connection itself. ”
“That’s just probability and compatibility metrics.”
I got it. I understood it in a way I never got it before.
Because whatever this was between us, it didn’t fit into any of my carefully constructed frameworks. It wasn’t a transaction.
It was just feeling.
And I had no idea what to do with that.
“I’m not good at this,” I said quietly. “At being open. At letting people in. I’ve spent so long building walls that I’m not sure I remember how to take them down.”
“I’m not asking you to take them all down.” Her hand was still on my cheek. I realized I’d leaned into the touch without meaning to. “Just maybe let me peek over the top sometimes. Let me see the real you, not just the CEO version.”
“What if the real me is disappointing?”
“What if he’s not?”
We were so close now that I could feel the warmth of her breath. I saw the exact moment her gaze dropped to my lips.
Kiss her, my brain demanded. Just kiss her and stop overthinking everything.