Chapter 1 #2
She rolled her eyes. “What? Are you a professional roller skater or something?”
He hid a smile again. “Something like that.”
“Well, maybe you should work here and…” She almost buckled over again.
“Okay, that’s enough,” she said with a sigh.
“Slide over a little.” She pressed her palms against his shoulder, as if indulging in the insane idea that she could move his 265 pounds of muscle with her toothpick arms. “The boss is gone, so no one will know. Slide over!”
He obliged, and she sat on the edge with her back to him, pulling the first skate off a foot.
“And I thought high heels were bad,” she muttered.
“By the way, lay off the gym, Tabasco Boy! If a delicate, innocent little flower like me barely has room on a two-person bench next to you, that’s too many muscles!
Didn’t your anabolic steroid consultant explain that to you? ”
An involuntary laugh slid across his lips as he shook his head and looked at her narrow neck. First, she was too cheeky, her smile too mischievous, and her body too curvy to be considered a delicate, innocent flower, and second – Tabasco Boy?
Moreau had leaned back in his seat opposite him, his hands clasped behind his neck with a blank expression. Austin knew the goalie well enough by now to tell from his pursed lips that he was close to bursting into laughter.
“Ah, so you can’t control your mouth or your skates,” Austin said with interest. “I don’t know if a job that depends on both balance and tips is such a good idea.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. To his surprise, she was still grinning broadly.
Her eyes sparkled beneath her long, pale lashes.
“I can control myself,” she explained patiently.
“But it would make my life a lot more boring, so I usually choose not to.” She shook off the second skate, kicked it under his seat, and rose from the table in her socks.
Man, she was tiny. She probably wouldn’t even reach Austin’s shoulder if he were standing.
“Why do you work at a roller skating diner if you can’t roller skate?” he asked. He wouldn’t be able to sleep without an answer to the question.
She shrugged. “Only the night shift has to roller skate. My shift is usually in the morning; I’m just filling in for a friend,” she stated.
“Besides, you probably wouldn’t do much better on roller skates.
No offense, but you look more like a man whose shoulders would barely fit through a normal-sized door, so you’re unlikely to roll smoothly into the sunset on wheels. ”
Moreau, across from him, lowered his chin, presumably to hide his grin, but said nothing, and Austin couldn’t help but laugh again.
“You really need to stop insulting my body,” he informed her. “Body shaming is a crime.”
“Please, it’s simply the truth.”
“A rude truth. Aren’t you afraid of getting fired if you take off your skates?”
“Speaking the truth is never rude,” she lectured him sternly.
“Today, however, is my last day here, so feel free to complain about my feet smelling and how I hurt your muscle-bound ego. Makes no difference to me.” She grinned and then pulled out her order pad.
“Do you want to order food too, or just file a complaint?”
With his mouth gaping, Austin stared at her.
Wow. With his grim expression, Moreau looked like a serial killer on good days and a demon on bad, so he himself wasn’t walking through the world today looking like a ray of sunshine.
But the fearless waitress didn’t seem to care in the slightest that she barely cleared their heads as they sat and that Austin could probably push her over with only a pinkie.
He needed that ridiculous muscle mass to effectively shove his opponents into the boards and dominate a game.
And he had no problems with doors — okay, sometimes, but they were too low and narrow and not built for hockey players!
“We would like to order something,” Moreau mumbled, pulling out the menu.
“No problem, take your time,” she said, glancing briefly at two other occupied tables, where the guests had already been served burgers, drinks, and fries, and then sighing heavily.
She placed her hands on her hips and stretched her back.
Not to show off her breasts, like the rink bunnies who hung around the hotels during their away games, vying for their attention.
Judging by her groaning, her muscles were sore.
She wasn’t wearing makeup, but she was wearing baggy jeans and a shapeless t-shirt. Her fingers were oddly rough, which must have been due to the calluses he was only now noticing. Where the hell did those calluses come from?
Anyway, the bottom line was, she probably didn’t spend her free time chasing men like many other women in L.A.
Although she was pretty in an…unimposing way.
He hadn’t noticed it earlier because, as a married man and not an asshole, he hadn’t consciously noticed any woman's looks in four years, but she had absurdly sensual lips and eyes so huge they could have fit right into a manga.
She looked young, maybe in her early twenties.
“This isn’t your first time here, is it?” she asked.
“Why do you think that?” he asked, forcing himself to look into her eyes again and not at her lips.
She laughed. “To be honest, there’s a piece of paper in the kitchen where my colleagues keep a tally of how many women those 'two hot guys' have turned down. Working the morning shift, I have always wondered who they were talking about, but I think they’re talking about you.”
Austin raised his eyebrows. “And you assume that because you think we’re hot?” he asked, interested.
She rolled her eyes with a grin. “No, because your nicknames are Serial Killer and Tabasco Hottie. That’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Moreau glanced up, frowning, his expression dark. “Who looks like a serial killer?”
Austin chuckled softly. “No one, Moreau, no one.”
The waitress grinned as well. “For months, they’ve been wondering why you don’t take home any of the women who throw themselves at you.
I could leave this job a hero if you told me why.
So…” She tilted her head and looked at them curiously.
“You’re actually a couple, right? And that’s why you’re not interested in the female sex? ”
Austin laughed loudly. For the first time in days, he felt like he could breathe more freely.
His teammates had been walking on eggshells around him because they all knew how bad he was feeling.
It was strangely liberating to talk to someone who acted completely normal and didn’t treat him with kid gloves.
“Well, now I’m offended. As if Moreau stood a chance with me,” he complained.
“Have you taken a look at him? He needs a haircut and he doesn’t smile enough.
Plus, you have to force every thought and emotion out of the guy with a gun pressed against his temple. Oh, and he keeps the toilet seat up.”
“Excuse me?” Moreau retorted hostilely. “I’m a damn good catch! As if you’re so much better. I couldn’t be with someone who’s so damn bad at pool that eight-year-old girls beat him.”
“Hey. She was ten!” he retorted, annoyed.
Moreau snorted and looked up at the waitress. “He has the soul of a fifty-year-old grandpa. I need someone with the heart of an adventurer.”
The waitress laughed. “So...not a couple.”
“In his dreams,” Austin muttered, taking a sip of the shake that burned deliciously on his tongue.
She laughed louder. “Too bad. You make a nice-looking couple. So, why don’t you ever take a woman home?”
“Because we’re not pick-up artists and we come here to be alone,” Austin muttered.
The waitress looked at them thoughtfully, as if she found that hard to believe.
Yes, most people felt that way when they met hockey players, and rightfully so.
Most of Austin’s teammates saw having sex with as many strange women as possible as serious a job as hockey.
But Moreau loved his privacy more than stopping pucks, and Austin usually preferred being in a relationship…