Face-Off. Nancy Warren

be like for him, to have risen so high and now be retired before he was ready.

      She rose on one elbow. “You are not a washed-up anything,” she informed him. “Right now you are a hockey coach. Who knows what you’ll end up being?”

      “That’s easy for you to say. Your work has meaning. Every morning when you wake up, you know you’re changing lives. You are helping kids learn stuff and grow up to be good citizens. That is so much more important than shooting a puck down the ice.”

      She started to laugh. First a low chuckle that she tried to smother, then a snort emerged and finally she could hold it back no longer. She let out a huge howl of laughter.

      “You are laughing? At my loss of career?”

      “No. I’m laughing because I was so demoralized when I found out who you were that I would have canceled our date if I’d had your number.”

      “You’re kidding, right?”

      She shook her head. “No.”

      He rolled over, pinned her. “I am so glad you didn’t have my phone number. Look what I would have missed.”

      She didn’t even want to think about what she’d have missed.

      “It’s just that, you’re, like, some celebrity that I’d see on TV and think, ‘Wow, he’s cute,’ but not someone I’d ever meet in real life. I want to know what the real man is like.”

      “Okay. Ask me anything.”

      “Anything?”

      “Yep.”

      “Promise to answer honestly?”

      He narrowed his eyes at her. “If you promise not to share anything I might tell you with anyone else. Especially anyone who might, say, carry a camera and a notebook and snoop on people for a living.”

      “Promise.”

      Now that she had his word he’d tell her anything, she had no idea what she wanted to ask him. She gazed up into those gorgeous green eyes and wondered if anything ever dented his armor. And there it was. Her question.

      “When’s the last time you cried?”

      He sucked in a breath. “You don’t want to start with an easy one? Like my astrology sign?”

      “Nope.”

      Besides, all the easy stuff was on the internet. He was a Taurus, she already knew that. His sign was the bull, which seemed perfect.

      He flopped on his back and stared at the ceiling, but kept a hand resting on her thigh so she still felt connected to him, warmed by his touch.

      “When my father died,” he finally said.

      Her sympathy was immediately aroused. “I’m so sorry.”

      “It was so sudden. He was alive and joking last time I saw him, and then boom. He had a massive heart attack and he was gone.” His voice thickened. “I never got to say goodbye. Never got to thank him for teaching me to skate.”

      A tear rolled down the side of his face and she felt her own eyes fill.

      “Never got to tell him I loved him.”

      She kissed him. “He knew,” she said softly. “He knew.”

      For a moment they lay there, her head on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her. And for her, he wasn’t a shaving-cream-commercial celebrity or a former NHL heavyweight, he was a man who missed his father. And who could open his heart to a woman.

      “So,” he said after a while. “Are we going to lie around blubbering or are we going for round two? “

      Her body sparked immediately in response. “I pick round two.”

      “That’s my girl.” And he rolled over and kissed her. And let his hands roam all over her as though he couldn’t ever get enough.

      “Is there anything in particular I can do for you?” he asked in a low, sexy voice.

      “Yes.”

      “What’s that?”

      She smiled the smile of a woman who is with a great lover.

      “Everything.”