Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Elton looked around, squinting. “You like Boston that much, huh?”
“Yes. I never want to leave. I could explore one street every day for the rest of my life and still never see it all.” She thought of the arena, Grace’s penthouse, the discovery of the dog park right down the street from her house. She had to have walked past it before and never noticed it until today. “It’s a town that gets familiar fast, but remains kind of a mystery, too.”
A grin was spreading across his face. “I . . . guess I never thought of it that way.”
She smiled. “Well, now we both can.”
Elton was seriously cute. Lanky. Six foot one, maybe? Sandy brown hair. Crow’s-feet that extended from the corners of his wraparound sunglasses. But she’d meant what she’d said—Elton wasn’t her type. What was her type, though?
Chloe envisioned a lineup of men, each one a various archetype. A cowboy. A preppy. A biker, even. But they were all just Sig dressed in different outfits.
Oh dear.
Who besides Sig could make her want to cry and cheer and laugh just by existing?
Would anyone else ever be able to make her knees feel like gelatin or her throat strain with the effort of keeping three words locked up inside? Make her hot, bothered, and wet with a smirk? Perhaps there was nobody in the world who could do that, except for Sig Gauthier. But she needed to try. She needed to separate her romantic life from her eventual stepbrother.
“So have you been playing baseball your whole life?” she asked, hoping to distract herself from the fact that her belly was trapped in a free fall.
“Since I was ten,” Elton answered. “My dad coached my Little League team—”
“Fascinating story, man,” came a voice from behind Elton. One Chloe recognized, but couldn’t quite place . . .
At least not until she turned around and found four fearsome Bearcats starters walking into the dog park the same way they skated onto the ice. Like they owned it.
Sig was leading the pack, but he wasn’t the one who’d spoken. No, it had been one of the Orgasm Donors, as Sig liked to call them.
Sig.
Happiness went off like a confetti bomb inside of her. There was no use pretending otherwise. He was there. With her. That would forever and always make her happy.
Too happy, though?
From this high of a height, she could only plummet. And always did.
“Hey, Chlo,” Sig drawled.
“Hi,” she breathed, unable to modulate her voice or her heart. She couldn’t look anywhere but right at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Just out for a walk.”
“Oh.” He’d moved his shoulder funny. “Are you sure?”
Sig moved in close and wrapped his right arm behind her back, pulling Chloe up onto her toes for a hug that arched her spine and made her feel weightless. “All right, fine,” he said gruffly in her ear. “I wanted to see you.”
“You just saw me this morning.”
Ever so briefly, he squeezed her tighter. “It’s never enough.”
“Who are you guys?” Elton asked.
Oh yeah. Elton.
Chloe forced herself to wiggle out of Sig’s perfect arms and observe the scene in front of her, which was straight out of a hockey horror flick. Sir Savage was leaning against a tree—which he almost matched for size—looking bored, but observant. Mailer and Corrigan were twinning as usual with matching expressions of blatant disrespect, pure and simple. They were focused on Elton, who looked nothing short of stunned at the arrival of four jacked professional athletes, all of whom looked like they needed a shower and some sleep, frankly.
“Who are we?” Mailer traded a booming laugh with Corrigan. “You don’t watch hockey, bro?”
“That’s Sir Savage, my guy,” Corrigan blustered, indicating the legendary center behind him. “Show some goddamn respect.”
Elton rolled a shoulder. “Might have heard of him. In passing.”
“In pass—” Mailer was having a ministroke. “Okay, fine. I guess you have an excuse since baseball games last fourteen hours. You don’t have time for anything else.”
“It’s America’s game,” Elton shot back.
“At best,” Mailer drew out, “it’s background noise during a nap.”
“Wow.” Still smarting from that insult, Elton turned his attention to Sig who was now standing in front of Chloe, all but blocking her view of the proceedings. Without seeing his face, she somehow knew he had his gametime expression locked in place. Forbidding. Murderous. Totally out of place in a peaceful dog park. “And who are you?”
“That’s her . . .” Corrigan trailed off, scratching a red eyebrow. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah,” Mailer echoed. “It’s complicated. More complicated than baseball, that’s for fucking sure.”
“Bottom line, she’s a hockey girl. She’s our hockey girl.”
“Don’t get carried away, Corrigan,” Sig said.
Chloe poked him in the shoulder. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
He turned and winked at her. “Did you do your hair different this morning? God, you look beautiful.”