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  “Another time,” she whispered, stepping back and leaving him to it.

  But he didn’t want her to leave.

  He didn’t want her to step back.

  He wanted her, and he wanted to give her the experiences he’d had, wanted to take back some for himself.

  But mostly, he didn’t want her to leave.

  “Wait.” Lungs tight, he caught her arm.

  She stopped instantly, turning to face him. But she didn’t give him pressure or sass that he’d changed his mind. She just gave him time and patience and…he found that he could take a breath, could focus on her and not what he’d lost.

  He inhaled and got flowers on his nose.

  An exhale. Another breath.

  And then…it just got easier.

  He brought his arms around her, holding the stick in front of her body and placing her hands on it. “Like this,” he said, positioning her bottom hand so it was facing the right direction, the top so that its grip was better. The stick was too tall for her, but that didn’t matter, not right then with his arms around her and her body pressed to his. “Bend your knees a little,” he murmured, and yeah, his voice went a little gruff.

  Mostly because her body against his made him hard.

  But also, because when she moved to bend those knees, her ass brushed against his cock and then she glanced up over her shoulder and he was rethinking countertop sex, even with that huge ass window revealing them to anyone who might walk into the lobby.

  “Like this?”

  Her voice wasn’t gruff. It was liquid heat that told him she was feeling everything he was, that she was feeling every inch of him.

  He nodded, coaxed her forward slightly, just enough so that her weight was on the balls of her feet.

  And fuck, if that wasn’t better.

  Her ass to his crotch. Her body close. His arms wrapped tight.

  “Yeah, baby,” he rasped.

  A moment passed, and for his part, he was soaking in the way she felt against him, trying to concentrate when every bit of blood in his body seemed to be in his dick. For hers, well, he couldn’t read her mind, but he knew she was enjoying it as much as he was.

  This was because her hips were working, just slightly, as though the motion was out of her control, but they were moving, and by moving, he meant rocking back against him, making his cock go from half-mast to full, taking the rest of his body and diverting it solely to his pelvis, and basically driving him insane in the best possible way.

  And when she spoke again, he knew she was there, too. “What’s”—another shift of that sexy ass against him—“next?”

  “Bend over.”

  That wasn’t exactly next, bending over was a rookie mistake borne of weak legs and poor discipline, but he couldn’t resist.

  Totally worth it too when she did it, when she again glanced at him over her shoulder, and his mind filled with possibilities.

  But she must have gotten a glimpse of his semi-nefarious intentions because she glared, straightened, and he thought she would step out of the circle of his arms and move away from him. Instead, she shifted closer and her hips—her ass—moved with intention this time, rubbing in a slow rhythm he was desperate to find again when they were both naked.

  “Thinking about me doing that while we’re both naked and partaking in countertop sex is your punishment.”

  Then she stepped away from him, moving to the rack, and snagging the other stick.

  She tossed it.

  He caught it without thinking.

  “Next you’ll teach me to shoot,” she said. “But we only have ten minutes left. Let’s get down to fucking up the rest of this room.”

  She moved to a china cabinet.

  Grinning, he returned to the teacups.

  A swipe had them flying off the shelves, shattering into a million pieces. Another had the row above cleared. But when one remained unscathed, piled on the broken remains of its brethren, Oliver did something else instinctual—scooping and lifting the cup onto the blade of his stick, balancing it as he gently tossed it up and down, and then just because he could still do it, he launched it into the corner of the room.

  It exploded into tiny pieces.

  “Whoa.”

  He turned, saw that Hazel was gaping at him.

  “Do that again,” she demanded.

  Not about to deny her anything, he shot the stick out toward another shelf, scooping up another cup, bouncing it a couple of times before he repeated the shot against the wall.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped, dropping her stick onto the rack. “I knew you guys were good with your sticks, but…how…I—” She shook her head while he was grinning about her saying he was good with his stick (also a bad name for a porno) and picked up a vase. “Can you do it with this?”

  “Probably.”

  She held it out.

  He scooped it up.

  “Aim for the red splotch on the wall,” she demanded.

  Now he was grinning because he was showing off, because it felt good that she was impressed by him.

  This one was a bit harder to balance, both because it was bigger and because its shape made it wobble against the curve of the stick’s blade. But after a few movements, he got the feel for it, and then he launched it at the wall.

  It hit the red spot she’d pointed out with a thunk and shattered.

  She squealed. “That is so cool.” Her gaze moved around the mostly decimated space. “What else, what else?” She kicked debris out of her way and snagged a ceramic bowl filled with plastic and Styrofoam fruit. Then began tossing one at a time, calling out targets.

  Fake apple. Exploded in the corner.

  Foam pear. Colliding with the shelving.

  Bunch of plastic bananas. Right for that old-ass computer.

  The ceramic bowl. That went right at a truly disgusting painting of a swamp. Pink porcelain mixed with puke green in a way that brought absolutely nothing good aesthetically but felt incredible when the shards embedded themselves into the canvas.

  Hazel whooped and clapped her hands.

  And then their time was up.

  He was sweating and breathing hard. She had a piece of plastic tangled in her curls. They both had impressions on their foreheads and cheeks from the safety goggles.

  But he was flying anyway.

  “That was fun!” she exclaimed after they pushed out onto the sidewalk and started heading for her car.

  It had been fun. Really fucking fun.

  But it had also been big.

  Because Hazel might not have realized it, but for all his talk of giving her the experiences he’d had—showing her the feel of the puck, a goal, the cool air—she’d been the one to give him something.

  She’d given him hockey back.

  The joy of the sport, not the pain of missing it.

  And he made a promise right then and there, the cold air swirling around them, the sun barely poking out from beneath the clouds but still making her curls shine as they bounced around her head, her excitement given form in words that kept pouring out of her mouth.

  He would give this woman everything.

  Even if everything ended up being every single piece of himself.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hazel

  “No, Mom,” she said, “it’s fine. I totally have time to talk, as long as you don’t mind listening to me pack up as I do so.”

  “Hazel Abigail Reid, do not tell me that you’re still at work.”

  Uh-oh.

  Mom Voice had come out.

  It was always best to head this off in the beginning.

  “It’s Wednesday, Mom. It’s my late-start day.”

  “It’s nearly nine o’clock at night.”

  She winced. Because it was that. But she’d started late and then Oliver had been in her office and they’d discussed all that desktop fucking (and other things she supposed). Then they’d gone to Rage, the wreck room she’d discovered by chance, and she’d thought that Oliver mi
ght have some anger to let go of, too, and she had some herself, and, truthfully, she just wanted to spend more time with him.

  Say what they want, she liked the man.

  A lot.

  Which was why the hour spent tearing through that room and culminating in Oliver showing off his stick skills had been a blast.

  Laughter and activity.

  Breaking shit, and she hoped, putting just a few of the pieces back together.

  Not that she saw him as a project—or a client any longer because clearly that ship had sailed about two minutes after he’d walked into her office for their first session—but she liked helping people, and she liked Oliver.

  But she especially liked the smile that had come onto his face when she’d launched plastic and foam fruit at him and demanded he hit the targets she pointed out.

  He had, without fail.

  And that smile had stayed.

  So, she had asked if he had time for lunch—he had—and they’d gone down to a little place near the waterfront, and they’d had soup and sandwiches, huddled together on a bench. Because the sun might have been out, but it was still winter in Baltimore (though almost spring). So while there wasn’t snow on the ground, when the breeze picked up, especially off the water, she’d felt like she was turning into a popsicle.

  Even with her heavy coat and scarf.

  But oddly enough (Ha! There was nothing odd about it), she’d felt much warmer when Oliver had slid an arm around her and tugged her so her body was pressed to his.

  Which meant they’d stayed there for a while.

  Long enough that she was working until nine at night.

  “I repeat, I had a late start,” she said when her mom continued to rant and rave about her working herself to the bone (she was too thin apparently), and being too tired to function properly (apparently her mom could see her dark circles through the airwaves), and needing proper rest or else her face would be full of wrinkles (oh, and by the way, had Hazel been using her eye cream?).

  “Weren’t you the one who told me that wrinkles are just God’s way of telling me you lived properly?” she asked.

  A scoff. “Well, I’m old, Peanut Brittle Princess—”

  Hazel smiled. That was a new one.

  “—which means I have to make excuses for my wrinkles. You, on the other hand, are young and beautiful and not married—”

  “Oh lord, here we go,” Hazel muttered. “You realize that I only broke up with Trevor six months ago.”

  “Seven, my Strawberry Daiquiri Darling. That means it’s time to move on and get me those grandbabies.”

  “You do realize you already have grandbabies, don’t you?”

  “From my son.”

  Hazel hit the button for speakerphone because she was getting a crick in her neck trying to hold it as she gathered her things. And while she loved her job and had loved her day with Oliver, she was tired and ready to go home. “And your oldest daughter,” she pointed out, feeling like it was her duty as the youngest child to remind her mother that grandbaby duty didn’t fall solely to her.

  There was a soft knock at the door, and she glanced up in time to see Oliver poke his head in.

  And…fuck, he was pretty.

  Just the sight of him made her heart beat a little faster, her fingers clench with the need to touch, her feet ache, wanting to carry her body over to his and pick up where they left off cuddling on that bench.

  She waved him in, right as her mom said, “But I don’t have grandbabies from you, Pecan Pie Pumpkin. I want a little girl with curls and your brown eyes.”

  Oliver jerked his head to the door, silently asking if she wanted him to go.

  But since his eyes were dancing and his lips were twitching (rather than him running off screaming for the hills because her mom mentioned grandbabies), she shook her head and pointed to the couch. “I’m not sure Pecan Pie Pumpkin makes sense, Mom,” she said.

  A sniff.

  “And I want kids, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen, okay? I thought things were going a different way”—she saw Oliver stiffen and forced herself to bring her gaze to his—“but I’m glad things ended before I had kids with Trevor. It’s just…kids aren’t exactly priority number one right now for me.”

  His face gentled.

  Her mom’s voice didn’t. “Well, it’s priority one for me, Darling Donut, and you know what that means.”

  Hazel groaned. “You’re not fixing me up, Mom. I’m—”

  “He’s a perfectly nice man, Hazelnut. He’s got a good job and is nice. Plus, I saw him with his shirt off at Suzy Duncan’s hot tub and let me tell you, that man works out. Hell, I haven’t seen abs like that on a man since—”

  “You streamed Thor: Ragnarok last week?”

  A pause, probably because Hazel had guessed right.

  Her mom had—rightfully so—an obsession with all things Hemsworth.

  “You make a good point,” her mom said, “but he also doesn’t have a movie studio’s budget or a personal trainer, professional chef, and whatever other services those fancy actors have to help him get that body. So, trust me, Muffin Mop, you would be doing the world a service to get up close and personal with those abs, let alone if you managed to get Eddie into a pair of gray sweats—”

  There was a lot there, and a lot of it that sent her brows high up on her forehead, but first and foremost was wondering how her mom knew about gray sweats.

  Then again, she got most of her book recs from her mom.

  Actually thinking about it, Hazel had probably learned about the gloriousness of tight sweatpants from her mom and not on her own.

  But she didn’t have a chance to fully process all things sweats or to say anything to cut off the hard sell of Eddie and his glorious abs. Which, face it, wouldn’t be a hard sell if the man who she’d lusted after for ages wasn’t currently in her office looking like he was either going to burst into laughter or track down Eddie and make sure he never got within five hundred feet of Hazel. The first she liked a whole lot and was why she wasn’t turning her phone off speaker.

  Because her mom was her mom, and if he couldn’t hack her mom on the phone, then there was no way he’d be able to hack her in person.

  The second—the glimpse of jealous and protective—she supposed she should hate, but truthfully, it made her belly feel a little squishy.

  Hand in her feminist card immediately.

  But, ah well, a girl had to live in fantasy everyone once in a while.

  While she was thinking that—and it must be said, while her mother was waxing poetic about abs and sweatpants and hot tubs—Oliver was moving.

  Toward her.

  Oh. She liked that.

  His knuckles trailed down her cheek. She sighed and shifted closer, winding her arms around his neck, suddenly needing to taste him.

  What Mom on the phone?

  But as she’d reached for him, her hand hit the cell and knocked it from the desk.

  It clattered on the floor.

  “What was that?” her mom demanded. “Hazelnut Puff, are you there?”

  Oliver grinned, unwound her arms and bent. This time she did watch him, mostly because his ass in those pants was chef’s kiss. A moment later, he’d snagged the cell (much faster than that morning with the folders, so maybe he’d figured out how to make that movement easier on himself) and set it on the desk. “We’re here, Hazel’s mom.”

  He snaked an arm around her waist and tugged her close, lips brushing her cheek.

  “We’re?” her mom asked.

  Hazel rushed in. “Mom, meet Oliver.” It was weird doing an introduction this way. “Oliver, my mom, Toni. Mom, sorry you’re on speakerphone, obviously and Oliver is a coworker.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Reid,” he said. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

  Charming.

  Genuine.

  Her mom felt it, Hazel could tell, even as she asked, “Coworker?”

  “Yes,” he said simply, not biting—good str
ategy. “But also, the man hoping to score a fourth date with your daughter,” he said, so silkily that she didn’t immediately process what he’d said.

  Then she did.

  Then…she swatted him.

  Right about the time her mom screeched, “Fourth?”

  Because seriously?

  “He’s teasing, Mom,” she said, reaching for the phone, intending to take it off speaker. “I haven’t agreed to go out with him yet.”

  He moved the cell out of her reach. “What was today if not a date?”

  “Today?” her mom squawked.

  “I miscounted,” Oliver said, still silkily, still charming. “I’m trying to get your daughter to agree to a fifth date.”

  “Hmm.” A pause, and Hazel braced herself for what would next come out of her mom’s mouth. “How’re his abs, Honey Cakes?”

  Without missing a beat, Oliver tugged up the edge of his shirt, revealing…

  “Holy hell,” she breathed.

  “Oh, I wish I was FaceTiming right now, Strawberry Shortcake. Please, tell me he’s showing them to you right now and they’re glorious.”

  “Hngah.” She didn’t know exactly what kind of sound she made, only that it was instinctual and paired with an intense urge to go all grabby hands—grabby tongue—all over his torso.

  “Queen Croissantia? Are you alive?”

  She blinked, managed to squeeze out, “Barely.”

  “I’ll keep Eddie’s number just in case,” her mom murmured.

  “I—”

  “Oliver?”

  The man was grinning, but he slowly lowered his shirt. “Yes, Mrs. Reid?”

  A pause, and fuck the man was charming the shit out of her mom. Seriously, how was he this good? Then her mom got it together (easier because she didn’t have the mental imprint of Oliver’s abs on her eyelids). “Hazel’s coming to our house next Sunday. I’ll expect you to join her for dinner.”

  “Mom—” Hazel began.

  “You’d better have secured dates six through eight in the meantime.”

  Oliver smiled. “On it.”

  “Mom!”