Becca finishes her mimosa and reaches for the pitcher containing more. With a wicked grin that makes me regret I asked, she replies, “Call Klaus.”
Speak of the devil.
2
Klaus
The barbell I’m holding slams to the ground, shaking the bar from the hundreds of pounds of weight I’ve deadlifted. Sweat makes my tank cling to my chest.
Shoving my hands to my hips, breathless, I glare at my trainer across from me. “We done now?”
Crank Matthews rolls his black eyes and grins, showing off one gold tooth at the side. “You’re a pussy.”
“Screw you.”
I know damn well that lift was my personal best. I’ve been working on my strength all off-season and I’m improving. Not quite the best yet, but I’ll get there even if I die trying.
“Nice lift, man.” Sebastian Hendrix, friend and fellow teammate for the Carolina Ice Kings hockey team, holds out his gloved fist. We don’t usually workout together and he’s rarely at the team’s facility this early.
I bump his fist. “Thanks. Don’t usually see you here.”
“Gigi’s having designers come today to help her redo our living areas. Since that’s her domain and she’s changed her mind thirty times already I figure it’s safer if I’m here.”
“Giving up the ghost?”
“Yeah.” He scratches the back of his neck. His hair, usually resting at his shoulders in typical hockey player waves, has been cut, and the beard he sports all season is absent. “Think it was starting to bug Gigi. She insists she doesn’t want to move. Just wants to make it ours.”
Sebastian’s ex-wife Madison lived with him in that home and liked everything stark white and impersonal. She left him eight months ago although the bastard held on to that information for a while before letting the team know. During that time, he started having a fling with the bartender where we like to hang out. Now, Gigi is pregnant with his kid and living with him.
I was traded to the Ice Kings from St. Louis when he and Madison were already having problems so I’ve never seen the guy actually look happy until the last few months happened.
“Not a bad idea. How’s she feeling?”
“Good. I guess the second trimester is when they get an energy burst so she’s busy at the bar, planning her takeover.”
I don’t know anything about pregnancies or trimesters so I grab weights and slide them onto the bar at the squat rack. “So you’re here avoiding your woman because you don’t want to talk about what… new couch colors?”
He huffs and wipes his gloved hand over his forehead before lying down on the weight bench. “Something like that. Mostly I just want Gigi to feel like she has free control to do whatever she wants. But God, yeah… I’d really like to get rid of that white couch.”
I grunt through my set, where we both barely speak until I slam the bar back to its hooks and Sebastian and I are both headed toward the showers.
“How’s Jillian? Seen her lately?”
“Not since the hospital event last week. But I will tonight.”
“Nice.” He drawls out the word earning an immediate punch to his solar plexus.
“We’re friends. That’s it,” I mutter, and unfortunately at that too. If I had my shot with Jillian Stearns, I’d jump so fast at the opportunity I’d probably scare the shit out of her.
She’s made it clear since we met at the first signing I did with the team where she runs marketing on all of our promo gear that she isn’t interested. At first, I chalked it up to her being in love with Roman but even once their relationship blew up and ended last year, she’s never looked at me differently. I’ve been hoping she would give me some sign there could be something more in it for us.
Outside giving me shit for my hockey skills, getting together to watch soccer—something we’re both fans of—and occasional early morning runs on the Sundays when I’m in town or in the off-season when I need to get my distance conditioning in, I’ve never once gotten any indication from her she’d be receptive to all the moves I want to make on her.
It’s hard enough not to take her and shove my tongue down her throat every time she laughs that ridiculously loud and throaty laugh of hers. She’s independent, and totally unimpressed with any professional athlete since she works with us all the time. If anything, it’s a checkmark in my con column, although I’ve never had the guts to ask.
That could screw up our friendship. I might want to know what she tastes and feels like in her most intimate places, but I’m not about to ruin what we already have if she doesn’t feel the same.
I think of my grandma’s Lutefisk dish, something as a Swedish immigrant I’m supposed to love but absolutely despise, to get rid of the hard-on growing in my shorts.
Jillian.
Yeah. I like her. A whole hell of a lot.
“So what are you two doing tonight then?” Sebastian asks once we’re in the showers. They’re separated by walls giving us privacy but at his question, my dick says hello at the reminder we get to see Jillian in a few hours.
Damn him—both my dick and Sebastian. I’d just gotten the not-so-little guy under control.
But when it comes to Jillian, my southern head has a mind of his own.
“Dinner somewhere. She said she has something to talk to me about.”
“Like ending this stupid friends-only thing you two have going?”
“We are just friends.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
He’s given me shit about this since well before Jillian was single and available. That happened last November, nine months ago and since then, she’s shown absolutely no interest in me otherwise. Nothing has changed between us outside the one night she cried in my arms after she found Roman and Juliana together.
Jillian’s friend, Becca, called me on day three of her crying jag, letting me know what happened. I went straight to her house where I held her for hours, plied her with her favorite wine, wishing I hadn’t had to get on a plane for ten days immediately after. All I’d wanted to do was stay with her. Or alternatively, drive down to Charleston and beat the shit out of Roman.
But still, even as I think of all that, I remember how she’d sounded when she called me yesterday, seeing if we could hang out tonight.
Almost… nervous?
When it comes to me, what in the hell would Jillian have to be nervous about?
I’m a sure thing, no matter what she needs or wants from me.
How about I cook dinner instead? Don’t really feel like going out.
Jillian offering to cook for me? Sign me up.
There’s a space on her kitchen counter with a massive pile of cookbooks and recipes she’s printed from online food bloggers due to her incessant need to try new things. Despite the fact that she’s a vegetarian and I’m a heavy meat eater, I love her cooking. The woman can whip up a meal that belongs in five-star restaurants.
I can be there in thirty. What can I bring?
I need a quick shower and a change of clothes after another workout in my own home gym, this time a run on the treadmill and another hour on the Peloton. With pre-season coming up in only a couple of weeks, I can’t miss a workout and have taken to doubling up doing most of my cardio at home.