Page 24 of Drop the Mitts

“The button, Grace. The one that abandoned ship on your shirt.”

She jogged up to walk beside him. “Yeah. Right here.” She held it out.

He reached out and took it from her. “Thanks.”

Before he could pull on his truck door handle, Grace grabbed his elbow and pulled him to a stop. “What are you doing?”

André worked to fill his lungs with air, his nipples pinching against the cold. And . . . other things. She was wearing his shirt, and he wasn’t prepared for what the sight of that did to him. The faint scent of her perfume or body lotion tinged the air. He cleared his throat. “Fixing it.”

Grace’s eyes dropped, but she quickly snapped them back to his. “I have a safety pin.”

“Well . . .” He pulled free and yanked on the door, then opened the glove box. “I have a sewing kit.”

He climbed into the passenger seat. He was willing to sew on a button, but not freeze to death in a parking lot. Grace wrapped her arms around herself, watching for a moment, then jogged around the front of the truck and slid into the driver’s seat.

Grace Fairbanks climbing into his truck wearing his shirt while he sewed the button back onto hers was not on his January vision board. But he wasn’t going to say he hadn’t manifested it. He’d imagined Grace in a bra. A lot. But in those daydreams, she was usually berating him, so he had work to do on that front. He had yet to admit to himself that he found that part disturbingly hot.

“How do you know how to do that?” Grace asked, watching him thread the needle with black thread. He figured black was better than the royal blue included in the kit.

“Because hockey gear is expensive as shit, and my mom got tired of fixing it for me.”

Grace let out a puff of air. He glanced up. That almost sounded like a laugh. He couldn’t tell if she was laughing at his answer or laughing at him. Something inside him withered. It wasn’t like he was painting his nails or anything, but his dad had given his thoughts freely when he’d seen him with a needle and thread.Your mother’s raising a helluva pansy. Maybe you should take up figure skating.

“I was a disaster with equipment when I was a kid,” he continued, looping another thread through the button. “Ripped my jerseys, busted the padding in my gloves, wore holes in my socks.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise,” she quipped.

André ’s hand froze as he looked up with a grin. “I’m sorry, was that a masturbation joke?”

She scoffed, her hand flying to her chest. “No, I would never insinuate such a thing! It’s just believable that you’d be rough on your socks.”

André watched her a moment. Was she flirting with him? He didn’t want to assume. He’d been wrong before, and he didn’t especially feel like getting slapped first thing in the morning. He dropped his head and put the final loop in the knot he’d sewn into the backside of Grace’s shirt. “It’s true. I’m rough on a lot of things actually.”

“Hmm. Good to know.” Grace didn’t ask him any other questions. She sat there still beside him, her eyes burning holes into his hands, the side of his face. She may as well have been holding a magnifying glass up to the sun.

He finished crisscrossing the thread over the button and through the fabric, then wound a few loops of thread between them to keep the button loose and easy to use. He tied off the end and brought the shirt to his lips to bite the thread since he didn’t have scissors.

“There you go.” André held up the blouse, fully intact, button secured.

Grace didn’t take it right away. She just stared at him. It only took him half a second to realize why. She wasn’t looking directly at the blouse. Sure, her eyes were aimed the right direction, but they were off by a few millimeters.

His lips curved before he could stop them, because Grace was staring, just a little, at his bare chest. André wasn’t the kind of guy to waste a moment of ego padding, so he let her. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, trying not to spook her.

Her throat bobbed slightly, her fingers tensed around the hem of his shirt, like she’d just remembered she was still wearingit. “This is yours.” She blinked and drew in a breath, quickly dropping her eyes.

“I’d be happy to wear this, but I don’t think it would close.” André gestured at the blouse in his hand.

Grace laughed, a little too high and bright. “Uh, no. I can—” She paused, her hand gripping his shirt, halfway up her abdomen.

André ’s heart slammed against his ribs. He dropped the blouse in her lap. “Better take that to your car.”

Grace’s lips twitched. “Why?”

He wet his lips. “Because I’ve been a gentleman, Grace, but if you change here, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from watching.”

Grace froze mid-motion, his shirt bunched around her ribs, revealing just the smallest strip of bare skin. Her gaze locked with his. There was a flicker of hesitation and then a blush. Soft. Barely there. But it still lit up her cheekbones, crept down the delicate line of her throat.

André clenched his jaw. She was thinking about it, and for just a second, he imagined what would happen if?—

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