Page 14 of Snowed In With the Mountain Man
“What time’s the game?” he answered.
“Um…” She looked at the dashboard, and then she sighed. “It’s about to start.”
He grinned over at her. “Then we should make it just in time.”
5
Dahlia thought record-scratching silence only happened in movies.
She was wrong.
JJ held the bar’s front door open for her—because of course he did—and when she stepped through, the entire place went silent. The only sound was a clink of glasses and the soft lilt of a country song coming from a radio in the back.
Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she found herself center stage as the patrons at the bar and tables stared her down.
She stared right back.
But then JJ followed her in, and the change in the crowd was instant.
“Hey, man,” one of the guys at a crowded table shouted.
The bartender nodded at him in acknowledgment.
“Hi, JJ!” The girl waiting tables beamed at him, while a few of the customers sitting at the bar called out greetings.
JJ nodded in return, and when his large hand came to her lower back, Dahlia gave an embarrassing start.
She wasn’t used to people touching her, that was all. Especially not men. Definitely not big, burly mountain men like JJ.
He steered her toward a table by the far wall. “Hey, Mack, can you turn this TV to the Rangers game?”
The bartender nodded. “Sure thing, JJ.”
Dahlia couldn’t even begin to hide her excitement as she gazed up at the screen. The table was sticky, the laughter around her too loud, and the TV straight out of the eighties.
And. This. Was. Heaven.
Or close to it, at least.
“Yes!” She clapped her hands. “Good play. Good play.” She watched her team in their red, white, and blue uniforms fly across the ice, putting pressure on the Pittsburgh Penguins. She was confident of a win, although the Penguins had a way of pulling it out of the hat in the third period. She wouldn’t be able to relax until the Rangers were up by at least two or three goals.
Her eyes tracked the puck, her body moving with the players. She was vaguely aware of JJ studying her, but she didn’t even care. She remembered the first time her ex, Brady, realized she was actually into sports. He’d given her this same look, like he was only just seeing her for the first time.
That was how JJ was watching her now… and maybe there was some truth to it.
Right here and right now, she felt like herself for the first time in a long while.
She hadn’t been in Montana more than a few days on this trip—she couldn’t get more time off work—but that house where she wasn’t wanted, trying to be the sister Rose needed and failing at every turn…
Being in this sports bar was a sweet relief, the sounds from the TV and the background noise around her a strange sort of balm for her tension. It’d always been this way. Well, ever since she’d discovered her love of sports in junior high.
“How’d you get into hockey?” JJ asked when a commercial came on and she sank back into her seat, taking a sip of the beer JJ had bought for her.
“A friend of mine got me into it a long time ago,” she said.
He arched a brow. “A male friend?”
She rolled her eyes, which inexplicably made him grin. “No, not a male friend. Her name was Becky, and she was my BFF in junior high.”
