Page 64 of Heated Rivalry 1
“Used to?”
“She is getting married.”
“Oh.” Shane looked into his ginger ale bottle. “Are you...upset about that?”
“What? No.” Rozanov seemed genuinely surprised, and maybe amused, by his question. “Was not like that. Just...convenient to have a reliable woman to sleep with in New York. With three teams to play against there, we are there a lot.”
“You think she’s the only woman in New York that would be willing to sleep with you?” Shane teased.
Rozanov smirked. “I think I will find someone.”
Another silence fell. Shane wondered if Rozanov was expecting him to share a piece of similar information. He couldn’t, really, so he said, “I find it hard, being so...high profile, you know? It’s hard to just...sleep with someone. Sometimes.”
“Yes. It is good to have reliable person.”
Shane offered him a small smile. “It is.”
Rozanov nodded and got up to go to the kitchen. “Stay,” he said. “I bring it here.”
Shane focused on the television and not on what they had just been talking about. Rozanov returned with two plates that he seemed to put some care into arranging tuna melts, potato chips, and dill pickles on.
“Another drink?” he asked.
“No. I’m good.” Shane kind of couldn’t believe that Rozanov had made them both dinner. He found it, he realized with some horror, adorable.
“Do you like them?” Rozanov asked after a minute of silent eating.
“What? The tuna melts?”
“No. Girls.”
Shane was caught off guard. “Oh. Sure. Yeah. I like them. Of course.” This bit of stammering did not match the answer that first popped into Shane’s head, which was:not really.
“Never hear about you with girls,” Rozanov said plainly.
“Well. It’s private.”
“Right. Private.”
“I keep a lot of things private!” Shane said. He waved a hand between the two of them and added, “Obviously.”
Rozanov didn’t reply for a moment. Then he turned back to the television and said, “I like girls.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“But I also like you.”
“Well, lucky me,” Shane grumbled.
“Not as a person, of course,” Rozanov teased. “But you have a good mouth.” He took a suggestive bite of his dill pickle.
At that moment, Rozanov’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and muttered something in Russian. “I have to take this. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Shane said, because of course it was.
Rozanov stood and walked out of the room, speaking to whoever was calling in Russian. Shane was left alone on the couch with his mind reeling.
The truth was that he hadn’t ever had what he would consider to be a successful relationship with a woman. He’d had a decent amount of experience with them, but he couldn’t think of any sexual encounters with women that had actually been great. He wasn’t sure how any of the girls felt about it. Maybe they had just been excited to get into bed with a hockey star, and that was enough to distract them from how halfhearted his efforts had been.
