Page 17 of Love of the Game
He cocked his head. “What if I say yes to the room, but want you to keep flirting?”
“Uh.” I was kind of surprised steam wasn’t curling off me, with how hot I’d suddenly become. I scratched the back of my head. “I can keep flirting. If you want.”
God, I hadn’t seen that cocky smile, and coupled with the quirk of his eyebrow before—fucking hell. “Do you want to?” he asked. “Keep flirting?”
This man was too much. Or maybe enough. Maybe exactly enough, and that was a scary thought.
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes to the room. Yes to flirting. And yes to a date.”
It was an actual wonder—a small miracle—that I didn’t just—self-combust right there. “Uh, are you allergic to cats? Because I have two.”
He laughed, and honestly those laughs were the best sound I’d heard all day. “Cats arefine.”
I smiled back and gestured to our trucks. “Let’s go get your stuff, then.”
My house wasa little ways outside of Greensburg proper, more or less equal driving distance between the arena and the bar. It was an older home and had a kind of pseudo-rustic look to it, like someone was trying to go for a cabin look, but out of brick, and wood and some pine-green paint, I guess. But the inside was spacious and the house was set back from the two-lane road and the neighboring properties to either side were far enough away that I could putter about in the woods, work on my motorcycle, and shoot pucks off my back patio in private.
When Drake got out, he looked quizzically at the house for a moment, then nodded as if to himself. “Is there a stream back there somewhere?”
There was. “How’d you know?”
He gave a shrug. “The trees, I guess. And—” He turned to face me. “I don’t know. I can picture you in the woods, sitting on a big rock, watching water.”
“Huh.” I stared out into the woods. “There’s a creek about a ten-minute walk in, and some rock outcroppings to sit on.” I turned to him. “Which I do, when I need to think. Sometimes the brain fills up, you know?”
He opened the back of his SUV and pulled out two suitcases. I gestured for him to give me one.
“You’re always so upbeat,” he said, as he followed me up onto the wrap-around porch. “Like a sunny day. I figure you have to have somewhere to go to recharge.”
I chuckled and glanced back over my shoulder. “I have lots of somewheres, actually. The woods. The bar. Takingmy bike out on nice days. The rink.” I unlocked the front door and ushered him inside. “And here.”
“You ride a motorcycle?” He stepped in. “Oh?—!”
Thor, my orange short-haired cat, trilled and swished his tail. Usually he came and rubbed my legs, but with Drake there, he sat and inspected him.
“Well,” Drake said, taking in all of Thor’s ginger glory. “He’s a handsome—girl? Boy?”
“That’s Thor. He’s a he.” I pointed over to the huge cat tree on the far wall. “Loki’s over there.”
Loki, my black smoke Maine Coon cat, perched on the tree like the lord of mischief he was.
Drake gawked. “Fuck, that’s a big cat.”
He was. Twenty-three pounds and three feet of fluff with the look of an absolute gremlin. “Thankfully, he’s a sweetheart. For the most part. He can be a little shit when he’s in a mood and get into everything, but that’s cats for you.” Knowing Loki, he’d check Drake out in his own time. “His fur is very soft. But also everywhere.”
“Yeah, we had a long-haired cat growing up.” Drake looked around beyond the cat. “But that doesn’t seem to be that much of a problem right now. This is…” He drank the room in.
One of the things I loved about this house, despite its cabin exterior, was the bright and open interior. You couldn’t tell from the front, but there were windows and windows and cathedral ceilings, and airy space in the living room, which led to the kitchen and its panoramic view of the woods that sloped back away from the house.
As for the furnishings, well, Papa once described my decorating choices as biker leather meets Scandinavian sensibility, and I guess that was a pretty decent description.I kept to lighter colors, mostly, but accented with black leather, chrome, and hints of red.
Drake’s pronouncement of all that was, “This seems—very you.”
“Come on, I’ll show you your room. It’s a little lessmeand more IKEA.”
That got me the smile I really liked.
