Page 53 of Canadian Boyfriend

“What do you have in hockey?” She leaned forward, studying my face.

“You have a kid skating on a bumpy pond, the air cold and sharp in his lungs, the thrill of speed and precision. Sometimes, you get this sense of… I don’t know how to say it. Rightness, I guess. Not to sound too woo-woo, but like you’re where you’re supposed to be, in sync with the universe. You have—” Whoa. She’d kept leaning forward as I talked, and now her face was only a couple inches from mine, and she was staring at my lips. “Are we about to kiss?”

Shit.I should have kept that question in my head. Because if wewereabout to kiss, which I suddenly very much wanted us to be, doing a play-by-play was a surefire way to scare her off.

It didn’t, though. It made her smile. “It seems like a pleasant and low-stakes thing to do.”

“‘Low-stakes’?” I couldn’t stop looking at her lips. They were pink and plump and a little bit chapped.Ifelt chapped, too, like my whole self was raggedy and in need of soothing. Like she, with her soft hands and her chapped lips, was the only person in the world who could do that soothing. I almost rolled my eyes at myself. Overdramatic much? I needed to get out of my own head.

Which didn’t help. All it did was remind me that I was incredibly turned on—and all she was doing was talking really close to my face. It had been a long time. And she was a bright thing.

I wasn’t sure I agreed about the “low-stakes” thing, though.

“Well,” she said, “you’re a hockey star, and I’m a glorified nanny. That seems pretty low-stakes.”

“I’m not a star, and you’re not a nanny.” I tried to surreptitiously rearrange myself so she wouldn’t notice the effect she was having on me and forced my gaze up from her lips to her eyes. I needed to think of a better comparison than mud for their color, but to be fair, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. They were a gorgeous gray-brown. Maybe there was some kind of horse comparison for her eyes. Bay? Chestnut? I didn’t know anything about horses. I leaned in a little more to try to get a closer look.

“Right. You’re a… What did you call it? Reliable stay-at-home defenseman? And I’m the person who drives your kid around and lives in your basement.”

“Sorry, what?” I snapped myself out of my eye-color trance.

She grinned. The mud eyes went all twinkly. “I’m just saying, the stakes are what we make them. If we kissed, which I kind of can’t believe I’m even suggesting, it would not have to be a big deal.”

“What would it be?” I was pretty sure my eyes were twinkling, too. I could feel them doing it. Which I knew was impossible, but it was happening. Being this turned on but also this lighthearted made for an interesting combination. Maybe shewasright about the low stakes. I hadn’t had any low-stakes intimacy for a very long time. Maybe Ineverhad, since even when I’d been having supposedly casual sex, before Sarah, I’d always get myself tied up in knots wondering if the woman would be sleeping with me if I weren’t a hockey player.

Not that we were talking about sex. She’d said kissing, which, honestly, was about all I could handle right now.

Aurora repeated my question. “Whatwouldit be?” She got even closer, so close I could feel her breath. She was almost talking against my lips as she suggested an answer for her own question: “A nice way to end a shitty day?”

I licked my lips, and I tried to be not-subtle about it. Part of me still thought this was a mistake, but a larger part of me didn’t care. “Yeah. It would be.”

“Not a big deal,” she repeated. “It can just be a little deal. A blip. Temporary Christmas insanity.”

I chuckled.

“So are we doing this, then?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “we’re doing this,” and I closed the rest of the distance between us.

12—SAVE THE CHIHUAHUAS

RORY

The morning of Boxing Day, Mike Martin drove Lauren and Ivan to the airport because they were going to Florida to see Lauren’s parents, and I drifted around the house freaking out about last night’s kiss.Whathad possessed me? Yes, Mike Martin was stupidly attractive, but being aware of that fact was one thing; acting on it was something else entirely. All I could come up with to explain my out-of-character and possibly-fatal-to-my-ongoing-employment behavior was that at that moment, in the cocoon of Christmas lights and confession, ithadfelt low-stakes. Safe. Inevitable, almost.

Either that, or I actuallyhadbeen rendered temporarily insane by too much Christmas spirit. And/or too much Veuve.

I was driving myself crazy with worry when the man himself arrived home—with Lauren’s skates. “I thought we could skate later,” he said like it was any other day. “Lauren said you could borrow these. What’s your shoe size?”

“Seven, but I don’t know how to skate,”Isaid like it was any other day.

“Seven. Jackpot.”

“Still can’t skate, though.” My outings to the lake thus far had only been on my boots.

“I thought you two might be the same size.”

“Um, hello? Are you not hearing the part where I can’t skate?”Are you not concerned about the part where I kissed you last night?

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