Lucky Score (The Hawkeyes Hockey Series Book 6)

It’s been a few hours since I left Brynn inside after breakfast.

Did I have a lot to do out here in this shit weather? No, not really.

But I didn’t get a chance to make sure that my solar panels are screwed on tight and I wanted to make sure that none of the hits I heard against the roof last night caused any damage to them.

Any excuse to stay as far away from Brynn as possible is worth the risk.

The minute I saw her walking into my kitchen, my body tensed. Brynn is naturally beautiful, with bright blue eyes, dark lashes, full pink lips, and soft brown hair that I can’t stop wondering how it would feel against my fingertips.

Not that I have any intention of finding out if her hair feels as silky smooth as it looks.

I have no intention of touching Brynn again.

Last night was a mistake, and I’ll make sure it’s not repeated.

What caught me off guard this morning was that Brynn didn’t walk out with her hair perfectly styled, a full face of makeup, and her tits smashed together and hiked up to her chin.

It’s not common for me to be in the proximity of women who aren’t dressed to get my attention.

If I was going to date someone, I’d pick someone with Brynn’s natural approach rather than the puck bunnies that show up at Oakley’s after a home game slathered in makeup and doused heavily in perfume. Perfume that it turns out I’m usually allergic to because I can’t stop sneezing as they walk past.

Not that it matters what kind of woman I’d date. It’s been eighteen years since I’ve been in a long-term relationship, and I don’t have any interest in breaking my impressive streak any time soon.

The second my phone picks up reception, I call Rita.

If I want to take Brynn to Rita’s apartment, I need to do it before the storm gets worse.

Scallywag’s is only fifteen minutes from here. As long as Rita has a spot for Brynn, I can get her packed up and moved over in the next hour.

“Rita, how’s the bar holding up?” I ask when she picks up the phone.

“Thanks to you, hun, everything held up through the night.  Silas called earlier and told me about the hotels around him. Sounds like they’re in bad shape over there. How are you holding up?”

“That’s actually one of the reasons I’m calling. I had a woman show up on my front door last night claiming to have rented my house for a writing retreat and booked it with that online scam property management company. I let her stay with me last night since there was nowhere else for her to go, but I was hoping that you still have that other room available above the bar.”

“Oh, that’s so terrible. That poor thing. Of course, I would be happy to take her in, but I’m afraid that I already offered up the room to one of our regulars and his family. She could sleep on the floor in the living room with the children, but that’s less than ideal, I would think. Especially since you have a spare bedroom available,” she says.

Damn, Rita’s place was my last hope for getting Brynn out of my house, but packing her into a small two-bedroom apartment with five other people doesn’t feel right.

“What about your house next door?” I ask.

The house is boarded up so it would be safe enough in that sense but Rita’s generator is a lot smaller than mine and can only run the fridge. Rita has a full-size generator at Scallywag’s, so they never felt the need for more than enough power at the beach house to run the fridge whenever they left due to a storm.

Brynn wouldn’t have running water or toilets. And since the house hasan electric stove, she wouldn’t be able to cook either.

It’s not a great situation for her to stay next door, but staying with me isn’t any better.

The storm might pass us by tomorrow afternoon, but it could be days or weeks before we get full power back and Brynn would be without basically any for too long.

“Send her to my house? I can’t imagine how she would be any safer there than with you. And if she’s there to write, you probably won’t even see her. She’ll be busy writing in the guest bedroom,” she says. “Is there a reason why you don’t want her there?”

Rita’s been trying to set me up with every single woman she comes across ever since she met me. If she knows that I’m trying to get rid of the beautiful author staying in my house, she might try to board up the front door while we’re sleeping so that neither Brynn or I can escape.

“No reason. I just think she’d be better off with you. But, you have enough on your plate. I just figured if you had an extra room, I’d see if it’s still available.”

“It sounds to me like you already have the perfect spot for her. She’ll certainly be more comfortable, and who wouldn’t want a big hunk like you around when a storm is raging outside? I’d say she’ll be getting plenty of inspiration.”

The very last thing she says starts to cut out—I’m losing reception again.

“Rita, can you hear me?” I ask but the line gets muffled and I can barely hear anything she’s saying.

“Rita… are you there?”

Then the line goes dead and my fate is now sealed.

It turns out that I’m stuck with Brynn until this storm passes.

What’s another two to three days until Silas has a vacancy?

I can keep my distance and just like Rita said, Brynn will probably spend most of her time in her room writing.

I have six more days before Cammy gets here, and by then, Brynn should be in a hotel room or on a flight home.

I spend the next several hours making sure that I’ve done everything I can before tonight. With the wind starting to pick up to the point where the sand was blowing in my eyes, I headed for my garage to work on a few projects for my boat, which is currently anchored out in the bay with other boats to keep it from banging around in the marina.

It’s dark out now and I’m starving.

I’ve done my best to stay out of the house and out of Brynn’s way.

The first thing I notice when I walk in through the front door is the smell of something cooking.

I hear the sound of plates and utensils rattling around in the kitchen. Brynn must have made herself dinner.

I don’t blame her for not waiting for me.

It’s nearly nine o’clock at night and I’m surprised she waited this long.

I walk into the kitchen to find Brynn with tortillas, shredded cheese, and diced ham from the breakfast leftovers, all played out with a hot pan on the stove.

“Oh, hi,” she says as she slices up a fresh mango and slides the fruit onto a plate. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to your fridge. I didn’t know if you had eaten, but I’m just about to make some ham and cheese quesadillas. Do you want one?”

I look around the kitchen to find that there isn’t a single dirty dish from this morning’s breakfast in the sink.

She did the dishes.

Usually, I would have cleaned those up before going outside, but I was in a hurry to get out of the house.

“Sure, but I can make my own. You don’t have to assemble it for me.”

“You already made me breakfast and you let me stay here. I’d be happy to make you dinner.”

I nod, giving in.

It’s a nice gesture since I need to sit down. My body hurts from climbing ladders and squatting all day on the roof while I fixed the solar panels in the high winds.

“Take a seat and tell me what you want in your quesadilla,’ she says

I walk over to the barstool and take a seat. Brynn pushes the plate of sliced mango between us as if to share it with me.

My mouth waters at the smell of fresh fruit, so I pick up a slice and plop it in my mouth before answering.

I must be starving because I swear I’ve never had a mango taste this good.

“Cheese, ham, and some of that sour cream is fine. Just fill it up, and I’ll take two, please. I usually eat a lot, and I missed lunch.”

“Coming right up,” she says, pulling out a large flour tortilla and tossing it on the pan to heat it up.

Next, she starts to layer on the cheese and ham.

“Is this enough?’ She asks after only adding a handful of ham.

There’s a large amount of ham sitting on the chopping block where she diced it all up so I know she’s not trying to be stingy with the protein, she just doesn’t understand how much I have to consume to keep up my energy at the performance level that my body is used to, I don’t expect her to. She and I don’t know each other at all.

I get off my chair and head towards her.

Showing her is going to be a lot easier for both of us.

Her eyes stay fixed on me as I walk around the counter to where she’s standing and I walk up behind her.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asks.

“Not at all,” I say.

I wash my hands in the sink quickly and then walk directly behind her, reaching over her shoulder and grabbing another large handful of ham and then another large handful of cheese.

The quesadilla is bursting with the contents I just loaded up, but I need to increase my calorie intake tonight since I missed a meal today.

“Like that. It takes a lot of food to feed me, and like I said, I didn’t eat lunch.”

“I bet it does,” she says.

But the way she says it in a low voice makes me wonder if there is innuendo I missed.

I step back and away from her.

However, she meant it; the last thing I need to do is analyze it.

“You can make the next one?” I ask, backing away and heading back to my bar stool.

“I think I get the idea now,” she says, starting to load up a second tortilla with a healthy helping like I showed her as she waits for the first quesadilla to heat up all the cheese. “So I’m guessing since I’m still here that means Rita didn’t have space for me.”

Brynn’s eyes stay focused on her task and don’t raise up to meet mine.

“She gave the available room she had away to a family who needed it. If I took you over there, it wouldn’t be as comfortable for you as it is here.”

She looks over at me finally.

“You don’t have to worry about my comfort. I’m intruding on your space. As long as I have a safe place to lay my head, anywhere will be fine.”

She grabs a spatula and slides it under the filled tortilla, and drops it onto a plate for me.

Reaching out, I grab the plate of hot food and set it in front of me. I’ll probably consume this thing in less time than she’ll have to make me a second one.

‘Thanks for dinner,’ I say to her.

Being able to come in after a long day and not have to scrounge around for something quick to eat when I came in was a nice surprise.

‘You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do.’

“You have a book due, right? If you’re going to spend most of your time writing in the guest room, we won’t see much of each other. And in a couple of days, the airport should be back up and running. Then you can choose to either fly home or take up a vacant room in Silas’s hotel once flights start taking vacationers out of here.”

She puts the next tortilla on the frying pan and starts the same process again while I eat my dinner.

“That’s very generous of you. If I can stay a couple more days, I’ll stay out of your way. I promise.”

“We’ll make it work,” I say, and then I get to work decimating the food in front of me.

I eat the first one in a matter of minutes, and just as I finish, she has the second one done and slides it onto my empty plate.

I watch her begin to assemble her own as I eat.

“Did you get any writing done today?”

“Actually, I did. I got the rest of my outline worked out. Now, I just need to start working through the chapters.”

Ever since she told me that she writes romance books, I’ve been curious about what exactly that entails.

I’ve never met an author before and I would have never guessed if I passed her in the street that she writes fiction for a living. It caught me off guard when she told me last night.

“Good. I’m glad my beating on the solar panels on the roof didn’t distract you.”

“No, actually. I was relieved to hear you up there and know that you were close by if I needed something,” she says and then pauses for a second like she’s giving too much information. ‘I uh… I get a little uneasy in storms. I grew up in Oklahoma, and we had a bad tornado one year. It’s not like I’m not used to the storm warnings or having to run for a shelter—I grew up doing that, but this one was different. Stuck in that damp cement shelter, we could feel the rumbling of the earth and the walls shake as it came close. Small pieces of the ceiling above us cracked and people screamed until they lost their voices. I didn’t think we would make it out alive.”

She doesn’t look at me as she tells the story.

This isn’t something she wants to talk about, but for some reason, she’s telling me anyway.

“Did anyone get hurt?” I ask, hoping to God that she didn’t lose a family member or a close friend.

“There were a lot of injuries. The ER was full for weeks but no fatalities—we got lucky. Storms like these bring back bad memories and flashbacks of being stuck in our building without knowing whether we would survive or not. It seemed like we were stuck down there for days, not hours.’

She turns away to grab a plate for herself.

I decide to change the subject. What she just told me was personal, and I can see in her body language that she feels weird about what she just told me.

“You said you write romance. What kind of romance do you write?” I ask.

“Most of my currently published books are of historical type romance, but after five years, I want a little change, and my publisher is giving me some freedom. Now I’m writing a new series in contemporary romance about a billionaire family who all have to marry to receive their inheritances.”

“How the hell do you write a billionaire romance series?” I say, forgetting not to be a dick.

I didn’t mean anything by my comment, but I really have no clue what any of that means.

She laughs like she already knew I was going to have a reaction to it.

“You write it just like any other romance book. It’s not that different from what I wrote about before. My Regency-era heroes are earls, dukes, and counts. In the modern day of my new series, my male leads will be billionaires. It’s kind of similar in that way. The biggest changes are the societal rules between that time period and now.’

“And let me guess. All the men you write about are jacked and good-looking, too?’

She lets out a little giggle and covers her full lips as she flips her quesadilla.

“Well, of course. I’m building the ultimate fantasy with spicy scenes. These men have to be gorgeous. Haven’t you had a girlfriend that reads romance books?”

“What, girlfriend?” I say out loud, though I didn’t mean to.

She looks over at me with an inquisitive brow.

“You’re a professional athlete… I’m sure you’ve had plenty of girlfriends. Or are you the typical player type,” she says, a subtle annoyance in her voice to the latter of the two.

Does she have something against me being a hockey player?

That’s rarely been an issue with women I meet.

It’s usually the reason most of them want to talk to me in the first place.

“I don’t date, and I wouldn’t consider myself a player by any stretch.’

‘That’s exactly what a player would say.’

I think for a second that she’s serious but then I see a glint in her eye.

Her quesadilla is finished, and she scoops it up with her spatula and flops it onto the plate.

“Okay, so you write billionaire romance with spicy scenes. What are spicy scenes?” I ask, taking my next bite.

“Spicy scenes are basically open-door romance scenes.”

She says with hesitation in her voice.

“What is an open-door romance scene?”

She grabs a knife and fork and starts to cut up her tortilla filled with cheese and ham.

“It’s basically a sex scene that I write out in graphic detail.”

Suddenly, everything I thought about this woman changed completely.

“How much detail are we talking about?”

“Very specific and explicit content,” she says and then takes a bite of food.

“I see. So what’s this book about then?”

“It’s the first book in a six-book series about these brothers that inherit a billionaire dollar empire when their father passes away, but in order to keep the businesses from being sold off, they each have to find a bride.”

“I see. So each brother gets his own book, and they all find a wife and live happily ever after?”

I get up, take my plate with me, and head for the sink, waiting for her to finish her bite.

I wash my plate and put it on the rack to dry.

“Of course they do. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be following the rules of a true romance.”

“That doesn’t seem realistic. What family of six brothers all end up happy? Statistically, that isn’t probable.”

She turns and stares over at me with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s why my books are found in the fiction side of the bookstore. And that’s also why it’s a damn good thing that you’re a hockey player and not a romance author. Your books would tank.”

I let out a chuckle, and her lips pull up into a smile at my reaction.

I can’t help but stare for a second.

I realize this is the first time I’ve seen a real smile from her, and that’s my fault.

“And then they fuck?’ I say.

She laughs this time.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

She finishes up her food and then walks it over to the sink.

“Here, I’ll do the dishes. You made dinner,” I tell her, reaching my hand out for her plate.

“Are you sure?” she asks and then breaks out into a yawn that she attempts to cover with her hand.

“Yeah. You’d better get some rest. It might be hard to sleep through the storm tonight. I’d get as much shut-eye as you can now.”

She hands me her plate and then stares up at the roof as if she’ll be able to see the storm clouds above us.

“Ok, thanks again for letting me stay here.”

“You’re welcome. Night Brynn.”

She walks out of the kitchen, and that’s the last time I see her for the night.