Penalty (Penalty Duet #1) Read online

  Our conversation is sparse, punctuated by a lot of silence that isn't awkward for some reason. In fact, it's comfortable, like we've known each other a long time and don't feel the need to fill the space between us with small talk. Not that there is a lot of space between us. She may have a tiny, albeit curvy frame, but I'm large and tall and with each moment I seem to be moving closer to her.

  The restaurant, as I expected, is busy on this Friday night but with reservations it isn't a problem. The hostess recognizes me, though her smile isn't as broad as usual. In fact, she looks a bit angry and is doing everything to fight it.

  Then she sees Brandy and something comes over her, like a lightbulb going off.

  "Are you the girl from the newspaper?" the hostess asks her. "Are you the mystery girl?"

  I glance at Brandy, wondering what she's going to say.

  She gives the hostess a proud smile and grabs my hand in a showy way, giving it a squeeze. "I sure am. If it wasn't for Bray here, I would probably be dead. He literally saved my life."

  She's laying it on a bit thick but the hostess is eating it up.

  "Wow." She looks at me and whatever anger she was covering up earlier has now turned to admiration. "You really are a hero then."

  I shrug, trying to downplay it. "I just did what anyone else would do."

  It seems to be the stock answer in these types of situations.

  But it works and the hostess not only changes her tune about me but sits us down at the best table near the window, in a nook with plenty of privacy. That doesn't stop every single person in the restaurant from turning their heads to watch us, hand in hand, as we are led over there. Just what I wanted.

  We sit down across from each other and the hostess goes off to whisper something in the waiter's ear. He nods at whatever she's saying, eyeing us. I have to wonder if she's warning him to go easy on me.

  "So," Brandy says, stealing my attention back to her. With the candle light and the fading city sky outside the window, she looks positively glowing. "How did I do?"

  "You did amazing," I tell her, reaching across the table and gesturing for her to put her hand back in mine.

  "Well it wasn't that much of an exaggeration," she tells me as she gingerly places her palm against my hand. I fold my fingers over it, holding her. "You did save me. That wasn't a lie. Though I have to tell you, you did what everyone else wouldn't do. Don't sell yourself short in any narrative."

  "Any narrative?"

  "Sorry," she gives me a sheepish smile. "It's the book reviewer in me coming out."

  The waiter comes over with the bread basket and truffle and rosemary butter and is friendlier than normal when he asks us what we'd like to drink.

  I'm about to get us a bottle of red wine to split when Brandy surprises me and orders a dirty martini. I decide to do the same.

  "You like dirty martinis?" she asks, reaching for the bread. There's no hesitation while she takes a large piece and slathers it with butter. Most women I go on dates with just pick at a salad and refuse to eat anything else. Then again, most women I date look like they never eat. Brandy, on the other hand, has healthy curves that go on for days, the kind of soft curves I’d love to spend days in bed with.

  "I like dirty anything," I respond. "You should know this by now."

  She doesn't say anything to that, just smirks, and then looks off to the rest of the restaurant. People are looking over at us from time to time and I even catch sight of someone taking our picture.

  "Do you really think this will help you?" Brandy asks between mouthfuls of bread.

  "It already is," I tell her. "You saw how the hostess wanted to kill me. I knew she was a big hockey fan and was rightfully pissed but the moment she saw you, she forgot all about it. You keep saying I saved you, well, babe, you saved me."

  She gives me a quick, dark look. I know she doesn't like it when I call her that, which is why I can't help doing so.

  "Anyway," she says. "I guess you've at least got people's attention here."

  "Do I have your attention?"

  "I'm all in," she says, her eyes focusing on me in such a way that I have no choice but to believe her. She clears her throat and looks about to say something else but the drinks arrive.

  "Are you ready to order?" the waiter asks.

  "Can you give us five minutes?" I tell him. "We haven't had a chance to look at the menus." Even though I already know what I'm going to get, I'm not about to order for Brandy. I can be a bit alpha sometimes and brutish, I mean it's practically my damn job, but I'm not the type of guy who orders for a woman on a date.

  Brandy makes quick work of it all and once she finds out what I'm having, she decides to do the same anyway.

  "So," she says to me after a sip of her drink. Her eyes close and she says, "Damn, that's good. Super dirty."

  "Say dirty again," I tell her, my voice low. "There's something about the way your lips move when you say that word."

  She ignores that. "Tell me a bit about yourself. I mean all the real truth."

  Luckily, even though everyone in the restaurant can see us and is still stealing pics and peeks, they aren't close enough to hear us. I don't want anyone to think we are strangers and I keep my voice low.

  "Pretty much everything I told you last night was true," I tell her. "I just left some things out."

  "Okay. So you're really Canadian."

  "I'm a hockey player, aren't I?"

  "That's pretty stereotypical."

  "Another sign that you don't follow hockey. If you did, you'd know that there's a stereotype for a reason. The majority of US players are, in fact, Canadian. It's like our country's biggest export."

  "Is that true, eh?"

  "Very funny," I tell her. "At least you got the context of eh right. We don't just add it onto every sentence. It's supposed to take the place of right? So in America you say, I know right? And in Canada we say, I know eh? Get it?"

  "I get it. Thanks for the education," she says rolling her eyes. "So where in Canada were you born? What did your parents do? Any siblings?"

  I busy myself with the drink, trying to give myself liquid courage. It's not that my past is a secret in any way, it's that I don't like talking about it much. At the start of my career I was grilled all the time about my upbringing, since when you become a hockey player people think they have the right to know everything about you. But I know that Brandy is just curious and wanting to know me better instead of holding it above me like some tabloid fodder.

  I clear my throat. "I grew up in a small town in buttfuck Alberta. Lots of farms, rolling hills. Hot as hell in the summer, cold as sin in the winter. My father was an oil rig worker who worked up in the north of the province most of the time. I honestly didn't see him very much and that was probably for the better.” I pause. “He wasn’t exactly the nicest, warmest man. And my mom left when I eight. I still don't know why. It doesn't matter. It happened. I've dealt with it. I guess I just kind of fended for myself, when I wasn't being looked after by my neighbor. They were on the next farm over, a long walk during any time of year. My neighbor had a pond that he would skate on and that's where I learned how to skate."

  "Who taught you?" she asks quietly, her eyes have been glued to me this entire time with subdued understanding.

  "He did. My neighbor. He was older. In his thirties. Had a wife and a baby. But he used to play hockey for one of the farm teams for the Edmonton Oilers. A farm team is the team that the NHL ones pick from. They play for teams, just not at the NHL level, at least not at first. He played for the Bakersfield Comets for a bit, and even back-up once or twice for the Oilers, until he had a concussion and couldn't skate well. He taught me everything he knew though. Then he died one year, heart attack. Wasn’t even that old. His name was Stan Smiley."

  "That's horrible," she says. "I'm so sorry."

  I shrug and look away out the window. "I am too. He was a good man. I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for him."

  "Is your real father
still alive?"

  I nod, feeling my chest tighten. "He is. But we don't talk. My mother, however, has come back into the picture once she learned I was a famous hockey player. Wanting money."

  "I hope you didn't give her any. She doesn't deserve it for abandoning you."

  "Of course I gave her money," I tell her. "She's still my mother, even if she left me."

  "You don't hate her?"

  "Sometimes I do. But sometimes the hate is too much of a burden. I guess that's why I'm so good at defense. I've got a lot of hate inside that needs to come out. What about you?"

  She blinks at me for a few moments, as if wrestling with something inside her head. Somehow I already know that she's not going to come out and tell me some fairy tale story about her family. Her eyes tell me too much, there's empathy swimming in them.

  "Me?" she asks. "I...I guess my story isn't all that different from yours, really. Except you've managed not to hate your parents the way that I have."

  Oof. I have to wonder if we're getting too deep for this dinner. Suddenly my urges to fuck her are being replaced with sympathy and respect. I was not planning on this.

  She goes on. "I guess I should say that I don't hate my parents. I just...I'm just angry that they're gone. They died in a car crash when I was young. It sounds silly...horrible even...but I always felt mad at them for leaving me like that. I know that's selfish to think that. They didn't ask for that. But sometimes I don't know who to blame for them being gone. God, I guess."

  "I totally understand," I say in a low voice. "Who raised you? Were you and your sister in foster care?"

  "No, thank God for that. We were raised by our aunt, on a farm just like you. But my aunt didn't have a lot of money so we worked on the farm for a long time. We'd milk cows and feed chickens and bale hay even. We did whatever we could to help out. Without us, my aunt would have lost everything. And without our aunt, we wouldn't have had anything."

  "That's a good way of looking at it."

  "Yeah. I read a lot as a means of escape, so I guess maybe I wouldn't have my job if it weren't for the way I was raised. Who knows. I know I shouldn't look back and get angry or upset about the past but it sneaks up on me sometimes, wondering about the life I could have had if my parents were still alive."

  I give her a tender smile. It's obvious she's getting a bit upset, she's sucking on her lip, her eyes look wet.

  "Will you excuse me?" she says to me and of course I tell her it's okay. I watch her go to the washroom, my eyes following her as does everyone else's. She's got them intrigued. She's got me hook, line and sinker.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Brandy

  I walk into the bathroom and breath out a sigh of relief when I realize it's empty. I splash water on my face, careful not to ruin my makeup, before I head over to the stall and sit down in it. My head is a bit swimmy from the martini I pretty much chugged down, but my nerves are still doing a conga line up and down my limbs.

  What the hell is wrong with me? One moment we're enjoying our martinis and the delicious bread, the next I'm babbling on about my family. I never talk about my upbringing if I can help it. I hate the look of pity in people's faces when they find out my sister and I are orphans. But I guess the way that Brayson opened up to me made me feel I could do the same.

  I just didn't think I'd hear his story like that. Just so out there for me to judge. That said, I have the feeling that this isn't typical with him, this type of trust and intimacy. I just have to wonder why he chose to share it with me.

  Stay cool, I tell myself. This isn't your typical date and you know it.

  That's for sure. For one, I've never been taken somewhere as fancy as this. Even the bread alone was like heaven on my tongue. For another, I've never had people stare at me like this before, all wondering who I am, really, aside from the mystery girl thing. Is this what it's like to date someone famous? I'm not sure I like it, to have everyone's eyes on me, like you belong to them or something.

  But even more jarring than the looks and the sly iPhone photos and the whispers, is how easy it feels to talk to Brayson. It shouldn't be this way. It should be awkward like it is for every date I've been on. Yet when I talk, he's really looking at me – in me – like he understands and what he doesn't understand he wants to know more of. Why he would consider someone like me interesting is beyond my comprehension, especially when he could have anyone he wants and probably has.

  Then there's the sexual tension which, until recently, had been flying high since we left my apartment. I've never had a man speak so openly about sex the way that Brayson has, not even after dating for a few months, and I never have said the things I've said tonight, let alone have the thoughts. What I said in the elevator was positively mortifying! This man had reduced me to a horny, filterless teenager in a matter of seconds. All he had to do was lay those vivid blue eyes on me and I was a goner.

  I still am. It's all so much and it shouldn't be. I should be treating this as it is, a date of convenience between two people where both our wants are out there on the table. He wants to use me to clear his name, I want to use him to have some good food and company. There shouldn't be anything else but now there is. We're trading secrets and opening up and the mood between us is startlingly intimate. I can only wonder where it could go if we're already starting to bare our souls to each other.

  Don't get ahead of yourself, I think. Just because you opened up a tiny bit about your backgrounds doesn't mean you're on the fast track to anything more. Let it be what it is.

  And yet I know that if I want it, this date can certainly lead on the fast track to sex.

  Fuck. Even the thought is making the heat pool between my legs and I'm clenching, trying to quell the feeling. How good it would feel to have that man naked above me, thrusting inside me, his hands, lips, eyes roaming my body like a man on fire. I wish I could just throw caution to the wind and have my world rocked. I want him to make me come over and over again until I don't know where I am, who I am. I want to escape to somewhere else for a while where all that matters is my own pleasure.

  And his. I would die to see his eyes roll back in his head, his neck and jaw clench as he comes inside me. I would love to drop to my knees and place my beloved mouth on his cock and make him see stars.

  That could be mine. I know this. His invitation has been clear as day from the very start. This date is just for show but it can end in a million orgasms. If I'm brave enough to ask for it.

  That's my problem. I'm so rickety and out of practice that I don't even know if I have the courage to initiate sex.

  Then again, maybe I'll end up saying something else that surprises me.

  I snap out of my thoughts when someone else comes in the washroom and exit the stall after I flush, going over to the sink to wash my hands. There's a woman at the mirror beside mine, brushing on a few coats of mascara. I think she's minding her own business but I keep catching her eyes on me.

  Finally, she says, "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure," I say warily. She’s a stranger to me.

  She jerks her head to the door. "Brayson Rockwell. Is he your boyfriend? Are you the girl in the newspaper? You know, the photo?"

  Time to lie. I hope I do him proud. "Yup, that's me."

  She looks me up and down and I know she's making some kind of judgement in her head, maybe about my weight or the fact that I don't look like the typical puck bunny. My thighs must look like drumsticks in these tight jeans.

  "What's your name?" she asks.

  "Brandy Cooper."

  "Cool. Well, nice to meet you. Tell Brayson I'm sorry they lost the cup. Maybe next time."

  "Next time for sure," I tell her before hurrying out the door. I don't want to be questioned anymore. Lying is hard work and with the strong martini I'm bound to say the wrong thing.

  I head back to the table, trying to walk normally as I make my way through the restaurant. There's nothing like having a bunch of people staring at you to make you suddenly thi
nk you're walking funny or something.

  When I sit down, I notice two more fresh martinis have been placed at the table.

  "I needed another," he tells me. "You don't have to drink yours if you don't want to."

  "Of course I do," I tell him, reaching for the pretty drink. "Just promise to keep me in line."

  The corner of his handsome mouth quirks up into a smile. "I promise nothing."

  Oh boy. This man is trouble. I'm in trouble. I can barely tear my eyes off him, taking in every square inch of his face, that strong jaw, the full, smirking lips, the devious glint in his eyes that promises me a night I'll never forget, if only I have the courage to embrace it.

  "I should tell you," he says carefully, breaking our gaze and looking out at the restaurant. "That I was approached while you were in the bathroom. Someone wanted to know your name."

  "Same thing happened to me while I was in the bathroom," I tell him. "What did you say?"

  "What did you say?"

  "I asked first."

  "I said you were Brandy Cooper, my girlfriend and a journalist."

  I can't help but smile at that. "Journalist. Wow, you really are building a house of lies here, aren't you?"

  "Well that's what you do isn't it? If you're writing reviews and getting paid for it, I think you're called a journalist. That’s what you first told me, anyway.”

  I have a hard time accepting that. It just doesn't feel like what I do is all that professional sometimes.

  "Don't sell yourself short, Brandy," he says to me. He sounds stern. "What you do is a respectable career and more than that, it's important."

  I deflect. "I'm not sure that I should take advice from someone who beats people up for a living." But the moment I say it, I regret it. There's a flash of anger on Brayson's face that quickly fades away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound like that."

  He licks his lips and leans back in his chair. "Yes you did. But it's okay. Hockey is a career though it might not be a respectable one. And mine in particular won't last a long time."