Tangled Up in Love (26 page)

When Zack didn’t react, Dylan started to worry he’d made a colossal mistake. He wanted to be a successful sports reporter, and his best friend did happen to be one of the biggest stars in the NHL, but he wasn’t willing to risk that friendship just for a glowing addition to his résumé.

“Look,” he said, holding up his hands and leaning back against the sofa, “maybe it was a bad idea. Forget I mentioned it. I—”

“Je-zus,” Zack swore, cutting Dylan off as he fell back into his own chair.

Across the room, Bruiser jerked awake at Zack’s heartfelt exclamation. He looked around, realized nothing of interest—at least to him—was going on, and went back to sleep on his giant red-and-blue Rockets dog pillow that was roughly the size of a toddler’s first mattress.

Driving his fingers through his blond hair from hairline to nape, Zack said, “You really know how to shrink a guy’s tea bags, buddy. For a minute there, you had me thinking you were going to ask me to pose nude for
Playgirl,
or tell me you were gay and wanted to be my love bunny or something.”

Dylan didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended by Zack’s reaction.

On the other side of the couch, Gage was chuckling and using the lip of his longneck in a poor attempt to hide his amusement.

“Sure, I can do that,” Zack continued. “There will have to be some ground rules. You know there are things I’m not going to talk about with a reporter, even if he happens to be one of my best friends. But aside from that, I’d be happy to sit down with you for an interview.”

“Great, man. Thanks, I appreciate it.”

A jolt of achievement and no small amount of excitement rolled through Dylan. And he wanted more than anything to pick up the phone and tell Ronnie the good news, tell her she’d been right, and that quite possibly she was the most brilliant person in the entire state of Ohio.

Better yet, he’d like to tell her in person, see her face and that thick mane of soft chestnut hair falling around her face.

But he might be smarter not to mention the Mensa IQ thing. After admitting how he felt about her writing, he didn’t want to stroke her ego any more.

Besides, if he was going to stroke her, he could think of about a dozen other places he’d rather focus his attention on.

With a grin, Dylan imagined how hard Ronnie would punch him if she could read his mind right now. Not that he wasn’t strong enough to take it . . . and then wrestle her to the ground and kiss the mad right out of her.

“You got something else on your mind, man?” Gage asked, interrupting his thoughts and the mini fantasy that had begun to play out in his head. “ ’Cause you look way too happy about a lousy interview with ‘Hot Legs’ over there . . . unless, of course, he’s right about you buttering him up to be your boyfriend. No pun intended.”

“Well, pooh,” he said, making his voice go high and slightly effeminate. “You found me out. It’s true, I’ve got a huge crush on this big galoot.” He tipped sideways just enough to curl his fingers around Zack’s knee and give a squeeze.

“Whoa!” Zack jumped up like a diamondback had just shaken its rattles underneath his chair, and put an extra couple of feet of space between them. “Keep your hands to yourself. It’s not funny anymore.”

Dylan laughed and gave his own knee a hearty slap. Even Gage was getting a chuckle out of Zack’s over-the-top reaction.

“Sit down, you homophobic pussy.”

It took a minute for their laughing to die down. When it did, Zack slowly returned to his seat and mumbled, “I’m not homophobic. Or a pussy.”

“Oh, come on,” Dylan said. “If we were in the locker room after a game, you’d let me slap your bare ass and think nothing of it.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not in the locker room,” Zack retorted, brow creased in discomfort, “so hands off my knee, my ass, and everything else.”

Batting his eyes and putting a bit of sass into his voice, Dylan said, “All right, but you don’t know what you’re missing.”

Zack flipped him the bird, drawing more loud guffaws out of Dylan and Gage both.

“So what was the grin about?” Gage wanted to know a few seconds later, after Zack had grumpily turned his attention back to the game and Dylan had once again picked up his knitting.

He shrugged. “Nothing in particular.”

Gage raised an eyebrow and took a slow sip of his beer before leaning back against the soft. He crossed one leg over the other and held his right ankle where it rested on his left knee.

“A guy doesn’t smile like that about nothing in particular,” he commented drily, flicking at the label on his bottle with the side of his thumb. “Does it have anything to do with Ronnie?”

The soft question caused a clench low in Dylan’s gut. But instead of being a clutch of fear or guilt or wariness, it seemed to feel more like possessiveness and . . . restlessness, desperation, even.

“What if it does?” he replied slowly, not meeting Gage’s gaze, even though he could sense both of his friends watching him.

Gage shook his head once, with an indifferent twist to his lips. “Nothing. I was just wondering. We haven’t
heard you complaining about her the way you used to, so I thought maybe the two of you had come to an understanding.”

“Or maybe that kiss a couple of weeks ago turned into more,” Zack offered.

Dylan had been friends with these guys long enough to know they weren’t ribbing him now, weren’t looking for a weakness they could exploit. As with Miranda rights, anything he said could and probably would be used against him down the road, but at the moment they were open to a frank and earnest discussion.

It happened sometimes. When Gage was having trouble with his marriage to Jenna and going through his divorce, and again when Zack started toying with the idea of proposing to Grace. Dylan supposed it was his turn in the hot seat.

“This doesn’t go any farther than this room,” he qualified, waiting until he’d gotten the requisite nods—from his best buds, that was as good as a handshake or a blood oath—to continue. “We’ve been sleeping together.”

Gage raised a brow and Zack gave a long, high whistle through his teeth.

“What?” Dylan prompted, a slightly defensive edge to his tone. “No catcalls or lewd comments? No
How was she?
or
Is she good with her mouth?
”

“I would, but I’m too afraid of getting a knitting needle to the ’nads,” Zack said.

Dylan cocked his head, waiting for Gage’s reply.

“Not me,” the smart cop said, holding up his hands. “I know better than to flap my gums around a guy who’s got a serious jones for a girl. Haven’t you ever heard ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’? Sam Cooke knew what he was talking about.”

It spoke to the depth of Dylan’s confusion about his relationship with Ronnie that he didn’t correct Gage on his
serious jones
remark. A week ago, he’d have been all over that, insisting he didn’t have a serious jones for her, didn’t have any sort of jones for her.

But now . . . now, he’d be lying if he denied it. He did have a jones for her. A big one.

He had the hots for her, in ways he’d never had the hots for any other woman. She made him want to—and willing to—do things he’d never wanted or been willing to do before. Made him want her even when she was nowhere around, while he was with his buddies, watching basketball, drinking beer, and knitting, for God’s sake.

At a time when he’d normally be thinking about those three things to the exclusion of everything else, she had his cock half hard behind the confines of his zipper and wondering how soon he’d get the chance to see her again.

But it wasn’t just the sex. He wished it was. Falling for Ronnie had never been part of the plan, but he was very much afraid that’s what had happened.

It wasn’t just the sex he liked about her, it was her skin, and her lips, and her luxurious hair. Her voice, and her smile, and the soft sway of her hips when she walked.

He liked talking with her and listening to her defend her positions to the death, even if 90 percent of the people in the room disagreed with her.

She was one of the most passionate people he’d ever met—in bed, at home, at work, in every aspect of her life.

She was also smart, and witty, and funny, and though
it made him uncomfortable to admit it, he was pretty sure he wanted to be with her longer than just the next couple of days or weeks. Maybe even longer than a couple of months.

Scary stuff. And if Ronnie found out he’d been thinking along those lines, she’d either laugh in his face or use one of her ice-pick high heels to kick him in the ass and out of her apartment.

“So are things getting serious?” Zack ventured, tossing the remote control he’d used to turn the volume down on the TV back on the glass-topped coffee table, testament to the significance of their conversation.

“I don’t know,” he replied, rubbing his jaw. “No doubt about it, the sex is great. If you think Ronnie looks hot in one of her prim little dress suits, you should see her naked. She could peel the paint off the walls and turn it liquid again.”

“Yeah,” Gage said drily with a wry quirk to his lips. “It’s probably not smart for us to be visualizing your girlfriend naked. That’s an invitation to a bloody nose and loose teeth, if you ask me.”

“And I can’t spare either,” Zack put in, covering the bridge of his nose, which had a small bump from the last time it had been busted by an opposing team member.

“Don’t let her hear you call her my girlfriend or she’ll skin you alive.”

“She doesn’t want to be your girlfriend?” Gage asked.

Dylan rolled his eyes and tapped the flat end of one of the needles he was using against his thigh. “She doesn’t want to be in the same zip code with me. While we’re going at it, she forgets she hates me like a cold sore, but
as soon as she comes up for air she’s back to thinking I’m the Antichrist.”

Gage and Zack both chuckled.

“So how do you manage to get her into the sack in the first place?” Zack wanted to know.

“Stealth, misdirection, and heavy doses of cough medicine in her wine,” he quipped.

The guys laughed at that, and the mood in the room lightened a few degrees.

“Frankly, I’m surprised to hear you’ve been tapping that. I didn’t think anyone could melt the Ice Queen,” Zack said with a smirk. “Not to mention, I thought you were one of the things that chapped her ass the most.”

“I am,” Dylan agreed, the corner of his own mouth lifting in amusement. “But you know what they say about there being a thin line between love and hate.”

“You think she’s in love with you?” Gage asked.

The question hit a little too close to home, and it took a second for Dylan’s gut to unclench and his mind to formulate an answer.

“Definitely not,” he responded slowly, remembering the number of times she’d turned away from him after they’d made love, in embarrassment and regret. The number of times she’d made a point of telling him it had been a mistake to sleep with him, and swearing him to secrecy so that no one would ever find out she’d let her guard down long enough to fall into bed with the enemy.

A twinge of disappointment seeped into his voice as he said, “It’s just lust and the illicitness of a forbidden affair.”

“One more reason for us to keep our traps shut, then,” Zack said. “We wouldn’t want to be the cause of you losing access to a regular supply of booty.”

“Gee, thanks,” Dylan quipped. The sex was good, no doubt about it, but that wasn’t his main concern anymore.

Shifting in his spot on the sofa, he went back to knitting, carefully forming one stitch after another. After a couple of minutes had passed with no further questions or well-meant comments from Gage and Zack, Dylan quietly murmured, “I’m thinking of trying to talk her into sticking things out awhile longer, seeing where they take us.”

Zack’s eyes widened, but Gage’s expression remained stoically unreadable.

A beat passed before Gage raised his bottle of beer in a mock salute and said, “More power to you, brother.”

Zack’s response was slower to come. Finally, he said, “Yeah, good luck with that,” sounding none too convinced that Dylan would be successful. “And if it doesn’t work out, you can always send her down to the rink to keep the ice from melting between games.”

When Ronnie walked to her desk at the
Sentinel
offices Monday morning, she did it with a bounce in her step and a smile on her face. She couldn’t believe how good she felt.

For the first time, she was happy to come into work. She was looking forward to checking her messages and e-mail, sitting in on the editorial meeting, and brainstorming ideas for new columns. It didn’t all feel rote to her anymore, like she was slogging through quicksand just trying to get to where she really wanted to be.

For once, she felt as though she was exactly where she belonged, doing exactly what she was meant to do.

And her concerns about money . . . well, they were by no means completely alleviated, but they had been significantly reduced after a phone call to Dylan’s father, who had talked to her for several hours about financial planning.

He’d also given her the name of a professional financial planner whom he seemed to think would help her get everything organized to the point that she wouldn’t need to worry about money or her future at all.

Although she’d tried several times, she hadn’t been
able to adequately express her gratitude to Mr. Stone for his help and advice. She had a feeling, though, that she would have to find a way to thank Dylan.

The only problem there was that she could very easily envision
several
hot and sweaty ways to express her appreciation to
him
.

Dylan was the one thing that tarnished her otherwise buoyant mood. She honestly didn’t know what to do about him.

Did she want to keep sleeping with him?

Oh, yeah. Especially since no other man she’d ever been with had managed to curl her toes and send her eyes rolling back in her head as often as he did.

Did she want things between them to become more serious?

That she wasn’t so sure about. There were moments she thought the answer was yes, and she could almost picture them going out on normal dates, hanging out with their friends, getting to know each other the way significant others did.