The ends justify the means, right?
I’m probably delusional.
Plus, I don’t want to know what Tyler will do if he finds out I’m using dating apps to meet and screen guys.
Not gonna lie.
I feel like I’m cheating on him every time I open an app and ask guys for dates, even though it’s strictly professional on my end.
But since they don’t know that, it’s complicated.
And the more matches I make this way, the more likely I am to get caught.
But it’s working.
So is it really wrong?
“Muffy.”
I leap sixteen feet in the air when Tyler says my name behind me. Mist and fog are invading the city, and I thought he listened when I told him to stay and have fun with his teammates and family—you know, where he’s safe if the Indies decided to go out and try to start something off the ice—instead of following me out, down a dark alley, and back onto the street toward his building. “Ohmygod.”
He grips me lightly by the elbow and tugs me away from the light-rail station I was passing as a trolley pulls up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m—I’m overwhelmed.” I say it out loud and realize it’s actually true. “Things don’t usually go this well for this long, and right now I have more satisfied clients than I’ve ever had, I hadn’t seen my mother in a week until tonight and I’m trying very hard to not let her get back in my head with her comments about my birthing hips, which I think is supposed to be complimentary, and I had a fantastic time hanging out with your family today even if I’m really pissed that you got a black eye in the game and I want to hit that asshole back for you. Nothing has ever gone this right for this long in my entire life.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods and pulls me into a hug. “That doesn’t mean anything’s about to go wrong.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“She sounds like a very good therapist.”
I hug him back tight. It feels so damn good right here in his arms.
If I could stay here, in the drizzly night after a super disappointing game, but with him holding me, forever, I would die a very happy woman. He’s not a superficial jerk who only cares about a woman’s size.
He’s everything, and I think he was everything before I let myself see it.
I can’t deny it anymore. I don’t even want to.
I am head over heels in love with Tyler Jaeger. Completely. Without question.
Not because he’s handsome.
Not because he’s successful.
Not because he gives me the most incredible orgasms of my life.
But because he cares.
He doesn’t have to. If anything, he has all the reasons in the world to not care.
Who am I to him, really?
Considering he’s still here, and all the other places he could be, I must be someone pretty special to him, and there’s nothing in the world to make a woman want to love a man more than feeling complete, total, unquestionable acceptance of even her worst moments.
He’s choosing me.
I need to choose him right back.
“Tyler?” There are so many emotions swirling in my chest, I can barely get his name out.
“Hmm?”
“Will you please—” I don’t finish the sentence before someone jostles into us.
I lift my head. Tyler drops his arms and shoves me behind him. “Cranford,” he growls.
A thick-necked dude with an ugly-ass scowl flexes his shoulders back. “Taking advantage of another one?”
“We’re leaving.” Tyler nudges me.
I grip his back belt loop and inch back toward the covered stop, where people are spilling off the trolley.
“Not gonna introduce me?” Cranford asks.
Tyler doesn’t answer. He turns his back on the other hockey player, tucks his arm around me, and nudges me again, more firmly, toward the trolley. “Fuck off,” he mutters over his shoulder.
I glance back too.
Cranford smiles. It’s an ugly smile, one that he tops with a wiggle of the brows and then a tongue movement that makes my ovaries shrivel and hide, because eew.
And that’s exactly what I’m thinking when I turn to look ahead again, zig when Tyler zags to get around the people departing the light-rail station, and I trip and fall into a massive concrete flower box.
42
Tyler
Only Muffy.
Seriously, only Muffy.
The good news? Cranford disappeared into the night as soon as Muffy went down in the flower box. Not that I expected him to cause actual trouble off the ice, but I’m still happier when he’s not around. Dude likes to be intimidating.
The bad news?
She’ll probably have a bruise the size of Alaska on her hip from hitting the concrete wrong, someone at the trolley stop told the tabloids that I stole Cranford’s girlfriend, and all of my sisters have invaded my condo after hearing about the little accident.
Could be worse.
Muffy could be seriously hurt.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Allie’s asking. “I can make soup.”
“How handy is it sometimes that you went to medical school?” Brit adds. “I’d be freaking out and rushing my kids to the emergency room.”
“Lots of padding and I can still walk,” Muffy replies, but she winces the teeniest amount, and I want to put my fist through a wall that I didn’t steer her better down the street. “You guys are so sweet to worry.”
Staci smiles at her. “Worrying is basically our entire job. We’re related to Tyler and West.”
“On behalf of West, Ty’s the bigger worry and always has been,” Keely calls from the kitchen, where she’s doing I don’t want to know what.
Probably brewing a potion to make me more romantic for Muffy.
It’s exactly the sort of thing my sisters would do.
“Out,” I order.
Forty-eight women turn and glare at me.
Okay, like five of them.
Also, Muffy’s not glaring. She’s blushing and avoiding my eye, just like she’s done since Allie banged on my door while I was trying to inspect Muffy’s hip, demanding to know why people at Chester Green’s were talking about me having another dust-up with Gator Cranford over a girl.
“He’s such a youngest child,” Brit mutters. She hugs Muffy. “We’re doing brunch at a wine bar at ten, and I really hope you make it, but we get it if we’re overwhelming and you send Tyler by himself.”
“Does your cat always stare at the fish tank like that?” Keely asks from the kitchen doorway. Rufus is doing his thing, sitting in a dining room chair that we’ve placed in the middle of the living room, his back to the aquarium, peeking over his shoulder like he’s afraid the fish will look back.
Didn’t take long for me to realize Rufus is more of a danger to himself than he is to the fish. I like it that way.
“Yes,” I answer for Muffy. “Go away.”
She gives me the don’t be rude huff. “He means thank you for being the kind of awesome sisters who care and try to help.”
“Even if we’re doing it in the name of not letting each other get more gossip than any of the rest of us?” Staci asks with a sly grin.