He wasn’t holding out much hope for the evening. His mood over losing the game had grown progressively darker with each passing hour, and comforting a crying woman—and with Charley, he used the term woman loosely—over a broken heart wasn’t his idea of a good time.
Shit.
He was suffering from his own damn broken heart.
And he didn’t see his so-called loving sister going out of her way to console him or make him feel better.
This was crap.
He was a grown-ass man, an all-star player in the NHL with a ten-million-a-year contract, for God’s sake, and here he was, catering to his kid sister.
And this was no small favor.
This was a date with Charley Matthews.
Sure, she’d been cool to hang out with—as another one of the guys—when they were teenagers, and she’d kicked his ass at hockey more than a few times.
But she wasn’t the type of woman he’d ever ask out. He liked his women soft and fluffy and, well, low-maintenance—light on conversation, heavy on sexuality.
Charley was opinionated, rough around the edges, she left bruises when she punched him on the arm…and she was a feminist, for God’s sake.
He didn’t have time for that shit.
And even if hell had frozen over and he’d asked her out on his own, he didn’t doubt for one second, she’d turn him down flat. If there was one thing Charley and he had always tacitly agreed on, it was the simple fact that neither one of them was attracted to the other.
She thought he was an arrogant, swaggering jerk, and she’d made it her life’s mission in high school to try to put him in his place.
The last time he’d seen her was at her and Bella’s graduation party. They’d snuck in a bunch of beer and the three of them had gotten trashed in his parents’ basement after most of the family and friends had gone home.
He was bragging about slipping his hand up Erin McMillan’s skirt and fingering her in the middle of the party, his actions shielded from everyone as they stood behind his dad’s backyard bar.
Bella had merely rolled her eyes at his boast, but Charley had called him a cocky son of a bitch.
Then she’d assured him that he was going to get his one day. Promised him that somewhere down the road, he was going to meet a woman he couldn’t charm into giving him his own way. One who would make him work for the privilege of dating her, of marrying her.
Jesus.
As if.
The memory provoked a grin. The first one all day.
No such woman had arrived—would ever arrive—and he was going to be sure to let Charley know she’d been wrong.
1490.
He’d reached her room.
Great.
He straightened his tie, sucked in a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
Here’s goes nothing.
The door swung open and his world tilted on its axis.
“Charley?”
He stood there for a full minute, staring at the woman looking back at him, before glancing at the number on the room again.
She tilted her head, staring back. Her gaze slowly drifted from his face, shifting lower, much lower—Jesus, was she trying to check out his package?—before meeting his eyes again with a sexy grin.
Granted, they hadn’t seen each other in eight years, but he couldn’t believe anyone could change as much as she had.
Her auburn hair was a lot longer than it had been back in high school, wavy and shiny and the perfect length to wrap around his fist as he pulled her toward him to kiss.
No.
Scratch that.
He was not kissing Charley. It would be like kissing a dude.
Or would it?
Her expressive green eyes were accentuated by long, thick lashes and smoky eyeliner that made them look big and beautiful. Her lip gloss was a shimmery pink that made him think of cotton candy and had his mouth watering for a taste, just to see if it was as sweet as it looked.
Nope.
No tasting, either.
The silence lingered as he took in the rest of her.
She was still tall, but there were no remnants of the skinny kid she’d been before. This woman was svelte, graceful.
Her dark green dress fit her like a second skin, revealing the perfect amount of cleavage, the slit in the skirt giving him more than a peek of one of her toned, tanned long legs. Legs he wouldn’t mind having wrapped around his waist as he…
Nope.
No fucking.
No. No. N—
Mother of God.
His gaze landed on her chest again and lingered.
Charley Matthews had tits.
Amazing tits.
Suddenly, every miserable scenario he’d imagined for the night vanished, replaced instead with a fantasy.
Of Charley, naked and under him, those shapely legs resting on his shoulders as he slid inside her, her perfect breasts in his hands.
“Hi, Alex,” Charley said with a sexy smile, finding her voice before he did. “Long time no see.”
Holy.
Shit.
Alex stood there. In a suit. Looking like some chiseled-in-marble Greek Adonis.
He’d shaved. That was the first thing Charley noticed.
And as much as she’d liked the beard he’d been sporting during the playoffs, this fresh-from-the-pages-of-GQ look was just as hot as the rugged mountain man she’d seen being interviewed on ESPN a few nights earlier.
“Charley?”
She’d had the benefit of watching Alex on television pretty much constantly since he left Wisconsin. The second he was drafted, his team became her team, and she took diehard fan to new limits.
So while she’d seen the breathtakingly gorgeous adult he’d become, it was clear he’d expected to see her as…
Oh.
Crap.
Yeah.
Now she got it.
She hadn’t recognized the woman looking back at her in the mirror a few minutes ago, either.
In fact, she felt like a grade-A asshole.
Bella had been determined that Charley was not only going to the wedding, but she was going to look like a million bucks and make Ben rue the day he ever picked Beverly Bryant over her.
So Bella had curled her hair in some sexy style she’d seen in a magazine and spent well over an hour fussing with Charley’s makeup.
Charley felt a little bit like a clown. Her daily look didn’t include more than a few swipes of mascara and tinted Chapstick.
“Come in,” she said, wishing he’d say something more than her name.
He stepped over the threshold and she caught a whiff of his cologne. It was the same scent he’d worn back in school. She used to give him shit for it, claiming he smelled like he had just walked out of Hollister.
Funny how it was having a much different effect on her now.
She shut the door, trying to feign a coolness she didn’t feel. She knew Alex was hot, but after too many years of seeing him only on the TV screen, it occurred to her—belatedly—that he had started to feel like a fictional character.
Seeing him up close and in person was doing things to her that—if she was being honest—she had anticipated…just not quite to this extent.
Her nipples were hard, her panties wet, and she was struggling to breathe.
This was not good.
“You look beautiful, Charley, I mean…Charlotte.”
She shook her head. “No, please. Call me Charley.”
“Phew,” he said, with an easy smile. “There was no way I was going to manage to call you Charlotte all night. I know it’s your name, but it doesn’t fit you. Never has.”