He holds out a hand to my fake girlfriend, who’s gawking.
“Can I sniff you?” Henri asks.
Beck’s brows go up. “Like, my hair? My clothes?”
“Your armpits. I have a writer friend who swears you wear the best deodorant. It’s for research. Cross my heart.”
“Ah, let me check with my wife. If she doesn’t care, I’m good with it.” He shoots me a look. “If it’s cool with you too.”
“Lift your arm, Ryder. If my girlfriend needs to do research, she needs to do research. You don’t get in the way of an author in need.”
Henri beams at me, and I feel like I just ran a marathon and then hit four grand slams and set a deadlift world record.
That is, elated but also very tired, and also suspicious that I’ve been using steroids or something, because no mortal man could do all of that in a single day without artificial assistance.
Beck lifts his arm, and Henri leans in. “Wow. You do have good deodorant.”
Hell, now I’m curious.
I lean in to sniff too, but Ryder shoves me away with a laugh. “Don’t think so. C’mon. Get some food.”
“Henri!” Marisol charges into the entryway. “I didn’t know you were coming! Get in here—the Thrusters’ wives and girlfriends are here too. They want to meet you, because the Thrusters have a book club. A romance book club. Plus, chocolate fountain. Chocolate. Fountain.”
I swear, Henri blows out a relieved breath before she gives me an apologetic smile, starts to leave, comes back, hesitates, then goes up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “Text me if you need me, okay?”
And then she’s gone like she’s glad to get away from me.
Not that I can blame her.
“Whoa, Luca, did your Nonna shrink your junk again?” Francisco asks as he pops his head around the corner too.
Beck ushers us both into the kitchen, where most of the rest of the team is gathered around the massive island loaded with food. The chocolate fountain is on a side countertop, which I can only tell by the number of women surrounding it and leaving with plates loaded with chocolate-covered fruit.
Brooks glances at me, then at Henri diving into the chocolate fountain crowd like it’s her salvation. “I don’t know what you did, man, but I recommend figuring out whatever she likes most in the world, and doing a lot of that.”
“Junk problems?” Emilio asks it, but every last one of my teammates who’s here is watching me like they were all thinking it.
I ignore them and glance around the penthouse, looking for Henri again.
She’s near the television in the next room, surrounded by Copper Valley royalty. Athletes, both soccer and hockey. Their significant others. A token rock star and movie star. Cooper’s sister, who should be famous, because that would annoy him.
And they’re all gathering around Henri because she’s a beacon of joy, and when she lights up and starts talking, it’s impossible for anyone to resist wanting to be closer to her.
So how the fuck has she been dumped by fiancés five times?
“Eat a sandwich.” Cooper shoves a plate into my chest. “It’ll help the hangries.”
“I’m not hangry.”
“Trying to help so they quit thinking of your shrunk junk, man,” he stage-whispers.
“I don’t give two shits about you all thinking about my junk.”
Cooper lifts a brow. Beck does one of those subtle gotta go check on something motions and slips out of the open kitchen and down a hallway. Brooks and Emilio share a look.
It’s one of those dude’s got it bad looks.
I glance at Henri again, feel my blood pressure rise as one of the single hockey players angles closer to her, which she’s naturally oblivious to, because she’s Henri, but Marisol steps in and glares at him before I have to go rack him in the nuts—which, again, I’m morally opposed to, because that shit hurts, but not when it’s a dude hitting on Henri.
Yeah.
I have it bad.
And I don’t want it.
I don’t want to be the guy who teaches her how to not fall in love.
She falls in love with the sunrise every morning, with the weird shapes in her toast at breakfast, with the way a bird shakes itself off after flying into a window, and with basically anything that isn’t evil.
Henri falls in love.
Not only with men, but with the world.
Every. Single. Day.
I can’t be the person who helps her figure out how to not do that.
I won’t.
Because she wouldn’t be Henri if she didn’t fall in love.
I glance around again. “Doesn’t Ryder have a big game room?”
Cooper grins. “You feeling like getting your ass whooped in some Pac-Man?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Beats getting my ass whooped by myself.
28
Henri
I owe Luca so big for tonight.
Not that I expect him to let me pay him back—or that I expect he wants anything to do with me given how weird he’s acting—but I do.
I owe him.
Maybe I’ll get his stairs fixed for him.
Or maybe I’ll make him my famous waffles for breakfast in the morning.
He’s off tomorrow—it’s the team’s last day off before the end of the season—and so I should—
I should not make him waffles.
Nonna isn’t around.
We’re not honestly dating.
And since he kissed me earlier, he’s been acting like I gave him cooties.
Or like I should’ve brushed my teeth better, or possibly like kissing me gives him psychic visions of the end of the world, and the fate of humanity rests on the two of us never boinking again.
“Henri?”
I blink at Marisol and realize I must’ve stopped talking mid-sentence, because seven people are staring at me expectantly. I swirl a strawberry in a pile of chocolate on my plate and smile like she caught me doing something bad. “Oh. Sorry. Plot bunny. It happens sometimes. I’ll be in the middle of a sentence, and poof! A new idea comes up.”
I am such a Liar McLiarson.
“For Confucius?” Tillie Jean asks.
I shake my head. “I can’t talk about it yet. I have to see if it has merit first.”
“Y’all back up and give Henri some room.” Marisol flaps her hands at the three guys who’ve leaned in closer. “Shoo. Go on. Somebody bring this poor woman a drink. You’ve been asking her to talk nonstop for an hour, and all she’s had is chocolate and strawberries.”
“An hour?” I whisper to her while one of the hockey players dashes off to do her bidding.
“At least,” Mackenzie agrees. I’ve finally gotten to meet her best friend, Sarah, who’s married to Beck Ryder, and who wasn’t at all bothered by me asking to sniff his armpits, though in retrospect, I’m a little concerned that I did that.
It’s possibly not quite normal.
But it was the first thing that popped to mind when we got off the elevator after Luca was so growly and silent the whole way here.
Honestly, I would’ve signed up to go to a party anywhere, with anybody, to escape the weird tension that’s settled between us tonight.