Fire on Ice (Fire on Ice Series) (5 page)

She paused and I stopped next to her. When she turned and looked up at me with
her beautiful brown eyes, my heart sang a few bars.

“You’re not going to follow me into the lab are you?” she asked.

“Not unless you want me to.” I tried to give her my most charismatic smile. It was the one I used to successfully seduce a number of puck bunnies.

“I don’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I don’t think this is going to work.”

“What?” I asked feigning innocence.

She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Us. This. Whatever
this
is.”

I closed the distance between us and I could see a shiver run through her. When she looked up at me again, she gulped.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, not taking my eyes off of her.

She shook her head.

“That’s what I thought.” Our eyes locked and the energy that was exchanged between us was so overpowering, it almost knocked all 6-feet 2-inches 210 pounds of me to my knees.

When I leaned in, I thought she might try to back away but she didn’t, so I placed a soft kiss on her lips.

Imagine my surprise when she kissed me back. When we parted, she licked her lips and I wanted to kiss her again.

I also wanted to take her into my arms and carry her to my apartment and make love to her all fucking afternoon.

“I’d better get to class,” she said but made no motion to leave.

“I don’t want you to be late,” I replied.

She just kept looking at me with her magnificent brown eyes.

“This,” I said finally.
“Us. It’s going to happen.”

Without another word, she stretched up on her toes and placed a light kiss on my cheek. “Thanks for lunch,” she whi
spered.

Then she turned and hurried into the building and was lost in a sea of students.

Four

Taylor

My mind was so cluttered with thoughts of
Kian—how his lips seemed to be made to fit mine, the way his blue eyes blazed when he was angry, his infectious smile, how incredibly mad he made me, and at the same time how completely and utterly he turned me on—that I didn’t even notice Kyle had walked up beside me.

“
Tay,” he said trying to get my attention. “Taylor.”

I turned to face him.
“Hey, Kyle. What’s up?”

“I saved a seat for you in Stats,” he stated.

“Sorry. I got to class late, so I just slipped in the back.”

He frowned. “You’re never late to class.”

“Yeah, well, I was today.” I didn’t really feel like discussing Kian with Kyle.

“It wasn’t that hockey player, was it?” The way he said
hockey player
made Kian sound like dirt. I didn’t like it.

I wasn’t sure what was going on with
Kian but I definitely didn’t want to share my insecurities with Kyle. I knew anything I told Kyle he’d twist around to make Kian seem like a villain.

I stopped walking and crossed my hands over my chest. “And what if it was?”

He swallowed and his forehead creased with thought. “I don’t trust that guy.”

I wasn’t sure I did either but there was something so ove
rpowering between us, every ounce of resolve I had not to see him again completely dissolved away when he looked at me and smiled.

“Kyle, I know you care about me. And you know how much I appreciate it. But you have to give me some space, okay?”

His face became sullen. “When you told me about Austin and your senior year of high school, I made you a promise. Do you remember what it was?”

“Of course,” I replied. “You promised that you would never let anyone ever hurt me again.”

“I meant it.” I had never seen Kyle look so serious.

“I know.” I gave my friend a half smile.

“I could beat him up if I had to,” Kyle teased. “
Go ahead, make my day
.”

“Okay, Dirty Harry,” I joked. “Let’s go study for our Social Psych exam.”

I grabbed Kyle’s elbow and the two of us headed for the library.

***

I was exhausted by the time I got back to my suite. All I wanted to do was lie down and take a nap before dinner. But as soon as my head hit the pillow, I heard my cell phone beep.

An incoming text.

I thought about ignoring it but I really wanted to see if it was from Kian.

But then I got mad at myself for hoping it was from
Kian.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t take my mind off of him and I hated it. The last thing I wanted was to get hung up on a guy, especially when I had so much going on the next few months. I had to keep my GPA up and I was taking some of the most difficult classes in the undergraduate psychology curriculum including both Research Design and Statistics.

I also had to worry about taking the GRE and scoring high enough to have my application for the doctoral program taken seriously.

And I was in the midst of my research internship and helping my mentor prepare an article for publication, and not just any article, an article that he assured me would have my name as a co-author.

It was a delicate balance to make sure all of the pieces of the puzzle would come together. With a guy in the picture, I felt like the entire puzzle could come apart at any moment. 

Especially a guy like
Kian. I’d only known him a few days and he’d already managed to completely throw me off balance. He’d infiltrated nearly all of my waking hours with memories of him kissing me and staring at me with those blazing blue eyes of his. Those memories alone already had the power to stir feelings deep inside me. Feelings that I’d worked extremely hard to keep trapped inside ever since Austin.

But
Kian was doing everything in his power to weasel his way into my life and he was obviously good at it because it was working.

I hopped from my bed and grabbed the cell phone from my desk, unable to control my curiosity. As I suspected, it was a text
from Kian but the message was cryptic:
Game Saturday night. Two tickets for you at the box office
.

If he was inviting me to his game on Saturday, it was a strange way of offering an invitation.

I wasn’t a fan of hockey. My family wasn’t into sports. As a concert cellist, my dad spent his life practicing his instrument and my mom, a novelist and poet, spent her days and nights behind a computer keyboard. Both of my parents also taught at the U. I was raised by two professional artists and intellectuals, who wouldn’t know the difference between a basketball and a football if they were hit in the head with them.

Two tickets.
I couldn’t ask Kyle to go to the game with me and I didn’t have any close female friends. There was only one other person I could possibly ask and it was a long shot.

Zelda.

My older sister was still in school studying for a degree in theater. She was apparently on the five year plan, so far, and she didn’t seem to be in any rush to complete her degree. The two of us were only 18 months apart but we couldn’t have been more different. She was an outgoing free-spirit with tons of friends and even more boyfriends.

The extent of my social circle in college was Kyle and I hadn’t had a boyfriend since my high school sweetheart, Austin, shattered my heart.

My sister was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of
The Great Gatsby
author F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom my mother adored. My mom should have given more thought to Zelda Fitzgerald’s life before naming my sister after her because according to literary history, Zelda was crazy and ended up in a mental hospital, which didn’t seem too far off from my sister’s lot in life.

I picked up my cell and dialed Zelda’s home number. She didn’t have a cell phone. She didn’t even own a phone from this century. She used one of those old fashion
ed rotary dialers that she found at a thrift store for a dollar. I was surprised the thing still worked. But my sister abhorred technology. She didn’t even own a computer. Somehow she survived without email and Google.

I wasn’t surprised when her phone rang indefinitely and she didn’t pick up. I dreaded having to find her but at least I knew the few places to look.

Since a nap was now out of the question, I threw on my sneakers and headed out the door to one of the places off campus I disliked the most: my sister’s home away from home.

***

I stood outside the campus theater. The fabulous building was gorgeous, modern and newly remodeled. I heard theater critics say it could rival any theater on Broadway.

Too bad that’s not where my sister liked to spend her time. Right across the street was an off-campus avant-garde theater called
TheatreArtz. The place was a complete dive that attracted the outcast, offbeat and fringe-dwellers of society. It was no wonder my sister fit right in.

My only saving grace was that it was still early afternoon and most of the regulars didn’t arrive until after dark. It made me
wonder if a few of them were vampires, or maybe thought they were. Those were the kinds of loons my sister attracted.

I took a deep breath then gathered the courage I needed to enter the place. It always smelled like a disgusting combination of mildew and dirty gym socks. The small venue, which only seated about 200 at full capacity, was completely dark except for a small spotlight illuminating two people on stage.

As I got closer, I recognized my sister and one of her many paramours, as she called them. I referred to them as the string of guys she was currently sleeping with.

The guy on stage with her was Robyn, one of her classmates in the theater program. One of the first things he told
people when they met him was that he was omnisexual. I had no idea what that meant nor did I ever want to find out.

Robyn was tall, probably six feet, but rail thin. He wore his dark hair spiky and when he turned sideways, he looked like a zipper.

My sister’s hair color of the week was cotton candy pink. She never wore a hair color more than seven days and she didn’t always limit herself to one color. My sister’s style could best be described as an eclectic mix of 60s flower child and 80s post-punk. She usually wore long flowing white skirts and billowy blouses but her hair was short and spiky and generally rainbow colored.

Robyn noticed me first. “Your sister’s here,” he said to Zelda. Then he turned to me and said, “What’s up, little one?”

My sister’s tribe of misfits loved to call me Little One because I was so petite. Another way in which my sister and I were complete opposites. Zelda was tall, nearly 5-feet 10-inches and voluptuous. When the two of us stood together, we looked like Bert and Ernie.

Zelda hopped down from the small stage and joined me in
the audience.

“Hey,
Tay.” She smiled. “What’s going on?”

I know my sister truly wanted me to be more involved in her life but her life was so far out of my comfort zone, it was diff
icult. And she knew how much I changed after everything that happened with Austin. I became much more reserved and guarded. And those two words were not in my sister’s vocabulary. She was a risk-taker, sometimes to her detriment, and she had a crazy zest for life that I sometimes envied. It was like we were two polar extremes and somewhere in the middle was normalcy.

“I have a favor to ask,” I said. I rarely asked m
y sister for anything so this seemed to really pique her curiosity.

She raised a pierced eyebrow. “What kind of favor?”

“Are you busy Saturday night?”

She shook her head slowly and stared at me like she was tr
ying to gauge where I was going with the line of questions.

“We’re still in rehearsals so the theater is dark. No shows this weekend.”

I swallowed. I was suddenly nervous to ask her because I knew what some of the inevitable questions would be.

“Spit it out,” Zelda prodded.

“I have two tickets to the hockey game Saturday night and I wondered if you’d go with me.”

Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth was agape. “You want to go to a hockey game?”

I gave her a slow nod.

“But why?
You’re Miss I-Hate-Athletes and I-Despise-Sports. Why in the world would you ever want to go to a hockey game? And with me, of all people?”

“Forget it,” I bit back. I tried to turn to leave but Zelda caught my elbow.

“Do you want to tell me what this is all about first?” she asked. I could see the concern in her eyes. We may have been complete opposites in every way but we were still sisters and cared deeply about each other. She knew every sordid detail about what happened with Austin and I knew it was probably shocking for her to hear me say I wanted to see a hockey game.

“One of the Firestorm players invited me to the game,” I admitted.

“Wow, this is huge.” She actually sat down in one of the seats in the front row.

I sat down with her.

“You actually talked to a guy besides Kyle?” she asked.

I nodded.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You actually talked to a hockey player long enough for him to invite you to a game?” 

“Yes.”

“You talked to an athlete? A professional hockey player?” She seemed to be in a state of shock.

I nodded again.

She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it. “Wow,” she repeated. “Just wow.”

She looked into my eyes and her expression was serious. “Are you sure you want to go down this road?”

“No,” I admitted.

“But you’re going to do it anyway? You’re actually going
to throw caution to the wind and take a risk? Even after everything that happened with Austin.”

“I guess so.” I hadn’t really thought about it like that. She made it sound ominous.

“I’m very proud of you,” she said to my surprise. “I know this is a big step.”

I wasn’t sure it was such a wonderful thing to have my crazy big sister proud of me but I took it as a compliment. “So does that mean you’ll go with me?”

She frowned. “Of course. I’m dying to see what kind of guy it takes to finally get you out of that dark black hole you’ve been living in since high school.”

I stood. “Don’t get your hopes up too high. I just met him a few days ago and we’ve only gone out once. It’s still very new.”

She gave me the once-over like she was inspecting me. “But you did let him kiss you.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it
letting
, he just kind of did it.”

“Ooh, a take-charge kind of guy,” she moaned. “I like him already. I’ll bet he’ll be dynamite in bed.”

I could feel my cheeks getting hot with embarrassment. My sister and I had such different ideas when it came to dating and men that we never discussed sex. My sister was the definition of easy and I had been with only one guy in my life: Austin.