Offside (21 page)

But he was right. The sexual
attraction between them was narcotic. Irresistible. So, as long as
they kept it to sex and she stopped spilling her guts to him,
stopped letting him see all her soft spots, maybe it would all be
okay.

She went up on her toes and threaded
her fingers through his hair and planted a big kiss right on his
lips. Then she whispered, “I
was
turned on watching you. It
made me want to do…this…” And she slid her hands down his body as
she went to her knees in front of him.

Chapter
Fifteen

Matt thought he’d been keyed up before
the game yesterday, but now…fucking hell. He rang the doorbell then
rubbed his palms over his thighs, standing outside the Holbrook
mansion.

The door opened and a little girl
dressed in a pink bathing suit looked up at him. “Hi,” she said,
studying him.

He grinned. “Hi.”

“Kavita, what are you doing answering
the door by yourself?” A woman on high heels tapped up behind the
girl.

“Grandpa told me to answer the door,”
Kavita said.

The woman moved into view—Honey’s mom
Sela.

“Oh, hi, Matt,” she said, giving him a
flirty look. “Steve told me he’d invited you for dinner. Please
come in.”

He entered the house and handed Mrs.
Holbrook the expensive bottle of wine he’d brought. “For you,” he
said. “Thanks so much for having me today.”

“Oh, you didn’t need to bring
anything! But thank you. Come in, the others are all out back on
the patio.”

The others. He had no clue who all was
going to be there. He followed Mrs. Holbrook as she again tapped
her way down the hardwood floor of a wide hall, past vast rooms
including a formal dining room with a long table all set with
flowers and table cloth and sparkling dishes, through a
kitchen/great room where two women worked at the stove and counter
preparing food, and out through French doors onto the
patio.

Yeah, there were a lot of people
there. More kids splashing and yelling in the pool. A lot of adults
sitting around on patio furniture. Matt spotted Steve Holbrook
standing beside an outdoor bar talking to Rudy Thomas and a younger
man that Matt recognized at Honey’s brother James. He’d never met
him, but had seem him on TV when he’d watched PGA golf.

“Come say hi to Steve,” Mrs. Holbrook
said, leading the way across the stone patio.

There was Jonathan Holbrook. Matt had
played against him many times and now knew him from his management
role with the Condors. He didn’t see Honey.

Steve spotted him, smiled, lifted his
glass. “Matt. Glad you made it. Can I get you something to
drink?”

“Beer if you have it.”

“Absolutely.” Steve moved around
behind the bar and removed a bottle from a small fridge. Jesus. “A
glass?”

“The bottle’s fine.”

“There you go. You know
James?”

“We’ve never met in person, but I’ve
watched you golf.” Matt smiled and shook the other man’s hand.
“You’re a great golfer.”

“Thanks.” James smiled. He looked
nothing like Honey, taking more after his dad. Thank Christ Honey
didn’t look like her dad. No offense to Steve, but his large nose
and chin would not look good on her. Instead, she’d gotten her
mother’s genes—her height, her slender grace, her blonde hair,
perfect skin and glamorous smile. “This is my wife
Kortney.”

He shook hands with a very pretty,
very pregnant woman.

Kavita had done a running jump into
the pool as they’d walked outside, and was now with the other kids.
Matt turned to survey them with a smile then realized that one of
the kids in the pool was…Honey.

Their eyes met across the
distance.

She was apparently treading water in
the deep end, her hair wet and slicked back from her face. She
didn’t smile.

He held up his bottle to her with a
grin, then lifted it to his lips and took several healthy
swallows.

She wasn’t exactly running over to
greet him.

“Great pool,” he said. “I love
swimming.”

“Steve!” Mrs. Holbrook said. “You
should have told him we have a pool! He could have brought a
swimsuit.”

“Sorry,” Steve said. “Never thought of
it.”

“No worries. I have a pool at my
apartment building, so I get to swim a lot. It was great rehab
after my injury.”

That led to a conversation about his
recovery and how he was doing and how great he’d played yesterday,
which, thank fuck, was true. He tried to focus on the people he was
talking to, resisting the urge to keep turning and looking at Honey
in the pool, playing with the kids as if she was one of
them.

Eventually she did get out, water
running down over her sleek body in the pink and yellow flowered
bikini he’d bought her as she grabbed a towel from a chair. She
gave him a look that could have shriveled his nuts, except he was
turned on by seeing her all wet and half naked. Like that night in
the hot tub.

“Honey, come say hi to Matt,” Mrs.
Holbrook called.

What the fuck were her parents
thinking? He had no fucking clue. He stood there holding his beer,
smiling, as Honey approached, a towel now wrapped around
her.

“Hi,” she said cautiously, her eyes
darting around from him to her mom, her dad, back to
him.

“I invited Matt for dinner,” Steve
said. “Thought it would be great to talk about his first game back
yesterday, since he played so well.”

“Uh-huh,” Honey said. She was too
polite to make a scene in front of bunch of other people, so she
pasted on that wide, white smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I
better go change before dinner.”

“Still about an hour,” Mrs. Holbrook
said. “But yes, you do need to clean up.”

Matt’s chin dipped and his mouth
tightened.

“Grandma, I’m hungry!” Kavita wailed
below them.

Matt looked down at her.

“Come on,” Honey said, taking the
little girl’s hand. “I think we can find a cookie.”

“Don’t ruin their appetite for
dinner!” Mrs. Holbrook called after them as they walked
away.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” James said.
“They’ll never sit and eat that fancy food you serve
anyway.”

He said it with a teasing smile and
soft tone, and Mrs. Holbrook smiled, apparently taking the comment
as a compliment to her food, but Matt sensed the
subtext.

Ooookay. So Honey had vanished and
here he was with her dysfunctional family. Great.

He’d wondered about the dysfunction
after she’d spilled all that shit the other night. To the rest of
the world, they seemed like a golden family, even more so than his.
The media made a big thing about his family—four brothers playing
in the NHL. But her family was more high profile than his. His
parents were regular, middle-class types, living in a small city
that nobody in the States had ever heard of. Honey’s parents were
rich and famous and living a Hollywood lifestyle in the
entertainment capital of the world, with two successful athlete
sons and…Honey. Who’d attracted as much media attention from her
antics as her dad had as one of the top NHL players. No,
wait—
more
media attention, given that Los Angeles was not a
hockey town, whereas half-dressed gorgeous girls doing crazy things
in bars and clubs and parties was the lifeblood of
Tinseltown.

Anyfuckinghoo. He’d wondered if she’d
exaggerated just a little how bad things had been for her growing
up. He hadn’t been sure if accepting Steve’s invitation last night
after the game was the right thing to do. He was ninety percent
less sure that accepting it and showing up without telling Honey
was the right thing to do. But his curiosity about that won out and
here he was.

The group chatted on for a while, and
since the talk was mostly about hockey, he noticed Mrs. Holbrook’s
smile fade and, after a failed attempt to change the subject, she
excused herself to go into the house to check on dinner.

Where the fuck was Honey? Matt wanted
to go hunt her down. Eventually he excused himself to go into the
house on the pretext of using the bathroom. He walked inside and
immediately saw Honey at the big kitchen island with three little
kids around her laughing as they tossed something…candies?...into
the air and she attempted to catch them in her mouth. The kids
giggled every time she missed.

Then she caught sight of him. He
smiled and moved toward her. “What are you doing?” he asked with
amusement.

“Auntie Honey’s being like Shamu,”
Kavita explained. “He catches fish.”

“Shamu? The killer whale?” One of his
eyebrows rose.

Honey grinned. “No comments about my
weight please.”

Matt held both hands up in front of
him. “Hey. Not going there.” Then he rolled his eyes. “As
if.”

She was all relaxed and happy looking.
“I better clean up the floor. “ She made a face at the
kids.

“Yes, please, Honey,” Mrs. Holbrook
spoke up. “Look at the mess you’ve made.”

Honey bugged her eyes out at the kids,
a look that said, “See, told you” and they snickered.

“It’s just a few gummy candies,
Mom.”

“I’ll do it, Honey,” said a woman Matt
didn’t know, wearing a uniform. She’d been one of the two he’d
noticed earlier working in the kitchen. She grabbed a broom from a
tall closet and began to sweep the floor. “I had to sweep
anyway.”

“Can you catch a gummy fish in your
mouth?” Kavita asked Matt.

He pursed his lips and slowly nodded.
“I’m ninety-eight percent sure I can.”

The kids giggled. “Honey will throw
one to you,” Kavita said, handing Honey a candy.

Their eyes met. “I’m good with my
mouth,” he murmured.

Honey’s cheeks went pink, and she gave
him a little eye roll that amused him. He lifted his chin and
opened up. She tossed the candy to him and he only had to move a
little to catch it neatly in his mouth.

“Yay!” The kids cheered.

Matt grinned as he chewed on the
candy. “I love gummy fish.”

“Me too,” Kavita said.

“I like the blue ones best.” He winked
at her.

“Me too!” Her eyes widened.

“You play hockey?” Matt asked
her.

She laughed. “Noooo. Hockey is for
boys!”

Matt widened his eyes into a horrified
expression and turned them on Honey.

She grimaced. “She’s not
my
kid.”

“How about you little dudes?” Matt
asked the two boys. “Play hockey?”

They shook their heads.

“Not yet,” Mrs. Holbrook said with a
smile. “They will.”

Honey pursed her lips and did another
bug-eyed look at Matt.

“Honey, you need to go get cleaned up
for dinner,” Mrs. Holbrook said.

“I am, Mom.”

She’d changed out of her bikini into a
short-sleeved baby-doll-style dress and flip flops. Her hair was
still damp. She didn’t have much makeup on, but she had some. She
looked sweet. And hot.

“You need to fix your hair,” her mom
said with a disapproving glance at the half-dry strands.

“I did,” Honey said again. “It’ll
dry.”

Mrs. Holbrook sighed then sent an
apologetic glance at Matt. “Sorry, Matt.”

“For what?” He gazed back at her,
perplexed.

“Honey just doesn’t like to listen to
me,” she said with a smile. “When we have guests we try to show
them some respect by looking nice.”

“You’re disrespecting me?” he asked
Honey, trying not to laugh.

“I didn’t even know you were going to
be here.” And she sent him a meaningful look. “You’d think that
might have come up in conversation…”

“Oh, did you two go out again last
night?” Mrs. Holbrook interjected. “Where did you go?”

Honey’s eyes hit his. “Uh…no. We
didn’t go out last night. Okay, kids, enough snacks for now. What
do you want to do until dinner time?”

Kortney and Demi, the two mothers,
appeared. “They’re going upstairs to get cleaned up,” Demi said,
grabbing one of the boys off a stool. The kids were all still
wearing swimsuits. “Thank you, Honey, for entertaining them all
afternoon.”

Honey smiled as the two women led
their kids out of the room, the boys jumping up and down and
flapping their hands for some reason with mind-boggling
energy.

“You look gorgeous, Honey,” he said in
a voice loud enough for her mom to hear. “I don’t feel disrespected
at all.”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a
crooked smile. “Thanks. Come on back outside.”

He followed her out, but instead of
letting her lead him back to the conversation the others were
having, he said, “Let’s look at the pool,” and nudged her toward
it.

“It’s a pool,” she muttered, but went
with him. They stood beside it.