Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4) (22 page)

The next morning I wake up early. The sun is barely cresting. Sebastian is dead asleep, snoring lightly, his head turned away from me and pressed into the pillow. He has one arm under his pillow and the other one stretched out kind of hanging off the bed. He’s kicked the duvet off and he’s only got the sheet twisted around his naked body. I have the ridiculous urge to dig my phone out of my purse and take a picture of him because I want to remember this—his beautiful, naked, sleeping body—forever. Or at least it would give me something to look at while he is in the playoffs.

I don’t expect to see him much until they’re over. When my father made the playoffs, which was almost every year of his professional career, the coach often sequestered them in hotel rooms, even for the home games. It was a tactic he used to keep the players focused. My mother hated it. My brother and I hated it at first too, until we were older, and not having Dad around actually felt like a relief. As soon as we were teens and I caught him cheating and he started really pressuring Trey about hockey, Glenn Beckford’s presence was no longer a blessing. I used to fantasize about my mom leaving him. What kid’s “dream” is a broken family?

I wonder about Sebastian’s family life. What was he like growing up? Is he close to both his parents? I met Stephanie, but does he have other siblings? I’m overwhelmed once again by how little I know about him. It’s overwhelming because it’s at such odds with how much I feel for him. And my feelings for him are beyond physical at this point, which makes this whole thing even crazier. How do I care for someone whom I barely know?

I lift the covers and slip out. The early morning air has a chill, so I make sure to cover him with the duvet he kicked off, and then I grab my underwear off the floor and pull them back on. I don’t feel like getting totally dressed so I glance around the room, which is more immaculate than any guy’s room I know. Sebastian isn’t messy. But I do see a blue hoodie hanging on a hook inside his open walk-in closet door, so I snag it and pull it on. It’s warm and fuzzy and smells like him, and luckily it hangs to my midthigh so I’m not going to be prancing around his house with my ass hanging out.

I pad out of his bedroom and downstairs. This is my second night in his house—in his bed—and both experiences have been wildly different. The first night when we came home from the bar, everything was a blur. I didn’t look around. I didn’t see anything but him. I concentrated solely on his naked body and giving it pleasure—and getting pleasure from it. I was high on the rush of breaking my own rules—my biggest, longest, strongest rule—and I had tunnel vision. And then I’d bolted the next day.

Last night, after our adventure on the Great Seattle Wheel, was completely different. After the ride we were both famished so we stopped at a fast-food place and indulged in burgers, fries and milk shakes. It was sinfully delicious. Being terrified and turned on at the same time, and then orgasming while hanging above the world, burns a ton of calories, I guess. When we got back to his place he opened some wine and we curled up on his upstairs balcony on the outdoor bed he has up there. We watched the water and talked. Well, mostly kissed. When we landed in his bed we didn’t have the wild, urgent sex we’d had the night before. This time it was slow and calculated and there was no denying—to him or to myself—that I knew exactly what I was doing. I was willingly sleeping with Sebastian Deveau, the all-star defenseman for the Seattle Winterhawks, and I was enjoying it.
Loving
it.

Now I let my eyes take in everything I glanced at last night. Sebastian’s house is an amazing tribute to the midcentury modern style. Purposeful clean lines of wood and glass, and the furniture is all low and lean and yet inviting without being cold. I stand at the bottom of the stairs and scan the open-concept first floor. I can’t help but notice that there isn’t a lot of hockey memorabilia. My father turned our house into a shrine to the sport—and himself. We had framed photos of him playing in every room, his Cup rings were on display on the mantel; pucks he’d collected for his first hat trick, his Cup-winning goal, his hundredth point, were all in Plexiglas cases placed in rooms like the den, the living room, even the kitchen, for crying out loud.

I hadn’t really done the research, but I was sure that Sebastian had accolades and mementos he could be displaying. In the corner of the living room, on a teak bookcase that looked more like a piece of art than a storage unit, he had a few framed photos. Curious, I walked over to them. There was one of him and Stephanie as preteens. Holy crap, he was a cute kid. Goofy hair, chubby cheeks and those same ice blue eyes with the same mischievous twinkle, although without the sexually charged flicker behind it. Stephanie looks less happy, but she is still smiling. She also appears painfully thin, but I guess she was probably in that awkward stage all kids hit during or right before puberty.

Next to that is a framed photo of a couple. I assume it is his parents because they are the right age. The woman has his same eyes and mouth. The man doesn’t look like him at all. There are also two young teenage girls crowded into the photo who also don’t resemble him. A third frame houses a picture of him skating across the ice at the Winterhawks arena with the Stanley Cup hoisted above his head.

I find myself smiling at that because he looks so happy in it. And even if I don’t like the sport, I understand the effort that goes into getting to the end of the season, of winning it all. The sacrifices are emotional and physical. I have to admire the commitment of any athlete who becomes the best. And Sebastian Deveau had done that. I hear a creak behind me and turn to find him standing on the stairs, a few steps from the bottom. He’s wearing underwear and nothing else as his sleepy eyes focus on me and he scratches the back of his head, running his fingers through his bed head.

“Hi.”

“
Bonjour
.” He winks. I roll my eyes. He lets out a sleepy chuckle. “Are you done snooping or should I go back to bed and give you some more time?”

I give him a wide, innocent stare. “I’m not snooping. These things are on display, begging for attention.”

He chuckles again and descends the rest of the stairs. “Just so you know, you’re welcome to snoop around. Open drawers, closets, whatever. I have nothing to hide.”

“Nothing?” I question, because that seems impossible.

“Baby, I have nothing I’m ashamed of. Nothing I can’t share.” He smiles and turns and starts toward the kitchen. I follow.

“You know, for a hockey player, you sure don’t have a lot of hockey stuff,” I can’t help but comment.

He walks over to a kettle on the stove and fills it with water from the wall-mounted pot filler above the six-burner stainless-steel stove. He places it on a burner and turns it on. I lean my elbows on the giant wood island with the amazing turquoise countertop as he turns back to me.

“I know what I do for a living. I don’t need to turn my house into a reminder,” he replies with a shrug. “My home is a tribute to my other passion. Architecture.”

My eyebrows fly up before I can contain my surprise and he grins at that, proud of my reaction. “Yeah, you didn’t see that coming, did you?” He is smug as he crosses his arms over his broad, bare chest. “I’m studying architecture and interior design online. I’m in my second year. It’ll take me longer than most, but I’m hoping to get a degree in five or six years.”

“Seriously?”

He walks to the other side of the island and mimics my pose. Our hands bump in the middle of the turquoise surface and he puts his hands on top of mine. “I don’t know if you know this, but hockey isn’t a career you can ride to the grave. It’ll be done by the time I’m thirty-five and that’s if I’m lucky.”

Of course I know this. “Yeah, but that’s what the money is for,” and now it’s my turn to school him. “You’re getting millions a year so you can coast once this career eats you up and spits you and your battered body out.”

He nods in agreement, and then I half-jokingly add, “Are you not saving your money? Is it being blown on hookers, blow and gambling debts?”

“Hardly.” He rolls his eyes and squeezes my hands under his. “But I am not going to be the guy who sits around waiting for guest spots on sport shows to talk about what once was. I’m going to reinvent myself.”

“As an architect?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. All I know is I loved renovating this place so I followed that interest. Maybe another thing will interest me in the next few years and I’ll go after that.”

I stare at him and flashes of him in his uniform on the ice at my dad’s jersey retirement fill my head and then a montage on YouTube that I watched of him fighting joins it. They clash so hard with this person standing in front of me. I find myself whispering, “Who are you?”

His full lips pull up slightly and he whispers back, “I’m many things, but the one thing that should matter to you is that I’m the man who is crazy about you.”

He lifts my hands and kisses my knuckles softly. The kettle starts to whistle, and it snaps the thick rope of emotions that seems to be wrapping itself around me with his words and pulling me down a path I’m still not entirely sure I should take.

“I didn’t take you for a tea guy,” I say when I can finally find my voice again. He turns off the flame under the kettle and turns to grab something in one of the cupboards under the island.

He pulls out a French press and shows it to me before putting it down on the island and reaching for the kettle. “I like my coffee the way you like your men. Dark and rich and—”

“Cuban?” I add, and he stops what he’s doing and pins me with his eyes. I wait a couple heartbeats before I clarify. “I like my coffee Cuban.”

“Well, you’re stuck with French,” he returns and scoops some grounds from a fancy French roast coffee bag into the press. “In more ways than one.”

When the coffee is ready, he fills two cups, adds the amount of half and half and sugar I request and gives me one of the mugs before taking my hand and leading me toward the wall of windows on the front of the house that gives an unobstructed view of the water. There’s an incredibly long, low, tufted couch in front of it. He sits at one end, his wide bare back positioned against the arm, and I move toward the other end, but he still has me by the hand and he pulls me down so that his chest is my backrest.

“By the way,” he murmurs against the shell of my ear, “you look fucktastic in my team sweatshirt.”

I almost snort coffee through my nose at that comment. Fighting off a coughing fit and struggling to swallow, I glance down at the sweatshirt I grabbed and realize it’s got a giant white Winterhawks logo in the center of it. I manage to swallow and choke out, “I look like a puck bunny.”

“Puck bunnies wish they looked like you.” He laughs and I’m debating pulling the thing off my body, but I’m so comfortable against him, and he’s got his arm wrapped around my waist holding me in place, so I decide to just ignore it and sip my coffee again.

“I have a flight at one thirty this afternoon,” he says after a few minutes of comfortable silence. That news comes as a surprise.

“Where are you going?”

I swear orgasms kill brain cells because as soon as he says, “Playoffs,” I realize I’m an idiot. Round one starts tomorrow. If the Winterhawks are starting the series somewhere else, it means they’re playing a team that is seeded higher than them.

“Who are you playing?”

“The fucking Thunder,” he replies, and I feel him heave a heavy breath. “I fucking hate those douchebags. They knocked us out last year.”

I nod and sip my coffee. “So you’ll be gone for four or five days?”

“Yeah, but I’ll call and text…I just need your number.” I smile at the stupidity of this. He doesn’t even have my phone number. This is nuts. Seriously, the way this whole thing happened between us—it’s
nuts
. If there’s a path to true love, we’ve thrown away the directions and are careening down it in reverse, blindfolded. He squeezes me tighter around the waist. “So can I have your number, Shay?”

“Do you have any other siblings?” I ask. “Besides Stephanie?”

“Umm…two stepsisters,” he explains. “My mom remarried a couple years ago and he has two daughters.”

“When did your parents divorce?”

“When I was ten.”

“And you grew up in Quebec?”

I feel him shake his head behind me. “Mostly. But I was born in New Brunswick. I’m technically Acadian French. My great-grandparents actually settled in Maine from France and then my grandparents moved to New Brunswick. Then my mom and dad moved to Quebec for my father’s job when I was three. We stayed there after the divorce, until I was sixteen, and then I moved back to New Brunswick because I made a junior team there. I lived with my grandparents until I was eighteen and entered the draft.”

I stare out the window at the calm water as he speaks. When he’s done with his story he leans close to my ear again. “So? Do I pass whatever weird background check you’re putting me through? Do I get your number now?”

I laugh. Man, he must think I’m a nutjob. He slips out from behind me and walks over to the console table where he dropped his wallet, keys and phone last night. As I scoot back to nestle in the corner of the couch he vacated, he tosses me his wallet before picking up his phone.

“You can verify my name, age and date of birth, write down my DL and do an official background check if you want, but I’ll take those digits now.” He’s grinning again, holding his phone up ready for the numbers.

I give him my phone number and glance down at his wallet where it landed open on my left thigh. His driver’s license is glaring up at me. He’s a Leo. He’s almost two years older than I am. And…“Holy shit!”

He smirks and puts down his phone, finished entering my information. He knows exactly what I’m gawking at. “I know. It’s a lot of names.”

“Sebastian Gabriel Maxim Louis Deveau.”

“I think my parents knew they weren’t having any more kids so they just dumped all the potential names on me.” He shrugs. “What’s your middle name?”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

“Nope? That’s worse than Shayne,” he teases and I flip him my middle finger. He pretends to be offended. “Come on, I just vomited my life story.”