Page 9

Chapter

Nine

André

André had seen a lot of unbelievable things in his life. A line brawl so vicious that a guy left the ice missing half his front teeth. A goalie scoring from the other end of the rink, the puck floating in like it had divine intervention. Hell, he’d even seen a fan throw a fully cooked rotisserie chicken onto the ice in the middle of a playoff game.

But nothing—nothing—had prepared him for the sight of Grace Fairbanks sitting in the front of her car wearing khaki slacks and a black lace bra, her blond hair curling over her bare shoulders.

André stopped dead in his tracks. His brain stalled, lagging like a bad WiFi connection. She was stunning. This was what men wrote poems about. The way the light hit her skin, the curves of her body. He could only see snippets through the car window, and it was enough to make him start thinking in rhyming couplets.

His heart sped so fast, his hands tingled. When Grace lifted her head, he panicked. Since he didn’t want to get caught staring, and he was sure any movement on his part would draw her attention at this point, he went with the default. Play it off. Make the whole thing a joke. Be the asshole.

He strode up to her window and tapped, plastering a grin to his face and forcing his eyes to stay fixed on hers even though they screamed to drop south.

Grace startled, her head whipping up, her eyes wide. She looked completely, utterly horrified, her navy blouse bunched in her hands like she was debating whether to throw it at him or choke herself out with it.

For one long, excruciating second, they just stared at each other. Then, in a motion that looked physically painful, she rolled down the window.

André bent over, leaning his arm on the top of the door. “So, is this a morning ritual? Or a special perk I get for inviting you to a charity meeting?”

Grace made a strangled noise, draping her shirt over herself. “Can you give me some privacy, please?”

André tilted his head, biting his cheek to keep from laughing. “If you need help with whatever is?—“

”I don’t need help.” Her jaw clenched. “It’s a missing button on my shirt, okay? I’m not having the best morning, so—“ Her voice cracked, and she turned her head.

She flipped the shirt, opening the safety pin, her fingers shaking as she fumbled with the fabric. And just like that, his amusement flickered into something else. She wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even yelling at him the way she usually would.

Grace ducked her head, swiping at her face like she had a stray hair bothering her, and he realized she wasn’t only frustrated. She was on the verge of tears.

Shit .

His stomach twisted. Maybe it was his fault. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, he didn’t like it. Didn’t like seeing her like this. Didn’t like not knowing what the hell to do about it.

So he did the only thing that made sense. Without a word, he reached for the hem of his shirt, pulled it over his head, and handed it to her. “Here.”

Grace blinked at him, confused. “What?—?”

“Trade me.”

Her mouth parted slightly, but for once, she didn’t argue. Just passed him her ruined blouse, fingers barely brushing his.

André sucked in a breath, working to ignore the jolt of energy zinging from his hand to his thighs. Without another word, he turned and headed back to his truck. Because if he stayed any longer, if he kept looking at her like that, he would do something stupid.

He barely made it five steps before Grace scrambled out of her car, his shirt hanging loose over her frame. “I can’t go in there like this.”

“Do you have the button?” he asked over his shoulder.

“What?”

“The button, Grace. The one that abandoned ship on your shirt.”

She jogged up to walk beside him. “Yeah. Right here.” She held it out.

He reached out and took it from her. “Thanks.”

Before he could pull on his truck door handle, Grace grabbed his elbow and pulled him to a stop. “What are you doing?”

André worked to fill his lungs with air, his nipples pinching against the cold. And . . . other things. She was wearing his shirt, and he wasn’t prepared for what the sight of that did to him. The faint scent of her perfume or body lotion tinged the air. He cleared his throat. “Fixing it.”

Grace’s eyes dropped, but she quickly snapped them back to his. “I have a safety pin.”

“Well . . .” He pulled free and yanked on the door, then opened the glove box. “I have a sewing kit.”

He climbed into the passenger seat. He was willing to sew on a button, but not freeze to death in a parking lot. Grace wrapped her arms around herself, watching for a moment, then jogged around the front of the truck and slid into the driver’s seat.

Grace Fairbanks climbing into his truck wearing his shirt while he sewed the button back onto hers was not on his January vision board. But he wasn’t going to say he hadn’t manifested it. He’d imagined Grace in a bra. A lot. But in those daydreams, she was usually berating him, so he had work to do on that front. He had yet to admit to himself that he found that part disturbingly hot.

“How do you know how to do that?” Grace asked, watching him thread the needle with black thread. He figured black was better than the royal blue included in the kit.

“Because hockey gear is expensive as shit, and my mom got tired of fixing it for me.”

Grace let out a puff of air. He glanced up. That almost sounded like a laugh. He couldn’t tell if she was laughing at his answer or laughing at him. Something inside him withered. It wasn’t like he was painting his nails or anything, but his dad had given his thoughts freely when he’d seen him with a needle and thread. Your mother’s raising a helluva pansy. Maybe you should take up figure skating.

“I was a disaster with equipment when I was a kid,” he continued, looping another thread through the button. “Ripped my jerseys, busted the padding in my gloves, wore holes in my socks.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise,” she quipped.

André ’s hand froze as he looked up with a grin. “I’m sorry, was that a masturbation joke?”

She scoffed, her hand flying to her chest. “No, I would never insinuate such a thing! It’s just believable that you’d be rough on your socks.”

André watched her a moment. Was she flirting with him? He didn’t want to assume. He’d been wrong before, and he didn’t especially feel like getting slapped first thing in the morning. He dropped his head and put the final loop in the knot he’d sewn into the backside of Grace’s shirt. “It’s true. I’m rough on a lot of things actually.”

“Hmm. Good to know.” Grace didn’t ask him any other questions. She sat there still beside him, her eyes burning holes into his hands, the side of his face. She may as well have been holding a magnifying glass up to the sun.

He finished crisscrossing the thread over the button and through the fabric, then wound a few loops of thread between them to keep the button loose and easy to use. He tied off the end and brought the shirt to his lips to bite the thread since he didn’t have scissors.

“There you go.” André held up the blouse, fully intact, button secured.

Grace didn’t take it right away. She just stared at him. It only took him half a second to realize why. She wasn’t looking directly at the blouse. Sure, her eyes were aimed the right direction, but they were off by a few millimeters.

His lips curved before he could stop them, because Grace was staring, just a little, at his bare chest. André wasn’t the kind of guy to waste a moment of ego padding, so he let her. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, trying not to spook her.

Her throat bobbed slightly, her fingers tensed around the hem of his shirt, like she’d just remembered she was still wearing it. “This is yours.” She blinked and drew in a breath, quickly dropping her eyes.

“I’d be happy to wear this, but I don’t think it would close.” André gestured at the blouse in his hand.

Grace laughed, a little too high and bright. “Uh, no. I can—” She paused, her hand gripping his shirt, halfway up her abdomen.

André ’s heart slammed against his ribs. He dropped the blouse in her lap. “Better take that to your car.”

Grace’s lips twitched. “Why?”

He wet his lips. “Because I’ve been a gentleman, Grace, but if you change here, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from watching.”

Grace froze mid-motion, his shirt bunched around her ribs, revealing just the smallest strip of bare skin. Her gaze locked with his. There was a flicker of hesitation and then a blush. Soft. Barely there. But it still lit up her cheekbones, crept down the delicate line of her throat.

André clenched his jaw. She was thinking about it, and for just a second, he imagined what would happen if?—

But then any fantasies evaporated because Grace pulled his shirt over her head. She moved slow. Relaxed. Not tense like she had been when he’d caught her at the window. She pulled her hair free and smoothed it, then tossed the shirt into his lap before picking up her own blouse.

She didn’t rush. Didn’t fumble. Grace held out one arm and pulled on the shirt, bowing her head as she pulled it across her back and slipped it over her other arm, then freed her hair caught in the collar before straightening it.

It sat open like a jacket, and the sight of that was somehow hotter than when it was all the way off. She started at the lowest button, working her way up. She took her time with the button he’d just sewn on, fingering it before slipping it through the hole. He couldn’t hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears.

When she finished, she looked up. “That’s better.”

André forced his mouth to close. He frowned and pulled his own T-shirt on, the image of her still seared onto his retinas, playing like a movie teaser. He didn’t know what this meant. Was that her idea of a gift? A thank you for the button fix? If so, she was a sadist.

“We should probably get in there.” Grace nodded toward the building.

André dragged a hand over his face, tilted his head back against the headrest, and exhaled. “Yeah. I’m going to need a minute.”

Silence.

He glanced over just in time to see a small curl of Grace’s mouth before she turned and reached for the door handle. “See you inside, then.”