Page 51 of If You Claim Me

“Doubtful.”

The girls hug me goodbye.

I don’t have time to read into the wedding book because Connor meets me in the hall. He tucks a hand in his pocket. “My mother sent that book over a couple of days ago. I wanted to make it easier for you, so I went through it first.”

“That was nice of you.”

He frowns. “I wasn’t being nice.”

I tip my head. “What were you being then? Efficient? Controlling?”

“That’s not?—”

I pat his cheek. “Regardless of the reason, I like your top three.” Then I skirt around him and head upstairs. The wedding magazine isn’t in the library anymore, though, which means Connor has it tucked away somewhere. Probably in his bedroom.

Whatever his reason, I like that he’s been looking at dresses for me.

And that seems both dangerous and enticing.

CHAPTER 15

DRED

“I’ll try not to waste your entire day off,” Connor informs me as he drives. It’s not an apology, but it’s notnotan apology.

“I really don’t mind.” Today is our venue walk-through and meal selection for the wedding. “Plus, we get to eat, so that’s a bonus, right?” I’m trying to keep things upbeat, but Connor looks stressed, which isn’t helping my own.

“Hopefully that will balance out the fact that you’ll have to deal with at least one of my parents at some point.”

Connor has been different since the photoshoot—since the second kiss—and the girls’ book club night. He’s almost always remote and awkward, but since that photoshoot make-out session—which I have replayed incessantly over the past few days while soaking in the clawfoot tub—the pendulum swings between those states have shifted. He’s something else now, too. And so am I.

I often find him staring at my mouth—maybe thinking about the kiss the same way I do. It was surprisingly gentle, but also full of the kind of pent-up longing and need that curls a girl’s toes.This girl’s toes. So it makes sense that I find myself wondering about the other things he could do with his talented tongue, and how I would not be opposed to finding out moreabout his off-ice skill sets, regardless of the parameters of the contract I signed.

But that’s a dangerous game to play. Keeping sex and feelings separate would be possible if this only lasted a couple of months, but a year—however insignificant in the span of a lifetime—is still a lot of days spent with one person. Especially since the more time I spend with Connor, the more I like him. He’s broody, closed off, emotional, and wildly, intensely devoted to his Meems. It’s that last part that’s hitting me in my soft places. And of course, the kisses.

“I can handle your parents,” I tell him.

They’re not difficult to read. His mother seems jealous of her son and his ability to give his family the middle finger so he can do what he loves. Her disdain isn’t for me, but for what I represent, which is the flipside of her pampered, spoiled life. His father is an elitist dick, based on our limited interaction. I’m sure it angers Connor’s parents to no end that their only son has chosen to marry someone way below their social standing. He should be marrying the daughter of one of their rich friends, not the local librarian.

“Why don’t they support your career?” I know, in the vaguest sense, the answer to this, but I want to hear it from him.

Connor glances at me, then refocuses on the road. His jaw tics. “It’s a waste of my Ivy League education, and I should be making them more money by taking my place in the family business, like I’m supposed to.”

“But hockey careers don’t last forever. Roman is the exception, not the rule, and even he retired at forty.”

“That’s correct.”

“So why can’t you do this now and shift gears later?” That they used his time at the Hockey Academy as punishment speaks to how out of touch they are with their son.

“It’s about family loyalty, and ticking the appropriate social boxes. I wasn’t supposed to play a sport where I could lose teeth and break bones in my face. To them, it’s like a prince becominga gladiator. It’s beneath our social standing. They don’t understand why I won’t give it up. They don’t understand me. It doesn’t help that Meems supports me and hasn’t cut me out of her will the way they cut me off when I signed my first contract.”

“What do you mean they cut you off?”

“They froze my accounts. I expected it, so it wasn’t the shock they’d hoped it would be.”

“Did they do it thinking you’d change your mind and come work for them?”

“That was my father’s hope.”