Page 50 of On A Manhunt: Complete Series

DEX

The music in grocery stores was the worst. No matter which one I went to, no matter which state, or hell, which country, it was all the same.

Saxophone remakes that became permanently stuck in my head.

I couldn’t help but hum along to an Adele disaster–sorry, Adele–when I brought my cart to a halt by the produce island of bananas. There, standing in front of the squash was Lindy Beckett.

“God, I love small towns,” I murmured to myself, tossing a bunch into my cart. They landed on top of a few peach yogurt containers.

The chances of running into Lindy were greater here in Hunter Valley than in Denver and worked to my advantage, especially with her. The woman of my dreams. And when I was awake.

I pushed my cart with the rogue wheel over to her.

I was famous for being a top scorer on the ice.

Lately, for the one time I was called an enforcer off it when I beat up an asshole at a bar.

Pro hockey enforcers were known for using their fists on the ice, not off.

And me? I was the nice one. The one the enforcers protected.

I was too valuable to get into ice fights.

So when I took a guy down for being a dick to a woman, they made it into a big deal.

Still, no matter how the media painted me with their ruthless brush, women literally tossed their panties at me.

I handled puck bunnies like they were no big deal.

To me, they weren’t, because I didn’t want any of them.

Not if they thought I was the good boy they wanted to tarnish, or the bad boy they wanted to reform. Either way, they only wanted to fuck.

Sure, maybe back in my rookie season when I was first exposed to the insane lifestyle when I’d been up for a little casual fun, but only for a few months.

It wore off quickly, especially when I caught on that me sleeping with those shallow women wasn’t any better than my father working his way through the intern pool at the office.

Meaningless. Empty. He’d needed pussy to feel validated. To get off. No connection. Hell, I doubted he even knew any of the women’s names he fucked.

I sure as shit didn’t remember the names of those women that first year. Of course, they’d wanted to fuck a hockey player, so the quickies were evenly balanced. Consensual anonymity.

Since then, I practiced and played. Hard.

As a kid, hockey was what got me out of the house–or in my case, dysfunctional mansion.

I spent as much time as I could at the local rink for endless practices and games.

Then when I got older and in the travel league, away games, even ones out of state, kept me sane.

The sport had kept me away from joining James Corp, the family business, because we all knew I’d go pro.

My brothers Mav, Silas, and Theo encouraged me to play my ass off because I was fucking good. It wasn’t cocky to say, but the truth.

But it was lonely.

My life was fucking lonely. I was constantly surrounded by trainers and players and coaches.

I shared rooms with teammates at the away-game hotels.

I was rarely alone. Yet I didn’t have a family–a real family of my own–to come home to.

To play for. To have in the WAG section cheering me on.

No wife, no girlfriend in the special box.

Until now. Until Lindy, because I could picture her at my games. In my–our–house. In our bed. She was why I was lingering here in Hunter Valley in the off season.

I didn’t know what it was about her that had hearts throb out of my eyes like in cartoons. Why I was obsessed with her. The day we met, she wasn’t the… nicest. To others, she may be seen as a bitch or cranky. To me, it seemed… standoffish.

She didn’t have to fly to Denver with us last weekend, but she had. Maybe she was worried about Bridget and how Mav had treated her. Maybe she was mad at him. Not maybe, probably. Maybe it was because she left town with five minutes notice. Maybe… well, who knew?

There was more to Lindy than the one incident and I wanted to figure her out. No. Not just figure out. I was going to marry her.

That had me walking toward her across the produce section with my heart rate double timing as if I were doing speed drills between the blue lines.

She doesn’t know you’re obsessed. Obsessed? I had the wedding ring Mallory and I picked out for her tucked away. Dude, chill the fuck out.

The obsessed guy versus the standoffish woman.

“Size isn’t as important as what you do with it,” I commented when I strolled up. Okay, maybe that was the dumbest thing in the world to say. Did a woman want a guy to fling innuendo about vegetables at them while grocery shopping?

Fuck. Probably not.

Be cool. Be. Cool.

Her blonde hair swirled around her shoulders as she looked my way and my dick got hard. Yeah, from the swing of her fucking hair.

Surprise and awareness widened her blue eyes.

She recognized me. Not from the sports channel, because it was crystal clear Lindy had no clue I was a pro hockey player.

She knew me from our little ride on the family’s private jet to Denver with Bridget and Mallory.

Since she didn’t know I played hockey, she assumed I was a bored billionaire kicking back in Montana for the summer because the Azores or Boca Raton were dull.

I could just tell her the truth. What I was. That I wasn’t a slacker trust fund kid. That would change her opinion of me pretty fast, but I wasn’t going to do it. I wanted her to be into me. Not because I was famous. Not for my skill with a stick.

Okay, one stick. The one getting hard for her right now.

Fuck, she was pretty. Every time I got in front of her, it hit me. In my heart. In my dick.

For a Saturday afternoon when most people went casual, especially grocery shopping, she was perfectly put together.

A jean skirt, crisp blouse with cutouts around the neckline that hinted at tanned skin beneath.

Her shoes were the same pale pink as her top.

So were her glossy lips. Lips I wanted to kiss that sheen right off of.

I had no idea how she and Bridget were sisters. Besides looking nothing alike, Lindy was clearly high maintenance while Bridget was… no maintenance. I’d even seen the younger Beckett in only a sheet–and not in a good, sexy times kind of way.

“What did you say?” she asked, her words full of surprise at seeing me.

I tipped my chin toward the yellow vegetable she held which looked a fair amount like a dick. Yes, the thought made me somewhat of a perv, but I didn’t want to talk to Lindy about the weather.

“Stir fry? Shish Kebab? It’s what you do with it that makes it good,” I commented as if I was a cooking channel host.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, instead of telling me her plans for the veg.

I glanced around. “Picking out dinner.”

Reaching out, she put the squash back in the pile with the rest in the display case. A rumble of fake thunder announced the imminent spray of water over the vegetables. “I mean Hunter Valley.”

I shrugged. “Don’t you remember flying with me last week? Aren’t I a little bit memorable?” I held up my hand and set my pointer finger and thumb close together.

She rolled her eyes. “I mean still. Don’t you have work in Denver?”

Yeah, she had no clue.

“On vacation.” I shrugged, not telling her it was the off season for the professional hockey league. “I’m hiking. Mountain biking. Did you know there’s a waterfall up the canyon?”

“Yes.”

I took a step toward her. “You’re lucky. You grew up here.” I reached out, stroked her hair behind her ear. “Hi, sugar,” I murmured softly, as if we were alone somewhere and not in the middle of a store.

I hadn’t seen her since we returned from the Bridget/Maverick popcorn-fest in Colorado. Fortunately, everything turned out and Mav and Bridge were back in town, hot and heavy and in love. After only two weeks.

It was sickening, but I was right there with my brother. One look at a Beckett woman and it was instalove for me, too.

Lindy’s eyes widened at the touch, but I couldn’t resist. I wanted to put my hands on her, kiss her, lick her because I knew she was going to be sweet like candy.

In Denver she was all kinds of wound up.

And it wasn’t worrying about Bridget. She didn’t want to kick back and have some fun.

New city, Saturday night… yeah, no. She took her laptop and went to a hotel room and worked.

Worked. Maybe that was the reason for her attitude that night. Work stress.

She needed to wind down with a few orgasms and I was going to give them to her. Except I had to approach this with the patience I struggled to find, because now that she was in front of me again, I wanted her. Now.

Would anyone notice if I tossed her over my shoulder and carried her out of the store?

Definitely. Dex James manhandling a woman buying groceries might be a dream for gossip sites, but it wouldn’t go over with the team owners. Or my agent. Or that sponsor he was trying to land for me.

I had to be good. In public. When I got her alone though…

“Hey, Dex,” she breathed as a flush spread across her cheeks. “Look, I’m, um… sorry about how I acted in Denver. I was a little overwhelmed.”

So she had been off.

The corner of my mouth tipped up showing her I wasn’t affected even though I was dying to know if she flushed like that when she came. “It was pretty spontaneous.”

I’d showed up on their doorstep, offered to fly them to Denver on the company jet for Bridget to confront Mav and we were in the air within an hour.

She nodded. “Bridget was upset all week about Mav, plus she told me about her time in Boston and–”

“You didn’t know?” I asked. Being kicked out of MIT for plagiarism was a big deal. So was the reason it happened.

She frowned. “You did?”

I scratched my cheek, slightly uncomfortable because my answer was going to probably make Lindy feel worse. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I wasn’t going to lie though, so I said, “Mav got it out of her the night before when we were at a bar.”

“Figures,” she muttered.

“I’d be upset too if one of my brothers kept something like that a secret. You two seem close.”

She nodded. “We are. I’m more mother than sister. I guess I went all Mama Bear over her about the MIT thing and Mav being a dick.”

I wasn’t going to remind her that Mav hadn’t been a dick, but well, he kind of had. He did some things wrong, but how they worked it out wasn’t my business. Or Lindy’s, no matter how protective she felt.

“Then you had work. I get it.”

“That’s it?”

She eyed me, as if debating whether I was being honest. For me, it was easy. She said she was sorry. It was done. I was taking the fact that she opened up as a win. Still, I couldn’t help but mess with her a little.

I glanced around and pointed. “I can bend you over the kiwis and give you a spanking if that’d make you feel better for being a bad girl.”

Three things happened simultaneously. Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open, and she flushed bright red.

I stepped close and whispered in her ear. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I sure as hell would.

She shook herself, as if flinging that idea off her body.

“You getting food for dinner?” I asked, switching topics faster than getting whiplash on an amusement park ride.

I couldn’t spank her ass here no matter how much either of us liked the idea, so it was better to get us back to more appropriate grocery store topics.

Otherwise, the squash in my pants was going to become apparent to all the shoppers.

She nodded and I didn’t miss the way her gaze dropped to my lips. Yeah, she wanted me. And that spanking. Or was I desperate to think that? Perhaps, but I considered it driven instead of desperate. Focused. Single minded. Whatever the term, that was me where Lindy was concerned.

“Good. We’ll have it together,” I said. I wasn’t asking.

She blinked and looked me in the eye. “What? Us, dinner? No.”

“It’s easier cooking for two. Besides, it’ll make up for last week.” I glanced down into her cart which so far only had a few things. A head of lettuce, a jar of salsa, two loaves of bread and–

“Ooh, brownies.” I reached into her cart for the plastic bakery container to see if that was fudge frosting on top. She slapped my hand.

I pulled back, not the least bit contrite. Turned on, definitely.

“Those are for my neighbor.”

“A guy?” I frowned at the possibility.

The corner of her mouth tipped up as if she picked up on my cranky tone. “Yes.”

I was suddenly wildly jealous.

“You’re giving your brownies to other men?” I took a step closer and touched her hair again. This close, I could pick up her soft scent. “I thought that sweetness was all for me. That hurts, sugar.”

Her mouth fell open and fuck yeah, she wasn’t thinking about baked goods either.

Then she rolled her eyes and tried not to smile. Failed. “Mr. VanMeyer is in his late sixties. I might be hard up for finding eligible men around here, but not that hard up.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be sympathetic or thrilled she hadn’t found a guy. That meant the path was clear for me. I was used to taking out players left and right to get to the goal.

I kept my hand on my chest. “I’m eligible and I’m right fucking here.”

“You’re in your twenties,” she reminded, saying it as if it was a huge deal like you have a raging case of herpes.

I couldn’t change my age, but if that was all that was keeping her from becoming mine, I could work with it. “I know what to do with squash,” I reminded, trying to keep things light. That’s what I did. Made people relaxed. Comfortable.

She looked to the pile of veg and grabbed one. A large one, held it between us and waved it back and forth.

“Sorry, I only like the big ones,” she countered, finally setting it in her cart.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Well played. She wasn’t going to make this easy, but it was going to be fun. She didn’t have a clue about how much I liked to win.

Trying to move around me, I stepped in, blocking her way. I looked left. I looked right. Then leaned in close so her hair brushed my nose.

“Sugar, I assure you, I’ve got one you’ll like just fine. It’ll be the best thing you ever put in your mouth.”