Caged (Gold Hockey #11) - Elise Faber Page 0,18

more entranced, because she was absolutely rapt by everything this man did—the way his throat worked as he chuckled, his big, scarred hands clenching on his thighs, that mouth tempting as it curved.

More silence. Another brush of his thumb on her cheek. “Should we get on with the painful adventure known as grocery shopping?”

“You don’t have bags,” she said.

To his credit, he didn’t misunderstand about the local law that charged for using anything that wasn’t a reusable bag in stores, instead he just shrugged. “I’ll buy some.”

Her lips parted as she mentally searched for a way to get him out of her car. Mostly because she wanted him so much, and that made him dangerous for her sanity and the well-being of her very jaded heart. “That seems very wasteful.”

“Unless you have some I can borrow?”

She didn’t. She’d brought the precise number of bags she would need for her weekly trip for junk food with the odd vegetable thrown in. Probably, she could lose a few pounds if she ate more of the latter and less of the former, but she didn’t care.

Once upon a time she had cared, and that had been disastrous for her mental health.

Now, she ate her fucking Oreos and didn’t give a damn if her jeans weren’t a size zero.

Instead of getting into her whole woman-hear-her-roar situation, Dani just simply said, “No.”

For some reason, that made his lips twitch.

“Why don’t you have any?” she felt obliged to ask.

A shrug. “I was going to walk home for them.”

Her mouth formed the word walk, but even though the sound didn’t cross her lips, he still saw or heard it or maybe the man who made her nipples tingle, her thighs quiver, maybe he just had fucking superpowers.

That seemed the more likely scenario when he said, “I live around the corner.”

“Oh,” she whispered.

“Want to come home with me, so I can grab some and not be wasteful?”

She swallowed. Hard. Hated that she felt like she was trapped inside a washing machine, being jerked this way and that during the conversation, not able to feel like she was in the least bit of control, not even for a moment.

She knew she could kick him out, could continue to feel stuck and whirling every time she had a conversation with him. Or—

Or she could just embrace this conversation, the time with a man who was funny and a little pushy and who’d also saved her books from hitting the ground. She could accept that out-of-control feeling and just live for one fucking moment.

By grocery shopping.

Yup.

Even when she was pushing her boundaries, she was living a huge, exciting life.

Paper or plastic.

The proverbial question.

Chapter Six

Ethan

He could freely admit that he was shocked she’d said yes.

Completely and utterly shocked.

But instead of wasting his opportunity, he used his hockey player skills to think quick on his feet and give her directions to his place.

It was a little over a mile, tucked on the edge of town, up against a creek. With neighbors on just one side, it afforded him the quiet and privacy he craved, but it wasn’t so far from the small downtown area that he couldn’t walk to the restaurants and shops a few streets over.

For him, it was the perfect fit.

Also, because he was south of the city, real estate prices weren’t so bad, and for a player who’d been shuffled around quite a few teams before he’d found his fit (thus contract offerings hadn’t been filled with outrageous professional athlete money), less expensive housing prices were right in his wheelhouse.

She pulled into the driveway, completing the short trip in a way that was much what he would have expected—competent, careful, with no extraneous movements.

He waited until she put the car in park, until she’d gotten out, before he grabbed his books, popped the door, and led the way up to his front porch, watching her as she took in his little house. It was a neat Craftsman two-story home, sitting on a decent-sized lot. The front yard was small with a tiny patch of grass and some planters on one side of the driveway, a curved path leading up to the door. The back yard was nice, though. Good sized and shaded, plus as a bonus, the previous owners had left behind their hot tub.

Immediately, thoughts of coaxing her into that steaming water, her curvy body clad in a skimpy swimsuit, had him distracted and way too ahead of himself.

But that was him with Dani, wasn’t it?

She paused on the