I Pucking Love You (The Copper Valley Thrusters #5) - Pippa Grant Page 0,101

arms and shoves me behind him. “Cranford,” he growls.

A thick-necked dude with an ugly-ass scowl flexes his shoulders back. “Taking advantage of another one?”

“We’re leaving.” Tyler nudges me.

I grip his back belt loop and inch back toward the covered stop, where people are spilling off the trolley.

“Not gonna introduce me?” Cranford asks.

Tyler doesn’t answer. He turns his back on the other hockey player, tucks his arm around me, and nudges me again, more firmly, toward the trolley. “Fuck off,” he mutters over his shoulder.

I glance back too.

Cranford smiles. It’s an ugly smile, one that he tops with a wiggle of the brows and then a tongue movement that makes my ovaries shrivel and hide, because eew.

And that’s exactly what I’m thinking when I turn to look ahead again, zig when Tyler zags to get around the people departing the light-rail station, and I trip and fall into a massive concrete flower box.

42

Tyler

Only Muffy.

Seriously, only Muffy.

The good news? Cranford disappeared into the night as soon as Muffy went down in the flower box. Not that I expected him to cause actual trouble off the ice, but I’m still happier when he’s not around. Dude likes to be intimidating.

The bad news?

She’ll probably have a bruise the size of Alaska on her hip from hitting the concrete wrong, someone at the trolley stop told the tabloids that I stole Cranford’s girlfriend, and all of my sisters have invaded my condo after hearing about the little accident.

Could be worse.

Muffy could be seriously hurt.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Allie’s asking. “I can make soup.”

“How handy is it sometimes that you went to medical school?” Brit adds. “I’d be freaking out and rushing my kids to the emergency room.”

“Lots of padding and I can still walk,” Muffy replies, but she winces the teeniest amount, and I want to put my fist through a wall that I didn’t steer her better down the street. “You guys are so sweet to worry.”

Staci smiles at her. “Worrying is basically our entire job. We’re related to Tyler and West.”

“On behalf of West, Ty’s the bigger worry and always has been,” Keely calls from the kitchen, where she’s doing I don’t want to know what.

Probably brewing a potion to make me more romantic for Muffy.

It’s exactly the sort of thing my sisters would do.

“Out,” I order.

Forty-eight women turn and glare at me.

Okay, like five of them.

Also, Muffy’s not glaring. She’s blushing and avoiding my eye, just like she’s done since Allie banged on my door while I was trying to inspect Muffy’s hip, demanding to know why people at Chester Green’s were talking about me having another dust-up with Gator Cranford over a girl.

“He’s such a youngest child,” Brit mutters. She hugs Muffy. “We’re doing brunch at a wine bar at ten, and I really hope you make it, but we get it if we’re overwhelming and you send Tyler by himself.”

“Does your cat always stare at the fish tank like that?” Keely asks from the kitchen doorway. Rufus is doing his thing, sitting in a dining room chair that we’ve placed in the middle of the living room, his back to the aquarium, peeking over his shoulder like he’s afraid the fish will look back.

Didn’t take long for me to realize Rufus is more of a danger to himself than he is to the fish. I like it that way.

“Yes,” I answer for Muffy. “Go away.”

She gives me the don’t be rude huff. “He means thank you for being the kind of awesome sisters who care and try to help.”

“Even if we’re doing it in the name of not letting each other get more gossip than any of the rest of us?” Staci asks with a sly grin.

They finally leave, and by the time I shut the door behind them, Muffy’s disappeared.

I find her leaning on her not-bruised hip in the middle of my bed. “I think I embarrassed myself this time,” she whispers. “Who walks into a giant flower pot?”

I crawl onto the bed with her. “You’re hot when you’re clumsy.”

She rolls her eyes and ends the massive gesture by staring at the wall over my shoulder.

“Hey. Look at me.” I grip her chin lightly, stroking her jaw with my thumb until her gaze shifts to me, her pupils dilating. “You’re not really embarrassed, are you?”

“No, I’m—okay, yes. No. Yes. I—maybe? Your sisters are all so put together, and they’re so nice, and I’m basically a walking disaster. Every time I feel like I’m making progress toward being a