Love In Moments (Love Distilled #2) - Scarlett Cole Page 0,43

at Liv’s wet hair, likely concluding she’d been there all night.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. Hey, Liv.” Karl grinned and raised an eyebrow in his direction.

“Hey, Karl.” She stepped out of Anders’s grasp and he missed her warmth immediately.

“Was it urgent? Whatever it is you need?” Anders asked.

Karl looked over the spread on the kitchen island, likely concluding breakfast had been preceded with a night together. “Nope. Sarah left for work already, so I was going to see if you wanted to head in early for breakfast. But I’m guessing not. Catch you at training,” he said, backing out through the door.

Anders shook his head and laughed. “I guess we don’t need to worry about telling my brother now. It’ll make it easier when he sees you later.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Natalie whispered as they sat in their seats.

Anders had been true to his word. The tickets he’d got her were not in the VIP section. Three rows back from the glass, about ten seats down from the bench where one of the teams would be seated.

“I don’t know,” Olivia answered honestly. “Christmas seemed like this gloriously fleeting memory that I could unpack and look at occasionally. I couldn’t speak about him because it seemed almost sacred, which I know sounds totally stupid.”

Natalie placed her hand over her heart. “Oh my god, that’s so . . . dreamy? Cute? I don’t know what the word is.”

“Nauseating?” Olivia offered.

Natalie laughed. “Definitely not. So, what? Then he just fell back into your life?”

“Something like that.” She didn’t need to tell Natalie all the gory details of how she’d run into him that night they’d gone out together. “He’s been traded here until the end of his contract.”

Natalie shrugged out of her coat. “And when is that?”

Olivia’s stomach felt as though she were free falling. “The end of this season.”

“Wow. So, what happens when it’s done?”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? He’d been back in her life for a little over a week. It was way too early to put a label on what they were. But her feelings for him went back two months. He’d seen her when everyone else saw her as broken. Nobody else would understand why he meant so much to her in such a short span of time, without her explaining what had happened on Christmas Eve.

Olivia tugged off her coat to reveal her dark green and gold Rush jersey. “Who knows? But one thing I learned last year is it’s better to take it one day at a time and not borrow trouble from the future.”

Natalie nudged her shoulder. “I can’t believe he sent you a jersey with his name on it. It’s so . . . possessive.”

Olivia grinned. “I guess he didn’t want me to forget who I was here to watch.”

The huge lights lowered, cameras and phones began to flash around the arena. As loud rock music played, players’ names flashed up on the jumbotron interspersed with plays from various games. Images were flashed onto the ice. It was sensory overload. Anders appeared on the jumbotron again, and she couldn’t help but grin. He looked so stern and so much larger than his usual built frame. The extra height from his skates and padding worn for safety made him appear almost menacing.

And too hot to handle.

Once the national anthem was over, his team skated to the bench or to their place on the ice. Concentration wracked Anders’s features, but as he neared her seat, he lifted his head and looked straight at her and winked. Before she could respond, he skated away.

A woman about the same age as Olivia squealed in the row in front of them. “Did you see him wink at me?”

Her friends nodded their agreement, but Natalie nudged Olivia and rolled her eyes. Olivia ignored the feeling that the woman was likely more Anders’s type.

Shake it off, Liv.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a woman flirting with Anders. But in this case, she knew Anders’s wink had been meant for her, and he’d left before the woman responded.

As the game started, Olivia tried to pay attention. Not a hockey fan in the slightest, she only knew the most basic details about the game. Puck to net. Different players constantly rotating, never more than six on the ice. And icing. Oh, and the Zamboni that came out periodically to resurface the ice.

Anders flew onto the ice with way more control than she possessed on ice skates. You didn’t grow up in Colorado without