Page 111 of Offside Devil

The pizza Hanna ordered for him.

The fact that his assistant was responsible for Zane’s “pleasure” once a week for years makes me hate her even more.

“Okay, but that still doesn’t explain why you can mince herbs better than I can.”

He waggles his fingers at me in a flirty wave. “I’m good with my hands.”

My face flames. Don’t I know it?

He sighs. “And I used to help my parents in the kitchen. They bought me a kid-safe knife when I was still a toddler so I could help out.”

“That’s sweet.” Sweeter than any memory I have of my childhood, at least. “Is that why you let Aiden help you cook?”

He gives me a tight, sad smile. “Those were always good times. I want Aiden to have those kinds of memories, too.”

So do I.

I clear the sudden lump out of my throat. “So where are your parents now?”

Zane’s hand tightens around his fork. “Dunno. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to them.”

I want to press. For some reason, I want to know everything there is to know about Zane Whitaker.

But those kinds of conversations lead to questions I don’t want to answer. Questions I can’t answer, unless I want Zane to boot me straight out of his and his son’s lives.

My past is a risk to them both, and I’m not going to bring it up unless I have to.

So I point my fork at the fig and pomegranate salad. “Aphrodisiac or not, this is coming with us to the barbecue. Just warn your teammates that it might ignite an orgy.”

44

ZANE

“This fig and pomegranate salad is amazing,” Daniel remarks. “But is it making anyone else suspiciously horny?”

I almost spew my lemonade across Coach Popov’s back deck. At my side, Mira is doing the exact same thing.

“Did someone call for me?” Davis walks through the sliding glass door with a beer in hand. “‘Suspiciously Horny’ was my nickname in college.”

Eyes narrowed at Taylor, Mira accuses, “You snitch! You told them!”

Taylor hugs Daniel’s middle, burying her laugh in his shoulder. “Sorry, girl. You can’t go to a horned-up cooking class and expect me not to make fun of you for the rest of time.”

“And I was with her when you called to tell her, so she had to tell me.” Daniel kisses the top of Taylor’s head, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him so happy. It’s repulsive.

It also makes me grin.

Motherfucker deserves some happiness.

“It wasn’t horned-up,” Mira cries. “It was just—It was an accident!”

Everyone—mostly Davis—demands a play-by-play of the class and Mira walks them all through it, from the red wine and chocolates spread out on our station when we arrived to the way the geriatric instructor told us that cooking should be a “full-body pleasure experience, inside and out, tits to toes. Oops, did I say ‘tits’?”

Jace snorts. “What about when I’m cooking frozen dino nuggets for the third time in a week because it’s all Gallagher will eat? Is that supposed to be a ‘sensual experience’ for me and Rachelle?”

“Oh, God.” Reeves covers his son’s ears, but Jalen is too busy wolfing down cookies to notice. “This is supposed to be family-friendly.”

“I’ll never look at dino nuggets the same way again,” Davis murmurs, a haunted look in his eyes.

---