Page 12 of Hockey Wife

Said as if people who did were bloodsuckers and parasites. If only she’d drunkenly married any other guy instead of this judgmental jackass.

Yet she couldn’t give up. Not when she was so close.

“What do you need?”

Something flashed in his eyes—something carnal. She recalled that look the night they met, the night they thought this would be a fun release, no strings, no consequences. What babies they were.

The heated expression vanished, replaced with something harder. Colder. “Nothing from you.”

Her disappointment was a gut punch. Not because she cared for his opinion but because she needed the funds to be released sooner than later. She had plans for that money.

It was pointless trying to bargain with him. You shouldn’t bargain with terrorists.

“Should I have my lawyer call yours, then?”

His brows crashed together in surprise. This hockey-playing lug expected her to fall to her knees because she was so desperate. Well, think again, Big Guy.

A desultory sniff, then, “Got a number for this lawyer?”

“Not on speed dial, no.”

“Put yours in there.” He dropped his phone on the bar and shoved it a few inches toward her. He couldn’t even hand it to her like a normal person.

She refused to pick it up, lest her hands shook with the rage coursing through her. Like an angry jackdaw, she pecked away at the keypad and pressed the dial button. Once her phone rang, she pulled it from her Miu Miu clutch and held it aloft.

“Connected!” In her best faux cheer because that seemed to annoy him more than anything.

“Yay,” he muttered. “I’ll pass it on to my guy and we’ll get this squared away. Properly.”

“Good.”

He grunted.

“What?”

“Good? You’re as variable as a summer storm. One minute you want out, the next you want my ring, now you’re acting like you don’t care again.”

She folded her arms. “You’re annoyed because I’m not pleading for your cooperation? I asked. You answered. Rudely, I might add. But I didn’t really expect anything more. It’s not like you understand subtlety.”

She expected an explosion. Craved it. Because emotional men were easier to control.

But yet again, Dylan Bankowski refused to conform to her expectations. He leaned in, bending his six-foot-three frame to bring his mouth close to hers.

“Your mind games won’t work on me, princess. You think I don’t see what you’re up to? In my business, we call that a deke, and no one responds to a fake-out better than me.”

His breath was a hot, sultry puff of air against her lips. He didn’t scare her.

He was a bully. A bearded, beast of a bully.

Was that her heart going pitter-patter? Nope. That was a very different part of her anatomy, the one that had responded to his sheer physicality that night in Vegas.

“I’m not going to beg. You want out, so we can move forward to the dissolution of the ties that unfortunately bind us. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be married to a man who has to get a girl drunk to have his way with her.”

That shut him up. However, the thrill of seeing him momentarily speechless was quickly evicted by the unease that came over her at his new expression.

She had offended him.

“You weren’t that drunk,” he finally gutted out. “And nothing happened.”

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