Page 24 of Hockey Wife

He loomed over her. This bathroom was suddenly as small as her building’s elevator car. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to know if your goals align with mine.”

“Assume they don’t, but at the base level, we need the same thing.”

“Which is?”

“To make this fake marriage look real.”

The answer to her prayers. All she had to do was agree, yet something in her balked at being treated like a puppet on a string. She had enough of that from her parents.

The doorknob turned and a knock sounded, bringing with it a renewed urgency. She just had to say yes.

“Who’s going to believe it when we haven’t even been together since it happened?”

“We don’t need to explain shit.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Because I need an explanation for your complete three-sixty.”

“One-eighty.”

“What?”

His deep rumble reverberated against the bathroom’s subway-styled tile. “It’s a one-eighty. If it was a three-sixty, we’d be back where we started. Both wanting a divorce.”

He was here, agreeing to her request, but still she pushed because Georgia Goodwin never knew what was good for her. “I need to know why you changed your mind.”

“Isn’t it enough that I have? You get what you want. I get what I want.”

What I want. The way he said that … as if he did want this.

He wasn’t going to spill the tea. Could she live with that? Did it really matter that she didn’t know his motivation?

He didn’t know hers, at least, not her true one.

“But if you don’t need to get back into your parents’ good books, then I suppose we can just go back to the original plan. Get the lawyers on the case. Properly.” Pivoting away from her, he placed a hand on the doorknob and winced.

“What happened?” She jumped forward, blocking his exit. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Was it a fight?” Oliver’s words about the fists-first nature of hockey came back to her.

He sucked in a breath. “Just my job. Sometimes it gets physical.”

“Oh my God, sit.” She pushed him down, none too gently, on the closed toilet lid. Amazingly, he acquiesced.

Now what? He was staring at her, waiting for her next move. She hadn’t really thought this through. Visions of wrapping bandages around his bruised, banging body floated through her brain. They would be standing close enough for her breasts to be level with his mouth and he’d be acting like a big, brave idiot while she played at sexy nurse.

There was that costume she’d worn one Halloween hanging in her closet. But this man needed real medical assistance, not the slutty nurse kind. She opened the doors below the sink and started to search.

This was a terrible idea in a playoff series of terrible ideas.

Coming here instead of going home to ice his shoulder;

Agreeing to Georgia’s request to stay married, but most of all,

Sitting in this tiny space while temptation herself bent over and wiggled her ass in his face.

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