Page 48 of Santa's Mistletoe Playbook

“Oof.” He backed up a step, relinquishing my hand. “Play fair.”

“Nope. Bye!” I dashed off to the nearest building with a line around the outside to wear off the weird nervous energy that bled from him to me.

You are not falling for a Rippton U manwhore.

I mean, he was just replacing the coffee we both wore. And I wasn’t going back to get it from him anyway.

“Stupid, stupid,” I muttered to myself, tapping my foot as the line for the ladies bathroom slowly inched along.

Five minutes later I glanced over my shoulder for the tenth time as snowflakes piled higher along my nose.

“Come on,” I groused, tapping my foot.

The woman in front of me cast a sympathetic glance over her shoulder. “Try the men’s if you’re in need, love.”

I bit my lip. I mean, it was only to wash my hands and hide for a second, right? Decision made, I nodded brusquely. “Good advice.”

I dashed into the men’s amenities, not looking to see if anyone was at the urinal–house rules and all–and scrubbed myjacket and hands. Clean, I dashed back outside and nearly wore my next coffee.

“Hell, girl. Slow down,” Dylan the Dopey Defender—okay, fine, Dylan the Sexy and Annoying Defender—murmured.

He raised a double stack of spiced gingerbread lattes above shoulder height just in time to prevent me from barrelling straight through them.

I did, however, pull myself up on a patch of ice I swore wasn’t there a few moments before. My feet skidded out from under me a second time in an hour. Gravity released its hold, and my already bruised rump prepared to hit the deck again.

A hard, warm surface as wide as a snowboard scooped me up and walked us away from the amenities, lifting me as though I weighed as much as a snowflake.

Dark eyes sparkled at me, cheeky superhero style. Dylan’s shit eating grin matched his expression. I wiggled in his hold, but he shook his head.

“Don’t move like that just yet, Trin,” he whispered huskily as I slid along his body.

“Like what?’ I glanced down between us where my hips joined against his waist, and the breath left my chest. “You randy damn defender. Get off me,” I grumbled, unable to put a full sentence together under the heat in his gaze.

“Mmm, someone’s been watching the other team play.” The inferno in his eyes backed off a touch as his ego engaged his favorite topic.

I shoved at his chest, needing fresh air to think straight, but he held me and our coffees with no issue, despite my wiggling. “You’re hard not to spot when you’re all over the end of the field when our team plays,” I retorted, then closed my eyes. “Nope, not feeding your ego any more. Scratch that.”

“No can do, lacrosse fangirl. Or are you more than just a fan?” His gaze roamed over me in a split second discovery tour,and his brow dipped. “Wait. Trinity. Trinity…Westwood? You cover sports for Blackstone. Journo studies, right?”

“Communications major. Yes, I often feature athletes. I like getting inside your heads and finding out how you manage to get up at five in the morning and train like hell when they should be hungover and snoring instead of studying like any other human.”

“Blackstone trains at five?” Dylan’s dark gaze shifted. “Thanks for that little tidbit, reporter girl.”

“What happened tooh, Trin?” I cooed, lacing my tone with a Dylan level dose of sarcasm. “You can put me down now, big boy.”

“Big boy, huh?” His lips curled up, and he drew me closer so I could feel the level ofbigfirst hand. “Oh, Trin.”

Something wicked flickered behind his eyes, something I wanted to do a little discovery on myself.

“Yeah,” I breathed, fluttering my lashes.“You have something I want.”

His eyes widened for a second before I swiped the top coffee and finally wriggled free of his grasp. Dylan fumbled his cup. It took both hands and a crouched position that showed off his thick thighs beneath his jeans for him to catch it.

“Tada!” he announced grandly from his lowered pose.

A rogue snowball hit me in the face he would have blocked with his broad shoulders a half second before.

“Terrific,” I muttered, swiping ice from my eyes.

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