Page 37 of Pucked and Pregnant

“Oh, so you’re still in the sketching stage. I know better than to ask you to let me have a peek, but I’m holding out hope that you’ll cave and show me anyway.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember that.”

“That you like to do art to blow off steam, or that you hate people looking at your sketches?”

“Both, I guess. Hockey tends to eclipse a lot of things. Sometimes I forget what my actual degree is in.”

“That’s a shame, you’re talented. Honestly, you could probably leave hockey behind and make it in the art world if you really wanted to.”

I snort out a laugh.

If only you knew.

“Seriously, you’re very good,” she insists, obviously having taken my laugh as doubt. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. You threw my book into a campfire for peeking at your work when we were twelve. I’ve never forgotten that, never forgotten you.”

I shouldn’t press the issue. I need to just let it go and steer things back into friend territory.

“Because of the pro hockey thing?”

Liv rolls her eyes. “Because you’re kind, you put people at ease, you’ve got these fascinating pockets of weird facts in your head, and what woman doesn’t have a fantasy of being immortalized in art? You find me one woman who doesn’t want to live out the fantasy of being sketched by a man that looks like you, and I’ll show you a liar.”

My chair scrapes across the floor as I get to my feet. “Come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you my sketches.”

Liv looks down at her half-eaten plate then back up at me. “Now?”

“Yes, now, before I lose my nerve.”

Letting her into my studio is uncharted territory for me. I don’t even let the guys in here, and they know exactly how far my little hobby has expanded to.

I feel more nervous than I did at the start of my first pro game.

“They’re over there.” I point.

My senses are on high alert, well aware that I have placed myself in an extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable situation. I can hear the slap of her bare feet on the tile floor, the rustling of papers as she flips through them.

I know the exact second when she realizes who the reference for my drawing is. Her breath catches in her throat, and she turns to me with wide and confused eyes.

“This is… you drew… I…”

“From the moment you walked back into my life, I haven’t been able to keep my eyes off of you. I don’t know how you managed it, but you are even more beautiful than when you left. One look at Max, though, and I knew you were off-limits. That night in New York… once will never be enough. So I thought that maybe if I drew you?—”

She holds up my sketch, causing me to halt my words.

“This is what you see when you look at me?”

Here it comes. She’s going to think I oversexualized her, that I see her as violent and cruel.

I wring my hands nervously. “I can explain.”

“You see me as something powerful and fierce?”

My breath catches as she grabs me by the shirt, pulling me against her. The feel of her body pressed against mine is intoxicating. My hands rove over every inch of her I can reach, and it’s still not enough.

With a flick of my wrist, I undo the button of her pants. I fall to my knees before her as I toss her jeans somewhere across theroom. Her fingernails dig into the wood of the drawing table in an attempt to stay balanced as I throw a leg over my shoulder.

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