Page 11 of Rematch
“Good information to have. I’ll be careful never to let you get behind the steering wheel of my Audi R8.”
“Way to work in a brag about your badass car.”
Preston chuckled. “You’re only giving me one night here. I have to take my shots where I can.”
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
“So your big childhood dreams were meter maid and bus driver?”
She lifted one shoulder. “Not really. Those dreams were short-lived. I guess what I always wanted to be when I grew up was a baker. I used to spend every Sunday in my grandma’s kitchen when I was younger, learning how to bake cookies and cakes and her world-famous apple pie.”
“World famous, huh?”
Joy nodded. “It won first place in a local apple pie baking contest ten years in a row.”
Preston whistled appreciatively. “That’s quite the record.”
“One day, I’d love to open my own bakery. I even know the name of it.” She held her hands out as if imagining the sign. “Sugar and Spice.”
“I like it,” Preston said.
“What about you? What did you dream of growing up to be?”
Preston answered honestly, aware that in addition to not sharing his name, he hadn’t told her about his profession, either, though he wasn’t sure why. “I suppose my dream is a popular one with most young boys. I wanted to become a professional athlete.”
“What sport?” she asked.
“The best sport ever. Hockey.”
Joy crinkled her nose. “Hockey, really?”
“What the hell is wrong with hockey?”
She considered his question, then shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. To be honest, I’ve never watched an entire hockey game. Just seen clips here and there.”
Preston clearly spent too much of his time around people who were all hockey mad. His family, his teammates, the fans. Then he realized the reason he’d probably held back about his career was because she wasn’t looking at him like every other woman he’d spent time with over the past decade and a half. To them, he was a rich professional athlete, and he knew their desire to be with him was based on that, rather than who he was as a person.
“You’re kidding,” he said. “You’ve never watched a whole game?”
She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “My dad is a Ravens fan, so we were a football house.”
“Fucking football,” Preston grumbled. “Crap sport. Trust me when I say, real men play hockey.”
She laughed. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
For the next half hour, Preston filled her in on the finer points of hockey, while she interjected her own misguided opinions on why football was better. The lively debate was fun and funny, and Preston found himself wishing this night would never end.
Mercifully, Joy didn’t ask if he managed to achieve his hockey player dream, because he wasn’t quite ready to reveal who he was to her just yet. “Do you have any siblings?”
She nodded. “Two sisters, much older. I was a late-in-life kid, and while I’m pretty sure I was an oopsie, my mom swears I wasn’t. Both my sisters are married with kids. One lives in Dallas, the other in Sacramento. How about you?”
“I have a younger brother. He moved to Denver a few years ago, married a nice woman, has a couple of daughters. He sells real estate, something he loves way too much. Whenever he calls, I get a full rundown of all his sales, as well as the deals that fell through. Boring as shit.”
“So he didn’t have that same dream of becoming a hockey player?”
“Nope. Guy doesn’t have an athletic bone in his body. We tease each other all the time about one of us being switched at birth. I say it’s him. He swears it’s me. We’re opposites right down the line, but I couldn’t imagine my life without the guy.”
“I feel that way about Allyson and Ethan.”
