Page 14 of Romancing the Grump
Nathan
Call me after? We’ll figure this out. Don’t plead guilty to something you didn’t do.
I stare at my phone for a beat, but Blake doesn’t text back.
I have to do a better job of figuring this out for him. He’s just a kid. And as much as I know Mom loves him, she’s not much of a bulldog. She won’t question what an attorney suggests—she won’t push back. She’s always been trusting by nature. A little too sweet. A little too gentle. She isn’t a fighter.
Even if she was, she’s two hours away from Boston in Portland, Maine. She’s barely better off than I am.
“Hey, you okay?” Alec says, and I look up to meet his gaze.
“What?”
“You got up like you were leaving, and now you’re frowning at your phone. I’m just asking if everything is okay.”
“Oh. Yeah. It’s nothing.”
Alec wrinkles his brow like he doesn’t believe me, but I don’t want to get into it here. I make a mental note to call Blake’s attorney again tomorrow—there has to be something I’m not understanding—then slip my phone into my pocket and stand up. But before I can thank Felix and Gracie for dinner and say goodbye, a knock sounds on the door, and Gracie hops up to answer it.
I swear under my breath.
Blake’s texts distracted me, and now it’s too late for me to escape.
“I assume you’ve all had the chance to meet Summer?” Gracie says as she shuttles her toward the kitchen table.
Summer scans the room. She looks at Gracie and lifts her eyebrows. “So, when you said you made enough soup for an army, you really meant for an entire hockey team?”
“Not thewholeteam,” Gracie says. “And I promise I saved you some. Do you know everyone? Do you need names?”
Summer props her hands on her hips. “Actually, I’ve been studying the player roster, so let me see if I can do this by myself.” She makes a show of pointing at each guy, listing off his jersey number and position. Finally, she turns to me. “And you’re Nathan Sanders,” she says. “Number…?” She wrinkles her forehead like she’s thinking and purses her lips to the side before she says, “Twenty-three?”
I nod my head in acknowledgment, hating that my number was the only one she struggled to remember.
Hating even more that I noticed.
Summer raises her fists in a tiny cheer. “And you’re a left defenseman.”
I nod again, and Summer turns, seating herself in the chair I vacated moments before. She’s wearing jeans now, more casual than anything I’ve seen her wearing at work, and a flannel shirt that makes her eyes look stupidly blue. She has on a tank top underneath, and every time she moves, I catch a glimpse of the way it hugs her curves. Her dark brown hair is down and loose around her shoulders, a contrast to her creamy white skin. Her hair is usually up when she’s at work, so I’ve never noticed how long it is—almost to her elbows.
“Just don’t ask me what any of those positions mean,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Parker insists I’ll get there if I keep watching the games, but so far, I still feel clueless.”
It’s nice that Summer doesn’t pretend to know more than she does. A lot of women do—they’re always easy to spot because they sound like they memorized talking points off ofSportsCenter. Others pretend they don’t know anything at all, asking question after question, like they think it’s the only thing hockey players ever want to talk about.
Which, admittedly, isn’t far from the truth. But I don’t want to talk about hockey with someone who’s only pretending to be interested because she recognizes me from the broody videos Parker posts on TikTok.
But Summer is neither of those things. She’s not pretending to know everything, but she also isn’t faking an interest. She doesn’t seem even a little bit starstruck, even though collectively, the guys around the table have millions of followers on social media.
It’s a definite point in her favor. Or it would be if I were tallying points. Which I’m not.
I’m also not leaving. So. Not sure how credible those convictions are at this point.
“Let me help you out,” Alec says. “Here. Give me yourglasses.” He gathers everyone’s cups from around the table and assembles what I assume is a makeshift representation of a hockey team. He smiles at Summer. “All you need is a little hands-on demonstration.”
Summer chuckles. “Is that so? Well, teach me then.”
He holds up his own glass. “Okay. So this guy is the center, which puts him here.” He drops the glass in the middle of the table. “He’s usually the guy with the puck.”
“Yeah, I am,” Van says, cocky like always.
