Page 50 of One Night Only
Oh. My. God.
I look back at Dallas to find his brow furrowed in obvious confusion, a slow smirk curling his lips as he shrugs off his coat.
“You should go!” I hiss, pushing him in his chest and urging him back out the doorway.
“Are you kidding me?” He guffaws, craning his neck to see down the corridor. “Sounds like a fun time.”
“No, really, you?—”
“Emmy?”
I stiffen then, a shiver running down my spine, my eyes wide as I gawk up at Dallas.
No. It can’t be.
“Emmy, is that you?”
It’s not living room sex, at all. It’s worse.
Spinning around just in time, I spot my mother sashaying around the corner, a curious smile lighting up her face when her gaze flits from me to the hulking NHL goalie looming behind me.
“Oh, my…” Mom clutches a hand to her chest, a scrupulous gaze scanning Dallas from head to toe and back again. “And who do we have here?” she asks me with an approving smile.
“Who do we have where?” Tess’s voice bounces off the walls before she comes bounding around the corner like an excitable puppy. Her socked feet skid to a stop, eyes wide and shimmering with smugness as she glances from me to Dallas and back again. She looks me up and down, noticing the dress I’m wearing. The same one I was wearing when I left for the event last night.
And, honestly, I’m as good as null and void, standing here frozen, unable to gather my wits to even string a sentence together, wishing the floor would open up and suck me down into the nine circles of hell. I want to die. In fact, no. Death wouldn’t be enough. I want to have never existed. Dear God,please go back thirty-five years ago and make my mom swallow instead…
I finally come to, right as Dallas removes his hat and steps around me, his hand held out.
“Dallas Shaw.” He shakes Mom’s hand first before turning to Tess, who has somehow transformed into an actual fangirl, all hyperventilating and heart eyes.
“Oh, Dallas, come on in, sweetheart. Let me introduce you to my husband, Emmy’s father,” Mom insists, wrapping a hand around Dallas’s arm and tugging him down the hallway before I can object.
I glare at Tess who is looking at me with a shit-eating grin. “What are you even doing here?”
“I mean, I do live here…” She snorts, helping me as I struggle to remove my coat.
“You’re never here on Sundays,” I hiss, smoothing down my wrinkled dress, feeling both over and underdressed.
“Bron’s parents are in town to see us before they go on their Christmas cruise, so Mom and Dad came in and we’re going to meet them for lunch,” Tess says with a casual shrug. “I told you this. I even invited you.”
I momentarily rack my brain. No. She absolutely did not tell me this. Or maybe she did and it was one of those times where I was only pretending to listen because sometimes I swear my sister just likes the sound of her own voice.
“You the married athlete?”
I gasp at the sound of my dad’s abrupt question coming from the living room, practically sprinting down the hallway with Tess hot on my heels.
Through the open French doors, the living room is at capacity with my parents, Dallas, Bron and, right there in the middle of the already minimal space, a Christmas tree that is so damn big, I can’t help but wonder how they even managed to get it up here.
“Uh, no,” Dallas chuckles, side-eyeing me. “Not married, sir.”
“But you’re anathlete?” Dad questions, looking over his thick-framed specs at Dallas in that way that he does to try and look intimidating.
“Yes, sir.” Dallas nods, tucking his hands in the pockets of his sweats. “Goalie for the New York Thunder.”
“Sexiestgoalie,” Tess murmurs, her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek as she nudges me with her elbow like the quintessential annoying little sister she is.
I spear her with ashut-the-hell-uplook.
