Page 50 of Irresistibly Risky

“That’s fine. I’m worried he has an infection. I just checked on him.” I shift. “That’s how I know he’s still sleeping. Not that anything else happened.”

Did I actually just say that? I mentally smack my forehead.

Could this be any more awkward?

“There you are, Doctor. You left me in bed to wake up all alone.” Asher’s voice rings out through the condo, and I close my eyes, beyond mortified. I can’t bear to handle the looks on Callan’s and Greyson’s faces. As it is, I hear their muffled snickers as Asher’s steps grow louder. “Oh, hey guys. What’s up? You come to check on me?”

I creak open my lids as Asher moves in beside me. He’s exactly how I left him. Wearing no shirt and low-slung pajama pants. His reddish-brown hair is sticking up every which way. Then there’s me with my bra in my hand. Awesome.

Callan clears his throat. “Yeah. Just wanted to see how you’re feeling.”

“Not bad since my beautiful doctor is taking such excellent care of me.” He drops his arm over my shoulder, and that’s my cue.

“I’m going to go shower before Mason wakes up. I called you in some antibiotics, and I’ll run and pick them up when the pharmacy opens. Nice seeing you both.” I rush off, throwing a wave over my shoulder when Greyson calls out that it was nice meeting me too, and Callan says that it was good to see me again.

Shoot. Me. Now.

I fly down the hallway, snatch my overnight bag off the floor, and head straight into the room Asher had pointed out as mine. The second I shut the door behind me, I want to cry. The room is so pretty. Cream fabric headboard with a bunch of throw pillows on the bed, and even a pretty crystal chandelier. The color scheme is simple and clean—all pale grays and creams.

I know he said his assistant did everything, so I shouldn’t think too much about this, but the fact that he created a space just for me…

I shake it off and pull out my clothes and toiletries before heading for the bathroom. The walk-in shower is loaded with expensive shampoos and conditioners, and the huge soaking tub has bath bombs, candles, and bubble bath on the shelf beside it.

His assistant did all this. I doubt Asher is even aware this stuff is in here.

What I really want—what I really need—is to go hit the ice for a while. Burn off some of these excess thoughts in my skates. Unfortunately, it’ll have to wait. I strip down and take a quick shower, sampling some of everything the player has in here for me. I get dressed and brush out my hair, about to put on a bit of makeup, when I hear a knock on the door.

“Come in!”

“Ice queen, are you decent?”

I smirk at the playful way he says that. “More so than I was fifteen minutes ago.”

He laughs. “If it helps, both of those guys are madly in love with their women and didn’t notice your braless tits the way I did. If they had, trust me, I would have gouged out their eyes Oedipus style, best friends or not.”

I groan, my face falling to my hands. “They think we slept together.”

“Slept, yes. Fucked, no.”

He enters the bathroom, coming in behind me, and my hands slip to my sides, my face meeting his in the reflection of the steamy mirror. It’s déjà vu from the night we first met. He smirks, clearly having the same thought.

“You were so adorable that night.”

“Was I?” My brows scrunch. I don’t remember much. “Adorable isn’t a word used with me very often.”

“You were chatty and nervous and so innocent, I nearly felt as though I was stealing your virtue.”

I sigh. He practically did. I lost my virginity in my third year of college—hello, trust issues—and it was with a guy I had been dating for three months. He broke up with me a week later, and I learned not long after that he’d had a bet with some of his friends that he could win my V-card from me. The guy after him came over a year later—hello, more trust issues than before—and we dated for four months. He was nice. Dependable. Boring as fuck, but I also knew he’d never burn me or break my heart. We fizzled out when I left for medical school. In medical school, there were two men, and I had zero feelings for either. I think by that point my heart had all but been frozen over—ice queen for the win—and I was okay with that until my eyes locked on a gorgeous guy in the wrong bathroom, who made me laugh and feel comfortable, but then gave me the worst sex in the history of the world, and once again renewed my lack of faith in men.

Until now. Until once again, this man made my head spin and my heart buzz.

“I remember you being so charming,” I tell him, smiling despite the ugly memory of it. “I remember you making me laugh, when laughing wasn’t something I did all that often.” I remember thinking how I knew I’d never see him again, so what did it matter if I let loose and stopped thinking for once?

“And now?”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Now I might laugh even less.” The admission hurts. I don’t want to be this mother. I don’t want to be this woman. But I’m not sure how to be any other way. I was carefree that night for the first time in my life, and though I wouldn’t change it because it brought me Mason, being carefree no longer feels like an option.

I’m a single mother, and I know Asher says he’s in this with me, but I can’t rely on that. I had a father once, and then I didn’t. I know everyone is different. I appreciate that Asher isn’t Joe. But that doesn’t make it easy to unwind the decades of distrust from my head.

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