He shrugged off my comment, and rolled up the sleeves of his white thermal, exposing the inked feathers that tattooed his massive arms. He placed his hands on the car, leaning over the engine, gazing at it with sharp eyes.
A flush swept over my skin as he flew into motion, something clicking behind those green eyes like an equation finally falling together. His movements were precise, calculated, as he went from his toolbox and back, over and over, clicking and cranking and turning things about.
“You’re going to get grease on your shirt!” I protested when he’d leaned so far over his shirt had raised a bit, showing off his carved muscles, a smooth strip of skin, and more whorls of ink I couldn’t make out.
He didn’t pause in his work as he shot me a really? look.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not paying for a new shirt.”
He chuckled. “I’ve loved engines since I was a kid. Cars, bikes, tractors. Anything with a motor. I loved it almost as much as being on the ice.”
I took a few steps closer, watching as his hands worked, hating that I wondered how those capable hands would feel on me. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he said, a bit of strain in the answer as he reached across the car for something. “If I wasn’t skating or helping on the farm, I was tinkering. And I caught flack for it. All the time.” He shifted for a moment to look up at me from where he was hunched over the engine. “All the other guys were off chasing girls and partying for the first time. Me? Work. Ice. Farm. Cars.” He shrugged. “Guess that qualifies me as a nerd, right?”
A flutter burst through me, realizing he was still on my earlier comment. I chuckled. “Mechanic,” I said, slightly under my breath.
“What?”
“Just like Tony. Mechanic. Hero. You really are Iron Man.”
He grinned and leaned away from the car, rising to his full height. A strand of his long red hair had come free of its tie, falling across the side of his face. And damn me if I didn’t want to touch it, push it back, or run my fingers through it if he ever let it completely down.
Grabbing a cloth from his toolbox, he rubbed at the grease on his fingers as he stepped closer to me.
“You won’t ever let that go, will you?” His green eyes were churning with…heat or adrenaline or maybe it was just the fumes from the car.
“Why should I?” I asked, my voice cracking the closer he came, the more he towered over me. Heat fell from his body onto mine, making my blood race.
He shook his head, lowering it slightly so he could meet my eyes. “If I’m Tony,” he said, his breath warm on my cheeks he was so close. “And you’re Pepper,” he continued, his eyes slowly trailing from my lips to my eyes and back again as he placed a hand on either side of me, caging me in. “Then, doesn’t that make you mine?”
A stuttered breath escaped my lips as his inched toward mine, hovering there, so damn close all it would take from me was a tilt and we’d collide.
Heart racing, skin vibrating, head swimming.
Eric held me in the charged moment, content to tease and wait and watch the battle in my eyes.
I darted my tongue out to wet my lips, unable to stop the motion like my body wanted to be kissed despite all my brain’s logic against the idea.
A muscle in his jaw ticked as he watched the move, his chest rising a bit faster than moments before.
One kiss wouldn’t kill me.
My eyes fluttered closed, my body arched—
Squealing tires burst the fantasy bubble, and I jerked away from the mistake I’d been about to make. Eric blinked a few times, shaking his head like he too had fallen under some spell.
The culprit car screeched to a stop, parking next to Eric’s truck.
Eric kept his gaze locked on mine as if he were trying to puzzle me out.
Heart in my throat, I shrugged, motioning to the engine with my head. “Too many fumes,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
“Right,” he agreed, but there was a huskiness to his voice that wasn’t there before. “Friends?” He asked like he needed clarification.
“Depends on how you like the next movie,” I teased, happy to return to common ground. The playful smirk that shaped his lips sent a zing straight to my core, so I hurried completely out of the garage, needing the crisp air to clear my head.
Get a grip!
“Gentry?” Crosby’s brash voice hollered across the fifteen-foot space between us as he climbed out of his horribly loud car.
Be grateful! He stopped me from making a huge mistake!
Right.
“The fuck you doing, man?” Crosby asked, stopping at the lip of the garage.
Eric cleared his throat, waving a wrench at the popped hood of my car. “Playing soccer, dick. What does it look like I’m doing?”
Crosby laughed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Coach has you on bitch duty?”
Eric straightened, taking two steps toward him, but I blocked his path. “Excuse me?” I snapped, shocked that my tiny frame had brought Eric to a halt.
Crosby rolled his eyes. “Not you…Pepper?” He narrowed his gaze, searching my hair. “I meant Coach has him doing chores. Fixing cars. You clean her crib too?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at him. “Coach doesn’t have him doing anything. I asked for his help.”
“Whatever. Is Ivy in there?” He motioned toward our front door.
I parted my lips, ready to tell him she’d already left with a hotter, nicer, smarter hockey player, but Ivy took that moment to open the door and wave enthusiastically at him.
I rolled my eyes.
Ivy. You picked a bad one. Again.
“Babe!” Crosby left us and spanned the distance to Ivy, his hands immediately going for her hips. “You look hot.”
Ivy gave him a light smack on the chest and paired it with a girlish laugh that induced my gag-reflex. He tugged her toward his car, and my stomach churned.
“Ivy!” I called, waving her over.
She sighed, told Crosby to go ahead and start the car, then practically stomped over to me. “Yes, mother?”
I flinched, the pain stinging every cell of my body. “You know I hate it when you call me that.” We’d lost our mother at seven. Cancer was a bitch.
Her shoulders dropped and she loosened her tense stance. “Sorry. Just save the lecture you’re about to give me, ‘kay?”
“Who said I was going to give you a lecture?”
She arched a brow at me, then chuckled when she glanced up and behind me. I spun around, finding Eric making the same look.
I flung my arms in the air. “What? Maybe I was going to tell her to tap that! Or make him beg for it! Huh? What about that?”
Eric’s eyes flew wide holding mine for all of five seconds before the three of us burst out laughing. So that didn’t sound the most natural coming out of my mouth. Sue me.
“Come on, Pepper,” Ivy said.
I swear that was her favorite freaking phrase.
“I just want you to be careful.”
“I know,” she said. “But I’m not a Shark. Or, at least, I’m not paid to be one. I don’t have the same risk you do.” She glanced at Eric again, and a flush raked over my cheeks.
The almost kiss. Damn, I was still tingling from it and he hadn’t even touched me.
Crosby honked.
The douche actually honked.
“Remember our code?” I asked as Ivy backed toward the car, her heels clicking against the pavement.
“For ten years now,” she groaned.
“Good. Use it. You know I’ll find you, anywhere. Anytime.”
She chuckled. “Not if Iron Man doesn’t fix your car.”
Eric hissed. “You too? Really?”
She shrugged.
“I’d find a way,” I assured her.
“I know. Love you.”
“Love,” I called back as she climbed into Crosby’s car. Another squealing of tires, the smell of burned rubber, and they were gone.
“Ugh,” I said, turning back to Eric. “That guy is a—”
“Teammate,” Eric cut me off. “Co-worker,” he added, smirking.
I took a deep breath, unclenched my fingers, and sighed. “Thank you.”
“For what?” He asked, returning to cleaning his hands on that rag of his. Good God, what was it about his now grease-stained fingers that was so sexy? Or maybe it was the white thermal stretched so tight across his muscled chest?
“For stopping me from bad mouthing my players,” I finally said, trying to get a lock on my hormones. He must be wearing drive-Pepper-crazy cologne. “I’m not used to the co-worker/teammate thing yet.”
“You’ll get there,” he said. “And I have free reign to talk shit on the guy, so I will if it makes you feel better.”
I laughed, the tight air in my lungs releasing. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” he challenged.
“I do,” I said, shocking myself with the certainty in that statement. I’d only known him a few days, but he was one of the good ones. The rare pro-athlete not out to use his status to get girls or booze or freebies.
Okay, so it wasn’t fair to lob them all under a stereotype, but maybe I’d been around too many not to.
The moment hung silent and charged between us. Eric threw the rag back in his box and closed it up, holding it by his side as he opened his mouth to say something but closed it last second.
God, was he thinking about our almost slip? Or was that not even a thing for him? He may be a good one, but that didn’t mean he didn’t indulge in a bunny every now and then. Just the thought was enough to have ice crystalize over the super-hot memory of Eric merely breathing close to me.
Pathetic.
“I need to snag a part from my guy at the auto-store,” he said, finally breaking the silence.
“You have a guy?” I teased.
“Naturally,” he said. “I’m well connected.”