“I’m only doing this because Antonia likes the drawings on your arms and because I’m hungry,” Fallon said, her voice harsher than the excited gleam in her blue eyes. “Well, that and you helped us raise more than I thought we could in a day.”
His breath came out in a whoosh. Hell yes. “Just wait until I come back with more of the guys, the line will be hours long.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “You could do that?”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure I could get some of the other players to come out for a meet and greet.” Where in the hell had that come from? He barely spoke to the other guys on the team, but if that’s what it took to get her on his side, he’d do it.
…
It wasn’t a date—Fallon was still in jeans. Okay, so the most she would have done was swap out into her nice jeans and a comfy shirt, but she hadn’t even done that. It was definitely not a date. They just happened to be in a booth at the back of Mama’s Place, the one it was rumored that the Lopez matriarch only let her favorite customers sit in.
Fallon knew this to be fact because she’d tried to have a girls’ night dinner with Tess in this booth and been told no. However, Zach had walked in the front door and was greeted by Mama Lopez herself, a Waterbury institution, with a hug. Fallon had gotten a hard once-over. Then, Mama had led them to the coveted back booth.
“You need to come by more than once a month,” Mama told Zach with a disapproving shake of her head. “You’re getting too skinny.”
Fallon tried to see what Mama Lopez was seeing when she looked at Zach and missed it completely. In his Ice Knights T-shirt that fit without being too tight or too loose and showed off his broad shoulders, muscular chest, and well-defined arms to perfection, skinny was definitely not how she would describe him. Not that she was looking at him that close. This was a sort of cool, even-handed clinical observation that just also happened to make it about ten degrees warmer in here all off a sudden.
Get a grip, girl.
“Don’t worry, I will take care of you,” Mama Lopez said with the wave of her hand. “I’ll be back with your dinner.”
And with that, she walked back to the kitchen without ever taking their orders.
Fallon looked around. None of the other waiters even glanced their way. “Is someone else bringing a menu?”
“Nope.” He leaned back against the curved booth seat and stretched his arm across the back so that his fingertips brushed her shoulder and the warm scent of his cologne—or maybe that was just his smell—surrounded her. “Mama will bring out a ton of food and we’ll feast.”
Her gut sank. That did not sound like something she wanted to do on her nursing paycheck, but there was no way she’d back out on paying the bill. A woman had to have her pride.
“And don’t worry about the tab,” he said as if he was reading her mind. “I was just giving you shit earlier.”
Nope. That wasn’t going to happen. She did not need people feeling sorry for her limited budget. Of course, that didn’t mean she could afford to meet the caloric needs of a professional athlete.
“You’re not paying for me,” she said, straightening her spine and doing her best to ignore the fact that they were practically hip to hip in the small, curved booth and that his pheromones were looking at her pheromones and saying hey baby, which was making it hard to think. “We can go Dutch.”
“It’s already paid for,” he said before dropping his voice to a volume level that would make it almost impossible for any of the other diners to hear. “I give Mama’s grandson hockey lessons, and she pays me in food.”
For the third time today, she’d been rendered speechless. That was some kind of record. Surprise had her pivoting in her seat to get a good look at him to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t, judging by the way he shoved his hand through his hair and set his face into a surly what’s-it-to-you snarl that just dared her to make something of it.
Someone was feeling vulnerable. She could understand. Exposing her soft underbelly wasn’t exactly her bag of chips, either. So instead of pointing out to the most-hated man in Harbor City that he shouldn’t be embarrassed about doing something nice, she focused on the act itself.
“You give hockey lessons?”
His expression warmed a whole three degrees. “The kid’s actually really good. He’s got a scholarship to some private high school in the city, and I have him down to our practice rink every month to watch practice and then we skate around. The chances of a high school player ever getting drafted are low, but if someone takes a chance on him, they’ll end up with a solid defenseman.”
She didn’t know how to process this. Zach’s shitty attitude about any charitable work was well-documented in the tabloids—right along with his dating history and latest on- or off-ice brawl. His refusal to do pre-season appearances or interviews when he first arrived in town was the thing that saddled him with the most-hated man moniker in the first place. Losing only made it stick. But giving a kid hockey lessons? Yeah, that was totally unexpected. So she fumbled around for a response, because staring at him with a blank expression wasn’t going to cut it.
“You’re not going soft on me, are you?” she asked and immediately wanted to take back the words.
Way to sound like a real bitch, Fallon.
He laughed and patted his belly. “Only around the middle during the off season.”
“Was that a joke?” she asked, holding her hands to each of her cheeks and letting her jaw drop in a melodramatic expression of shock. “Did the most-hated man in Harbor City make a joke?”
He shrugged and shot her the bird. “It occasionally happens.”
They were both chuckling when Mama came back with chips, salsa, and the best guacamole Fallon had ever had in her life. Seriously. It was like an avocado and heaven had a baby. She was half tempted to lick the bowl after they ran out of chips but managed to stop herself. It was one of her harder-fought battles. Thankfully, that was when a waiter came by with another basket of homemade tortilla chips. For a while, the only thing that could be heard at the table was the crunch of chips.