His smile is slow, cocky as hell. “No, I heard you coming.”
“Hard not to.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder. “I think your muffler is broke.”
“That’s just how it sounds.”
“You know what they say about guys with noisy mufflers.” What the hell am I doing? Shut up, Nina. Shut up right now before you back yourself into a corner and have to use the word penis in front of Cole.
“You mean about overcompensating?” he asks, and turns to the side to allow me to pass. “That a man with a small cock compensates by getting a noisy muffler?”
Heat burns my face, and I keep my back to Cole, dying of embarrassment. But he steps around me, and a sexy grin splits his lips when he sees the color on my cheeks.
“Hey, you’re the one who brought it up.”
I tug my notepad from my purse. “We should get to work.”
“What’s the hurry? The game doesn’t start for another hour.” He rubs his stomach. “I was about to order pizza. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat,” I say, the strawberries I had for dinner doing little to fill my stomach.
“What do you like on your pizza?”
“Vagatarian.” Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m really going to kill my bestie. “I mean vegetarian. Vegetarian,” I say again.
“You don’t eat meat?”
“No, I eat meat,” I say quickly. “I love meat.” His grin widens, and I know exactly what’s going through his little pea brain. Why oh why does everything sound sexual when I’m around him. “I just don’t like all the processed meats on pizza,” I add. “They’re full of nitrates, and not very good for you.”
“So you only like to put things that are good for you in your mouth.”
I stare at him, pretty sure he’s making this about sex. With every ounce of me fighting the urge to punch that playful grin off his face, I choose my words carefully, so he can’t twist them into something dirty. “Yes. I like to eat healthy,” I say.
He nods in agreement and runs his fingers through his dark hair, messing it up. Damn, that makes him look sexier—and here I thought that was impossible.
“I normally do too, but the pizza joint is just around the corner and it’s quick and easy.”
That gives me pause. The last time I was here, there was a pizza box on his kitchen counter. “Wait, have you been eating takeout for the last a month?”
“Yeah. I can’t drive to get groceries because of the concussion, and I don’t really do a lot of cooking anyway.”
“What about your dad? Couldn’t he help you out?”
He stiffens at the mention of his dad. “No,” is all he says, but I don’t miss the defensiveness in his tone.
“Friends?”
“I live on the ice, my friends are all hockey players, and they’re on the road right now.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Single.”
I hate the little thrill that goes through me with that admission. I don’t care if he’s single. It means nothing to me, other than he has no girl to help him out when he’s down, and that just plain sucks.
“Sister?”
He frowns, and looks down, like he’s remembering something painful. “She’s away, working on the East Coast.”
“Oh, wow, I didn’t realize. She sure moved far away from home.”