I roll to my back, tug off the condom and grab a tissue from the box beside the bed. I set it down to dispose of later and pull her to me as I bask in my post-orgasm bliss. Sleep pulls at me, but I don’t want this moment to end. I widen my eyes and suck in a breath to force the oxygen back into my brain. I glance around her room. It’s dim, but there is enough light from the moon to cast shadows on the wall and showcase her paintings.
“Homey,” I say, and examine the painted picture of a vineyard. Is it someplace she’d visited, someplace special to her?
She jerks up. “Excuse me?”
“What?” I ask at the startled expression on her face, the fire blazing in her dark eyes. Any man who can’t see that she was the most beautiful woman in the room, a woman who deserves a guy’s undivided attention, is a total douche. But, selfish bastard that I am, I’m glad Tate bored her into my arms, and her bed.
Her big eyes narrow in on me. “Did you just call me homely?”
I laugh—loud and hard—until my damn stomach hurts. Could this girl be any more adorable, and the furthest thing from homely?
“I said…homey.”
“Oh,” she says and laughs. “Sometimes you mumble.”
I fix her hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ears. “I do not mumble, and you’re beautiful. I already told you that.” Why the heck does she have such a hard time believing that? Yeah, I get that her friend likes to take the spotlight, and Jules seems happy for her to do that, and that beneath it all, she’s guarded. She said it wasn’t because of her ex, and I shouldn’t want to know why, but dammit, I can’t help but want to know more about her. But it didn’t seem like something she wanted to talk about and I’m not going to push.
She snuggles against me, and I’m more comfortable than I ever could have imagined. Normally I don’t stay to snuggle, but I’m lethargic, and have no reason to rush home to a big empty house that is the opposite of hers in every way.
“What kind of art do you have on your wall?” she asks.
In my mind’s eye I picture the monochrome prints on my wall. “Just the stuff the decorator put there.”
“You had a professional decorate it?”
“Yeah,” I say, noting the surprise in her voice. “Cole hired a decorator and recommended her to the rest of us. I’m happy with the results,” I say. Those meaningless pictures serve the purpose of filling the gray walls and big open rooms. Some are even conversation starters.
“That surprises me, since you seem to like art so much. But I guess I am glad you don’t have a bubble gum wall.”
“You don’t know that. You’ve not been to my place.”
“Please tell me you don’t?”
“I don’t.” I chuckle. “But how it’s decorated doesn’t really matter. I’m not home a lot, and in the summers, I hang out at my cottage on Wautauga Beach.” Once the hockey season is over, we’ll all be heading there. I like the cottage, but now that my buddies are filling their houses with wives and kids, it’s a constant reminder of what I want but can’t have. “The guys’ wives all decorated it for me. They insisted on a beachy theme and believe me, there’s no telling them no. You’d probably love the place,” I say, although I don’t bring women there.
“Are you close to the other players’ wives?”
“Yeah, we’re all close.” I guffaw. “Although they’ve been trying to fix me up for as long as I can remember. But still, you’d like them. Not that you can ever meet them. I don’t want them to get the wrong idea.”
“No, me neither,” she says and while that should bring a measure of relief that she’s not looking to insert herself into my life, it somehow comes off feeling like I’d just been cross-checked. My stomach takes that moment to grumble and I’m happy for the distraction.
Jules laughs. “I guess I did promise you grilled cheese sandwiches.”
I smooth my hair back, and her eyes follow the motion. “How about I make them?”
Her cute freckles bunch as she crinkles her nose. “You cook?”
“Yup.”
“No way.”
I press a kiss to her forehead and slide from the covers. I tug on my jeans and hold my hand out to help her up. She slides her tiny palm into mine.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” I ask. Hell, when I was a kid, before child protective services rescued me—although rescued is not a word I’d use, considering some of the homes I’d been sent to weren’t much better than my own—and Dad was gone and Mom was off fucking some random guy for money in the back bedroom, I used to make my own food. “I’m not a gourmet chef or anything, but I can get by.”
“Okay, Wingman, let’s see what you got.”
I wag my brows at her. “I think you already did, and I’m pretty sure you like what I got.”