Page 47 of Tricky Puck

“Don’t worry, hot pants. I’ll be there by noon to get you.”

“Shit. I suppose I have no choice.”

“You’re welcome. Have I ever mentioned how much I admire your gracious nature?”

She laughs. “No fair, hockey for brains. Sarcasm is my jam. You can’t steal my jam.”

I laugh at the hockey-for-brains shade because it’s what I’m aiming for. No way will I admit to anyone it’s becoming a struggle to concentrate on hockey. Not even to myself.

Juiced on coffee, I leave in the early morning dark and head to Sugar Hill on my rescue mission. I need to make it back in time for an afternoon nap and try to keep to my routine as much as possible with Delaney in the house.

Shit. She’ll be there with me all night and in the morning before the game.

Maybe I can lock her in a closet—or lock myself in a closet.

But I settle to locking down any thoughts about us together. Cranking up the music works until I pull up the dirt road to the cabin and find an extra car in the driveway.

I hear her shouting and a man’s response before I open the door. All my muscles tense up and adrenaline mixed with my Delaney-induced hormones kick up driving my thundering heart to my throat, priming me to kick some unlucky dude’s ass.

Good sense tells me to calm down and find out what’s going on, but when I open the door and see Delaney with her hands on her hips glaring at George her asshole ex-boss, my head explodes and I instantly go into kick-ass-now-and-ask-questions-later mode

Rage fueled by my pounding heart drives me forward and I grab George by the back of his shirt and spin him around, catching him off. For a split second our eyes connect, then I punch his surprised face, my knuckles catching his cheek bone and slamming his eye socket with enough force to knock him down, but not out.

Delaney, with her hands still on her hips, stares at me with her mouth open, disbelief on her face, crowding out whatever else is on her mind.

I step around George and rush to her. “Are you okay?”

“What the hell are you doing, Milano?” She shakes my hand loose from her arm.

Before I have a chance to say anymore—not that I know what to say because my mind is barely functional with all the adrenaline and hormones swirling at full tilt—George grabs me from behind, attempting to spin me around the way I did to him.

The only problem for him with that is that I outweigh him by fifty pounds of muscle. I turn and push him aside, but the fucker is quick and he gets in an uppercut, his fist glancing off my mouth. Shit.

This is a real fight. We square off and start throwing more punches at each other and both end up on the floor.

“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Delaney says as she watches, not bothering to try and stop us. I finally extricate myself and stand over him, ready to punch him again if he shows signs of getting back up.

“Stay where you are,” Delaney tells George.

Then she goes to the kitchen and comes out of the kitchen with two towels wrapped around ice and tosses them at each of us. I put the cold wet towel to my mouth while I catch my breath and try to slow down my pounding heart. The wild tide of adrenaline starts to recede.

“Why did you punch George for no reason?” Delaney asks me like she’s asking about the weather, seemingly unphased. But I see the bravado for what it is. Her voice is slightly higher pitched than normal and she’s staring at me like she’s thinking of running.

Fuck. I drag in a long breath.

“It wasn’t for no reason—” I pause when I see her look past me, her face turning wary. I spin around, half expecting to see George ready to attack, except he’s still on the floor sitting up, nursing his eye with the towel of ice.

“Who the hell are you?” I say to the guy standing in the doorway. He’s holding a fucking phone up like he was taking pictures.

George looks up and says, “That’s my handyman.”

“Why does he have his phone out like he’s taking pictures?”

George gets up and stands in front of Delaney, which shouldn’t bother me, but it flicks a sore spot and jealousy flares up.

I tamp it down and turn back to the handyman who could be a more immediate threat and stare him down. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing? I’m here to fix the plumbing and I find you beating up my friend George so I called the Sherriff.”