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He laughed even though he wished she hadn't mentioned burning thighs. "Come on." He led her back out to the open hallway that looked down at the entrance and great room. "That's my daughter's room," he said and pointed to a closed door.
"How often does she visit?"
"Amelia's never visited me here. She lives in Seattle with her mother, but when the house was built, I had her room done for her."
"How old is she?"
"Two."
He pointed to another closed door. "That's a bathroom, but I don't think it's ever been used." They moved past some sort of alcove with a couch he never sat on and a big plant he never watered. "You ever married?"
"No."
"Ever get close?"
"A few times." She laughed without humor. "Or at least I thought so. They didn't, though."
"That's a problem." They moved to the open door of his bedroom. The place where he'd pictured her naked. Tied to his bed or on her knees in the moonlight. He wondered if he should feel like a pig for thinking about her naked so much. He wondered if it counted since she didn't know, and he never planned to do anything about it. He leaned a shoulder into the door frame and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his Levi's. As he watched her move silently through his room, he wondered if he'd ever be able to separate the Kate looking out his bedroom window from the Kate who'd wanted to have sex with him the first night they met. He doubted it. The two were so interwoven in his brain that when he looked at her, it was always there.
"Is this your little girl?" she asked as she stopped in front of his entertainment center, cluttered with pictures of his daughter.
"Yeah. That's Amelia."
She leaned in for a closer look. "She's cute. She looks like you."
"My mother thinks so."
Kate took a step back, and her gaze moved to his big-screen television. "Hockey must pay well."
So, she did know a thing or two about him. It was no secret. Everyone in town knew. "It did, yes."
"What team?"
"Ottawa Senators. New York Rangers. Florida Panthers. Detroit Red Wings. L.A. Kings, and the Seattle Chinooks."
She looked across at him. "Sounds like you moved around a lot."
"Yeah." He didn't really like to talk about the past. It brought up too many questions he didn't want to answer. Too many memories he didn't like to think about.
The carpet muffled the sound of her boots as she walked toward him and stopped about a foot away. "Were you good?"
His gaze slid to her mouth. "What do you think?"
She tilted her head to one side as if she were studying him. "I think you were probably scary."
"Do you watch hockey?"
"Just enough to know that if you were skating toward me, I'd get out of your way." She bit her lip, and it slid through her teeth. "And I saw you take out the Worsleys."
He chuckled. "Let's go downstairs," he said before he gave in to the urge to bite her lip, too.
He pointed to two more closed doors. One bedroom was filled with his fly-tying gear. The other had boxes of his hockey stuff in it. They walked downstairs and through the house, past the dining room to the kitchen. On the granite countertops and steel gas range sat his sheets of cooling granola. He was addicted to the stuff, and he'd been making his own for several years. He'd just about perfected his honey almond crunch. When he'd played hockey, the guys had all given him a raft of shit about his granola, but they all secretly hit him up for some when no one else was around.
She stood next to the work island in the middle of the room and gazed up at the pots and pans hanging on the rack above her head. The recessed lighting cast her in a warm glow and sh
one in her red hair. "Who uses all these pots and pans?"
"Me." He lived alone and had learned a long time ago how to cook for himself. Life on the road and eating in restaurants could get real old. "When I'm here." He scooped up some granola and moved toward her. "Open up," he said as he held his fingers in front of her mouth.
