Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 55599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
She scoffs. “What, to White Castle?”
“That was one time,” Tate says defensively. “It was after midnight and nothing else was open. It happened like two years ago, and my girlfriend at the time loved White Castle.”
“I’d rather eat a stale bag of gas station peanuts than go to White Castle,” Gina says, cringing. “Am I right, Josie?”
“I’d eat the plastic bag the peanuts came in before I ate White Castle.”
Gina snort-laughs. “I think we’re gonna be good friends.”
“What should we call her?” Tate gives me a puzzled look. “Jo? JoJo?”
“Call her Josie,” Gina says. “Save the nicknames for the boys.”
“You’re still not over me calling you Gina, are you?”
He pronounces it like vagina, and Gina shrugs. “I don’t care, Tater. I know you’re intellectually still in puberty, so I can see why it amuses you.”
Dane walks into the room, announcing, “My back hurts.”
“Can you be more specific?” Gina asks.
Dane furrows his brow in a textbook brood. “When I started stretching, I felt a twinge and it still hurts.”
“How do you hurt yourself stretching?” Tate asks.
“Take a twenty-minute ice bath,” Gina says. “Then I’ll look at it.”
Dane walks over to a big tub, which training assistants filled with ice earlier. He strips off his shirt and reaches for the waistband of his shorts.
“I’m out,” I say, grabbing my bag.
“You don’t want to see his bratwurst?” Tate asks, grinning.
“No.”
“Aw, is our little Josie shy? Or have you never seen a pork sword before?”
I glare at him. “I’ve seen plenty, and if you refer to yours as a pork sword with women you’re trying to get in bed, I get why Gina’s the only woman who touches you.”
“Tater’s is more like a pork pocket knife,” Dane says from the tub.
The sound of his deep voice makes me break out in goose bumps. There’s something about knowing he’s naked on the other side of the room I’m standing in right now that’s unnerving.
“You get used to it after a while,” Gina says. “They all look the same.”
I shake my head, keeping my gaze on the door to the training room. She’s still focused on the conversation, but the way my heart is racing, I’m focused on getting out of here.
I wasn’t being completely honest with Tater when I said I’ve seen “plenty” of men naked.
Two. I’ve seen two. Sex with both of them was underwhelming, and neither of them ever made me break out in goose bumps the way Dane just did with his voice.
It’s because I haven’t even been kissed in more than a year. And because I’m in unfamiliar territory here. A pro sports locker room. It’s not because I’m attracted to Dane.
He’s attractive; that’s more fact than opinion. But he ruins his good looks with his personality. I’m attracted to nice guys, not arrogant playboys.
Still, by the time I’m in the hallway outside the locker room, I feel like I’m the one who should be taking an ice bath.
“That’s how you do it, baby!” Jenn Rogers jumps up from her seat and blows her husband a dozen flying kisses, alternating hands.
Aiden Rogers just scored a goal, and his teammates huddle around him in a circle to celebrate.
Aiden’s name is announced and Dane is credited with an assist. Jenn lowers her brows and looks at me.
“Is Dane okay? He seems stiff.”
“That’s what she said,” Elena says dismissively, her fingers flying over her phone, typing out a text.
“His back is sore,” I say.
Elena sets down the phone and turns her attention back to me and Jenn. “Aaron says hotel beds are hard on his back sometimes. I find it so funny that he blames mattress firmness when he’s sore after being boarded over and over in a game.”
“Couldn’t be the boarding,” Jenn jokes. “He’s too manly for that to hurt.”
I’m sitting in a private box with around a dozen family members of players who made the trip to Tampa for the game.
“I heard you were sick on the plane,” Elena says. “I get really bad motion sickness, too.”
“Is there anything that helps it?”
“I know it sounds weird, but it helps me to eat something small before I fly. I take CBD oil, too. But if there’s bad turbulence, I get sick anyway.”
“Yeah, that flight felt like it took about twelve hours,” I say. “I’m hoping to sleep on tonight’s flight.”
“Hope you can. I’m staying an extra couple of days at my hotel with my sister, my daughter and my two nephews. My sister’s back at the hotel with the kids tonight.”
“You have a daughter?”
She smiles brightly. “Amara. Now that you’ve indicated a slight interest, I have to break out my photo slideshow.”
Elena’s husband, Aaron, is tall and blond. Their daughter is a beautiful mix of the two of them with caramel curls and big dark-brown eyes. I ooh and aah at Elena’s photos, trying not to let on how distracted I am by the conversation going on next to us.