but he didn’t stop to analyze his motives.
“I have to close up the bar.” Lainey pulled her tank top over her head and tugged down the hem.
“I can help,” Coop offered, fastening his jeans and pulling his belt back into place.
“You’ve done enough. It’s not a two-person job,” she told him, and though he wasn’t wild about the idea of her in this place alone in the middle of the night with a bunch of cash, he reminded himself that she’d probably locked up a thousand nights before.
“Look, Slick. Tonight was great. The sex was great. But that’s all it was—a night of great sex. So stop trying to turn it into something more.”
She busied herself by grabbing a rag from the sink and wiping the counter down, but Cooper got the impression it was more about avoiding eye contact with him than any actual need for cleanliness.
“Lainey, c’mon. I didn’t propose marriage.” He pulled his T-shirt on, then ran a hand back and forth across his hair. “It’s just breakfast.”
She looked at him then, but there was no coyness in her eyes. Nothing flirty. “I don’t date hockey players.”
“Yeah. Okay. Right.” Cooper shrugged, trying to let her rejection roll off his back. No big deal. He’d eat alone. He preferred it that way. It wasn’t like he was looking for a relationship or anything. He’d just thought...hell, he didn’t know what he’d thought. “Just sex. That’s the best kind, right? Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, Lainey Sillinger.”
“Harper. I took my mother’s maiden name.”
“Harper. Got it,” he relented with tip of his head, grabbing her phone off the counter as he walked by. He was relieved to see it didn’t require a passcode.
“Hey, give that back!”
“Just in case you change your mind and get hungry later,” Coop explained, texting himself a quick message as he stepped out from behind the bar. “And word to the wise? You should lock this. Anyone could pick it up and check out whatever naughty videos you’ve got stored on here.”
He came to a stop beside the stool where he’d left his jacket before relinquishing her phone. She practically lunged at the counter in her haste to snatch it. With a grin designed to rankle, he picked up his coat and he headed for the door.
“Cooper?”
He stopped. There it was. Something vaguely like relief flooded through him as he turned to face her.
“That door is locked. You mind going out the staff entrance in the back?”
“No problem.” He shook his head, hoping it didn’t look as robotic as it felt, even as he followed in the direction she was pointing, past the storage room she’d been coming out of when he’d first laid eyes on her. It felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been hours. A short hallway with doors on either side brought him to a beat-up metal exit door, and he pushed through it to find himself standing in the parking lot, next to a Dumpster, about ten feet away from his car.
It had been a hell of a day.
THE EAR-SPLITTING SHRIEK of the whistle echoed through the chilly arena air, and the rest of the ambient noise—the scraping of skates, the tapping of sticks and the boom of pucks hitting the boards—faded out.
“Okay, guys, last drill of the day. Let’s make it count.” Coach Taggert’s heavy baritone echoed down the rink.
Cooper stood by the boards, elbow resting on the end of his hockey stick, watching as center Eric Jacobs—or Cubs, as he was better known to his teammates—turned on the jets and blew past the rookie on the outside. But instead of hustling back into position, Brett slammed his stick on the ice, upset at getting beat.
That pulled Sillinger’s defensive partner out of position, and Cubs capitalized on the defensive error by sending a beauty of a cross-crease pass to a wide-open Luke Maguire, who easily tapped the puck into the net.
It was all Cooper could do not to roll his eyes as the kid swore and flung his glove at the boards, not even having the grace to look embarrassed when he lumbered over to stand beside Cooper.
“What are you looking at?” Brett demanded, all little-man swagger as he unsnapped the chin strap on his helmet.
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