Missed Call (Love on Thin Ice Book 3) Page 2

  “Trying to figure out what I said wrong. Nothing like having a friendly conversation with someone, and then watching as the person turns into a sprinter trying to get away from you.”

  Curtis scoffed, earning a smack from his redheaded wife, Hannah. Jake hadn’t spent much time with the team, since they were in the offseason. He went to some workouts, trying to get a feel for how he’d be treated as the new meat. So far, there didn’t seem to be any hiccups. Curtis was one of the first people he’d met. He also happened to be the team captain and was good about smoothing the way with the rest of the team.

  Kelly had stopped her sprint and was leaning across the table to talk to another blonde. There was some resemblance between the two, so Jake figured they were related in some way. Thinking about it, she even looked a little bit like her cousin, sitting only a couple feet away. All three women had close to the same shade of golden hair and cheekbones that stood out. Neither of the other women’s cheekbones were quite as visible as Kelly’s, but he could see a likeness.

  They hadn’t gotten to a point in the conversation to bring up siblings, but Jake was sure that was the case with the woman she spoke to. He also got the sense Kelly was the younger of the two. Even though she was tall, she seemed small in a way the other woman didn’t. It was probably the fact that Kelly was almost toothpick thin. Jake didn’t usually find the starving model look attractive, but Kelly wasn’t flat up front or in the rear. In fact, her ass sticking out as she leaned over the table gave him something he wanted to sink his teeth into.

  “If you’re talking about Kelly, it’s not going to happen,” Hannah said.

  Jake let his eyes drift away from Kelly and over to the couple speaking to him. He knew they had a pair of almost one-year-old twins that had been at the ceremony, but he hadn’t seen the babies since the reception had started.

  “I didn’t ask for anything to happen. She’s made it abundantly clear she has a boyfriend. I just wanted to finish our conversation.”

  Hannah looked at him skeptically. He was being honest, so there was no need for the doubt he saw on her face.

  “Seriously. I was asking what she did for a living, and she took off. It wasn’t like I was turning on the charm or anything.”

  “I’ve been around enough hockey players to know there’s never a time when you guys aren’t turning on the charm. Well, I suppose when you’re dropping the gloves, you probably aren’t enchanting your opponent, but otherwise it’s hard to cut through all that charm.” Hannah held up her hand to indicate she wasn’t finished when Jake opened his mouth to say something. “I’m not saying you mean to do it. It just comes naturally to you guys.”

  Jake shrugged. He supposed she had a point. He had come right out and told Kelly he was checking her out. He still contended that he didn’t imply something would happen between them. He could tell a woman she was sexy without it being a proposition. The thought of proving that idea by telling Hannah she was hot crossed his mind, but he thought better of it in only a second. As easygoing as Curtis seemed to be, Jake knew he’d probably kill him for speaking the truth about his wife.

  “On that fun note,” the bride said as she stood up and raised a champagne flute, clinking a knife on the side of it to get everyone’s attention. “I think it’s time for some speeches. I know a lot of times the fathers say something and the maid, or matron, of honor and best man will give a speech, but since it’s my big day, I decided I get to give the first speech, and possibly the only one.”

  Nina was sitting next to Hannah, so she’d been privy to the conversation, and apparently, she was over it as she started her announcement. Since she was the center of attention, Jake hurried across the front of the table, towards where Kelly was still whispering to the woman Jake had decided was her sister. He saw her head and eyes nudge in his direction and wanted to laugh, but kept it in.

  He didn’t say a word as he stood off to the side of her and waited for the promised bride’s speech. He was sure it was just going to be another boring part of the relatively boring afternoon.

  “Many of you know that I never expected to get married.”

  Jake’s eyes immediately rolled up at the first words. He wondered how pissed anyone would get if he nodded off. Since he was a little too close to the center of attention, he didn’t figure he could get by without being noticed.

  “I guess expected isn’t the right word. I vowed I would never get married. Marriage in my mind has always meant giving up your freedom and letting someone else dictate at least part of your life. When I was fourteen years old, I decided no man would have a say in what I do.”

  Nina paused for a second to glance at her husband. There was a more meaningful look between her and Hannah after that. Jake had no idea what was up there, but he’d heard the two of them had been friends forever.

  “But, as you can tell from the fact that there is a nacho bar at my wedding, Brady McDonald found a way to convince me life tethered to someone might not be so bad. It was a little over a year ago that we met, and I decided quickly that I hated him. I won’t go through the list of reasons why, but I realized after spending more time with him that I hated the fact I actually liked him.”

  Jake started tuning out at that point. She was the bride, and it was her right to spout whatever wisdom she felt she had. That didn’t mean he had to listen.

  He was close enough to Kelly that he reached over and tapped her on the shoulder. Her back was mostly to him, as she’d straightened up once Nina got going. He couldn’t see her face to see how intently she was listening, but he hoped she needed a distraction as much as he did.

  She shrugged off his touch with a glare over her shoulder. He got the feeling if someone else would’ve been doing the tapping, her eyes wouldn’t have narrowed anywhere near as much. It was kind of a turn on to know he’d somehow gotten under her skin.

  He bent his finger to beckon her and started walking towards the closest empty wall. Since most of the guests were sitting down, enthralled by Nina while they ate, there weren’t as many people milling around like there had been when he first got there. That made it easy to find something to lean against while he waited for Kelly to make up her mind. She hadn’t turned around to return to being a captive audience, so he was sure he wasn’t going to be standing alone for long.

  Jake couldn’t understand the indecision. With someone at the big table giving a speech, standing in front of it was kind of blocking it for some. He went ahead and waved his arm to the right to try to get her to realize how many eyes were on her. He wasn’t sure if it was a shy vibe or something else he’d picked up on when he found her frozen after getting her food.

  She’d been the one to point out she was part of the wedding party, and yet, she wasn’t sitting up on the stage like everyone else. No one in that elite company had to go through the buffet line. Jake had seen their food delivered and placed in front of them.

  He watched the awareness in Kelly’s eyes as she looked out to the crowd. He was used to crowds much bigger than the wedding guests, so standing up there wouldn’t have bothered him. The wideness of her eyes told him it wasn’t something she was too fond of. She looked to her sister, who shrugged slightly and smiled, then Kelly started stepping backward, as if turning around and walking would’ve made her exit stage right any less obvious.

  Jake chuckled to himself as he watched. As soon as she cleared the table, she turned around and hurried in his direction. Even in the scuttle, there was grace in her steps.

  “Why won’t you leave me alone?” she hissed under her breath.

  He thought for a second she’d dart off again, but she allowed her back to rest against the wall about a foot away from him. It wasn’t exactly whispering distance, so he took a step sideways to cut the space in half. As quiet as the room was, aside from Nina’s voice, it would’ve been easy for others to overhear the conversation. Jake thought it was best to keep it as private as possible.

  “We introduced ourselves fifteen minutes a
go. I hardly think that makes me a stalker for trying to keep the conversation going.”

  A look that matched the skepticism on Hannah’s face a few minutes prior was his only immediate answer. The fact that there seemed to be some interesting story he was missing out on only drove his insistence that he wanted to keep talking. Hannah had instantly said nothing was going to happen between the two of them. That could’ve been because of the boyfriend thing, but there was some undercurrent that made him think there was more.

  “How about we go outside and get some fresh air?” he asked.

  She wasn’t responding to the stalker comment, so Jake tried to move things forward. He figured he’d made a long enough appearance for someone who’d known the happy couple for a few weeks. It’d been only a week since he’d met Nina at a barbecue Curtis put together.

  After the glares and disbelief from her direction, Jake was mildly shocked when he saw Kelly’s head nod almost imperceptively. He didn’t wait around to see if she’d change her mind. Reaching over, he grabbed her hand and kept them along the wall, trying to keep their movements from interrupting the speech still dragging on. Nina had moved on from sharing every “amazing” quality Brady had to some anecdote about having dinner at Hannah’s house. There was obviously some segue that he’d missed.

  “You can let go of my hand.”

  She hadn’t immediately started pulling away from him, but he had noticed little tugs as they got closer to an exit. The banquet hall was in the convention center next to the arena he would eventually play in. They were still in the banquet hall portion, which meant they had almost a mile left to go before they found an exit. Jake took some liberties with the exact distance, but it felt like a mile.

  He’d originally grabbed her hand to verify whether the sparks he felt when they’d first touched were static electricity or something more. The slight spark that hit him again told him their bodies at least felt chemistry.

  With the test over, he fulfilled her request and let go of her hand. It felt like ice anyway, which was weird in the hundred-degree room. He was sweating like a pig, and she felt like an ice princess. It was a little strange, but he didn’t spend too much time overthinking it.

  He listened to her heels as they made contact with the tile floor, making sure she was still following without the tether. They made an even beat that Jake imagined her hips swaying to as they exited the banquet hall and eventually the building.

  Jake wasn’t sure what he was going to say when they got outside, a fact that remained when the setting sun filled the sky and the warm summer air hit his skin. It was probably seventy-five out, which was a vast improvement over the hundred degrees it had been in the banquet hall.

  His body was still adjusting to the temperature change when he registered the clacking Kelly made as she walked didn’t stop when he did. He looked to his right and saw Kelly had sped up and was jogging over to the parking lot. He shook his head and considered following her. He wanted to at least unravel one mystery about her, but he wasn’t going to fight her clear desire to be anywhere but there.

  That didn’t stop him from yelling out his phone number and requesting she give him a call before she got across the street. With the traffic going by, she probably didn’t hear it, and even if she did, it wasn’t like she had her phone out waiting to type it in. She didn’t acknowledge him as the light turned green, and she hurried across the street.

  “Well, Kelly, it was nice knowing you for twenty minutes,” Jake said to no one as he shook his head.

  Chapter 3

  An alarm clock was the last thing Kelly wanted to hear. That wasn’t true, because the growl from her stomach beat the alarm clock out for annoyance. She’d had a protein shake before going to bed, so she wasn’t sure what its problem was. She hated the reminder she didn’t get enough to eat, even if it was first thing in the morning.

  Groaning, she rolled over and smacked her hand down on the blaring beeping coming from her right. The beeping meant it was nine, and it was time to get up and get ready to head to the airport. The thought made her groan again.

  It had been a week and a half since she’d been home, and she wasn’t sure what she’d find when she got back. The wedding had kept her busy for most of the time, with Nina planning out the bridesmaids’ days efficiently. There hadn’t been a lot of time for sightseeing, which was fine in Kelly’s book.

  It wasn’t her first time in the general New York area, not by a long shot. She’d spent months there working different shows, but almost three years had passed since then. She supposed there were new things for her to see, but she wanted to avoid any former acquaintances if she could. Most of the models she’d worked with were probably out of the main scene. Unless you had the “it” quality, there was a limited time your presence was needed. It was a rough industry, which was why Kelly was happy to be out of it.

  The other girls wouldn’t be around, but they were only a fraction of the group Kelly was happy to never run into again. She’d made plenty of enemies over the years, not that she’d meant to. That was just how things worked.

  She shook her head, clearing the bad thoughts that always came up when she started thinking about how things were. The naïve girl who’d blindly followed her agent’s advice was long gone, and there was nothing she could change about the past, so it was stupid dwelling on it.

  Kelly rolled over and stretched out on the queen-sized bed. It was a little too firm for her liking, but she wasn’t complaining. Her sister and brother-in-law had a beautiful home for their small family. Kelly was lucky the guest room hadn’t been turned into another nursery. They already had a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son. Kirsten was vaguely talking about a third kid, so it was only a matter of time before the family grew again.

  Kirsten had always been an overachiever. Kelly was twenty-five with no immediate plans to get married or start a family. Sure, she had Trent waiting for her back home, but they’d been together for four months and hadn’t talked about their future, not even eventually moving in together. Truth be told, Kelly was against it ever happening. She couldn’t stand the idea of sharing her space with someone.

  It wasn’t so much the idea of seeing her things next to someone else’s that bothered her. It was the idea that someone would be there to see the days she couldn’t keep her demons away and skipped a meal or two. Trent knew about her past, but he was more wrapped up in the fact he was dating a former model than the problems she had with body image and food.

  He probably wouldn’t say anything if she neglected to eat for a day or two, which was one of the main reasons Kelly didn’t break up with him. That sounded so stupid when she thought about it, but she’d had boyfriends who thought they could help her with her problems by making huge meals and pushing calories in front of her. Being told she should eat only made things worse, so those relationships didn’t last very long.

  As it was, Trent probably wasn’t going to last too much longer. What little chemistry they’d had when they first met was waning. She kept pretending that wasn’t the case, which was why she’d been very clear with Jake he didn’t have a chance. Honestly, the hot hockey player had a good shot, but they weren’t exactly living close enough to each other to think seriously about that. She’d taken off from the reception, after he’d given her an exit strategy, so she didn’t have to think about how horrible she’d feel about cheating on Trent.

  Kelly sighed as she listened to the silence around her. Most mornings since she’d arrived were anything but quiet. Kirsten and Brian were usually hustling to get ready for work, while their nanny tried to corral two rambunctious kids. There was screaming and yelling to give one of the kids back whatever the other had taken from them.

  It had been annoying at first to wake up to so much noise, but Kelly had grown used to it. Somehow, she must have slept through the usual morning routine. The silence she’d been used to before now sounded weird. She rolled over and verified it was really nine o’clock. The alarm clock sai
d 9:02, so she hadn’t messed up setting it. She would’ve set her phone to go off, but it never seemed as loud as an old-fashioned alarm clock.

  Throwing her legs over the edge of the bed, she got up and decided silence or not, she needed to get going. Her plane took off at noon and traffic on a Wednesday morning would be hell. She already knew that traffic in and out of New York was basically always hell compared to what she’d grown used to, but that didn’t change the tension she felt building up having to deal with it. She wasn’t even going to be the one driving.

  She ran a brush through her long golden hair, then she threw all the toiletries she’d set out on the attached bath’s vanity into a bag. She was just finishing brushing her teeth when her phone rang. It was probably Kirsten calling from work to make sure she was up and moving.

  Kelly ignored it to pull out a string of floss. There weren’t a lot of things her mother had embedded in her daily routine that she still did, but the twice-daily teeth-cleaning routine was still going strong. That routine was interrupted by her phone ringing again.

  She sighed, knowing her sister wouldn’t stop until she answered. Putting the floss down, she walked back out to the bed and grabbed her phone from the table with the alarm on it. She barely registered that it wasn’t her sister’s number when she put the phone up to her ear.

  “I’m a little busy, so if you’re trying to sell me something, the answer is no.”

  “Is this Kelly Martin?”

  The voice didn’t sound deterred from her way of answering the phone. She was sure she’d never heard the mild, bordering on a little high, male voice before.

  “Are you selling something?”