“I thought about telling you.” Kade jammed his hands into the pockets of his pants and scowled.
“Thought about it?”
“Yeah! I was going to explain what she’d done, tell you I wasn’t going to do it. I was hoping we’d have a laugh about it.”
“I’m not finding anything vaguely funny in this.”
Kade shoved his hands into his hair, linked his fingers behind his head and stared at her with hot eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you feel used, or bad. The truth is that when you opened the door the only thing I could think about was the fact you were nearly naked. I had to have you. Again. Being set up was the last thing on my mind.”
She wanted to tell him she didn’t believe him, but she saw the truth in his eyes. He’d wanted her like she’d wanted him. Impulsively. Wildly. Crazily. Their need for each other didn’t stop to, well, think. And, damn, it was hot.
And deeply, utterly problematic. She couldn’t control her attraction to him and it seemed Kade was having a similar problem. Such need wasn’t healthy, nor was it easy to resist. She needed to step back, to create some distance between them, but every time they were in the same room all they wanted to do was rip off each other’s clothes.
They had to stop the madness—this was supposed to be a one-night fling. They were already on day two—sort of—and Kade was like any other man: he wasn’t going to walk away from fabulous sex.
She didn’t want to walk away from it, either, but for her, being with him felt like it was about more than just the sex. With him she felt alive and vibrant and animated and she couldn’t afford to feel like that, even if it only happened in the bedroom. She might come to like it and, worse, get used to it. How would she get that genie back in its bottle?
So this had to stop now. She liked her life exactly as it was. Bland, safe, predictable.
She needed to walk away, far, far away. But Kade just needed to kiss her and she’d be all yes, please, take me now.
So she was going to match him.
“You’re making too big a deal of this, Brodie,” Kade stated. “Just tell Rory we are seeing each other, that there’s a conflict of interest. Tell her to let you match Quinn.”
Ha! Right. Kade would get out of the matchmaking, keep sleeping with Brodie and annoy Quinn in the process. For Kade, it would be a trifecta win.
But that wasn’t going to happen. Brodie shoved aside the heat and the lust and ordered herself to use her brain.
“That would be rude and disrespectful. No, Rory’s bid was for you so I will match you.”
If she hadn’t been feeling so miserable she would’ve laughed at his horrified face. “What? No!”
Her thinking hat firmly in place, Brodie paced the free area in her small kitchen. “Wren is a smart cookie and I bet she’s already thinking of ways to spin this to generate PR for you. Mavericks fans will lap it up. They need a feel-good story, what with the owner’s recent death and the future of the team still up in the air. And you released one of their favorite players last month. They are not happy with you.”
“You seem to know a lot about my business.”
Brodie waved away his comment, not feeling the need to tell him that after he left last night she jumped online to read about him and the Mavericks.
“I had solid reasons for releasing him,” Kade argued. “It didn’t matter that he was the best rookie in the league, a BC native and one of the first graduates from the Mavericks Ice Hockey Academy. He was photographed snorting coke, he was underperforming as a player and he was undisciplined. He had more chances than most, not that the fans care about that.” Kade’s tone was flat, his eyes bleak.
It had been a joint decision to boot the player, but as CEO, Kade took the flak. He led from the front, Brodie realized, and she had to admire him for that.
Quickly, she returned to the topic at hand. She couldn’t afford to get sidetracked admiring him. “Matching you would be good publicity, for the Mavericks and for me.”
“Not happening.”
“Go to the office, see what Wren’s working on. I guarantee it’s something similar to what I’ve been thinking.”
A muscle jumped in Kade’s jaw and he tipped his head back to look at the ceiling. “I’m going to kill Rory, I really am. Want to help me bury her body?”
At his rueful words the rest of Brodie’s anger dissipated. “I’ll dig the grave.”
Brodie raked her hair back from her face, then grabbed her mug from the sink and poured coffee back into the cup. She took a couple of sips. “I’m sure this is the most interesting conversation after a one-night stand in the history of one-night stands.”