Melting Ice (12 page)

Isaac “Ice” Wolfe fascinated her. Maybe it was the brief sadness she saw in those blue eyes before they turned frosty once again. Maybe it was their dysfunctional families. Maybe it was two souls who recognized similar pain in each other. Maybe it was just as simple as his hot body and piercing eyes.

Whatever her reasons, she admitted—only to herself—to having a harmless crush on the bad-boy hockey player. And it was harmless because he’d already told her he wasn’t interested in a repeat performance, which was for the best.

Seriously. It was
.

Sleeping with him would go down as her one and only one-night stand, no reason to be ashamed or proud. It was what it was.

Except she wanted more, more of his hard body moving over her, more of his heated stares, more of his hands on her, and definitely more of him inside her. In this case, it didn’t matter what she wanted or what he wanted; their fate had been sealed, but that didn’t stop her from cyber-stalking him. Just a little to satisfy her curiosity.

Avery Googled Isaac’s name, and waded through mounds of crap about his attitude, his party lifestyle, his drinking, and his women. Finally she found a very small, vague mention of his sister and another woman dying in a one-car crash on a winding road on a stormy night. They’d been drinking, and the driver drove off a steep bank into a lake. Neither woman survived. They were the only two in the car.

Why would Tanner blame Isaac for a car accident when Isaac wasn’t even there? Why would Isaac blame himself? It was weird, and it didn’t make sense, but the hurt in Isaac’s eyes drove her to find out.

Emma came home a few minutes later to find her sister poring over the information on her computer. “I know that look. You’ve been doing research. So what’s the deal with Tanner and Isaac?” Emma asked, as usual reading Avery’s mind.

“Tanner blames Isaac for their sister’s death, but it doesn’t make sense. She died in a car accident. Isaac wasn’t near the scene of the accident.”

Emma pulled up a dining room chair next to Avery’s desk and peered at the computer, reading the article on the screen. Finally she straightened. “That’s weird. I mean, Tanner despises the air Isaac breathes.”

“Yeah, it is weird.” Avery clicked on another link, but it contained no new information.

“You two have a thing for each other. Why don’t you ask him?” Emma pointed out the obvious.

Avery squirmed, not certain she should tell her sister that she’d stopped at the bar on her way home when she’d seen Isaac’s car there.

“Okay, spill it.” Emma read her mind.

Avery told her all about her evening with Isaac. And Emma’s frown deepened while her brows drew a straight line across her forehead, a sure sign she was equally confused and worried.

“Why would both of them believe Isaac was to blame?” Emma shook her head.

“I have no clue.
Men
. They say women are hard to figure out. I should stick with horses.” Avery rubbed her tired eyes. She had an early morning, as usual, but she already knew she wouldn’t be able sleep.

“I’m sticking with cats until I meet that one special guy.” On cue, Emma’s prima donna cat, Tuxedo, sauntered in, jumped on the desk, and laid across the keyboard. Emma grabbed him and held him close to her. His purring could be heard in a rock concert.

Avery clamped her mouth shut. Emma was the hopeless romantic of the family, believing every person had that special someone out there somewhere. Avery considered such romantic notions ridiculous, but she wasn’t in the mood tonight to debate it with Emma. If Emma wanted to wait into spinsterhood to meet the right guy, that was her problem.

Spinsterhood?
Seriously? Did anyone even use that word anymore? Avery had to quit reading Emma’s historical romance novels during her bouts of late-night insomnia. If Avery didn’t watch it, she’d find herself picking out a silverware pattern and her wedding colors just because a guy said hi to her.

Or screwed her in the barn lounge after she’d just met him.

“Ave?”

“Huh, oh, uh, sorry.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere, I’m sitting right here.”

Emma gave her a little shove with her hand on Avery’s shoulder. “I meant what were you thinking? You zoned out for a few. You’re really enamored with this guy.”

Enamored?
Her sister really needed to get a life.

“No, I’m not.” It was stupid to deny it, and even stupider to try to put something over on her twin. After all, they’d shared a uterus for nine months. You can’t get closer than that.

“I’ve never seen you obsessed like this, unless it was over a really nice horse or something. Usually you can take a guy or leave him.”

Avery would take Isaac any day, but leaving him alone proved to be a lot more difficult.

Chapter 8—Running

After week and a half in the farm house, Isaac had settled into a routine. Rain or shine, he ran every morning following the path along the edge of the large field next to his house and down the gravel road past the barn and back. He preferred that route as opposed to the paved county road.

His only company were the birds and squirrels and an occasional deer. It only took him a few days to realize if he was lucky, he’d also catch glimpses of Avery riding the Gator across the parking lot to the hay barn. Oh, how he’d loved those few glimpses of her in a ratty sweatshirt, faded jeans, and rubber boots. She was the sexiest thing on earth with her ponytail swinging back and forth and her nice ass straining as she lifted bales of hay bigger than she was. He was playing with fire, and he knew it, but a guy couldn’t get in trouble for looking as long as he didn’t touch.

Isaac didn’t sleep well after his encounter with his asshole brother the night before. Taking advantage of a rare day off, he got up late and ran midmorning. Even though he slowed to a jog past the barn, Avery wasn’t anywhere in sight, which bummed him out more than he liked to admit.

He picked up his pace but slowed again when he noticed a figure grazing her horse on the grass shoulder of the gravel driveway in front of his house. As he got closer, he realized it was the traumatized teenage girl, Tiffani.

Normally, he would’ve run past her and not glanced her way. He hated his privacy invaded, and this girl’s crush on him had now extended to her hanging out near his house, a fact which didn’t thrill him. Yet she was broken just like he was. Her damaged soul spoke to him, leaving Isaac to grapple with his usual asshole demeanor versus his deeply-buried sense of decency.

As he jogged closer, Tiffani looked up, her eyes haunted with a crushing sadness born from great tragedy and guilt. A glimmer of hope appeared in her sad eyes when their gazes met. Maybe her crush on him wasn’t a crush after all.

Like kindred spirits, he sensed the heartbreak she struggled to overcome. Yet, he’d never been one to consider others’ needs, nor was he prone to sensitivity, or at least that’s the story he sold to himself.

Isaac slowed to a walk and wiped his sweaty brow with his sleeve. The girl watched him warily yet with a fragile trust he hadn’t earned. He stopped a good ten feet from her, his hands shoved in his sweatshirt pockets. A smile, unbidden, crossed his face. She almost smiled back as she leaned against her horse.

“Hi, Tiffani,” he said, not completely onboard with why he was talking to her, why he cared. Caring got a guy nothing but a shitload of trouble and pain.

She blinked at him, then glanced shyly at her feet.

For several seconds, he stood there, awkwardly trying to come up with a way to put into words what he wanted to say, even as his asshole persona warned him against becoming involved.

He cleared his throat, and she met his gaze with eyes older than they had a right to be.

“You understand, don’t you?” he asked simply.

“Yes,” she nodded, as if she completely comprehended what he was trying to say. She studied him for a few more seconds and turned almost as if in slow motion, tugging on the horse’s lead rope as she walked down the road to the barn.

Isaac shook his head, thrown off balance by the sorrow in her ancient eyes. With a shrug, he headed toward his house to take a shower. She wasn’t his concern. No one was. He was an island with no one to worry about but himself; his only worry was his next hockey game. He didn’t give a shit about that girl or his family or a certain blonde who’d rocked his world enough that he couldn’t seem to banish her from his thoughts. He liked being a loner.

Surely, he played nice with damaged teenager all the while having the ulterior motive of looking good in Avery’s eyes. Yeah, that had to be it. Yet, since when had he ever cared what anyone thought about him? The whole damn thing was damn disturbing.

In the bathroom, Isaac stripped out of his sweaty clothes and tossed them in a wicker hamper. Troubling memories messed with his head, pulling him closer to that pit of despair. He’d never crawl out if he allowed himself sink any deeper. He’d been there before and barely made it out alive.

Isaac picked up the prescription pill bottle on the counter, a constant testament to what a sorry-assed weakling he really was. He hated the pills. Hated them, but they were a necessary evil, and until his self-loathing simmered down to tolerable dislike, he’d continue taking the damn things. He popped one in his mouth, and swallowed it without water. He placed the bottle on the counter in plain sight as part of his personal torture, rather than shoving it in a drawer.

He needed the anti-depressants to survive his personal hell one day at a time. Isaac might be a tough guy on the ice, but deep down, past all his contrived defenses, he was as weak as they came, a pathetic imposter hiding behind a smokescreen of badass behavior. Tiffani and that sexy horse trainer had started to drill a hole in his Kevlar armor, and he couldn’t allow them to continue. It was bad enough his dickhead brother knew how to prod his weak spots to cause the most pain.

Isaac turned on the shower, cranking the hot water to the point it was one notch short of scalding. He stood under the pulsating jets, letting the hot water slide down his naked body. Closing his eyes, he tried to relax and clear his mind of any thoughts but the next game. Only his mind refused to obey and kept sneaking back to images of Avery, her blond hair loose from its ponytail and falling like silk across his naked body.

Oh, hell
.

He needed to strangle his teenage infatuation with her. Sure, she’d been a good lay. Okay, a hot lay. A sizzling hot, melt your boxers lay. But she’d been more than a lay. It’d gone beyond sex, and he couldn’t afford the danger she presented to his career and his emotions.

His body wanted her again, while his brain warned against it. Isaac didn’t know which one would be the stronger of the two. If he was stupid enough to be alone with Avery, all bets were off. He wanted to sink into her over and over again until all his pain melted away inside her moist heat, even if for a short while. She’d become his replacement drug, his painkiller, and all that after one hard, rough fuck on a couch in a horse barn.

Damn, he was all kinds of messed up. More than he’d been since before he’d taken his last drink. He didn’t need the kind of trouble that came from banging Cooper’s future sister-in-law.

Yet, he was pretty sure, he’d be all over that trouble given half the chance.

What idiot did that to himself when he could have any other woman he wanted?

Except lately he only wanted one woman.

And, yeah, he was that idiot.

* * * *

Avery cooled out Riot in the chilly, January sunshine. She sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Riding horses was better exercise than most people realized, and Riot had given Avery a good workout this morning with his sullen behavior and refusal to move forward. It’d taken every bit of her skill and patience to coax a decent ride out of him.

Pausing, Avery squinted into the rare winter sun, noting Tiffani once again drifting closer and closer to Isaac’s house—the same Isaac who’d been running laps with the precision of a machine, his strong legs carrying him around the hay field time and time again. Avery wasn’t the only woman at the barn who took an inordinate amount of time walking her horse or hand grazing it just to watch that man’s incredible body at work. His body was a work of art with ripped muscles straining under his sweatshirt, his handsome face drenched in sweat, and his mouth set in a grim, determined line.

Obviously, not even Tiffani was immune to his bad-boy magnetism. At least the poor girl had shown interest in something even if it was a baby step. Keeping her thoughts to herself, she didn’t grill Tiff when the teenager wandered back toward the barn with her horse in tow.

In fact, she almost fainted when Tiff shot her a tiny smile and said hi. What could a little flirtation with Isaac hurt if it made the girl feel a little better, as long as Isaac didn’t take it any further?

Even Avery knew such a thought was ludicrous. No matter what people said about Isaac, Avery didn’t believe for a second that he’d take advantage of a damaged teenager, especially not when he was just as damaged. He’d balk if she told him so, but the real Isaac was a noble guy with good intentions, even if he refused to acknowledge his basic decency.

She forced her attention back to Riot, as he lipped at the grass with disinterest. Every horse, especially one who spent his hours in a stall or a grassless paddock, went crazy over green grass, but not this one. She’d finished her ride on him, and he’d done everything she’d asked with his usual lackluster performance, unlike how he’d been several days. She’d failed him, unable to recapture their brief mojo. It’d almost be better if he hadn’t shown her what he could do because ignorance really was bliss in this case. If only she could find a way to draw him out again, relax like she had for those few short days, push away all the noise and bury herself in her horses.

But the noise wouldn’t go away. Nor would the nagging doubt of her abilities to produce consistent repeat performances. Not without—

She stopped that thought in its tracks. The last thing she needed would be to sleep with Isaac again just to get that mojo back. What woman slept with a hot, intense guy just to ease her tension?