Tangled Up in Love (30 page)

His mouth quirked in a hint of a smile. “I know. But thanks, anyway. The naked knitting lessons, especially, really paid off.”

A flush of heat suffused her cheeks at the reminder. She’d known that would come back to bite her in the butt someday—and not in the good way.

“Yeah, yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes and hoping he wouldn’t notice her blushing. “You’re lucky I didn’t take the opportunity to do a little amateur acupuncture with the needles. And you still owe me that thousand bucks.”

He gave a bark of laughter and slapped her on the thigh. His touch alone sent her temperature rising by a good ten degrees. Having him treat her with such familiarity, as though they were buddies—or lovers—shocked her into losing her breath altogether.

“That’s my Ronnie, always quick with a comeback
and ready to do bodily injury, if necessary. Don’t worry, you’ll get your money.”

He continued talking . . . she knew this because she watched his lips move . . . but for a moment, all she could hear was a loud ringing and the echo of him saying,
That’s my Ronnie.
Over and over, the comment played through her head like a scratched record. And her heart skipped a beat wondering if he meant it, or if it had been merely an off-the-cuff figure of speech.

As her hearing began to clear, he said, “No, I want to say thank you for suggesting that I ask Zack about an exclusive. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself a lot sooner. He agreed, though, and we conducted the interview earlier this week.”

He shifted beside her, his leg bumping into hers as he leaned his arms on his knees and rubbed his hands together almost nervously. “I’ve already been shopping it around.”

This was good news, right? Ronnie’s nose wrinkled. It
sounded
like good news, but then, why was he fidgeting and acting so uncomfortable?

“I’m glad,” she said carefully. “I hope you get some good nibbles.”

Pushing up from the couch, he stalked across the room, digging his hands into the back pockets of his jeans as he began to pace.

“That’s the thing,” he muttered, pointedly avoiding her gaze. “I already got some nibbles. More than nibbles—I got huge, marlin-sized yanks on the line. As soon as word got around that I’d gotten an exclusive, candid interview with the Rockets’ star goalie, my phone started ringing off the hook. At work and at home.”

As the speed of his words increased, so did his strides.
And then suddenly, without warning, he stopped and spun in her direction. Eyes locking on hers, he said, “I got an offer from
Sports Weekly
.”

She was still digesting that information when he rushed forward and plopped down on the sofa beside her again, this time on her other side, forcing her to shift to hold his gaze.

“
Sports Weekly,
Ronnie. Can you believe that? They’re only, like, the most popular sports magazine after
Sports Illustrated
.”

A smile spilled across her face before she could think to stop it. Not that she would have; she was truly happy for him. It seemed they’d both been offered their dream jobs in the same week.

“Congratulations,” she said, and meant it. Then, even though she suspected she already knew the answer, she asked, “Are you going to take it?”

He’d be crazy not to. The same way she’d be crazy not to take the job in Chicago.

His head bobbed in a nod. “I already gave my two weeks’ notice at the
Herald
.”

Her grin broadened and she leaned in to hug him. He felt amazing—hot and hard and oh, so inviting.

She tried not to let her hunger or her growing sense of loss slip into her voice when she said, “Good for you. You deserve it, and I know you’re going to love covering all those games and interviewing all those sports figures. It’s what you’ve always wanted, right?”

His arms around her back tightened and she closed her eyes, swallowing hard as emotions threatened to overtake her.

“Yeah,” he whispered softly just above her ear. “It’s
going to mean a lot of traveling, though, following different teams through each sports season.”

“You’ll get used to it,” she told him, forcing a brusqueness into her voice that she didn’t particularly feel. “And after a while, I’ll bet you even start to like it.”

She gave his shoulder a firm pat, pulling away before she did something stupid like spill her heart out or jump his bones for one last ride on the train to O-town.

“I’ve got some news, too, actually,” she continued, tucking a strand of hair that had come loose from its knot behind one ear.

She hadn’t actually made up her mind until that very moment, but now that she knew Dylan would be out of town more often than he was home, that he was about to embark on the career he’d always wanted . . . she couldn’t stay here and watch that without either going insane with jealousy or succumbing to her need to throw herself at his feet, so it was better to follow his lead and get the hell out of Dodge.

Pasting a wide smile on her face, she pitched her voice an octave higher than her mood would naturally convey and announced, “I’m moving to Chicago.”

Dylan felt as though he’d been dropped from a very tall building and had yet to land. His vision narrowed, going dark at the edges while his hearing went haywire, fading in and out like a hard-to-tune radio station.

Ronnie was moving? To Chicago?

Since when?

“I got a new job offer, too,” she said, doing that eerie thing where she read his mind. “At the
Chicago City News
. It’s a more prominent paper, better money, will provide me with better career opportunities. So it’s, you know . . . good. Just what I’ve always wanted, too.”

Yeah, it was just freaking fantastic. Just what she’d always wanted.

Except that she wasn’t supposed to want to leave Cleveland.

Okay, he’d known that was part of her agenda practically from the beginning because it went hand in hand with climbing the ladder to success, but still . . .

She wasn’t supposed to want to leave Cleveland, because she was supposed to want to be with him. He was supposed to have won her over with his sophisticated charm and out-of-this-world sexual prowess.

Dammit. Hell, damn, shit, fuck.

This wasn’t going at all the way he’d imagined. In fact, it was so far off track, he might as well be in Siberia.

Think, Stone. Get your ass out of the fire and back into the frying pan.

“This is great,” Ronnie went on, bouncing to her feet. “We’re both starting new jobs, turning new corners in our careers and our lives. It’s amazing how things turn out sometimes, isn’t it?”

She had her arms wrapped snuggly around her waist, emphasizing the generous curve of her breasts where some goofy-looking monkey had its finger stuffed up its nose.

How was it even possible for that to turn him on?

Maybe it had something to do with knowing the exact size and shape and feel of the breasts the stupid chimp was pressed up against, and being able to see the slightest hint of nipple through the gray cotton.

Taking a deep breath, he clenched his fists to keep from running a hand down the front of his trousers in an effort to rein in his raging libido, and forced himself to focus on the little fragments of his life that were currently breaking apart and spinning out of control.

Now, what had she been saying? Oh, yeah. That their lives were coming together so well, and they should both be so happy.

Screw that. A new job wasn’t going to make him happy. It wasn’t going to make her happy, either. Neither was moving across two states.

And if she
was
happy about it, then she wouldn’t be standing there looking pale and pinched and hugging herself like her pet parakeet had just died.

He knew her well enough by now to recognize that the smile on her face was for his benefit, not her own. His heart lifted as that knowledge seeped into his bones, making him push back his shoulders, straighten his spine, and puff his chest out just an inch or two. He grinned, brimming with renewed determination.

“Actually,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure it’s as great as you think.”

Her phony smile faltered. “What do you mean?”

“Well, see,” he drawled, taking half a step forward to crowd her, “I didn’t come over here just to tell you about
Sports Weekly
.”

Her voice was soft and reed-thin when she said, “You didn’t?”

“Nope.”

Another step forward. She licked her lips and took a nervous step back. It took all the self-control he could muster not to flash a wide grin before grabbing her up and kissing her senseless.

Moving at the speed of molasses, he leaned in, amused when she leaned back, then over until he could reach the paper sack he’d left on the floor while they’d eaten. Straightening, he noticed that her chocolate-brown eyes had gone round in wariness.

God, she was just too adorable for words. And so easy, he could tease her for days if he weren’t chomping at the bit to get this over with and move on to better, sweatier things.

The paper bag crinkled as he opened the top and dug inside. “I came to give you this.”

Ronnie’s heart froze in her chest and refused to beat as she watched him pull the long, black scarf he’d knit for their challenge out of the plain brown sack. She’d
missed the extra bag when he’d first arrived, assuming it was more Chinese food. But now . . .

She swallowed hard, reaching out to touch the soft alpaca yarn he’d used to make the scarf. Her fingers skimmed the even stitches of the simple pattern.

It was beautiful. She knew how much trouble he’d had getting the hang of knitting at first and was sure if she looked closely enough, she would spot imperfect or dropped stitches here or there. But none of that took away from its inherent allure, made even more special by the fact that he was giving the scarf to her.

“For me?” she asked, embarrassed to hear the hitch in her voice and felt tears rising to the surface.

“For you,” Dylan said gently, his own voice sounding less than 100 percent steady.

Raising her head, she met his gaze and prayed he wouldn’t notice how close she was to a total meltdown. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to move to Chicago. Unless you agree to let me relocate with you,” he added almost as an afterthought. “Because I don’t want what we have to be some forbidden, temporary fling that we have to keep a secret for fear of ruining our reputations as mortal enemies. I want to be able to walk into The Penalty Box and kiss the smart-ass attitude out of you any damn time I please, regardless of who might be looking.”

His big, strong hands curled around her elbows and tugged her closer, until her breasts brushed his chest and her knees bumped against his. “I came over here to tell you about my new job because
you
made it possible.
You
drove me to do something I don’t think I’d have done on my own. I didn’t come to gloat, I came
to . . . Well, to let you know that there will be a lot of traveling involved in working for the magazine, and to make sure that would be okay with you.”

“Why . . .” The word came out as a squeak and she stopped to clear her throat before trying again. “Why would you care if it was okay with me or not?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. “Hand-knit scarves obviously keep your brain from running on all cylinders. I’ll have to remember that the next time I want to win an argument. It will also give me an excuse to continue with the knitting.”

Her brows began to draw together, but he kissed her there before a full-blown case of annoyance could develop. “It matters because I was kind of hoping you’d move in with me. Or let me move in here. Either way, I want us to give this thing between us a go. See if our compatibility in the bedroom can carry over into everyday life.”

Her heart had gone from a dead stop to beating almost out of control. It felt as though the organ was pounding its way up her throat, blocking both the air to her lungs and the blood to her brain.

“Are you asking me to . . .”

“Move in with me,”
he stressed, his expression going very serious and a little green around the gills for a second. “Be my girlfriend. Date seriously. See where things go.”

Ronnie bit back a laugh, the sudden break of the pressure building inside her leaving her feeling light-headed and relieved for the first time in several long, excruciating minutes.

If ever there was a man determined to avoid the M-word, Dylan was it. Rather than being offended,
though, as many women might be, she was happy to avoid it, too. Just finding out that he didn’t want their time together to end was enough to make her want to jump up on the coffee table and do a little striptease.

And maybe later, depending on how the rest of this conversation went, she would.

“So you think we should bury the hatchet, both privately and publicly,” she said carefully, still fingering the scarf in his hands. He’d added a bit of fringe at the ends, which was even softer than the rest of the more tightly knitted stitches. “Put an end to our competitions and stop making each other do crazy, embarrassing things just to prove who has the bigger set of brass ones.”

“Yeah,” he said, the ghost of a smile snaking across his face. “I gladly concede defeat in that department. We won’t have much of an outlet for goading each other if we’re both writing for different media, anyway. Besides . . .” His smile widened and he gave her a sexy, toe-curling wink. “It would probably be more fun to work out our aggressions in other ways. Say, like making our way through the Kama Sutra.”

He wiggled his brows like a dirty old man, sending her into peals of laughter. Her head fell back and her arms came up to twine around his neck.

“That’s a mighty tempting offer,” she murmured, unable to keep the joy from spilling out of her heart and into her eyes, across her mouth. “But I have a confession to make.”

His lips pressed against her own, their soft warmth tempting her even more than his previous suggestion.

“What’s that?” he asked, continuing to rub and nibble.

“I don’t want to move to Chicago.”