Free Heart and Snow (Texas Highlanders Ice Hockey) by Suzan Butler Page A

shrugged, his heart in his throat. Was it getting warm? Too close. Too close. “Not sure. He’s been edgy lately. He left the signing early too.”
    “Yeah.”
    Silence fell over them as Gavin pulled the car from the parking spot and started the drive home. They didn’t live far from the practice arena, but it was just long enough to make Gavin completely uncomfortable. He was fooling himself thinking that Misha would ever think of him as anything more than a friend.
    “Heard about Vince?”
    Gavin nodded. “Yeah.” The man had had some heart problems lately. He’d gone in for a routine visit, and the doctor had sent him to the emergency room. Ellie had taken over for her father, something Gavin was sure she hadn’t expected to have to do while she was in school. “Sucks.”
    “You want to drink tonight?” Misha’s soft Russian accent filled his ears.
    Between the sound of his low voice, the spicy scent of his cologne, and the way his arm muscles flexed when he moved, Gavin was sure he was going to self-combust in the driver’s seat.
    “I think I’m gonna stay in.”
    He gripped the wheel, so hard his knuckles were white. Dying. That’s all there was to it. Gavin was going to burn up and die. Right there in the driver’s seat.
    He nearly groaned out loud when he pulled into their garage and got out of the car. He sucked in a deep breath of non-Misha-saturated air. He needed to get a hold of himself.
    “What’s wrong with you?” Misha asked as he shut the passenger side door behind him. He peered over the SUV, a peculiar frown on his face. “You’re all weird this afternoon.”
    “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me.”
    I’d like to be sucking your face right now, but you currently think I’m straight . He clenched his jaw and walked around the car. He pulled open the entrance into the house and walked through, not bothering to shut it behind him since Misha was following him in.
    “Pfft. Please. Go take a nap, and then we go out tonight.”
    “I don’t know, Misha.”
    “Let’s get a girl. Bring her back for good times.” Gavin glanced at Misha, who wiggled his eyebrows with that stupid goofy smile on his face.
    “You said you weren’t comfortable with the threesome thing.”
    Gavin was comfortable with it.. God, he was too comfortable with it. Being so close to Misha… a soft pliable body of feminine grace between them. Rubbing against him, even accidentally. It sent a thrill through him.
    Misha shrugged. “It was fun. We try again?”
    Oh, that would be such a damn mistake. His self-control was crumbling as it was, and Misha, damn him, was tempting the fuck out of him.
    “I don’t—”
    “Oh, come on. We hit the Penalty Box.”
    Misha grinned at him, and walked away. As soon as Misha was out of earshot, Gavin braced himself against the door to the garage and groaned. What was Misha thinking? A threesome? The last time they’d involved themselves in a threesome, Gavin thought he was going to come in his pants in the first thirty seconds after Misha had gotten naked. The girl was hot too, but Gavin’s mind had been all about Misha.
    He was doomed.
    *~*~*
    Jo sat down on the couch with a hot chocolate. She wished she’d thought to pack the Bailey’s in with her clothes. Her mother’s no alcohol rule was killing her and Christmas wasn’t for another day. She pulled her sock-covered feet up under her and arranged the plaid throw over her legs.
    There was something about being home with family, as irritating as they were, that made her feel better. Safe. Stress had been eating away at her sanity for the last few weeks, and she was ready for it to go.
    Michele came in the room, with a matching hot chocolate cup with her. Michele was one of those people that were just naturally hard to get along with. She loved her sister, but she always thought more about herself than the family.
    Michele plopped down on the couch next to her. “So.”
    “So.” Jo returned.