Free One Man Rush by Joanne Rock Page A

been specifically listening for a pitch like that, figuring it would confirm that she was after the plans for his new 3-D graphics chip.
    But apparently, he’d missed it.
    “I said we’d make the perfect couple,” she retorted. “Remember? You don’t listen enough and I talk too much. I thought it sounded perfect. As an added bonus, you don’t stare down my dress and you haven’t paid me a bunch of ridiculous compliments meant to get me into bed. And for some reason—maybe because you don’t seem like you’re trying to impress me—I don’t feel intimidated to say what I think with you.”
    She tried to turn the car over, but since the engine was already running, it made a scraping, squealing sound.
    “Stacy.” He had zero experience with hysterical females since he’d never incited this much emotion from a woman outside of bed. He wasn’t quite sure what to do next.
    Could he have read the situation wrong? What if she wasn’t a spy and she was just a very unusual beauty with an overprotective father and a matchmaker trying to call the shots?
    “Sorry again about trying to break into your van.” Putting the transmission into drive, she kept her foot on the brake and met his gaze under the buzzing fluorescent glow of a street lamp. Her eye makeup had smudged under one eye. “Goodbye, Isaac Reynolds.”
    Tearing out of the lot, she left him shaking his head and wondering what had just happened. As spy missions went, she’d obviously failed. But on the off chance that she hadn’t been sent to learn his company’s secrets, it was he who’d messed up royally. No man with red blood in his veins and a few functional brain cells would let a woman like that get away.
    A woman who might have been attracted to him.
    The possibility blew his mind.
    The only thing left to do was run a check on her and see what he found. Because if she wasn’t working for the competition, Isaac had a new goal in life, the first that didn’t have anything to do with his business model. He’d chase his sexy, futuristic spaceship captain all the way back to her home planet if he had to. He’d do whatever it took to get her back.

6
    BLADES FLYING OVER THE ICE, Kyle Murphy deked two defensemen, protecting the puck as if it was his firstborn. Beating the competition, he came face-to-face with the goalie, a rare one-on-one shot opportunity. An opportunity he excelled at creating. Lifting his stick, he faked a drive to the body, refired and…missed the goal all together.
    For a moment, his teammates seemed too surprised to react. That shot was his bread and butter. The money shot.
    Didn’t matter that this was a practice. He practiced like he played, and he always made that frigging shot.
    Curses streamed from his mouth, rare for him even though the practice arena was frequently filled with creative and functional swearing alike.
    Behind him, the coach’s whistle blew to end practice. Leandre Archambault had the audacity to clap him on the back.
    “Tough shot, Murphy.” He almost kept a straight face when he said it.
    Bastard.
    “Ignore him.” Axel was in his face before Kyle could fire back something he’d regret.
    The Finn dropped a heavy arm around Kyle’s shoulders and steered him away from their teammates as they headed toward the tunnel to the locker rooms and workout facility.
    A foul mood had dogged him ever since he and Marissa had exchanged a terse good-night when he’d dropped her off at her car yesterday. He’d hoped that a good hard practice this morning would take the edge off, but if anything, he felt fiercer than ever.
    “I don’t miss that shot,” he told Ax, even though his foster brother knew it as well as he did. “Leandre isn’t taking the starting position from me because of one missed goal. I’m not worried about him. But I don’t know what the hell went wrong just now, and that…”
    Scares the crap out of me.
    He didn’t finish the sentence because he didn’t need to. Ax would understand