Free Underneath It All (Storm Series) by Cassandra Carr Page B

first time Sarah had them over, before she and Sebastian had become an item, she’d burned her hand taking dinner out of the oven and he’d been forced to wait in the living room while Sebastian tried to kiss her and make it better.
    “A true wingman, huh?”
    “Yeah. The sacrifices I make for my friends…”
    Sebastian returned. “All good.”
    “You know,” Rob told Alaina. “I tried to buy Sebastian a ‘swear word of the day’ calendar for Christmas, but he actually didn’t need any help in that department. Apparently hockey players the world over are fluent in swear.”
    Alaina laughed , and Rob grinned at Sebastian, feeling more than a little smug. The man’s eyebrows had practically grown into his hair as he watched the interplay between him and Alaina. His friends had probably expected to have to push the two of them together.
    Nope, bro. I got game.
    Dinner was better than Rob expected. The meal was delicious, that part didn’t surprise him in the least; but Sarah and Sebastian behaved themselves, and he actually found himself feeling grateful to them as he learned a lot about Alaina from the questions they asked, though the niggle of guilt about how he’d sucked face with her rather than trying to get to know her better, wouldn’t go away. Since the team had practice the next day and she had school, they left shortly after nine.
    After he drove her home, Rob walked Alaina to the door of her apartment, shoving his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t push her against the thing and take her mouth again. I might need to look into a 12-step program for kissaholics if this keeps up.
    Taking a deep breath to calm his raging libido, he asked, “Can I call you? Maybe we can grab dinner, just the two of us?”
    “Yeah, that’d be fun. And t hank you for today. The entire thing was a dream come true. The kids are going to be so excited when they see everything. I’m guessing all we’ll achieve tomorrow is a rearrangement of the classroom. They’ll be too keyed up to do anything else.”
    “I didn’t think about that. Do you want to hide the stuff until the weekend? I should have some time to help you set everything up. Maybe we can coerce, I mean, request Sebastian and Sarah’s presence too.”
    “No, it’s fine,” she said, waving his concern away. “ The day will be like their birthdays and Christmas all wrapped into one, times about a hundred. I’d like to give them that.”
    “You’re the boss. Be sure you take pictures.” Motioning behind her, he said, “Better get inside. The urge to kiss you isn’t going away, and we both have big days tomorrow.”
    “Oh.” She ducked her head, smiling. “Well, then.” She fit her key into the lock. Once she had the door open, she turned back. “Goodnight, Rob.”
    “Goodnight.”
    Alaina ran her fingertips down the side of his face then over his lips, where he captured her fingers with his hand and kissed them. After pulling away, she waved and went inside.
    As he returned to his truck, his thoughts were swirling. Clearly, at this point, they didn’t know each other well enough to make any hasty judgments, but had he finally found someone? A flashback to the looks shared by his friends over dinner tonight brought a smile. What would sharing the same intimacy with Alaina be like?
     
    ~ * ~

     
    FOUR
     
     
     
    The next game was a t home against Colorado, a team that wasn’t in the Storm’s conference, and the temptation to take it easy, to conserve his energy for other games was there, but Rob never gave in to the lure. Come April, the two points the Storm would get by winning this game could turn out to be the deciding factor between the team making the playoffs versus missing them, or between getting home-ice advantage versus having to deal with pumped-up away crowds.
    One of his friends from junior s played for Colorado, and before the game in the hallway outside the visitors’ locker room, Rob spoke with him briefly. They were