What the hell had she been thinking?

“Eek!”

Why did she agree to this?

“Ack!”

Why didn’t she just say “no”? Or even “hell no”?

“Ow!”

Like her father had constantly told her, “You don’t think before you do, then you’re shocked when you end up on the wrong side of a shit pile.” As always, the cranky old wolf was right, and she’d ended up on the wrong side of a big, fat shit pile.

Blayne tried to duck, but the hard piece of plastic slammed into the back of her head. “That’s it!” she roared, positive her skull must have cracked in several places from that hit. What good was a helmet if it couldn’t protect her precious cranium from small, flying, lethal objects? “That is it! I’m done!”

She tried to shake off the two different gloves she had to wear, one for blocking and one for catching the puck, but he’d taped the damn things on her with duct tape since they were too big.

After wearing nothing more than elbow and knee pads and some glitter with her derby uniform of tiny shorts and tank tops, she felt completely weighed down by the hockey equipment. Even worse, she had to use Bo’s grade school stuff, which was still too big for her! Plus she couldn’t see with the damn helmet that kept sliding all over the place. Christ! How big was this guy’s head anyway? She did, however, have the lovely bright red—and sparkly!—skates he’d gotten for her. She loved the skates. But that was all she loved about this vicious, violent sport!

“I can’t do this anymore!” She struggled to get the helmet off, not easy when she couldn’t get off the gloves, which meant she couldn’t get a grip on the strap holding the helmet in place.

Bo skated by her, not appearing to weigh his just-shy-of four hundred pounds by the way he managed to glide.

“Wuss,” he teased as he glided by again.

She snarled, her arms dropping to her sides. “I am not a wuss. I am simply tired of being pummeled by that damn puck.” For hours! He’d been torturing her for hours! She was hungry and cranky and covered in little puck-size bruises!

“Just a girl,” Bo tossed out as he skated around her in sexy little circles. She couldn’t explain why they were sexy, but damn him they were! “Can’t play in the man sports. You’ll need to stick with your little girly derby.”

Blayne swiped up the junior hockey stick and swung at Bo. He caught the curved end of her stick with his own and skated backward, pulling her along with him.

“You,” she hissed, “couldn’t handle derby. The Babes would eat you alive and you know it.”

“Could I wear those shorts?”

She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. The image of him in the Assault and Battery ParkBabes short-shorts would stick with her for eternity.

Bo pulled Blayne around the pond without looking behind him. He’d worked this pond so much as a kid, he instinctively knew its dimensions, so he didn’t need to look.

“You trained on this pond, didn’t you?” Blayne asked. “When you were a kid?”

“Yup. I came out here every day before school and after, during the winter.”

“You miss it, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“You should visit more. I’m sure your uncle would love to have you.”

“Blayne—”

“I’m just saying.”

“Don’t.”

“Everyone loves having you back. You’re the town hero.”

“And you know this because . . .”

“Bob Sherman told me.”

So startled, Bo almost tripped. “Bob Sherman?” he asked. “Who runs the gas station?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why were you talking to him?”

“I bought bottled water from him this morning during my run—I put it on your account by the way—after I chatted with Craig and Luther Vanders outside of the farmer’s market.”

“You talked to Craig and Luther?”

“Yeah. They’re really nice. Gave me free fruit.”

“They gave you free fruit?”

“Yup. I offered to run back to Grigori’s place to get some money, but they said it wasn’t necessary. They really are sweet.”

And stingy. Craig and Luther were stingy bears. They didn’t give anything away for free. A pear, a strawberry, a peanut. Nothing!

Instead of asking about the Vanders brothers, he asked about Bob Sherman, also referred to as Mean Old Bob Sherman or That Old Bastard Bob Sherman. “You talked to Bob Sherman? And he . . . talked back?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t feel bad because you can’t do that. Not everyone has that skill.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Be chatty and friendly. I’m a firm believer not everyone needs to be, and it really irritates me when people try to force others to do it. Like they’re not being normal if they’re not talking, talking, talking.”

“Uh-huh.”

“More important,” she went on since nothing ever deterred the woman from her ultimate goal, “if you’re staying with your uncle when you visit, you won’t have to talk to anyone but him. And the most you two do in the mornings is grunt at each other. So it’s a win-win for both of you.”

“You’re not clear on the whole ‘letting it go’ concept, are you?”