She shrugged.
The waitress set their milkshakes in front of them, Duncan’s vanilla and her strawberry. Amber pulled hers toward her and she picked up the straw. When she ripped off one paper end, then put it to her mouth and blew the wrapper at him, hitting him dead in the chest, he burst out laughing.
Fuck. He might be in love.
Amber dropped her straw into the thick milkshake and closed her lips around it, never taking her eyes off Duncan.
“You’re killing me,” he said, his voice constricted.
The milkshake was thick and her cheeks hollowed as she sucked on the straw. “Mmm. This is a good milkshake.”
She was torturing him, but in reality she was torturing both of them. Liquid heat gathered between her thighs, her pelvis full and achy. Her breasts ached too.
“I need to eat,” she continued. “You want me to keep my strength up, right?”
He swallowed. “Oh yeah.”
“Try your milkshake.”
“Oh. Right.” He ripped open his own straw and plunged it into the thick drink. When he sucked on it she watched him with the same focus he’d given her. “Good.”
“Vanilla’s kind of boring, isn’t it?”
His lips twitched. “Are you talking about the milkshake?”
Heat flushed into her face. “Yes!”
“Uh-huh. Well, I like vanilla milkshakes…”
His tone and the way he ended the sentence implied that when it came to other things he wasn’t so vanilla…
Geez mama. Her * gave a hard contraction. She licked her bottom lip, and Duncan’s eyes dropped there, making her insides do a little flip-flop. She sucked down more of her cold milkshake. Duncan grinned.
“I watched part of your game last night,” she blurted.
“Oh yeah?” One of his eyebrows arched. “I thought you didn’t watch hockey.”
Damn. “I was curious. I saw you score.”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t understand some of it,” she admitted.
“I can teach you about the game.”
“I’m not really interested.”
His face closed up and his gaze dropped to the table. “Right. Sure.”
Shit. She’d said that to protect herself and instead had offended him. “I mean, I’m just not interested in any sports. Professional sports.” Or professional athletes. Except this one, apparently, this sweet, sexy guy sitting across from her, drinking a vanilla milkshake and waiting for his cheeseburger.
Shit.
“I get that,” he said quietly. “Not a lot of women like watching sports.”
“I keep saying the wrong thing around you.”
He looked up at her.
“I didn’t mean to insult your profession. I just…” Now she dropped her gaze. “It’s just me.”
“It’s okay. Really. Everybody’s interested in different things. You like cities, I like the country. You like…strawberry, I like vanilla.”
Her throat tightened for some strange reason. Then their waitress appeared with their meals. “Anything else for you two?”
“No thanks.”
Her sandwich looked great, reminding her that she was starving. She picked up the golden toasted pieces of bread surrounding perfectly fried eggs, ketchup oozing out one side, while Duncan lifted his cheeseburger.
“This is awesome,” she said moments later. “How’s your burger?”
“Great.”
He caught her eyeing the pile of French fries on his plate. “Have some.”
“Thanks.” She grinned and snatched a couple. “I should have ordered my own.”
She finished off her sandwich, stole a few more of his fries, then sucked back the rest of her milkshake.
“I like how you eat,” Duncan said.
“Uh…thanks. I like food.”
“You don’t diet?”
She made a face. “No. I know I’m lucky, and maybe it’ll change when I get older, but I never put on weight. On the other hand, if I’d really wanted a modeling career, like runway modeling, I’d probably have to lose ten or fifteen pounds. I’m not sure I could do that.”
“Christ. You’d be a skeleton.”
“Yup. Clothes look best hanging on a skeleton, sadly.”
“But you get work looking the way you do.”
“Yes. Mostly thanks to Easton.”
“Your roommate.”
“Yeah. He’s a photographer. He helped me get some jobs when I moved to Chicago. It’s really helped financially.”
He nodded. “I was lucky I had a hockey scholarship.”
“You went to college?”
“Yeah, but only two years. I got drafted when I was in college. I stayed another year after that, but then I wanted to play pro. I felt I was ready. The Aces felt I was ready.”
“What were you studying?”
“Eh. A bunch of different things. I knew I just wanted to play hockey, but I took some history courses, economics, psychology.”
“Wow. Right, you mentioned you like history.”
“Yeah. But I never got my degree.”
“You could still do it. You could take courses in the summers.”
“Yeah. I guess I could. Somehow my summers seem to fill up, though.”