Would he? Could he?
He cleared his throat. “Hockey is the only thing I’ve ever been any good at.” It was oddly uncomfortable to admit that weakness to Mel. Usually he had no problems admitting weakness in everything that wasn’t hockey. Call him foolish or stupid or selfish—he’d agree with it all easy enough.
But something about admitting the whole of what he was worth to Mel seemed a stupid thing to do. He wished the words back into his mouth as he pushed the green beans around on his plate. “How can I not worry about that?” he grumbled, irritated with himself, with Scott, with her, with fucking Montana and its damn mountains everywhere.
“I doubt hockey is the only thing you’re good at.”
The weak compliment was enough to smooth some of the edges of his frustration. If Mel was complimenting him, surely all wasn’t lost. “Well, sure.” He took a bite of his steak, chewed thoughtfully. Remembering the way she’d kissed him this morning, remembering the fact that he’d said no. He had been in charge there. “You know, I’m pretty good at sex too.”
She choked on her water, then glared at him. “That’s an off-limits topic.”
“Off-limits, huh? I don’t know. I was thinking maybe we should revisit the…uh…what did you call it? Some kind of moratorium.” Yeah, maybe they should revisit that after all.
“Too late.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. It is.” She pulled the napkin out of her lap and wiped her mouth. “Now, if you’d hurry up? We’ve wasted an entire morning on nothing, and you have a limited use of my services. You want to be good at something, Dan? You’re going to have to try. You’re going to have to care. And you’re going to have to not get on my bad side.”
Try. Care. Two things he stayed away from outside of an ice rink. Hell, even inside a rink sometimes.
“I can’t promise the last one,” he said. She made an exasperated sound. “But let’s try the first two. I’m going to need a book store.”
“You need to work, not read.”
“Knowledge is power, Mel.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ll be lucky to get a fence in come August at this rate.”
He didn’t say anything, instead focusing on finishing his steak. When he’d decided he wanted to go pro like Dad, he’d followed his father’s footsteps inch by inch, so he hadn’t had to come up with a plan of his own—there had been a route already laid out to follow.
Wouldn’t Mel be surprised when he came up with his own road map? Okay, he’d probably be a little surprised too, and he might even fuck it up.
But if he was going to care, why not try?
Chapter 8
“I’m going to start a llama ranch.”
Mel blinked. She had barely gotten out of her truck when Dan blasted her with…what? “It’s a little early to be drinking.” The past three days had been relatively normal after their little blip a few mornings ago.
Dan had been quiet, a good worker, doing whatever she told him to do. No flirting, no sex talk. He had been the perfect gentleman.
It had been weird, actually, but she figured he’d just set his mind to trying to be good at this ranching thing. She’d been thankful that he was over being all…purposefully charming and crap.
But apparently he hadn’t been focusing on getting the more dilapidated parts of his ranch in working order. Instead, he’d been thinking about llamas.
Possibly he’d been abducted by aliens, or hippies.
“I’m not drinking. I’ve been researching.”
“Researching llamas?” She squinted at him in the early morning light, confused that he was carrying a book. Even more confused that he was wearing glasses. “Researching llamas and wearing glasses. Are you okay? There’s this thing called the mountain crazies around here—I think you’ve come down with it.”
“I do not have the mountain crazies.” When she kept staring at his glasses, he yanked them off his face. “So, I don’t see well close up. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“Oh my God, you’re so old you need cheaters.” It was such a hilariously un-super-hot Dan thing, she all but giggled. “You have old-guy eyes.”
“I do not have old-guy eyes. I have astigmatism. Kind of.”
This time she couldn’t help herself—she did giggle. Not the sound of an in-control, take-charge kind of woman, but he was so flustered by his “kind-of” astigmatism. “Sure you do, Dad.”
The baffled indignation on his face morphed into one of those sharp, sexy looks that made her completely forget the glasses in his hands. He smirked. “Look, I’m all for pet names, but let’s not get weird.”
She rolled her eyes. “So, we’re back to that.”
“Back to what?”
“All your lame sexual innuendo.”
“Hey, my sexual innuendo is not lame.”