Pucking Around With My Ex's Older Brother

Chapter 5

Lena's POV

There were men with cameras pointed at my bedroom window, and Rhys was standing in his hallway pretending his phone had not just buzzed twice in ten seconds. I watched him through the cracked guest room door while I folded my one good sweater, and his jaw was tight enough to crack teeth.

He slipped the phone into his pocket and looked up, and he caught me watching, and he did not even flinch.

He said, "Everything okay."

I said, "No, you tell me, is everything okay."

He walked over, slow, and stopped in my doorway with his hands loose at his sides, like he was trying very hard to look casual.

He said, "You need anything, towels, charger."

I said, "I need you to stop lying to me, who keeps texting you."

He hesitated for half a beat, too long for a man who usually answers fast, and then he said, "Team stuff."

I said, "Team stuff at nine at night, on a game off day."

He said, "Silas."

I crossed my arms, and I said, "Try again."

He stared at me for a long moment, and then he sighed, quiet, and he pulled his phone back out and turned the screen toward me.

It was a photo, grainy and zoomed in, two men in a black SUV, and one of them was holding a long lens aimed up, aimed right at this building, right at this floor.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

I said, "Is that now."

He said, "Twenty minutes ago."

I said, "Are they press."

He said, "No."

I said, "Then who."

He said, "I do not know yet, but they will be gone by morning."

I stepped back from the window fast, like they could see me through the blinds, and my hands were shaking again.

He said, "Hey, breathe, the glass is tinted, they cannot see in."

I said, "That does not make me feel better."

He said, "I know, I am sorry."

I sat down hard on the edge of the guest bed, and the mattress was too soft and too big and it smelled like clean laundry and him.

I said, "This is because of last night, right, the kiss."

He said, "Partly."

I said, "What is the other part."

He said, "My last name."

I looked up at him, and he was still standing in my doorway like he was afraid to come in, and that was ridiculous, because this was his house, his bed, his life I had crashed into.

I said, "You said fake date me, you said three weeks, you said rules in private, so let's do rules."

He blinked, surprised, and then he nodded once.

He said, "Okay."

I patted the bed next to me before I could talk myself out of it, and I said, "Sit, you are making me nervous looming like that."

He sat, careful to leave a foot of space between us, and the mattress dipped under his weight, and I felt it all the way up my spine.

I said, "Rule one, no touching unless I say so, you already said that, I am holding you to it."

He said, "Done."

I said, "Rule two, in public we sell it, hands, kissing for cameras if we have to, whatever keeps the league off my back, but in private we are roommates, nothing more."

Something flickered across his face, fast, and then it was gone.

He said, "Whatever you want."

I said, "Rule three, you tell me the truth, even if it is bad, especially if it is bad, no more team stuff lies."

He was quiet for a second, and then he said, "Okay."

I said, "Rule four, this ends in three weeks, clean break, no weirdness, I go back to work, you go back to hockey, we pretend the kiss never happened."

He did not answer right away, and the silence stretched thin between us.

He said, "Okay."

His voice was flat, and I told myself that was good, that was professional, that was exactly what I wanted.

I said, "Rule five, no other women while we are doing this, fake or not, I am not getting humiliated again."

His eyes snapped to mine, sharp, and he said, "There is no one else, there has not been anyone else in three years."

My breath caught, stupid and loud, and I tried to cover it with a cough.

I said, "Three years."

He said, "Do not ask me questions you do not want real answers to, Lena."

I said, "Fine, rule six, you do not get to say things like that, it messes with the fake part."

He almost smiled, barely there, and he said, "Noted."

I pulled the little hotel notepad I found in the nightstand into my lap, and I started writing the rules down with a shaky hand, numbering them neat.

He watched me write, quiet, and then he said, "You missed one."

I said, "What."

He said, "Rule seven, you do not leave this penthouse alone, not for coffee, not for a run, nowhere, if you need something I go with you or Marco goes with you."

I said, "That is controlling."

He said, "That is me keeping you alive while men with cameras sit outside my building."

I chewed on the end of the pen, thinking, and then I wrote it down.

I said, "Fine, rule seven, bodyguard mode, but only for three weeks."

He said, "Deal."

I tore the page out and held it between us, and I said, "Sign it."

He stared at the paper like I had handed him a bomb, and then he took the pen from my fingers, slow, his knuckles brushing mine, and he signed his name under mine, big and messy and confident.

Rhys Maddox.

Seeing it under mine made my stomach flip for no good reason.

He handed the pen back, and our fingers touched again, and neither of us moved right away.

He said, "Anything else."

I said, "Yeah, rule eight, stop looking at me like that."

He said, "Like what."

I said, "Like you know exactly what I am thinking."

He leaned in half an inch, just enough that I could smell his soap, and he said, "Do you want me to stop."

My mouth went dry, and I said, "Yes."

He said, "Liar."

I shoved the rules paper at his chest, flustered, and I said, "Sign the back too, just in case."

He laughed, quiet and low, a real laugh this time, not the cold captain laugh he used for reporters, and the sound did something stupid to my chest.

He signed the back, slow and deliberate, and then he stood up, putting proper space back between us, like he knew exactly how close I was to breaking rule one myself.

He said, "Dinner in twenty, I ordered Thai, hope that is okay."

I said, "You remembered."

He said, "I remember everything about you, Lena."

He walked out before I could answer that, and the door clicked shut soft behind him, and I flopped back onto the bed and pressed my hands to my hot face.

The rules paper was still crumpled in my fist, seven rules, eight with the last minute add, all signed, all neat and clean and completely pointless, because the second he had laughed I had wanted to kiss him again, for real this time, not for revenge, not for show.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, Mara again, and I answered without looking.

I said, "Hey."

A voice that was not Mara said, "Miss Hart."

I sat straight up, cold all over.

I said, "Who is this."

The man said, "A friend, tell Rhys that Cole's debt just got called in, and if he wants his little physio to keep all her fingers, he will bring twenty million to the warehouse on Pier 17 tomorrow night, alone."

The line went dead before I could breathe, and a second later my phone buzzed again with a photo text, it was me, tonight, standing in the guest room window with the blinds half open, timestamped ten minutes ago, and underneath it said, pretty girl, shame if something happened to her face.