“We’ll see,” I replied, weighing whether I felt like taking home a beautiful waitress or a beautiful contortionist. Maybe both. I knew Choral was up for more than one in a bed.
“Okay, Cam.” She patted my pectoral, then moved through the crowd, her chunky backside popping as she went. I sat down with an exhalation that emptied my lungs. Sometimes it was hard to be on all the time, but that was life in the public eye. I wished more people understood that…
I jumped when someone sat down beside me. Not just a someone. The fuck? Finn Kerrigan. Like… the Finn Kerrigan. I checked around for a bodyguard, or at least someone who might tell me what he was doing here in this club. His blue eyes sparkled in the glowing red lights as he gazed out over the crowd as the burlesque performers began a fan dance.
“Hello! Hey, so sorry about the losing thing tonight. I was at the game incognito.” He pulled a baseball cap off his gold curls, then wagged a rubber nose with fake glasses in my face. “No one knew it was me, which is kind of amazing. I think I might go out like that more often because man, is it a drag when you want to just be, and people are watching you all the time? Oh, cool! That looks good. Can I get one of what he’s having? Thanks. Hey, she’s pretty. Do you come here a lot? I like the vibes. So anyway, I need someone to coach me on how to do hockey. You interested?”
I gaped, trying my best to keep up with the hurried flow of monolog and not get lost in his big blue eyes. He was even better looking up close than I could have imagined. He had freckles. I’d seen all the Rapid films numerous times and did not recall him being freckled in those movies. He was clean-shaven, as opposed to me with my scruffy playoff beard, and I felt awkward for a moment.
That was new.
A tiny bralette landed on his head from the direction of the stage. He laughed brightly as he pulled it off, then showed it to me as if it were a prized trout he’d just wrangled to shore.
“Look at that!” he announced.
“Um, yes, it’s nice,” I said as I leaned closer to keep our discussion private. Not that anyone could hear with “I Want to be Evil” by Eartha Kitt pouring out of the speakers. He tucked the bralette into the back pocket of his jeans. “How did you find me here?”
“Oh, that was easy,” he said as his gaze moved to the busty young woman on stage. Where had the redhead bendy guy gone? “I followed you from the arena. You have a fancy car that really stands out.”
Okay, yeah, that was true. I was still confused. “Why is a big movie star following me to a club?” I lifted my drink to my lips. The pineapple taste strong and sweet.
He dipped his gaze, as if he was shy about being caught out, or maybe shy about the movie star label. Who knew?
“I told you already,” he leaned to my ear and replied, his gaze still pinned to the striptease taking place right in front of us. You’d think he’d never seen boobs before. Not that they were shabby boobs, oh no, they were big bouncy ones, but still… “She’s got the jiggles.”
That made me chuckle. Something I thought would not be possible after fucking up our chance of being the champions. Again. Fucking again. The sigh that escaped was far more dramatic than I’d intended.
“Remind me why you said you followed me.” I nudged him with my knee under the small round table of dark wood.
He gave me a wide-eyed glance, as if he’d forgotten all about me. Guess he was a boob man. It would be a crying shame if he was only into boobs because I’d never fucked an A-lister before, and he was a hot property in these parts.
“I need someone to teach me to do hockey. You won the Google results! I mean, okay, to be honest, that hot guy in Pennsylvania with the flicked hair would have been my first choice because, well, hot guy with flicked hair.”
“What guy?”
He scrunched up his nose. “A player, on skates, super cute, flicked dark hair, married to a coach, has kids, very pretty, like I said.”
He thought guys were cute. Maybe he wasn’t just a boob man after all, and for some reason, that sent all my blood south. Then I added up all the clues and he could only be talking about one man who was sadly off the market for all of us since hooking up and then marrying his team’s defensive coach.
“Madsen-Rowe? Railers?” I suggested, but he stared at me as if I were talking a second language, then shrugged.
“Whatever, I’m not up to flying to the east coast to learn hockey. Then there was another guy in Arizona, looked like a rock star. Tattoos. He did hockey as well, but he was the goalie.”
“Colorado Penn.”
“Sure, yeah, that was him. I don’t mean to offend, but he would have beaten you out because he was totally sexy as hell. I like a bad boy.”
Now my radar was fully on board—he liked a bad boy? From what I recalled about Mr. Finn Kerrigan, he was the action hero big guy with girls on his arm everywhere I saw him. But he was here, in a club, talking to a virtual stranger about men? Should he be doing that? Was he drunk? I peered at him, but apart from talking twenty to the dozen, he seemed fine. Hyper, but fine.
“… but I didn’t think he was suitable because he didn’t skate.”
“Goalies skate,” I said, amused now by his nonstop ramble-bramble way of speaking. Was the guy on dope? His pupils weren’t wide as if he were stoned, but my gods could he talk.
“Really. Well shit. I could have asked hot rocker goalie then. Could you connect me with him? Do you know Arizona well? ”
I blinked at him. “Uhm, yeah, I was born in Scottsdale. It might be hard to follow him home though since, you know, we’re in LA and all.”
His drink arrived. He gave Choral a fifty, which would cover the cost of the cocktail and then some, before he took a long sip that emptied half the glass.
“True, yeah, that was why I chose you. Closer to home base. This is amazing! I generally don’t like citrus drinks because the acid makes my lips tingle.”
I glanced around the club. It felt as if I’d stepped into an alternate reality. Finn Kerrigan seemed nothing like the man I’d seen in the movies. He was… bouncy and light, whereas the guy on the screen was stoic and emotionless. Typical action star. Finn, the real Finn, was the opposite of what I expected from movie star Finn.
“So, I’m a little confused still,” I confessed as a young couple came over to get Finn to sign their cocktail napkins. I didn’t mind being recognized, but he was on a different level and if we weren’t careful he’d be mobbed, even in this venue, which was used to the stars. He seemed embarrassed at first, then signed what they offered, pulling down his cap and asking them not to let anyone else know he was here. They agreed with him when he smiled and showed the world his dimples, and then he waved a hand at me.
“This is Cameron Chavkin, the star hockey player for the Los Angeles Typhoon,” he exclaimed, his attention moving from his fans to the woman on stage wearing only a G-string and pasties. “Man, how does she swing those so hard and fast and not hit herself in the chin?”
“Storm. I play for the Storm,” I clarified as I added my name to the napkin. The fans nodded at me, obviously not sports people, then faded back into the dark corners of the club. “So, Finn, as honored as I am to have had you follow me in a totally stalker way—”