“Shit. Shit shit shit,” he moaned. I heard the bed creak even as I pressed the towel to my nose, waiting for it to stop bleeding. “Fuck, Zorba, I’m sorry.”
“Zara,” I told him, my voice muffled from the towel.
“Zara,” he echoed. “Zara. Zara. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bloody your nose.” Ty gave me a chagrined look. There were dark rings under his eyes, and he looked like a mess. “You just startled the hell out of me when you yelled in my ear.”
I shot him the bird, still pressing the towel to my nose with my other hand. “I’m going to have two black eyes now, thanks to you.”
“Ah fuck,” he rubbed a hand down his face. “Great. Now I’m going to have the reputation of beating up girls as well as biting noses.”
“I’m not a girl, remember? I’m just a stick with a mouth,” I said bitterly.
“Actually, I felt your tits. They’re pretty good, given that you look like you’re fourteen.”
“Fuck you! I’m twenty-five!”
“I know, I know.” He raised his hands in the air, apology on his rough features. “Can we talk about this, Zara? Come to a compromise?”
“You’re not getting my room!”
He looked confused for a moment, and then rubbed a hand down his face. “Not that. I don’t give a shit about that now. But if my manager sees you with two black eyes and the camera crew films that? I’m done. I’m so done. Here.” He shoved my makeup bag at me. “Put some powder or girl shit on it and cover it up.”
“No. I’m going to tell everyone you head butted me.” I’d just leave out the part where it was an accident. “At least this way, I can salvage my career.”
“It would totally f**k me. Come on, Zara, please.” He dropped to his knees, and I realized for the first time that he was wearing a pair of boxer briefs and nothing else. His big, muscular body flexed as he clasped his meaty hands in front of him in a supplicating pose. And his thighs? When he knelt, his thighs were nothing but enormous cords of muscle. The athlete in me really liked that. Far too much.
“Look,” he said, giving me a sincere expression of misery. “This is me, begging you for mercy. It’ll totally screw me over if they think I hit you on purpose. After my last incident, no one will think it’s an accident.”
“Well, we can just tell them the truth,” I said, too-sweetly. “I’ll just say that you got totally plastered and crawled into my bed, and when I tried to get away from you, you head butted me.”
He groaned, covering his face with his hands. “I am so f**king screwed.”
“Unless…” I teased, checking the washcloth and turning it. Still bleeding. Ugh. He’d smacked me good.
Ty looked up at me with so much hope in his eyes that I felt a twinge of pity for the guy. I knew what it was like to f**k up and have everything come crashing down around you. Also, his big pale eyes were kind of sexy. Silvery, almost. Normally they made him look mean, but right now? I kind of liked it.
“Unless you promise to take this whole ice dancing thing seriously,” I told him, pulling the wad of fabric away from my nose and checking my face in the mirror. My normally tiny nose looked like a potato, and my eyes were already swelling. Lovely. The bleeding had mostly stopped, though, and I looked over at Ty. “I will go out there and tell everyone I practiced late. No, that we practiced late. You had a change of heart and came back. My toe pick got caught on something, and I miscalculated and landed on my face.”
Hope lit up his brutish features, and for the first time since I’d met him, Ty didn’t seem like a Neanderthal or a caveman. He was actually kind of cute when he wasn’t scowling or drunk. His face was a little more rugged than I liked normally, and he’d definitely taken several hard punches to the face, but he had an appeal to him when he was looking up at me like that. “You’d do that for me? Lie to everyone?”
“I will…if,” I said, and I made sure to emphasize the ‘if.’ “If you take this seriously.”
He considered me for a long, long moment, those silver eyes regarding my face. “How seriously?”
“You know what? Never mind—”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Ty got up from his knees and grabbed my arms when I turned away. “You mean the dancing shit, right? Fine, fine. I’ll go to practice.”
“No, you’ll go to practice early and you’ll stay late,” I corrected. “Just like me. And I’ll go on and on about how nice of a partner you are, and how sweet and caring. And you’re going to work your tail off for this and make us both look good. It’s not just your career on the line here, buddy. It’s mine, too. If I don’t look good this season I won’t get asked back again.”
“No sequins?” He looked dubious. “I really, really refuse to wear sequins.”
“What is it with you and sequins?” I gave him an exasperated look. “No embarrassing costumes for either of us. We both take this seriously and come out of this to fix our careers, okay? All I want from you is that you work hard and don’t quit.”
“I can do that,” he said, sincerity on his face. “I promise.”
“And no more beer,” I added.
“That’s two things.”
I put my hands on my h*ps and glared at him.
“Fine.” He sighed. “Wasn’t going to drink any more after this, anyhow. I think I’m scared straight.”
“Good. So we both agree to work our asses off and do whatever it takes to fix our careers?”
Ty nodded at me. “Agreed.”
I spit on my palm and held it out to him. “Shake on it.”
He looked at me like I’d just grown another head. “I’m not touching your hand if you spit on it.”
I jiggled it at him. “You can’t seal a deal otherwise. It won’t work. The juju won’t be there.”
His lip curled as if in disgust, and he stared at me for a moment longer. Was the big MMA fighter squeamish?
I waited, staring at him, hand still extended.
He sighed, spit into his own hand, and then smacked it against mine. “You are a strange chick,” he told me. And then he pulled his hand from mine and washed it off quickly.
I cleaned off my own hand and then dabbed at my nose one more time. It looked awful. I was going to look horrible for the next week on camera. Lucky me.
“All right,” he told me. “Let’s just forget about this and go back to bed.”
As if on cue, my alarm clock began to beep. I gave him a wry look and headed to the side of the bed, clicking off the alarm. “No sleep. It’s time to get up and train.”
He gave me a withering look.
We met fifteen minutes later. I was dressed in my typical leotard and tights (hey, everyone has a work uniform), and my hair was pulled back in my standard bun. I hadn’t bothered with makeup for my nose and swelling eyes. Instead, I’d put a dainty pink bandaid, which matched my leotard, over my nose and pulled on my lucky socks that I’d washed in the sink the night before.
Then, skates in hand, I headed out to the rink to warm up.
To my surprise (and pleasure), Ty was there, lacing up his skates as he sat on the bench. Good. So he was going to take this seriously. I sat next to him and flipped over my skates, mentally assessing all of my luck charms taped to the bottom of my skates as I touched each one in order.
He leaned over and glanced at my skate. “What’s all that shit?”
“They’re for good luck.” I pulled my skate away protectively, and then began to put it on. First the left skate, because that was the lucky one. You never started with your right foot.
Ty grunted. “You superstitious?”
“No more than anyone else,” I told him, tightening the laces on my skate until I was pleased with how it felt. Then, I gave it a wiggle and moved to the other skate. A few minutes later, I was good, and I took off my blade guards, and then headed to the ice. As was my custom, I leaned over the ice and gave it a kiss.
Behind me, Ty snorted. “Did you just kiss the ice?”
“Good luck,” I told him. “We don’t want any bad juju.”
“Uh huh,” he said skeptically. “You should try making your own luck for a change.”
“You should shut your mouth,” I said pleasantly, getting back to my feet and stepping onto the ice. It was like welcoming a lover—not that I’d ever done that, either. I sighed with pure pleasure as my skates glided onto the ice, and I closed my eyes, rolling my shoulders and working out the kinks in my neck. No sign of our cameraman yet, or Imelda. It was just the two of us.
I began to skate slowly around the ice, warming up and shaking out my muscles. As a test, I swung around and popped into a double axel. Smooth and flawless. Nice. I continued to warm up, adding the occasional jump just for fun. Nothing hard, nothing strenuous, just prepping my body for a long workout ahead.
Still, when Ty skated close to me and began to keep pace with my strides, he looked pretty impressed. “You’re good.”
I gave him a funny look. “I know I’m good. That was just warm-ups, though.”
“You were in the Olympics?”
I nodded, and then flipped around to skate backward so I wouldn’t have to answer more questions.
He wouldn’t be deterred, though. Ty followed my lead and turned as well, skating into a tight edge and showing more agility on the ice than I’d given him credit for. He caught up to me and started again. “You get any medals?”
“I don’t want to talk about the Olympics,” I told him.
“Why not? You talk about everything else. Half the time you won’t shut up.”
I skidded to a halt, jamming my toe-pick into the ice. My hands went to my hips. “Have I asked you what it feels like to chew off some guy’s nose?”
He scowled at me, his mood going dark right away.
“Exactly. You don’t ask me about the Olympics, and I won’t ask you about eating some guy’s face.”
“Fine,” he said in a curt voice.
“Fine,” I said, keeping my own tone light. I was going to be nice if it killed me. I dropped into a loose sit spin to end the conversation.
When I was sufficiently warmed up, I skated toward Ty. Hopefully he’d had time to cool down a bit. “So do you want to practice ice waltzing until Imelda gets here?”
He wiped his hands on his sweatpants, and held them out to me. “Sure. Let’s go for it.”
I placed his hand at my waist like we’d been shown and flushed, remembering that I’d woke up that morning with his hand on my breast. Don’t think about that, Zara, I scolded myself. I took his other hand and clasped it in mine, then put my other on his shoulder. I looked into his eyes. Despite all we’d been through in the last two days, our embrace still felt intimate as heck, and my body reacted, my skin tingling as I became aware of him close to me. I needed to get used to a partner, or this was going to make me flustered and nervous every time he touched me. I glanced at him, and he was staring at my face with intensity.