All You Need

  “Let me guess: trail mix. But instead of raisins . . . it contains dried lingonberries. Oh, and dried eel.”

  “You truly are not in tune with my culture,” he retorted. “We’re much more sophisticated than that.”

  “My mistake to compare you to Bear Grylls,” I muttered.

  “Then after the hike, we could gather up leaves . . .”

  My mind wandered to Axl dressed in a turtleneck and a fisherman’s sweater, a hand-loomed scarf looped around his neck. He’d look like he stepped out of an outdoorsman’s catalogue. Then I saw us rolling around in a pile of leaves, laughing and teasing each other before we settled in for a long and steamy kiss. Our faces would be cold, our mouths hot. We’d reluctantly separate after our hands wandered beneath the layers of clothing and our bodies began rocking together. Axl would gather a pile of leaves and twigs and start a fire, wrapping his arms around me as we gazed into the flames. It’d be the most romantic thing ever. If I closed my eyes I could smell the smoke and feel the chill from the autumn air on my cheeks. I could feel Axl’s big body sheltering mine . . .

  “Annika?”

  I opened my eyes and glanced up at him. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “Be adventurous. Take a hike with me tomorrow night.”

  I wanted to say yes. But given the parameters we’d both agreed to abide by, that wouldn’t be beneficial to him PR-wise. “I’m sure that hiking with you in a place where there’s not ten feet of snowpack and windchills in the subzero range would be doable . . . but it’s not practical.” I lowered my gaze to the food I was preparing. “I doubt there’d be any photo ops in the great outdoors. So we’ll just stick with an unadventurous date at a bar or restaurant where we’re sure to get our picture snapped for the gossip page. That’s what all this is about, remember?”

  His sudden silence told me that he had forgotten.

  While it broke me a little to shoot him down after he’d opened up to me about an activity that he enjoyed in his life outside of hockey, one of us had to retain a clear head. Apparently tonight that responsibility fell to me.

  I snagged a platter and assembled four open-faced sandwiches. Bread, mustard, four strips of cheese, two slices of tomato with a smear of mayo, then black caviar sprinkled on top and dusted with salt and pepper. It was a knife-and-fork sandwich, so I passed him the utensils and reclaimed my fur.

  He cut off a chunk of the sandwich and popped it in his mouth. The fact that he barely slowed down was the best kind of praise. I liked to watch Axl eat. There was something almost sensual about the way he used his knife and fork.

  After he finished, he looked chagrined. “I didn’t even offer you a bite of one of the four sandwiches, Annika. I’m—”

  “I made them all for you. If I would’ve wanted a bite, Axl, I would’ve asked. I’m not shy in asking for what I want.”

  “Good to know.” He studied me. “Shall we return to the party?”

  “Can we cut out? I’d rather go home.”

  He seemed relieved we were skipping out. “Of course. I’ll call for the car.”

  Maxwell let us sneak out the back door.

  Axl took my hand and we walked to the corner to wait for our ride. Once we were in the car, he kept a constant caress across my knuckles with his thumb. This unconscious sweetness got to me because I wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it.

  He’s not supposed to be doing it; there’s no audience to see it.

  That thought dampened my mood.

  The car dropped me off inside the parking garage at Lund Industries.

  Axl waited as I unlocked my car. “Thank you for making this another amazing night.”

  “Amazing? Right. I made peasant sandwiches and awkward conversation; you bought me this gorgeous outfit. Seems a little one-sided.”

  He curled his hands around my face. “The sandwiches were fit for a king. Sometimes social situations overwhelm me when I remember I’m in a foreign country, speaking a different language, and I long for one thing that reminds me of home. The sandwiches were exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

  Then he kissed me—just a quick peck on the mouth.

  I didn’t latch onto him and feed my hunger that wasn’t for food.

  “Peter wants us out on the town this week and a hike is out, so what’s your schedule?”

  “I have time for a nooner tomorrow.”

  Seeing the interest in his eyes provided the tiny ego boost I needed.

  “I’d love to take you up on the nooner,” he said huskily, “but I have practice during the day and can’t take a six-hour lunch break.”

  Holy buckets. Images flashed of us rolling around in front of my fireplace, food forgotten as we feasted on each other for hours . . . yes, please.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m trying really fucking hard to stick to our parameters, Annika.”

  I placed my hands on his chest and pushed him back. “Then stop tempting me. Call me tomorrow?”

  “Count on it.”

  Fifteen

  ___

  ANNIKA

  “I think I made a huge mistake,” I admitted to Dallas on Saturday morning as we prepped the space in the old school gym for our upcoming community coat drive.

  “How so?

  Just spit it out. “I invited Rausch.”

  Dallas whirled around so fast she almost knocked me over. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I was mad.” At Axl, at myself, at Peter, at my mom. At my brother Walker for being so freakin’ romantic. At my brother Brady for putting that satisfied look in Lennox’s eyes. At my dad for still getting jealous after being married to Mom for thirty-six years.

  “So you just randomly called up Rausch and . . . ?”

  “No. I talked to him Saturday night at the bar when you were out dancing. I mentioned this coat drive and the lack of support it seemed to have, and you know Rausch. He had his phone out, checking his schedule. On Monday he asked his admin to organize a companywide, last-minute blitz, which resulted in over two hundred coats and hundreds of pairs of gloves and mittens.”

  “Which he is personally dropping off?”

  “In about ten minutes.”

  “Annika.”

  “What?” I bristled. “That was the goal. To get as many donations of gently used coats and winter wear as we could house in this facility. Maybe this year, we won’t run out.”

  Dallas took my hands away from fiddling with the zipper on the coat I’d been hanging up. “The guy never does anything without expecting something in return. And you know he’s interested in you. You know this about him. It’s why you stopped asking for his help on other charity events.”

  “Maybe he’s changed.”

  “Or maybe he thinks that this is your way of reaching out to him to rekindle—”

  “There is no rekindling, because there was no kindling between us in the first place! Rausch and I are friends. That’s it.”

  “He’s always wanted more than that,” Dallas pointed out again, as if I’d somehow missed the first three times she’d mentioned it in the last minute.

  “Rausch is a total gossip hound. He has to know that I’m involved with Axl.”

  Dallas’s eyes gleamed. “Exactly. He’s the type of guy to see this as his chance to finally prove himself to you. Remember last fall? When he declared to your mother that he was in the running for your future husband? Because he’d known you for years, he worked well with you on charitable events and you shared the same philosophy about giving back. Plus, your families were acquainted and he was in your social, intellectual and economic class?”

  I’d kinda, sorta, maybe blocked that out. Damn it.

  “And Aunt Selka was relentless? Urging you to ‘exploit your options’ with him? Is that ringing any bells, A?”

  I nodded. “But I’d forgotten about it.”

  “Only because your mother dropped it as soon as Brady and Lennox became a thing.”

  That hadn’t been the only reason she
’d let it go. I loved my mother and she meant well, but last fall she’d started grilling my friends about Rausch. Asking if they believed he was a “faithful man” and if he held old-fashioned ideas about a woman’s place after marriage. Usually I laughed off her bizarre behavior, but that time it’d reached a critical and embarrassing level because she hadn’t bothered doing any of it behind my back. Anytime I ran into her if I was with my friends—boom, there was Mama Lund, forcing them to answer her stupidly endless matchmaking questions. I could’ve overlooked it once. Maybe even twice. But by the third time, Mom and I had words. She maintained it was her right to gather information since he’d all but offered himself up as a potential mate and she feared that I . . . preferred fishing in shallow streams and refused to test my bobber in deeper waters . . . whatever the hell that’d meant.

  For me? It meant I stopped asking my friends to hang with me in the skybox the rest of the football season. Then she’d forced me to do something that grated on the very essence of who I was; I’d had to ask Brady to run interference for me. I fought my own battles every day in the Lund corporate world. So it’d really chapped my ass that I’d had to run to my big brother to call off the bulldog that was our mother.

  So the question remained, how had I forgotten all that? Because it had ruled my life for several months last year.

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky and Rausch only agreed to help me because he’s found his soul mate and he wants to rub her in my face.”

  Dallas laughed and patted my cheeks. “You are so cute sometimes.”

  “Why are you here again? Don’t you have to cheer on Saturdays?”

  “I quit the squad,” she said offhandedly.

  “What?”

  She started to walk away, but I caught her. When I forced her to face me, she had tears in her eyes.

  Dallas never cried. Not because she was tough but because she claimed it attracted too much negative energy. I bent down to peer into her face because I had a solid six inches on her. “What happened?”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Tough pom-poms. Tell me.”

  She shook her head. “Not now, okay? As soon as the dust settles, I’ll tell you. For today I need to stay busy doing things that will have a positive impact on the world.”

  I hugged her hard and whispered, “I am one hundred thousand percent here for you, day or night. Please tell me you know that.”

  “I do. That’s why I’m here. You are a positive influence in my life, A.” She wiggled out of my hold. “I’ll look for more hangers.”

  As I watched her walk away, I didn’t need her special ability to read auras to notice the serious lack of pep in her step. Her ponytail didn’t even bounce.

  Ten minutes later I’d made progress on sorting the infant snowsuits into piles from smallest—omigod, could those tiny little puffy suits be any cuter?—to the largest when I heard “Annika” behind me and I screamed.

  Another thing I’d forgotten about Rausch: his preference to sneak up on me.

  I forced a smile before I faced him. “Sorry, Rausch. You startled me.”

  “No worries.” He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. If I met him on the street, I’d describe him as average. Brown hair, brown eyes, slight build . . . that was the extent of it.

  Rausch took my hands in his. He studied my face for a beat too long, making it uncomfortable when he finally leaned in and kissed each of my cheeks. “How is it that you get more beautiful every time I see you?”

  “You don’t see me that often?” I joked.

  “It’d be my fondest desire in life to rectify that situation.”

  Oh boy. He retained his hold on my hands. I hoped since his hands were sweaty maybe it’d seem natural if my hands just slipped free. I tugged.

  Rausch held strong. “I’ve missed you, Annika. The benefit for the Scandinavian Society wasn’t the same without you this year.”

  “That’s kind of you to say.” Now let go.

  “I must apologize in advance. I wasn’t able to round up any of our employees to volunteer today. So you’re stuck with just me.” He ripped his gaze from mine and it swept the room. “It appears I’ll have you pretty much to myself.”

  “You’re just early, that’s all. Dallas is here. And—”

  The auditorium door banged open and Jensen strolled in. “Yo, bossy, here’s your coffee. And in the future, if you want it hot, don’t send me after it. I got freakin’ mobbed.”

  Rausch finally dropped my hands when Jensen thrust a paper cup at me.

  “Thank you. But in the future, I suggest you don’t wear your team jersey on a coffee run. It’s almost like you want to get mobbed.” I squinted at the cup, which probably had a dozen phone numbers written on it. I passed it back to him. “I think this one is yours.”

  Jens shook his head. “Nope. But give that to me before you toss it. There’s a couple numbers on there I want to keep, since I ran out of space on my cup.”

  I sighed. “Jensen, you remember Rausch Johnson.”

  “Afraid not. I meet a lot of people.” He offered his hand. “Jensen Lund.”

  “We’ve met a dozen times, Jensen,” Rausch said tightly. “I hope getting tackled on a regular basis isn’t affecting your memory.”

  He did not just say that to my brother, who would take great pleasure in tackling his scrawny ass to the ground.

  I held my breath.

  Jensen ignored him and looked at me. “Hey, when’s Axl getting here?”

  Why did Jens care? “As soon as he’s done with practice.”

  “Cool.” Jensen smiled at Rausch. “Do you know Annika’s boyfriend, Axl Hammerquist?”

  “No. I haven’t had the—”

  “Great guy. They call him ‘The Hammer’ and trust me, he’s earned it.”

  And the other cleat officially dropped.

  What the hell was Jensen up to?

  “Anyway, I’ll see you around.” Jensen gave Rausch his back. “What’s my assignment today?”

  “Can you assemble more racks? That way we can organize the new coats that were dropped off this week.”

  “No problem.”

  After Jensen ambled away, I faced Rausch. “Did you want to go through your company’s donations?”

  “Are you helping me? It’ll go twice as fast.”

  He had a point, so I said, “Sure.”

  The project had reached the overwhelming stage. We had more donations than volunteers. That had been the main reason for calling Rausch on Monday. I’d needed help, not more coats—not that I was complaining. I stared at the massive pile. The donation truck had literally backed up and dumped these out.

  Rausch moved to stand beside me—right beside me—so close our shoulders touched. “I say start in the middle and work our way out until there are two piles.”

  That’d keep us in close contact for a while. I’d just have to move quickly. I pointed behind us. “But we might as well create four piles. Men’s, women’s, children’s, and ones that need cleaning.”

  “What do you consider too dirty, Annika?”

  Omigod. Really? He thought I’d find that double entendre sexy?

  You’d find it melt-your-panties sexy if Axl had said that to you.

  But that was Axl. Axl could read off the items in his equipment bag and I’d find it mesmerizing.

  “Anything obviously stained. Shoot. Maybe we need a fifth pile.