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  Full Contact

  Andie J. Christopher

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  Also by Andie J. Christopher

  Copyright © 2017 by Andie J. Christopher

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Sweet & Spicy Designs

  Edited by Jessica Snyder

  This book is for the women in my family, both the family I was born to and the family I’ve made in the romance community.

  * * *

  Special thanks to Jessica Snyder for her meticulous copyedits and Laurel Simmons for her suggestions and encouragement.

  One

  “You’re not allowed to be cranky in my bar.”

  Anders scowled at the barmaid. Since when couldn’t he be cranky in a bar? Bars were for drowning one’s sorrows and toasting one’s victories. Well, they were also for picking up people to have sex with—at least for other people. Not him. Not even if he wanted to.

  “Why so grim?” She apparently didn’t take the scowl to mean that he wanted to enjoy his beer in peace. “Seriously, if you’re going to look at me like I pissed in that beer, you’re going to have to tell me what the hell’s the matter with you.”

  He considered the list of things wrong with his life that he could tell her. The list was short, but each item weighed about a ton. He wasn’t sure the bar could withstand that kind of weight. “Bad knee.”

  The barmaid shrugged. He’d noticed her purple hair and colorful tattoos as soon as he’d walked in, and the full sleeve seemed to dance in the light coming in the window off Lake Superior. She seemed like a beacon in the dark bar—like a wood nymph.

  Shit. Maybe she had put something in his beer. Either that, or mixing alcohol and painkillers was worse than he’d thought. But he’d only taken an Aleve today. He needed a clear head for the decisions he would have to make about his career—his life—very soon.

  “That’s a tough break.”

  “Especially tough since I kind of need my knee for my job.”

  “What are you, a superhero?”

  Sort of. “I play hockey, professionally.” Her eyes didn’t light up like some women’s did when he said that. Of course, there were women around the team—puck bunnies—that he didn’t need to tell about playing hockey. They already knew, and it was part of what made him attractive to them. That, and the bounty.

  Not this girl. She wiped down the bar in front of him again. She’d done it twice since he’d sat down, so he was pretty sure it was clean. But she couldn’t seem to keep still. In the fifteen minutes he’d nursed his first beer, she hadn’t stopped moving once.

  “Do you know who I am?” She didn’t look at him. She shrugged again, and the flowers on her shoulder changed shape to him, seemed almost angry. “I don’t follow hockey.”

  “Hockey’s religion in Northern Minnesota.” He didn’t know why he was chagrined that she didn’t know who he was, didn’t smile and giggle and flirt now that she knew he played in the league.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the Cup coming to visit in a couple of days when she said, “I’m an atheist.”

  And now there was a sulky look on her face. “I thought people weren’t allowed to sulk in your bar.”

  “I make the rules, I break them, I guess.” She nodded at his almost empty glass. “Another one?”

  It was after noon, so a second beer wouldn’t make him seem like an alcoholic. And he was on vacation, maybe a permanent one. If he had another beer, maybe he could talk to the now-surly barmaid a little longer. Maybe get her to smile.

  She nodded at his glass again. Maybe a smile would be pushing it. He’d settle for a smirk.

  And then he realized that some of the dark clouds that had been hovering over him since his season ended—during the second-to-last game of the Cup series—had lifted while he was talking to her.

  “What’s your name?”

  “You want another beer or not?” She looked toward the door, as if she were hoping a rush of people would show and save her from having to talk to him.

  “I’m Anders. Anders Sorenson.”

  “Jesus Christ.” She grabbed his glass and plunged it in warm soapy water of the sink. “Another Summer Crush?”

  She looked back over her shoulder, and he nodded. She pulled another beer and sat it in front of him. He wanted to grab her hand where it touched the cold pint glass and keep her here. He wanted to talk to her a little bit more, but she didn’t even look at him.

  Someone waved her down at the end of the bar.

  Thunderbay Cove was a hopping resort in late summer. He certainly wasn’t the only person at the bar. Two guys with mullets had been hanging out since before he’d come in.

  His family had always come up here in the fall—without him. He’d usually been at hockey camp or on a travel team. But he’d looked at pictures of them all. They’d seemed so happy. He came up here this summer for the first time to figure out if he could be happy without hockey, and this might be the best place to do it.

  “Dahlia, the guys who have been drinking since nine are going to die.” The other waitress’s words were laced with venom. He didn’t doubt her proclamation about the fate of the guys drinking for five hours. And now he knew the barmaid’s name – Dahlia. It was lovely, but didn’t fit the hard-edged cool about her.

  Dahlia rounded the bar and gave him a look. “Keep an eye on the mullet squad, handsome. If any of them try to pull their own beers, crush them under your hammer or something.”

  He laughed; she thought he looked like Thor. He’d take it.

  He turned back to his beer and pretended not to notice the guys at the end of the bar getting louder.

  “She wouldn’t give you the time of day in high school,” the one with the blond mullet said. “What makes you think you could get a piece of that now?”

  The one with the red political baseball cap shoved the blonde one in the arm. “You know how them freaky girls are. They just want to get it, don’t care much from who.”

  Anders gripped his beer tighter and took a sip. It took a lot for him not to get up and hand both those guys’ asses to them. That was a terrible idea, though. He might be a professional athlete, but his potential adversaries had heft. If one of them took out his knee, it would put a definite end to his career. A career he wasn’t sure he wanted anymore, but did he want to lose it in a fist fight with a couple of loudmouth drunks?

  The blond one shrugged. “You might be right. D’s been down on her luck. Maybe it’s bad enough that she’d suck your pencil dick.”

  They both laughed, and Anders ground his teeth. These guys were nothing. And they shouldn’t be talking about any woman that way. He clenched his fists and tapped at the bar.

  “Your sister doesn’t think it’s a pencil.” Thank God they’d moved on to sisters. Maybe they’d start talking about each others’ moms soon and would keep their fat mouths shut about Dahlia.

  “Yeah, but Dahlia Clarno’s such a whore—”

  No such luck. Depending on what the guy said next, he’d have to kick some ass. His fists clenched in anticipation, like he was in a game and one of his teammates just took a check and the refs refused to make a call. He’d love
to feel the crunch of that motherfucker’s nose under his jaw. It would cure him of a lot of frustration.

  Finish that fucking sentence. Dare you.

  Instead of finishing his sentence, Red Hat and the Blonde laughed. And laughed. And laughed. They laughed as though calling Dahlia a whore was the funniest thing they’d ever thought of in their pathetic lives.

  He couldn’t stop himself. Once they found out who’d hit them, neither would press charges. If they did, his agent could deal with it. Sam obviously didn’t have to field any new deals now.

  Anders grabbed the Blonde by the long hair at the back of his head. With a snap of his wrist, he smashed guy’s face into the bar. Red Hat looked at his friend in disbelief, which gave Anders enough time to wrap his hand around the guy’s neck and back him up off his barstool and bend him over against the bar.

  “What the fuck?” The blonde clutched at his face, but blood seeped through his fingers onto the bar.

  “Yeah. What the fu—” Red Hat stopped talking when Anders tightened his fingers.

  “Dahlia’s not a whore.” Anders didn’t know that for a fact. For all he knew, she could actually be selling sex along with craft beer, but he wouldn’t let these guys laugh at her.

  Red Hat started turning a little purple, so he loosened his grip.

  “You her boyfriend or something?” The Blonde had a cloth napkin over his face, which was soaking with blood. But he was drinking beer with the other hand, so he couldn’t be hurt too badly.

  “What if I am?” Anders didn’t know what made him say that. If they recognized him, a Google search would prove his words wrong. The league’s only virgin player was legend on the fucking Internet, thanks to his teammates’ big mouths and a couple of shithead sports reporters.

  Red Hat sputtered. “Sorry, man. We didn’t mean any harm.”

  “You don’t think it’s harmful to call someone a ‘whore?’”

  “Nah, man. We was just joking.”

  He lifted Red Hat up by his jaw. The guy squealed, and Anders felt a flash of guilt. “I don’t care if you were joking. Don’t joke about that. Not with her. Not with anyone.”

  Red Hat tried to nod, and Anders calculated the pros and cons of clocking him now that he’d assented to his demands. On the pro side, it would feel great to make this guy hurt. On the con side, it might be harder to argue his way out of issues with the authorities. The Blonde might see that as a serious act of aggression and abandon his makeshift tourniquet and beer to defend his buddy.

  He didn’t have to make a choice because Dahlia walked back into the bar. “These two really tried to steal beer?”

  Anders dropped Red Hat, who stumbled and sat on the floor between the stools, but not before bumping his lower back and skull on the mahogany bar. “Ow. Fuck.”

  “Tsk-tsk.” Anders was surprised to look up and find Dahlia chastising him. “That seems like a pretty steep punishment.” She looked him up and down as though the sight of him with his hand around Red Hat’s throat turned her on. “But I do appreciate your commitment to the job.”

  She pulled another pint and sat it next to the half-empty one he’d abandoned to kick some ass.

  “Thank you.” He smiled at her again as he returned to his seat. She winked at him, and he felt it like a stroke against his skin.

  He sat down and finished his half-full beer in one swallow. She moved over to the assholes who’d been talking about her.

  “You guys okay?”

  Both of them looked over at Anders nervously, as though they were wary that he would get up and hit them again. They were right to be worried. If they so much as looked below Dahlia’s neck, he would dismantle them.

  “I’m not going to hit you again.” The as long as you keep your stupid mouths shut was implied. Anders turned to Dahlia. “I’m sorry about that.”

  She smiled at him, and he was glad to see it. “Seriously, did they really try to steal a beer? I was only joking.”

  She wiped up the counter in front of him again, though she should probably have been paying attention to the other end of the bar. Where the blood was.

  “No.” He wasn’t sure what more he should say. Maybe it would be better if she didn’t know they were talking about her, but maybe talk would turn into action when he wasn’t around. She should know that. “They were talking about a woman.”

  “Me, right?” She shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “Those motherfuckers.”

  “You swear a lot.” Anders normally didn’t have a problem keeping his mouth shut. But something about her made him want to say everything he was thinking. She’d make a great reporter. But he realized how that might have sounded, felt his neck flush in embarrassment, and backtracked. “I mean, that’s totally fine if you find that swearing helps.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard much more colorful language than mine, Mr. Professional Hockey Player.” Her eyes didn’t quite light up, but they conveyed more interest than they had since before he’d told her.

  “I’ve never heard such colorful language from someone so…colorful.”

  She furrowed her brow, leaning with both hands on the bar. She wore a white tank top, and he caught enough cleavage to realize she wasn’t wearing a bra. If he hadn’t already been blushing, he would be now. He looked away, out over the lake, so expansive that it was like the ocean up here.

  The bar and restaurant hung out over a rocky break, and the sound of the waves crashing against the beach below filled the silence. He hadn’t meant to insult her, he didn’t know how to charm a woman.

  “You’re not the typical hockey dickhead, are you?”

  He looked back at her then, careful to keep his gaze on her face. She had her nose wrinkled up, the only creases on her pale, bare skin. “I don’t think I am.”

  “Well, those motherfuckers were the typical hockey dickheads in high school. And now, without anything to do but drink in my bar and try to get me to trip and fall on one of their dicks, they’ve gone to seed.”

  “I could see why they’d want that.” Anders couldn’t believe he’d said that out loud. He spent most of his time trying to fend off puck bunnies—not because he didn’t want to have sex eventually, but because he wanted to have sex the first time with someone who didn’t have anything to gain. He wished at least once a day that he didn’t have principles. He wished he hadn’t grown up chubby, hadn’t had acne, hadn’t been born painfully shy. He wished his parents hadn’t been so terribly religious.

  Most of all, he wished that he wasn’t such a dope when it came to talking to women. Maybe he could say something that didn’t make him sound like a “typical hockey dickhead” if he wasn’t so behind in this particular area.

  He’d been waiting for her to pour the remainder of his beer over his head, walk off in a huff. She didn’t give a shit that he was a professional hockey player. Hell, she’d been a lot flirtier when he’d scowled at her. Now that he’d as much as told her that he wanted to have sex with her, he was sure that would never happen.

  Instead, she laughed, and looked at him like she had when she’d told him he couldn’t be cranky in her bar. When she was done with her little chucklefest, she leaned over and looked him right in the eye. Close enough that he could smell the fresh sweat of her skin and a hint of candied lip stuff.

  “You’re honest.” Her gaze slipped down to his mouth, which he’d unconsciously been wetting with his tongue. “I like that. Definitely not a typical dickhead.”

  His eyelids got heavy, and he almost let himself reach out and touch his mouth to hers.

  But a crowd of guys walked into the bar, yelling out her name and demanding beers.

  Two

  Anders, the Viking Giant who’d made her belly go heavy, disappeared at some point over the next half an hour. It was just as well because a bachelor party of guys up on the North Shore for a fishing weekend showed up and occupied her for the next three hours. She didn’t have time to clean the bar in front of him a fourth time. But she still want
ed more of his dimples.

  And she wouldn’t have minded had he stuck around when she poured the bachelor party its fifth round of shots. They were tipping well, but she knew more than one of them would end up patting her on the ass before the end of the night.

  The be-mulleted creeps she went to high school with—the ones whom he’d beat up—also left after three more beers. She’d known what they had to say about her. Earned or not, she’d had a reputation before she’d left for culinary school. Her reputation was a product of what she now knew was sexual assault, but the people who knew her back then didn’t draw the distinctions. To them, she’d been asking for it.

  At least her cousin hadn’t had any more emergencies in the dining room. The fact that Lilly couldn’t run a service on her own was problematic enough. This wasn’t even their busy time—summer was hopping, but early fall and spring were where it was at.

  Dahlia shouldn’t be here. She should be back in Minneapolis, opening her restaurant in a week. Instead, she was slinging drinks at her family’s resort. Fuck, she wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. That was her uncle’s domain. It didn’t matter that she’d graduated from the Cordon Bleu in Paris. Too fancy for the rest of us. She could hear the venom seeping out of her uncle’s words, even if they were in her own head.

  It wasn’t like she wanted to change everything, she just wanted to introduce the Thunderbay Cove kitchen to a few mother sauces, maybe a beouf bourguignon instead of chicken and wild rice soup as a lunch special, once a week.

  But no, because she’d failed when she’d tried to leave home, she wasn’t going to get to do that. She would be the barmaid. She’d smile and put up with the locals who thought of her as a warm, wet hole. And she would be grateful for the opportunity to come home. Some people weren’t quite so lucky.

  The bachelor party stayed until the dining room closed, and got louder. Lilly walked out, probably hoping that one of them was single. When she looked at Dahlia hopefully, she shook her head once, and Lilly’s face fell.