Still, here Ian was, the night before the last game of the road trip, standing outside Shelby’s Vancouver hotel room at one in the morning with a brand-new black eye and absolutely no idea what he was going to do. He should turn around and go right back to his room. He’d spent Seattle and Vegas trying to keep his distance as much as he could when they spent every meal and more together. But tonight, he’d been lying on his bed staring at the ceiling

Oh, fuck it.

He tapped lightly on her door. If she was sleeping, she wouldn’t hear and he’d go back to his room. She was probably asleep anyway and— The door opened.

Wearing a black tank top that dipped low over the upper swells of her tits and leggings that made her legs seem even longer, Shelby stood in the opening. All the racket thundering in his head since the game ended, spurred on by adrenaline and an overtime win, settled.

The TV was on behind her but there wasn’t any sound. The covers on her bed were rumpled, but the pillows were propped up on the headboard as if she’d been sitting up in bed, not lying down trying to sleep.

“Is everything okay?” She stepped close, looking up at him with concern, her attention focusing in on his latest injury. “Do you need help? Is it your eye? That was such a cheap shot from Evanston. Total high stick.”

“I’m fine.” He managed to stifle the urge to touch the heart of the bruise where Doc had given him two quick stitches before sending him back out for the second period. “I couldn’t sleep.”

She crossed her arms and narrowed her gaze, the little vee of worry wrinkling her forehead smoothing out into are-you-kidding-me annoyance. “I am not currently accepting booty calls.”

Way to go, Petrov. So smooth. Amazing. How are women not falling at your feet wherever you go?

“It’s not that.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. If I invite you in, the next step in the plan is to tell me that you just want to stretch out and we’d both be more comfortable on the bed?”

“Is that the kind of guy you think I am?” He wasn’t. He was a grown-ass man, not a frat boy.

She looked down at her bare wrist as if she were wearing a watch. “It’s after midnight and you just knocked on my hotel door to tell me you couldn’t sleep.”

Okay, she had a point. And if he understood why in the hell he was there instead of watching episodes of The Office that he’d seen a million times already, per usual for a road trip, he would have told her. Instead, the best he could do was try not to sound as lame as he felt at the moment.