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the snowmobiles had been silenced.
    “It’s beautiful up here,” Sable said, following Heath’s lead and taking off her helmet and goggles as well.
    Her hair cascaded down around her shoulders and it took everything he had to keep from reaching out and curling a finger around one of those locks, or pulling her closer to kiss her. He wanted to, desperately, but he’d promised himself that he’d give her all the space she needed. It’d been difficult enough to get her to come out with him in the first place; he didn’t want to scare her off before things got anywhere near interesting.
    “So are you,” he said, not an ounce of bravado in his voice.
    She flicked a dubious look at him and he saw the moment when her eyebrows arched a little in surprise, reading the earnestness in his expression.
    Heath shrugged his shoulders, looking into the distance in an effort to settle down both the man and the bear. His grizzly was attempting to convince him to basically tackle her, and despite clear interest in doing so, he didn’t think that would help his cause either. Restraint was such a bore.
    “Thanks. Feeling a bit schmaltzy today, huh?” Sable said after a bout of silence, giving him a wink.
    Heath breathed a bit easier. Banter he could do.
    “Oh, well, the games always make me get so emotional. You know, everything on the line, all those children hoping to see me conquer and win so they could dream of becoming me one day, all that.”
    “You’re telling me there’s a gaggle of kids somewhere, dreaming about being a misogynistic puck donkey?”
    “Hey, that’s unfair,” Heath said, gasping as if she’d shot him in the chest as they sat facing opposite directions, their snowmobiles parked next to one another. “I’m an opportunistic puck donkey, thank you. Get your terminology straight. It could save lives.”
    “Whose lives?”
    “Those of my adoring fans. You wouldn’t want to gravely wound them with your hateful comments, right?”
    “Oh, of course I wouldn’t. Because that’d be bad,” Sable said, nodding with a serious look on her face before breaking out in a laugh. “Fine, opportunistic. I’ll pretend to live with that.”
    “Fantastic. We’ve reached an agreement. See how easy it can be? And I had to basically drag you along on this little date of ours,” Heath said with a chuckle, though he bit his lip a second later.
    Stupid.
    “So this is a date, huh? I thought we were simply ‘friendly people from rival camps’ going to ‘pound some powder’ together. What happened to that?” Sable asked, the sweet tint of mockery in her voice grating at him as much as it was honey to his ears.
    “Isn’t that what you say when you ask someone out on a date in California?”
    “No, we make up some lame excuse about going to try out the new artisan taco truck and implying that they could or could not join us, if they wanted to, or whatever.”
    Shaking her head, Sable took her gloves off so she could run her fingers through her hair before tying it up in a ponytail. Heath watched, practically mesmerized. He still hadn’t figured out what it was about that woman that got him so hot and bothered, but whatever it was, he was loving it. She kept his attention better than hockey could at times, and that was something he never thought he could claim about anyone.
    It was ten kinds of weird and he couldn’t get enough of it.
    And the fact that he still hadn’t kissed her since San Diego was driving him up a tree. Or it would have, if they hadn’t been on a stretch of barren snow.
    “I like our way better,” Heath said, smirking.
    “Personally, I might prefer surfing to this, but I guess I can settle.”
    “Nonsense. There is no settling when it comes to Heath Locklear. You’ve been blessed with my magnificent presence. No surfing could compare,” he said, putting all the fake swagger he could into his voice.
    It was a gamble. He was half-expecting to find a helmet flying in the general direction