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us struggling to figure out our lives.” She gave a self-deprecating grin, although he couldn’t imagine what her struggles might have been these past ten years. “Anyway, he talked about the need to sort out the past before you could really embrace future relationships. You know, make peace with people you’ve cared about. Figure out what went wrong so you can do better next time.”
    He laughed. “I’m nowhere near ready to reach out to my ex.”
    She went quiet. Too quiet.
    “Shea?” No doubt about it, he was messing up this conversation. He was going to wind up alone in that damn house again tonight and Shea would be driving out of town in the morning.
    “I was thinking about you and me.” She shrugged like it was no big deal, an off-handed idea she’d thrown out there. “We ended things on a bit of a harsh note.”
    Her words shocked the hell out of him and made so much damn sense, he kicked himself for not seeing it sooner.
    “That’s putting it mildly.” It hadn’t been easy breaking things off with her, but two years difference was huge as teenagers, and she’d been going through a rough time with her father’s expectations of her. She’d wanted a break from everything involving hockey and for him—it was his life. “I can’t think of anything I’d like better this Christmas than making peace with you, Shea Walker.”
    Her eyebrow arched as if she debated whether or not to believe him. She tipped her head sideways against the seat as she regarded him.
    “Do you think it’s possible for two feisty people to ever really smooth things over?”
    “Hell yes. I’m smarter than I was at eighteen. And besides, I don’t know if I agree that our problems were due to feistiness as much as chemistry.”
    “What chemistry?” She honestly looked him in the eye as she said it.
    He did a double take or he might not have noticed the way her heartbeat pulsed faster at the base of her throat. Even in the dim light from a street lamp and the moon, he could pick out the thrum that called her a liar.
    “You know as well as I do, we had some serious chemistry even as teenagers. I’d hazard a guess that’s where some feistiness originated—right in the heart of raging hormones.”
    She looked him up and down, thoroughly sizing him up.
    “No one feeling an ounce of chemistry toward me could have run off to Minnesota to play hockey when we agreed we were going to New York. Together.”
    And there it was. Their past laid bare. The old argument stripped down to its essence even though it had been far more complicated than she made it out to be.
    He didn’t want to argue with her. He was buying into this whole “make peace with the past” idea so he wanted her to come home with him, not sitting in some anonymous hotel room and fuming at him. But no matter how much he didn’t want to contradict her, he knew enough about this woman to know she wouldn’t walk away from the one argument he planned to make.
    Unzipping his parka, he shrugged out of his jacket.
    “What are you doing?” Her eyes went wide.
    “Challenging you,” he informed her mildly, liking the way she tracked his movements. Liking everything about her.
    Damn, but it had been too long since he’d seen her.
    “Explain yourself,” she demanded, asserting credible feistiness.
    Shoulders freed, he angled closer to her in the narrow confines of her rental car. Sparks flew, just like they had when he’d touched her in her parents’ backyard earlier. He’d just been feeling too surprised to see her and too gentlemanly to do anything about it. Now? After the “no chemistry” comment?
    Not so much.
    “We had chemistry then. We have chemistry now. And I’m going to prove it.”
    *
    “Your concussion has made you insane.” Shea refrained from licking her lips even though the urge was strong. Damn. Strong. But she would not encourage him. Could not afford to go down this path with him three hours after seeing him again.
    Had she fantasized