Chapter Thirty-Five

Natalie and Darcy took over a conference room when they got to the office so they could work together while they ate their lunch.

Darcy slid her laptop across the table. “Have you seen this?”

Natalie clicked the link and found an article that was a compilation of the funniest #PuckingHotties tweets. “Oh god, we’re a listicle? Good lord.”

She scrolled through them. Darcy leaned over her shoulder and pointed to a short video that spliced together their figure skating fall with seemingly every bit of eye contact caught on camera.

“Damn, this makes you look super thirsty, LaCroix. I mean, I get it. I’m super hot, but chill out.”

Darcy laughed. “My favorite is the one where they compare you to Pepé Le Pew chasing after me on your skis.”

Natalie scowled until she watched the GIF of his eyes turning into hearts right before he chased after a cat. “So I’m an inappropriate skunk who doesn’t understand consent? Hard pass.”

Darcy shook her head. “If you don’t want me, stop staring at me like that.” She pointed to another GIF of Natalie’s eyes staring very obviously, not , at Darcy’s face.

Natalie covered her face with her hands. “Do you think everyone thinks we’re dating?” Natalie asked as a couple other employees walked past the room.

Darcy looked up. “What?”

Natalie unwrapped her sandwich. “I assume they’ve all been on Twitter and seen the hashtag. Do you think they believe it?”

Darcy shrugged. “Who knows?” Two people looked into the conference room, their eyes lingering on Nat and Darcy as they walked by. “Okay, those two were weird. Maybe you’re right. But who cares?”

Natalie frowned at her sandwich, which was so tall she couldn’t figure out how she was going to be able to take a bite. “It means we can’t do anything here that would kill that rumor. We have to keep up the illusion in the office, too.”

“Oh,” Darcy said, her voice betraying her disappointment. “Yeah. I guess. I hope being friendly to me isn’t too much of a hardship for you.”

Natalie looked up from her sandwich conundrum. “Oh my god, stop being so dramatic.” She lifted the sandwich and attempted a bite. It was a disaster. The middle of the sandwich made a speedy escape out of the bread and plopped onto the paper wrapping.

Darcy couldn’t hide her smile. “Graceful, ladylike, refined. However can I resist your charms?”

Natalie picked up a pickle and feigned tossing it at Darcy. “It’s too big!”

“That’s what she said,” Darcy quipped, taking a bite of her own, reasonable-size sandwich.

Natalie cackled. “Oh my god, you are such a massive dork. Were you this dorky in college?” She attempted another bite. It ended with more of her sandwich on the desk in front of her.

Darcy nodded. “I’ve always been a dork, but maybe you didn’t notice until now.”

Natalie stared at the mess of sandwich innards in front of her. “I noticed everything about you,” she said quietly and then blushed.

Oh my god, get a grip, Carpenter.

She was actually flirting with Darcy when there was no one around who needed to be convinced.

She looked up. “I’m observant, you know, in general.”

Darcy nodded along, but there was something in her eyes. Natalie tried to figure it out but that didn’t help because the longer she looked at Darcy, the more she remembered—her body remembered—how much she loved those pale green eyes. They’d been her undoing dozens of times in college. They’d be in a team meeting and she’d catch sight of Darcy and her coaches could have been on fire and she wouldn’t have noticed. More than once she had to ask one of her teammates, sometimes Darcy, to explain what she missed.

A decade and a half hadn’t changed their effect on her. She dropped her gaze to her deconstructed sandwich and tried to find a way to put it back together.

“Tomorrow,” Darcy said, clearing her throat. “How on earth are we going to learn how to ski jump? There is no way in hell I’m flying off the end of that giant ramp.”

Natalie rolled her eyes. “You think that they’d make us do that? There’s not enough liability insurance for that. We’re going to have to try doing whatever it is they do to train. We’re going to look absurd.”

“That’ll be a change.”

“Are you saying you think we look silly doing these segments? How dare you? I know for a fact that I looked so graceful out there today that I have fielded several calls from skating coaches hoping to reenact The Cutting Edge .”

Darcy laughed. A real laugh. Natalie loved that sound.

Fuck. Grace was right. She was falling for it again. No way. There was no way she was going to fall for Darcy’s myriad charms and have her heart demolished again.

“You have a certain Douglas Dorsey quality,” Darcy said, cocking her head to one side.

“Yeah, and you’re the perfect ice princess counterpart,” Natalie snapped. Shit. She didn’t mean for it to come out so forceful. She meant for it to be teasing, light, but the look on Darcy’s face darkened and she focused on the laptop in front of her.

Natalie should say sorry but she didn’t get a chance. Darcy pulled up a series of videos from the Olympic training center that showed the kinds of things the ski jumpers did to practice. “We are going to look so stupid,” Darcy said. “Ski jumpers and hockey players do not have the same build.”

Natalie looked over her shoulder. “It can’t be worse than how we looked next to the figure skaters.” She watched the video through to the end. “Oh god, it’s definitely worse.”