Read Online Quick Trick (A Rough Riders Hockey Novel Book 1) by Skye Jordan, Joan Swan - Free Book Online

three steps past when his feet halted and spun him around almost before he understood why. But something he’d heard in the hardware store earlier this week triggered in his mind, and Grant backtracked, turning into the store.
    He only had the door open three inches when the warm, chocolate-scented air reached out and grabbed hold, dragging him the rest of the way in. He was having a Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory flashback when he closed the door behind him.
    “Well, look who’s here.” Jemma came out of the back with her dark hair tied up in a ponytail, her bright blue eyes sparkling, and her white apron smeared with chocolate. “Heard you were back in town. How’s the big shot?”
    He grinned. “Hey, Jemma. Man, you still look sixteen.”
    “Oh, go on.”
    “No, really. You’re throwing me back to high school, only in a much better way than the first time around.”
    She laughed. “You’ve come a long way since high school. Got a lot to be proud of. Dwayne says you’re pitching in to help out the hockey team.”
    “Word still travels fast around here.”
    “Like lightning.”
    Grant chuckled, hoping word of his identity had finally reached Faith. “Happy to do it.”
    “What can I get you? I have a fresh batch of that marzipan your mama loves. Makes a great stocking stuffer.”
    “Sure, I’ll take some. Can never hurt to please my mom, right? But I’m here because I understand Faith has an addiction to your chocolate.”
    “Faith.” Jemma lifted her brows and tried way too hard to look innocent. “Oh? Did she say what, exactly, she was addicted to?”
    “No. I overheard her talking about it to a friend at the store. She’s given me a lot of help this week while I’ve been working on my parents’ house, and I was thinking I’d bring her a little thank-you. Something she likes.”
    Jemma pursed her lips, scrunching them sideways, her gaze cast down.
    He knew that look: the naughty, guilty one.
    “I’m also trying to soften her up so she’ll let me take her out,” Grant added hopefully. “Some days, I swear I’m invisible.”
    Jemma’s smooth brow pulled into a deep vee. “That’s not like Faith. You may not think she’s paying attention, but she knows everything that’s happening around her. Everything that’s happening in the store. When you think ‘mind like a steel trap,’ you think Faith.”
    He was having a hard time seeing that. “Can you help me out?”
    Ten minutes later, he jogged up the brick steps to St. Nicholas Hardware and pushed through the door to a chorus of loud male voices.
    “Stop, both of you,” Faith cut in, her voice distinctly female and clearly authoritarian. But Grant had come to recognize the dry sarcasm edging her tone. “St. Nicholas Hardware is an inclusive safety zone for all fans, Wolfpack and Tar Heels alike.”
    “What the hell does a ram have to do with being a Tar Heel anyway? And what kind of name is Rameses?” Leon Simms chided Mike Lowry. “Those boys paint his horns blue? Doesn’t anyone call the ASPCA? Or PETA?”
    “It’s pronounced ram-sees, Mike, and you know it,” Faith said while she rang up and bagged his items. “Don’t be starting trouble for the sake of trouble, now.”
    “That’s right,” Leon said. “Listen to the lady. She knows what she’s talkin’ ’bout.”
    “I do know what I’m talking about,” Faith said. “Which is how I also know you ask Mike the same questions every year when the Tobacco game comes up, just to rile him.”
    Mike pointed at Leon. “You do. Every year.”
    “That’s because it works. Every year.”
    A chorus of laughter filled the store, and Grant was grinning at the exchange and Faith’s smooth control over everyone and everything that happened in here as he wandered into her peripheral vision. Joe Sheridan came toward the register with a customer close behind and rang up some paint.
    Faith’s attention was on the credit processor waiting for the receipt, when her gaze slid