"And you're not now?"
"It ended several years ago."
"Yet you kept his name? Why? Do you have kids?"
"No kids." Thank God. Not that she didn't want any. She did. She loved children, but she was thankful that she'd been very careful about birth control during that time in her life. No child needed to grow up in an abusive environment. She had firsthand knowledge of that, growing up with verbally abusive alcoholic parents. "And I didn't keep his name. After my divorce I wanted a fresh start. So I took the name from one of my favorite Beatles songs. Although now some of my students sing the song to tease me. So maybe I should have just picked a last name out of the hat."
"Yeah." His dark eyes brightened. "You could have gotten real creative . . . Lucy Lovelace, Lucy Luscious . . ."
The names were so ridiculous she laughed. Again.
"You have a beautiful smile." His expression turned serious. "You should do it more often."
Compliments had rarely been a part of her life. Maybe that was the only reason his observation made her feel like lightning bugs were waltzing with butterflies in her stomach. Completely unsure of how to respond, she sipped her tea.
"You're not used to compliments, are you?" He leaned back in the chair, folded his arms, and studied her.
She shook her head.
"I can't imagine why not."
When she threw him a skeptical look he said, "I can't imagine why you aren't told daily what a beautiful smile you have, or how pretty you are, or that when you bite your bottom lip like you're doing now, what it can do to a man."
If he'd smiled when he said those words she'd have known he was having a laugh at her expense. No smile crossed his lips. He appeared to be dead serious. Lucy didn't quite know what to do with that.
"What happened to your marriage?"
The question wasn't out of line. But that didn't make it any easier to answer.
"That's personal." She lifted her mug that was too small to hide behind.
"It is personal." He leaned forward, stretched his long, muscular arms out on the table. "But we were friends once. And as a long-­ago friend who's trying to get reacquainted, I'm interested in what's happened in your life."
"There's not much to tell." She lied. There was a lot. "He presented himself as someone other than he really was."
"Such as?"
Her hesitation to respond spilled over into an awkward silence. Jordan touched her arm with enough leverage to pull the mug of tea down and away from her face. "It was bad?"
She nodded. "I can't talk about it. I swore I'd never relive it all. And that's what talking about it does."
"Seems to me like you might feel better if you did."
"No." Hating the bite of the old terror sneaking up, she shook her head and looked away. "I can't."
"Okay."
He withdrew his strong hand and she watched it slide back across the table. The memory of other strong hands flashed like a bad nightmare. Oddly, while Jordan had large hands, he didn't appear to be the type who'd use them on a defenseless woman. But she pitied the men he faced on the ice.
"If you ever do feel like talking, I'm the last person on earth who'd ever judge anyone," he said. "Just give me a call."
"Thank you, but that day will never come."
He shrugged. "Never say never."
"Is that your philosophy on life?"
He laughed. "I've never had a philosophy. I never thought I'd have regrets. I even thought of having 'No Regrets' tattooed somewhere. Glad I didn't."
"Because they aren't created with erasable ink?"
"Yep."
"So you have other tattoos?"
"A few."
Lucy swallowed. Tattoos on a man were sexy. She didn't like when men were so covered you couldn't see their skin or you couldn't figure out the design, but she did appreciate a few well-­placed pieces of art on a strong, hot body.
"You?" he asked.
"No ink for me."
"You don't like it?"
"I'm too chicken."
"It only hurts a little."
"Says the man who throws punches for a living."
He laughed. "That's inaccurate. I hit a puck for a living."
He took the last sip of his tea, then stood. "Come on. Walk me to the door."
"As opposed to kicking you out the door?"
When he reached for the handle on the front door, he stopped and turned toward her. "I'm hoping you'll never do that."
"It all depends on how I grade your behavior. You know, I grade my students on more than academics."