Page 45 of Matched with the Player

“In a world full of cynics, Stacy remains sweet and warm-hearted. Completely unaffected. And for some unknown reason, she really digs me.” He gave her that quick flash of a grin again, but then he was looking up ahead, seeking out the woman who’d obviously captured his heart. “I know a stroke of good luck when I see it.”

While Marissa mulled that over, Isaac pointed toward the right.

“She went this way,” he informed her, making her realize she would have lost Stacy anyhow. “You have to get through security to reach the level with the locker rooms. But since Stacy’s dad owns the joint, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Thank you.” She hastened her step to catch up to Stacy, the crowd thinner here save for a few hardcore fans trying to convince the guards why the needed to be in the secured area.

It reminded Stacy of the groupies at her mother’s concerts trying to wheedle a VIP pass backstage. As much as she wanted her mother to recover, Marissa realized she didn’t miss the world that had come with the touring and singing. She’d personally played the secondary gatekeeper after the security guards for her mom – keeping lovesick fans out of the dressing room and telling pushy guys to take a hike.

Now that she thought about it, that’s why she first bought her fake wedding band. It had been her decoy even then when she’d been sixteen and guarding the superstar from men who would flirt with her to try and get past her.

“Isn’t Isaac the greatest?” Stacy asked as Marissa reached her side.

They were waved through the doors while other fans bemoaned the unfairness of some people being allowed to enter and not others. Isaac stayed behind, telling Stacy he’d pick her up at the east gate whenever she was ready to leave.

“I like him,” Marissa asserted, confident the guy had Stacy’s best interests in mind. He wanted to make sure she was happy in the future. How thoughtful was that?

A little corner of her heart wished Kyle would look beyond the next game to think about her that way. She understood his drive and commitment, all the more after seeing him play. But bottom line, he wasn’t at a point in his career where he would settle down.

“Can you believe I found him myself? I literally tripped on him. Oh, and that was after I tried to break into his van.” Stacy pointed toward visitors’ sign on the outside of one of the locker room doors. “Kyle should be in there. I’ll try to find someone to go in the he-man domain and get him for you.”

While Stacy disappeared into an office, Marissa felt suddenly unsure. Should she bother him now? She’d been so worried about his head, but surely the team had sports trainers and medical staff that would look him over. Was she treading where she had no business? Amplifying her role in his life when they’d known from the start this was going to be temporary?

She and Kyle hadn’t talked about compatibility counseling, like Isaac already had for him and Stacy. When Marissa had reminded him earlier today that neither of one of them had wanted a relationship, he hadn’t argued. Obviously, he still felt that way while she…

She’d fallen for him. For all her wisdom about matchmaking and her awareness that she had no judgment about men when she was most attracted, she still made the same old mistakes.

Today, when Kyle had asked her to go on the road with him, at least she’d had the presence of mind not to jump on the offer. Spending more time with him would only dig her in deeper. She couldn’t just leap into Kyle’s world, travelling around the country with another superstar the way she had for so many years with Brandy Collins. She hadn’t cared for that kind of life back then. Why would it be any different now, with a man who hadn’t professed any kind of commitment toward her? She needed to remember she already had a huge commitment back home, to her mother.

“Harry can help you.” Stacy returned, arm and arm with a gray-haired security guard who looked well past retirement age. “He’ll find Kyle in the locker room to let him know you’re here.”

“Maybe I should just wait for him upstairs,” she demurred, already feeling out of place.

“Don’t be silly,” Stacy insisted, giving Harry the security guard’s arm an urgent squeeze before she half dragged him toward the locker room. “Harry doesn’t mind.”

Too late to call him back, Marissa watched as the older man plowed through the locker room doors. Briefly, she could hear raised voices and shouting… a celebration inside for sure. That much, at least, gave her heart. They wouldn’t be whooping it up over the playoff spot if one of their own was severely injured, right?

Still, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d just shown her hand too soon with Kyle Murphy. Revealed a bit too much about her feelings for him by chasing him down in his domain. But maybe it was just as well she was honest with him about getting in over her head. Because if her feelings for him weren’t returned in some measure, if he wasn’t ready for a more stable life and sense of commitment, she couldn’t afford to indulge herself with the Phantoms’ lauded playmaker anymore.

* * *

“Just two more stitches,” the team doctor assured Kyle as he lay on the gurney, his face half-sheathed in white paper to keep the area sterile while they worked on him.

He hadn’t required sedation for the gash on his jaw, so he was alert through the process of closing it up.

“Good deal.” He needed to shower and put in a quick appearance with the team to celebrate clinching their division. Mostly, he wanted to get off the table to see Marissa.

And wasn’t that unexpected after how hard he’d worked to get here? The regimented training, the year-round discipline, the daily practices – all of it had been aimed at getting him to this moment, poised for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Yet the first thought in his head was the woman he’d just met, the woman who’d been a fixture in his thoughts from the moment they’d met.

And she was walking away from him tomorrow.

The realization burned more than the doctor’s needle in his skin.

“Kyle Murphy?” an unfamiliar voice cackled from the doorway while the assisting doc tied off the face embroidery.

“Right here.” Kyle lifted a hand to assure the old guy he’d found the correct party, his knuckles taped and bandaged since he’d split them open. In his peripheral version, he saw a gray haired security guard.

“I’ve got a couple of ladies looking for you,” the man hitched at pants that were a size too big for his thin frame. “Marissa someone or other. You know her?”

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