Page 4 of Bombshells
“Yes, sir. That’s going to happen.”
“I have some ideas.” There’s a glint in the older man’s eyes. “We’re going to practice a couple different defensive pairings this year. You’ll skate with O’Doul in some preseason games and Tankiewicz in others. Gotta keep ’em guessing. We have so much strength on the blue line. Let’s make it all count.”
“Yes, Coach. I can’t wait.” His optimism is contagious. Everyone is buzzing about how this will be a big season for us. It was only a few years ago when the Bruisers were moved to the city and rebranded as a Brooklyn team. The GM got fired, and then the coach, too.
Everybody said Nate Kattenberger was a fool, that an internet billionaire couldn’t make a world-class hockey team out of his pricey investment.
They were wrong.
Nate is only part of our story now. Now there’s Rebecca Rowley Kattenberger—his wife—who owns the team. We’ve got a terrific GM, a great staff, and twenty-three players who are determined to get back to the finals this season.
Thank you, Jesus, for making me one of them. And I’m sorry about that dirty joke earlier.
I know I’m lucky to be standing here in this state-of-the-art practice rink in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It’s a bit of a zoo today because the team is holding an open practice. There are little kids in the stands wearing purple Bruisers jerseys. And photographers angling their giant cameras toward the ice.
Practice hasn’t started, and most of the guys aren’t out here yet. But out of the corner of my eye, I see an unfamiliar skater in full goalie padding. My attention is snagged by the fluid, strong strides of his skating. Goalies have to be phenomenal skaters, but there’s something really stylish about this one. I wonder who he is. Some college kid getting a tryout? A draft pick I haven’t seen before?
“We’re going to run a lot of back-checking drills,” Coach says. “Our whole season could hinge on how many fractional seconds it takes us to recover a lost puck.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” I agree.
The goalie has reached my end of the rink now, where there is a little girl smiling and waving at him. He comes to a fluid stop in front of the plexi. He scoops a puck up off the ice and then shows it to the little girl, sending her into paroxysms of joy. He tosses it over, and the little girl lets out a whoop and leaps for it.
I smile as a reflex, because I was once that kid, desperate for a moment’s contact with one of my idols at the rink.
But then? The goalie unclips his helmet and hauls it over his head, revealing a head of long, thick hair. Hold the phone—this goalie is a girl. No—a woman. With rich brown hair and lush olive skin. She shakes out her hair, which seems to be in the process of escaping whatever braid or ponytail that had confined it. Then she smiles, giving the little girl a wave.
And I can’t fucking breathe. Her smile lights up her eyes, which are a warm brown. She is like the living, breathing picture of female perfection.
In a goalie’s pads. Fuck me.
“Anton Bayer,” Coach snaps. “We were having a conversation. And now you’re staring at a girl.”
Dazed, I look back in his direction. “Sorry, sir. I just didn’t realize…” The sentence has no rational conclusion. I just didn’t realize that a ten-second look at a woman from ten yards away was enough to make me feel so much. Curiosity. Intrigue. Hunger, even. Who knew I had a thing for goalies?
“Yeah, the Bombshells’ season is starting up at the same time as yours,” Coach says. “It’s going to be an adjustment sharing this facility.”
“Exactly,” I agree, as if I’d been thinking the same thing. And in truth, I had forgotten all about Rebecca’s investment in women’s hockey. “The, uh, new renovation looks great, though.”
Coach grunts his agreement. Over the summer, they’d done a lot of work on the practice facility. The full-sized practice rink—where I’m currently making an ass of myself in front of Coach—got five hundred additional seats and a new, high-tech roof. There’s a new stadium-worthy scoreboard hanging from the ceiling.
And—this is the wildest thing—an entire new story was constructed on top of our state-of-the-art locker room facility. So our dressing rooms are still there, but there’s a new suite for the women’s team above us.
I’d known all that. It’s just that it hadn’t really sunk in that there’d be actual women here in the building with us. And I really hadn’t anticipated that my brain could be stolen by the goalie on day one.
Lordy, I’m going to have to watch myself. Coach was absolutely right when he said this is my year to settle down and contribute. It isn’t just my sprints that I’ve been training. It’s my mind. I need to be tougher than I’ve been.
Focus, man. Come on.
Coach checks his expensive watch. “Let’s do this, Bayer. We’re starting. Get out there.”
I vault over the wall to get in a couple of warmup laps as my teammates troop down the chute to join me. I lean into my glide, lengthening my stride and stretching my legs. But as I round the ice, something silver glints at me from the surface. I stop, lean down, and remove my glove to pluck some kind of hairpin off the ice. It must have escaped when the world’s most sensuous goalie shook out her hair.
So much for avoiding her. I straighten up and skate hastily toward the end of the rink where I’d seen her disappear. And there she is, helmet under her arm, watching my teammates warm up. She’s wearing a frown now, which puts a crease in her forehead. I have the urge to smooth it out with my fingers.
But that would be creepy and weird, so I speak to her instead. “Excuse me, miss? I think you might have dropped this when you were giving that little girl the puck. Nice move, by the way. You made her whole year.”
The beauty turns, and her eyes widen slightly. “Sorry. Are you speaking to me?”
