Page 66 of A Major Puck Up

Finn giggles beside me.

Frowning, I hold out my hand to the man. “Well, you can give me that back, then.”

“Lesson number one. You don’t take back gifts. Maybe you don’t deserve to get Princess Peaches back after all.” The man pats his pocket and grins. “Don’t forget my Frosty tomorrow. Same time.” With that, he stands and walks away, whistling a tune.

“I think you just got swindled, Uncle Gav,” Finn sings.

I laugh, feeling lighter now that I’ve finally told someone the whole truth. “I think you’re right.”

Hours later, I’m in my new apartment at a long dining room table with half the guys from my team. I moved in a couple of weeks ago, right after I added head coach of the Boston Bolts to my résumé. It’s my dream job, even if the way I got it was more like a nightmare.

I had to fire the head coach, Sebastian Lukov, after it was discovered that he’d had an affair with the head of PR, Sara Case, without disclosing to her that he was married to my aunt. It was a shit show, as expected, and worse, the woman at the center of the scandal, Sara, is my brother Brooks’s best friend.

During the fallout of the affair, Sara and Brooks began fake dating and somehow managed to fall in love. Now, they’re happier than ever.

When Sara came to me about the affair in hopes of saving her job and Brooks’s, I did some digging. Apparently, my uncle had been cheating on my aunt for years. But I’ve kept that information to myself. Aunt Zoe was devastated as it was, and I have no interest in rubbing salt in her wounds.

I lost no sleep over firing his ass, but finding a coach mid-season—one the guys and I could trust implicitly after what the team had been through—proved more difficult.

Okay. Maybe I didn’t look all that hard. Because this is the job I’ve always wanted.

And it came at the perfect time. When my uncle’s indiscretions were blasted all over the media, I’d already lost Millie. Honestly, the job saved me from a depression I was easily sinking into. Now I’m just on the left side of grumpy.

Moving into the building where my hockey players lived seemed like a no-brainer. A fresh start. Langfield Corp owns the whole place, and we encourage our guys to live here—i.e. we offer them apartments rent-free—to build comradery.

My hope is that by moving in here these guys will come to trust me. For all they know, I don’t have the first clue about how to coach an NHL team. I sign their paychecks and I wooed them when I was drafting them to my team, but they have no idea that I know what I’m doing when it comes to the game. They’re probably under the impression that I think my last name makes me entitled to this position.

That’s definitely what the media is saying.

I’m determined to prove everyone wrong.

Grinding my teeth, I read the most recent text message from my asshole uncle.

Sebastian: I’m not signing the divorce papers until you agree to abide by the terms in my contract.

Fuck this man. He’s holding my aunt hostage in their sham of a marriage because I refuse to agree that if the team makes it to the playoffs, he’ll still get his contract bonus. Yes, he held the position of head coach for more than half the season, which is what the contract stipulates, but he’s a scumbag, and I refuse to pay him another dime.

I turn the phone over and blow out a breath. I won’t allow him to ruin another thing for my hockey team.

“I have to sing for my food.” Aiden, my youngest brother, stands and does his vocal warm-ups. “Do, re, me?—”

“No. You really, really don’t.” I grasp his arm so I can force him to sit and shut up, but he pulls away.

Not only is Aiden my little brother, he’s also the best center in the NHL. Commentators even argue that he’s one of the best to ever set foot on the ice. He’s also the biggest pain in my ass, and he loves to sing to get the team amped up. I get it. It’s good for morale. And before I took over as coach, I even liked it. But now that he’s constantly singing his own versions of Ariana Grande songs and inserting my name into the lyrics, I want to kill him.

The doorbell rings, and I jump up to get it, happy to have the attention off me and the long list of Aiden’s past coaches that, according to his song, aren’t as great as me.

“Sar, if this is another one of your packages, I’m going to start charging you delivery fees.”

As this is the only apartment in the building with three bedrooms, I took it, despite the fact that it once was my uncle’s.

The only issue? During her epic revenge tour against him, Sara set up regular shipments to be delivered to Sebastian in hopes of pissing him off. The number of dildos and lingerie sets she’s sent to him—and me, since I now live here—is insane.

Sara laughs from beside Brooks, and his face flames. My brother is so in love with her it’s not even funny. A grown man blushing.

“The last time I called, they swore the deliveries would stop,” she says as I open the door and look out into the hall.

The elevator is just closing, probably taking the delivery person back down to the ground floor.

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