Page 8 of Sin Bin

Meadow grinned, glancing behind her at the empty booster seat. “I really wish you had him this weekend. I miss my Bear.”

“I know. He misses you, too.” Rosalie’s eyes twinkled. “When you get this job and move to Denver, you and Cam can spend as much time together as you want.”

Meadow sighed. “If I get the job. And that’s a very big if.”

“You will. Think positive.” Her aunt switched lanes. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Let’s go have a drink.”

Meadow raised an eyebrow. “At nine-thirty in the morning?”

“It’s never too early for a drink.” Rosalie grinned, shaking her head at Meadow. “You need to loosen up and let your hair down, baby girl. Seriously. You’re twenty-four going on eighty. When was the last time you threw caution to the wind and did something reckless? Hell, when was the last time you got laid?”

The second question brought heat to Meadow’s face. She’d been in a sex drought for so long, she could feel tumbleweed blowing across her lady parts.

Rosalie gave her a knowing grin. “That long, huh?”

Meadow pushed her black cat-eyed glasses up her nose and mumbled, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Rosalie laughed sympathetically. She’d always felt more like a big sister to Meadow than an aunt. It was Rosalie who introduced her to tampons and showed her how to use them. It was Rosalie who took her to buy her first real bra because she was too embarrassed to tell her father that she’d outgrown her training bra. It was Rosalie who took her to concerts and spent the night rocking out beside her. And it was Rosalie who whisked her off to Cancun for spring break when her dad wouldn’t let her go to Daytona Beach with her friends. It was a wild and crazy trip, one she would never forget.

Unlike other memories that eluded her, she thought, absently rubbing the scar hidden under her hairline. She couldn’t remember where or how she’d gotten it. There were huge gaps in her memory, like missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. According to the therapist who’d treated her as a child, her parents’ deaths had been so traumatic that she’d suppressed parts of her past to protect herself. The explanation made sense. But those missing fragments of memory haunted her to this day.

Her aunt’s voice broke into her grim thoughts. “So who are you interviewing with?”

“Dirk Lange, the Chief People Officer.”

“That’s an actual title?”

Meadow nodded. “If I get the job, he’ll be my boss.”

As they neared Denver, traffic slowed to a crawl. A humongous billboard loomed up ahead on the side of the highway. As they got closer, Meadow looked out her window and froze.

The billboard was a tribute to the Denver Rebels: The Road To The Cup Ends Here. This Is Our Year!

Below those words was a larger-than-life image of the team’s star players. Big and badass in black-and-gold uniforms, the six hockey gods stood shoulder to shoulder staring down at motorists with panty-exploding grins.

“Wow,” Meadow couldn’t help whispering.

“I know.” Rosalie leered out the window. “We have the hottest hockey team in the NHL—and not just on the ice. Those boys are fine as hell.”

“Seriously.” As Meadow’s awestruck gaze focused on Logan Brassard, she felt a funny little catch in her throat.

There was no trace of the boy she once knew. He was all man now, massive and smoldering with sexy dark stubble on his jaw. The unruly mop of black hair she remembered had been shaved into a tight buzz cut that accentuated the hard planes of his face. His head was tilted back at a cocky angle and there was something downright wicked about his grin. Something so wicked and dirty Meadow felt corrupted just looking at him.

“He’s all grown up now, isn’t he?” her aunt purred lecherously. “Your old friend is one hundred percent Grade A prime beefcake.”

Meadow jerked her gaze away from the billboard—no easy feat—and cleared her throat. “He wasn’t my friend.”

“That’s not what I’ve always heard,” Rosalie said with a laugh. “I wasn’t there the day you were adopted, but I’ve heard the story many times. When Harris and Lacey went to the group home to pick you up, you wouldn’t leave until you gave Logan the world’s biggest hug. Lacey told me it was the most touching thing she and Harris had ever seen.”

The memory brought a warm flush to Meadow’s cheeks. “I was nine years old,” she mumbled. “Who knows what was going through my mind that day?”

Rosalie just chuckled.

Meadow was relieved when traffic started moving and her aunt drove past the billboard.

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