Page 13 of Slap Shots & Sweethearts

"What's going on?" Maria asks.

Then we see Lou's face as he stands over the hostess at her stand. He towers over the people still standing in line, and I see more than one phone out to take pictures.

"You told him!" She gasps in horror.

Chapter 5

Hannah

Lou nods his head at the hostess and then gives a thumbs up with both his hands as he smiles for the photo with her. The hostess takes her phone back and I can tell from the look on her face she's trying to hit him up for a date.

I look back at her accusing face. "He grabbed my phone and saw your text about Charlotte. I had no choice."

"Hannah." Her tone is disappointed.

"Why do you hate him so much?" I ask her. "He's my twin, I'm never going to get rid of him."

She goes quiet, not telling me what has gotten so under her skin when it comes to him. More commotion at the door has her looking back to Lou, and then a small smile forms. "At least he brought someone for you with him."

I whip my head so fast to see what she means that I risk whiplash. Matt is standing next to Lou, scanning the room. When he finds me his shoulders relax. He says something to Lou, and the two of them slowly pull away from the crowd towards my booth.

Maria picks up her glass and slips out of her seat. "I better go find a table before they're all gone."

Lou takes a seat across from me, but he's watching Maria as she walks away. Matt detours to the bar, and the crowd there is all too eager to speak with him. I frown when I see a blond with a particularly sexy red dress lean in to whisper something in his ear. To his credit, Matt is looking at the bartender to check the status of his drink. His face is polite as he talks with the blond and points to the table where Lou and I are sitting.

In that wordless way women do, she looks me over and just as quickly disregards me as competition. She turns back to Matt and runs a hand flirtatiously down his arm, and smiles sweetly at whatever he says. Jealously rears its ugly head, but I have no right to be jealous. Matt and I aren't dating, I can't even say we're close friends. At best we're colleagues, or he's Lou's friend.

Matt finally gets his drink, apparently he needed two, and leaves the woman behind. Unfortunately, there's a group of four men with hockey hats on that peel away from the bar and look at Matt as if he hung the moon.

"Hey Sis," Lou says loud enough for the group of men approaching him to hear. "Do I need to knock sense into anyone yet? Or have you found someone to join you for the hockey games this weekend?"

"Really?" I hiss at him, glaring at him with all the hatred I can muster. If I had magical powers like the dragon romance book I'd been reading, he'd be a pile of ashes now.

The fanboys pause in their approach, clearly having heard Lou. They look at Lou, and then at me. Two thoughts become readily apparent on their faces. The first being that they don't want to have Lou beating them. Second, I just became the key to getting hockey tickets. Lou's just made me more desirable for the hockey fans, and made it that much harder to find a man who wants to date me for me.

Lou smiles and leans forward. "Shouldn't have picked a sports bar for finding a date."

Matt shakes his head, and sets one glass in front of Lou. "I'm going to go find a table."

"That's not how it works." One of the men whines. "The ladies get tables first. Your nametag has the table you start at on it."

He points to the corner of his own name tag, where I see the number twenty on it. I then take a closer look at Lou's name tag and see it has the number eleven written in the corner. I snort, of course he had to get assigned his jersey number. There is a small square box sitting in the middle of the table, I hadn't paid it much attention before, it's filled with strips of paper, and has a metal pole, about a foot tall, that sticks out of the center. At the top is a big split-ring looking thing with a white card inserted between the split. The card has the number thirteen on it in big black font.

Finally, something is going my way. The relief helps to loosen my shoulders just a bit and I dial back the desire to stab my twin. Instead, I give him a sickly sweet smile and say, "Guess you have to go too."

His eyes narrow at me as he stands up. "Don't worry, I'll be back."

"Bye terminator." I wiggle my fingers at him. Seriously the man has a desire to kill my love life.

Before he can retort, a bell rings and we turn to see the hostess holding up a black and gold handbell.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining the second annual Pizza Pub Sweetheart Shuffle!" She pauses waiting for cheers of excitement.

There's a lone woop from one of the tables in the back.

She clears her throat. "I know you are all eager to meet your future sweetheart. The rules are simple. Three minutes at each table. Men, write down the table number, and ladies write down the number on the gent's nametag and get to know each other in that time. You can put down a name, but without the number I won't know which Kaitlyn or Matt you meant."

A chuckle runs through the pub.

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