Page 18 of Hockey Wife

How she couldn’t wait to meet Georgia.

How hopeful she was for another great-grandchild.

Her health had taken a turn over the last year. She might not have much time left and this was a sliver of color in a gray world. He could do that for her.

Except it would be a lie. Pretending to be someone he was not: a good grandson, a dutiful husband.

Two months ago in Vegas, he had gone to sleep thinking this could work. So Georgia was twelve years younger than him, better suited to some young buck straight out of the draft than a has-been on the butt end of his career. But they’d connected enough to think that getting hitched was a good idea.

Then he woke up alone and realized that only one of them was stuck in that headspace. Any embers of hope were doused when he tried to contact her. The message was clear: pretend it never happened.

It was what she wanted, and after he’d calmed down, he reckoned she was right and put it out of his mind. He had a team to gel with, a city to acclimatize to, and a house to set up for the inevitable influx of relatives. And if every now and then his misbehaving fingers ran Google searches on his ex-wife, that was down to normal curiosity. Who wouldn’t want to know more about the bullet he’d dodged.

Only that bullet was now firmly embedded and would require major surgery to excise.

He looked up to find that during his navel-gazing, the locker room had cleared out. Dex O’Malley remained, checking his phone for the fiftieth time because of his love life drama, and for a brief moment, Banks felt an affinity with the younger man.

He quickly swatted that away. Banks didn’t have woman problems, at least not on the same level as O’Malley. He could fix his issue easily. This time he’d do it right. His family would have to slow their roll and suffer the disappointment.

“You still think I ratted you out?” O’Malley looked like one of the sad little puppies in that dog shelter where he had gone to sell his soul.

“You say you didn’t. I believe you.”

“Except you’re looking at me like you want to use that stick in a NSFW way.”

He placed the stick down on the bench. “How long has she been your neighbor?”

“Georgia?”

Banks’s hand itched for the stick he’d just taped and laid to the side for everyone’s safety. Who else would he be talking about?

“Since I moved in? Maybe eighteen months ago. But I don’t know her all that well. It’s a ships passing in the night kind of thing.”

Dexter was a bit of a man whore, and Georgia … well, he didn’t know a thing about her.

A suddenly intuitive O’Malley picked up on the vibe. “Dude, Georgia and I?—”

“Georgia and you?” A red mist raged before his eyes. His hand flexed again. The stick was right there.

“There is no Georgia and I. That’s what I’m trying to say. We’re neighbors, sort of friendly—” He held up a hand, that newfound intuition sensing Banks’s irritation. “But that’s it.”

Banks released a pent-up breath. Eighteen months. Was that when her parents cut her off? Castle Apartments was where the team stashed players on short-term leases before they settled enough to find their own place. Some guys, like O’Malley, stayed longer while they waited on a multi-year contract. Basically, it was high-end corporate housing, and the fact a woman who came from the kind of money Georgia did was living there said something—he just wasn’t sure what.

He hated to ask, but right now, O’Malley was his best source of information. “Is she seeing someone?”

The younger man had the decency not to betray any surprise at the obvious.

She’s not seeing me.

“A lot of people come and go from her place, but to be honest, I think they’re friends, or maybe just acquaintances. She entertains a lot. All night parties. I had to get my bedroom soundproofed because I had trouble sleeping when I first moved in.” O’Malley took a seat on the bench beside Banks. “What happened?”

I thought we had a connection, but I was out of my fucking mind.

“Too much tequila.”

O’Malley nodded sagely. “But you’re still married when you thought you weren’t.”

“Paperwork problem.”

---