Page 47 of Hockey Wife

Only as she walked out did he realize why the flannel she wore was so familiar. It was the one he’d given her that night in Vegas. To keep her warm.

After they got married.

Fuck.

15

Georgia turned to Cheddar, who had just curled up on her bed.

“What the hell happened there?”

Banks had asked if that was what Vegas was about. What they were about.

Her parents were the last people on her mind when she tripped down that aisle. No, she was thinking purely of herself. Of this one, precious thing that would be for her. Not for Dani. Not in service to the Goodwin family-industrial complex.

For me.

So it was a mistake. As soon as she woke up, her hangover and her trip-hammering heart told her she needed to backspace the hell out of it. She might not have done it for Dani, but grief had certainly factored into it. Two years without her sister, and Georgia was still trying to figure out how to stand on her own. Marrying a stranger was not the way. It wasn’t fair on Banks, either, using him like that.

His accusation stung, but there was more to it. Since reconnecting with him, she’d picked up on a vibe. He was angry, not so much about the incomplete annulment, but the cowardly way she handled it. Neither did he approve of her mercenary motivation for staying married. And here he was again, testy about her supposed reasons for marrying him in the first place.

It was as if he … liked her?

She squirmed on the bed. That could not be right. But at the mention of Oliver and their joke wedding pact, his huge shoulders had tensed.

Her heart beat wildly at the thought. Don’t get ahead of yourself. He just wants you to be an adult about it instead of a scaredy cat.

She wasn’t one to let a fight linger. Time to fix this. On her way downstairs, she passed by his bedroom with its open door, just as he exited the en suite bathroom in a towel.

But it wasn’t the rippling muscles, broad shoulders, and perfect sprinkling of chest hair that got her attention. Neither was it the taut abs, thick thighs, or the lazy way he pushed his hand through his wet hair.

She would have thought all those things wonderful if her gaze wasn’t instantly drawn to the bruise over his ribs.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?”

His eyes flashed, but he remained silent, so she pressed further.

“Did that happen in a game?”

“It’s nothing.” He rolled his shoulder, like that Henry Cavill move in Mission Impossible, which is when she noticed a bump at the top of it and even more bruising.

“And your shoulder?”

“It popped out a week back, but it’s fine now.”

Popped out? That sounded like something that should not happen to shoulders. And a week? That was the night he came to see her at her apartment—and she gave him a measly aspirin. Good job, Georgia!

She rushed in, not caring that she was invading his sanctum. “But it must really hurt.”

“Sure, but athletes play hurt all the time. And the older you get the longer it takes to come back from a hit.”

“Shouldn’t you be on the injured list?” She’d read about that. Injured Reserve they called it, now on one of her flash cards. “Surely they don’t expect you to play like this.”

Her hand fluttered near his chest, not wanting to touch the bruise but needing to touch him. Her hovering fingertips, the ones that had yet to make chestfall, must have annoyed him. He grasped them and held her hand away from his skin.

“I have a few weeks, a couple months maximum left to the season, assuming we do well, and I can’t miss it. This kind of thing is something I deal with. We all deal with.”

This big, brave dummy. “You haven’t told the team medics, have you?”

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