Page 19 of Sin Bin

“Is he really small?” she asks me. “He looks like the kind of guy who’d be hung like ahorse.”

I don’t even turn around, because I’m not sure I could lie to her face. “He has the smallest penis I’ve ever seen,” I fib. “Thesmallest.”

ChapterSeven

ZOE

Twenty-Eight Days Left…

By 9:45a.m. the next morning, I am what some would call a “hotmess.”

I snoozed my alarm one too many times, therefore losing the opportunity to completely pull myself together for my meeting with Andre. My dark hair is washed, but untamed, and thanks to the very dry March air, the static teased the strands into something unrecognizable during my morningcommute.

My coffee decided to leap out of its home—a Styrofoam cup—and splattered my white shirt. I did what I could to clean the stain while I rode the T, Boston’s subway, on my way in. But no matter how many napkins I’ve pressed to the stain, the dark espresso now resembles something that I would rather not talkabout.

And, to top it all off, the heel of my favorite stiletto pair broke. Broke! There I was, striding down the street and giving myself a much-needed pep talk, when my poor Manolo Blahnik succumbed to a crack in the sidewalk. I went flying; the toe part of my stiletto went flying, but the damn heel remained wedged in the sidewalk’s crevice like a white flag wavingsurrender.

Walking six blocks through Boston’s financial district on bare feet is an experience I never want torepeat.

Honestly, thank God for convenient stores and cheap, plastic flip-flops.

So, like I said, “ahotmess.”

This issonotmyday.

Cracking open my day planner, I scribble in today’s key points that I want to cover with Andre. Namely, the fact that we have twenty-eight days to strip him of his bad boy image offtheice.

Having worked with professional athletes before, it’s always been a little strange to me as to where the line is drawn. The public loves guys like Marshall Hunt, one of Andre’s teammates for the Blades. Since Hunt has just come up from the farm team, he rarely gets the same level of playtime on the ice. But the people love him—they love the way he stops to take selfies with fans after games. They love the way he jokes around with reporters, giving them his full attention whenever he’s in thehotseat.

From what I’ve gathered, Hunt also has a reputation as a ladies’ man—he makes no secret about the fact that he dates supermodels, and supermodels exclusively. He’s practically the Leonardo DiCaprio of the hockey world. But the public adores him anyway. They adore his boyish good looks, and the way he takes the time to hold open doors for the various women he dates, even when they change every weekend—or every othernight.

The public does not adore Andre. He verbally snaps at the media, and, seeing the way he blew off Suzanne last night, it doesn’t seem that he’s all that kind to the ladieseither.

Makes sense, considering the way he treatedmetoo.

I have no doubt that I’m up for a battle today, but I’m hoping that he’ll see reason. Above all else, Andre Beaumont loves hockey. Without sponsors, without a willingness to play like a team-member on and off the ice, this could very well be his last season intheNHL.

Teams will take a risk on a player that’s physically injured, but they’re less likely to keep a player who is a liability to the structure or reputation of theirorganization.

A knock comes at the door, and I don’t even have to look up to see who’s standing there. Cliché as it might be, but the air changes with his entrance. It shifts and crackles and tenses withanticipation.

Or maybe that’s just my anticipation to get this over anddonewith.

I feign nonchalance, still scribbling in my planner.Play it cool, girl, playitcool.

“Good morning,Andre.”

The chair across from me creaks under the sudden onslaught of his weight. Like most hockey players, Andre is big. A hulking body of pure muscle that is put to the test on a dailybasis.

“Morning,” he says, the ‘o’ drawn out in true Canadian flare. “That’s a nice shirt you’ve got onthere.”

My fingers clench tightly around the pen. “I spilled my coffee thismorning.”

I glance up in time to see the way he tilts his head in thought. “Very well-placed,eh?”

Perhaps I should have elaborated. When I spilled the Starbucks blend this morning, it somehow—in some stars-misaligning sort of way—splattered me right in the boob area. Specifically, in the left-nipplezone.

My eyes squeeze shut, and I lift a hand to shield the evidence of my embarrassment from his perusal. “I was already running late, otherwise I would have gone back home to change shirts. It’s been a roughmorning.”

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