Page 2 of Ice Dance Hockey

Dropping my stick, I tug off my helmet supermodel style, allowing my dark hockey hair to flow like I’m on an episode of Baywatch. I beam my panty-dropping smile. “I believe there has been a misunderstanding. I have the ice from five am until seven am. I’m sure we can sort this out.”

“Your fake-ass smile won’t work on me. There was no misunderstanding. It appears as if someone didn’t think it important if you got the memo or not.”

How dare?—

“And also,” he continues, “Anyone ever tell you your chin is too cleft-y? It looks like your jaw has its own butt.”

“Your eyelashes are too fucking long, and they make you look like Pamela Lee,” I snap without thinking, surprising myself. I can get angry, sure, but I’m not prone to outbursts.

He shrugs. “I like Pamela Lee, but real mature by the way.”

“You just?—”

“I’m still eighteen for the next week, I’m allowed a little immaturity. You’re what? Going on thirty-five?” He smirks, and I think he might be out smirking me.

Know what? Fuck charm or money. I’ll deal with this the old-fashioned way; a couple of phone calls to people far more important than he is. Picking him up and throwing him out of here will be fun and worth the berating lecture I’ll get from Father when he hears about this later.

As soon as I move my skate, he takes off. I chuck my helmet on the ground and hop over the boards onto the ice. He’s a fast little ant, I’ll give him that, but he’s not faster than me, which he realizes too late.

Plus, I could cheat. I could send us railing into the boards, something I’m going to guess he’s never done since that’s the behavior of a goon. But I can’t. It would be different if he was at least half my size, but I would crush him. Maybe break bones.

I’m all right with scaring him, though. He deserves it for the comment about my gorgeous chin. Journalists have written whole pieces dedicated to this chin.

Making like I’m going to crush him doesn’t elicit the fear I’d hoped for, and instead makes him double down his efforts to make it to the other end of the ice where there’s no way to navigate a sharper turn. The little idiot is going to kill himself at that speed.

Abandoning my cool plans, I skate even faster than I was, which was already damn fast, so I catch up to him and pluck him off the ice, encasing him with my tree-trunk-sized arms. But now I’m going too fast to stop without using the boards to do it, and I can’t let him hit first or he’ll break a limb.

Praying I don’t twist anything, I spin us just enough that it’s my hip and shoulder checking the boards at top speed, curling him into my body to shield him from the world of hurt I’m currently experiencing.

“Mother fucker,” I growl, absorbing the pain. Miraculously, I don’t put myself out of a hockey career—but I will have one helluva bruise later—and he’s curled into a ball in my arms.

He’s frail. He’s smaller than he looks, and he looks damn small. My instincts tug in all kinds of ways, and I want to keep holding him. Men like him break in this world.

He thrashes like a wildcat with a thorn in his paw until I release him. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You could have killed me.”

“I could have killedus,” I correct him, which isn’t helpful nor is it the kind of clever response I’m usually capable of.

“No, just me. If you had died, that’s Darwinism. It’s what happens to foolish animals.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have chased him, but I’m not going to admit that. “It’s time for you to leave.”

“My sport requires actual skill and I need the practice. Can’t you just, I dunno, terrorize a group of preschoolers or something? Hockey is nothing but a bunch of oversized toddlers punching each other in the face. You’ll be right at home in a Montessori.”

It takes a lot to stump Rhett Elkington, but this guy has done it. He’s not intimidated by me in any of the ways a person can be intimidated by me. I can’t catch him without almost killing us both—though if he keeps this up, I might be willing to try again—and I doubt he’d take a bribe at this point. I might actually have to concede the ice for the next twenty minutes. At least I stole ten minutes of his precious practice time.

“Aw, fucking hell,” he says, but he’s staring off into the stands and not at me. “I told him not to come early,” he adds under his breath.

Turning gingerly, I set eyes on the man who makes my heart skip a thousand beats. The man I’m going to marry and have children with someday, even if I have to wait out his fuck-my-hockey-coach era. He’s barreling down the stairs, with a baby attached to his torso and zipped into his jacket.

“It’s a little chilly in here, fellas,” he says. “Shoulda wore my boots.”

It’s late spring and not near summer weather in Vancouver, but of course, Jack’s wearing flip-flops in an ice arena as if he’s never been in an ice arena before. I would never allow that. It prickles my insides. Mercy isn’t taking proper care of him.

“Sorry I’m early to pick you up, Lo, but the baby was awake, and I took him for a drive, and we landed here. Hey, Rhett. What you doin’ here?”

Lo? I try to place the name. If he’s connected to Jack, I should have heard about this “Lo” character by now. Oh, wait,Logan. This must be Logan. I read something in the reports from my private investigator about a Logan, butMerchas so many siblings—boring siblings—that I didn’t think much of it. Plus, I don’t have as many private detectives on Jack as I used to. Just one now. He reports to me with what he deems important along with any information I’ve requested.

“Lo” quickly realizes that Jack and I know each other and that his ice time might be in danger.

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