Page 17 of Grumpy Puck

Interesting.

Once we’re finally inside, the HR woman—who reminds me that her name is Linda—asks for me and Coach to follow her into the conference room near her office.

So Iamgetting fired?

“Is Michael in there already?”Coach asks.

Why would he need to be at my firing?

“He’s in there,” Linda says.“So is Adam from PR and Eve from Finance.”

PR?Finance?Curiouser and curiouser.Maybe they’re going to ask me not to badmouth them after I’m fired,and to that end, they plan to pay me a generous severance?

I wouldn’t mind that at all.

When we enter the conference room, Adam and Eve are already waiting—dressed in business suits, not fig leaves.Also waiting is Michael, and seeing him again is like a kick in the ovaries.He has a muscle shirt on, with delectable chest hair peeking out, and sports a five-o’clock shadow—which everyone knows is the sexiest kind of shadow.Oh, and for some reason, he’s glaring at the players who escorted us in.

“You can go,” Coach says to said players.

The two look all too happy to leave, no doubt because they’ve also noticed Michael’s black-as-his-soul eyes beaming death rays their way.

Not a single person seems to care that Wolfgang is sitting on my shoulder, which makes me like them all, with the exception of the bear, of course, who probably just doesn’t look at me enough to notice anything at all.

“Want to sit there?”Coach points at the chair next to Michael.

I narrow my eyes.“Why would I want to sit next tohim?”

Coach shrugs.“What we have to say concerns the two of you, so it will just make life a little easier.”He gestures at a chair across from Michael.“You can sit there if you’d prefer.”

“No.It’s fine.”I plop into the chair next to Michael and immediately curse my choice.Just like yesterday, he smells mouthwateringly good: like herbs, mushrooms, and honey.

“What the fuck is all this about?”Michael growls as soon as everyone is seated.

“I might not have put it in those exact terms, but yeah,” I say.“Why are we here?”

Eve clears her throat.“I got a call from my equivalent with the Yetis.The tickets to the exhibition game are sold out.”

Everyone except me stares at her with different levels of shocked expressions.

Adam scratches the back of his head.“The same game that was going to get canceled because the Yetis couldn’t sell any tickets?”

Eve nods triumphantly.

“Who or what are the Yetis?”I ask no one in particular.

On my shoulder, Wolfgang cleans his whiskers.

Meine Liebe, a yeti is another word for bigfoot, and bigfoot sounds like a creature that smells strongly like feet, which—given that feet smell like cheese—tells me that whatever or whoever the Yetis are, they smell delicious.

“The Yetis are a New York hockey team,” Coach says.“Michael was with them for a short while, and he recently used that connection to set up an outside-league game with them, a big deal because they’re much stronger and?—”

“They’re not that much stronger,” Michael growls.“We just?—”

“Gentlemen,” Eve says pointedly.“I wasn’t finished.”

Everyone stops talking and looks at Eve, even Wolfgang.

“As I was saying,” Eve continues.“All of our other games have sold out as well, even the one against the Pineapple Ice Surfers.”

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