Page 8 of Santa's Pucking Hat Trick

She’d be a challenge to seduce, that was for sure. And I should probably take the prospect of losing my literal job more seriously, focus on more effectively hiding my habits if I had no intention of changing them. But watching Rachel Henning’s hips sway as she left, all I could think was,Challenge accepted.

4

SAWYER

The cheap beer I’d ordered went down easy as I sipped, watching Wes, Michael, and Roman struggle through a piss-poor game of darts. We may have been a killer team on the ice, but here in the Rowdy Reindeer, Mistletoe’s only decent place to get a drink after practice, my friends were just a bunch of regular guys.

I watched as Wes lined up his next throw and absolutely beefed it, hitting just outside the board. Roman and Michael cracked up together, and I smirked from my quiet perch of observation, content with my usual role on the outer edges of our friend group.

Maybe it was an age thing. I was almost the oldest guy on the team, still well within appropriate hockey-playing age, but there was a big difference between Michael’s twenty-two and my thirty whole years of life. Wes was about the same age as Michael, and Roman was only a ripe old twenty-five. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling—a strange melancholy that didn’t go down as smooth as the beer—and though I’d never been a social butterfly, I was once way more fun than now.

It was Alicia, of course. Before my ex-wife broke my heart, which I’d never realized was breakable before, I’d been a less broody version of my current self. I was always a man of few words as a general rule, but ever since Alicia left me for another fucking hockey player—a professional one, no less, not minor leagues, with more money and fame and all the bullshit I’d never known her to care about before—I was different. Worse, probably.

I didn’t miss her, really. It had been years since all of that went down, and though I didn’t regret marrying her when I did, I knew now that she and I wouldn’t have worked out long term even if she hadn’t become the ultimate fucking puck bunny. But there was a part of me that missed the idea of the future I had with her. The comfortable, settled feeling of being married suited me. That, and the idea of one day having kids of my own, fulfilling the whole cliché fucking fantasy I’d never admit to any of my teammates was my real dream.

I’d always wanted to be a father. And even though in theory I had time to find someone else, to take that step with someone who was ready for it and wanted it with me, part of me felt sure I never would. It didn’t help that I hadn’t dated or even looked at another woman since my divorce. Too messy. Too…not worth the effort and the risk of being wrong about someone all over again.

I swallowed down my self-pitying bullshit with the last dregs of my beer, willing myself to clear my head, focus on the doofus dart game in front of me. I tuned in just in time to see Roman obnoxiously hit a bullseye.

“Fuck yeah, motherfuckers!” He celebrated, pulling Wes down into a headlock and noogie, which didn’t have the same effect when it was on a short buzz cut, but Wes was a good sport about it.

“You still have to get the overall score, asshole,” Michael reminded him, and Roman shrugged.

“Winning’s what I do, Mikey. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

“Dick,” Michael muttered as he came to sit beside me. “You sure you don’t want in on a round, Sawyer?”

“Positive,” I answered. “Let me drink in peace.”

“You act like you’re about eighty-five instead of thirty,” Michael told me, but he settled in on the stool next to me at the table, gesturing toward our bartender buddy, Roger, to grab us another round of beers.

Mike and I chatted for a while about basically nothing, until he got into the topic that really made him get animated.

“I’m just stoked as hell my sister is back in town, you know?” he said, bringing to mind the dark-haired beauty who’d busted my balls at her own welcome-back party. Her gorgeous gray-blue eyes seemed to look straight through me, and they may have been haunting me a little ever since. “She’s been gone so long, it feels like we’ve sort of drifted. I miss being close to her.”

Michael had always been a bit more touchy-feely than me, but that wasn’t why I was a little uncomfortable with this line of conversation. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“And I think one way to kinda get us back on track is if I help her find a job,” he said as if I wasn’t even here. “I know her. She doesn’t do well being on her own. I feel like it’s the least I can do for her, y’know?”

“What kind of job is she in the market for?”

“Well, her degree is in marketing, PR, that kind of thing. So I guess she wants to do something like that, but I don’t know shit about any of it.” He shrugged, happily uncertain in a way that I envied. “I’m just trying to keep an eye out.”

“Aren’t they hiring a new marketing person for the team?” I shouldn’t have suggested it, but hell, maybe I was a glutton forpunishment. I’d never considered myself a masochist before, but now I’d suggested this even though I knew it would be painful to have to look at Michael’s hot sister around the ice center all the time, especially after our first meeting was prickly at best.

Michael’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. Fitting for a Mistletoe boy, born and bred. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Sawyer, man, you’re a genius. It’d be so great to have Rach around the rink!”

“Is she much of a sports girl?” I asked out of sheer curiosity. Michael let out a bark of a laugh.

“Ha, no. Not at all. But who cares? She’d be marketing, not playing hockey. I bet she’d be great at it.”

Before I could try to un-put my foot in my mouth, get the silly idea of inviting his attractive sister to hang around at my place of work regularly out of his impressionable head, the opportunity passed. Mike’s attention shifted as the dart game he’d abandoned ended abruptly because Roman was distracted. He ditched all of us for some busty blonde at the bar, and within seconds, he had her giggling and hair twirling.

“Found his next conquest, I guess,” I commented as Wes joined us at the table. “Can’t deny he’s effective.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.” Wes smirked.

“More like obnoxious,” Mike rebutted. “Glad I’ve got Violet and I don’t have to throw myself at women that way.” Even when he said his long-term girlfriend’s name in passing, his face looked like a kid on Christmas—giddy, awestruck with wonder. The poor bastard.

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