Page 76 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

Not just because I so badly want to sleep with her. But because I want her to like me when she does.

“I’ll tell you.” I turn the quarter inch toward her that the confines of the sleigh allow. “It’s better that you hear it from me than Wyatt tells you the whole thing from his side first.”

My guts tighten. They’re not used to being spilled. “When we had our…disagreement…I was already in a raging ball of fury about a couple of other things.”

“Things that Wyatt had done?”

“Nothing to do with him at all.” I take a long inhale of the cold night air. “It was over the same trash that you read about me.”

“So, the things that woman said were lies?” she asks.

As I look at her, she faces forward, taking over the monitoring of the donkey’s swishing tail.

“Yes,” I state. “Total lies.”

Then there’s just the sound of the hooves and sleigh on the snow again.

And I have no idea if she believes it.

She needs more from me. And, strangely, I’m willing to give it.

“I should never have gotten involved with her. She was a walking red flag. Desperate to get married and have kids from week one.”

“Married?”Natalie’s head recoils as it snaps to face me.

“Yup. So desperate that I’d flush the condoms down the toilet to make sure she couldn’t access the ammunition. So to speak.”

“Good God.” It’s the first time I’ve seen her shocked. “Why would you continue to see someone who made you feel like that?”

“I’ve tried to figure that out. I think it was because when I met her at the end of my first season at the Apollos, I was ready to stop all the wild partying. My head had really been turned in those first few months in New York. Wyatt and I instantly clicked on the ice and were this phenomenal force that everyone was raving about, and outside the game I was at all the best barsand clubs and there were…women.” This story is not making me look good.

“So at the end of that first season I think I just wanted to have an actual relationship. And I kidded myself it was working.” I shrug. “Then during the offseason, when I had some headspace to come to my senses, I ended it. But she threatened to go to the media and sell stories if I didn’t marry her.”

“So she just made up that you’d cheated on her with her best friend?”

“Yup. And those stories were published right before the start of my second Apollos season. Perfect timing to throw me right off balance.”

The sleigh jolts with such force that Natalie’s backside lifts off the seat and she lets out a little yelp.

Instinctively I latch my arms around her in a protective hug.

“Shit, sorry,” Frankie calls back to us. “Couldn’t see the pothole in the snow. You both okay?”

“Are you?” I ask Natalie as I loosen my embrace but keep a firm grip on her shoulder with my left hand.

She nods. “We’re fine, thanks,” she says to Frankie.

Natalie pushes herself upright and out of my arms. The thought that she might not want to be there makes my stomach heavy. I could hold on to her all night and never get tired of it.

I return my left arm to rest on the back of the sleigh where at least it’s close to her.

Natalie adjusts her jacket and turns as far as she can to face me.

Her eyes meet mine, searching them. “And you didn’t sleep with her friend?”

“Never touched her.”

Does she believe me now?

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