Page 1 of Pucked and Pregnant

1

LIV

I’m only halfway through the statistics for the last AHL game I covered when I feel the mood of the office shift. The clacking of keyboards and the indiscernible buzz of murmured collaboration turns into shrill, rapid-fire clucking.

Just a few seconds ago, this office was a hive of number-crunching intellectuals yet now it sounds like a coop of cackling hens. It happens sometimes, especially when there’s a particularly exciting bit of hockey gossip, but it always dies down quickly.

This time, however, it doesn’t stop.

How the hell am I going to be able to concentrate now?

Caroline told me that if I can impress the president of the league with my data analysis and subsequent presentation, that would give her enough data points to go toe-to-toe with her boss, and possibly get me into the pros.

When I joined Pro Rink Analytics, they started me in the minors. I fought my way through the ranks of the ECHL, and then the AHL by shamelessly throwing myself into every project I could get my grubby little hands on.

Unfortunately, however, sports analytics—like many other things—is a boy’s club. I had to supply perfection in every report I created while my colleagues got away with turning in half-assed work.

While working in the ECHL department, I accidentally transposed two numbers, and they made me rerun every single chart and data point. Meanwhile, my partner turned in work with so many typos it was illegible, as well as charts with an obvious bias toward the teams he liked, regardless of what the actual numbers showed.

Dave, my boss at the time, took him out to dinner on the company dime to “celebrate his improvement.” Yes, you heard right. Cooked numbers and typos were an improvement to the work he’d submitted before.

Things got better though when Caroline pitched me for the AHL department.

Despite the occasional come-ons and dirty jokes, the men I work with are decent. Most importantly, Caroline values my work and supports my career goals. I supplied her with my best work and she repaid that by being my biggest advocate when a position in the pro division opened up.

Even with her support, I’ve had to do twice as many press conferences and submit work twice as good as the men in my department to even be considered a candidate. They’ll look at my portfolio, probably to avoid a discrimination lawsuit, only to come back with, “Not good enough. You need more experience.”

There have even been times when I was the only person who applied. I know this because Caroline checked and told me. Instead of giving me the opportunity, they transferred in someone from a different state to fill the spot.

Clearly, they don’t want you. They already have their token female. Why not just give up?

Because mean little voice in my head, I don’t want to, and despite what it sounds like, my trajectory is practically a meteoric rise to the top from a lady analyst perspective. The fact that I’m twenty-six years old and already working at the top of the AHL department is nothing short of a miracle. If you consider the complete sacrifice of my social life, ruthlessness, and bold ambition to be miraculous, that is.

I let out a frustrated groan and try to return my focus to the report I’m working on, but no matter what I do, I can’t tune out the noise.

It’s been more than ten minutes of this crap and I’ve had enough. I stomp over to a cluster of men three cubicles down.

“What could possibly be interesting enough to warrant all this noise?” I demand. “Jumbo jets are quieter than you guys right now.”

“Uh oh, it’s the fun police.”

“Bite me.”

Garrett smirks. “Gladly. Do you have a place in mind, or do I get to choose?”

The other men snicker.

I square my shoulders and look him dead in the eye. “Not even if I was dying and your dick was the cure.”

The other men carry on like schoolboys whose classmate just got called to the principal’s office. Garrett turns an interesting shade of red and slinks away from me.

Maybe it was a bit over the top but I’m not in the mood to stroke any male egos today.

“Are you ready to stop acting like a bunch of children now and tell me what’s going on?” I demand.

“You seriously don’t know?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I did.”

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