Page 1 of Ice Melts

CHAPTER ONE

Sarah Cooper had a secret. Something she’d told no one ever, that she’d carried since high school.

But she was going to have to let it go.

And that might never happen if she kept her same career as a sports reporter… covering hockey… and the players… and their personal lives.

She sat with notebook in hand, her favorite pen and a pasted-on smile, waiting for the guys to gather so she could ask her questions and go. This article was going to be one for the books. Or at least the exposure would be.

Her respect for the players was meticulously hidden between many layers of professionality and journalistic smarts. This was not her secret necessarily, but she’d also never admit to admiring them, purely platonically, of course.

She certainly wasn’t attracted to them…

The guys came pouring out of the locker room and began to strip down to their shirts and tights right in front of her.Uh, what is going on here?She didn’t think giving up her thing for hockey players was going to happen any time soon.

What people didn’t understand about Hockey players was how fit they were. Their uniforms were bulky. No one saw the beauty beneath all those pads. But they were some of the toned most built athletes she’d ever seen and she didn’t think she’d ever get tired of seeing it.

She looked away. She tried not to notice. They were smelly, afterall. And arrogant, self-serving, overly hyped about their self-importance…so many things that a good set of abs did not address…or make up for. Mostly.

Not that she spoke from experience. She’d refused to date one since she was in high school, since her best friend’s brother had started playing hockey. That was the moment hockey became off limits as a romantic interest.

But then moments like this happened, when she was waiting for the press conference and somehow got a front row view of the guys. Turns out, pipes had burst in their locker room and someone had offered to take their uniforms to be washed. So, here she was, in the hall with the whole team while they started peeling away the uniforms.

A small smile curled at her lips no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

“Are you drooling over the guys, Sarah?” Their main team media liaison stepped up next to her, his eyes twinkling.

She frowned. “Of course I am. But that doesn’t mean anything. I’d never actually date one.”

Tiny, the player actually close enough to hear their conversation snorted. “You act like we’re some kind of specimen in a jar. Never date one, what does that even mean?”

“One as in, I don’t know, one of you.”

“Wow, just wow.” He shook his head and dropped a pile of wet sweaty clothes at her feet.

She stepped back, wrinkling her nose. “I’m not here to do your laundry.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to insult the guys she hoped to get statements from. She bumped shoulders with the media liaison. “Now look what you did. You made me insult one of the exhibits.”

Jorge, who had been working with hockey players his whole life and should have sympathized with her, should have gotten her joke, just shook his head. “Not a good move Cooper, not a good move.”

“Oh, come on, they have the emotional sensitivity of a…”

She noticed a few more of the guys with an eye in her direction. She cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll send Tiny a gift basket. Let’s get this press conference going, shall we?”

She hid her awkward embarrassment behind forced professionality. Her attempted smile of apology sent in Tiny’s direction only seemed to make things worse.Stick to the script, Cooper.If she were being totally honest and admitting her deepest secret, she didn’t have a thing forallhockey players, just one. The one she could probably never have, who didn’t see her that way, who was responsible for her greatest hurt in highschool...Focus.

Flat stomachs and rippled abs surrounded her. For the most part at this point, the players were all free of their uniforms, wearing wet-through tight workout clothes. And she had to admit they were excellent at what they did. To arrive at the professional level, an athlete was in pristine condition, especially a hockey player. She felt her cheeks flush. Perhaps she was being a bit unfair. Perhaps there was room for a hockey player to be a decent human being.

“Oh, come on Cooper, don’t tell me you’ve never seen a bunch of half-dressed athletes before.” The star forward, Trey, clipped her on the back like she was one of the guys and brushed past her, his body leaving a moist smear across her arm.

“Ugh!” She turned to Jorge but he arched his shirt away from her. “Don’t wipe that mess on me. Do you know how many germs are in a single drop of sweat? Not to mention waste...”

She held up her hands. “Okay, just stop.”

She had nothing to wipe it with so she left the glistening line on her arm to dry and stood taller, trying to maintain some level of professionality.

Jorge stepped in front of a make shift microphone podium and tapped to make sure the sound was working. “Okay, hey guys. Sorry about the locker room confusion. As a result of our ahem, lack of clothing, we will have cameras pointed this way only.” He waved his arms and pointed to himself and the reporters behind him. “But the audio is on, so as always, best faces for the camera, or in this case voices. Represent the team well.”

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