Page 4 of Glitz & Goals

“Grady Metcalfe! It’s great to meet you in the flesh.” The smiling man who holds out his hand to me looks like he’s barely thirty. In fact, the longer I look at him, the more I think he might be in his early twenties at best. He’s young, fresh-faced, and eager.

Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Is this guy really the owner of the team? I bet he’s younger than some of the players.

“Are you Mr. Giovanetti?” I ask, even as I extend my hand.

The guy wrinkles his nose. “Please, call me Sergio. Every time people sayMr. Giovanetti,I think of my dad, and… well, you’ll meet him soon enough.”

I pump Sergio’s hand in greeting. Sure enough, this is my new boss. I’m not sure how I feel about working for a kid, but I’m the youngest coach in the NHL this season, so I know how it feels when people don’t take you seriously on account of your age. Sergio seems nice enough. He’s got a full head of dark hair—okay, I’m a little jealous, since mine’s never been that thick—and a round, open face that makes me like him at once. There’s none of that weird posturing and extra-tight hand squeezing that some guys do when they want to establish dominance.

So far, so good. I can work with this.

“We’ll get you all set up after the welcome breakfast,” Sergio explains. He turns deeper into the building and waves for me to follow him. “You’ve already met Renee since she’s the one you’ve been corresponding with. And I know you’ve been in touch with my dad…”

Technically, Dante Giovanetti is the one who hired me, although I have yet to meet the guy in person. I got a series of slightly unhinged emails talking about magic at the end of last season, and after confirming that they weren’t a hoax, I did some digging. I knew the Vegas Venom from back in the day, of course, but over the years, they lost their mojo, and the entire organization has gone downhill.

It seems fitting, I suppose, that I’ve come full circle. A Venom player took me out of the game. Now, a decade and a half later, that same team is paying me a staggering amount of money to put them back on the map. The team roster even includes a kid with the same last name as the guy who injured me: Abbott. It’s a wild coincidence, but it also feels like a sign. Like redemption.

I let Sergio take me on a quick tour of the building just to get my bearings. “We’ll show you around in earnest later,” he promises. “Renee will get you set up in your office, and then Ranger—he’s the new assistant coach—will give you the rundown on how everything’s going.”

I cock my head to one side. “Ranger? As in, Ranger Shaw? Wasn’t he on the team back in the Stanley Cup years?”

“Yeah…” Sergio draws out the word and rubs his temples. “Listen, my dad is a little, uh… Eccentric?” The way he hits that last word makes me think he has another adjective in mind. “So he started hiring a bunch of the kids of former players and stacking the front office with old friends. He says he’s trying to get the magic back.”

“Hold on.” Ah, so now all that magic stuff is starting to make sense. I think back over the roster. Now that I consider it, there were a few other familiar names on it, although I didn’t put two and two together because… well, because this plan doesn’t make any sense. Who does that kind of thing? And if I had acceptedthe job prior to Sergio’s dad getting this hairbrained idea, I would have stopped him.

And does that mean the Abbott kid…?

“Oh, don’t worry.” Sergio flaps a hand at me, misreading my hesitation. “Dad’s really excited to have you, with your reputation. He’s all about the nepotism, but even he has his limits.” Sergio laughs, but there’s a note of awkwardness in his voice, which makes me wonder what kind of pressure Dante’s putting on his son. From what I can tell, his are pretty big shoes to fill. If I were a father, I would never…

Well, it doesn’t matter. No use opening up that old wound. I guess I’ll never know for sure.

“The players will be here in about half an hour, but I wanted to give you the chance to meet the rest of the guys you’ll be working with first.” Sergio pauses at a pair of double doors and gives me a big grin. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’m gonna be.”

Sergio pulls one of the doors open and leads me through, and the instant I step inside, my words make a liar of me. I’m prepared for the two guys sitting across the long table from me, one of whom is my age, and the other a little older. They look kind of familiar, but I can’t place them. It’s the sight of the third man that stops me in my tracks.

Noah Abbott. Noah fucking Abbott, the man who singlehandedly ended my career and, indirectly, my marriage, is…right. Fucking.There.

My whole body locks up. I can feel myself slipping into flight or fight mode. When Dante Giovanetti sent me the coaching staff bios, Noah Abbott was not on that list. But then again, neither was Ranger Shaw. This is not how today was supposed to go.

The three men stop talking, and two of them look up at me with expectant expressions, their eyes fixed on my face. I shouldturn away, but my body isn’t listening to me, and I find myself staring right into Noah’s eyes. He grins.

“Hey, let me guess… you’re Grady Metcalfe,” he says. Like he’s never seen me before in his life. Like we’re meeting for the first time.

“Yeah,” I croak.

Sergio slaps my back so hard that he almost knocks me off my feet. Given that you could blow me over with a feather, I guess that’s not saying much. “Grady, this is Noah Abbott, our new goalie coach.”

Yeah,I fucking know who he is.I wait for things to click for him, or for whatever facade he’s holding together to break, but it doesn’t happen.

This guy ruined my life, and he has no idea who I am.

Sergio plows on. “And this is Briggs Sawyer, the Director of Acquisitions.”

“Yo.” Briggs lifts a hand in greeting. He’s a little shorter than the other two, with the kind of body that speaks of a guy who used to rely on his metabolism to keep his weight in check and is gradually slipping into dad-bod territory. His cocky grin makes him look younger than his thinning hair suggests.

“And this is Ranger Shaw, the assistant coach.”

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