Page 50 of The Nanny Goal

And then I shove Zondi out the door, and keep pushing him until I deliver him to the medical team myself.

Our injured new D-man, Luca Carter, is there, too, getting a treatment on his knee. He looks back and forth between us.

Zondi shrugs. “Don’t hit on his babysitter.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Luca says.

Good. That’s good—for him. For his tenuous health.

Everyone needs to keep their fucking hands off Emery.

Including me.

CHAPTER16

EMERY

I stare at Alexei’s back, and then the empty doorway, as my pulse races and my head spins. Who in the possessive heck wasthatman?

Grumpy.

Growly.

He evengruntedwhen Malik implied more than is accurate about our friendship, if one can stretch it even that far. Acquaintanceship.

And now I’m wearing Alexei’s jersey for the second time in three days!

Unreal.

I grab the skates.

I need to find a bucket of pucks, a really expensive hockey stick, and get on the ice.

My goalie boss and former mistake of a hook up had better get ready, because I feel like smashing some pucks into the net. Preferably off his blocker and his shoulders and his face mask, and most definitely five-hole, right between the legs.

CHAPTER17

ALEXEI

I’m calmer by the time I step on the ice, fully dressed in my goalie gear.

Emery is skating a looping warm up pattern on one half of the rink, her skates leaving a carved path in the fresh ice.

I skate right to the middle of her path and start to do my own warm up, getting a bit of cardio in while finding my edges. She’s faster than me, and picks up extra speed as she rushes past.

I grin.

She narrows her eyes at me on the next pass. “What are you smiling at?”

“You,” I say, but it’s quiet and I don’t think she hears it under the slice of her blades against the crisp surface.

The cure for being jealous of my teammate wasn’t stalking away from her and getting dressed on my own—it’s being alone with Emery on the ice and giving her a chance to be mad at me.

She hasn’t had that chance yet, because we had other things to worry about. But my mother is recovering, and in good hands. Seeing her this morning, knowing my dad has a place to stay…it lifted some of the panic that had consumed all of my thoughts.

And in the quiet that replaced it, I felt Emery’s thigh flex against my knuckles. I felt the loss of her when Inessa wasn’t agreeable to skating. And I saw another man want her the way I have always wanted her.

The way I can’t have her.

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