Page 3 of Goalie Interference

“What?”

Her polite smile was fixed. “The gates in New York are not close, unfortunately.”

“But…I’m flying to New York, right?”

Her smile was slipping now. “Yes, you’re flying to New York to catch your connecting flight.”

“Um, where do I stop flying?” Not a Canadian team, or I’d be going directly there. Philly? Pittsburgh? Washington?

She leaned away from me. “Austin. In Texas.”

I stared at her. My mouth hung open, and I probably looked like I no longer understood English. “What?”

Her smile was gone. “I’m not sure what you’re questioning, sir.”

“I’m going to Austin?” The team in Austin was the Aces. Had I really signed to play there?

A short sigh. “That’s what this ticket is booked for. Whether or not you get on the plane is up to you.”

My knee-jerk reaction was no.Fuck no. Of all the teams in the league, this was the one I didn’t want to go to. The team with the new goalie coach who hated me and would have the chance to make my life a fucking misery. Benny knew that, damn him. No wonder he’d been careful to never mention the team. And I’d been desperate enough not to ask.

It was almost enough to make me back out. Almost. But my need to play hockey was bigger than whatever Otts might dish out while I was playing on his team.

“Sorry. Yes, I’m flying.”

Chapter 2

What have I got to do with this?

Sophie

“Sophie!”

I jerked my gaze from the guitar on the table in front of me as the voice called through the speaker of my phone. “Yes, Dad?”

A sigh. “Were you even listening?”

“Of course.” Kinda. Sorta. “You want to know what Cash is doing.”

Not that I knew why my brother wasn’t answering the calls from Dad. Dad was just impatient and didn’t want to wait for an answer, so complaining to me was a fallback. I shifted my weight to the hip leaning against the workbench at the side of my shop, the one with the bigger machines. On the table in the middle of the room was the guitar I was currently repairing, and I was itching to get back to it. Unfortunately, the next step involved using a router, so I couldn’t do anything till Dad was done talking.

“Why can’t he answer his damn phone?”

Because he was in the studio, probably. I lost track of who he was working with, since he traveled all over as he became morein demand as a music producer. Dad was never reachable when he was in the studio, so he should understand if anyone did.

“He’s working.” Chances were.

“I wouldn’t be calling him if it wasn’t important.”

What Dad thought was important and what Cash did weren’t always the same, but I kept quiet. Dad would just ignore me anyway.

“Would Ollie know?”

That snapped my attention back to the call. Sure, Ollie and Cash were friends, but Ollie was my ex-husband and we definitely didn’t keep tabs on each other.

“I have no idea.” My voice was curt, but Dad didn’t notice, of course.

Ollie, Cash and I grew up next-door neighbors in a wealthy Austin suburb. Our dad was the lead singer of an incredibly successful country group, and Ollie’s dad had been a professional baseball player. Also very successful. The properties where we grew up were as large as this place my brother had bought a few years ago so “next door” was quite a hike, but we’d managed to hang out together. Ollie and Cash had been best friends from the time they were ten. Since I was a couple of years younger, I was only occasionally allowed to hang around with them. I’d had a crush on Ollie all through my teens. After high school, he’d left to be a hockey superstar and my brother had gone off to hit the charts with his own band, and I was left behind. I’d set my crush aside.

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