Page 5 of Goalie Interference

Remy

By the time I landed, I had a few messages to deal with. The team had scrounged up an address for me, and someone named Elsa Harbourn sent it to me. I didn’t know shit about Austin, so the street name meant nothing and I had no idea what kind of place I was going to. The animal transportation company notified me that a vet had signed off on Beast and they would be shipping him down once I sent word. I’d need to do that ASAP. That animal had issues on his issues, and being in a kennel environment wouldn’t help him.

No one had recognized me on the flights, but I was used to that. I wasn’t one of the stars of the NHL, and over the summer I let my hair and beard grow. Instead of the suits we wore to travel, or a hockey jersey, I was in khaki shorts and a faded T-shirt. I didn’t even recognize myself in the reflective surfaces around the airport. I hadn’t had a chance to hit up a barber before my flights, but I should make that a priority now that I was here.

Once I’d picked up my luggage, I was met by a young man holding up a sign withDaniel Rempelon it.

I walked over to him. “That’s me.”

He ran a surprised glance over me but put on a polite smile. “How was your flight?”

I shrugged. “Fine.” This guy didn’t want a real answer.

“If you come with me, I’ll drop you off at your new home.” He was so bright and perky he had to be an intern.

I followed him out to a black SUV. Austin was hot as hell compared to the cottage where I’d been all summer. I shifted my grip on my duffel and waited for him to open the vehicle up.

Once the bags were tossed in the back, we got in and he turned up the AC. We pulled out of the airport and onto a main road. He seemed confident driving, so I asked, “What’s this place like that I’m going to?”

He shot me a glance. “I don’t know. Elsa, the GM’s assistant, is in charge of that. Because of the dog situation we couldn’t use the usual hotels. All I know is that it’s a private residence. But it’s in an expensive neighborhood, if that helps.”

I didn’t need anything fancy. I wasn’t sure how Beast was going to behave in a new environment, so something more affordable might help if he decided to chew on the furniture, but I didn’t have a lot of options.

The areas we drove through kept getting nicer as we got closer to the location on his GPS.Expensivehardly touched these places. The car pulled up in front of iron gates. Through them I could see huge, immaculately maintained grounds. This place screamed money. Who the hell lived here, and why was I getting to stay? Did it belong to one of my new teammates? One of the stars? It didn’t look big enough to belong to a billionaire team owner.

I’d been given the security code for the gates in an email, and they swung open after I’d input them. I’d never lived in a placelike this. The only reason I wasn’t freaking out was because the email also indicated I’d be staying in the carriage house, not the main residence.

Who the fuck had a carriage house?

We turned right when the driveway split, just after we got through the gates, and stopped in front of what had to be my new home. It was two stories tall, white stucco with clay tiles on the roof. The building had a staircase to the side, and the main doors were open in front of us. Most people would have been happy to have this as their home, let alone the huge place I could see to the left through the trees.

The driver got out and started to remove my bags. He left the gear bag in the back, saying he’d been instructed to take it to the team’s equipment room. We could hear a grinding noise coming out of the open doors, and for a moment I wondered if this was the right place. The gate code worked, so this must be it, but why was someone inside working? They weren’t renovating the place for me, surely.

I thanked the driver and offered him a tip. I watched him leave before I turned to check out my new home. My duffel had wheels, and I threw the bag with my suits over my shoulder as I headed for the doors, fingers crossed that someone inside could help me out.

When I looked through the doors I found a workshop, not a residence, and it was big, the whole bottom floor of the building. I hoped upstairs had a bedroom, because this place wasn’t ready for anyone to live in. On the wall was a board of instruments, tools for someone who worked around the house. Below the tools were benches, with machines and shit on them. There were stairs to the second floor, a kitchenette, and a door to what could be a bathroom at the back. My dad had been strictly a “call people when something goes wrong” guy, so I’d never learned to use a hammer or drill the way some of my teammates hadgrowing up, but even to my untrained eyes the stuff in here looked different to the hammers and saws I’d seen at people’s houses.

There were a couple of larger machines on one table—I had no idea what they’d do—and pieces of wood, glue and clamps, everything clean and well cared for. I saw guitars hanging up, as well as the one on the central workbench, which had the strings off and looked bare and empty.

Someone was standing in front of one of the machines, the one making noise. She—I was pretty sure it was a she—was maybe five foot six, with baggy jeans and a T-shirt, hair covered by a dusty bandana, and big headphones on, to protect her ears.

I tried to say hello, getting louder each time, but she didn’t hear me. Maybe she shouldn’t leave the doors open when she had the headphones on? I didn’t want to scare the shit out of her by going over and getting in her line of sight, since she was handling equipment.

I finally yelled a “Hey” just as she turned off her machine, and she jumped, whipping around and brandishing a piece of wood at me.

She pulled off the headphones, stick still pointing at me. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

I held up my hands in a non-threatening gesture. “I’m here for the carriage house apartment?”

She was attractive, but not typical, with straight brows that gave her frown a lot more weight. Pale skin, with what could be freckles or just bits of wood from what she’d been working on. A long nose, and right now, lips thinned together in a disapproving frown. Again I had to question whether this was the right place.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’d say that if you were planning to hurt me.”

Fair point.“I was given this address, a gate code, and told to come to the carriage house.”

Her hand holding the wood lowered. “How are you here already?”

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