Page 35 of Treat

Jude looked up. Brynn stood at the edge of the boards at the end of the tunnel. She’d donned a thick hoodie over the t-shirt and leggings she’d worn in the weight room, likely in deference to the chill coming off the ice, and the phone in her hand was aimed at him.

“Smile, asshole,” Tommy muttered.

“What?”

“You look like a constipated goat. Smile.”

He didn’t feel like smiling. He felt like chucking his gear, snatching her up, and fucking her into the boards until they both passed out. He didn’t even care that he’d be risking frost bite to his balls to do it.

Tommy snorted out a laugh. “I said smile, not eye-fuck her.”

Fuck that. She wanted juice for social media? He’d give her some juice.

He walked up the tunnel, his eyes on her face. She was watching her phone screen, but then her gaze flicked up to meet his.

Sometimes, before a game, it was like something was building inside him, an engine revving before a race, energy coiled and waiting to be set free. That’s what he felt like now, seeing awareness dawn in her eyes and color bloom in her cheeks. This close to the ice he could see her breath, coming in short, rapid little puffs, hitching as he drew closer. He sloweddown, so many things he wanted to say leaping to mind.You’re beautiful. I want you. Please sit on my face.But she was filming, and none of those things were appropriate.

So he sent her a slow smile, knowing his dimples would pop, and closed one eye in a wink when he passed her. He skated onto the ice with Tommy right behind him, still laughing, and shouted, “Okay boys, let’s do this!”

Brynn madeher way up into the stands, trying to stop hyperventilating before she got to her seat. Tommy’s wife was here with her sister, along with his assistant Angela, and she was afraid if she didn’t calm down they’d ask questions, probably something like,are you going through early menopause?because she sure felt like she was having a hot flash.

She’d set up her tripod a few rows back from the glass, hoping to get as much of the ice in frame as possible while still staying close to the action, and busied herself setting up her phone. There were about a dozen players out there, skating in circles and talking shit, Jude in the middle of them. He was laughing at something Tommy said, which wasn’t helping her hot flash situation, so she set the phone to record and took the stairs into the stands at a run so it would look like she was breathless and sweaty because she was out of shape instead of horny.

Kara, Tommy’s very pregnant wife, was dressed in a pair of leggings and her husband’s jersey and had her red hair up in a high ponytail that set off her excellent bone structure. Her skin, almost as white as Brynn’s, was unfairly freckle-free, something that would’ve annoyed Brynn if Kara hadn’t already confessed that the red was chemically assisted. She was bickering with her sister when Brynn arrived and was surrounded by an impressive array of snacks. There was a two-liter bottle of Faygo Red Pop onthe floor, a jar of garlic pickles next to it, and a Meijer grocery bag filled with what looked like every kind of box candy they carried perched on Kara’s knees.

“It’s ridiculous,” Kara’s sister was saying. Seated on Kara’s other side, she was a pretty, forty-something white brunette with a short, stylish bob, snapping blue eyes and the kind of skin that screamedI work indoors and make enough money to see my dermatologist more often than my dentist.

“It’s not,” Kara insisted with a toss of her ponytail, her own blue eyes firing. “And anyway, I didn’t ask. She volunteered.”

The sister—Layla, Brynn recalled—rolled her eyes. “She volunteered because you whined.”

“I did not whine,” Kara whined.

“You’re pathetic,” Layla declared and snatched the bag of candy off Kara’s lap.

“Hey!”

“I’m taking the Lemonheads. That’s your punishment for being a spoiled brat.”

“Bitch,” Kara muttered, then turned to smile at Brynn. “Hey, Brynn. Want some candy?”

“No, thanks.” Unfazed by the sisterly bickering and grateful for the distraction from her lustful thoughts, Brynn took the seat next to Kara. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay,” Kara said, patting the bump rising from her middle like Mount Doom. “Tired, and hungry all the time?—”

Layla snorted around a mouth full of Lemonheads.

“Bite me,” Kara snapped, then continued without missing a beat. “But all in all, feeling pretty good.”

“That’s great.”

“I’m so glad they’re doing this.” Wiggling in her seat, Kara nodded at the ice, where the shit-talking had stopped and they seemed to be getting organized. “I can get some heckling in before I’m sidelined with Tommy Junior, here.”

“You’re going to heckle your husband?” Brynn asked, amused.

“Hell, yes.” Leaning forward, Kara cupped her hands around her mouth to yell, “Hey Jakes, you candy-ass! You gonna play some hockey, or stand around gabbing like an old lady all day?”

Layla just shook her head and sighed, but out on the ice, Tommy laughed.

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