Page 7 of Troublemaker
Which was why I got moved around so much. Fortunately, one of said abusive foster parents had been a hockey coach, so I’d gotten my first introduction to the ice at a young age. And after I moved out of that home, I lucked outagain,because my mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program owned his own damn hockey team. He saw to it that I got training.
That man was none other than Elijah Braverman, Lucy’s father.
Elijah seemed like a cold man to everyone but me. He’d told me I reminded him of himself, and so he’d taken me under his wing, regularly invited me to his home, and treated me like he was the father I’d never had. Before they’d died in that freak accident, Elijah shared that they were leaving Lucy to me in the will, “just in case.” It had made me uncomfortable at the time.
“Why?” I’d asked him.
“Lucy’s a tricky kid. She’s too needy for most people. But you seem to tolerate her well enough, so you’re our best option. Don’t worry; if we do die, there’s plenty of money and you can always ship her off to boarding school.”
He’d laughed, and I’d had to stop myself from retorting that Lucy didn’t seem needier than any other young kid. The whole thing made me uncomfortable, but since he’d given me everything and made my dreams possible, I couldn’t deny him that. Plus, there was no way in the world they’d die. This was all hypothetical.
Until it wasn’t.
God, Lucy.
She was the one thing in my life I always tried to exert control over—only to fail.
She was also why I was going to hell.
Eighteen years old, 40% golden curls and siren curves, 60% dynamite, and as off-limits as a woman could get. It hadn’t been an issue before, of course. Back when Elijah had been alive, I’d barely noticed her at all, other than as my boss’s sweet, chaotic, overlooked kid. And then after he and his wife died, I just saw her as a motherfucking pain-in-the-ass responsibility. I sent her off to boarding school like he’d recommended because what the hell did I know about raising a teenager? I had no parental figures in my own life; I certainly wasn’t going to bean exemplary version of one. No, better that she get a good education, far away from me.
And then she showed up at orientation, and she wasn’t a gawky, chatty, grieving kid anymore with blonde frizzy hair and braces. No, she was barely recognizable: A tall, built woman with curves for days, long, wavy blonde hair that made a bad man want to wrap it around his hand and tug hard, dark bedroom eyes and big pouty lips that…fuck, I couldn’t even go there.
If that weren’t enough, she was loud, confident, fucking funny as hell, and so sassy that a man would want to put her over his knee and turn her ass red for it until she was crying and saying,sorry, daddy, I’ll be better, I promise?—
She was unholy temptation in a short dress and pink lips, and the second I saw her, I knew she’d be trouble.
The devil in a tight dress.
A motherfucking succubus.
And none of it was her fault. All of it was mine.
After our first pre-season hockey game, she’d come right up to me on the ice—not even caring that she wasn’t supposed tobeon the ice. Marched right up to me, smacked me on the shoulder, and said, “You don’t write, you don’t call. I’m starting to think you don’t like me much,Coach.”
I’d blinked at the much-too-young-for-me goddess and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”
She’d snorted. “I guess I’m not surprised. I’m Lucy, your ward. The kid you used to be responsible for but fobbed off on expensive academic institutions. Except I’m all grown up now. Miss me?”
Alarm bells had begun to ring in my head, and disgust filled me, because how the hell could I be attracted to my motherfucking ward? My one single responsibility, all grown up just like she’d said, and clearly here for blood.
And part of me, a dark, sick part of me, had wanted her to rake her fingers down my chest and make it bleed.
“Coach? Coach?Blake.”
I shook my head to clear it. My assistant coach, Trey Putrovksi, was snapping his fingers in front of my face. We were in the middle of our weekly one-on-one to discuss the team, and I’d zoned out for most of it.
Because of Lucy fucking Braverman. She was goddamn kryptonite, put on this earth to destroy my head, my equilibrium, and make a good man go bad.
“Yeah, all that sounds great,” I said. “Although I think we need to work more closely with Emory—he’s been off his game lately, and I’m not sure why, but we need to get him back on it.”
“Girl trouble,” Trey snorted. “And the unfixable kind. He wants someone out of his reach and it’s fucking with his head.”
At my look, he added, “I’ll take care of it. Speaking of girl trouble…”
Ah, shit.
I knew what this was about, and I apparently couldn’t avoid it any longer.
