Page 121 of Zero Pucks Given (Las Vegas Angels 1)

34

Gigi

We’d ended up winning our away game, too.

The next week’s show had footage of both games and also showed snippets of the party that Beau and I had gone to in Montreal. Someone had sent in a video of us kissing on the flight back to Vegas.

That was also the first day that fans had gathered outside the rink doors. One of them handed Beau a pen and paper for his autograph. I thought it was cute. Deciding to leave him alone with his fans, I started walking away.

“Gigi, you, too!” the woman said, taking the pen and paper from Beau and shoving it in my direction.

I’d never signed an autograph before. “Me? Yeah, sure,” I said, signing underneath Beau’s scrawl. For fun, I added in my jersey number.

“And a selfie? Do you mind?” she asked, obviously a dedicated fan. I wasn’t even aware that there were any Angels jerseys available, but she wore one. Beau motioned to me and arranged us for a group shot.

Then we did the same for the five other fans there.

After we left, I got an earful from Beau in the car. “You don’t just walk away from fans, G. They’re our lifeblood,” he said, sounding pissed. “Is that what you normally do?”

“Normally do? With what?”

“When someone wants your autograph? Do you just ignore them?” he asked, his voice rising.

I turned to him. “First of all, nobody’s ever asked me for my autograph before. Secondly, they wanted you, not me.”

His head nearly spun off. “Are you kidding me? You’ve never been asked to sign something before?”

“Pfft, sometimes when we do a clinic with the youth teams,” I said, clicking my seat belt in. I didn’t know why he was so surprised. Women’s teams were nowhere near as popular as the men’s.

“My sister and brother said the show’s getting more and more popular up there. Be prepared for that to happen a lot more often. You’ll need to coach your team on how to behave.”

Huh, I thought about that for a minute. This was not an area we’d ever had to cover before. I didn’t know the first thing about what to tell them. “Can you do it? I mean, I really can’t see us having any fans. I’m sure if you hadn’t been with me, they wouldn’t have asked. But just in case, we should know what’s kosher and what’s not.”

He chuckled at me. “Have you not seen the comments about you on social media?” he asked, backing up out of his spot.

I’d read them all. Most of them were good. Some of them were mean and spiteful. “Yeah, what’s your point?”

“My point, G, is that the world has gone fucking crazy for you.” He chuckled, grabbing my hand with his. He kissed the back of it before setting it down on his thigh.

“That’s a huge exaggeration,” I said, sitting back in my seat.

“Give it about two more weeks. There’ll be ten times the people there.” His prediction made me nervous. I decided not to think about it.

“We’ll see,” I said, staring out my window.

All he did was squeeze my hand.

“Holy shit,you guys were awesome out there tonight,” I said to Beau on the phone.

“We were lucky,” he said, but I could tell by his tone that he was proud. He’d scored the winning goal after double overtime.

“That was pure skill, Moreau, and you know it.”

He laughed at that. “Whatever. Trey wants the guys to go out to celebrate.”

“Where are you going? I can meet you?” I asked, excited to be able to see him after watching a home game.

“Uh, he said just the guys. Is that okay? If it’s not, I won’t go.”

---