Page 8 of Hard Hit

I forced myself to look at my teammate Nash, who also volunteered coaching here. The last thing I needed was to get caught staring at Coach’s daughter.

She was on the rebound, making her ripe for a fling. But she was my coach’s daughter.

Coach dismissed everyone to start drills, and I groaned inwardly when Jolie and I were assigned to the same group, standing side by side and feeding pucks.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good. Thanks again for…you know.”

I nodded. “No problem.”

I dumped out our bucket of pucks to make our work easier. She fed a puck to the first skater, then I slid the next one toward her.

“It’s been a hot second since I had a stick in my hand,” she said lightly.

She knew what she was doing, no matter how long it had been.

“You play hockey?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. My dad wanted me to be the first female in the big league.”

“Hang on, guys,” Nash said to us. “I want to show them something real quick.”

I turned to Jolie as Nash demonstrated stickhandling form to the kids in our group. “I take it you didn’t want that?”

She laughed. “No. I was done with hockey by my sophomore year of high school, but my dad made me play through the end of senior year.”

“Hey, did you tell him about…?”

“Yeah, I told him I jumped in your car and pretty much forced you to give me a ride. Don’t worry, it’s me he’s mad at, not you.”

“Still?”

It had been several days since the wedding that wasn’t. I wondered how long Coach would stay pissed. He was known for holding grudges, but Jolie was his only daughter.

She shrugged. “I think he thinks Jarvis and I are going to patch things up and elope.”

I suppressed a groan. She’d dodged a bullet already. Why would she jump out in front of another one?

“Are you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I’m done.”

“But your dad wants to change your mind,” I said.

She gave me a knowing smile. “He can be stubborn, but you probably know that.”

I laughed because that was an understatement. Coach Gizzard had once made me skate the same drill for two hours when he was pissed off about how I’d played in a game the night before. When he had his mind made up about something, there was no changing it.

“Is this part of your probation?” I asked her.

“Pretty much. My mom called it a peace offering. But I don’t mind, honestly. It feels good to be out on the ice again.”

Nash resumed the drill, and Jolie and I returned to feeding pucks.

“Jarvis giving you any trouble?” I asked her.

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