Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About this Book

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Epilogue

Roster

Other Catherine Gayle Books

About the Author

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

Game Breaker

Copyright © 2016 by Catherine Gayle

Cover Design by Kim Killion, The Killion Group

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

For more information: catherine@catherinegayle.com

This one goes out to everyone whose heart is breaking, much like mine, because of the state of our world today.

This book, with these characters, and with this conflict, has been on my writing schedule for well over a year. The timing for both the writing and release seems to have been some sort of master plan, when we consider the events of recent weeks and months.

Our society is broken. Our people are broken. Our hearts are broken.

Fear, hatred, and violence are not the answers to our problems. Love is. Acceptance is.

Every day, I hope we wake up to a better world.

He’s becoming a Game Breaker on the ice.

With the playoffs right around the corner, Nate “Ghost” Golston is focused on only one thing—getting the Portland Storm to the Finals so he can finally hoist the Cup. But when opposing teams’ fans start getting under his skin, he can’t ignore the ridicule that’s suddenly all over the Internet. With each degrading word slung over the boards, he strains to keep his focus on the ice. Now, everything he’s worked for is in jeopardy.

She’s facing off with the Game Makers.

Stunning sports reporter and aspiring filmmaker Anne Dennison is determined to use her smarts to get ahead in a male-dominated career. Producing a behind-the-scenes web series brings Anne up close and personal with skilled, sexy Nate. Sparks fly, putting her plans in danger. For Anne to succeed, she has to capitalize on Nate’s struggles.

Wanting to be together, they know they must bend for each other before one of them breaks. If they can’t, it’s Game Over.

GAME BREAKER is Book 14 in the Portland Storm hockey romance series written by USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle. If you enjoy it, look for the other books in the series.

BREAKAWAY

ON THE FLY

TAKING A SHOT

LIGHT THE LAMP

DELAY OF GAME

DOUBLE MAJOR

IN THE ZONE

HOLIDAY HAT TRICK

COMEBACK

DROPPING GLOVES

HOME ICE

MISTLETOE MISCONDUCT

LOSING AN EDGE

GAME BREAKER

DEFENSIVE ZONE

POWER PLAY

There are also currently two boxed sets of books within the series, if you would prefer to purchase them in that way.

PORTLAND STORM: THE FIRST PERIOD (Contains Breakaway, On the Fly, Taking a Shot, and Light the Lamp)

PORTLAND STORM: THE SECOND PERIOD (Contains Delay of Game, Double Major, In the Zone, Holiday Hat Trick, and Comeback)

Also, join Catherine’s mailing list to receive ICE BREAKER, a Portland Storm short story prequel that you can’t get anywhere else.

Want to join in the Portland Storm discussion? Join the Facebook reader group at Cat’s House.

Interested in buying your own customizable Portland Storm and Tulsa Thunderbirds jerseys, T-shirts, and more? Find out how here.

“THIS IS FANTASTIC footage, guys. Really excellent work,” I said, somehow focusing on all the screens in front of me at once. The adrenaline coursing through my body seemed to be in overdrive, more so than at any other point in this new adventure so far.

My eyes flipped back and forth as I tried to determine exactly where our focus needed to be. Nate Golston had already scored twice in this game, and he was out on the ice again with the rest of his line, with only a little over a minute left on the game clock. No doubt the Blackhawks would be pulling their goalie soon for an extra attacker, which meant the Portland Storm players on the ice would surely try to feed Golston and help him score a National Hockey League hat trick for the first time in his career.

We were nearing the end of my initial week of filming for Eye of the Storm, a behind-the-scenes web series focused on the Storm, and I hadn’t yet decided on how to focus the premiere episode. As the producer, it was on me to find the story we wanted to tell and bring it to life. Since I was one of the only women in the world of sports broadcasting and journalism to be given this level of responsibility, I had no intention of screwing up my chance.

Golston was a good story. Or he could be, depending on how we framed it. Smaller guy in the NHL. One of the few black players in the league, finding his footing in a sport that boasted very little diversity.

From my days working as part of the television broadcast team, I knew the coaches and management were hot on him. He had a ton of potential, but he’d only recently been starting to fulfill it. Over the last couple of months of the season, he’d found his offensive touch and started using it to develop what should be a very promising career.

We could frame the struggles and fortunes of the team around his story if we did it right. The team had gotten near the pinnacle of the sport a decade or so ago. Then tough times hit, and they missed the playoffs several seasons in a row before a resurgence. Fresh blood. Now they were climbing toward the top again, and it was up to me to chronicle this resurrection as best I could.

They’d been in the Stanley Cup Finals last season. If all went according to plan, they could win it this season. If they did, it would be because of players like Golston finally playing up to their potential.

I might be wrong about this, and I could always find a new angle once I was editing the webisode together, but everything in my gut screamed that Golston needed to be my focus.

“Dave, can you zoom in tight on Golston for me?” I said into my headpiece. “You, too, Ben. Stick with him, no matter what happens.”

“Got it, Anne.”

Within moments, the views on Camera Two and Camera Four had gone from wide shots at different angles, covering much of the ice, to isolations on Golston—one capturing his face head on and the other coming in from the side.

The teams lined up on the face-off dot to the right of the Blackhawks goaltender. I kept my eye primarily on those two cameras, although I flickered my gaze around to each of them every few seconds, as well as down to the ice, just to be sure we weren’t missing anything important.

The linesman squared up to drop the puck, but something else hit the ice first, right at Golston’s feet. One of the other officials skated in, putting a stop to the action before play resumed.

“What is that?” I demanded, straining my eyes to make out what had been tossed from the crowd. “Dave, go in tighter on that, whatever it is.”

With my other views, the ref was getting in the way as he bent to collect the debris. When he came up with it in his hand, I finally recognized it.

“No freaking way,” I said, my stomach clenching.

Someone had tossed a banana peel at Nate Golston’s feet.

“I got it, Anne,” Dave said, reminding me that we had an obligation to capture the story as it unfolded in front of us, whatever that story might be. We had a show to produce, and like it or not, the story was unfolding in front of us.

Fighting down waves of nausea, I snapped back into action. “Right. I want Five to get shots of the crowd, particularly the parts of the crowd close enough to have seen what happened. Dave, stay with the ref and that fucking banana peel until it’s gone. Three, I want reactions from every player on the ice. Four, don’t you dare lose Golston for the rest of this game or I will murder you in your sleep. One, give me the team benches. I want to see the coaches’ reactions, the other players. Even the equipment guys. Got it?”

My camera crew did exactly as I instructed them. The ref took the banana peel over to the timekeeper’s bench and dropped it off there. Within moments, the PA announcer came over the loudspeakers with a reminder that nothing was to be tossed on the ice, and breaking this rule would result in expulsion from the arena and a minor bench penalty assessed to the home team. Then everyone lined up again to resume where things had left off.

Through my disgust, only two things truly registered in my mind.

The first was a shot of a man in the crowd, angrily shouting things in Golston’s direction. Things I couldn’t hear, but I could sure enough read the man’s lips. Things that left me shaken, angry, and hurt. Things that left me scared for the world in which we lived.

The second was the look of utter shock that had come over Golston’s face and refused to budge.

The puck dropped. The game resumed. The Storm players fought hard and kept the Blackhawks from getting a tie, and with eighteen seconds left on the clock, Nate Golston zipped the puck up the ice and into the empty net, scoring his first hat trick.

I should have been elated, because—like it or not—I had a definite focus for the first episode of my web series. Instead, I wanted to find the nearest bathroom and puke up my guts.

This was not what I thought I’d signed up for.

I DIDN’T WANT to wear the stupid purple umbrella hat, so as soon as the boys let me, I took the fucking thing off and tossed it in my stall. That ridiculous hat was tradition for us this season. When we won a game, the guy who’d been awarded it after our last win selected someone else to give it to—typically the player who’d been most instrumental in the win that night. Apparently, tonight, that was me.

But right now I didn’t care that I’d scored a hat trick. I didn’t even care that we’d won the game. This win didn’t have any effect on our positioning heading into the playoffs, so it didn’t factor into the big picture beyond us starting the postseason on a roll.

The only thing I wanted to do right now was get the fuck out of this arena so I could have a few beers and try to forget about what had happened at the end of the game. Only we were on the road and flying back to Portland tonight, so I couldn’t escape so easily. It’d be hours before I got home and could drink enough to numb all the insanity racing through my mind.

I stripped off my jersey and tossed it in the bin in the center of the locker room. I ripped off my pads, hurrying through the process of changing. The bus wouldn’t leave for the airport until all the guys were ready to go, which would be a while since the media would want to come in and interview a few of us and the coach, but maybe I could slip out sooner, catch a cab to the airport. At least there, I wouldn’t have to look at the rest of the boys while so many of them were busy studiously avoiding looking at me at all. Not to mention those cameras that had been following us around for the last week. Two of those cameramen had joined us in the locker room, and if I wasn’t mistaken, one of those two had been zoomed in tight on me since the final horn had sounded.

None of my teammates had said a word to me when we’d come off the ice. No doubt they didn’t know what to say. I didn’t either, so I couldn’t blame them. Never, not once in my life, had I been up against such blatant racism. I’d read about it. I’d seen it on the news. But it had never been directed at me before.

I didn’t know how long ago that banana peel had come over the glass to land at my feet, but I was still vibrating. Not just because of the symbolism, either. The words they’d shouted at me before arena security guards escorted them out hadn’t stopped echoing in my ears.

“Get on the bus and go back to the projects. You have no business on the ice.”

“Fucking monkey, finally learning to perform tricks. At least you’re good for something more than fighting now.”

“Don’t you know niggers are supposed to play basketball, not hockey?”

Yes, the three of them had been drinking, and yes, the rest of the crowd had given them hell over what they’d said and done. But drunk or not, they’d said it. And they’d done it.

Somehow, I’d had it in my head that people only said those things in books and movies. Or maybe only in the South, where racial tensions still seemed to be so heightened. But Chicago wasn’t in the South, and while the cameras had filmed every bit of it for both the TV broadcast and this web series the team had commissioned, this was still my real life, not some piece of fiction.

It had really happened.

To me.

The more time that passed since that moment, the more I felt suffocated by everything surrounding me. My lungs were trapped in a vise that kept squeezing tighter and tighter, forcing the air out of me by degrees.

There was a part of me that wanted to let the vise finish me off. It would hurt less than the realization that there were people out there who hated me that much, but not for anything I’d done. It was because of who I was.

No, not even that. It was because of who my ancestors were, if anything. Because of my DNA. The color of my skin. Because of something I couldn’t change even if I wanted to.

But right now, I wanted to. Something else I’d never experienced before. It was seriously starting to fuck with my head.

“Ghost.” It was the head coach, Mattias Bergstrom, standing right behind me.

That was what the guys all called me—Ghost—a play on my last name, Golston, and maybe a bit of an inside joke, too, since I definitely didn’t look like anything close to Casper. But Ghost was just my nickname with my teammates, something meant in good fun, the same as me being officially listed as five foot ten and a hundred eighty-five pounds, even though that was only close to true when I was in all my gear. Five foot eight and one seventy was a lot closer to reality. Guys had started calling me Ghost so long ago that I didn’t even remember who was responsible for it, back when I was a kid playing hockey in Toronto. I’d never thought anything of it until I was older, and by then the name had stuck. Ghost was simply who I was to everyone I played with or against.

A couple of months ago, Bergy had pointed out a new side of that nickname to me. He’d said I tended to be a ghost on the ice, sneaky and elusive, slipping past guys twice my size before they knew what to do about it. He wanted me to find ways to use that to my advantage instead of thinking of my size as a disadvantage. He’d even had me come to work with him one-on-one several times on days off, me trying to slip past him. The guy may have retired as a player several years back, but he’d been a strong-as-fuck defenseman in his day with a hell of a nasty streak, and he still had all the size and strength he’d been known for. Working with him like that meant taking a beating. But lately, I’d been slipping past him untouched, and now I was finding a way to do it in game situations, too. Like tonight.

I grunted to acknowledge him, swallowing hard. I didn’t trust my voice. Hell, I didn’t trust myself not to throat-punch someone right now for looking at me wrong. I wouldn’t throat-punch Bergy, but I couldn’t make any promises about anyone else who might come along.

I didn’t like this side of me. I hated that it had been so easy to bring it out. Ten seconds’ time, with ignorant asswipes revealing their hatred, and I’d been reduced to a pressure cooker ready to explode at the tiniest provocation.

“Kurt just gave me the word from communications,” Bergy said. “The media specifically wants to talk to you tonight.”

Of course the press wanted to talk to me tonight. They came to me after just about every game, mainly because I tended to give a good sound bite. Add in the fact that I’d scored three goals, had a banana peel thrown at me, and had things shouted at me I’d never heard a human being actually say out loud before, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that every sports reporter in this damn city wouldn’t be closing in around my stall and suffocating the life out of me for as long as they were allowed to stay.

I nodded that I understood.

“I could send you to the trainers’ room,” Bergy said. “Tell them you’re being treated for an injury and aren’t available. Buy you some time so you can figure out what you want to say.”

“I’m not hiding,” I bit off. The temptation to take him up on it was definitely there, but burying my head in the sand and pretending nothing had happened wouldn’t solve anything. It’d only make facing their questions worse once I finally got around to it, because they’d think I’d been running.

I’d never been a fan of avoidance, and I wasn’t about to change my mind about that now, even if I’d been debating hopping in a cab only moments ago. I doubted I’d ever have actually done it. That wasn’t me, even if it’s nice to fantasize about being someone else occasionally.

“It wouldn’t be hiding,” Bergy said. “You did get banged up in the third blocking that shot.”

I took a seat on the bench and tore through the laces on my skates, pulling them free. “I’m fine, so unless you’re planning to force me to go to the trainers’ room—”

“No one’s forcing you to do anything. That’s just it. If you don’t want to talk to the press yet, you don’t have to.”

If I wasn’t so hot already, I knew I’d have no problem seeing the truth in what Bergy was saying. The guy was a hard-ass, but he was as fair as they came. He just wanted to give me options.

I took a breath and willed myself to calm the fuck down. “I’m fine. I appreciate what you’re doing, but I’m fine. Send them in.”

He gave me a tight nod, crossing his arms. Then he gestured toward Kurt Yarbrough, the head of the Storm’s communications department, before returning his attention to me. “Fine. But Kurt’s going to be right by your side the whole time they’re in here. If anyone asks you something you don’t want to answer, or if you’re ready to be done, you just nod at him, and he’ll take care of it.”

I had no intention of fighting Bergy on that one, but I also didn’t plan to send out an SOS in front of all those cameras. I could fight my own battles, something I’d been striving to prove to Bergy, my teammates, and the rest of the damned league all season long. This was just one more battle in the war. One more mountain to climb.

I’d be damned if I’d let anything or anyone get in my way.

Bergy headed off to talk with the other coaches, and Kurt took up position near me but not all the way in my grill. The security guard outside the locker room opened the doors, and a flood of reporters swarmed inside—far more of them than was normal during the regular season. I caught a glimpse of Anne Dennison among them, but she walked over to one of her camera guys and whispered something in his ear as the crowd converged on me, and I lost track of her.

Too bad. She was probably the only one out of the lot of them who’d be completely safe from me losing my temper. Granted, she wasn’t a reporter anymore, now that she’d taken over the production of this web series.

In no time, a few dozen mics and other recording devices were shoved in my direction. I couldn’t see anything beyond the glare of lights shining in my face.

Mike Polanski, the Storm beat writer for the Portland Tribune and the absolute bane of my existence, stood directly in front of me. “Nate, what’s your reaction to the banana peel incident?” he demanded.

“Have we already whittled it down to that?” I groused. “The banana peel incident? Sounds like a case to put Sherlock Holmes on. Someone get Cumberbatch on the line.”

A few of the media guys chuckled, but Polanski wasn’t one of them. “So you’re just going to laugh it off?”

“I’d rather laugh than react in a way that would land me in jail,” I bit off, and everyone sobered. “And I’d rather be talking about the game than the fact that three buffoons in the crowd decided to let the world see just how ignorant they are. Why aren’t you asking me about scoring my first ever hat trick in the NHL? Why aren’t you asking me about the fact that the Storm just soundly beat a team we might be facing again in only a couple of weeks in the playoffs? Why aren’t you asking me if we’re ready to take on the Sharks in a few days and how we think we’ll handle the way they throw their weight around, or if our skill can outperform their skill?”

“Sorry to say it, Ghost, but that isn’t the story. Considering what happened this afternoon with Marcus Jameson and after what happened tonight—”

“Hold up. Who is Marcus Jameson?” I wasn’t following. At all.

“You haven’t heard about that?” Polanski asked. “This afternoon, a man named Marcus Jameson was pulled over by Chicago PD for a routine traffic stop. They shot and killed him. Everyone’s saying it’s racially motivated, and then this…”

“I’m sorry to hear that about Marcus Jameson, but I don’t know what he has to do with the game tonight. As far as I’m concerned, the story you should be asking me about is the game. That’s what I know about. And if you ask the other nineteen guys in this room right now, I think they’d all agree with me that it’s the story that we think is important.”

“So Marcus Jameson’s death isn’t important, Nate?” one of the other reporters asked, and I wanted to kick myself.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. His death is very important. But I didn’t have anything to do with it, and he didn’t have anything to do with this game. Frankly, this game is the only thing any of us is focused on, so if you want some other story, you’re going to have to get it from another source. Because here’s some truth for you. The guys who were behind the banana peel incident aren’t worth my time.”

At that point, half a dozen of the other reporters tried to jump in with questions at once, but the only thing that registered with me was the sight of Anne pushing her way forward—the only woman in a mob of men, the only flash of color in an ocean of white faces much like I was the only minority among my teammates—with her cameraman at her side.

Kurt held up his hand and tried to regain control of the session, getting them to stop talking over each other. Once they shut up, I nodded at Anne, giving her the floor. I’d rather talk to her any day than the rest of these guys, and not just because she was hot as hell and we’d been flirting outrageously with each other for the last couple of seasons, either.

Her cameraman shoved his boom mic forward and she smiled, putting me at ease.

“How are you going to make sure this doesn’t become a distraction for you and your teammates heading into the playoffs, especially if you do end up playing against the Blackhawks in the second round?” she asked, and I felt a hell of a lot less at ease.

I’d thought Anne, at least, would be willing to focus on what really mattered right now. I’d expected her to realize that the press making this incident out to be a bigger deal than it was would only cause it to blow up and become a distraction. There’d been some part of me that had been counting on Anne to be on my side.

At least now I knew she wasn’t. Flirtation or not, she was still part of the press. Maybe she worked for the team in some small way, but she was still out to get her story, trying to sell her angle on it, whatever that might be.

I ground my jaw, apparently hesitating for so long that Kurt got nervous. He inched closer to my side and nudged my elbow, but I wasn’t going to let anyone rush to my aid and rescue me from a situation I didn’t need rescuing from.

I looked straight in Anne’s eyes, hoping she got a full sense of the betrayal roiling through my gaze, and said, “The only people making it a distraction are all of you. My teammates and I have bigger things to worry about. Like San Jose, since we’ve got Game One to prepare for, and it’s coming up in a few days. If no one has any questions about hockey, I think we’re finished here.”

Without checking to see if Kurt was satisfied with my response or not, I grabbed a towel from my stall and pushed my way through the throng.

FOR THE LAST two days, I hadn’t been able to escape the fucking banana peel incident other than in the middle of the night, once I finally managed to shut off my brain and get some sleep. By the time we’d gotten back to Portland after that game, it had blown up all over Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and every other social media platform in existence, including a few I’d never heard of before. The media kept flogging it, and not just the sports media, either. This story was hitting the mainstream news. I’d even seen it on CNN last night while flipping channels.

More racial tensions in Chicago, the headlines blared. Black hockey player subjected to slurs. Discrimination is alive and well in the Midwest. Marcus Jameson murdered at the hands of white police officer. Everywhere I turned, I kept running into it. At bars. At the gym. On the radio every time I got in my car. On newspapers and magazines at the grocery store. I couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard I tried.

And trust me—I was trying. All I wanted was for the distraction to go away so I could get back to focusing on improving my game and being the kind of player Bergy was determined I could be. That was what I needed to have happen, especially with the playoffs starting tomorrow.

He seemed to think I could be a game breaker, the kind of player who could get on a scoring streak and almost singlehandedly destroy another team in a seven-game series. I wanted to find out if he was right about that. Back in juniors, I’d been able to, but it hadn’t ever translated to my game in the pros. But with the way things had been clicking for me lately with my line mates, Blake Kozlow and Axel Johansson…

“How you holding up?” Riley Jezek asked me after practice, getting in my way and preventing me from making my escape.

I’d been trying to hurry up and get my ass out to my car before someone could stop me, and especially before Anne and one of the guys from her camera crew could try to tag along with me like they’d attempted to do yesterday. I’d managed to slip out while the coaching staff distracted them, but it had been a close call. Apparently RJ had other plans for me today.

“How do you think?” I replied, glaring.

“I think you’re about ready to blow, based on the way you’ve been griping at everything that moves just about every chance you get. You just about bit Coop’s head off out there for passing you a bouncing puck. Not the kid’s fault the ice was shit after we’d been on it for a solid hour.”

Even as he spoke, I noticed one of the camera guys heading our direction. Jamie Babcock, the team captain, got in his way and held him up. I made a mental note to buy Babs a steak dinner as thanks the next time we were out together.

I gave RJ a significant look, angling my head toward the jackass who wanted to capture my every movement to broadcast for the whole world to see. “Is it any wonder I’m about to snap?”

“Nope. But that doesn’t mean you need to take it out on Coop. Or any of the rest of us, for that matter. It’s not our fault there are asswipes in the world. We had nothing to do with all the shit you’re having to deal with. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re all on your side.”

He was right, and I knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier to stop myself from behaving like a son of a bitch. If my mother were here, she’d be giving me a serious earful about how she’d raised me and the way I should conduct myself around my colleagues. And she’d be right. I didn’t need her here to say the words—just like I didn’t need her here to hold my hand while I tried to get through this ordeal with the media. She’d threatened to fly in from Toronto, although I was sure she didn’t see it as a threat. Moral support, she’d called it. It had taken both me and Dad to convince her I was a grown man and could sort this out on my own.

Hell of a job I was doing with that, though.

“I’m sorry, man,” I said, wishing like hell I could get my head back under control.

“Don’t apologize to me. Or at least not just to me.”

“I’ll say something to the boys tomorrow.” Once I’d had a chance to figure out what the hell I wanted to say. Besides, half of them had already split today. It’d be better to do it when I knew they were all present and accounted for.

The truth was, they’d all been standing by me through every bit of this—sticking up for me, trying to help me escape the media any time they could like the coaches had done a couple of days ago and Babs was doing now—and I’d been acting like a douchebag with a major case of PMS.

“And I’ll take Coop aside to apologize to him personally,” I added. Austin Cooper was the youngest guy on the team, called up from our minor league affiliate as an injury replacement. The kid was just trying to fit in and find his role on the team. He didn’t need me ripping him a new one, especially when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“That’s good,” RJ said. “It’s a good start, at least. I think your mom would say you could do better.”

He knew he could talk to me like that and get away with it, especially since he actually knew my mother.

RJ was my closest friend on the team. We’d grown up about three blocks away from each other in Toronto. My older sister had been in classes with his older brother for as long as either of us could remember. I’d been a year ahead of RJ in school. Didn’t matter much that he was a year younger than me, though. He’d always been a step or two ahead of me on the ice and at least a few inches taller than me. We’d played against each other just about our entire lives, right up until the moment when I’d been traded to the Storm a few seasons ago and we became teammates.

“She would,” I admitted. “You’re right. I’m trying not to lose my shit, but right now I think that’s the best I can do.”

He gave me a look that said he thought I was full of shit, but he let it drop. “Listen, Amanda and I were planning to take the dogs out for a walk this afternoon. She wants to take them to the Rose Test Gardens. I told her it’s probably too soon, they aren’t blooming much yet, but she’s insisting. Why don’t you come with us?”

Amanda was RJ’s fiancée, and they had two enormous two-year-old mastiffs that seemed to think they were still puppies, along with all the exuberant energy to show for it. Amanda claimed they were her dogs, but she didn’t do a very good job of taking care of them without some muscle around to assist her. They were each almost twice her size, so there was no way she could walk them on her own. If they wanted to get away from her, it wouldn’t be very difficult at all.

“So basically you want me to control one of the beasts, huh?”

He grinned. “Something like that. But don’t call them beasts to their faces. You’ll hurt their feelings.”

“They could stand to have their feelings hurt if they’re going to try to climb on my lap again. My balls still haven’t recovered.”

“Doubt that’s solely due to my dogs. Might help if you got laid.”

“How am I supposed to get laid if your dogs mash my balls?”

“Lola is an angel. She can’t help it that she loves you. Or that she’s bigger than you. Not the dog’s fault you’re a shrimp.”

“Well, try to teach her that she’s not a lap dog, then.”

“You teach her.”

“She’s your dog.”

He shook his head. “Nah. They’re Amanda’s.”

“Since when have you been agreeing with that load of shit?”

“Since it suits my purposes. They’re Amanda’s dogs when they’re bad.”

“Does that mean you’re giving me Lola?” I asked, hoping against hope I was right. Max, RJ’s other dog, easily had thirty pounds on Lola, and she weighed as much as I did.

“Max loves you, too, even when you’re an ass.”

“He might love me better when I’m an ass. He likes stinky things.”

“Then you’re all set.”

“This is quality cologne I’m wearing,” I shot back at him. “Not like your Axe body spray. When are you gonna realize you’re an adult?” It was better than the Old Spice he used to wear, but not by much.

He sniffed his arm. “Smells fine to me. Amanda likes it well enough.”

I rolled my eyes and glanced over to see Babs still had the cameraman distracted. “Maybe that’s why Max likes you as much as he does. Come on. Let’s get out of here before we have more company watching your dogs drag my ass through the gardens.”

RJ laughed, but he didn’t argue. In no time, we were heading out of the practice facility on our way to the parking garage…only to run headfirst into Anne Dennison as we walked through the double doors.

“Nate,” she said, looking up at me and smiling, her hand on her chest. Damn, but she had a gorgeous smile, and when she was this close, I could see the hints of green in her light brown eyes that always did a number on me.

I didn’t smile in return. Couldn’t. The way she’d joined in with the other media guys that night still stung too much. The last thing I needed right now was to forget that she was on the other side of things. She wasn’t my friend, and definitely not anything more than a friend, even though we’d been flirting way more than was good for either of us since she’d been around the team. She was part of my problem right now, no matter how hot she was.

“I was hoping we could get some time with you sometime today,” she said, not taking the hint that I didn’t want to have anything to do with her right now. “I’ve got Dave all set up and ready—”

“I’ve got plans,” I cut in. I jerked my head in RJ’s direction. “We have plans, actually.”

She nodded. “It’s fine if we have some of the other guys from the team involved. Or even some of your friends outside of the team. Dave and I could come with you.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work.” I took off again, and RJ came with me.

“Going somewhere you can’t bring extra people with you?” She kept pace alongside me, her legs as long as mine. Not even her heels slowed her down. “You sure we couldn’t sneak in? We could stay in the background, just filming without interfering. We really want to get some footage of you doing whatever it is you do in your time off. Trying to get the bigger picture of who you are.”

The woman didn’t let up. No wonder she’d been given such a big assignment already. There weren’t many women in sports broadcasting, in general. But she was young, and other than spending a few seasons working with the Storm’s broadcast team, she was relatively inexperienced. I hadn’t been able to figure out how she’d finagled such a prime gig, producing a web series about the team. Now it was starting to make sense. She’d probably hounded whomever was in charge until they’d given in just to get her off their back.

It couldn’t be easy to be a woman in this industry—one more reason I’d wrongly assumed Anne would be on my side when it came to wanting to ignore everything that had happened a couple of nights ago.

One more reason to never assume anything.

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” I finally bit off as we reached my car. “This isn’t something—”

She stopped and scowled at me. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but I’ll remind you that based on the contract the Storm has with my production company, and your contract with the Storm, you can’t keep brushing me off forever. You’re contractually obligated to cooperate, whether you’re happy about it or not. Your friends and family don’t have to be part of this series, but everyone involved with the team does.”

I jerked open my car door and leaned on the frame, thinking through my options. They seemed to be slim and growing slimmer by the moment. “So what happens if I brush you off again today?”

“I’ll take it up with Jim Sutter,” she said without hesitation.

Jim was our general manager—someone who could make my life hell if I made Anne’s life hell.

I ground my jaw and looked at RJ for help. He frowned and shrugged, which meant he was as lost as I was when it came to coming up with anything better. Damn it.

“We’re walking dogs at the International Rose Test Gardens,” I bit off. Then I climbed into my car and slammed the door.

“Got it,” Anne said, taking off into the building at a run. She spun around, jogging backward on those heels. “We’ll meet you there! Thanks, Nate.”

Lucky me.

“If they’re bringing the cameras along, you need to be on your best behavior,” RJ said.

“I’m always on my best behavior,” I grumbled.

“You know your mom’s going to be watching this. Just…try to act like you normally do around Anne.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning why don’t you flirt with her again or something?”

“I don’t want to flirt with her right now.” I wanted to give her an earful about how I felt about her turning this into a bigger deal than it was.

But RJ was right. If I gave in to the temptation, I was stooping to her level. Time to put on a brave face and convince the world that I hadn’t been fazed by all the shit being thrown my way. Even if it was a fucking lie.

I KNEW THE reasons Nate had been avoiding me. Hell, I’d avoid me, too, if I were in his shoes. But that didn’t change the fact that I had a job to do and a show to produce, and at the moment, everything surrounding him was the focus of the story I had to tell.

I’d spent the morning and early afternoon holed up in the cutting room with my editor and a couple of assistants, poring over hours and hours of footage from the last week so we could meet our deadline. The first webisode was scheduled to go live tomorrow evening, about an hour before puck drop for the first game of the playoffs.

We had a ton of film to sift through. Maybe too much, to be honest. But now we had to determine which angles to use from the game sequences and how to combine it with interviews and other behind-the-scenes moments in order to present a sound narrative arc, making the determination of which pieces were important and which could be left behind without losing impact.

On top of that, the story we’d thought we were telling the whole time we were filming? It had been turned on its head in the final moments of the last night of filming, so now we were in a panicked rush to reframe everything to fit the new story line.

Yes, story line. That wasn’t me using the wrong word in terms of this journalistic endeavor. I had to remind myself that Eye of the Storm, the web series I was producing, wasn’t strictly news. It wasn’t pure journalism. There was a bit of a documentary feel to what we were doing with this, which meant we had to pull from the world of fiction in order to properly present it for our audience.

We were presenting what had happened in the world of the Portland Storm, true, but doing so in a way that made it entertaining for the viewer. The episode needed a beginning, rising action, a climax, falling action, and a denouement. There had to be a narrative arc, taking the viewer from the opening moments all the way up to the end, and it needed to leave them wanting more so they’d tune in again next week. That meant we had to take some creative license in the way we pieced everything together.

We weren’t changing facts; we were simply sorting out the best way to present it to the people who watched, in order to keep them riveted. Not an easy task.

At the moment, my editor and his assistants were still hard at work putting together the first episode, using the guidelines I’d given them before leaving, but I had to shift my focus to what we had in front of us for the second episode. The playoffs starting tomorrow would certainly get a lot of attention, but we couldn’t ignore what had happened in the first week.

Which meant I had to get Nate Golston to talk to me.

Which was why I’d pulled rank and threatened him with taking things to the general manager if he didn’t cooperate.

It irked me to stoop to that level, but the guy hadn’t left me much choice. And that was how I’d ended up at the International Rose Test Gardens, attempting to keep my heels from sinking into the soft ground while I fitted Nate, Riley Jezek, and Jezek’s fiancée, Amanda Morris, with mic packs, at the same time as two dogs the size of small horses tried to climb me.

Did I mention I’d always been afraid of dogs, even the small yappy ones? Just being in the same vicinity of these two had me shaking uncontrollably. At least no one seemed to have noticed. And once I had the mics in place, they could go about their business, and Dave and I could keep our distance to film them without interfering.

One of them—the bigger one—gave a happy bark and put his front paws on my shoulder, further pressing my heels into the grassy earth.

“Down, Max,” Jezek said, laughing.

I noticed there wasn’t a whole lot of authority in his tone. The guy was amused by his dog’s antics. Nate didn’t seem too bothered by them, either. In fact, he wasn’t doing much to keep the dog on his leash under control. I bit down on my tongue to keep from saying anything I’d regret and hurried to finish getting them situated.

One more mic to go—the one for Nate. “Turn around for me,” I said.

He winked, the first hint I’d seen since that final game of the regular season of our former flirtation. “You just want to check out my ass.” But he passed the leash into Jezek’s hand and turned around like I’d instructed him to do. “Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I don’t mind you checking out my ass. I’d check it out, too, if I could.”

“If you were a contortionist,” Jezek added, trying to keep both massive animals under control. They probably each weighed as much as he did, though, and it looked like they were all muscle.

“As long as I’m not an extortionist,” Nate replied.

“I wouldn’t make any promises on that score,” Jezek said with a snort-laugh.

I bit down on my lower lip to keep from joining them in inappropriate laughter since I was trying to keep everything professional. Finally, Nate lifted the back of his shirt the way I’d had Jezek and his fiancée do moments before. Only he lifted it a lot higher than was necessary, giving me a nice glimpse of his muscled back. I handed him the mic pack and quickly strung the wire up and over his shoulder, my fingertips accidentally brushing his skin. It was soft, damn it. Not what I needed to be thinking about. I dropped my hands to my sides like he’d burned me. “There you go. Just hook that into the waistband of your pants—”

“You could do that for me,” he cut in, with a definite hint of laughter in his tone, which left me struggling to keep my composure. He’d always done that when I was with the Storm’s broadcast team, too, trying to throw me off my game by flirting with me. Outrageously. And I’d flirted back, because he’d made it so easy to do.

Even though it felt a lot better to be treating each other the way we’d always done before instead of going at each other, I knew it was a bad idea. I had to keep this aboveboard. I had way too much riding on this job, and I couldn’t afford to jeopardize anything by getting too personal with one of the players. My boss had made that abundantly clear when he’d reluctantly given me the assignment, and he’d only done that due to not having anyone else on staff who had any experience whatsoever doing the sort of work I was doing. Because of the Storm’s timeline for getting this series going, there hadn’t been time for him to do a massive search for a producer and bring in someone from the outside.

He’d have more than enough time to do that over the team’s summer break, though—which served as a constant reminder to me that I could have Eye of the Storm ripped out of my hands at any moment. Right now, it was my baby. But for how long?

“—and we’re all set once we pop the mic through a buttonhole in front,” I finished firmly, not taking Nate’s bait. I took a step back, trying to get both some distance and some perspective. “In fact, you can handle that part yourself. Then you three can go about your business and forget all about the two of us.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be possible,” Nate said.

Dave smirked at me, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

“All right,” I said, brushing my hands on my thighs because they were sweating. Nerves. Getting that close to him, touching him ever so slightly, had brought out my inner geeky teenager. Bad timing for that. “You’re good to go. Just pretend we’re not even here.”

I took another step backward, but my heel plummeted through a soft spot in the grass, and I fell on my ass. As soon as I was on the ground, both dogs took that as a sign that they should pile on and wrestle with me. Jezek tried to hold them both back, but it was no use. They were too big, too strong, the pair of them overpowering him and leaping onto my chest.

Out of instinct, I screamed like a petrified little girl and put my arms over my face to protect myself. Didn’t do any good. Two enormous canines shoved my hands out of their way with their noses, and then they started licking my face, holding me down with their front paws. Both Jezek and Nate tried to drag the overly exuberant dogs off me, adding their weight to the mix, and then Dave dropped his camera and joined the fray, leaving only Amanda standing off to the side, watching with a dazed expression.

I giggle-shrieked. Couldn’t help it. This was the most bizarre, hilarious, painful thing to have happened to me in months. Maybe years. My adrenaline shot through the roof, and I was fully in self-preservation mode. It was a sad realization that my natural gut reaction when presented with one of my greatest fears was to laugh my head off in a psychotic panic. That didn’t bode well.

Finally, they got the dogs off me, Jezek manhandling the bigger one and forcing him back while Dave—who was easily as big and strong as most of the guys on the team—practically laid on top of the smaller dog to keep her off me.

Nate reached out a hand to help me up, with a sexy-as-sin curve of his lips. He was probably trying not to laugh as maniacally as I was. “Unless you’d rather stay in the dirt,” he said when I sat there a little too long staring at him. “Too bad you didn’t get any of that on film. That’d make a much more entertaining show than anything you got on me last week.”

He was wrong on that score, but I still reached up and took his hand, allowing him to drag me to my feet. As soon as I was standing, I wished I was back on the ground again. My ankle felt like I’d done a serious number on it, one of my heels had broken off the shoe, my tan suit was covered in dirt and grass stains, and I didn’t think I’d be able to fix the rat’s nest of my hair until I could dunk my entire head in a vat of shampoo. That sobered me up pretty fast. If I wasn’t careful, my laughter would turn to sobs of pain—both real, physical pain and the sort that rips you apart from the inside when you’re embarrassed in front of a crush.

“Please tell me they didn’t hurt you,” Jezek said, cutting through the fog of humiliation eating me alive.

I shot my gaze over to him, taking my hand out of Nate’s before I got too comfortable with holding on to him. “I’m fine,” I forced myself to say, brushing some debris off my butt.

Nate dropped his gaze down to my hips, just long enough that it was obvious, before bringing his eyes up to meet mine again. “Yeah. Fine.”

I kicked off both my shoes since they weren’t going to do me any good as they were. “You came to walk the dogs, right? So walk the dogs.” Then I tossed my shoes in my purse, slung the strap over my shoulder, and turned to Dave, trying not to put too much of my weight on my right foot. Unsuccessfully, I might add, but I did try. “Come on. Get your camera set up. We have a job to do.”

All the flirtatiousness drained off Nate’s face in an instant. “Yeah, you sure do.” He grabbed the dog’s leash from Dave, and he and his friends took off without us.

“You’re not fine,” Dave said once they were gone.

“I’m as fine as I have time to be.” I could put my foot up and have a good cry when I got home. Until then, I had to grin and bear it, even if it was the last thing on earth I felt like doing.

RJ HAD BEEN right. It was too early for many of the roses to be blooming, which led to Amanda’s disappointment—and pouting. Her histrionics didn’t stop Max and Lola from having the time of their lives, though.

We didn’t walk them so much as they walked us. The pair of them spent the afternoon racing from stranger to stranger, from one new scent to another, dragging me and RJ along for the ride while Amanda hung back and alternated between laughing her head off and remembering that she was supposed to be sulking.

Anne and her cameraman kept up with all of us well enough, which was impressive in Anne’s case, given that she was limping around in bare feet and nursing an obviously sprained right ankle. At least I hoped it was only a sprain. It seemed to me she was stubborn enough that it could be worse. If so, she was likely causing herself more damage by continuing to hobble around on it.

I had to remind myself that I hadn’t done anything to hurt her, and I hadn’t been the one to invite her along. This was all her. She’d insisted on coming, and she hadn’t bothered to put on sensible shoes. All her fault, even if Max and Lola had probably been responsible for at least some of the damage.

I felt bad for her, which was stupid considering all the crap she was putting me through. Earlier, I’d only flirted with her because of RJ’s reminder that my mother would be at home glued to her computer, watching every moment of this show Anne was producing. But then it had started to feel natural again. Comfortable. Like there was no other way we ought to be together than overly playful, cracking jokes and making each other laugh.

Anne and I had chatted each other up far more than was good for either of us over the last couple of years, and now that we’d started it up again, I wasn’t so sure I wanted it to stop. Lord knew I enjoyed the way we were together like this a hell of a lot better than how we’d been the last couple of days—even though that was all on me. I was the one avoiding her at every possible opportunity, not the other way around.

That said, I couldn’t let myself forget that she was not my friend, no matter how I looked at it. Letting something as important as that slip my mind would be setting myself up for a world of hurt. Since the banana peel incident, I’d already had enough crap to deal with to last for years. Anne Dennison was determined to do her job, to get her story, and it didn’t matter one bit to her if she destroyed me in the process. I had to remember that. Always. Even if I’d rather forget it.

Still, watching her limp around in the grass as she followed us, her pain overly apparent, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling sorry for her.

The worst part of it all—at least for Anne—was that I doubted she’d gotten any useful footage all afternoon. All we’d done was get dragged all over the place by these two beasts, laughing our asses off. How the hell was that going to fit into the story she was trying to present of me being this poor SOB getting picked on by racist bigots everywhere I went? I didn’t have a clue.

Finally, it seemed Max and Lola had worn themselves out. They plopped down on a stretch of grass in the middle of the gardens and lay on their sides, breathing heavily. Looked like a good plan to me. I collapsed next to Lola and rolled onto my back, looking up at the few wispy clouds dotting the otherwise perfectly clear sky. Lola took that as an open invitation to drape herself across my belly, forcing all the air out of my lungs.

“Oof,” I said, trying to shove her off. It was no use. She was right where she wanted to be and had no intention of moving again until she was good and ready. “Seriously, RJ, you’ve got to find a way to convince them they’re too big for this shit.”

“She can’t help it that she loves you. We don’t choose who we love.” He took a seat next to Max and rubbed his belly. Amanda looked at the grass, then at the light-colored shorts she was wearing, and remained standing with her nose crinkling ever so slightly in distaste. She couldn’t stand getting dirty. Lord only knew why she’d wanted to come to the gardens today, because the chances of her getting dirty increased by an enormous degree outside the house. I still hadn’t figured out what RJ saw in her other than the fact that she was hot as hell, but oh well. Maybe he really believed what he’d said, that he couldn’t choose who he loved.

On the other hand, I wasn’t going to fall into that trap. “You sure about that?” Because I’d definitely decided I wasn’t going to even like Anne Dennison any more, and I had no intention of ever doing more than that. Wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t let it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her slipping into position next to her cameraman, giving him silent instructions as he filmed us. Couldn’t even lie here basking in the sun without them trying to capture every inane moment of my life.

“Pretty sure,” he said, rubbing Max on the belly. That was apparently the right thing to do in Max’s opinion. He rolled and writhed around like a puppy, four paws flying through the air in glee and barking like he was possessed.

“He’s going to need a bath when we get home if you keep that up,” Amanda griped.

RJ rolled his eyes and kept doing what he’d been doing. “He’s going to need a bath when we get home anyway. He’s sweaty, smelly, and covered in dirt and grass. So is Lola.”

“Well, have fun with that,” Amanda said.

“It wouldn’t kill you to help me out with them.”

“I feed them. I take care of them when you’re gone.”

“You feed them when I’m gone. You don’t walk them. You don’t clean them or clean up after—”

“How do you expect me to walk them when the two of you can barely handle them?” she cut in.

“They’re your dogs!”

“I do the best I can,” Amanda bit off, the camera absorbing every bit of this—which might actually prove to be a good thing for me. Not that I wanted RJ to suffer the same kind of scrutiny I’d been under, but it would be a relief to have the focus shifted. Amanda seemed to remember that we were being filmed, shifting her eyes over to Anne and her crew of one. Then she ripped off the microphone and jerked the mic pack free from her waistband, tossing them in Anne’s direction. “I’m ready to go. Let’s go.” Then she stalked off, leaving us on the ground as she headed toward RJ’s enormous SUV.

He gave me an exasperated look, but it slipped away as soon as it came on. I was tempted to remind him that he was the one who intended to marry her, not me, but I bit my tongue. Not the kind of thing I needed to say in front of Amanda, let alone in front of anyone and everyone who decided to tune in and watch this show online.

“I’d better go,” he said, dragging himself to his feet and tugging on Max’s leash to get him up. He reached for Lola’s leash, which I gratefully handed over. “Thanks for giving me a hand with them.”

I shrugged now that I could move again, no longer pinned to the ground by Lola’s exuberant affection. “You know me. Glutton for punishment.”

He laughed. “Yep. Always have been.” Then he tugged on the dogs’ leashes and started to follow his fiancée. “See you in the morning, Ghost,” he called over his shoulder.

I was still on my back, basking in the sun and momentarily oblivious to the fact that I was now all alone with Anne and her cameraman, when she limped over and took a seat next to me.

Well, shit. I draped an arm over my eyes to block the sun.

“Hiding from me?” she asked.

More like hiding from the camera. But that wasn’t like me, at least not until lately, so I put my arm back down on the ground at my side. “You’ll get your pants dirty,” I pointed out.

“Too late, they’re already ruined.”

“You can probably get the grass stains out.”

“Maybe my dry cleaner can, but not me.” She winked. “I never learned the art of doing laundry. One more way I failed in my mother’s eyes.”

The sun was behind her like a halo, and I squinted to see what I could make out in her expression. There wasn’t any irony in her tone—only resignation. Which meant she actually believed what she’d said. That had to be one of the most ridiculous things I’d ever heard. Anne Dennison was making her mark in a career where few women ventured.

“How on earth could your mother think you’re a failure?” I demanded.

“It’d be easier to list the things I’ve done that she approves of.”

“Which are?”

“I have a college degree. The wrong college degree, but still. I graduated.”

“And?” I coaxed when she didn’t continue, sitting up so I could see her better. I draped my arm over my knee and searched her eyes. Definitely no irony in her look. Good grief.

“That’s about it.”

“You’re joking.” She had to be.

“Nope. I went into journalism and minored in radio, TV, and film. She wanted me to get a degree in math or science—something useful, she said—and marry an Indian doctor so I could make Indian babies and let my degree go to waste. I wasn’t supposed to still be single at this age.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four. By now, she thinks I should have popped out at least my first two Indian babies. I should spend my life barefoot and pregnant, don’t you know? That’s what a good Indian girl is supposed to do. Be smart, but never use her smarts other than to snag an Indian doctor and make Indian babies.”

I rolled my eyes. That sounded like the last thing she would want, based on what little I knew of her. “I didn’t realize you’re Indian.” Never would have guessed it, based on her name, but now that she said it, I could see it in some of her features—her lighter skin and curly hair, not to mention the shape of her face. She had high cheekbones that gave her an exotic look.

“Half-Indian. My dad’s half-black, half-Irish. He’s a doctor. Mom got that part right, she says, but their marriage was always rocky. They divorced when I was ten. Mom has been trying to brainwash me into getting everything right that she got wrong ever since. That’s one of the reasons I don’t spend as much time with her as I do with my dad.”

I didn’t have any difficulty imagining what it would be like growing up with animosity between divorced parents. Not that mine were like that—they were still happily married more than thirty-five years later. But RJ and his brother had spent a ton of time at our house growing up because his parents were constantly fighting. Even after they’d divorced, he’d continued coming to my house because it was a refuge for him. Mom and Dad had treated him like he was one of their kids, loving him in ways his own parents seemed incapable of doing. We hadn’t ever really talked about what happened at his house. I’d never wanted to push him into it. I just knew that he needed somewhere to go, and we were always happy to be that somewhere for him.

But I did have a hard time imagining a life with a parent who was trying to get you to do all the things they felt they’d done wrong. Shouldn’t they want their kids to chase their own dreams, to go after the things they loved? My parents had never played hockey in their lives. Hell, Dad couldn’t skate and refused to even try. But they’d taken me to every practice and tournament, watching from the stands and cheering me on. My sister, Nicole, had wanted to become a teacher, so they’d gotten her into babysitting and enrolled her in early childhood development programs so she could get a head start and be sure it was the career she wanted to pursue. They did everything they could to support both of us in reaching our goals, never attempting to force their own dreams on us.

“You’ve known Jezek for a long time?” Anne prompted after a long silence.

“Since I was probably nine or ten? RJ and I’ve known each other for what feels like forever. I barely remember a time before he was around.”

“Seems like you two are good friends.”

“You could say that,” I replied, trying to figure out what she was fishing for. These felt like leading questions. But leading up to what?

“And your family? You’re close to your family?”

“Yeah. I spend time with Mom and Dad every chance I get. My sister’s a teacher, so her summer breaks tend to coincide with the time I have off from hockey. It works out well.” I remained intentionally vague, not giving away too much, because in the back of my mind, I knew the camera was still rolling. “RJ’s kind of like family to me. Hell, the whole team is like family to me. We’re a bunch of brothers, teasing each other, giving each other a hard time, but when it comes down to it, these are the guys watching my back. They’re the ones I’m going into battle with. We take care of our own.”

One thing we learned early in my world was that hockey was a team sport. It should never be about individual achievements or failures. We tended to answer questions about the team as a whole, lauding teammates and pointing out areas where our personal game needed improvement. The focus was almost never on an individual, though, which was one more reason the entire situation with the banana peel had made me uncomfortable. It was about me, and only me. Not about the team. And all this time with Anne was forcing me to look at myself even more. She wanted me to talk about myself. I wanted to put the focus back on the team.

“I’ve noticed that,” Anne said dryly. “Every time I’ve tried to get you alone like this to talk to you, someone else has tried to get in the way or distract me. They’ve wanted to talk to me about anyone and anything else. No one has given me anything more than pat answers when it comes to what happened the other night.”

“Because that doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?” She raised one of her eyebrows, drawing my attention to how thick and perfectly arched they were. “Can you really say that and believe it? In this day and age, the fact that someone threw a banana peel at your feet and shouted racial slurs at you doesn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t,” I ground out.

“How can it not be a huge deal?”

“It’s only a big deal if you decide to make it into one. But me? I’m not giving it that much power. Neither are my teammates. There are ignorant people everywhere. Racists, homophobes, sexist assholes, perverts, people who are scared of other religions… But I don’t think that’s what most of the world is like. I choose to believe that most people are good. Most realize that hatred based on someone being different is truly just fear of what they don’t understand. So you can make this into something bigger than what it is if you want, but I’m not going to play along. I’m going to go about my life like I always have. We’ve got our first game of the playoffs tomorrow. That’s what I’m focused on. And only that.”

To Anne’s credit, she didn’t blanch at anything I said. She kept a straight face. Interested. Intrigued, maybe. “I was talking with your coaches about you yesterday,” she said. “Coach Bergstrom seems to think that final game of the regular season might have been the beginning of your coming-out party. He seems to think you’ve got the talent to become a real game breaker, something you’ve shown hints of in the last few months.”

I shrugged. “I was always an offensive threat growing up. Took me a while to figure it out at this level.”

“You’re seriously going to downplay that?” Anne shook her head and laughed. “That’s an amazing compliment, and you’re going to shrug it off like it’s nothing.”

“It is nothing unless I back it up. Let’s see what happens in the playoffs.”

“Yeah, let’s see. Thanks for agreeing to do this, by the way. I know you didn’t want to, and I can’t say I blame you.”

“Well, like you reminded me before we left… I don’t really have a choice, do I?” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t been so short with her. Everything had been smooth between us, but now it was like a cold front had blown in. “Sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“No, but it isn’t yours, either. I get it, Nate. I really do. I’m not trying to make your life difficult. I hope you know that.” When I didn’t respond, she let out a sigh. “Well, I think that’s good enough for now. Dave, you can pack up to go,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at the cameraman. She got to her knees and made to stand, but her ankle twisted beneath her again, and she flopped back down to the ground with a pained squeak.

I tugged her ankle toward me for a better look. “That’s a lot of swelling. You shouldn’t have been traipsing around on it all day.”

“I had a job to do. It wasn’t that bad until I sat down.”

“It’s always worse once you get off it.” I scowled. “You have no business walking on this right now. Not until you get some X-rays and we can be sure what’s going on.”

“We?” she asked, drawling the word and arching one of those gorgeous brows.

“Figure of speech.” I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to cover my tracks there.

She struggled to an upright position again. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

When she tried to stand, I had to push on her shoulders and keep her down. “You don’t listen very well, do you?”

“Well, how do you propose I get back to my car and drive myself to a doctor without walking?”

“I could carry you.” Then I saw that Dave had finished putting away all his equipment, slinging the strap of a carrying case over one shoulder. “Or you can put an arm around each of our shoulders so you can use us like crutches. Honestly, I don’t care which, but I don’t want to let you walk on that any more right now.”

She huffed, the breath blowing her bangs out of her face for a moment as she frowned. “To be honest, I don’t know if I can manage it, anyway.”

“You’re too stubborn for your own good.”

“Something else my mother is constantly reminding me of,” she said, but this time when she spoke of her mother, she did it with a laugh.

I SPENT THE majority of the next day holed up in the cutting room with my editor, a writer, and Carson, the local actor we’d chosen to be the narrator of the series. They kept nagging me to elevate my foot, and an assistant continually ran errands for me instead of allowing me to get up and do things for myself—fetching ice packs, food, and drinks, bringing me more ibuprofen, running messages back and forth between me and other members of my crew, and a thousand other things at once.

The whole time we were piecing the episode together, I was also fielding what felt like a thousand calls, texts, and emails from different members of my crew, from people involved in the Storm organization, and a couple from my father, who reminded me to take it easy today. Just a sprain, I told him repeatedly, and a couple of the Storm’s trainers intended to monitor me occasionally to be sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. That part might have been a slight exaggeration, as they were only providing me with ice packs and wraps for my ankle, but my father didn’t need to know that.

Besides, Dad wasn’t my doctor. He wasn’t even the sort of doctor anyone would go to over a sprained ankle. He was a bariatric surgeon. He worked with severely obese people, helping them to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle, which had next to nothing to do with sprains. Still, I was his little girl, and he was determined to worry about me. There were worse things he could do, so the least I could do was put up with his meddling and worrying.

With barely more than an hour to spare before the first webisode went live, I sent Carson and the writer off to the sound studio to record the narration we’d discussed so it could be cut in over the footage we’d selected. While they were gone, Bill the editor and I both worked at a feverish pace alongside each other, both of us occupied by a different sequence, to edit the remaining few scenes and cut them together.

They raced back in with the audio with only twenty minutes to go. I hadn’t intended to cut things so close—we really ought to have a final run-through of the whole thing so we could make a few tweaks before it aired—but there wasn’t time for that.

We uploaded and crossed our fingers that there weren’t any issues. I sent off a quick message to the Storm’s Internet guys so they knew to put a link about it on the home page of their website and have their social media department post about it. Then I took a moment to post about it on our own Eye of the Storm social media accounts so the world would know it was available. Once all of that was done, we sat down and watched it through for the first time, along with everyone else in the world who decided to check it out before the Storm’s first playoff game of the season.

I don’t think I took a breath through the entire thirty-minute webisode, and especially not when it got to the banana peel incident. Even though I’d seen it happen live, and I’d watched all of our footage countless times over the course of the last few days as we’d painstakingly selected what to use and what to leave behind, I still choked up when it hit the ice in front of Nate, and I saw the pained expression come into his eyes while Carson’s words trailed off into nothingness.

We’d settled on using only the true audio for that moment. No exposition. We weren’t going to tell anyone how they should feel about it as they watched Nate’s dawning comprehension, or the explosive anger that lit a fire in the eyes of some of his teammates, or the hatred revealed in the faces of the men who were behind the moment. We wanted everyone to make up their own minds as to how they should respond to such a disgusting display.

Watching it through like that, I was left with chills racing up my spine.

Somehow, it went off without a hitch. All the men in the room high-fived each other, and I sucked in a breath, finally filling my lungs with air.

“Great work, Anne,” Bill said, slapping me on the back like I was one of the guys.

“Same to you. All of you.” I removed the most recent ice pack from my ankle and grabbed my crutches. “But for now, I have to run.” The camera crew was at the Moda Center already, filming what I’d instructed them to, but I needed to get out to our control center so I could keep an eye on everything going on in this game. One episode down, but now we needed to start thinking up the narrative for the second.

“Car’s waiting for you out front,” Bill said. He grabbed my bag for me and held open the door for me to crutch my way through. When we reached the car we’d arranged, he tossed my bag inside and shut the door behind me once I had the crutches situated.

The driver pulled out. Bill winked at me as we drove off.

Since I was just along for the ride, I took out my phone and pulled up Twitter to see if people were posting reactions to the first webisode.

Then I wished the driver would pull over, because I felt like I might toss my cookies.

@EyeoftheStormShow is just glorifying racism. No surprise with @AnnePDennison at the helm. Someone should rape her to shut her up.

How many people did @AnnePDennison fuck to get this @EyeoftheStormShow gig? Women don’t know sports. #stupidcunt

Why is @StormNHL letting @AnnePDennison run @EyeoftheStormShow? #rapethebitch

Those were just the first three reactions I came to, but scrolling through my feed revealed hundreds more along the same lines.

This wasn’t anything new, of course. I’d been facing the same sort of hate since my first day on the job as part of the Storm’s broadcast team. I’d faced it throughout my college days, working for the university newspaper and radio departments and taking on the hockey coverage. I knew there was bound to be more to come, and I’d thought I was prepared for it now. But it washed over me like a torrential downpour, drowning me under its weight.

The Moda Center came into view, and I forced my face into a calm, neutral expression. Now wasn’t the time to give in to the negativity threatening to swamp me, and I needed to have my game face on; I had a job to do, whether the world thought I was capable of doing it or not.

OUR HOME-ICE ADVANTAGE against the Sharks didn’t seem to be working out in our favor so far. Granted, it was only halfway through the first game of a seven-game series, but they had a two-to-nothing lead and had been drowning us with constant, smothering pressure in our own end. Nicky Ericsson, our goaltender, had been standing on his head to withstand their assault, but the man was only human. He’d been calm and steady for us, and he’d even made a few miraculous saves that would play on highlight reels for the duration of the playoffs. One of the goals that had gotten past him had been on a three-on-none breakaway when we’d been caught on a bad change. The other came on a Sharks power play just a few moments ago when they converged on the net, and Pavelski banged in a garbage goal that deflected off Brenden “Soupy” Campbell’s ass in his first game back after a long stint on the injured list.

Soupy wanted to impact the game, but I didn’t need to look at the thunderous expression in his eyes to know this wasn’t the kind of impact he’d been hoping for. He slammed his stick against the boards, splintering it in two before taking his spot on the bench.

“Not your fault, Soupy,” I said. He was one of our best penalty-killing forwards and had been since before I’d joined the team. As long as he was healthy, at least. I knew this had to rankle him like nothing else, though. No hockey player liked being responsible for scoring on his own goaltender, but especially not the guys known for being defensive specialists.

Soupy glared at me.

“We’ll get it back,” Koz added. Blake Kozlow was the center on my line. About the only time I could stand the guy was when we were playing hockey. He was a jumped-up spaz the rest of the time, and one of the biggest assholes I’d ever met on a good day. On a bad day? Better to stay the hell away from the guy. But he seemed to chill out when he got out on the ice. I wasn’t sure what it was—the activity, the competitiveness—but whatever was behind it, he seemed to focus in a lot better in a game, and his asshole-ish tendencies drifted away.

Except for when it came to the opposition. Koz never stopped talking trash. At least he was starting to back it up more often than not. Pissed me off, though, when I was out there with him and he started shit that he wouldn’t finish. That left me and Jo-Jo to clean up his messes—and Jo-Jo was just a twenty-one-year-old kid. A skinny blond Swede, no less. Not a fighter. I was scrappy, but that didn’t change the fact that almost every guy in the league had at least half a foot and thirty pounds on me. Besides, Bergy didn’t want me fighting. He wanted me on the ice, setting an example for those two and trying to somehow take over games like he seemed to think I could.

Bergy slapped a hand down on top of my shoulder. “Koz, Ghost, Jo-Jo… Get out there and give ’em hell.”

“That’s what I do best,” Koz said, jumping over the boards with more energy than should be legal.

I tamped down my annoyance and followed him and Jo-Jo out to take the face-off at center ice. The guy hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Yet. Sounded like he was planning to stir up a crap ton of shit, though.

The Sharks left Pavelski’s line out there for this shift. They had the momentum, so it made sense, even if they were more winded than we were.

Levi “501” Babcock and his new defensive partner, Leif Sorenson—a trade deadline acquisition who’d been with the Oilers most of the season, and a guy we all called Thor because of his godlike build and long hair—joined us on the back end.

“God, suck on a fucking breath mint, would you?” Koz said to Pavelski. “I might pass out from the fumes before this guy ever drops the fucking puck.”

Pavelski just put his stick on the ice and readied himself for the face-off.

Koz managed to get his stick under Pavelski’s and win the draw back to Thor. My guy tried to tie me up, but I ducked past him and barreled my way toward the Sharks’ zone, sure that Thor and 501 would get the puck up to me in no time. Sure enough, as soon as I reached the blue line, the puck hit my stick. Sharks defenseman Brent Burns and his caveman beard were all that stood between me and the goalie, and Jo-Jo was streaking down the other wing with Paul Martin covering him hard and tight.

Head up, I surveyed the scene before me. Burns had his eyes locked on me. The guy always seemed to read things exactly right. I had to fake going one way and convince him to bite or I’d never get free from him. Time to use the moves I’d been working on with Bergy.

I made like I would go left, but at the last second, I shifted my weight and powered my way to the right with my thighs.

Burns took the bait, and in his effort to change directions the same way I had, he fell down. Clear path to the goal.

I deked once, glanced across to see Martin had Jo-Jo tied up, deked one more time to convince the goalie to take himself out of position, and shot the puck high, glove side. It clanged off the crossbar and in the net. The goal horn sounded and the crowd went wild.

Jo-Jo and the rest of the guys converged on me, and Thor lifted me up in the air.

“Fucking right,” Koz shouted in my ear. I couldn’t make out all the rest of the things the guys were saying. Because, despite myself, I’d frozen with an unfounded fear. I didn’t want to look out into the crowd. I didn’t want to see if there were any people out there screaming things at me instead of shouting in elation.

I’d never reacted like this before to something that should be positive and exciting. I should be on top of the world, but instead, I was shaking in my skates.

I didn’t like this new side of me. I wanted to bury it. Six feet under didn’t seem deep enough.

Bergy gave me an odd look when we skated over to the bench, but it was gone before I could try to figure it out. He slapped me on the back. “That’s what I’m talking about, boys. Let’s get some more of that going. Keep it up.” Then he leaned over my shoulder. “Hell of a fake on Burns. Told you.”

I nodded and stared out at the ice. No one needed to know how bad that shit had gotten into my head, and I was going to have a hell of a time hiding it if Bergy was already giving me strange looks. The only thing that needed to be in my mind right now was this game. Period.

Everything else was just a distraction, and I didn’t need any more of those.

THE PRESS CONVERGED around Koz instead of me, Babs, or any of the usual suspects after the game, for once, since he’d not only scored the game winner, but he’d also assisted on my second goal and fought two different Sharks players in the third period. My knuckles thanked him for dealing with the shit he’d started instead of leaving it all to me. Commenting on Pavelski’s breath had only been the start of it. By the end of the second period, every guy on that team wanted to rip Koz’s head off, and I couldn’t say I blamed them. I was just glad he was on my side. Playing against him would drive me batshit crazy in about 0.12 seconds.

I gave him a warning look from my stall, hoping he’d interpret that to mean he shouldn’t say anything stupid that he’d have to retract later, but it didn’t seem as though he’d noticed. His problem, not mine, I reminded myself. No matter what kinds of idiotic things Koz said, it was on him. Kurt Yarbrough and the other guys in the communications department could help him sort it out. I was just glad they weren’t all over me tonight. I’d had enough of that in the last few days to last a lifetime.

I stripped off all my gear and headed for the showers, hoping they’d be finished with all of their interviews by the time I got back. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Anne ditching her crutches and hobbling over to say something to one of her camera guys. She really shouldn’t be doing that. I had half a mind to tell her as much before I took a step back and reminded myself it wasn’t any of my business if she fucked up her ankle worse than it already was. Not my show; not my monkeys—same as with Koz.

When I returned to the room a while later, fully dressed and ready to get the hell out of there, most of the media had left. Anne and her guys were still around, though, camera trained on Koz and a mic shoved in his face. I inched past and hoped she wouldn’t notice, but as I walked by her, I couldn’t help but hear what he was saying.

“…not going to let anyone do or say shit about Ghost.” He cut himself off and grimaced for a moment. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have used that word, but I think you catch my drift. We’re not going to just sit by and let people get away with that stuff. He’s one of us. He’s our brother. We’re all sticking by him.”

“So are you saying that one of the Sharks players made a comment about Golston and that’s why—”

“I’m not answering that,” Koz cut in dismissively. “What happened on the ice stays on the ice. That’s how it’s always been and how it’s always going to be.”

“Because wouldn’t that be something the league would want to look into?” Anne continued. “I know there have been penalties handed out in the past when players have used derogatory language—”

“Not answering that,” he said again. “And unless you have something else to ask me, I think we’re done here.” He didn’t give her the opportunity to ask him anything else, shoving past her and the cameraman and heading for the showers.

I ducked my head down and tidied up my stall, hoping beyond hope she wouldn’t try to start anything with me next. I sure as hell hadn’t heard anyone out on the ice saying anything like what Koz had hinted at. If anyone had said anything to him, I figured it had a hell of a lot more to do with him being a son of a bitch who couldn’t shut the fuck up than anything about me. Lord only knew what he was thinking, because I sure as hell didn’t.

“That’s good enough for tonight, guys,” Anne said to her crew behind me. She sounded weary, like she was overdoing it. Which she probably was, considering she still hadn’t picked up her crutches again. Not only that, but there was no telling how many hours she’d been working lately with producing this show.

I grabbed my phone out of my stall and shoved it into the pocket of my suit jacket alongside my wallet. If she was telling them to shut off their cameras, she wasn’t going to hound me tonight.

Or so I thought.

When I turned around, she gave me a curious look and arched a brow. “Did you hear anything like what Kozlow was talking about?”

“No,” I bit off.

“Would you tell me if you had?”

This time, I chuckled. “Nope.”

She shook her head with laughter in her tired eyes. “First episode is up. You can watch it when you get home.”

“I doubt that’ll happen.”

She deflated a bit, disappointment drawing those gorgeous brows together over her nose. “You’re not curious how it went?”

“I lived it. I don’t need to watch it on repeat.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I wish you’d watch it. I’d like to know what you think.”

“Why does it matter what any of us think?”

“I didn’t say anything about an us. I want to know what you think. And I think you know why.”

The only reason my opinion would matter was something I’d already determined wasn’t a possibility—that she cared what damage she might have inflicted on me on top of the sons of bitches who’d started it to begin with.

Not a possibility. She was doing her job, and that was that. She didn’t care about me, and I’d be an idiot to think otherwise.

I might be many things, but an idiot was not one of them. “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Practice in the morning.”

“Yeah.” Anne’s voice sounded strained. “I’ve got a lot to do, too.” She hobbled away without looking at me again.

I couldn’t stop myself from calling after her, “You should get off that ankle!”

“That’s what my dad tells me, too.” She turned her head toward me and winked. “But like you said, I’m too stubborn for my own good.”

Damn if I didn’t like it too much when she smiled at me like that.

Maybe I was a bigger idiot than I wanted to believe.

AFTER THE STORM’S second game of the playoffs—a one-to-nothing loss—we were getting close to finishing up with filming the second week’s footage for Eye of the Storm. Several of the guys on my crew and I were up well after midnight at a bar, drinking a few beers and debating the angle we should take as we edited the episode together.

I’d been studiously avoiding looking at social media, instead turning that responsibility over to my assistant, Tim Wilmington, who had signed on as an intern. He’d been given instruction to ignore the nasty comments about me but to pass on anything constructive about the show, and to respond to as many of those tweets and other posts that were positive as he could. We wanted to present a good image to the world and not get caught up in the nastiness that tended to come out in crashing waves when people could hide behind the anonymity of the Internet.

“We could continue to keep the focus on Golston,” Dave put in, taking another swig of his beer. “I mean, he’s not giving us much, but you’ve gotten a few good sound bites out of several others. The guys want to stick up for him. You could paint it as the whole team, even the whole organization, rallying around him.”

“He wouldn’t like that much,” I said. And I wouldn’t blame him. Granted, I didn’t think he’d bothered to watch the first episode, so I doubted he would be very keen on watching the second one any time soon, either. Maybe I didn’t need to worry too much about how Nate would feel about us continuing to harp on this one incident.

“It’s not about what he likes,” Bill said. “You can’t make your decisions based on if you’re worried about hurting his tender feelings. You’ve got to put together the best show you can using the material you’ve got—and right now, he’s the best material you’ve got. Or at least the way they’re closing ranks around him is.”

I scowled down into my empty beer glass, wishing I’d asked for another the last time the waitress had come by. “I still don’t like it. We can’t keep pushing the same story repeatedly with only minor changes. The audience will tune out fast if we do. It’ll get stale. We need a fresh angle on it.”

“This is a fresh angle,” Ben said. “In the first episode, it had barely happened. There wasn’t much exposition on it. We left them drowning in the muck and mire of how awful it felt with nothing but Golston’s initial response to ease the sting. In a way, it was a cliffhanger. You need to resolve that story arc, and that could take a few episodes to tie up neatly.”

“I’d rather it become a side plot instead of the main focus, though.”

“It will,” Bill said. “With time. You can’t push it to the side right away, even if Golston would prefer for you to.”

“I’m not doing things based on what Nate wants!” I argued. Maybe too forcefully.

The guys all gave me looks that said as much before taking another sip from their beers.

“So maybe you’re doing it based on your own feelings,” Tim said, and the other guys nodded.

“Don’t you dare start with the whole Anne-is-a-female-with-too-many-hormones-so-she-can’t-be-objective bull,” I snapped.

Tim blanched, but he said, “No, that’s not what I mean. I just meant maybe you’re sympathizing with him right now. He’s up against people who think he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing because of his race. You’re dealing with something similar right now because some jerks think you shouldn’t be working in this field because you’re a woman. So maybe you’re getting too close and can’t look at the situation objectively right now.”

He might have a point, but I wasn’t inclined to give in to it.

“Objective or not, I don’t like the idea of harping on the racism issue any more than we have to. I’d rather we find another angle and start veering the audience into that territory sooner rather than later. So let’s see what direction we can shift the focus in this episode. We have a couple more days to film and then two days to piece it together. I want all your best ideas as soon as possible.”

“You’ve got our best idea,” Bill insisted, and a couple of the other guys—the older ones, who had more experience, nodded in agreement.

“You know we’re on your side, Anne,” Dave said.

“It doesn’t sound like it at the moment,” I shot back.

“Well, we are,” he said. “But here’s the thing. You’ve got to give the guys who make decisions what they want. And what they want is the story that is all over the headlines. They want you to get the inside scoop from the people closest to what’s going on, and deliver that in a way that keeps viewers riveted, keeps their asses in their seats, and makes them want to come back for more. If you don’t—”

“I’m not pandering to what they want just because they think they want it,” I cut in. “I’m producing the show that I think we need to produce, focusing on what’s important overall.”

“Then you might not have this job for very long,” Dave said. I knew it wasn’t a threat. He worked for me and not the other way around, and he didn’t have any sort of say as far as whether I got to keep my job or not. He was telling me this more as a warning than anything, which, in a way, I could appreciate.

And I wasn’t stupid enough to think that he was wrong. I still wasn’t sure how I’d landed this job. There weren’t many women in this field in any position, but even fewer who were entrusted with such big responsibilities. The kinds of responses I’d gotten on Twitter? It wasn’t just nameless, faceless people on the Internet who thought those kinds of things, and I was sure some people actually said them in real life—just not to my face. They were said in men-only meetings, in passing when those few women in the business like me weren’t around. Dave was very much right.

But I still couldn’t produce this show while worrying about the possibility of losing my job if I didn’t do it the way they wanted it. I had to maintain my integrity. I had to do it the way I saw it, even if it meant losing my job. I’d be doing everyone a disservice otherwise, myself most of all.

“So be it,” I said, looking Dave straight in the eye with as much conviction as I could muster. I needed these guys on my side, because there were enough other people out there hoping to see me crash and burn. “We’re still doing this my way for as long as it is my job.”

The guys muttered, “Got it,” and other similar words of assent, but they sounded less than enthusiastic. I understood their reluctance. The easy thing to do would be exactly what they were suggesting. I didn’t want to take the easy way out. I had never been one to travel the path of least resistance. If I had been, I’d have a physics degree and would be popping out Indian babies like my mother thought best.

I shook my head, brushing all the negativity aside. If I allowed myself to dwell on that, I’d be swallowed up in it in no time. “Let’s call it a night, guys. We’ve all got a lot to do tomorrow.” Not the least of which was figuring out how to frame the second episode.

This job might well be the death of me, but at least I’d go out doing something I could be proud of.

“ANIKA, YOU SHOULD talk to your mother,” Padma said into the phone. “She’s driving us all up the wall with how her only daughter has banished her from her life, how you’re shaming her with the work you do.”

“Will you ever start calling me Anne like everyone else does?” I demanded of my cousin, trying to deflect the conversation from the direction she wanted to take things.

“Everyone? Who is this everyone? The whole family has always called you Anika.”

Not my whole family, I thought to myself. Only the Indian half of it. The rest of my family called me by my real name, Anne. “Only because Mom calls me Anika.”

“Because it’s how we know you.”

“But it’s not my name.”

“It should be your name.”

“But it isn’t. If you doubt it, have a look at my birth certificate.” I shoved the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could keep packing my suitcase. I’d already thrown in my toiletries and my undergarments. Now I needed enough suits to get me through the four days I’d be with the Storm in San Jose. It was definitely warm weather there now, in late April, so lightweight suits would be best. Too bad I’d completely ruined that tan suit. It had been my favorite, but the dry cleaner hadn’t been able to get all the grass stains out of it. Even if they could, I’d ripped it open in a couple of places—not along the seams, either, since that would be too easy to repair—when I’d fallen, so I’d ended up tossing the whole thing in the garbage.

“Your mother said she wanted you to be named Anika,” Padma insisted.

“Then she should have named me Anika when I was born. She didn’t.”

“Because your father wanted you to have an American name even though you’re Indian.”

“Half-Indian,” I corrected her. “But regardless, that was between the two of them.”

“And he won. Just like he always wins.”

He always won where I was concerned because he loved me as the person I was, not the person he wished I was, but that was neither here nor there. Padma wouldn’t want to hear it, anyway. My mother’s family was always on her side in all things, and since I didn’t share those sentiments, I was continually on the outs with half my relatives these days. Black sheep, thy name is Anne.

Not bothering with my crutches since I was dealing with the phone and needing to fill my hands with clothes, I limped to the closet and grabbed the first three suits I could find that weren’t made from a hot, thick wool. Before going back to the bed, where my suitcase was thrown open, I grabbed one more suit for good measure. Then I loaded a few colorful shells and blouses to wear beneath the jackets, so I wouldn’t have to make another trip to the closet on my aching ankle.

“You’re not denying it, Anika.”

“There’s nothing to deny. My name is Anne. And I will talk to my mother when she apologizes to me.”

“Why on earth would your mother need to apologize to you? She carried you for nine months. She gave birth to you. She raised—”

“She berates me at every opportunity she gets for not being her version of an ideal Indian daughter. And you know what? She wasn’t the ideal Indian daughter, either, and she was and is as far from being the ideal American mother as possible. She made her choices, so I don’t know why she can’t respect the fact that I need to make my own choices, as well.”

“But her choices were wrong!” Padma insisted.

“They were wrong for her. I’m not making the same choices she made, though. She needs to accept the fact that I am not her, and I will never be her, and she can’t turn me into something or someone I’m not. It can’t and won’t happen. So until she can apologize—”

“For what?” my cousin cut in, and I ground my jaw, tossing the suits into the suitcase without even bothering to fold them.

I slammed the top closed and seethed silently for a few moments, trying to calm myself through deep breathing before I went off on Padma. It was really my mother who deserved to be on the receiving end of my ire, not my cousin.

“Don’t you remember that farce of a wedding?” I finally bit off.

“She was just trying to be proactive.”

“Proactive?” I nearly shouted into the phone. “How is my mother planning a wedding for me, buying the dress, inviting every member of her family but no one from the other half of my family—including my own father—and even picking out the groom, an Indian doctor who was more than twice my age, no less, all of this without saying a freaking word to me until I showed up after graduation, simply being proactive? How is it not majorly overstepping?”

“Arranged marriages are common in India,” Padma said feebly, feeding me the same line every member of my mother’s family had been reciting in the two years since that disaster.

“Well, we aren’t in India, are we? This is America. And they’re not common in America. Good grief, I’ve never even been to India,” I added, almost as an afterthought. A very important afterthought, though, if you asked me. Granted, my mother didn’t seem to think that was necessary. She wanted to marry me off to a fifty-two-year-old Indian doctor who could barely speak English, and the only non-English language I could speak was geek. “I can’t even speak the language, other than a couple of phrases.”

“She was only trying to help.”

“She didn’t help. At all. And until she can recognize that what she did was wrong and hurtful, and apologize to me for it, there’s nothing else I have to say to that woman. And there’s no amount of pleading and guilt-tripping the rest of you can do to change that. My mother is the one in the wrong here. If you can’t see that—”

“What, are you going to cut the rest of the family off, too?” Padma cut in.

“At this point, it feels to me as if it’s all of you cutting me off, because you refuse to accept the truth of the situation.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this anymore,” she said. Then the line went dead.

When I heard the dial tone, the only thing I felt was relief.

WE WERE A team built on skill and speed, which was why I was able to fit in reasonably well despite my obvious lack of size in comparison to almost every guy in the league. The Sharks boasted an intimidating combination of the same skill game we played along with a lineup full of big bodies. As a team, we might be a bit faster and have a few more players who could pull off crazy skill moves than they did, but they were a team designed to bang and bruise.

And they’d been doing plenty of that.

After every game so far in this series, almost every guy in our locker room had a bag of ice strapped to at least a few choice body parts. We were taking a serious beating, even though the series was tied at two wins apiece heading back to Portland for the fifth game in this seven-game series.

As for me, I’d tweaked an old knee injury when I’d been trying to dig the puck out of the boards tonight, with two big Sharks defensemen banging away at it, as well. It wasn’t anything that would keep me out of the next game, but the trainers had me keeping ice on it even during the flight home and elevating it as much as I could. They’d stacked a couple of carry-on suitcases on top of each other and instructed me to put my foot up on it. Good thing my legs were shorter than most of the guys’, because mine were almost too long to make this kind of setup work, even though we had a lot more room on this private jet than we would on any commercial plane.

Anne and two of her cameramen were on the flight with us, and they were moving around the cabin, filming segments with various guys. For the most part, they’d left me alone during the few days we were in San Jose, which felt like a blessing. Maybe all the bullshit about the banana peel was finally starting to die off. I hoped that would be the case, at least.

RJ had been sitting next to me, his nose buried in his phone as he messaged back and forth with Amanda, an ice pack strapped to his shoulder. But about halfway through the flight, 501 and Cody “Harry” Williams dragged him to the back of the plane to play poker, leaving the seat beside me empty.

Anne was in it so fast it seemed like she’d been watching for her opening. She propped her bad ankle up on the suitcases beside my foot and let out an audible sigh. I took a quick glance down. The leg of her slacks hid quite a bit, but not enough.

“Your ankle is the size of a watermelon,” I pointed out.

She gave me an annoyed look, then followed my gaze. “More like a cantaloupe.”

“Why aren’t you using your crutches?”

“Have you tried using crutches on an airplane?” she shot back.

“More times than you have.”

She just rolled her eyes.

“You should put some ice on that.”

To that, she didn’t respond at all. My knee was already feeling a lot better, so I reached down and took the ice pack off, then bent over to strap it around her ankle. She shuddered with the chill, but she didn’t do anything more than give me a nasty look in complaint. I kept my leg elevated so the trainers wouldn’t yell at me too much if they strolled back to check on things. Besides, I was in much better shape than she was at the moment, so I figured she needed it more than I did.

“It’d be nice if everyone would stop trying to tell me what to do,” she grumbled after a moment. But she didn’t seem quite as grouchy as she had when she’d first sat next to me. No doubt the ice was already starting to numb some of the pain.

“You’d rather be in charge, wouldn’t you? Like with your minions.”

“Minions?” Anne’s perfect eyebrow arched so high it was almost comical.

I found one of the camera guys and nodded my head in his directions. “Your crew.”

“They’re hardly my minions. And they seem to think they know how to do my job better than I do. At least some of the time. They’ve all got more experience, you know. And they’re men. So clearly they know better than I do.”

I didn’t miss the bitterness in her tone.

“Having some issues with insubordination?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

She shook her head and shrugged. “They’re just trying to help me keep my job.”

I sat up straight. “You think you might lose it?” That seemed crazy to me. She’d just gotten started with this new project, and from everything I’d heard from fans, and from the guys who’d checked out the first episode, she was putting together an excellent program.

“They only gave it to me because it was put together at the last minute, and I was the only person who qualified and who could start right away. They’ll almost definitely replace me with a man before the next season starts, though. I’m only temporary, and everybody knows it even if no one’s actually saying it.”

“Why do you think that?”

“You haven’t looked at Twitter lately, have you?”

“Never.” I almost shuddered at the thought. Some of the guys stalked Twitter, looking for trade rumors with their names floating around, seeing what people had to say about the way they were playing. Sounded like torture to me. Not my idea of a good time. I had never been one of those guys who read articles written about me, searched out blog posts about myself, or anything else like that. I watched the hockey highlights, but I got up to do something else once the focus was on how I’d played. That kind of thing only served to screw with my head. Hell, 501 had spent most of the season with his head stuck up his ass, all because the so-called fans on Twitter had started up a #DamnIt501 hashtag, and it trended just about every time we’d played for the first half of the season. All the more reason to avoid that shit like the plague, if you asked me.

“Probably better if you don’t,” Anne said somberly. “I’ve recently sworn off of all social media for a while.”

“Do I want to know what they’re saying?” I wasn’t sure why I even bothered asking, because I was one hundred percent positive I would rather gouge out my eyes with a rusty spoon.

“Nothing worth wasting your time reading.” She cracked a grin. “Unless you’re of the mind that women working in sports media should all be drawn, quartered, raped, and left tied to a tree for anyone who comes along to do with as they will. You know, the typical Game of Thrones treatment for women. Oh, or if you wanted to weigh in on any side of the Marcus Jameson event. There’s a lot of that right now.”

I wasn’t surprised that Marcus Jameson was still dominating social media, but what she said about women in sports media hit a nerve. She had to be exaggerating, didn’t she? No one would go so far as to post about raping a woman, and definitely not just because of the job she did. Right? I had to believe that. “How can you even joke about that?”

“It’s either make a crack or hate the world. I’d rather laugh it off. Same as you’d rather go on about your life like nothing happened a week ago.”

Maybe the two of us were more similar than I’d like to think. Not a good thought when I’d spent the better part of the last week being pissed off at Anne because she was determined to do her job even when doing it was like a slap in my face. “So what are your guys trying to tell you? What do they think you need to do to perform your job better?”

“Nothing to bore you with,” she said, shifting her weight slightly and wincing when it changed the position of her ankle.

“Bore me anyway.”

She scowled over at me.

I raised a brow and settled back in my seat.

“They want me to keep the focus of the show on you right now. Because you’re the big story that’s all over the news, and you tie in well with the national story line, too.”

“Because racial tensions are high all across the country.”

“Exactly. They think if I give the higher-ups exactly what they want, I’ll have a better chance of keeping my job after the end of this first season.”

“But you’re not?”

“You still haven’t watched, have you? The second episode went live yesterday. You should see for yourself.” She glanced at me, then chuckled, probably because the look on my face had to be one that said fat chance. “Well, even without watching, you should have noticed that I haven’t been hounding you lately. We haven’t left your story line in the dust, but I refuse to glorify that kind of hatred. Reporting on it when it happens is one thing. Beating it into the ground is something else entirely. I’m not going there. Not when there are so many other important things going on within the team right now.”

“Not even if it means losing your job?”

“I’d rather lose my job than my integrity,” Anne said.

“If you lose either, it’ll truly be a shame,” I said. And I meant it. Sticking to her convictions, even with everyone around her telling her that she was making a mistake, took a hell of a lot of courage. I had to admire her for it.

She gave me a self-deprecating smile, and before I had a clue what was about to come out of my mouth, I said, “You’re so damn gorgeous.”

Her grin became flirtatious in a flash. “You’re not too bad to look at yourself. Thanks for bullying me into putting ice on my ankle. It’s helping, even if I don’t like letting someone else be right.”

I winked. “I don’t need to be right all the time. Just some of the time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. How often? Once a week or so?”

“Maybe twice a week.”

“You might be pushing your luck with that…”

The way I saw it, I was pushing my luck enough already by allowing myself to flirt with Anne, when the guys on her crew were probably right, even if I wished they were wrong. If she didn’t play by their rules, she could lose her job. On top of that, our flirtation could lead to other problems for her.

Maybe there was a double standard in place, but that was the way of this part of the world. Not much I could do about it.

We were walking a tightrope with this, and I’d never been much of a daredevil. I had to wonder how adventurous she wanted to be. Because if we weren’t careful, this could easily become more than a simple flirtation.

I didn’t want to be the one responsible for putting her job in jeopardy. But she was an adult, too, perfectly capable of making her own decisions.

The question now was…what choice would she make if given an option? And did I want her to choose me?

RJ STOWED HIS skates on the lower shelf in his stall and looked over at me with massive brown puppy-dog eyes. They had always been his primary weapon with girls when we were in our teens, but the guy had never been stupid enough to try using them on me.

Did he honestly think that would make any difference in whether I’d do what he wanted or not? Hardly likely. I’d never been one to fall for that shit, not even with my sister. Maybe for my niece, but she was only one year old. And she had the ultimate trump card, being my niece. RJ, though? Dumb ass. I rolled my eyes.

“Please,” he said. “It’s just for an hour.”

“An hour of your beast dogs trying to drown me,” I shot back, even though I’d already made up my mind to go along with him. There wasn’t much heat in my words. Hell, to be completely honest, I was curious about this whole thing. That didn’t mean I needed to give in too easily, though. Especially not with him trying to guilt me into it. “You know black men can’t swim, right?” I tossed out to egg him on.

“And white men can’t jump if you believe the movies, but I can still get a three-pointer past you any day of the week.”

“And twice on Sunday,” I finished. “But only because you have half a foot on me.” Depending on whether you believed the official numbers they had on me or not.

He rolled his eyes. “More like because you can’t shoot hoops to save your life. Doesn’t matter. Don’t try to pull that shit on me. Your mom was the one who taught me to swim when we were growing up.”

“That doesn’t mean I can swim with a dog that weighs as much as me trying to slobber all over me in the water,” I pointed out. If they both decided to jump on me at the same time? I might as well be a dead man.

Sounded like it would be a fun day for the dogs, but…

Amanda had booked time for Max and Lola to go swimming at a dog pool. She said they needed to burn off their energy because they’d been driving her up the wall the whole time the team had been gone to San Jose. If she could take them out for a walk, of course, that would help immensely with their hyperactivity, but if RJ and I could barely handle the two of them together, there was no way Amanda could manage them both on her own. Don’t ask me how she thought she was going to deal with taking them swimming when she’d booked the session, because I couldn’t tell you, but together, RJ and I could manage it.

Which, now that I thought about it, was probably her plan all along—getting the two of us to take care of things so she wouldn’t have to.

Even if she was being lazy and expecting us to do everything for her dogs, it didn’t sound all bad.

Besides, spending some time in the pool might actually be soothing for my knee. It felt worse than it had last night, not that I intended to say a thing to the trainers about it. Based on my past experience and the way it kept trying to give out on me every now and then, I’d likely strained a ligament. I hoped it wasn’t anything worse, but whether it was or not, the last thing I needed was for the trainers to get wind of the severity and decide they needed to send me to the hospital for a bunch of tests. They might find an injury bad enough that they’d pull me from the lineup.

So as long as I could play through the pain, you could damn well bet I was going to do it. This was the playoffs. We had a legitimate shot at winning the Stanley Cup this year. I’d have to be on my deathbed to come out of the lineup without putting up one hell of a fight. I didn’t know for certain what this knee injury was, but it wasn’t bad enough for me to be sitting up in the press box and watching the boys take care of things down below.

That meant I needed to do as much self-care as possible—staying off it when I could, icing it every day, and that sort of thing. The pool sounded like a good way to get a bit of a workout in without putting any unnecessary pressure on the joint and muscles.

RJ grabbed his gym bag and raised his brow. “You gonna help me or not?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

Anne and one of her camera guys hustled into the room—this time she was using her crutches, at least—and took a quick look around to see who was still here…and an idea struck me.

An idea that probably meant I’d lost my mind.

Still, I’d rather she get more footage of me and RJ being goofballs with Max and Lola than trying to pick my brain on the state of the world considering that racism was still so rampant in this country. Surely she could find a way to use the footage.

“Okay with you if I invite Anne to tag along?” I asked him, never taking my eyes off her.

The laugh he let out said he agreed with my earlier assessment and I must be crazy. But he said, “Sure. Whatever you want to do.”

“You need my help getting them there, or what?”

He followed my eyes over to Anne, then he shook his head. “Nah. You just get whatever you’re swimming in and meet us there.” Then he rattled off the address and left, saying he’d be there with the dogs in forty-five minutes.

Anne and her cameraman were still surveying the almost empty room. Most of the guys had taken to clearing out fast since they’d been filming us. I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t keen on having my life put under the microscope, but the Storm organization hadn’t exactly given us any say in that matter. I crossed over to them, shoving my hands in my pockets.

“Hey,” she said with a genuine smile.

“Hey.” I shrugged, trying to look casual even though this felt anything but casual. It almost felt like asking her out on a date, only I had the sense that I’d be a lot more comfortable doing that than this. “RJ and I are taking his dogs out again. To a place called Doggy Paddles this time. If you guys wanted to come with us…”

“Doggy Paddles?” she repeated, stifling a laugh. “Is that what it sounds like? A pool for dogs?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Something Amanda booked for them. She thinks it’ll help with their over-exuberance.”

“You promise they won’t sprain my other ankle?” Anne asked.

“I don’t think it’s possible to contain them enough to make any promises like that.” I winked. “Try to look mean or something. Maybe they won’t like you so much then.”

“I don’t know, they seem to like you just fine.”

I tried to pull off an offended look, sure I failed miserably even though I put a hand over my heart and everything. “You think I look mean?”

“I think you look like you’re trying to look mean a lot of times. Mainly on the ice, though.”

“When you’re the shortest guy in the league…”

“Nice try, but nope. Gerbe is shorter than you. I’ve interviewed him, and I was taller than him even in flats.”

“Might have been a slight exaggeration.”

“A slight exaggeration, kind of like that look you get right before a face-off.”

She wouldn’t give in. Which was kind of hot, in its own way. I chuckled. “You’re determined to wound my pride, aren’t you?”

“If that’s enough to wound your pride…”

“So are you coming? Or do you have something better to do?”

She glanced at her watch, then took out her cell phone and scrolled through a couple of screens before her eyes—gorgeous, honey-colored eyes with flecks of green that seemed so out of place yet so perfect—flashed back up to meet mine. “I’m all yours. Give me an address and we’ll be there.”

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Dave and I pulled up at Doggy Paddles, which turned out to be exactly what it sounded like: an indoor pool that catered solely to canine clientele and their human masters. I’d Googled it on the way, but I was still trying to process just what, exactly, we were getting ourselves into. Doggy Paddles worked with dogs of all ages, breeds, and sizes. They helped rehabbing injuries, held play therapy sessions, and offered any number of other amenities for their canine clients. Their humans could get in the pool with the dogs, but it wasn’t required, as one of the Doggy Paddles staff members would always be involved.

Required or not, something told me Nate and Riley Jezek would be in the water today. Those two dogs were going to be way too much for any one person to handle by themselves, no matter how much experience the staff here might have.

Dave parked and started unloading all his gear while I headed for the main doors, since I saw Nate and Jezek already in the lobby with Jezek’s two enormous dogs.

Nate held the door open for me while Jezek tried to hold both dogs back. They were barking up a storm and looked like they were either happy to see me or hoping to eat me for lunch, one of the two. On second thought, they might be happy to see me because they were planning to make a meal out of me. I tried to push that thought away and focus on the job at hand.

In Eye of the Storm’s second episode, I’d started to focus the show on some of the relationships between the people involved with the team. The idea had come to me after tagging along with Nate and Jezek that day at the International Rose Test Gardens. I’d taken it further than that by spending some time with other groups of friends and family within the team.

I’d started with Jamie and Levi Babcock, two brothers playing for the Storm. Jamie was the team captain and married to Katie, who was the daughter of one of the coaches—David Weber. Levi was engaged to Cadence Johnson, who was the youngest sister of one of the older players on the team, Cam Johnson. Cam just so happened to be married to Scotty Thomas’s daughter, and Scotty had been the Storm’s coach once upon a time, but these days he was part of the scouting staff.

That was just one of the tangled groups of relationships on the team. Another grouping started with Brenden and Rachel Campbell. Brenden was a veteran player, and Rachel worked as the assistant to the general manager, a man who used to play with Brenden’s father. Brenden’s sister was married to the former Storm captain who was now playing for the expansion Tulsa Thunderbirds.

So far, that was as far as I’d delved into the inner dynamics among the players, but I knew there were many other layers to explore in future episodes.

Not only was it more interesting to me to explore the guys’ dynamics away from the rink and witness how that played out on the ice, but it made the story we were telling that much more personal. It gave the show a heartbeat. This wasn’t just about hockey; it was about everything that made these men tick.

A woman who looked like she worked at the doggy pool nodded at me as I came in. “Right. They told me you wanted to film today, which is fine as long as you and your crew stay out of our way. Safety is our biggest concern, so if we tell you to move, you’ve got to move. And we won’t be responsible for any damage to your equipment because of the water, so that’s on you.” Then she turned to the two guys. “You’re welcome to come into the water with us, but it’s not required. We’ll be fitting Max and Lola with water harnesses so I can assess their swimming ability. After today, they might not need them any longer. Is everyone ready to go?”

Max and Lola responded by barking and jumping around like they were puppies being unleashed into a pile of autumn leaves.

“I think that’s a yes,” Jezek said.

The woman laughed and glanced up as Dave came in with his cameras. “I’d say so. Off we go.” She nodded in my direction, then angled her head toward Dave. “You’ll fill him in?”

“I’m already on it.”

We followed her into the pool area. She took over putting the harnesses on the dogs while Nate and Jezek stripped down to their swim trunks. I scoped out the area and found a corner where we should be out of the way of anything but tidal-wave-sized splashes and still have good light and angles on the action. I nodded toward that spot. “Over here,” I said to Dave.

He came with me and took a minute or two to set up all his equipment while I gave him the bullet points. He’d barely started filming by the time the dogs were running along the edges and dipping their front toes into the water along the ledge, unsure what to think. This must be a new experience for them.

The woman in charge and the two guys got straight into the water. Lola seemed to think the fact that Nate was already in the water was good enough reason to believe that she wouldn’t die if she joined him, so she made a flying leap into the water, sending up a huge splash that drenched Max and nearly reached us. He barked indignantly, but a moment later, he followed her into the water.

For two dogs that had never gone swimming before, they took to it in no time.

The humans threw balls and other toys for the dogs to fetch, and within minutes, both dogs were paddling up and down the length of the pool, climbing out of it, jumping back in (and taking no notice whatsoever of whether a human or another dog was in their way while doing so), and otherwise having the time of their lives.

Nate and Jezek kept up a steady stream of banter, of the sort that would have to be bleeped out if this were to air on network television. Good thing we hadn’t been saddled with those restrictions for this web series, although, since it was meant for viewing by all ages, I’d be careful to select footage with a limited amount of cursing.

It was great, seeing these two hanging out together so far away from the pressure cooker of the playoffs, just being themselves and having a good time. In fact, I was pretty sure they forgot we were filming them after a bit—at least I thought they had until Nate turned his head and looked right at me, waggling his eyebrows only a nanosecond before Lola leaped on him and dunked him underwater with her front paws on his shoulders. He came up spluttering, and I grinned and shook my head.

It wasn’t just the dogs’ playfulness that had me enjoying myself, either. Nate and Jezek were hamming it up and having a grand old time. I had extreme difficulty not bursting out laughing at their antics, especially when Nate clearly sought me out and flexed his muscles with a wink. But I couldn’t allow myself to do that. Dave’s boom mic would pick me up. This wasn’t supposed to be about me but about the men in the water having a good time with the dogs.

There was so much laughter that they were getting out and drying off, the dogs shaking and spraying water everywhere, well before I expected the time to be up. I couldn’t help but stare at Nate as he tried to corral Lola so he could rub her dry with a towel, the beads of water glistening on his skin and emphasizing his chest and arm muscles. In fact, I might have even licked my lips before remembering I was supposed to keep this professional. At least he hadn’t seen me. I wasn’t quite so lucky with Dave if the twinkle in his eye was any indication.

I’d seen Nate half-naked plenty before over the last couple of seasons, when I’d gone into the locker room after practices and games to get a quick interview, but there was something special about seeing him like this, completely free and not being careful about what he did or said. We had a camera trained on him, but all indications pointed toward him starting to feel more like himself in front of it, less self-conscious and aware that everything he did and said was being recorded for posterity.

I finally ripped my eyes away from him, turning to Dave. “I think that’s good enough for today. We’ve got enough to work with.”

“Want me to head back up to the offices and see who I can scrounge up for an interview?” he asked me, starting to pack things away.

I shook my head. “Take the rest of the day off. Lord knows you’ve earned it. I’ve arranged for us to head back to Jamie Babcock’s house with him after morning skate tomorrow. I’ll take both you and Ben. Katie’s supposed to be there, and maybe her sister, too. I bet we can get some decent footage then.”

“You’re the boss,” he said.

I slung my backpack that was doubling as a purse onto my shoulders so I could easily crutch out of there once he was ready to go, but Nate looked over his shoulder and grinned.

“You’re already leaving?” he said.

I shrugged. “I think we’ve got enough for today.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed, which sent a tingle racing through my belly and up to wrap around my heart. “I was just hoping I could take you out for coffee or something. So we could talk some more. But if you’ve got—”

“I don’t have any other plans,” I said a little too enthusiastically. “But I came with Dave. My car’s back at the practice facility.”

“Don’t use me as an excuse,” Dave muttered in my ear. “If you want to fuck up your career before you get too far into it, be my guest.”

I shot a glare in his direction.

“I could take you back to your car later,” Nate said.

“Good,” Dave said, loud enough for the guys to hear this time. “Because that’ll save me a ton of time. I can just go straight home.”

“Traitor,” I whispered.

He chortled. “This has been building up for way too long. Don’t even bother trying to deny it. No one who’s been watching the two of you in those interviews would buy it.”

“Not denying it.” I was just sulking because he was right. Nate and I had been building our flirtation for two years, so it felt almost inevitable to take things a bit further. Coffee was relatively safe in terms of our next steps, even if it might be dangerous in terms of my career.

Might be? Who was I kidding?

But then again, I doubted I’d have this job much longer anyway. Would I really be hurting anything by crossing this line? Probably not.

I smiled across at Nate. “Go put some clothes on. I don’t mind the view, but food establishments have strange rules about shirts and shoes.”

He winked. “Damn rules.”

Indeed.

THE LATE-AFTERNOON SUN was just starting to drop in the sky, warming me through the massive coffee-shop windows. We’d been sitting here nursing our coffees and flirting outrageously for a couple of hours, if not longer.

It’d been so long since I’d taken an afternoon off, or even more than an hour off here and there, that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. That alone was enough to leave me giddy, but the floating sensation was amplified by how much I truly enjoyed being in Nate’s company. It felt as easy and natural as breathing. At least it did until he smiled at me again. Then I started soaring, and had to drink more coffee to ground myself.

I was now working on my third nonfat, decaf cappuccino, and Nate had just started on an Americano after finishing off two caramel macchiatos. Watching him drink that caramel goodness had done a real number on me, in more ways than one. I couldn’t understand how he could drink something so full of sugar without putting on twenty pounds, because I could barely look at the syrupy goodness without feeling my hips get wider. But then again, he worked out all the time, and his body was built to burn energy. Even if I was in the gym twenty-four seven, I doubted I could look half as good as he did.

And all this thinking about sweets wasn’t doing me any favors in another area. My stomach was starting to rumble with hunger noises, even though I wasn’t in any big hurry to leave; I’d rather sit and talk.

The whole time we’d been here, it was as if the world had melted away and it was just the two of us. No enormous dogs trying to jump all over either of us or eat us alive. No deadlines to meet. No high-stakes games to play. No reminders of all the crap we’d both been facing with the general public.

I could get used to this if I allowed myself.

But that was a big if. And a dangerous one if my job wasn’t already hanging in the balance like everyone knew it was. Nate probably wouldn’t face any major consequences for starting up a personal relationship with me, but I had to play by a different set of rules. Arbitrary rules, true. And sexist ones. Archaic, even. But none of those arguments changed the fact that this was the field I’d chosen to work in, and I’d known going in that it would be an uphill climb with roadblocks to maneuver myself around at every step.

Still… I might as well enjoy the rest of the time I had with Nate. Everyone knew there was no chance I’d keep this job after the first season of Eye of the Storm was officially in the books, so why pretend otherwise?

“I don’t know how you could drink those macchiatos,” I said, blowing on my coffee to cool it off before taking a sip. “They’re so sweet.” Never mind the fact that I had a sweet tooth to rival the product tasters at Hershey’s and was jealous as all hell that he could have them.

“Just like me. Strong, dark, and sweet as your grandma’s pie.”

I shot my eyes over to find his full of laughter.

“Couldn’t go with the tall, dark, and handsome line,” he said, winking. “No one would ever buy the tall part.”

“You think I’m going to believe you’re sweet?”

“Maybe someday you’ll be ready for a taste so you can see for yourself.”

Maybe seemed to be too wishy-washy for the state of things, considering a warm, tingling sensation had started in my belly and jolted through my body like a flash of lightning. I bit down on my lower lip to keep from saying anything at all before I’d thought through every possible consequence of any potential response.

“Maybe you’re ready now,” he said, leaning back and draping his arm over the back of the chair like he could read my mind. His lazy posture made me wish I was next to him, his arm wrapped around my shoulders, instead of being seated on the other side of the table.

“Tell me what it was like for you growing up,” I said, desperately needing to change the subject.

He shrugged, but there was a bit of disappointment in the move. “I could say it was all hockey, all the time, but that wouldn’t exactly be true. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me be quite so single-minded about anything.”

“No?”

“Not unless it was my education.” He grinned, and my insides melted. “My parents were—actually, they are—both working-class. He’s a plumber, and she runs his office. They make good money, considering what they do, but they wanted better for their kids. My sister, Nicole, went to college like they wanted her to. Now she’s a teacher, and she married an engineer, so they’re solidly middle class and moving ahead in the world, the way Mom and Dad wanted. I was always a good student, but I wanted to pursue a hockey career even if it was a long shot for me to make it in the NHL. They tried to get me to play college hockey. I insisted I had a better chance of making an impression if I went into juniors.”

“They seem to be fairly equal in scouts’ eyes these days,” I said.

“They are.” Nate winked. “But I did my damnedest to convince my parents otherwise.”

“Don’t you usually start in juniors in high school?”

“Yeah. It meant leaving home with two more years of high school to go, and forgetting about college. Let’s just say that my parents weren’t too keen on the idea.”

“But you did it anyway?” I asked.

“I did. But the only way they’d agree to it was if I made them a promise.”

I raised a brow. “What promise?”

“I told them that if I didn’t get into the NHL by the time I was twenty-four, I’d come home and start college in earnest. And if I did make it by then, I’d take a couple of courses every semester and do summer school, too. It might take me a long time to get my degree, but I’d get one. They weren’t thrilled with the idea of me waiting so late to get started, but they agreed in the end.”

There wasn’t any point in denying I was impressed. Coming from a family like mine—even if my mother didn’t want me to do anything with my degree once I got it, both of my parents had been adamant that college was an absolute necessity—I had an appreciation for the kind of dedication it took to put such a priority on higher education. “So did you keep your promise? Get a degree?”

“I’m keeping it,” he said, taking another sip. He winked. “I’m on the ten-year plan at Portland State. I started once I made it to the AHL level, even though that was sooner than I’d said I would. I’d thought about getting started while I was in juniors, but I needed some more stability than I had back then. Logistically, it wasn’t exactly a piece of cake figuring out how to make it all work.”

I nodded, completely enraptured. Smart men were a heck of a turn-on for me. “So you’re taking classes now?”

“I’m technically a junior, but it’ll probably take me two to three more years to finish since I’m still playing full time. Business management major.”

“Business?” That one took me aback. I shook my head. “Not what I imagined.”

“What, did you think I was going to be a nutrition science major? Or maybe kinesiology? Something that makes more sense for an athlete?”

“Not really. I’m not sure what I expected, but not business management.” My stomach rumbled again, but I didn’t get the impression that Nate heard it. At least I hoped he hadn’t. I took another swallow of my coffee, wishing there was more substance to it so we could keep talking like this for hours to come. My inner geek was getting off on this conversation as much as my superficial side was enjoying staring at him. “So, are you going to use it to help your parents out after you retire as a player? Find ways to help the plumbing business grow?”

He scrunched up his nose. “Plumbing’s not my thing. I figured I could find a way to use it to continue in the hockey world. Get into upper management or something with a team. Maybe.”

“You could also go into broadcasting,” I suggested. He gave me a look that said I had lost my mind, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. “You’re good on camera. Some guys, you can hardly get a decent sound bite out of them, but you’ve always got something interesting to say. You don’t clam up. Plus, you’re easy on the eyes,” I added with a wink.

“It’s a possibility, I guess.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if I’d really like it.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m not keen on the idea of getting the story when it’s something I don’t think should be a story.” He didn’t sound angry, but there wasn’t any point trying to convince myself he wasn’t thinking about how I’d jumped right in with the rest of the media after the night of the banana peel incident. How I hadn’t let it go for most of a week. How I’d put the job ahead of what was right.

“You don’t always have to get the story,” I said. “Sometimes, you can tell them what the true story ought to be.”

“Can you really?” he asked, sarcasm dripping thick, like molasses.

“That’s what I’m doing now. You might know that, if you’d bother to watch.”

“But aren’t all your guys telling you they know better than you do how to do your job? Or was that all a figment of my imagination?”

“I’m still doing it my way,” I pointed out.

More than ever before, I was determined to produce this show the way I thought it should be, not the way everyone else seemed to think I should. Because, whether the powers that be liked it or not, Eye of the Storm was my baby. At least until they took it away from me. But I had no intention of producing a show I wasn’t proud of in the hopes that I could somehow save a job that was already essentially a lost cause.

Nate passed appraising eyes over me and nodded. “You are. I wouldn’t take that away from you.”

“I wouldn’t let you, anyway,” I said. Then my stomach made itself known in the most undignified way possible, and I groaned.

“Hungry?” he said, grinning.

“You could say that.”

He finished off his Americano and leaned forward across the table, making like he was reaching for my hand before he stopped himself. “I’ll make you a deal.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of deal?”

“I’ll watch your show. Really watch it, even though I hate watching anything that’s about me.”

“If?” I added when he didn’t finish.

“If you’ll let me take you out to dinner tonight.”

“Doesn’t seem like much of a hardship on my part.”

“Good. Then you’ll come?”

Even with the warning bells clanging in the back of my mind, reminding me that dinner was a hell of a lot closer to a date than coffee was and that if I had any intention at all of keeping my job I needed to stay the heck away from dating any of the players on the team I was responsible for covering, I nodded. “Yeah. You can buy me dinner. I’m starving.”

I only hoped I wasn’t committing career suicide.

Probably an unfounded hope, but still.

THE NEXT DAY, as Dave and Ben set up their cameras, microphones, and lights in Jamie Babcock’s living room, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from yawning. Often. Repeatedly. Loudly, too. It didn’t even matter that we were surrounded by organized chaos. Jamie invited his brother along, who brought his fiancée, who brought her brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew. Then there were Jamie and Katie’s two cats, one of which was currently circling my legs and doing its best to trip me at every turn while it studiously avoided the two children. And Katie’s sister was still due to arrive at any moment.

None of that was doing a thing to wake me up. I either needed a stiff cup of coffee or a dunk in a basin of cold water.

“Late night?” Dave asked with a knowing wink after I yawned for at least the eighth time since we’d walked through the front door and started getting ready for whatever was to come.

“Not for the reasons you seem to be implying.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Dave said, but he smirked over at Ben, who laughed out loud while he adjusted the height of a light rig.

In truth, Nate and I had been out until the wee hours of the morning…but we hadn’t done anything more than talk, laugh, and tease each other. Dinner had been an extended version of our afternoon over coffee. Lots of making eyes at each other. Even more getting to know one another. Not even a hint at anything that went beyond flirtation.

I wasn’t sure who felt more anxious about taking things further, him or me. It seemed odd to think about Nate Golston being nervous, considering he came across as ridiculously full of confidence and more than merely sure of himself in most of our interactions. But every time I’d gotten the sense that a kiss, however innocent, was imminent, he’d backed off.

And me, being the bookish and awkward nerd I’d always been…well, I’d never been the one to make the first move with someone I was interested in, no matter how much I might want to. I could hang out with guys all day long, trading barbs with the best of them. But when it came to anything in the realm of one-on-one relationships with a man, anything in the love-and-dating world, I turned into a giant chicken.

So nothing had happened.

Yet in some ways, everything had happened.

Because I wanted him to kiss me, even knowing exactly what that would mean for my career once word got out. And it would get out. There wasn’t any way of hiding it. His life was too public, and my life revolved around my job these days.

I wanted a heck of a lot more than just kisses, too. The more time I spent with Nate, the more I came to realize he wasn’t just a sexy-as-all-get-out athlete with an amazing smile. He was confident, intelligent, driven, loyal, and he had a sense of humor that wasn’t too far from my own.

The problem was it might not just be nerves on his part. In fact, nerves might not even be part of the equation on his side of things. I could just be reading that into it because that was what I felt.

What if he still saw me as the enemy? As someone who was only trying to get the story, as he’d put it earlier. Yeah, he’d invited me out for coffee and followed it up with dinner, but maybe he was just trying to deflect my professional attention away from him by showering me with personal flattery.

No matter how many times I tried to work it all out in my head, I couldn’t settle on a single answer. For all I knew, he might not have come to that conclusion himself.

The doorbell rang, snapping me out of my ruminations.

I whipped my head over to see if the guys were ready to start filming, but they’d beaten me to the punch. Ben already had a camera over his shoulder, and Dave had his set up on a tripod. With a nod from me, they both pressed their buttons to start filming.

Katie Babcock raced down the hall with Cam Johnson’s little boy, Connor, trying to climb her and Cam attempting to drag Connor down. Katie, grinning from ear to ear, flung open the front door to let her sister in, oblivious to the chaos surrounding her.

“You’re late,” she said without any preamble.

Dani Weber came in, nearly a mirror image of her older sister. Dani’s brown hair was long and slightly curling, with a hint of red highlights. Katie’s was growing out, cut in an adorable bob. They were the same height and had identical faces. The only difference other than their hair, as far as I could tell, was that Dani had a few more curves.

“Only late because I stopped to hug Mom and Dad before coming over.” Dani came through the door and tossed a duffel bag and her purse on the floor at the front of the hall. She pried Connor’s sticky fingers free from Katie’s hair to help Cam extricate the boy. The sisters came into the living room and plopped down on the couch next to each other, acting like there was nothing more natural or normal than the cacophony in this house.

I took a seat on the floor in a corner of the room where I could spy on everyone and observe. I had a mic of my own, which allowed me to quietly give instructions to Ben and Dave, letting them know who I wanted them to focus on and when.

Jamie, Levi, and Sara Johnson went into the kitchen to prep some steaks to go on the grill. They started talking about Sara’s father, Scotty Thomas, and whether or not he was dating a woman who worked in the Storm’s travel department.

Cam got down on the floor in front of Katie and Dani. He dragged Connor down there with him, who then decided to climb him like a jungle gym, cackling like a loon. His daughter, Cassidy, was already on the floor crawling around. She giggled at everything her brother did, especially if it was something that hurt Cam. The two cats got in on the act, too. Filming a bit of that wouldn’t be bad at all. It made Johnson seem like an ordinary dad, not some millionaire athlete.

The two sisters started talking like there weren’t any cameras around, catching up on the things sisters who hadn’t seen each other in months would do. How’s school? What have you heard from Luke? Why is Dad so grumpy today?

I sent Ben in to catch the kitchen talk, just in case it turned into something as juicy as the steaks might be, and I directed Dave to film the action on the floor while I eavesdropped on Katie and Dani’s conversation.

“I’m taking an independent study this summer,” Dani said. “They don’t usually let students do this one until they’re seniors, but I nagged my prof until he agreed to let me.”

The talk of college and professors automatically sent my thoughts back to Nate, which didn’t help me at all. I shoved the thought aside.

“So you aren’t coming home for summer break?” Katie replied, sounding wounded. “I had all sorts of plans, and Mom wanted to get us all together to go to the Bahamas…”

“Do they have wine in the Bahamas? I only think of fruity rum drinks.”

Katie scowled at her sister. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m still coming home.” Dani rolled her eyes. “I’ll need somewhere I can set up a studio and do my work, and I’ll have to shoot up to Seattle a couple of times to meet with Dr. Schlesinger and show him what I’ve done, but otherwise I can do it all from here.”

“What kind of independent study is this?”

Dani tucked both feet underneath her, sitting cross-legged on the couch. “A makeover challenge. I’m supposed to find a woman—a real woman, not some supermodel type—who has a hard time finding clothes that flatter her because of whatever problem area. And then I have to design a wardrobe that not only flatters her but that fits her aesthetic.”

“Are you going to have time to go to the Bahamas?” Katie asked.

Dani winked. “For that, I’ll make time. Especially if she lets me have some of those fruity rum drinks.”

“I’ll sneak you a few if you don’t let Dad know.”

“Seriously, though, why was he so grumbly with me when I was there?” Dani asked with a pout. “He hasn’t seen me in almost a month. I come home for a long Easter weekend, and all he wants to do is glare and grumble about staying away from asswipes.”

“He saw you kiss Harry.”

Harry. I did a quick mental rundown of the team, trying to remember which of the players the others all called Harry. Big, redheaded defenseman named Cody Williams who looked kind of like the British royal. Scruffy facial hair that had nothing to do with being a playoff beard. He tended to wear bowties, and he actually pulled the look off. He was like a sexy physics professor off the ice but a mean SOB on the ice.

Dani didn’t exactly blush, but it came close to it. “None of Dad’s business who I kiss.”

“Mm hmm. You remember how many years it took him to be okay with me being with Jamie? And you’re his baby.”

“But still a grown-ass woman who can make her own decisions when it comes to who I kiss.”

“It’s not like Harry is even close to your age, either.”

“He’s close enough.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “Not going to make a difference to Dad. Not when it comes to you being with one of his players. Especially not if the player in question is that much older than you.”

Dani rolled her eyes, and I made a mental note to further investigate whatever was going on between her and Cody Williams. Before I could get too far with that, though, Cassidy Johnson toddled over and climbed into my lap. She reached up and shoved something sticky into my mouth.

I scanned the room quickly to see if there was anyone to come to my rescue without disturbing everything that was happening, but no luck. I was on my own.

At least it was kind of sweet, whatever it was. Applesauce? With a hint of yogurt.

Shouldn’t kill me, in any case.

I was so distracted by the little girl in my lap, though, that I lost track of the conversation between the sisters. By the time I looked up again, Dave had switched to filming the pair of them instead of Johnson and his son. I tuned out all the noise and focused in on their words. They were talking much more quietly than before, so it wasn’t easy to make them out. Especially not with the toddler’s babble right by my ear.

“Dr. Oliver keeps stressing that we shouldn’t get our hopes up,” Katie said. “And I’m not, honestly. I mean, if we can get pregnant, awesome. But if we can’t, it’s not the end of the world. But I don’t think Jamie sees it that way. He seems to think it’s going to happen.”

“Probably because there’s something in the water with his teammates,” Dani murmured. “Every time I come home, someone else is knocked up. They’re breeding like bunnies. You’d think they’re all old enough to know what’s causing it…”

Both sisters laughed, but Katie quickly sobered. “But he’s known all along that it wasn’t likely for us. After all the chemo, there’s just not much chance.”

“Apparently that isn’t enough to stop him from dreaming.”

“Apparently not,” Katie said. Her eyes flickered over and landed on me. She blinked a couple of times, then seemed to realize that her conversation wasn’t private. She stared at me for a moment.

“So now what?” her sister asked. “Fertility specialist? Will you talk about adoption?”

“The last thing I want is to go to more doctors.”

Dani reached over and squeezed her sister’s hand.

I glanced up to be sure Dave was capturing every moment. Then, one more time, Nate’s words from earlier fluttered through my mind. I’m not keen on the idea of getting the story when it’s something I don’t think should be a story. Was I about to turn what should be a private moment, something that should stay within the family, into my latest story? This wasn’t news. This wasn’t something that the public had a right to know, unless Jamie and Katie Babcock decided to tell the world about their struggles.

Oh, sure. In my head, I knew all the arguments the guys would give me about why I had to use the footage. I needed to save my job. They’d signed off on all the releases, and they’d invited us into their home with the knowledge that we’d be filming and potentially using anything that we witnessed. Legally, we had every right to use the footage in any way we saw fit.

But was that enough?

Maybe Nate had more of a point than I’d like to concede.

With every day that passed of working in this job, I questioned myself and my motives more than the day before. I’d known when I took this job that I was either setting myself up to fail spectacularly or succeed beyond my wildest dreams.

I’d never imagined I was walking into a crisis of conscience, but here it was, staring me in the face. Laughing at me.

Now what?

WE’D ONLY BEEN home for a few days—just long enough to take Max and Lola to the dog pool, take Anne out for coffee and dinner, for me to catch up on the first two episodes of Anne’s behind-the-scenes production about the team, and to beat the Sharks in Game Five to go up three games to two in the series—and already we were on our way back to San Jose.

With any luck, we could take complete control of Game Six from the drop of the puck and not have to worry about playing the seventh. We could all use a couple of extra days to rest before the next series started. Almost every guy on the team was playing through some injury or another, large or small. My knee hadn’t gotten any worse, but it hadn’t gotten any better, either. I still had no intention of talking to the trainers about it. Hell, Babs had broken two toes in Game Three, but he refused to come out of the lineup. They shot him up with some stuff to kill the pain before each game, and he forced his foot into his skates without a word of complaint. If he was playing through that, I would play through anything that didn’t kill me.

No one on this team cared whether we ended up facing Chicago, who had snagged one of the Wild Card spots in the Western Conference, or LA, who had finished first in the Pacific Division. No one but me, at any rate, but my reasons were entirely selfish—especially now that I’d heard there was a demonstration planned in Chicago for next week. A bunch of people were going to march through downtown, protesting the fact that the cop who’d shot Marcus Jameson had only been put on probation and wasn’t even being formally charged. I just wanted to stay the hell away from all the racial tensions, and there wouldn’t be much chance of that if we had to play against the Blackhawks in the next round.

Game Six in that series was ongoing as we boarded our plane, with Chicago putting on quite a show in front of their home crowd in an effort to tie the series and force a seventh and deciding game. They’d scored three goals in the first ten minutes of the game. The boys and I had all been watching on a big screen in the locker room before they’d ushered us out to a charter bus bound for PDX.

As expected, Anne and several of her guys were coming with us to continue filming her show. She was up ahead of me, climbing the stairs on her crutches. She looked like an old pro at it now. Must have been using them like she was supposed to lately. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.

In fact, I seemed to do that almost any time I saw her or thought about her lately. Couldn’t help it. She brought that side of me to the forefront and kept any thought I might have had of pushing her away well outside of my mind.

Koz bumped into my shoulder—intentionally. “Playing poker on the way. Sit by me and I’ll try not to take all your fucking money.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a deal.” It also didn’t sound like how I wanted to spend the flight.

RJ gave me a knowing look, rolled his eyes, then turned to Koz. “I’m in. Lover boy here is going to be too busy making fucking googly eyes at Anne to play.”

“Which means he won’t be paying fucking attention and we can get all his money,” Koz argued, starting the climb to our chartered plane.

RJ laughed and followed him, putting some distance between me and my obnoxious line mate. Once I got inside the cabin, I spotted Anne in a window seat not far behind the coaches, her laptop out and headphones covering her ears. The seat next to her was empty.

Not for long, though. As soon as the guys ahead of me got out of my way, I snagged it.

She whipped her head around and removed the headphones from one ear, looking slightly annoyed. “I’ve got about seven hours’ worth of work to get done and probably only forty-five minutes to do it in, since they’re going to make me put this away for takeoff and landing.”

“Anything I can help with?”

She blinked at me like I was an idiot. “No. How could you help?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.” I glanced at her screen. She’d paused video footage of Katie Babcock and Dani Weber hanging out at what appeared to be Babs’s house. “More focus on the guys’ lives away from hockey for this next episode, then?”

“You watched?” she asked with a skeptical raising of one of those perfect brows.

“Promised you I would. We made a deal. You let me buy you dinner, I watched your show.”

“And?” She removed the headphones completely, letting them rest on her shoulders, draped around her neck. “What did you think?”

I didn’t miss her anxious tone, and I couldn’t stop the smile from coming to my lips. “Impressive. The first episode wasn’t as hard to watch as I feared it would be. The second gave a more complete picture of the team as a whole, what the guys are about, and didn’t focus on me so much. Other than hanging out with RJ and his dogs. Which, I’m guessing, there will be more of in the third episode.”

A softness had started to come over her, gradually replacing the stressed-out, frazzled look of annoyance she’d given me when I’d first sat next to her. “We’ve already pieced that section together. My editor’s pulling an all-nighter here in Portland to work on tonight’s game while I finish off a couple of segments with the other guys away from the game. Then tomorrow, we’ve got to put the whole thing together, write and record any narrative bits, and upload the completed webisode.”

That sounded like a hell of a lot of work, and I wouldn’t have the first clue how to do any of it. Good thing I had no intention of ever trying to do her job or anything like it. “And you think you can get your part done on this flight?”

“If you’ll stop flirting with me and let me do it.”

I chuckled, but I reached over and settled her headphones over her ears again. “Get to work, slacker.”

She winked at me.

I reached into my carry-on bag and took out my textbook for Financial Accounting and Analysis and flipped to the right chapter. I had finals coming up in the middle of the next round, and some of the accounting concepts I knew would be involved still made my eyes cross and my head throb every time I had to look at them.

Ten minutes later, the whole team had boarded and the flight attendants started their safety spiel. Instead of paying attention to them or working on editing her film, Anne’s eyes kept straying over to me and my textbook.

There wasn’t any point in denying it. I was paying a hell of a lot more attention to the fact that she was checking me—well, technically, checking my book—out than I was to reviewing the Going Concern Principle. Like it or not, Anne was more into me now than she had been before.

I, for one, definitely liked it.

ONLY A MINUTE and twenty-three seconds remained in regulation. We were up by a goal, but the Sharks had already pulled their goalie in a last-ditch, season-on-the-line move. They had my line hemmed into our zone, along with 501 and Thor on D, and the five of us were completely gassed.

I could hardly move, let alone take a good breath.

Former Sharks captain Joe Thornton had the puck on his stick. He passed it back to Dillon, one of his teammates, on the blue line. Dillon hesitated just long enough for me to close the gap between us. He still hadn’t decided—shoot or pass—so I had half a second to make a move. I lunged for the puck.

Missed it and fell flat on my face.

By the time I got to my skates again, Dillon had sent the puck toward the net. Our goaltender, Nicky Ericsson, had stopped it, but he didn’t control the rebound. Now half the guys on the ice were converging on him, and it was a mad scramble.

I raced as fast as I could to get over there. Nicky was down in a full split and trying to reposition himself, 501 was literally inside the net, and Thor was bashing everything in teal that came within his considerable reach. I’d barely joined the fray when the puck squirted free from the pile, heading out toward the right-side face-off dot.

It had taken every bit of juice I had to get back into the play, but there wasn’t a single teal jersey between me and that little black piece of vulcanized rubber. I dug in and found another gear, zipping over to pick up the puck and race toward the other end of the ice with it.

Grabbed it with the tape on my stick and shuffled out toward center ice, with Dillon right behind me. Not a surprise. The guy had half a foot on me and a powerful stride. I was speedy in general, but this shift had gone on way too long.

Still, I gave it all I had. Got close to the blue line. Felt him gaining on me, but there was a gorgeous, wide-open net at the other end calling my name. Inched past the blue line, but now his stick was whacking at my skates. Needed to get past the red line at center before shooting, in case my aim was off. We couldn’t afford an icing call right now. Not when my guys were this tired.

But then Dillon was almost completely alongside me, and his stick was longer than mine. And he poked at the puck, nearly knocking it away from me.

Red line or not, I had to shoot.

So I did, putting so much behind my wrister that I fell over in the process.

Dillon dived for it, but he missed.

The puck rolled on its end, bouncing around and acting like it might just squeak inside the goal post. But at the last second, it angled to the left and stayed out.

Another Sharks player was racing in an attempt to stop it. Even though he wouldn’t get there in time, that was enough for the refs to call icing. Now the Sharks could get a line change and put out fresh players, but the five of us had to stay on the ice.

I got to my feet and skated back to the circle to Nicky’s left as slowly as I could without the refs calling a penalty for delaying the game or some other bullshit. Koz and Jo-Jo were both bent over at the waist, their hands resting on their knees as they tried to suck in as much oxygen as possible. Thor tapped me on the back of the calves with his stick and nodded, which was as close to him saying, “Nice effort,” as he’d ever come. The guy hardly ever said a word since his arrival at the trade deadline.

No matter how bone-tired the five of us were, though, I knew that Nicky was the one who would truly be tested here. I glanced back at him long enough to see that his eyes were sharp and focused. Hell, he even winked at me. The guy was fine. Confident to the point of bordering on cocky, which was about as close to perfect as you could get as a goaltender. I sure as hell knew I wanted a goalie back there who believed in himself even if no one else did, and that was exactly what Nicky was giving me. His body language said he had this in the bag, as long as none of us did anything to fuck it up for him.

That alone was enough to get the oxygen flowing more freely through my body. I took my position at the face-off circle with one goal in mind.

I was going to put this game—and series—away, whether my lungs wanted to cooperate or not.

THE WHOLE TEAM leaped over the boards as one as soon as the final horn sounded to end the game, racing out to tackle Nate. He ended up at the bottom of a massive, sweaty dog pile of his teammates. Once they dug him out, he came up with an enormous grin.

As he should. He and his line had been out on the ice for the final two-plus minutes of the game, unable to get off for a change while the Sharks had thrown everything they had at them. Through it all, Nate had managed to score not one but two empty-net goals. To call him a hero in his teammates’ eyes right now would be putting it mildly. The other guys on the ice with him hadn’t been slouches, either, but Nate was the one to put the game completely out of the Sharks’ reach.

I made sure the guys on my camera crew were all well positioned to get the shots of the handshake line I wanted. It was a tradition in hockey, and one I had no intention of neglecting in the show, especially since this marked the end of the first-round series against the Sharks. In a couple more days, the Portland Storm players would find out who they would be facing in the second round, but for now, they could relax in the knowledge that they were moving on.

Apparently, I didn’t have enough control over myself to watch the whole team as they shook hands with the Sharks players. My eyes stayed rooted to Nate, so I didn’t miss the fact that, when he reached for Brent Burns’s hand, the big Wookie-esque Sharks defenseman picked him up in a bear hug, lifting him a foot or two off the ground. I busted out laughing and couldn’t get myself under control again until Ben said in my ear, “Got that for you, Anne.”

“Great work, guys,” I finally said once I sobered. “Everyone knows where to go once the team clears off the ice, right? Dave, make your way to Golston’s stall. I’m sure that’s where the reporters will want to start.”

They all gave me murmurs of assent. Now that we’d been at this for a few weeks, I didn’t have to direct them too much. My team almost always knew what I wanted, and they gave it to me, frequently before I asked.

Jim Sutter, the team’s general manager, poked his head into my control room once most of the players were heading down the tunnel. “Coming down to the locker room?” he asked.

I reached for my backpack and shoved a couple of items inside it. “On my way.”

Before I could sling it onto my shoulders, Jim took it from me. “You bring yourself,” he said. “I’ll get everything else.”

I didn’t want to waste the time it would take to argue with him that I could do it all on my own. Instead, I grabbed my crutches and followed him, allowing him to hold doors open for me on the way. “Your team did well for you tonight,” I said as we arrived at the elevator bay.

“The boys always do.”

I couldn’t help but smile as the elevator doors opened and he ushered me inside. “You sound like a proud papa.”

He winked without confirming or denying my assessment. “Rachel tells me you want to set up some time with me. Maybe involving her and Brenden, too.”

“I would.” I leaned back against the wall, thankful to allow my aching armpits a reprieve, even if only for a few moments. Getting around on crutches wasn’t for the faint of heart. “I’m trying to highlight some of the relationships on the team. I understand you used to play with Campbell’s father.”

“That I did. I owe Mark Campbell more than I could ever repay. I have to say, I’m impressed that you haven’t focused on the hoopla surrounding Golston any more than you have.”

“In my opinion, there’s a lot more going on with the team than just that. I’m trying to give a bigger picture.”

“And I’d say you’re succeeding.” The doors opened again, and he pressed the button to keep them open while I made my way off into the bowels of the arena. In no time, he was walking alongside me. “I think we could work something out getting us all together. In fact, Rachel said that Eric and Dana Zellinger are planning on a trip to Portland during the next series so all the cousins can spend some time together. I bet we could even get the two of them to agree to be involved.”

“Yeah?”

Jim nodded at the security guards standing outside the locker room, and one of them opened the doors to allow the two of us to pass, even though the rest of the press wasn’t being given access just yet. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll have Rachel set something up with you in the next few days.”

I could hardly believe my luck with how it was all starting to come together. “Thanks, Jim. That sounds amazing.”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” he said. Then he veered off to join the coaches in Bergstrom’s office—I glanced inside long enough to see Ben with his handheld camera trained on Adam Hancock, the assistant coach who was currently speaking—and I made my way in to see the team’s reaction and make sure Dave and the rest of my guys had repositioned themselves already.

Sure enough, Dave had his tripod set up not far from Nate’s stall, and the other members of the crew were scattered throughout the locker room with their equipment ready to go.

Most of the guys were quietly taking off their uniforms and equipment, but Nicky Ericsson was standing in the middle of the room with their ugly purple umbrella hat in his hands.

“There are a few guys who deserve this fucking thing tonight,” he said, flipping it around so it spun in the air almost like a top. “I could give it to Ghost, for basically putting the game away when they were trying like crazy to tie it up.”

Several of the guys clapped or made murmurs of assent. I glanced over and caught a slight hint of embarrassment in the way Nate ducked his head as he unlaced his skates.

“I could give it to Harry, because I have to tell you—I haven’t seen a defensive game like that in so long I don’t remember it. How many fucking shots did you block, anyway?”

Harry looked down at his left leg, which appeared to be turning purple from top to bottom. He shrugged. “A few.”

“Maybe next time, let me handle a few more of those,” Nicky teased. “At least I’ve got the right gear on for it.”

The team laughed, and a few of them said some things that I might end up bleeping out if we used this footage because of the young fans watching at home.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ben and most of the coaching staff making their way out of the coach’s office and into the locker room.

“But there’s someone else that I think deserves to wear this umbrella more tonight,” Nicky said. “Harry wasn’t the only one who saved my bacon tonight. I got myself out of position during that scramble at the end, and 501 didn’t even think twice when he took my place. He didn’t have the mask or the pads. Hell, he didn’t even have a goalie stick. But the son of a bitch planted his ass on that goal line, and there wasn’t anything getting past him. By my count, he had four saves before I was able to get back into position. Whoever tracks the stats is probably giving those saves to me, but I didn’t touch that fucking puck. That was all 501.”

“Damn it, 501,” Jamie Babcock said, winking at his brother.

“Don’t forget to fucking hashtag it,” Levi said, taking the umbrella hat and putting it on his head while the rest of the team applauded and ribbed him.

With that out of the way, Riley Jezek turned up the volume on his iPod, letting the strains of “Uptown Funk” fill the room while the guys finished changing out of their gear. A few minutes later, the coaches let the media in. The room was swarmed with the biggest crowd I’d seen around this team outside of the Stanley Cup Finals last season.

Sure enough, the majority of them headed straight for Nate. A few stragglers scattered around to talk to Jamie Babcock and Nicky Ericsson, and one went for Levi Babcock before he was able to hide the purple umbrella hat among his things.

My guys slipped into position, virtually unnoticed by anyone but me.

Since everything seemed to be going according to plan, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for me to find somewhere quiet to get off these stupid crutches and put my ankle up. I headed into the hall, well away from all the press, and found a bench not far from the recently vacated coach’s office.

At least, I’d assumed it was recently vacated and I was away from all of the press. One reporter was in Coach Bergstrom’s office, with a handheld voice recorder shoved into David Weber’s face.

“So you don’t have any idea at all about what sort of announcement your son is planning to make?”

“None,” Weber said. “Maybe some NHL team offered Luke the opportunity to sign on as a free agent, so he’s electing to forgo his senior year. If that’s it, I can tell you it wasn’t the Storm. I don’t know, though. You’ll have to ask him.”

“But if he was signing with an NHL team, surely he would have said something to you about it. To his family.”

“Well, that could be why he’s waiting until next week to announce whatever it is,” Weber said, exasperation coming through in every word. “Maybe he wants to speak to me and his mother first, before it becomes official.”

“So you don’t think it’s anything…” The reporter trailed off.

“Anything what?” Weber demanded. “Why don’t you save us both some time and get to whatever it is you’re hinting at?”

“There are rumors floating around campus at the University of Minnesota.”

Weber raised a brow and crossed his arms, taking on a posture that should have left the reporter quaking. Lord knows I would have been if I were on the other end of that glare. “You’re seriously standing here and grilling me over some rumors about my son right now? This team just won a playoff series. We’re getting ready to face our next opponent, whoever that may be. I don’t have time to play around over some silly rum—”

“They’re saying that your son, Luke Weber, has been seen at some gay clubs in Minneapolis,” the reporter cut in.

“They’re saying,” Weber repeated darkly. “Who’s they? Or is it just you?”

I wished I’d had Ben remain in the coach’s office instead of heading back into the locker room among the players once he’d finished filming the coaches’ discussion. Or that I had a camera of my own. Something. Anything. But I didn’t, and there was no time for me to rectify the situation, because now that he’d gotten started, this guy rushed to get the rest of it out before he lost his nerve.

“That’s been the big talk on campus since early last semester,” the reporter said, not bothering to answer Weber’s pointed question. “Everyone’s speculating that he’s going to come out next week, that he wants to put an end to all the rumors and admit that there’s truth to them.”

Within the span of a few seconds, the initial shock that registered on David Weber’s face evaporated, to be replaced with an expression of utter disdain. “And?”

“And what do you have to say about that?”

Stone-cold glare. It went on for so long I was shocked the reporter didn’t give up and excuse himself or move on to something else. But the guy stood there, handheld recorder pressed up next to Weber’s face, and waited him out.

Despite myself, I was impressed. That took some serious guts.

Finally, Weber said, “I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know why my son is holding a press conference next week, and even if I’m lying to your face, even if I do know, and even if you’re right, there’s not a chance in hell that I would tell you so. Because if that’s what my son is holding a press conference to tell the world next week, then it’s his news to tell. Not mine.”

Then without another word, Weber pushed past the reporter and left the coach’s office, giving me a curt nod as he left. To let me know he knew I’d heard every word of it? Or to give me the go-ahead to use what I’d heard?

But it didn’t matter. I hadn’t gotten it on film. I couldn’t use it. I could only do my best to prepare my team to capture whatever might be on the horizon next week, if these rumors turned out to be true.

There was a part of me that was glad I hadn’t had a camera on him then.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this job after all. Maybe my guys were right.

I was still mulling it all over a few minutes later when Nate sat next to me. When I glanced over at him, he grinned, making me wish I could talk to him about my predicament. But since he was one of the reasons behind the dilemma, it didn’t exactly seem fair to dump it on him. I needed to figure out someone else I could talk to about it, but I didn’t have the first clue who that would be. Maybe I could call Dad tomorrow. He should have the day off since it was Easter Sunday.

“How’s the ankle?” Nate asked.

I shrugged. “Better than my armpits.”

He burst out laughing. “They really need to figure out something better for when you hurt a leg. Crutches are a bitch.”

“Nice couple of minutes at the end, there,” I said.

He shrugged. “All in a day’s work.”

“Yeah, sure. All in a day’s work if you’re a super-elite athlete giving everything he has…”

“So, are you working on the flight home tonight?”

“Maybe. Are you studying?”

“Maybe. Mind if I steal the seat next to you?”

I shook my head.

“Would you be offended if I tried to casually put my arm around your shoulders on the plane? I’m pretty damn smooth. You might not even notice me doing it until it’s too late.”

This was one of those moments I was glad my skin wasn’t as fair as some of my cousins. My blushes didn’t show up very well, so he might not realize I was thoroughly embarrassed and excited. I tried to keep cool. “I wouldn’t be offended by that as long as you wouldn’t get upset if I let my head fall on your shoulder.”

He nodded, his lips pursed in thought. “I think we could work something like that out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

No matter how calm and collected I might appear on the outside, inside it was like the butterflies in my belly had started a conga line. I had no idea where this was heading, but I had every intention of seeing it through to whatever end.

“YOUR COUSIN TOLD me you’re being unreasonable,” Dad said over our Easter brunch. We were doing brunch instead of breakfast because the team plane hadn’t landed at PDX until about three in the morning, and there was no chance I was getting up before ten at the earliest. He reached for his mimosa and winked, not that I needed confirmation that he was teasing more than admonishing me.

“Padma?” I asked. Not that it really mattered which cousin, but I assumed it was her since she’d been on my back recently.

He nodded.

“Why are you talking to Padma about me?”

“She called me. I have no idea why she thought it would help, but she seems to be under the impression that I could—or would—attempt to convince you to do the right thing, whatever that may be.”

While a mimosa sounded great, I’d settled for coffee. Not decaf this time, either. I’d asked our waitress to brew a fresh pot extra strong…and to leave the pot. “I’m sure she did.”

“Do I want to know what you did this time? She never filled me in on that part of it, and I never asked.”

“Only the same as always. I refused to apologize to my mother when she’s the one who should apologize again.”

“Padma seems to think you’re cutting off the entire family.”

“Padma needs to see that it’s the family cutting me off and not the other way around. But I doubt that’s ever going to happen. Not while my mother continues to spread her woe-is-me garbage among her relatives.”

Dad studied me for so long it left me squirming, but then he reached for the salt shaker and doused his eggs without saying a word.

“You should really try to eat more like you tell your patients they need to eat, you know,” I muttered. He raised a brow and pointed to his plate that was filled with proteins and not many carbs. I pointed at the salt shaker. “You want them to cut back on salt and eliminate caffeine and alcohol. Oh, and let’s not even bother to think about how much fat is on your plate right now. Probably as much as you allow them in a day.”

“It’s not about what I allow or don’t allow. It’s about them learning to eat in a new way that their bodies can handle after the changes to their digestive tract. They can’t handle much fat because of the surgery. Besides, fat isn’t what makes people fat. Carbs are. But after surgery, too much fat will make them sick. Their stomachs can’t process it. I haven’t had bariatric surgery, so I eat a generally healthy diet for someone whose digestive tract is normal.”

“Plus ten times as much salt as you should have.”

“My cardiologist says my heart is perfectly fine and I don’t need to worry about my salt intake.”

“Mm hmm. For now,” I said, but I dropped it. For the most part, Dad took really good care of himself, so I shouldn’t nag him about those few things he did that were unhealthy. We all had faults, and he was no different. “Just be glad your patients don’t watch you eat. They’d be all over you about it, I bet you anything.”

“I know one of them would, for sure.”

“Yeah?” I raised a brow, scooping up some oatmeal. “Who’s that?”

“Beatriz Castillo. Bea’s a little over a year out from bypass. Lost about 140 pounds so far. She’s a firecracker. Every time she comes in for a checkup, she spends half the time telling me all sorts of things I could do to get my staff to be more efficient and offering to bring in some of her students so they could teach us.”

I raised a brow, refilling my mug of coffee. “Her students?”

“She’s a special education teacher for one of the local high schools. She’s always trying to find ways to get her kids out into the community, but I’m not sure volunteering in a bariatric surgeon’s office is ideal.”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Might help teach them empathy for other people, or maybe show them they aren’t the only ones who’re different. Those things can be problematic for kids with autism and whatnot.”

“Which Bea is all too happy to point out at every opportunity she gets.” Dad winked. “Along with anything and everything else that comes to her mind, usually as soon as the thought strikes her.”

“She sounds like a woman who knows what she wants.”

“She does. And right now, what she wants is something I have no idea how to give her. Clothes that flatter her new body.”

I raised a brow, my mind racing back to that conversation I’d overheard between Katie and Dani the other day. “I suppose she’s got lots of problem areas after losing so much weight?” I said.

“They always do. Some of my patients have surgery after their weight loss to remove the excess skin, but a lot of them can’t afford it. Insurance doesn’t cover it. Even if they can, they have to live with the excess until their weight stabilizes.” Dad studied me. “Your mind is going a thousand miles an hour. What’s going on in there?”

“Just an idea.”

He frowned.

“All right. Fine. I might be able to hook Bea up with someone who can design her a new wardrobe. If I can, will you put me in contact with her?”

He reached for the salt shaker again and doused the sausage patty he was about to eat. “I can do that. On one condition.”

“What kind of condition?” I asked warily. My father wasn’t the manipulative one out of my parents, but if he had any thought of forcing me into doing something with Mom…

“I want to meet your new man.”

That was the last thing I’d been expecting. It took me so thoroughly by surprise that I dropped my fork, and it clattered against my plate.

Then it was Dad’s turn to raise a brow. “You didn’t think I knew, did you?”

“Knew what? What new man?”

“Nate Golston. That hockey player. The one who had a banana peel thrown at his feet a couple of weeks ago.”

“Why do you think he’s my man?”

“Just something I saw on Twitter.”

Now he’d really thrown me for a loop. “What are you doing on Twitter?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of my father doing anything on social media. He abhorred using the computer, and he only did because it made life easier in his practice. He didn’t own a tablet of any sort. Somehow, he still had a flip phone instead of a smartphone. The man was as technology-phobic as they came, unless it involved a new medical advance in his field.

“Trying to figure out how many of those assholes who post things about you are people I really need to worry about,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been talking to my lawyer to see if there’s anything we can do about all the threats being made against you.”

I was pretty sure my jaw would be sore tomorrow, it had dropped so hard and fast. “They’re not real threats.”

“How can you be sure?” He took another bite of bacon, going about his meal as though he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on me.

“Because they’re just idiots who think they can say anything they want because they’re protected by the anonymity of the Internet. The police won’t bother looking into it. It’s too complicated to try to track someone down over what are almost always baseless threats just meant to scare someone.”

“But sometimes these people really act on their threats,” he insisted. And he was right, even if I’d rather not admit it. There’d been enough reports in the news for me to know the truth of the situation. Reports of women—often journalists in traditionally male-dominated fields or outspoken feminists—who’d been subjected to online threats, which were then acted out. My father was right, darn it. “Who’s to say that next time, instead of some racist buffoon throwing banana peels on the ice, it’s not going to be some sexist ignoramus following you to your car? These things happen, you know.”

“Not that often,” I said, with full knowledge of the feebleness of my argument. The fact that it happened at all was enough to convince my father to worry. Admittedly, the idea of Dad being concerned enough to check Twitter to see what people were saying about me and had been talking to a lawyer meant he was an awesome dad. Maybe he was a bit intrusive, but his curiosity was forgivable in the long run. Especially because it meant he cared enough to delve into this part of my life.

“Often enough,” he said. “Anyway, my lawyer is keeping a close eye on a few of them and talking to the police to see if we can file any sort of official reports against the worst offenders. Online harassment or something. I’ll let you know what he says. But, in the midst of all my research, I stumbled on some tweets between Golston’s teammates about the two of you.”

“What kind of tweets?” Maybe I should break my own rule and take a look at what was happening on social media more often instead of leaving it all to Tim. If I had, I might have known what my father had found. It wouldn’t have prevented this conversation, but it could have prepared me for it, if nothing else.

“The kind where they talk about him being, and I quote, your lover boy. So I want to meet him.”

“He’s not my lover boy.”

“So you didn’t fall asleep with your head on his shoulder on the plane last night?” Dad asked, his tone full of teasing. This was worse than him attempting to pull off Dad Jokes. “And before you try to lie about that, one of them posted a picture.”

“Who did?”

“Riley Jesus or something like that.”

“Jezek,” I corrected him.

“That’s the one. So when am I going to get to meet this Golston?”

“I don’t— We’re not—” Augh, this wasn’t at all what I’d intended to talk to my father about this morning. And if the guys on the team were posting pictures of me and Nate all over social media, then any chance I might have once had of keeping my job—however slim—was now gone. No doubt, my boss would be calling me first thing tomorrow morning to tell me I’d been fired. Or at least that I would be as soon as the season came to a close, one of the two.

“Looked like you two were nice and cozy,” Dad said.

“I don’t know what we are.”

“Has he taken you on a date?”

“Coffee. And dinner,” I amended. And hours of talking.

“Has he kissed you yet?”

Again, I was grateful that my cheeks didn’t really turn pink when I blushed. At least he’d only asked about a kiss and not anything beyond that. “Not yet.”

“But you want him to,” Dad said with a great deal of certainty.

“Maybe.”

“That could prove to be problematic with your job, couldn’t it?”

I shrugged. “There’s no chance I’ll still have this job next season, anyway, so does it really matter?”

“You tell me. I was under the impression that you wanted to prove you could do this as well as any man. That you wanted to make your mark in sports journalism. You were all gung-ho about paving the path for other women to follow, but I don’t know how that can happen if you throw it away.”

“I’m not throwing anything away! And to hear that coming from you, of all peop—”

“You know I don’t think that,” he cut in, hands up in surrender. “But that’s the picture they’ll paint. That’s the story they’ll try to sell.”

“Well, I have my own story to tell.”

Dad nodded thoughtfully. “I know you do.” Total and complete acceptance, without a moment’s hesitation. That was how Dad had always been with me—the complete opposite of my mother. It was nice to know some things didn’t change, even if I wished so many others would.

“I just don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,” I whined.

“What do you mean? With Golston?”

“No. Not exactly.” I reached for my coffee, but apparently I’d already drained the whole thing.

Dad picked up the pot and refilled my mug, patiently waiting for me to continue.

“It’s just…” I sighed, wishing it were easier to put into words. “If I get involved with him, how can I present an unbiased picture of him for this show? I don’t think that’s possible. And the closer I get to him, the closer I’m getting to his friends on the team, so there’s no way I’ll be able to be unbiased in how I’m editing them. And it is editing them, not just putting things out there like it’s strictly journalism. This is more of a documentary. There has to be a story—a beginning, middle, and end, rising action, climax, and falling action, all of the things they talk about in fiction and screenwriting. So I can’t just present the events as they unfold, can I? I have to put some sort of narrative twist on everything that happens, which has left me trying to find other stories to follow beyond Nate and the racist stuff, but now I’m running into the issue of things cropping up that should be private. They shouldn’t be filmed and shared with the whole world. I know these people all signed release forms and whatnot, but were they counting on me breaking the news of their infertility or a family member maybe coming out of the closet? I don’t think they were, but I’m still leaning toward using that kind of footage when I get it, because it’ll take the heat off Nate. But is that right? And am I only doing it in a sick, twisted effort to salvage a job that I’m probably going to lose anyway?”

I finally stopped speaking only because I was about to choke up and start crying, and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in public. The only times I’d ever broken that rule had been stupid, academic things, like when I’d lost the spelling bee in the fifth grade after misspelling errand, one of the simplest words offered in the whole event.

I tried to settle my nerves by sipping from my coffee. When I looked up at Dad again, he was just staring at me. Not in judgment. Not in disappointment. Just staring.

“What?” I asked.

“Did you get it all out yet?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Okay.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So what do you think I should do?” I demanded.

“I think you need to follow your gut. It’s always led you down the right path before.”

“Not with—”

“Even with your mother, it’s led you to the right answer for you. It might not be the right answer for her or for your cousins. But it’s the right answer for you and your sanity. Your gut led you to your college major. It led you to your first job after college. It got you this position, which, as you’ve said before many times, no one your age gets offered, and definitely not a woman. You’ve got the job. It’s yours. Maybe not for long, but for now, it’s yours. So what story is it you think you need to tell while you’ve got the platform? That’s what I think you should do. Tell your story, and tell it the way you think it should be told. Ignore all the rest.”

“But what if…?”

“What if you get fired? Sounds like that’s already going to happen anyway. Might as well make the most of the opportunity in front of you.”

ANY TIME SOMEONE asked if we’d rather face the Kings or the Blackhawks in the next round, there was a correct reply. Both teams would be worthy opponents, and we were more concerned with making sure we were rested and ready, no matter who we faced—something along those lines. In other words, a non-answer was the only appropriate response to the question.

In truth, those two teams were both formidable opponents, in many of the same ways. They’d each won the Cup in recent years, and the core of their Cup-winning teams remained intact, meaning they had the skill and experience to do it again. Not only that, but those guys knew what it felt like to reach the ultimate pinnacle in our sport, which gave them the drive and urgency to get there again.

The Blackhawks might have struggled more during the regular season, but that was only because they were part of the Central Division, which, to oversimplify matters, was the toughest division in the NHL right now. In that way, the Blackhawks might prove to be a more difficult adversary for us. They also played a more similar style to ours, as a team built around speed and skill more so than size and brute force.

The Kings were more of a hybrid. They could play our way, but they could also push us into playing a more physical game, which would surely give them an advantage. And, as the top seed in our division, they would have home-ice advantage over us, whereas we would have that benefit in a series against the Blackhawks.

But on a personal level, I would much prefer for the Kings to win Game Seven. I wasn’t keen on dealing with the inevitable return of the attention if we had to go back to the same city where the banana peel incident had taken place…where Marcus Jameson was killed by a cop…where protests and demonstrations were heating up. The drama around me had finally started to die down, and the press was beginning to focus on the fact that we’d come together as a team and beaten the Sharks, and the press in Chicago was focusing more on the bigger picture of the racial tensions in the city and the nation.

I’d prefer to keep things moving in the current direction.

Maybe it was a ridiculous reason for me to hope for one opponent over another, but there was never much logic to be found in emotional responses—and if anyone deserved to react emotionally, it was me right now.

When we got home so late from San Jose, Bergy had announced he was giving us the full day off on Easter Sunday. We had at least a few days before the first game of the next series, and he said he wanted us all to get some rest. No practice. No film sessions. The guys who wanted to go in for treatment for their various ailments were welcome to do so, but otherwise we were free to spend the day with our friends and family. He wasn’t requiring anyone to show up at the practice facility for any reason.

Briefly, I’d thought about hitting the gym, if nothing else, but then I thought better of it. My knee was killing me, so the more rest I could get, the better. But that meant I had no plans for how to spend my day.

RJ’s brother had come into town, and so RJ and Amanda invited me to spend the day with the three of them. I wasn’t keen on the idea of being slobbered on by Max and Lola all day, so I passed.

Koz was getting a few of the younger, single guys together at his place, too, but I wasn’t in the mood to play designated driver or be the guy who made sure Koz didn’t get arrested for groping a stripper. I turned down that invitation, too.

To be honest, I wanted to spend the day with Anne, but I hadn’t thought to ask her before we’d said good-bye after getting back to PDX. And besides, she had family in the area. She’d probably want to spend the day with her father.

If she even celebrated the holiday. I didn’t have any idea if she was Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist…or just one of those people who celebrated holidays regardless of the religious meaning behind them. Any of the above was possible.

There was also a good chance she might spend the whole day working. The more time I’d spent around her lately, the more I realized she was a true workaholic, not to mention a perfectionist. As an NHL player, I devoted a lot of time and effort to the team and to bettering myself as a player, but she put me to shame in that regard. I’d never seen someone who was so devoted to her career.

For a couple of hours, I lounged around the house and debated whether I should call her up anyway to see if she wanted to get together. I should spend the day studying for finals, not that I wanted to. But before I could make up my mind to do either of those things, my phone buzzed with a text message from Harry.

Bored as hell. Hanging out with Hammer and Thor. Hammer’s kids are with his ex this weekend, and Thor’s are doing a girls’ day with their mother. Colesy’s on the way. You coming too?

Colesy was what we called another of our teammates, Cole Paxton. After a momentary private chuckle over the juxtaposition of Thor and Hammer, which I doubted Harry had noticed when he’d plugged it into his phone, I tapped out a response.

Me: Sounds like the over-the-hill, overpaid defensemen’s guild meeting. Why would I want to be part of that?

Harry: If you come, we can be the overhyped, underperforming, short-as-fuck jackwads league. You coming or not?

Me: Your place?

Harry: Yes. Bring beer. We’ve got food.

I grabbed a couple of six-packs and headed out the door with my phone pinging at me again. Assuming it was Harry with another request for booze or something, I swiped my thumb over the slider and stumbled into a message from Anne.

Actually, it was just a picture—of the two of us, her head resting on my shoulder while we both dozed on the flight home last night.

Fuck.

I tossed the beers on the passenger seat, climbed in, started the engine, then sent her a response.

Me: Do I want to know how you got that?

Anne: My dad let me know it’s on Twitter. Apparently, Riley Jezek posted it. Called you “lover boy.” Now Dad wants to meet you.

Yeah, fuck didn’t even begin to cover it.

Me: Do you want me to meet him?

Anne: I don’t know. Are we at the meet-the-parents stage? We’ve barely been on a date, and we haven’t even kissed yet.

Good question. And one I didn’t have a ready answer for. I wouldn’t deny that the idea of moving things into that territory sounded great, even if I didn’t know the first thing about her father or how he would react to me, but I doubted he’d be as bad as Webs had been when Babs started dating Katie.

If Anne wanted me to meet her father, maybe that meant we could move things along more quickly than we had been.

Me: So if I kiss you next time I see you, will you be ready for me to meet your father? Because I’m game if you are.

It seemed like an eternity passed before she responded. I almost gave up and started driving over to Harry’s place, assuming I’d pushed too hard, too soon. But finally, my phone buzzed again, with a single-word response: Yes.

SPENDING EASTER WITH the guys turned out to be more fun than I’d anticipated. There was something about getting together with some of the older guys on the team, with no wives, girlfriends, fiancées, or kids around, and just shooting the breeze. I didn’t do that often enough. Most of the time, I either hung out with RJ and Amanda or I stuck to myself and hit the books. When I did get together with a big group, it was usually with the younger, single guys—Koz’s crowd, even though they all complained about him nonstop—but those guys wanted to party and goof off, which wasn’t very appealing to me anymore. Maybe I was becoming an old fuddy-duddy.

I’d sure as hell been called worse things before. Everyone knew that after what had happened in Chicago a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, we spent the day lounging around Harry’s pool. It was the warmest it’d been so far this spring. He started up the grill. We ate, drank, and spent hours poking at each other like guys tend to do when there aren’t any women around.

Harry’s skin was turning pink and the sun was starting to set. About an hour ago, he’d put up an umbrella to block the sun’s rays and put on more clothes and sunscreen to protect himself, but by that point it was too late to do any good. He was well on his way to lobster-ville when his phone buzzed for what had to be the tenth time since he’d made the changes. He glanced down at the screen briefly, but then he tugged his ball cap down over his face and ignored whoever it was trying to get in touch with him yet again.

“You ever going to answer that?” I asked.

“It’s a text message, not a call.”

“And? You could respond.”

“Not if I want to still be alive after next time I see Webs, I can’t.”

Colesy and Hammer both busted up laughing.

“What?” I said. “What am I missing?”

Harry poked his head out again to stare at me. “Last time Dani Weber was home from school, she cornered me in the wives’ room after a game and kissed me.”

“And she’s home again for the holiday weekend, I suppose.”

“He’s leaving out the best part,” Hammer said, reaching into the cooler for another beer. He leaned across the table and grinned at me. “Webs saw the whole thing go down. And it was right after the big hushed-up arrest incident, so you can imagine Webs wasn’t a happy father.”

“Oh, shit,” I said, trying not to burst out laughing. A few months back, instead of coming along with most of us to help Koz celebrate his birthday, Harry had gone off on his own. He still hadn’t filled any of us in on exactly what he’d been doing that night, but he’d been arrested…and we’d all been too drunk to go bail him out. He’d ended up getting Webs involved, and the team’s legal department had made sure nothing serious ever came of it, but there’d been more than just a hint of mystery surrounding Harry ever since that night. Not only that, but he seemed to have found a permanent spot on Webs’s shit list. Surely seeing his youngest daughter kissing the guy hadn’t sat well at all. Webs had taken a long time to give in on Katie, his older daughter, hooking up with Babs—and there weren’t many who came more clean-cut than Babs. Harry couldn’t even hope to come close.

“She kissed me, not the other way around,” Harry argued. “Which is exactly what I fucking told Webs. I didn’t encourage her in any way.”

Colesy seemed ready to be done with the direction of our current conversation. He turned and asked me, “Did you see what RJ put on Twitter yet? Doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know why he would have done that.”

“Ghost doesn’t do Twitter,” Harry said.

Hammer set his beer down on the table between us and raised a brow. “You don’t do Twitter? How the hell, in this day and age, do you not do Twitter?”

“Hammer’s got a point,” Harry said, peeking at us from under his hat again. “He’s a fucking dinosaur, and he’s on it. Why aren’t you?”

“Watch it,” Hammer said. “I might have T-Rex arms, but if I catch you…”

“You won’t have any problem catching him,” Colesy said. “He’ll be burned to a crisp.”

“Hammer’s only on Twitter to watch videos about how to braid his daughters’ hair,” I shot back. “Why would I need to see those? I don’t want to see all the other shit that gets posted about me.”

“They have hair videos?” Thor asked, ignoring me. Those had to be the first words out of his mouth in over an hour.

“You might have a little girl someday,” Hammer replied, nodding in my direction. “Then we’ll see how much you need hair videos. When my girls are with me, their mom’s not here to help, but someone still has to do their hair. And trust me, if it’s bad, I’ll hear about it from all the moms at the park.” Then he dug out his phone and pulled up some app or another. “YouTube’s better than Twitter for hair tutorials. I’ll show you which feeds to follow. And you can get good stuff on Pinterest, too.”

Thor took out his phone, too, leaning over to follow along with what was on Hammer’s screen.

I rolled my eyes. “See what I mean? But to answer your question, yes, I saw what RJ fucking posted. Anne’s father saw it first, actually, and he pointed it out to her. Haven’t talked to the asswipe yet. Thought it would be better for me to calm down before I rip his throat out or do something else just as stupid.”

“You should tell him to delete it,” Colesy said, like it was as simple as that. Maybe in his world, it was. He never seemed to get caught up in all the drama that sometimes took place around the locker room, like with the way he’d changed the subject away from Harry’s dilemma just now. He kept to himself a lot, other than hanging out with Burnzie.

“Deleting it won’t do much good now,” I pointed out. “Her father’s already seen it, and now he wants to meet me.”

Harry let out a slow whistle, and the rest of the guys laughed. “At least I’m not the only one with daddy drama,” he said.

I shrugged it off. That was just how it went when you got a bunch of the guys together for any reason. “If he’s seen it, you know the higher-ups in her production company have, too. It’s too late to change anything.” Too late to change things for the better, at least. Things could definitely get worse, and they might, depending on how meeting Anne’s father went. Or what her boss thought. No point in worrying about that until it happened, though.

But I could at least make sure RJ didn’t do anything as stupid as that again. I didn’t exactly need him fucking things up for me with Anne before we really got started.

MONDAY MORNING, I hit the trainers’ room early before practice, hoping for some relief. Despite all my efforts to stay off it and hope whatever was wrong would heal on its own, that wasn’t happening. When I rolled out of bed, my knee was more swollen than it had been since the injury. And it was stiff. Not a good sign.

I was still wary of walking in and telling them I needed to have it checked out, because they might decide to prevent me from playing through it, but the fact remained—with as swollen as it was right now, there was no chance I’d be able to hide it from them for long. Better to be up front about it than to lie and try to hide it. If I got lucky, they could give me a few treatments and I wouldn’t have to sit out any games at all, or maybe only a handful.

I wasn’t expecting to walk in and see Anne sitting on one of their exam tables, though. She had her injured ankle up and unwrapped so Ken Archer, the head trainer, could take a look at it.

Archie held her leg in one hand and her foot in the other, putting pressure on it at various angles and rolling it around. “No pain when I do any of this?”

She glanced up and saw me, then bit her lip and turned her attention back to him. “Nope. I think it’s good.”

“You just saying that because you’re sick of the crutches, or do you really mean it?”

“I’m done with the crutches whether you think I should ditch them or not,” she said. “I’ve got blisters on my underarms and my palms. Not worth it.”

“Hmm,” Archie said, scowling as he continued to manipulate her foot.

She didn’t wince or try to pull away, so either she really didn’t feel any pain or she was a good actress.

“All right. No more crutches, but you should keep it wrapped while you’re on your feet for at least a few more days. And try not to be on your feet as much as you usually are.”

“Ha. Good luck with that one,” she said.

He gave her the same kind of stern look he always gave us when we tried to come back too soon from an injury. “It’s healing, but it’s not fully healed. Unless you want to set yourself back, you’ll do what I say.”

The look she gave him in response was one that rivaled his, but she reached for the ACE bandage and started rewrapping it. “I’ve never been very good at doing what I’m told.”

“I got that impression already, strangely enough.” But Archie left her to take care of herself and came over to me. “What’s going on with you? That knee acting up?”

“You could say that.” I hopped up on the nearest table and pulled the leg of my pants up so he could see.

“How long’s it been that swollen?”

“Woke up with it this way this morning. And it’s stiff. A little better now that I’ve been moving around on it some, but it’s not great.”

Archie started poking around, moving the joint and whatnot to see what he could learn. I glanced over to find Anne putting on her shoe but peeking at me. I winked at her, but then Archie pressed a finger into a certain spot, and I hissed in a breath.

“Has it still been bothering you since that night you hurt it?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“And you were scared I’d make you sit.”

“Yeah. That about sums it up.”

He scowled, but he didn’t seem surprised. I was surely not the first pro hockey player he’d ever dealt with who’d tried to hide an injury, and I wouldn’t be the last, either.

“Did you hear a pop when it happened?”

“Nope.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Anne picking up her backpack and a few other things, but it appeared she was taking her time about it. So she wasn’t in any big hurry to leave? Fine by me. I kind of hoped we’d be able to talk for a minute or two, now that we were in the same place.

“Are you having any problems with stability?” Archie asked, still working the joint so much I was tempted to kick him.

“None. It just hurts. And it’s swollen and stiff.”

“Where does it hurt, specifically?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to pinpoint it in my mind. But to be honest, the pain was just kind of all over the place, not in any one spot. “It’s just the whole knee.”

Archie nodded and finally let go of my limb. “All right, so here’s the deal. My guess is you’ve at least strained or sprained your ACL, but we’re going to have to do an MRI to determine that for sure and understand just how bad it is.”

“And once we know that?” I asked, dreading his answer.

He sighed. “If it’s just a sprain and not a tear, Doc will probably let you keep playing on it because we’re in the playoffs. He might have you sit for a couple of games to rest it, but after that, he’ll probably leave the ultimate decision up to you.”

“Which means I’ll be playing.”

Archie chuckled. “Sounds like it.”

“But if it’s a tear?”

“I don’t know what’ll happen if it’s a tear. You’ll need surgery to correct it, but you’ve still been playing on it, so…” He shook his head. “I’m not the doctor. It might not even be your ACL. I don’t know. You’ll have to take it up with Doc, no matter what the diagnosis is. But for now, I’m putting in a call to him, and then I’m sending you over to the hospital for an MRI. And don’t keep shit like this from us, dumb ass,” he said, knocking me lightly on the side of the head. “You could have been making a small problem worse this whole time.”

Then he walked out, and Anne gave me a sheepish look.

“Didn’t mean to walk in on you like that,” I said.

She shook her head. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “I probably should have left when I was done and not listened in.”

“That’s your job. To listen in.” I winked.

“No cameras here, so I should be minding my own business.”

“Listen,” I started, not really sure how to say what was on my mind, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about that picture. I’m going to have it out with RJ. He knows better than to post things like that—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I am worried about it. That’s the thing. I mean, I don’t give a rat’s ass if the whole world sees that I’m into you. Because I am.” I angled my head toward her to emphasize my words. “I’m really into you, even if it would be better for me—well, better for you, I guess—for me to stay away from you. But I know things are different for you. With your family, maybe. Definitely with your job…”

“Don’t worry about my job. Let me worry about that.” Anne took a seat next to me on the exam table, and her arm brushed against mine. She shivered.

I turned so I could see her eyes. “Are you? Worried?”

“Not exactly. I mean, yeah, I’m expecting my boss to call me in for a meeting sometime today, but if it wasn’t this, it’d be something else.”

“What do you mean?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she sounded so completely resigned, like it was inevitable for her job to be in jeopardy.

“Just that if it’s not this, it’ll be something else. They’ll find some other reason to replace me.” She punched my upper arm. “Hey. No sad faces. I’ve known all along that I didn’t have long in this position. It’s not like it’s any big surprise.”

“It’s bullshit, that’s what it is.”

Her smile was enough to ease the ache in my knee. “Glad you think so, at least. But seriously, the picture’s not a big deal, even though I didn’t know about it up front. Don’t do anything to ruin your friendship with Jezek over that.”

“RJ’s the one who made the decision to post it.”

“And you can be the one who decides to take the high road. Be the bigger man.”

I laughed and winked. “At least this once, I can be bigger than him.”

She just shook her head, her lips pursed to keep her from laughing out loud.

“I know I basically promised to kiss you next time I saw you,” I said, glancing around the trainers’ room. It felt like a doctor’s office, only there was a permanent stench of sweaty hockey pads instead of the typical cold, sterile scents. “I wasn’t counting on this being that moment, though.”

“Not too romantic, huh?” she said, stifling a grin. “Good thing I’ve never been the romantic sort.”

“No?”

“I spend too much of my time around men.”

“Some men can be romantic.”

“Sure they can.” She narrowed her eyes to sarcastic slits and nodded slowly.

“Should I take that as a challenge?”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with you if you went all romantic on me.”

There was no chance in hell I could stop myself from grinning…and from considering myself duly challenged, whether she thought she wanted it or not. “I might like to see that.”

“Hmm.”

We were still alone. A glance over my shoulder confirmed it. And I had promised to kiss her. I leaned in, my lips close enough to hers that I could feel her warmth. She had a cinnamon scent on her breath, strong and spicy. Seemed fitting.

Those honey-gold eyes stayed on mine, reflecting both desire and surprise.

But Archie threw open the door before I got my kiss in, interrupting us and destroying the moment.

Probably for the best, anyway. Stale hockey pad stench wouldn’t make for a good memory to go with a first kiss.

DAVID WEBER SKATED over to me as the team was leaving the ice after practice. Nate hadn’t been out there with them—he’d gone to the hospital for his MRI, and there hadn’t been any further update since he’d left—but otherwise, most of the team had been involved, other than a couple of the older guys who were nursing injuries that would have kept lesser men completely out of games as opposed to simply missing a few practices.

It had been a relatively upbeat session, the guys proving to have a lot more energy than I did, despite the fact that they’d already completed an eighty-two-game regular season and a tough six games in the first round against the Sharks. The meeting this morning with my boss had drained almost every ounce of gumption out of me, and all I wanted to do was crash in bed and not come out for a week.

In short, I wasn’t fired—yet—but only because they didn’t have anyone in line to replace me. Yet. Oh, and because my guys had all threatened to walk out if they kicked me to the curb. In short, if I left, they’d have no film crew, no editor, no footage… They wouldn’t have anything. So they were stuck with me. But more than ever before, I knew I was living on borrowed time.

Too bad Archie had walked in on us before Nate had kissed me. A kiss would have done a world of good in terms of boosting my ego right now. But that hadn’t happened, and I didn’t know when it would, so all I wanted to do was sulk.

In fact, going home and digging into a vat of ice cream covered in chocolate and caramel syrup sounded like an excellent idea. With a banana. I could make it a banana split. That would make it healthy, or at least healthy enough that I wouldn’t feel any guilt about it.

I couldn’t do any of that until I figured out what David Weber wanted from me, though.

He’d seemed to be in a good mood, relatively speaking, throughout the team’s practice, but that didn’t give me much reassurance. I still remembered the glare he’d given that reporter in San Jose, and in my current state of sulking, I didn’t think I could handle being on the receiving end of one of those.

“You planning on working tonight?” he asked. “Or are you taking time off?”

Not what I was expecting. At all. “The guys and I were going to get together in about half an hour to discuss what we could film tonight, so I’m not sure yet.” My hope was that they could each figure out somewhere to go, something to do, that wouldn’t require my presence. Sometimes, a person just needed a night alone.

Weber nodded thoughtfully. “Well, if you and one of your guys want to come over to my house tonight, you’d be welcome. My youngest daughter’s still in town until tomorrow morning. We’re going to watch Game Seven in the Kings-Blackhawks series together.”

I nodded, but there wasn’t anything about that to interest me more than my enormous banana split, so I doubted I’d take part in it. I could send Ben, though…

“And we’re expecting a call from Luke,” he added with a meaningful look. “His press conference is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”

There wasn’t any mistaking the fact that he was fully opening himself and his family up to me this time, no matter what this call might be about. “You’re sure?” I asked. “Because I know you signed the releases and all—”

“We’re sure. I’ve talked it over with Laura, Dani, and Katie. Luke’s opening up to the press tomorrow, whatever it’s about, so there’s not really any difference where he’s concerned.”

“But shouldn’t it be a private thing at first? Just the family?”

“Isn’t that what Eye of the Storm is all about? Showing the world what it’s really like to be part of this family?”

Well, then. There wasn’t much I could say to that.

LAURA WEBER HAD been nursing the same glass of red wine for the last thirty minutes, taking nervous sips that I was sure Ben’s camera was picking up while her focus was supposedly on the television. She’d been perfectly friendly toward the two of us, offering food and drink and acting more like a hostess than someone having her personal life invaded for other peoples’ entertainment, but now that her husband’s focus had switched to the game, her nervous tics were starting to make themselves known.

During the first intermission, they’d shown coverage of the protest in downtown Chicago from this afternoon. Tensions had been very high, but thank goodness there hadn’t been any violence—just a lot of yelling on both sides. But no one had taken out a weapon. I was honestly worried about that, especially with the possibility that the Storm would be heading to Chicago soon for the second round of the playoffs.

The Blackhawks and Kings were tied at two in the second period, and David Weber was oblivious to everything going on around him.

Dani had gone between halfheartedly watching the game and passing surreptitious glances in her mother’s direction, clearly worried but seemingly unsure how to make things better for her. I doubted there was anything to be done. Until Laura learned what this phone call and the impending press conference were about, she was going to behave like a Nervous Nellie.

Normally, I didn’t interrupt when we were filming unless we were doing a segment that was more like an interview or confessional. Otherwise, I did my best to stay out of the way. Tonight seemed like an excellent opportunity to help someone out, though, and we were in a holding pattern until Luke Weber decided to call his parents, so I decided to break my own rule.

I waited until Dani got up to refill her drink, and I followed her to the kitchen. Ben gave me a questioning look, so I shook my head, letting him know to stick with the parents. This wasn’t anything he needed to get on film.

“I hope you don’t mind me coming to you like this,” I said once Dani turned around and saw me. She smiled slightly, even if it looked like she was putting on a show for my benefit. I hoped what I wanted to bring up would help. “But the thing is, I couldn’t help but listen in on your conversation with your sister the other day, and I’ve got an idea I wanted to run by you—about your independent study for this summer.”

Suddenly, she got a lot more interested, perking up and raising a brow. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“See, my dad is a bariatric surgeon. He does weight loss surgery,” I added, since most people didn’t get it at first, and she was giving me a questioning look. “So a lot of his patients have lost a hundred pounds or more, but they’re still kind of lumpy in places, or they have loose skin that gets in the way. It’s really hard for them to find clothes that fit right and look good. He’s got one patient who’s a little over a year out from her surgery. She’s lost a ton of weight and is holding steady, but it’s still too soon to get any sort of plastic surgery to deal with it, and she might not be able to afford it…so she needs clothes that work with her body, not against her.”

The longer I talked, the more excited Dani became. Her eyes lit up like a fireworks display. “And you think she’d let me do a makeover for her? I mean, I’m still just a design student. I don’t have my own line or anything.”

“I think she would. If you want to talk to her—”

“Yes, I want to talk to her. I’m supposed to go back to Seattle tomorrow, but I could call her in the morning. Or better yet, I can meet her in person. Take some measurements. Get a feel for her style and what she’s looking for. Oh my goodness. This is the best thing ever.”

I frowned. “Not sure that’ll work. She’s a teacher. She’s got to go to work, and I don’t know when her planning period is…”

“Then I’ll wait until after school tomorrow to meet with her, and I’ll drive back to Seattle after that.”

“Won’t you miss classes?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be worth it for this,” Dani insisted. “And besides, that’ll give me the chance to… Well, never mind that.” She shook her head and grinned. But it wasn’t any normal grin. It was the sort of look that said her plans to take over the world were clicking into place, and we’d all better watch out.

Whatever else she was thinking of sounded more than just a bit devious, based on her tone, but I didn’t get the chance to try to deter her from doing anything she might regret later—because the phone rang.

We both looked at each other, with understanding flowing through the space between us. Without another word, we headed back into the living room, where her father was muting the television with his cell phone pressed to his ear. Dani took a seat on the couch between her parents.

“Hey, Luke,” he said before falling silent for a moment. “Yeah, your mom and Dani are with me. We’ve got a camera crew from Eye of the Storm here, too. Is it all right if I put you on speaker?”

Luke must have given his agreement, because his father lowered the phone and pressed the button. I glanced over to be sure Ben was catching everything, my gut clenching in anticipation. I’d never witnessed anyone coming out to their family before, and the emotional side that I tried to always keep in check when I was working was going haywire. I couldn’t imagine being in any of their shoes. The way they reacted in the beginning would have such a huge effect on all their lives going forward.

“Hi, Mom,” Luke said. It sounded like he had a cold, but my guess was that he’d been crying. In fact, he might be crying right now.

“Hi, baby,” she replied. She gripped her wineglass tighter, but everything about her seemed unsteady. Dani took the wine from her mother and set it on the coffee table, where it would be out of harm’s way.

“So I just wanted you guys to hear it from me first, because I’m sure it’s going to blow up as soon as the press conference happens tomorrow,” Luke said. He started to go on, but his father interrupted him.

“I just have to say something before you say whatever it is you called to tell us. We love you. You’re our son, you’re Dani and Katie’s brother, and we love you. We’re behind you, no matter what. And there’s nothing you can do or say to change that fact. Okay?”

About halfway through her husband’s speech, Laura started crying, silent but uncontrolled. Dani took her hand and squeezed. Based on the sounds coming from the other end of the line, she wasn’t the only one crying. Heck, I was about to lose it, myself, and I had never met Luke before.

“I know that,” Luke said, but those few words came out in fits and starts.

“Good,” David replied. “Because if this is some ploy to run us off, you’re shit out of luck. You got that?”

And everyone laughed, including me and Ben.

“So I guess you’ve figured out I’m trying to tell you I’m gay,” Luke said, choking on some of the words but still powering through.

“So you’re saying I have more competition with the cute guys,” Dani teased, earning an eye roll from her father.

“I’m being serious here!”

“So am I,” she countered. “Because, damn it all, you’re a hottie.”

“Oh my God,” Luke said, but he was still laughing. “You’re really turning this into a fight over guys?”

“What, did you want me to treat this like it’s a big deal? It’s not. You’re still my big brother. Nothing’s changed.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. That’s what we’re all saying.” Dani shrugged, not that he could see it through the phone. “Do you have a hot boyfriend? When do we get to meet him?”

“I don’t— I’m not—”

“You just be sure that any guys you date aren’t asswipes,” their father said. “And if they are, they’ll have to answer to me.”

“Oh God,” Luke said, an eye roll evident in his tone. “Dad, give it a rest with that. We’re all adults now.”

“If I’m gonna run the asswipes off from my little girls, it’s only fair for me to do the same if some asswipe decides to chase after you.”

The next few minutes passed with a lot more laughter than tears, although the occasional sniffle made itself known. But Laura hadn’t said a thing. In fact, she hadn’t been laughing as much as the rest, even if her tears had slowed and she appeared to be much calmer than she’d been before the phone rang…but Luke apparently noticed.

“Mom?” he said in a lull in the conversation. “You’ve been awful quiet.”

“Have I?” she replied, reaching for a tissue.

“Yeah, you have. You okay?”

All the laughter died off while they waited for her to answer.

“I’m fine.” But she didn’t sound fine.

“You’re lying,” Luke said. “If you’re not oka—”

“I’m just worried about you,” she cut in.

“Worried about me? Why?”

“Because this isn’t just you coming out to your family and friends. This is you making an announcement to the whole world—in a world that doesn’t necessarily already love you. You’ve seen all the things that happen just because someone’s gay. Our world isn’t kind to anyone who’s different, for whatever reason. And it’s not like there’s a huge community of other gay hockey players out there for you to lean on.”

“I’ve got support, Mom. Not just my family, either. My team’s standing beside me for this.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but do you have any idea how big a mantle you’re picking up with this? There’s not a single out player in the NHL. You’ll be paving new ground.”

“If I even make it to the NHL, which right now, that’s not looking good.”

“Yeah, but if you do?”

A couple of moments passed before Luke said, “Someone has to.”

“But why you?” Laura asked with a worry-filled ache in her voice. “Why not someone else?”

“That’s the problem. Everyone keeps hoping someone else will do it. Someone has to be the first, Mom.”

“And you’re determined it has to be you,” she said, sounding resigned.

“It has to be me because it’s time for me to be myself, no matter what the fallout might be because of it. I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of keeping secrets.”

“Well, then…” Laura steeled her spine, like she was preparing to do battle. “I guess that’s all there is to that.”

They kept talking for a while, but I stopped paying such close attention. My focus strayed to thoughts of how it must feel to have a mother like Laura Weber. She might want different things for her children than they wanted for themselves, but she was ready and willing to fight for them, no matter what decisions they made. It was clear to me that her concern was because we lived in a world that could be less than accepting of anyone who was different…something I knew all too well. If only all mothers were cut of the same cloth.

After another ten minutes or so, Luke said he needed to call Katie so he could fill her in on the same thing, and they hung up. David went back to watching the game, with the Blackhawks pulling ahead while it had been muted. Laura headed into the kitchen to get more wine. Dani came over to me to continue our conversation about my proposal, and I left Ben filming in case anything else of significance took place. An hour later, when Ben and I packed up our gear and left the family in peace, I knew three things: the Storm would be facing off against the Blackhawks in the next round, I’d done at least one good deed with my day, and I had the beginnings of what could make for an incredibly powerful episode—and the blessing of the Weber family to use it—if only I could figure out the right context to present it.

By the time I crawled into my bed at the end of the night, I was as bone-weary as I could remember being. To say the day had been eventful would be putting it mildly. I was more exhausted than ever before on every front—physically, professionally, and especially emotionally. All I wanted to do was sleep for the next week.

Before I could fall asleep, though, my phone dinged with a text message. I was tempted to roll over and ignore it until tomorrow, but I’d never been able to do that any more than I could leave emails unread in my inbox at the end of the day. I swiped my thumb across the screen and found a message from Nate.

Thinking of you. Can I tear you away from your work tomorrow night? I want to follow through on what got interrupted this morning.

Despite my exhaustion, my heart started racing just from reading those words, and I was right back in the moment when Archie had walked in and stopped us from kissing. It’d taken me almost an hour to get over my disappointment, once they’d sent Nate off to the hospital for tests, and my day had gone downhill fast after that, before coming to a climax at the Weber house.

I keyed in a response.

Me: I can be finished by six.

Nate: Pick you up then. Wear something nice.

Nice? How nice? Suddenly, this was sounding a whole heck of a lot more like a date and less like a quick kiss. I did a quick inventory of my closet, but the only things I could think of that would qualify as nice were the usual suits I wore for work, and I somehow doubted that was what he had in mind.

I really needed someone to give me lessons on girly stuff. That was so not my forte. I hoped he didn’t expect me to have on some cute dress or a flirty skirt, because I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d worn something like that.

Although, a quick trip to the store on my lunch break might not be out of order. If such a thing could happen in such a short amount of time.

For a moment, I debated responding again and backing out, because that would be so much easier than trying to find something to wear on short notice.

But before I could do that, he sent me another text.

It kills me that I have to wait that long to kiss you. I’m tempted to come over right now and take care of that, but I figure you’ve already changed for the night, and I’d have a hard time leaving. And I took your challenge for being romantic, so I’d better wait. Barging in like that wouldn’t be very romantic of me.

It might not be romantic, but I wouldn’t turn him away…a thought that warmed me through and left me tingling in all the right places.

I could find myself falling for Nate Golston if I wasn’t careful.

I’d never been one to be overly careful when it came to making decisions that could impact my life. If I were, I’d be married to an Indian doctor and popping out babies like my mother wanted. Instead, I was treading water encouraging a relationship with a man that would almost definitely end my career.

THE MRI HAD shown a mild to moderate sprain to my ACL. Doc agreed to let me keep playing since I wasn’t experiencing stability issues, with the understanding that I could potentially make the injury worse, and it might then require surgery. He told Bergy and the rest of the coaching staff to let me rest as much as possible, and he put me in a knee brace that I had to wear off the ice and was fitting me for one to wear during games. In addition to that, I had to ice it as much as possible and go in to see the trainers for treatment anytime I sat out of practice. Bergy then informed me that I would not be participating in practices until further notice, but only in game-day skates to get the blood pumping.

Since I intended to keep playing, Doc warned me to expect that it wouldn’t fully heal until after we’d finished our playoff run, whenever that might be. Hockey was hard on a body—something we’d simply come to accept as a reality of our lives.

That said, this injury definitely wasn’t proving to be the end of the world, and if I was lucky, it would heal up on its own before too long.

In my opinion, the fact that we were facing the Blackhawks in the next round was a much more difficult pill to swallow. I wasn’t looking forward to the return of the media attention that had finally started to shift away from me in the last week or so, but I couldn’t delude myself that it would do exactly that.

Unless something or someone else came along to take the attention off me.

I was in the trainers’ room with Archie working on my knee when one of the other trainers flipped the TV from CNN’s coverage of the protests in Chicago over to NHL Network, which was airing Luke Weber’s press conference. The guy was still in college, not in the NHL, but that didn’t seem to matter. The fact that a hockey player at this level was coming out—the son of a former NHL player and current NHL coach, no less—meant it was big news. Huge, even. The number of reporters who’d gone out to be part of it was astounding, given that the guy hadn’t been drafted and had yet to sign with any NHL team as a free agent.

It was the sort of news that might deflect some attention away from me, but that was my selfish side talking.

It was also the sort of news that might keep Anne busy.

Again, with my selfish side rearing its ugly head. I needed to get that under control.

The other guys came off the ice after practice at about the time that the press conference was coming to a close. I caught sight of Anne and a couple of her camera guys shuffling down the hall past me on their way to Bergy’s office—following Webs, it seemed—and hoped that maybe this was a sign that I was right.

She glanced back over her shoulder before heading into the office, and her gaze met mine. She winked in the moment before ducking inside.

Damn, but I couldn’t wait for tonight.

ANNE CAME OUT wearing a soft green dress made of some fabric that practically floated on her skin, along with some strappy heels that I doubted Archie would approve of, given her barely healed ankle sprain. I didn’t particularly care if he approved or not, at the moment, because the complete package was enough to nearly have me drooling.

I’d never seen her in anything that wasn’t a business suit of some sort, usually in black, navy, gray, or brown—all bland and lacking in personality, even if she wasn’t. The only real pop of color came in with whatever top she wore under the jacket. But in this, she looked like spring turned to human form.

“This okay?” she asked, sounding tentative as all hell. “You just said to wear something nice, but you didn’t say what we were doing, so…”

“This is better than okay.” I didn’t understand how she could be so uncertain of herself. In some things, she was the epitome of confidence. Apparently not when it came to dating, though. It was kind of cute, in a way that made me want to kick the asses of any guy who’d ever overlooked her, or whatever it was. “You look amazing. Makes me think you should wear dresses more often. I didn’t realize you had legs under there,” I teased.

That only made her look even more self-conscious than before, wrapping her arms in front of her in a protective sort of gesture.

“Just trying to help you relax,” I said. “I’m not giving you a hard time.

She shook her head. “I’m probably overreacting. I do that. When it comes to this kind of thing.”

“This kind of thing?”

“Dating,” she clarified. “I’m okay hanging out with guys when there’s a bunch of them and we’re talking about sports or whatever, but this is just…”

“Different,” I finished for her when she trailed off.

“Right.” She gave me a sheepish look.

“I get that. But I’m still the same guy I’ve been all along. I don’t expect you to change anything about who you are. I’m into you already, exactly how you are.”

“Yeah, but you like me in dresses…”

“I think it would be safe to say I’d like you in anything. Or nothing.” I winked.

She bit her lower lip, which made me want to kiss her just there. But I had plans for that first kiss, and those plans didn’t involve us still standing just outside her apartment.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I held out a hand for her.

Anne hesitated for a moment, but then she placed her hand in mine and let me lead her out to my car. “Where is it we’re going?” she asked as I held open the passenger-side door for her.

I waited until she’d safely settled the fluttering fabric, then closed the door and walked around the front to get in. “Will you kill me if I keep it a surprise until we get there?”

She gave me a look that said she might, but in the end, she consented.

I drove us to the waterfront park along the Willamette River and found somewhere to park.

“Here?” Anne asked. She looked around at all the office buildings and businesses. “I’m confused. What’s going on down here?”

“We’re taking a dinner cruise on the river.”

“Oh.” She sounded both surprised and awed. Her gaze traveled over to the Portland Spirit, which was docked and waiting for us to board.

I shut off the engine. “Not what you were expecting?”

“Not even close, not that I could tell you what I thought we were doing.”

“It’s okay, though?”

She smiled. “Better than okay. Much better.”

“Good.”

I reached for her hand as we crossed to the dock. She took it, and the soft fabric of her dress tickled my arm as it fluttered in the breeze. I handed in our tickets, and an employee guided us on board.

“Would you like to sit inside or out?” he asked.

“Out?” I asked Anne. The weather was nice enough, and sitting up top would give us a great view of the city at sunset.

“Outside is perfect,” she agreed.

The worker led us up a couple of flights of stairs and seated us at a table for two. The candles were fake, but everything else was exactly what you’d expect at an upscale restaurant.

Another employee came along to give us menus, take our drink orders, and make sure we had everything else we needed as the other tables started to fill in around us, although there were several empty spots, as well. They must not have sold out tonight. Not a bad turnout for a weeknight, though. A few minutes later, a jazz trio started playing live music. When we left port not long before sunset, the waiter returned with our drinks and took our food order.

“I was afraid you were going to try to back out on me,” I said after everyone left us on our own.

Anne blinked a couple of times. “Were you? Why?”

“Because of that press conference with Luke Weber this morning. I thought it was going to mean a lot more work for you, and you were going to choose that over me.”

She smiled as she reached for her glass. “Well, you’re in luck. I actually got a head start on the fallout from that.”

I raised a brow.

“David Weber asked me to bring one of my guys over to his house last night, since Luke was going to call and fill the family in on whatever the presser would be about. So we got their immediate reactions already, and I had a plan in place with my team before anyone got to work this morning. My editor is already piecing some of it together as we speak.”

“Sneaky,” I said with a wink.

She laughed. “I prefer to think of it as being efficient. There’s still a lot of work to do along those lines. We have to sort out the narrative arc of the episode. To do that, I’m going to have to somehow tie it in to you guys winning your first series, and the beginning of the next series. But that’s something we’ll work on as a team over the next few days.”

“So you could come out with me tonight,” I finished for her.

“So I could come out with you tonight.” Anne bit her lower lip again, hiding a smile. “So… Your knee? How bad is it?”

“On the record or off the record?” I asked, then immediately wished I’d thought that through before speaking.

She didn’t even bat an eye, though. “Off the record. No cameras here tonight.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s a fair question,” Anne interrupted. “And it’s probably good to get that out in the open. If any of my guys are around with their cameras, then assume things are on the record. If I’m with you in a social situation and not tagging along to film something, then it’s safe to say we’re off the record.”

“I think it’s easier to understand that when it comes to you and your guys than it is with my friends.”

“Jezek didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I’m sure he didn’t.”

“He says he didn’t even post it to Twitter himself,” I said—an answer that only pissed me off more. Why the fuck wasn’t he keeping a closer eye on his phone than that? There’d been enough guys in the league to get into trouble over their friends getting hold of their phones and doing stupid shit as pranks. “He took the picture, but he claims he was just going to use it to tease me with. He thinks Amanda did it while he was napping, or something. He’s deleted it now. Not that it did any good, I imagine.”

Anne shrugged, brushing it off a hell of a lot more easily than I had. “You still haven’t told me about your knee.”

“ACL sprain. I get to wear a brace all the time and go in for treatments if the coaches don’t need me in practice.”

“No surgery?”

“No surgery.” Unless I fucked it up worse than it already was.

“Good,” she said, flashing the most amazing smile I’d ever seen.

The waiter brought out our appetizers. We kept talking as we ate, barely looking out at the amazing view. Looking at each other seemed to do the trick, instead. And once we’d gotten past the initial discomfort over RJ’s stupidity, everything between us seemed to flow, with our natural flirtation coming back in full swing.

At one point, while she filled me in on how she’d set Dani Weber up with one of her father’s patients for a school project, I reached across and teased the tips of her fingers with my own. It should have been a casual touch, but there was nothing casual about the electricity that seemed to flow back and forth between us in that moment.

We talked for what felt like hours, paying far more attention to each other than to our food. They brought out dessert and coffee not long before sunset. Most of the other tables around us had already been cleared off, the people who’d been sitting at them heading over to the railings to look out.

I still couldn’t look anywhere but at Anne. Didn’t want to. I couldn’t care less how gorgeous the city skyline looked from the river at sunset. Not when she was looking at me like there was nowhere else she’d rather be.

Anne took a small bite from her crème brûlée, leaving the spoon in her mouth longer than was truly necessary. Savoring it.

And I couldn’t wait any longer. She set down her spoon. I leaned across the table and cupped her cheek in my hand. She met me halfway like she’d been expecting it. But instead of the perfect kiss I’d been hoping to give her, our noses bumped, she jumped, our faces collided in such a way I worried she’d have a fat lip, she yelped, and the table collapsed underneath us.

Everyone on the top deck spun around to stare.

Anne looked at me, eyes wide.

And we both busted up, laughing so hard it hurt.

DAD TEXTED ME on a break between surgeries the next day, telling me about the call he’d received from Bea Castillo and how she couldn’t stop gushing about her meeting with Dani Weber. Apparently, I’d been right to set the two of them up. It left me with a smile, even if the rest of my day was hectic and stressed.

The first game of the Storm’s second-round series was scheduled for tonight, but hockey was far from the only storyline my guys and I were suddenly covering. In fact, it was starting to feel secondary to everything else.

Luke Weber’s press conference yesterday afternoon was completely dominating not only the typical sports media coverage, but it was trickling over into the mainstream media, as well, mingling with all the coverage of racial tensions around the nation. Suddenly, the media outlets trying to get time with the Storm—or more specifically, with David Weber—had quadrupled. It felt like a circus anytime I walked into the locker room, once the rest of the media had been allowed in. So many swarmed around him that there was no chance most of them could get the sound bites they wanted. Before long, a few of them started trickling over to the players and asking them for their take on gay hockey players.

As I made my way through the crowd to get to Ben and make sure he was ready to go, I overheard Chris Hammond nearly shouting at a few of the reporters in front of him that he didn’t care who a guy went to bed with as long as he could skate—only his language was a bit more colorful than that. Then Keith Burns nearly punched one of the media guys in front of him, shouting about how his brother was gay, too, before a couple of his teammates got in the way and led him out of the locker room to cool off. I’d rarely seen anything so out of control as the spectacle surrounding this team right now. I didn’t know how the guys were going to maintain their focus in order to keep it on what truly mattered for them right now—their matchup against the Blackhawks.

A little while later, Jamie Babcock told me they were hounding his wife just as much, if not more, than the way these people were cornering her father. Only it was a different sort of media chasing after her. With all her Hollywood connections and the history of being followed by the paparazzi, suddenly her life was looking much like it had back when she’d starred on the TV show The Cool Kids. He told me she could hardly leave the house without being trailed. In fact, she was debating not coming to the game tonight, because she didn’t want to detract from the game itself.

As if that weren’t enough, all sorts of unusual media folks seemed to have followed the Blackhawks, and it didn’t take me long to figure out the reason behind it. Most of them flocked to Nate’s stall after the team’s morning skate as soon as they were given the green light to enter the locker room. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know about the questions they were asking him, but there wasn’t anything I could do to help.

When I wasn’t making sure my camera crews were getting through the throng to film what I needed, I was busy fielding emails from my editor in the cutting room. Bill and Tim were holed up in Bill’s office working on splicing together the Weber family footage in the way I’d asked them to. This particular piece was so important to the overall production, in my opinion, that I’d turned Tim over to Bill’s care. That way, they could work as a team and be sure they got every moment of it exactly how I wanted it. Tim’s social media responsibilities could be put on hold for a while.

In the middle of all that—as if this wasn’t already more than enough for a single day—Cody Williams waylaid me to ask for a favor.

“A favor?” I repeated, confused but more than a little curious.

We were in a corner of the overly crowded locker room. He’d already changed clothes and looked like he was ready to make his escape.

So far, my guys and I hadn’t spent much time focusing on him—he’d only been in the periphery of a few segments we’d aired, and we’d never presented him in any sort of a negative light. My initial assumption had been that he wasn’t happy with the way he’d been edited, but that didn’t make any sense once I thought it through.

“Maybe somewhere with a bit more privacy?” he suggested. He glanced around at the masses of people holding cameras and other sorts of recording devices, then jerked his head toward a quieter hall in the underbelly of the Moda Center.

I nodded, then followed until he came to a stop in an equipment room that was currently unoccupied.

“Look,” he said, dragging a hand through his still-wet red hair. “I don’t exactly know how to put this, and I know you’ve got a lot more you need to cover right now with things happening for some of the other guys, but if you could— It’s just— I made Webs a promise, and his daughter’s not making it very easy for me to keep that promise.”

“You mean Dani?” I asked, and suddenly, the unexplained parts of our conversation from the other day started to click into place. Whatever it was that sticking around Portland for an extra day would allow her the chance to do, it must have had something to do with Cody Williams.

“She’s not taking the hint,” he said, nodding. “I’ve tried flat-out telling her that I’m not interested. I’ve tried ignoring her. She won’t give up. She even showed up at my place yesterday. I’d thought she was going back to Seattle sometime on Monday, but there she was at my house…”

I bit down on my lip to keep from laughing, because the picture in my head was more than simply amusing. There was no doubt Dani could be a handful and then some, and I doubted she took being told no lightly. That girl was a firecracker, and it seemed Williams didn’t have the first clue how to handle her.

“But how can I help?” I asked, thoroughly at a loss. To me, this seemed like something that was between the two of them. And maybe Dani’s father.

“You just… You haven’t shown me much on the show yet. I was thinking maybe you could send one of your camera guys out with me one night. I’ve got a friend who’s agreed to play the part of my girlfriend, and—”

“You want to present a lie,” I cut in, again trying not to laugh.

“It’s not a huge lie.”

“Big enough,” I said. “What happens when your teammates see it and reveal the truth?”

Williams shrugged. “I keep to myself a lot. Don’t really let on too much about my private life. They’re always saying I’ve got some girlfriend hidden away from them. Too ashamed of them to bring her around or something. Or maybe the opposite. I don’t know what they think.”

“And you want to perpetuate the rumors?”

“Are you saying you won’t do it? Because it’s not like this show is nothing but the facts or anything.”

I scowled. “But it’s not an outright lie, either.”

“This lie’s for a good cause.”

“Breaking Dani Weber’s heart is a good cause?”

“No,” he said, the word coming out as a frustrated grumble. “I don’t want to hurt her feelings or anything. I’m just trying to keep my promise to Webs.”

“Is the promise that important?”

“This one is. And I don’t know how else I can convince her to leave me be.”

Going along with his request rubbed me wrong in all sorts of ways, but there was something in his eyes—an odd combination of determination and desperation—that compelled me to do it. “Is tomorrow night too soon?” I asked, racing through my mental calendar.

“I can make it work.”

Then I supposed I could make it work, too, even if it felt as though I would be compromising my journalistic integrity to do so.

But if I was already losing this job soon, anyway, I might as well do what I wanted, not what I felt as if I was supposed to do. Right now, I wanted to help Cody Williams. In the process, I might even end up helping Dani, too, although she likely wouldn’t see it that way at first. If he was willing to go to these lengths to drive her away, though, then she was better off without him.

That said, I couldn’t help but notice that he’d never actually said he wasn’t interested in her. Only that he’d made a promise to her father.

Very, very interesting.

I finished making plans with him to send a crew out with him tomorrow, and then we both headed back into the locker room. Once there, I did a quick scan to see what was going on. There was still a large crowd around David Weber, along with smaller groups of reporters surrounding a few of the guys. Nate had the second largest gathering, and he looked miserable. And there still wasn’t any way I could help him out, other than send him a text message that might make him smile when he saw it later, and wait for a time when we could talk without all the cameras around. So, once I was certain that my guys still had things well under control, I took out my phone and tried to think up something funny or otherwise helpful to say.

BAD KNEE OR not, Nate turned out to be the best player on the ice in Game One of the Storm’s series against the Blackhawks. He’d only scored a single goal, but he and his line mates had put so much pressure the other team that the Blackhawks’ top line had been incapable of generating any momentum. Between the way Nate used his speed and lack of size to swerve away from the defenders’ reach, Johansson’s stick-handling, and Kozlow’s ability to get under the skin of even the calmest players, they’d controlled the play in almost every moment they spent on the ice.

I didn’t know if they’d be able to keep this same sort of dominance up throughout the series, and particularly not once the games were played in Chicago and the Blackhawks would have the final change. If they could, this might turn out to be one of the more dominant performances of any line in recent playoff memory.

As expected, dozens of reporters gathered around Nate’s stall in the aftermath, so many of them that Dave could hardly get in there with his camera. I kept my distance—something I was attempting to do more and more when it came to filming anything to do with him for Eye of the Storm. I wasn’t anything close to unbiased, so I needed to let my guys do their jobs and keep myself out of it as much as possible.

There were still a large number of unexpected journalists among the ranks, due to Luke Weber’s announcement, but not as many as earlier. It seemed they were far more interested in covering the gay hockey player angle than actual hockey.

Later, once the press had cleared out and the guys had finished cleaning up after their dominating win, Nate sought me out. “Too late to take you out for coffee tonight? I know you’ve got a lot on your plate tomorrow.” He looked determined to convince me, even if I didn’t immediately jump on the idea.

I had every intention of spending the majority of the day tomorrow holed up in the cutting room putting the final touches on the next webisode, but the lure of spending some time with him tonight was far too enticing to ignore.

“I suppose you can,” I teased. “Although I might prefer a meal over coffee.”

“Stomach growling again?” He winked. “Good, because I’m starving. I was so worked up before the game because of all the press garbage that I didn’t eat like I should have.”

Ten minutes later, my guys were packing up their gear to head home for the night, and Nate and I were on our way out to his car. He reached for my hand, even though there were still a ton of people around. I hesitated for a moment, but not very long. Any damage that could be done to my career had already been done when my boss had seen that tweet from Jezek—or whoever it was that had gotten their hands on his phone. Besides, I hadn’t been concerned about people watching us last night on that river cruise, and we’d made quite a spectacle of ourselves.

“Do I make you nervous?” he asked me when we reached the parking garage.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to give him a glare that said you wish, but my laughter ruined the effect. “Maybe a little.”

“Why’s that?”

“I just… I’ve never been the girl who dated the jocks, you know? I dated the other geeks and nerds. I reported on the jocks. So I feel out of place being with you.”

“Yeah, but I’m a nerdy jock,” he said with a wink, and I laughed.

“More jock than nerd.”

“Maybe. Depends on who you ask. Koz is always telling me I spend too much time with my books and not enough time with the guys.”

“Do you care that much what he thinks? I doubt Jezek would say the same.”

“RJ knows why I’m doing it. He gets it. He knows my parents.”

“Then I’d say that his opinion matters more, wouldn’t you?”

“Hmm…” he said, but it sounded more like he agreed than wanted to argue.

“What about me? Do I make you nervous?”

“More excited than nervous. It’s like I’m always trying to figure out ways to be with you. To get you alone.” He squeezed my hand gently.

“That hasn’t been easy lately.”

“Not at all. Something tells me it won’t be easy for a while. But I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge, and I don’t get the impression you are, either.”

The corners of my lips curled upward. “My father would certainly agree with that. Speaking of him, he wants you to come to his house for dinner some night. I pushed him off until next week, but…”

“But he won’t be put off forever,” Nate finished for me.

“He’ll like you,” I felt compelled to tell him. “He won’t give you a hard time. He’s never been like David Weber, trying to run guys away from me.”

Nate turned and raised a brow. “Who’s Webs running off this time?”

I’d said something I shouldn’t have. If I wasn’t careful, I’d give Cody Williams and his plan away before he’d ever had a chance to execute it. It wouldn’t matter if things turned out the way he hoped or not if I couldn’t manage to keep my mouth shut. “Never mind that,” I said, shaking my head. Then I remembered what Weber had said to Luke during that phone call. I made a mental note to be sure that part was included in the cut we aired. I figured I could use that to explain what I’d meant if Nate ever brought it up again.

Not that I thought he would, but it was hard to be certain. I hadn’t exactly done a great job of explaining myself.

We reached his car, and he spun me around until my back was against the passenger door. My eyes went wide, flashing across to meet his. They’d gone dark and hungry, much like they’d been last night when he’d started to kiss me…before the debacle that had followed.

“I’m going to do this right this time,” he said, just before he inched his face closer to me.

Nate’s lips were soft and full as they matched up with mine. He braced his hands on either side of me, not quite pressing his body weight against me but still leaning enough that I felt every inch of him. I raised my arms, unsure what to do with them. Finally, I settled my hands on his biceps, which flexed beneath my touch.

He was all muscle, and still warm from so much exertion in the game even though he’d showered and changed into a suit. There wasn’t an ounce of tension in him, but as for me? I was taut from head to toe, wound up tight and ready to spring into him as soon as he released my trigger. He shifted his head, his nose brushing lightly against mine as he changed the angle, and the breath I’d been holding slipped free. It fluttered out as a sigh, and I closed my eyes to lose myself in him. His lips parted, and he glided his tongue along the seam between mine until I opened for him. My hands dug into his biceps, fisting of their own volition. I tried to inch closer to him when he took my lower lip between both of his and suckled, his breath mingling with mine. It was tender and sexy as all get out, and I couldn’t get enough.

Then, almost as soon as I began to stop overthinking things and simply enjoy the moment, he pulled away with a cocky grin that melted my insides like a Bunsen burner had been placed in my gut and turned up to high. “That was much better.”

That was putting it mildly. This kiss was so much better that my knees were weak.

Nate backed up and nudged me away from the door so he could open it, but I wobbled to such a degree that he put an arm around my waist to steady me. “Your ankle?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.

I shook my head. “Just a little light-headed.”

“Are you getting sick? Should I take you home and make you some soup? You’re working yourself into an early grave.”

Lovesick? Maybe. But there was no way around it… I had to stroke his ego and give him the truth. “I’m fine. It’s just because of how good that kiss was.”

He chuckled and guided me into the passenger seat. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

I was counting on it.

WHEN HARRY WALKED into the locker room late in the morning after our Game Two loss to the Blackhawks—a loss that came in overtime during one of the craziest thunderstorms I’d ever experienced, no less—Burnzie wanted answers. It didn’t matter that we were all busy getting ready to leave for Chicago, either. He wanted them now.

“Why the fuck haven’t you brought Jasinda around at all?” he demanded, tossing a towel in Harry’s direction to get his attention.

Jasinda? I didn’t have a clue who that was or what was going on. No doubt it had something to do with the latest episode of Eye of the Storm. It had been scheduled to go live on the Internet shortly before the game last night, but I hadn’t found time to watch it yet. I’d had better things to do—like taking Anne out for a late-night dinner at a twenty-four-hour diner again, even though the storm had still been raging, plus longer and longer study sessions with finals just around the corner.

“Didn’t feel like letting all you fucking buffoons give her a hard time,” Harry responded. He tossed the towel back at Burnzie and kept heading for his stall.

“You’re with a girl long enough that you’re comfortable letting the whole world know she’s your girlfriend on that show, but you’re not comfortable bringing her around your teammates?” Burnzie actually sounded pissed off, which wasn’t something that happened often. He typically let things roll off his back. Not this time, though. “What the fuck do you think that says about how you feel about us? You should bring her to the games. Introduce her to the other WAGs.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be part of all this,” Harry replied sheepishly.

“You have a girlfriend?” I asked, but no one was paying any attention to me.

“If she’s going to be part of your life, she’s going to be part of all this,” Hammer pointed out, always a voice of reason and experience. “Whether she wants to be or not. And whether you want her to be or not. That’s just how it works. Might as well get her used to it now.”

Mitch “Q” Quincey walked through the middle of the room before taking a seat on the bench to tape up a stick. “If it’s too much for her to take in at once, maybe introduce her to one or two of them, just so she’s got someone to lean on. Not trying to fit in on her own. Mia could help with that. She wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s not—” Harry let out a sound of pure frustration.

“Hell, you could hook her up with Ghost’s girl,” Hammer suggested. “They could stick together.”

“My girl? Anne already knows everyone,” I spluttered. And besides, was she my girlfriend? I mean, yeah, I wanted her to be, but we hadn’t exactly put it in so many words as of yet. “She’s hanging out—”

“She’s working,” Q said, raising a brow. “She’s doing a job. That’s not the same as hanging out, even if she knows who the WAGs are. It’s not like they’re getting a chance to know her. And she’s not taking part in all the fundraisers they do.”

“Katie would love some more help with the fundraisers,” Babs put in.

“At least I’m not trying to hide her,” I pointed out, hoping to shift the focus back onto Harry instead of me. I’d had more than my fair share lately. Time to dump some of it on someone else.

They went back to ragging on Harry again, so it seemed to do the trick.

RJ came in, looking like death warmed over. His stall was immediately next to mine. He plopped down on the bench, more so than taking a seat, and raked a hand through his hair.

“Rough night?” I asked, keeping my voice down so it could be just between the two of us.

“Lola is apparently terrified of thunder.”

“Apparently? You didn’t already know this?”

“We haven’t had many thunderstorms since I’ve had the dogs, have we?”

Come to think of it, he was right.

“Anyway, when she gets scared, it gets Max riled up. You ever try sleeping with three hundred seventy pounds of so-scared-they’re-shaking dog trying to crawl in your lap?”

“You should have shoved one of them off onto Amanda, at least.”

“She wasn’t even home to help me with them last night. Went out for one of her girlfriends’ birthdays. She was too drunk to drive home, so she spent the night there. It was just me and the dogs.”

No wonder he looked like shit. Didn’t mean I needed to take it easy on him, though. “Yeah, she says she was too drunk to come home. She’s probably secretly bisexual, and she wanted a hot night with a chick.”

“She would’ve invited me along if that’s what she was doing.”

“You sure about that?” Because I sure as hell wasn’t. In fact, I probably should’ve picked something else to poke at him with. It was too late to take the words back, though.

“Sure enough.” He grabbed a roll of tape and started working on one of his sticks. “You look at Twitter lately?” he asked, sounding far too casual. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“You know I haven’t. Why? Who’s posting shit about me now?”

“Not you,” he said darkly.

“Anne?” I didn’t need to hear his answer to know it had to be. “What kind of things?”

Before he could answer, she walked into the locker room along with a couple of her cameramen and started pointing out where she wanted them to go, effectively putting an end to the conversation. We weren’t going to talk about that shit if it might be caught on film, that was for sure.

She caught my eye and smiled. I winked to let her know I’d seen her, and then she went back to ordering her guys around like a sexy-as-hell drill sergeant.

Most of the guys headed out to the ice for a short practice, but I went to the trainers’ room along with Soupy, Hammer, and a couple of the other guys to get treatment on our various ailments. While I iced my knee and let Archie work on it, I took out my phone and decided to set up an account on Twitter, after all. It wasn’t my idea of a good time, but it seemed necessary if I wanted to know what was going on.

Once I’d set up my profile, I found RJ and a few of the other guys so I could scroll through the people they followed. That seemed as good a way as any to find Anne.

Sure enough, I stumbled onto her profile in no time. Nothing bad was there. In fact, she hadn’t posted to her profile in almost a month. I seemed to recall that she’d sworn off social media recently, so this made sense to me.

It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to search for what people had been posting about her, but that was when I understood RJ’s concerns.

No wonder @AnnePDennison got the @EyeoftheStormShow job. She’s fucking everyone she can to get it and keep it. #slut #whenisitmyturn

A picture of the two of us about to kiss on the dinner cruise the other night was included with the tweet. And that was just one of what had to be dozens of similar messages posted within the last few days. Some had pictures of us together, like the one that had been posted on (and subsequently deleted from) RJ’s account. Others had links to gossip sites that went on and on about her supposedly selling herself to everyone from me to her boss to Jim Sutter, and even Mr. Engels, the team owner.

It made me sick to my stomach.

I wanted to punch something.

More than anything, I wished I’d listened to my gut and backed off once I realized all the possible implications a relationship between the two of us would have on her career. Getting involved with Anne wasn’t problematic for me—but there seemed to be no end to the type and number of problems she was facing because of it.

There wasn’t any way to convince myself otherwise anymore: if I didn’t put an end to this, I would be one selfish son of a bitch.

Anne deserved better than that.

NATE HAD WINKED as he’d walked past me in the aisle, heading toward the back of the plane with Jezek instead of taking the open seat next to me.

While more than simply disappointed, I hadn’t thought too much of it at the time. He was still part of this team, after all, and he had responsibilities to fulfill and friends to spend time with. Those things hadn’t changed just because we’d gone out on a few dates. Besides, we’d never officially said anything about being a couple. There wasn’t any reason he should drop everything in order to hang out with me, especially if we would just end up spending the flight like we so often did—me working and him studying.

It still stung, though. I couldn’t deny that.

It stung even worse now that we’d arrived in Chicago for Game Three. In fact, it now felt as if he was actively avoiding me.

Once we got to the hotel, he’d disappeared with Jezek and a few of the other guys while I was still giving instructions to my crew about when and where I needed them next. After I got settled in my room, I had texted him to see if he wanted to grab dinner somewhere. No response. I ended up poring through the footage Bill had sent over while we’d been in the air over room service, since the guys on my crew had all broken up and tagged along with various groups of players and team executives, as I’d instructed them to do, filming everything they could.

I briefly checked in on Facebook, but wished I hadn’t. There was something going on between a group of black teenagers and the police in some suburb of Chicago. I set aside my work and turned on the news to learn as much as I could. I’d been watching for a few hours when my phone buzzed on the desk.

Nate. Calling me. The clock read 9:48, so it had sure taken him long enough.

I dropped everything and answered. “Hey. I was starting to get the feeling you’d been avoiding me.”

“You were, were you?” he asked, sounding distant. And he didn’t immediately try to put my mind at ease by telling me it had all been in my head or explaining why he hadn’t bothered to at least respond to my earlier message.

This couldn’t be good.

“Yeah…” I said, drawing the word out as I racked my brain to figure out what to do and how to respond. Because, while I may be inexperienced when it came to being with seriously hot guys who seemed way too good to be true, this sure felt a lot like he was dumping me.

Could he dump me if we weren’t officially a couple? I mean, we’d only kissed a few times and gone out on a couple of dates. There wasn’t anything more official than that.

“I just…” He let out a ragged sigh, which more than confirmed my fears.

My gut started churning. I shouldn’t have ordered pizza for my dinner. Really bad choice, in more ways than I could count. And I should have stopped eating it a long time ago instead of continuing to graze on it long after the point it should have been tossed in the garbage. Now I was going to have to pay the price for my poor decision-making.

“Where are you?” Nate asked after a protracted silence.

“In my room.”

“Can I come up and talk to you?”

If he intended to dump me, I’d rather have him do it over the phone. Because I didn’t want him to see me fall apart. I wasn’t a pretty crier. I didn’t cry often, but when I did, it was all ugly crying. Worse yet, I could already feel the beginnings of it starting. If we could get it over with right now, then I could cry my eyes out all alone, and I could curse him and throw things and bury my emotions in the cheesecake that I’d popped into the mini-fridge for later. And then by the time I saw him tomorrow, I could pull myself together again and act like he hadn’t completely crushed me.

Because that’s exactly what it would be. An act. A show. It would be me putting on a front for all the world to see so he wouldn’t know how deeply he’d hurt me.

Which meant I already cared about him more than I’d realized before now. I might have fallen for him just a bit. Stupid move, really, but it was too late to stop it from happening.

“Anne?” he said, because I hadn’t responded to him yet. I’d been too busy dumping myself in my head.

I swallowed hard, hoping that would be enough to keep my voice from cracking when I spoke. “Can it wait?” I finally asked. Wait? Why, other than the fact that I was a glutton for punishment? Waiting would be the worst idea ever, because then I’d only obsess over it all night long. I wouldn’t get a lick of work done, and there wasn’t a chance I’d be able to sleep. But now that I’d started down that path, I figured I might as well keep going. “I’ve got a lot on my pla—”

“It really can’t wait,” he said. “I know you’re busy. I should’ve done this earlier, but I couldn’t figure out how to say what I need to say. It won’t take long, but please, can I come up?”

No, it wouldn’t take long for him to tell me he didn’t want to be with me. We might as well get it over with. I still wouldn’t sleep tonight, but it would be for a different reason entirely.

“Sure,” I forced myself to say, even as I felt my throat closing. “Room 2318.”

“Be right there.” Then the line went dead.

I turned off the news, tossed the remainder of my pizza in the trash can, and raced around to tidy up. At the last second, I realized I’d already changed into my pj’s—a ratty T-shirt with holes I hadn’t realized were in it when I’d packed, and a pair of men’s boxer shorts that I’d bought as soon as I’d moved out for college and which had seen better days. No bra. I threw open the dresser drawer and grabbed the first bra I could get my hands on. I ripped the shirt off and squirreled my way into the bra, but then he was already knocking on my door. Flinging open the door of the closet, I somehow knocked the ironing board off its hooks. It smacked me in the head before clattering to the floor, barely missing my toes.

I let out a stream of curses.

“Anne?” Nate called from the hallway. “You okay?”

Not in the slightest, but I replied, “Fine! Just… Just gimme a second.” I managed to pick up the ironing board, but I couldn’t get it back on the hooks, so I angled it against the wall of the closet. It started to fall again, dragging my clothes off their hangers. They fell to the floor. Frustrated, I tried to right the stupid thing again, but it was all I could do to shove the door closed with everything inside the closet. The ironing board clattered around in there again for a moment.

But I still hadn’t taken out anything else to wear.

I tried to tug the door of the closet open, but it appeared to be wedged closed now. There wasn’t anything I could do but put on my ratty, hole-riddled T-shirt again and get rid of Nate as fast as possible. I tugged it back over my head and glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror. Not good enough. At all. I raced back into the main part of the room, grabbed a pillow off the bed, and held it in front of me to open the door so I’d at least have something covering me.

He looked me over with concern at first, but then his eyes dropped lower. He burst out laughing. “What on earth are you doing in here?”

I scowled at him, rubbing my temple with one hand. It hurt worse than I’d initially thought. “Are you coming in or not? Because I’m not standing here with the door open all night.”

He came through the door and closed it behind him, so I scurried into the room and took a seat on the couch. Nate sat next to me. Belatedly, I wished I’d thought to sit in the desk chair, because I wasn’t sure how I felt about being this close to him when he was about to break my heart.

“You’d already changed for the night,” he said, sounding almost apologetic if not for the hint of laughter coming through in his tone. “You should have said…”

“But you said it couldn’t wait,” I pointed out.

“Sounded like you were doing battle with something.”

“The ironing board in the closet.” I shrugged. “But that’s not why you’re here.”

“No, it’s not.” Still, he didn’t rush to get to the point. Instead, he passed his gaze over me again, until I shifted away from him and held the pillow tighter to my body, as if it could somehow protect me.

I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. “Can you just tell me why you’re up here? You said it couldn’t wait, so…”

He dropped his eyes to his lap for a moment, and I prepared myself for the hammer to fall. It couldn’t hurt too much worse than the blow to my head moments ago, could it? Probably not.

“I was on Twitter this morning—”

“You don’t have a Twitter account,” I cut in, completely thrown. “You told me you don’t like reading what everyone’s saying about you, so you avoid social media like the plague.”

“I didn’t have Twitter. Now I do.”

“Why?”

“Because RJ told me I needed to see something.”

The awful churning in my belly only got worse. There wasn’t anything good he could have found on Twitter, at least not if it was something his friend was telling him he needed to go look at. Jezek knew why Nate avoided it, the same as I did.

“And?” I asked tentatively.

“And he was right. There were a lot of things I needed to see. So I could understand—really understand—the sort of effect I’m having on you.”

I blinked and shook my head. “The effect you’re having on me? Why not ask me? Why bother signing up for Twi—”

“On your job,” he clarified. “Your career.”

“I already told you not to worry about all that. Yeah, my boss saw that picture, but he doesn’t have anyone to repl—”

“I’m not talking about the picture RJ posted. Or at least not just about that. There’s more. A lot more.”

I shook my head. “So some other people saw it and saved it before he delet—”

“Someone got pictures of us on that dinner cruise,” Nate said.

“Oh.” That part took me by surprise, but it didn’t change anything, as far as I could tell. There still wasn’t anyone ready to replace me tomorrow. My boss had been very clear about that part.

But now I was more confused than ever. Was this all because Nate had just figured out that people on the Internet were jerks? Had he been avoiding me because he couldn’t figure out how to break the news to me? Because our relationship was more public than we might have wanted it to be, at least at such an early juncture?

Maybe I’d been getting myself all worked up for no reason, and he wasn’t about to dump me. Now I had at least a glimmer of hope.

“They’re saying all sorts of things about you that I won’t repeat.”

“That’s not new,” I said, shaking my head to reassure him, uncertain what direction this conversation was heading. “It’s not anything to worry about. People say all sorts of things when they think they’re anonymous. You shouldn’t look at that stuff. It’ll get in your head, the same as seeing what the press is saying about you. It’ll only make you mad.”

“Mad?” Nate said with a lot more force than I’d ever heard from him before. He was usually even-keeled, as calm and collected as they came, always thinking things through before letting them fly out of his mouth. In that moment, he was the exact opposite. “It made me a hell of a lot more than mad. It made me scared for you and ashamed of myself for being so selfish—”

“Wait a second,” I interrupted, angling my body so I was facing him but keeping the pillow between us so he wouldn’t see all the holes in my shirt. “Back up. There’s no reason for you to be ashamed, and you’ve been anything but selfish.”

“Ignoring the fact that the two of us having any sort of relationship that goes beyond being strictly professional would be putting your career in danger isn’t selfish? How do you make that one out?”

“It’s my decision,” I insisted. “I went into this with both eyes open.”

“And I went in with blinders on.”

“Doesn’t matter now. Any damage that could come from this is already done.”

“Not exactly,” Nate insisted, eyes flashing.

I shook my head. “Meaning what? I already know the consequences I’m facing with my employer.”

“Yeah, you’re probably losing this job. That’s already been established. But what happens when you try to get your next job and all these rumors and innuendo follow you?”

“I point out that they’re nothing more than people being idiots on the Internet, which, by the way, is as good as an epidemic. I admit where I went wrong. And then I hope my prospective employer is able to see past the stupid people tweeting at me to find the truth. But seriously, I doubt they’ll see any of this stuff—”

“Seems like an awfully big assumption. Especially if nothing happens to quash it all now.”

I frowned at him, hugging my pillow closer. “My father’s already doing what he can on that score. He’s got his lawyer working on going after the worst offenders.”

“But what if that’s not enough? What then?” Nate raised a brow. “And that doesn’t have anything to do with how future employers will look at all the things that are floating around about you.”

“What things?” I demanded, my frustration leading to the words sounding snippier than I intended. “I don’t see how any employer could refuse to give me a chance simply because a bunch of idiots think I need a good rape, just because I’m a woman trying to make it in a man’s world.”

“Rape?” Nate practically roared. “Who said anything about rape?”

“A few hundred men on Twitter, last time I looked. Could be a few thousand by now, though. I told you about it before.”

“Yeah, but I thought you were exaggerating.”

“Not exaggerating. At all. But I doubt the lawyers have gotten very far with making them stop. And frankly, the police have a lot more important things to worry about, given the state of the world right now. Have you seen the news tonight?”

But clearly, the rape threats weren’t what he’d seen, and whether he’d seen tonight’s news or not, he wasn’t in any mood to be deterred from the conversation he’d started… Not if the utter fury causing a tic in his jaw was any indication.

I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like you haven’t been up against the same and worse.”

“No one’s threatened to rape me that I know of,” he grumbled.

“Maybe not, but they’ve certainly made unfounded comments about you based on nothing more than the color of your skin. And things are getting worse out there.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it? Tell me how it’s different. Tell me how it’s not all a bunch of ignorance and hatred and idiocy, because I don’t see it. You’ve had to face racism. I’ve had to face sexism. Big whoop.”

“How can you be so blasé about something like this?”

I threw a hand up in annoyance. “What else do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted.

“It’s not like you’ve been fighting back with everything you’ve got, either. You’re just pretending like it didn’t happen. Wishing it would go away, even though it isn’t. Two black teenagers got shot and killed by the cops tonight, not too far from here, you know. This city’s about ready to explode with tensions.”

“You’ve been helping me with pretending it wasn’t happening,” Nate pointed out. “And what am I supposed to do about kids getting killed? I’m just trying to do my job. That’s it.”

“I have been helping on that score! That’s absolutely right. I’ve been focusing my show on anything and everything else, to try to draw some of the focus off of you. I admit it. So how is this any different?”

“Because all that happened with me was a couple of assholes throwing a fucking banana peel on the ice and shouting a few slurs. No one threatened to fucking hurt me.”

“They’re just threats! What better way is there for me to fight back other than to go on about my life like they don’t have any effect on me?”

Nate glowered, but he didn’t immediately spout off a comeback. “But maybe—”

“Maybe nothing. Like I said, Dad has his lawyer on it. There’s not anything else I can do about it if all they’re doing is offering up vague threats on the Internet. No one’s acting on them. In a lot of ways, what happened with you was more real. They were physically there. In the building. You could see them, and they could see you. And there are real, physical things happening right now, in this city, related to the racial tensions. That’s a hell of a lot more real than anything I’m facing online. With this stuff, it’s all just…” I shrugged. “They don’t see me as a real person, you know? Someone with feelings. As long as they can hide behind the Internet, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

“I hate this,” Nate said, his jaw tic intensifying. “I hate everything about this.”

“I know. So do I.”

“Noted,” he grumbled.

“So what kinds of things did you see if it wasn’t that?” I half dreaded hearing his answer. But I wanted to move the conversation well away from the anonymous threats that I hadn’t thought about in weeks. “What are they saying now?”

He shook his head a couple of times, an internal war going on in his head. “They seem to think that the only way you got your job is by sleeping your way into it. They think you’re sleeping with me, with your boss, with Jim Sutter…with all sorts of people, just so you can keep your job.”

“Oh. Well, that’s not anywhere near as bad as I was assuming based on the way you’re acting.”

“You don’t care about that?”

I shrugged. “When you’ve seen all the threats I’ve seen, this isn’t all that bad. It’s just gossip. It’s not anything to worry about.”

“It is for me,” Nate said. “Which brings us to why I wanted to see you tonight.”

In the midst of our argument, I’d forgotten all about my fears from earlier, but now they came rushing back like a tidal wave, threatening to tow me under. I swallowed, barely managing to get the sudden excess of saliva past the huge lump in my throat. “Why is that?” I croaked.

The intensity in his eyes spoke of a dozen different emotions at once: anger, sadness, fear, lust, and countless others I couldn’t differentiate. And determination. That one, I could make out.

“I can’t be the one responsible for your career being ruined,” he said after what felt like an eternity.

“But you’re not—”

“I think we’ve already established that the kinds of things being spread around about you right now can and will destroy your career. Maybe not the job you have now, but it’ll follow you forever.”

Every word he said sucked more air out of the room, leaving me fighting for each and every breath I could get.

“So that’s it?” I demanded. “You’re done? You want out? It’s not like we were really a couple or anything, any—”

“Bullshit we weren’t.”

“That’s still what you’re saying, though, isn’t it? Whatever we might have been, you want to end it.”

“That’s not what I want. At all.”

“Then what?”

“You,” he shouted. “I want to be with you.”

“Well, great. I want to be with you, too.”

“Good.”

“So what are we even fighting about?”

“This isn’t a fight,” Nate insisted. “We aren’t fighting.”

“Sure seems like a good imitation of it.”

“We’re not fighting. We’re having a discussion. Maybe an argument, but not a fight. I’ve seen people fight, and that’s not what this is. I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter what I want, because I can’t be with you. Not if it’s going to—”

“Shouldn’t I have some say in this?” I demanded. “I mean, it’s my damn career we’re fighting over.”

“We’re not fighting.”

“It’s still my career,” I said, rolling my eyes. What the hell was it supposed to be like if we really were fighting, in his opinion? I didn’t want to see that. But, in a way, I was kind of glad we were getting a good argument in now—before things went too far between us. This way, either we would know that we could disagree and still move on as we were before, because we cared enough about each other to keep it from coming between us, or it would be too much and we could make a clean break.

He gave me a pouting sort of look and crossed his arms. “Fair enough. But I don’t want to—”

“To tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my career, right?” There was no hiding my sarcasm. It was dripping through my pores and invading every inch of the space between us. “Because you’re not the kind of guy who would try to tell a woman how she needs to go about her business just because you’re a man.”

Nate scowled, but he didn’t try to argue his way out of that one. Good thing, too, because I was ready to jump all over him if he tried it.

“I just think,” he said slowly, “that you’ve worked so hard and given up so much in order to even have a career, so maybe you shouldn’t throw it away so easily.”

“What do you mean by that? What have I given up?”

“Your relationship with your mother and her family.” He didn’t even hesitate when he said it, just laid it out there like it was a fact.

In a way, he was right. Absolutely right. But… “Don’t you think that’s even more reason I shouldn’t walk away from something like this?”

“Like your job?”

“No. Like us. Like what we’re building, whatever it is.” I sighed, because he didn’t immediately jump on board and agree with me. “There’s a lot more involved in my relationship with my mother than her not approving of my choice of career. That’s oversimplifying things to an insane degree. But I’m not willing to let my job ruin what we could have.”

Nate stared at me a long time, his dark eyes scanning every inch of my face, like he was trying to see into the depths of my soul. “Then I think we’re at a bit of an impasse.”

“We don’t have to be.”

“We don’t?” He raised a brow.

“Nope. Look, we both want to be together. Isn’t that enough for now? We can figure out the rest later. It’s not like we can solve the issue of my job tonight, let alone my entire career, while we’re sitting in this hotel room.”

“With you in your pj’s,” he said, winking.

I snuggled the pillow closer to my lap, but he grabbed hold of a corner and tugged it away, leaving me with nothing but those boxers and that holey T-shirt to cover me.

“That’s not fair,” I complained, but my laughter ruined the effect of my argument.

“Why not? You’ve been coming into the locker room for years with me in next to nothing. Besides, you look hot like that.”

Hot? I bit my lower lip and looked down, hoping to understand what he was seeing. All I could see were my clothes that needed to be trashed, not worn, and skin that I never let anyone see. I tucked my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs, hoping to cover as much as possible in lieu of racing over to the bed and burrowing beneath the blankets in an effort to disappear.

“Someday,” he said, not seeming to notice how uncomfortable I was, “some morning, I want to see you in my shirt and boxers, your hair all messed up, maybe borrowing my toothbrush.”

“I want my own toothbrush.” And a lot more clothes than what he wanted to see me in, but it wouldn’t do either of us much good to argue over that right now.

“Okay. You can have your own toothbrush, but I want you in my clothes. My bed.”

My stomach fluttered again, but this time from an entirely different sort of nerves. “So does that mean you’re done trying to get rid of me for my own sake now?”

The corners of his lips quirked up in a grin. “At least for now. But I’m not done worrying about you.”

“I suppose I can live with that.”

“And I want to talk to your father to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

I sighed, but there were worse things in the world than having men in my life who cared enough to involve themselves, even if getting involved was bound to be a hopeless cause. “You free Wednesday night for dinner?”

Nate leaned in, his lips hovering over mine so close I could feel the warmth of his breath. “With your father?”

My breathing stopped. My heartbeat, too. “Yes.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he said. Then he closed the distance between us and kissed me so well I felt it all the way to my tingling toes.

AS WE LEFT the ice at the at the end of the second period of Game Three—still scoreless—my eyes drifted up into the lower bowl and landed on a sign that was clearly meant for me. No words. Just a crudely drawn monkey and an enormous banana peel.

The sign disappeared only a moment after I saw it, remaining just long enough for me to register what I was seeing. I swallowed the bile that had gathered in my throat and forced my legs to keep moving until I reached my stall in the locker room.

I’d barely taken a seat before Archie was on the floor in front of me, trying to get my breezers up enough that he could take a look at my knee.

“It’s fine,” I said. Which was a lie. My knee wasn’t fine at all, especially not after I’d taken an awkward fall behind the net when I was trying to dig the puck out against two Blackhawks defenders about ten minutes ago. It also appeared that someone involved with the Blackhawks had been watching Eye of the Storm and knew I was playing on an injury. The Storm hadn’t made any sort of announcement to that effect, and we definitely hadn’t stated which knee was the problem. But every time I turned around out there tonight, some guy on the other team was taking a good, solid whack at the injury.

I’d probably be doing the same thing if the tables were reversed, so I couldn’t blame them. But it wasn’t helping with my pain level, to say the least.

Archie didn’t listen to me and kept shifting my gear around so he could take a look.

“Might be quicker and easier for me to strip,” I drawled.

But too late. He’d reached my knee brace and was poking around in there. “Pretty swollen,” he said. “Doc said we can give you a shot, if you nee—”

“I don’t need a shot in it.”

“Well, you’re getting a shit ton of ice on it as soon as this game’s over. And I think I want you to wear a wrap on it all night.”

“Fine.” I shrugged. Right now, I didn’t care about my knee. All I cared about was getting my head back on straight after what I’d just seen. Plus, I was worried that someone else had seen it. Or that cameras had captured it. If so, all signs pointed to my entire world being about to blow up all around me again.

He made a few adjustments to my brace before the coaches came into the room, then headed over to Soupy’s stall to perform a similar inspection.

Bergy took a quick look around, taking stock. We were banged up, but that was nothing new. He’d never been one to give rousing speeches, though, so I doubted that was what he had in store. “This one has the feel of a game that’s either about to get broken wide open or one that’s going to keep going until the wee hours of the morning,” he said. “I, for one, know which I’d prefer. Let’s get back out there and take care of business.”

Short and sweet, much like I’d been expecting.

After the coaches went back into Bergy’s office, RJ elbowed me in the ribs. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Total lie again. But I got the sense he already knew I wasn’t, anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal to lie to him. I shot him a look that I knew he’d be able to interpret without explanation.

“I saw it,” he said, sending ice through my blood.

“You think anyone else did?”

He shrugged. “Not sure.”

But if RJ had seen it, there was little doubt that plenty of others had, too. In fact, when I glanced up again, it was to see one of Anne’s cameramen focusing in on me.

Son of a bitch.

He didn’t say anything else the rest of the intermission. Didn’t need to. I knew he had my back, the same as the rest of my teammates did. I knew that whoever it was out there in the audience with that sign, they weren’t worth my time or energy. Nothing mattered but getting back out there and taking care of business, like Bergy had said.

Bergy sent me, Koz, and Jo-Jo out to take the first face-off of the third period. I didn’t bother looking up at the crowd. No need to see any more signs like the one I’d already witnessed. It’d only serve to piss me off worse than I already was, and that wouldn’t help me focus on the game. Didn’t need anything to grab my focus.

Koz won the draw and sent it back to our D. Not wasting any time, I barreled past my guy and headed straight for the blue line. Sure enough, 501 sent a pass straight to the tape on my stick. Jo-Jo was flying down the other wing, making a beeline for Crawford in the Blackhawks’ goal, and I could feel Koz’s presence not far behind me, coming up through the middle.

Koz and Jo-Jo both had defenders bearing down on them, but I was in the clear. I waited for Jo-Jo to cross in front of the goalie, creating a screen. I faked a pass to Koz, and the D tailing him bit, diving to the ice to prevent it.

I spotted a hole over the goalie’s stick-side shoulder and took my shot. He just got the butt end of his stick in the way in time, but the puck bounced onto Jo-Jo’s backside and trickled past Crawford into the goal.

I barely had my hands in the air to celebrate when Thor lifted me off the ice and spun me around, yelling some unintelligible Swedish gibberish in my ear. The rest of the guys on the ice joined in, slapping my ass, my helmet, and every other part of me they could reach.

Bergy winked at me when we headed back to the bench for a line change. He gave me a good smack on the shoulder once I took a seat next to RJ. “Let’s keep it going, boys,” Bergy called out. “Keep the pressure on them.”

“Nice one,” RJ said.

I grinned at him, but then I saw another sign in the crowd over his shoulder. Only two words and a single image from the sign registered before it disappeared: faggots and niggers, and a picture of a gun. Any thought of laughter fizzled away.

SO MANY REPORTERS had gathered around my stall after the game that I couldn’t take a full breath. They’d left a slight gap between me and them, but there wasn’t any air in the room. It had all been sucked away like a vacuum system was in play. With the masses of lights blinding me, the hordes of cameras and microphones being thrust in my direction, it was all I could do to keep from suffocating beneath the weight of it.

I glanced around for Anne or any of her camera guys, but I couldn’t find them in the throng. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though. With the mass of humanity in front of me, my family could have been in there, and I would be none the wiser.

Kurt Yarbrough stood behind my left shoulder, not that his presence made anything better.

“Nate!” they were all shouting, spouting off their questions, each trying to have his voice heard above the rest. Finally, only one voice kept going—one of the men in the front.

“Nate, tell us about the penalty shot. When did you know the puck went in?”

That was probably the easiest question I’d face all night, and I knew it. “I was just trying to watch Crawford and wait for him to bite first. Everyone talks about his glove side being his weak side, but honestly, he’s worked a lot on that lately. He bought a deke to his glove side, and I got off a backhand shot on the stick side. I didn’t realize it was in until the goal light lit up.”

I’d barely finished speaking before they were all shouting over each other again. The next question wasn’t anywhere near as safe.

“Nate, several of the cameras picked up shots of less-than-complimentary signs in the crowd tonight. Did you see any of them?”

I’d been grinding my teeth together so much for the last couple of hours that my jaw was sore. I forced myself to relax. “I saw some,” I bit off. “Didn’t pay much attention to them. Next question.”

“Did those signs add any fuel to the fire for you?” another guy asked.

I leveled him with a stare. “Did they upset you?”

He stammered for a moment, and Kurt inched forward. “Does anyone want to ask Mr. Golston about the game? About his goal and two assists that he scored tonight? Maybe about his thoughts on how the rest of the team played, especially his goaltender, who had a playoff shutout? Those are the things he’s here to talk about tonight.”

“So he’d rather hide from questions about the racism he’s facing?” some other voice from the crowd put in.

“I’m not hiding from anything. I’m just focusing on what’s important right here and right now, in this moment.”

“You don’t think it’s important that two black teenagers got killed yesterday?” another called out.

“Again, that didn’t have anything to do with me. And frankly, anyone who would go to the trouble to make signs like those just to pull me off my game isn’t important. Not in the least.”

There was a rumble rolling through the locker room coming from somewhere across from me. I glanced over to see if I could sort out what was going on, and several of the reporters surrounding me followed suit.

A smaller group of media was huddled around Colesy, but it was his voice that had risen above the hubbub.

“You all just need to get over it,” he said, almost in a shout.

Colesy wasn’t a shouter. He wasn’t a fighter. Hotheaded wasn’t a word anyone would ever use to describe the guy, yet right now…that was the shoe that seemed to fit best. If anyone needed Kurt or one of the media guys to rescue him tonight, that was Colesy.

I glanced back at Kurt, trying to tell him exactly that without using words. He seemed to be of the same mind, trying to shove his way out of my maze so he could get to the other side of the room—but the crowd didn’t give way very easily. He hadn’t made it very far when Colesy responded to another question.

“No, I don’t give a fuck that one of my teammates is black. I don’t give two shits if they’re brown, yellow, red, orange, or green, either.”

I couldn’t believe he was using that kind of language in front of reporters. That was completely out of character for Colesy. Kurt was apparently having the same sort of reaction I was, as he pushed harder to dig his way through the sea of people who’d shifted from my stall to Colesy’s.

“Does it bother you to see signs in the crowd about having people of color on your team? And what about the one that cast aspersions on the character of this organization because of the sexual orientation of David Weber’s son?”

“I think it says a hell of a lot more about the character of the person who held up the sign than it does about anyone involved with this organization. What does that even mean, doubting the character of the organization because there’s a homosexual in the family? What kind of family would this be if—” He broke off, dragging a towel down his face. “We’re all behind Ghost in this room, and we’re all behind Luke Weber, too. Every last one of us.”

“What if one of the guys on this team is gay?” someone I couldn’t see asked.

“Why the hell would I care if a teammate is gay? That’s as stupid as thinking Ghost can’t play because he’s black. Can the guy still play the game? Is he part of this team? Those things are all that matter to me, and I think they’re all that matters to any guy in this locker room.”

“A lot of players would care—”

“Who the fuck is this a lot of players you’re talking about? Because that’s news to me. And if anyone on this team has a fucking problem with someone being gay, then they have a problem with me. Because I’m gay. Okay?”

What? Colesy was gay? Granted, I’d never seen the guy with a girlfriend, but I never would have guessed the reason behind it, either. But like he had already said—it didn’t matter. Because he was Colesy. He was part of this team—this family—and he had been for a long time, and that was that.

Except, I hated that he was coming out like this. It didn’t feel right to me. Colesy hadn’t said a word to the guys on the team, as far as I knew. That meant there was a reason for keeping his silence. I didn’t know what his reason for secrecy was any more than I knew why he was coming out with it now, but I hated that they’d goaded him into revealing such a personal thing in this way. I wanted to punch someone. Something. Anything.

The glare on Colesy’s face when he was looking at one of those reporters was unlike anything I’d ever seen from him before in my life. All of the media in front of him started talking at once, trying to force their questions forward as the story suddenly took a shift no one had expected. But he didn’t let them pick up any steam, pushing through before they could ask him anything else. “Yeah, that’s right, I’m gay. Do you have a problem with that? Do you think you’re going to catch it from me? There must be something running rampant in hockey locker rooms lately, now that there’s a whopping two of us who’ve come out. Maybe you should go f—”

But Kurt reached him and grabbed his arm before he could finish the thought and put his foot in his mouth worse than he already had. “That’s all for today, folks,” Kurt said, much calmer on the exterior than I knew he must be on the inside. “We’re done here.” A few of the reporters tried to stop Kurt, hoping to ask more questions, but he didn’t give them the opportunity. “There will be an official statement from the Portland Storm offices tomorrow, but not before,” he said. Then he dragged Colesy out of the locker room, heading for the coach’s office.

Colesy caught my eye as they went past. He winked in my direction. Holy shit. I don’t know what sort of reaction I’d been expecting when he went by, but a wink was definitely not it.

What the hell just happened?

Several of the media guys still surrounding me started murmuring among themselves, and a couple of them turned around and tried to thrust their mics back in my face.

I shook my head, having none of it. “You heard Kurt, the same as I did,” I said, shoving past them before any of the others could get any bright ideas about foisting questions about having a gay teammate on me. They’d been after the rest of the guys ever since Luke Weber’s press conference, but so far, they’d left me out of it. There were enough other things to harp on me about, I supposed. But either way, I’d had enough. “That’s all for today. I’m done.”

Before they could try to get anything else out of me, and particularly before I said something they could take out of context and twist around into another thing entirely, I tugged my jersey over my head, tossed it in the bin in the middle of the room, and followed Kurt and Colesy to Bergy’s office. Webs opened the door when I knocked. He nodded and jerked his head toward the middle of the room to invite me in, closing the door behind me.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I demanded as soon as I made sure we were alone—no reporters, not even any of the guys from Anne’s crew.

Colesy rolled his eyes. “I was thinking I was sick and tired of the way they’re beating you over the head with that shit, so I wanted to give them something else they can flog to death.”

“But you— You’re not—” I stopped, shaking my head, not even sure what to say to that.

“Yes, I’m really gay. Not exactly how I intended to come out, but whatever. My family already knows. My father will be furious that this is how the world finds out, but that’s his problem. Hell, he still thinks he should be able to beat the gay out of me or something.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I just couldn’t stand the way they keep digging at you, solely because there are some racist shits in the world.”

All I could do was stare at him, trying to find a way to turn everything running through my head into words. “You just came out to take the heat off of me?”

He shrugged. “Something like that. Not a big deal.”

Big deal didn’t even come close to covering it. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. I didn’t know how I’d ever thank him enough to cover it. I started by doing the only thing that felt right. I crossed over, grabbed his hand, pulled him in for a hug, and slapped him on the back.

“SORRY I DIDN’T get in there before they shut the door,” Ben said, packing up his equipment now that the press had left the locker room and we were getting ready to ride the bus back to the hotel with the team. “There were too many people in the way.”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. You got plenty in the locker room, and I’m sure we can get anything else we need over the next few days.”

To be completely honest, there was a part of me that was glad Nate had those moments alone with Paxton and the coaching staff after what had gone down following the game. I got the sense that they all needed to process it first, before they were ready to comment on it in any way.

For that matter, I hadn’t fully wrapped my head around everything that had happened tonight. The Storm had won the game, taking a two-to-one lead in the series. But that felt minor in comparison to everything else—the racist and homophobic signs that had kept popping up around the United Center, the way the media had gone on the offensive with Nate, and how Paxton had come out as being gay.

It didn’t matter how far the world had progressed in terms of acceptance. The truth was, there weren’t many professional athletes who were officially out. For that matter, there were none, until tonight, in the NHL. Luke Weber’s coming out as a gay college athlete last week had been a huge event in the hockey world, but Cole Paxton’s revelation would prove to be the ultimate trump card. Now that he’d made his revelation, the doors would be open for others to come through.

How soon that would happen remained to be seen—there were still a ton of barriers to be crossed, and I couldn’t imagine it would be an easy decision for many players to make due to locker room culture—but Luke Weber and Cole Paxton had, in the last week, bulldozed a path for others to follow.

But right now, my concern was for Nate. Our cameras had landed on at least four different racist signs in the arena, and I knew he’d seen some of them, as well. Add that to the way the media hadn’t been able to let the story go after the more recent events, and I wasn’t sure where his head was.

I sent my guys out to load their equipment on the truck, since I’d made the executive decision not to film any more tonight, then made my way out to the bus. Nate was already there, with a book in his hands and an empty seat next to him. It was a regular paperback this time, not one of his textbooks, and he was holding it open in such a way that he wasn’t creasing the spine.

I took the seat next to him and tipped the book back so I could see what he was reading. The Hunger Games. Not at all what I would have expected.

I raised a brow in question when he looked up.

“You have a problem with me reading this?” he asked, but he did it with a wink.

“Just surprised. Never pegged you for being the futuristic dystopian love triangle sort of guy.”

“I tried Twilight, but I couldn’t get into it. The vampire thing just didn’t work for me.”

“But alternate realities are fine?”

“Depends on the alternate reality. I tried Divergent, too, and I was okay with it until the last book, where everything was explained.”

“Didn’t like the ending?” I asked.

“Didn’t like any piece of the explanation about everything in the world. I was mad. Got all invested in what seemed like a really cool thing, and the answers were stupid.”

“Stupid is bad.”

“Stupid is worse than bad. It’s awful. I had to fix a hole in a wall because I threw the book.”

I laughed.

“It was the hardback,” he explained.

“So what happens if you don’t like the ending to this series?”

“I already know the ending, or at least I assume I do. Saw the movies first, so unless they changed a ton because of it being Hollywood, I have a good sense of it. Seemed like a safer plan, so I wouldn’t have to fix any more holes in the walls.”

“A lot cheaper, at least.”

“You have no idea. Drywall. Paint. We had to repaint the whole room, because we couldn’t match the original color exactly, and that led to doing the entire house.” He gave me a meaningful look. “It was my mom’s wall. I was visiting my parents over the summer. Turned into a massive redecorating project. Dad wanted to murder me before she was done. New paint wasn’t enough. She ended up remodeling the entire kitchen and both bathrooms before he finally put his foot down and insisted she had to stop.”

The bus pulled out into traffic. I hadn’t been paying attention to see if everyone had gotten on board, too caught up in talking young-adult fiction with Nate.

“You know those books are all essentially romances, right?” I pointed out. “Written for teenagers, too.”

“You have a problem with the fact that I read romance?”

I shook my head. “No problem at all. Just surprised, I guess.” Again. He kept surprising me.

“I need a few tips in the romance department.”

I rolled my eyes. “From teenagers?”

“I’ll take them from anyone and anywhere I can find them.”

“Hardly. You did well enough on your own with that dinner cruise.” I’d never been treated to anything as romantic as that before. With most of the guys I had dated over the years, ordering pizza and playing a few rounds of Dungeons and Dragons was as romantic as it got. “Or have I missed the book you got that one from?”

He wrapped a strong arm around my shoulders and drew me in against his side. It was all I could do not to let out an audible sigh of contentment.

“That was one date. It takes more than one night of romance to be considered a romantic.”

“Hmm,” I said, snuggling closer. “So what kind of tips are you getting from this book?”

“Well, it’s too late to throw burned bread to you in the rain while you’re starving as a child, so I’m hoping I run across some better tips once I get further in. Were you ever starving as a kid?” he asked, raising a brow. Then he shook his head. “Probably not.”

“Definitely not,” I said. “Dad always made a good living. We never wanted for anything. You seem like you’re in a good mood.”

“You surprised after everything that happened tonight?”

“A bit.” No point in lying about that.

“I was in a shitty mood. But then Colesy did what he did, and everything changed.”

I lifted my head so I could raise a brow at him. “Everything?”

He shrugged, grinning. “Enough. At least when it came to my mood.”

“Guess I should be glad he opened himself up to be the next media whipping boy, then.”

“Oh yeah? And why is that?”

“Because I thought I was going to have to spend some time putting you in a better mood.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t do that anyway,” Nate murmured, waggling his eyebrows.

I laughed and curled into his side as he marked his page—using a sticky note as a bookmark instead of folding down a corner and desecrating the book, I couldn’t help but notice—and we stayed like that until the bus pulled up in front of the team’s hotel.

A bunch of the guys immediately headed out in groups to get a late-night dinner. I assumed Nate would want to do the same, but he surprised me by taking my hand once I followed him off the bus and leading me inside, heading straight through the lobby and making a beeline for the elevator bay.

“You’re not hungry?” I asked after he pressed the up button.

He glanced around, making sure no one was within earshot, then put his mouth next to my ear. “Different kind of hunger,” he whispered, moments before his lips closed over the lobe of my ear.

A shiver raced up my spine as the elevator doors opened. We went in together. Alone. As the doors closed again, Nate pressed the button for his floor.

I didn’t press the button for mine.

BY THE TIME we reached Nate’s room, my pulse was at a full sprint from a combination of nerves and excitement. We’d managed to keep our hands to ourselves in the elevator, but an unspoken agreement of what was to come filled the space between us.

His hand holding tightly to mine, he flipped on the lights and closed the door behind us. He leaned back against it, his eyes passing over my face in a way that heated me from the belly out in every direction. He looked as calm and unflappable as I felt out of control, especially when he smiled at me. His smile could always do that to me. There was something confident and maybe just a little bit cocky about it. He had an utter and complete belief in himself that I envied. It didn’t matter how successful I might be in anything—I’d never been so self-assured. And right now? I felt as uncertain of myself as I ever had in my life.

How could he be keeping it together like this? He was supposed to be wild and angry and falling to pieces because of those signs in the crowd and the way the press had tried to flog the racism angle to death again, and I was supposed to let him lose himself in me. That had been my plan. I was going to be there for him on a physical level, to let him vent whatever frustrations he needed to vent into me.

Instead, he was acting like nothing out of the ordinary had happened tonight, and I was the one falling apart at the seams. He seemed to be gathering all my loose ends together, too, keeping them safe until I was able to stitch things together again. Still, it annoyed me to no end that our roles were reversed from what I’d been expecting.

“You’re breathing hard,” he said, raising our joined hands. He set mine against his chest, and my fingers curled in toward him.

The whole way back to the hotel, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him. I’d been thinking about it for so long—longer than I should have been. He was right in that the two of us should be off-limits for each other. We both knew it in our heads. Too bad no one bothered getting that message through to our hearts.

I felt my own chest rise and fall, much harder than his was at the moment. He’d said I was breathing hard? That was putting it mildly. “I suppose I am.” I took a step closer to him, my pulse drowning out all sounds other than our unsteady breaths. There was one sign, at least, that he wasn’t quite as cool and collected as I’d imagined at first—his ragged breathing. His heart beat hard and fast beneath my fingertips. Another sign of his struggles. Maybe I wasn’t the only one losing my grip on reality because of lust.

Was it just lust, though? I wasn’t so sure of that anymore. For my part, I was well and truly beyond the lust stage and verging on falling hard. After the way we’d argued last night… All signs pointed toward us both being in the same place, which was both exhilarating and startling. I couldn’t say that I’d ever been in love before. There’d been plenty of infatuations over the years, and I wasn’t immune to a healthy crush. But was this how love felt? Aching need, mixed with a calming sense of rightness settling over me, and a good dose of aggravation to balance everything out?

With my pumps, we were the same height. He reached behind my head and released the clip that had been holding the mess of my hair captive all day. My hair was long, thick, and curly, an unruly mass that had always been the bane of my mother’s existence. She’d spent years cursing my father for his DNA and lamenting the fact that I wasn’t fully Indian, with the sleek, easily restrained hair that ran in her family.

As an adult, I went back and forth between cursing my hair as much as she had and reveling in the ways I was different from my mother and her family. Nate combed his fingers through my tangled ringlets, and it was all I could do to keep from sighing and falling into him.

“You wore it down like this that night on the cruise,” he said. “I can’t tell you how hard it was to keep from running my fingers through it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugged, but he didn’t take his hand away. Thank goodness. I couldn’t handle it if he stopped now, which only proved I was more of a lost cause than I’d realized. “Thought I should kiss you first,” he said with a half shrug.

“Do you have a list of steps to follow for everything you do?” I let my other hand rest on his chest, too, a smile working its way to my lips. My fingers itched to loosen his tie and undo his buttons, but I didn’t want to rush into anything. If I did, we might both end up with broken limbs or concussions, given the way I always seemed to be hurting myself around him.

“Is it a problem if I do?”

“Not a problem, exactly, no. But does that mean you’ve got a formula in place for how this next part is going to go?”

“Why?” He laughed. “You want a rundown? Let me think… Step one: kiss Anne until her toes curl. Step two: grope Anne until my toes curl.”

I halfheartedly punched him on the shoulder.

“Sorry. Groping isn’t the romantic word I should be using if I’m paying attention to The Hunger Games. Peeta would never talk about groping Katniss. He might think about it, but he’d be a gentleman.”

“Just don’t tell me that step three is bump and grind, and I think I’ll cope well enough.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of bump uglies.”

I rolled my eyes. “Either way.”

He gave me an exaggerated pout. “You mean we aren’t going to get to that step tonight? Because if not, I’ll have to adjust my schedule to account for not making it all the way to home base yet.”

“Please tell me we’re not going to have to use sports analogies for everything.”

“I’m happy to use any form of pop culture references you prefer, and especially those that rank high in the realm of geekdom.”

“You’d do that for me, hmm?”

“I’d do just about anything for you,” he said, sounding as serious as ever. Like he meant it. Like he wasn’t just exaggerating because that’s what you do when you’re flirting. He couldn’t mean any such thing, could he? Anything was an incredibly broad term.

I rolled my eyes, deciding to take it as a simple flirtation, but he stopped me from arguing with him by kissing me. A few torturously long moments after his lips pressed to mine, his tongue traced the seam of my lips. I welcomed him in, taking hold of his jacket lapels to ground myself because I felt ready to float away otherwise. Somehow, gravity ceased to exist. I had to wonder what other basic laws of human life were going to be turned on their heads before this came to a conclusion. He stopped teasing his fingers through my hair, instead sliding them down the column of my neck.

“That’s a lot better than groping,” I murmured when he nipped my lower lip and then broke away.

“You sure about that?” He trailed his other hand down my back until he could grab a palm full of my bottom and squeeze. He winked. “Because I can give you both.”

I laughed out loud, which only led to a deeper kiss. All the sweetness of the first one was gone. This was so much more intense. Harder. Hungrier. It was wet and raw, with teeth and tongue, our bodies rubbing together in a heated frenzy.

But we both had far too much clothing in the way. With shaking hands, I tugged at his tie until I got the knot loose. Nate appeared to be of the same mind. He jerked the tie free from his collar and tossed it on the dresser, then walked me backward into the room, undoing the buttons of my jacket as he went.

Within moments, we were a tangle of limbs and clothes, both partially undressed as we tumbled onto the bed. Our jackets were gone. One of my shoes was still on my foot, but the other was missing. He’d stripped his belt and pants away before we fell on the bed, leaving his powerful thighs bare other than the bands of his boxer-briefs and the bandage on his leg.

Nate rolled us over until I was on top of him. I steadied myself, bracing my knees on either side of his hips and resting my hands on his shoulders. My hair hung down between us, the long ends of it dusting his chest. He freed my shirt from my waistband, shifted the fabric up, and tugged it over my head.

Out of nowhere, panic hit me. I scrabbled to grab my shirt again, or anything at all I could use to cover myself with, but he caught my hands in his, trapping them between us and willing me with his steady gaze to calm down.

I tried. Took deep breaths. Focused on his eyes, like they were my safe space. Couldn’t stop thinking about how no one had ever—ever—seen me this naked before, not since I was a little girl and my parents had bathed me. I’d had sex before, sure, but never with the lights on. Even in high school gym class, I’d gone into a private bathroom stall to change clothes. I wanted to free my hands and cover my body, but Nate’s grip, while gentle, was unrelenting.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I shook my head, trying to get free from him, but he held me still.

He tucked some of my hair behind my ear with his free hand, his fingertips teasing me with a light, gentle touch. I wanted more of that, but…

“I just want to look at you,” he said. As if to prove his point, his gaze roved from my face to my neck. My shoulders. The space between my breasts. I didn’t even spend any more time than necessary looking at my own body in the mirror, covering up as soon as possible. How could I allow him to? But he kept staring. “Is that all right? If I spend some time looking at you? God, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

My breath formed a knot under my breastbone. His touch was soothing, but his gaze had the opposite effect on me. I needed to cover myself, and I needed to do it now. But I was frozen beneath his stare. Couldn’t move, even if Nate wasn’t trapping my hands in his grip.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He trailed his fingers along the same path his eyes had just taken. Everywhere he touched, my skin jumped. Goose bumps popped up along each inch of his journey, warming me even though the air in the room suddenly felt cold enough to turn my breath to frost—if I had any breath, which, of course, I didn’t. Everything about this moment was a war inside my body, and one I couldn’t understand, let alone explain.

I shook my head. I convinced myself I could tell him nothing was wrong even though it was a lie. But that wasn’t even close to what came out of my mouth.

“Can we turn out the lights?” I spluttered, wishing I could force the words back inside, but it was too late. There they were, out in the open, laughing at me. The most ridiculous part of it was that I wanted to see Nate’s body with everything that was in me. I’d seen him nearly naked so many times before, and he was a gorgeous specimen of a man. Rock-hard abs. Smooth, dark skin that I wanted to taste. A chest like Hercules. A butt like a Speedo model.

I’d been thinking about getting him undressed for longer than was good for me.

But now he was looking at me. And I didn’t think I could cope, which was beyond pathetic. I couldn’t stop thinking about covering myself again. Not only that, but it was all my mother’s fault. She’d gotten so deeply into my head that she was invading my thoughts even now, at a time when she was the last person on earth I ought to be thinking of.

I’d only started wearing shorts and T-shirts to sleep in once I’d moved out of my father’s house to live on my own—once there was no one else around to see my bare arms and legs, or anything else that might be hanging out there. It was one of the vestiges of all the years living with my mother, even if I’d done my best to shake free of her influence in every way possible. Apparently, I’d never been able to rid myself of her voice in my ear anytime I attempted to wear something that was common in America.

My recognition of that fact didn’t do anything to ease the discomfort of the current situation, especially with Nate looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

“You want to turn the lights out,” he repeated, sounding as full of dismay as I’d ever heard him.

“Never mind,” I insisted, shaking my head and trying to convince myself that I could get through this with the lights on. “It’s ridiculous. I’m being—”

“No,” he said, as calm as ever. “If you need the lights off, we’ll turn the lights off. You’re sure you want this, though? Because I don’t want to rush you. If you need more time…” He released my hands, letting me reach for the blankets to cover myself. The way he was looking at me, his gaze so filled with concern, nearly broke me.

“I don’t need more time. I want this. I want you. More than anything.” Even more than my next breath. “I just—” Couldn’t find the words. Definitely couldn’t explain.

“You just need the lights out.”

I nodded, hating myself because of the momentary flash of disappointment that swept through his eyes.

Men were visual creatures. I knew that. But here I was, asking Nate to give up that part of the experience just because I couldn’t deal.

He sat up and eased me off his lap before crossing to flip the switch, leaving only the lamp next to the bed burning. I clutched the blankets to my chest as he took a moment to remove his shirt and retrieve a foil-wrapped condom from a box on the nightstand. Then he turned off the lamp, as well, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Better?” he asked, stretching out a hand for mine.

I put my hand in his, letting his calmness seep into me as the blankets drifted back down to the mattress. “Much.”

“You’re sure?”

My breaths came more regularly. The uncomfortable jumping sensation in my belly was starting to ease. “Positive,” I said.

“Good. So any chance I can get back to the groping part of the proceedings? Because I was getting really close to the toe-curling stuff.”

I laughed and inched closer to him. Once again, he’d surprised me by simply accepting whatever was thrown at him and moving forward, as though nothing was standing in his way. “I don’t know about yours, but mine were already curling.”

“Not curling anywhere near enough yet.” There was a hint of a smile in Nate’s tone. He caressed my cheek and drew my face toward his, but he didn’t kiss me even though our mouths were only a hairsbreadth apart. He slid his other hand up and down the side of my arm. “You’re sure this is okay?”

I nodded, trusting that the movement would be enough with his hand on my face.

The thumb of his other hand slipped across to tickle the side of my breast. “You’d tell me if I did something that’s not, wouldn’t you? You’d stop me?”

I hated how worried he sounded, especially because I was the reason for it. “Promise. I’ll tell you. But this is good. I want this. Just not…”

“Not with the lights on,” he finished for me.

“Right.” I couldn’t get over the fact that he was going along with it, not trying to figure out why I couldn’t allow him to see me.

His touch was still so tentative, though—not groping like he’d promised only moments before. Lifting up onto my knees, I reached behind my back and unclasped my bra. When the straps fell forward, I took Nate’s hand and guided him to touch me. He palmed my breast, and I sucked in a breath at the surge of energy racing through me.

“That’s better,” I said.

He kneaded gently, and I felt the pull all the way in my core.

Not trusting my legs to hold me up for much longer, considering the amount of adrenaline surging through my veins, I undid the hook and zipper of my slacks. I hooked my thumbs under the band of both my pants and my underwear, lowering them past my hips as Nate started exploring my body with his hands. He used them the way a blind man would, learning how I looked through the sense of touch.

I steadied myself with my hands on his shoulders. He helped me free myself of the last of my clothes, tossing them to the floor. He kissed me again, and I lost myself in sensation. His hands—strong and sure—teased me to a frenzy, until I was aching to be closer to him. He had amazing hands. Skilled hands. Loving hands. Before long, he started using his mouth to torment me in new and delightful ways.

“Nate,” I begged, arching into him as he shifted us, placing me on my back.

He took a moment to remove the rest of his clothes and put on a condom, but then the bed shifted with his weight as he settled between my legs. I raised my knees and drew him toward me, so ready to be with him I thought I might burst.

He let out a groan as he slipped easily inside, his head coming down to rest beside mine. I rocked my hips against him, urging him to move with me. He held himself above me, his powerful arms preventing him from crushing me as we crashed into each other repeatedly.

It was all I could do to hold on, both arms around his shoulders, my legs locked behind his waist, riding the cresting waves caused by sensation and emotion colliding inside me. I held on and knew I couldn’t let go even if I’d wanted to, because no one had ever made me feel more accepted than Nate did in that moment. My crazy panic about him seeing my body and all, he took me as I was and left me feeling cherished.

It all came together in my mind at the same time as my climax struck. Every muscle in my body clenched, and I clasped Nate tightly to me until the tiny tremors came to a stop. He whispered things in my ear I couldn’t make out, driving his hips against me a few more times. His body tensing, his back flexing, he came and rolled off me, drawing me to his side almost in the same movement.

I laid my head on his chest, rising and falling with his breaths, his heart pounding out a rhythm against my ear.

“I could stay like this forever,” he said once his breathing started to settle into a more normal pattern. “Never move another muscle. I’d be fine with that.”

I’d be fine with it, too. Until the sun came up, and he could see every bit of me. I decided to keep that thought to myself.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Nate said after a moment. He stretched his arm around my shoulder and drew me closer to his side. “Not having second thoughts now, are you?”

“No regrets,” I insisted.

“But? Are you still worried about whatever had you freaking out with the lights?”

I shook my head again and slipped away from Nate, dragging a pillow with me and holding it over my chest and abdomen. Not that he could see me with it pitch black in here, anyway, so it shouldn’t matter. But I couldn’t seem to face this without covering myself.

Moments ago, he’d been what had covered me. It seemed crazy that I could have been so close with him—the two of us touching one another in every way people could touch—but I couldn’t bear the thought of his eyes falling on my naked body.

He rolled over so he was facing my back, but this time, he didn’t take the pillow away. Not like he had last night. He didn’t attempt to make me face him, either. He just rested his hand on my elbow, letting me know he was there. That he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Why don’t you want me to see you?” he asked.

I tried to shrug it off, but a massive sense of shame was welling up inside me, choking me with its intensity. There was no way to get rid of the sensation other than to spit it out. “It’s stupid,” I said.

“That’s one word that doesn’t ever belong anywhere near you.”

“No, but… There’s no good reason for me to be like this. Except I am.”

“Like what?” he asked, so calm and patient, just like always.

“I just— I can’t handle anyone looking at me. Seeing me undressed. Seeing me without something covering every single inch of me.”

“But you’re beautiful. You know you’re gorgeous, right? I’ve never been as turned on as I am when I look at you.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that, even. It comes down to all my mother’s ideas of what’s acceptable and what isn’t. When I was a girl, she forced me to wear traditional Indian clothes, even though I was living in America. Everything had to be covered all the time—and I do mean everything. My neck, face, and hands were just about the only parts of me that ever saw the light of day, all the way through high school. I had to swim in full clothing, so I chose not to swim. I couldn’t participate in sports if I wasn’t in long pants and long sleeves, so I didn’t participate—I just reported on them, instead. She even made me go to my prom in a sari.”

“Saris are pretty,” he said.

“Pretty, but they’re not like regular prom dresses.”

“You don’t dress like that now,” Nate pointed out.

“I wouldn’t even if you paid me to. Except, if I’m being completely honest, I still dress like that in some ways.”

He made a sound of disagreement.

“No, I’m being serious!” I said. “I wear business suits that cover everything but my neck and my hands. You pointed out yourself that I never wear dresses, and you weren’t sure I had legs under there…”

“I was teasing you. Because I like to tease you, not because I think you need to change anything.”

“But I do need to change things, because my mother’s still in my head. I don’t know how to handle anyone seeing me if I don’t have every available inch of skin covered in some way.”

“Even though I was just inside you?” he asked.

“Even then.”

“But you don’t have a problem with me touching you?” As if to test the theory, he slid his hand down my side until it settled on my hip.

“No,” I said, but the word came out on a puff of air.

“Just with me seeing you.”

“I told you it was stupid.”

He didn’t say anything for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. But then he curled his arm around my waist and drew me back against him. “Don’t say things like that,” he murmured, his face buried against my hair.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like hearing anyone attack the woman I love.”

All of those emotions that had been crashing into each other a bit ago? In that moment, they smashed together all at once and caused an explosion.

In my heart.

SOMETIME BEFORE SUNRISE, after spending most of the night in my arms, Anne kissed me, found her clothes in the dark, and made her way back to her own room.

There’d been a selfish part of me hoping she’d keep sleeping until the sun lit the room, but I had no intention of pushing her for something she wasn’t ready to give me. I might want to deliver her mother a piece of my mind, but the kind of shame Anne felt about her body wasn’t something she would break free from overnight. She needed time. And acceptance. And I intended to provide her with as much of both as she required.

With the playoffs in full swing, Bergy and the rest of the coaches weren’t holding too many practices these days. We needed rest a hell of a lot more than we needed a refresher course in the systems we’d been using all season long, so that was exactly what they gave us. Instead of a needless practice the day after Game Three, Bergy had us all come in for a brief film session so we could talk about all the things that had gone both right and wrong the night before. Then he gave us the rest of the day off to spend in whatever manner we preferred, with a warning to be very careful if we were out and about in the city, considering the heightened state of tensions.

I wanted to spend it with Anne, of course, but while I had the day off, she still had a job to do. She and some of her crew tagged along with Koz, 501, Coop, and Jo-Jo. I wasn’t sure where they were headed, but since Koz was involved, I hoped he wasn’t going to get Coop and Jo-Jo in over their heads with anything. They were the two youngest guys on the team, and they were definitely still impressionable. Coop hadn’t even been with us the whole season, only getting called up a few months back due to some injuries. I couldn’t say that Koz would be a good influence on them, but they were grown men and could do what they wanted…even if what they wanted wasn’t good for them. At least 501 was going, too. Maybe he could rein Koz in.

It was probably for the best that Anne had other things to do, anyway, because I needed to write a final essay for one of my classes, and the day off would give me a perfect time to do that.

So, after we finished with the film session, I went to lunch with RJ and Babs before heading back to the hotel alone to break out my laptop and start writing. Hours later I was still working on my paper, going through my notes, and looking things up in textbooks, when my phone buzzed, alerting me to a text message.

Anne: You busy?

Me: Depends on your definition of “busy.”

Anne: Okay, let’s try this again. Are you hungry, do you already have plans for dinner, and/or are you too busy to go grab a bite with me? If you still want to have dinner with me, after last night.

Me: I know how you get hangry, so let’s get some food.

Anne: Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes?

Me: Done.

She was already waiting for me when I got down there, still wearing the business suit she’d had on earlier—pale gray, with a bright green top under the jacket that made the green flecks in her eyes dance. I planted a kiss on her as soon as I reached her side, grinning when she blinked a few times in surprise.

“Hey, gorgeous,” I said.

“Hey, yourself.” Her expression was filled with a combination of excitement and nerves, much like last night when we’d gotten up to my room. I loved the excitement but hated the nerves. I wanted to help her get past that, but I wasn’t sure what she needed from me. No matter what, it would take time—something I needed to remind myself of again. In fact, I might need the reminder a few times.

But there was no rush.

I reached for her hand and headed out front to have a cab hailed. Twenty minutes later, after a bunch of flirting and laughing in the back of the cab, we were seated for dinner at a swanky steak place.

Anne sat across from me as the waiter handed over a wine menu and filled our water glasses. But then she started fidgeting with her suit jacket, like she couldn’t make up her mind about something.

“You all right?” I asked.

She nodded, but she didn’t stop messing with the jacket. The next thing I knew, she undid the buttons and took the whole thing off, draping it over the back of her chair. The shirt she had on underneath was sleeveless. Two wide straps covered her shoulders, but her arms were bare—and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. They were toned and shapely, much like the rest of her. Absolutely perfect, if you asked me.

I raised a brow. “You don’t need to do that if you’re not comfortable.”

“I know.” She nodded resolutely. “But I do need to do this. It’s just my arms. There’s nothing scandalous about showing off your arms, especially when it’s as warm out as it is right now. I can do this.”

Her determination was one of the things I loved the most about her. When she made up her mind to do something, she did it no matter how much might stand in her way. We were a lot alike in that way.

“One thing at a time, right?” she said, arching one of those gorgeous brows. With more of her shirt showing, her eyes looked almost fully green.

I was captivated. Completely.

I knew I probably shouldn’t draw any more attention to the fact that I could see her arms, but I couldn’t resist, just this once. “If you’re not careful about how much you show off, I’ll get the urge to grope you again.”

She narrowed her eyes and gave me a little kick under the table. “Watch it. No public groping.”

“But private groping is all right?”

“Depends on how you behave the rest of the night until we’re in private again.”

“Fair enough.”

She took a sip of water. “What’d you do today?”

“Worked on one of my final papers. And what were Koz and the guys up to?”

She gave me a mischievous look but didn’t answer.

“Oh God. Tell me he didn’t corrupt Coop.”

“Corrupt? I wouldn’t say that, no.”

“But you aren’t denying that he dragged them into something.”

“Cooper and Johansson got their first tattoos,” she said with a shrug.

That definitely could have been worse. But then again… “What did they get? And where?” And how much influence had Koz exerted over their decisions?

“Maybe you should ask them.” Anne winked, and the waiter came back for our wine orders, effectively putting an end to that conversation.

TWO MINUTES INTO the second period of Game Four, Brenden Campbell had been out killing a penalty when he crashed awkwardly into the boards, and a few players from both teams fell on top of him. When he came out from the bottom of the pile, he was carrying his arm in a crazy position, which couldn’t be good news.

Turned out he had pulled his shoulder completely out of socket. He was done for the playoffs.

Coach Bergstrom double-shifted a bunch of other players the rest of the game, especially those who normally played left wing—Nate’s natural position. In fact, the coach sent Nate out with the third line more than any of his other players. Nate came close to scoring a goal with Cooper’s help, but the Blackhawks goaltender snagged it at the last second.

He ended up being the one with the shutout that night, sending the teams back to Portland for Game Five tied at two games apiece.

I spent the flight home sleeping, my head resting on Nate’s shoulder while he read more of The Hunger Games. He started on the second book in the series before I drifted off. Neither of us had gotten much sleep over the last couple of nights, but he had at least taken his pregame nap this afternoon. I’d been busy editing film for Eye of the Storm while the team had their downtime—something I’d been doing more and more of in my so-called time off. There seemed to be no end to things to be done with this job, and it didn’t help anything that I was constantly changing my mind about things I’d thought I’d settled on already, as the narratives in front of me shifted. I was at once invigorated by my work and exhausted from it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nate woke me as we landed, shaking out his arm once I straightened away from him. “It’s been asleep for the last hour,” he said in explanation.

I yawned, covering it with my hand. “You should have shoved me off.”

“Not a chance,” he said with a wink. “I only get so much time to hold you. Not going to give up even a minute of it if I have anything to say about it.”

There wasn’t any good reason I could come up with to argue that point.

He picked up my carry-on as well as his own as we left the plane. But instead of taking it to my car, he headed straight for his.

I slowed down enough that he stopped and turned.

“What? You’ve got a toothbrush in here, right?” He winked.

“I do, but—” It was one thing to spend most of the night in a hotel room with him, when the lights were all out and I could sneak back to my own room before the sun came up. It was something else entirely to be with him all night at his house.

My pulse skipped a few beats.

Nate set our suitcases on the ground and closed the distance between us, cupping my face between both hands. He kissed me, soft and sweet, in the way he tended to do to calm my nerves. “Bring your car. You can leave whenever you’re ready to go. I just want to hold you for a while longer.”

That was all the encouragement I needed. I headed for my car and followed him to his house. Once there, he carried our bags inside. I debated asking him to go ahead and put mine in my trunk, but stopped myself. I could take it out later, so there was no reason to pick an argument with him now over something so minor.

Then we spent far too long wrapped up in each other, making out on his couch while we watched The Hunger Games together. I fell asleep with my head resting on his lap, his fingers combing through my hair.

When I woke hours later, I didn’t have it in me to wake him up only so I could go home. He was spread out on the couch, his head lolling back against the cushions. He might be more comfortable in his bed, but I got the sense he needed the sleep more than comfort. Instead, I rearranged the throw blanket he’d draped over me so it covered him, too, and adjusted my position in the hope that we’d both be more comfortable. The lamp was still on, though, so I stretched to turn it off.

Despite my efforts to keep from waking him, his head popped up before I reached the lamp, and he gave me a sleepy smile. “Going home?” he asked, blinking a few times.

“Trying to make you more comfortable.”

“No such thing as more comfortable as long as I’m touching you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“We could move to the bed,” he suggested. “To sleep,” he added before I could start to panic. “You could go home, too, but I’d like you to stay.”

I wanted to stay, too, so I nodded. “Let’s do that.”

A few minutes later, he’d stripped down to his boxer-briefs and was offering me a T-shirt and some shorts to change into. I refused, still not ready for him to see that much of me. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to sleep in all my clothes, but it was a choice between doing that or going home, the way I saw it.

When we crawled into his bed, he curled up behind me, one arm around my waist keeping us tucked in together like spoons in a drawer. All thought of my discomfort over sleeping in my clothes slipped away. Being so close to Nate all night would far outweigh anything like that.

Maybe it was a good thing he’d brought my suitcase in rather than transferring it to my car, after all. That toothbrush would come in handy in the morning.

THE NEXT DAY, Jim Sutter and his assistant, Rachel Campbell, took the day off entirely—something that was as out of character for either of them as I’d seen in the time I’d been working around the Storm organization. They took the time off for me. Or for my show, to be more precise.

Ben, Dave, and I were set up to film at Mr. Sutter’s house by midmorning, before the Campbell and Zellinger families were due to arrive. It was quiet while it was just me and my crew along with the general manager and his wife, Elaine. I took the opportunity to focus in on the two of them, seating them on the couch while I asked a few questions.

“So you two were married once before, but then you were divorced for a number of years. Is that right?” I asked.

“A couple of decades, actually,” Elaine said.

“I made some big mistakes,” Jim added. He winked at his wife and took her hand. “Really big.”

“But even after all those years, we still loved each other.”

“How did you get back together again after so much time had passed?” I asked.

“It came down to Laura Weber and a bunch of my players’ wives,” Jim said before delving into the story.

I’d picked up on bits and pieces of it last season, when I’d been covering the team for the local sports network, but the full story was even more fascinating than what I’d already gleaned. The Storm WAGs had placed an ad for him on a dating site. Elaine had run across it and responded. Then she flew halfway across the country to surprise him at Christmas, and the rest was history.

She’d gone back to Minnesota for a few months, preparing to pack up her life and make the move to Portland. A couple of weekends a month, she’d flown back to be with him here, so they could go through the process of getting to know each other again. Then last summer, they’d remarried during the few days between the NHL draft and the opening of the free agency period.

“Elaine was forgiving enough to take a rain check on the honeymoon,” he said, winking at me.

“But only because he promised to take me to Europe this coming summer. Before the draft, so I can have all his attention.”

“And your son?” I asked after hearing the full story, unable to stop from putting myself in his shoes. I couldn’t imagine I’d be happy at all if my parents decided to get back together again now. But then again, they hadn’t loved each other for most of the time they’d been married. They’d only stayed together because of me, which was in some ways worse than it would have been if they’d split up while I was still in school. But since these two still clearly loved each other… “How’s he dealing with the reunion? Is he thrilled to have his parents back together?”

“He’s…coming around,” Elaine said cautiously.

Ouch. I must have hit on a sore point.

“Dillon blamed me for a lot of things,” Jim said. “And he was right to do so. I’ve had a lot of wrongs to right, and he has every reason to be angry with me.”

“But he’s starting to let Jim back into his life, a bit at a time. We even went—as a couple—to Dillon’s wedding a few months ago.”

Before I could delve any deeper into Mr. Sutter’s strained relationship with his son, the doorbell rang. All hell broke loose when Elaine opened the door and let the Campbells and Zellingers in. In no time, the living room was filled with four more adults and seven kids—five of them under the age of five—plus toys, food, drinks, laughter, tears, and the insanity of family.

I took a step back and let my cameramen do their jobs, situating myself on the brick hearth by the fireplace so as to be well out of the way. This was about filming the day as it happened, messes and all.

And there were plenty of messes.

Three-year-old redheaded twins Sidney and Peyton Campbell were constantly into everything. Tuck and Maddie, their older siblings, did their best to keep them out of harm’s way, but Rachel was constantly following behind her toddlers with wet wipes and a garbage bag, trying to keep the mess contained, even if she couldn’t completely prevent it.

Eventually, Tuck gave up since his mother was tackling the job of toddler wrangling. He took out an iPad and started playing a game, oblivious to everything around him.

Maddie also stopped chasing after the kids before long. She buried her nose in her cell phone, but it didn’t look like she was playing a game. Probably texting a boy, based on the way she was blushing.

Brenden took a seat in the dining room so that the little ones would stop trying to climb him like a jungle gym. That was where Elaine took it upon herself to wait on him. She brought him food and drinks, homemade cookies, and anything else she could, until he complained that while his shoulder had been dislocated, his legs still worked perfectly well, thank you very much. That slowed her down in terms of spoiling him rotten, but it didn’t stop her completely.

Eric Zellinger—the former Storm captain, current Tulsa Thunderbirds captain, and Brenden’s best friend—sprawled out on the floor in the living room and let his little ones crawl all over him while he caught up with Mr. Sutter. Eric’s wife, Dana, alternated between changing diapers as needed, refilling snacks and drinks for the kids, taking the toddlers to the bathroom every three minutes, and trying to convince Mrs. Sutter to stop babying Brenden—who happened to be Dana’s brother.

Having been an only child, I found this whole situation to be as wonderful as it was unfamiliar. Not to mention slightly uncomfortable. I’d been somewhat overwhelmed with the two Johnson kids that day a few weeks ago. This was more than I’d been prepared for.

I definitely wasn’t ready for Dana to deposit her infant son with Elaine before coming to join me on the brick hearth. “You’ve been putting together a great show,” she said, but I could barely hear her above the cacophony surrounding us.

Still, I swelled up a bit with pride. It was nice to have my hard work acknowledged. “You’ve been watching?”

“Wouldn’t miss it! Eric and I tune in every week as soon as it goes live, as long as we’ve already got the kids down for the night. We spent so many years here that it’s kind of like being back with the family.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear.” Especially since I’d been focusing so much on the family aspect of the team. She was taking from it exactly what I had hoped would come across. It was hard to believe in my judgment, though, when my boss was so completely against the choices I’d made.

“I was kind of worried,” she admitted conspiratorially. “Before we started watching, that is. I mean, we all follow the news, so everyone knows about all the things going on around the team lately. We’ve been dealing with enough of that on our own, lately, after what happened with Eric and Drew Nash in the last game of the season.”

Nash had taken a skate blade to the neck and, rather than let him bleed to death on the ice, Zellinger had immediately used his own hands to put pressure on the wound. In the aftermath, it came out that Nash was HIV positive, so the Thunderbirds had been dealing with their own hullabaloo over that.

“He’s okay, though, right?” I asked.

“Tests are normal so far, but sometimes it doesn’t show up for a long time. So we have to keep testing and taking precautions. Anyway, I was sure you were going to focus the show more on the external stuff, which would have been a shame. We get plenty of that just from turning on the news. That’s not what the show should be about, you know?”

“You could have taken those words right out of my mouth when I met with my boss the other day,” I said. Then I wished I hadn’t said so much. It was one thing to talk to Nate about how I would be losing my job. It was something else entirely to bring someone from the outside in.

“Well, like I said…I’m glad. You’re showing exactly what I want to see.” Then she grinned. “My brother tells me you and Ghost are an item lately. I had a feeling that could happen from watching the way you two flirted all the time whenever you interviewed him. It’s good to know my radar still works, even though I’ve got mommy-brain. You should have brought him along today.”

I felt heat rush to my cheeks. Good thing my skin would hide the blush. “I’m working today,” I pointed out.

“Yeah. And? No one here would’ve cared if there was one more person around.”

“He’s coming to dinner tonight with my father, so this might have been too much for him for one day, anyway.” But then again, he might be more used to being around all these kids than I was, considering about half his teammates had little ones.

Maybe I should start to get used to them.

Just then, Brenden let out a pained sound, and we all turned to find both of his little redheaded twins trying to climb his arm—the same arm that he’d injured yesterday.

“Damn,” Dana said, jumping to her feet, but Rachel and Mr. Sutter beat her into the dining room to pry the little girls off their father’s arm.

My guys leaped into action, shifting the focus of their filming without me giving them any direction. I followed, keeping my distance as I observed the action. Maddie and Tuck hauled their little sisters away to play in the living room with their Zellinger cousins while Dana and Eric worked together to resituate Brenden’s arm in his sling. Elaine bounced the baby and moved him out of the way. Mr. Sutter went into the kitchen and came back with an ice pack.

But my eyes landed on Rachel and wouldn’t leave her. I slipped up behind Ben and whispered in his ear to be sure he was filming her, preferably at an angle where he could capture Brenden’s reactions, too.

Fat tears rolled down her cheeks as she took the ice pack from her boss and strapped it to her husband’s shoulder with an ACE bandage. “I know you’re not ready, but will you please consider retiring this summer? Because I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

Brenden didn’t respond, but his eyes said everything: he wasn’t ready to call it quits, even if his body already had—but he didn’t want to torment his wife anymore, either. Or his kids.

My heart broke for them both.

Dana got up and came back over to me. “Did you get all that?” she asked quietly.

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Good. Because this is the story you’re telling. The human story.”

She was right about that.

MY PALMS WERE sweating. Completely cliché, and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop it from happening as we pulled into the driveway at Anne’s father’s house for dinner.

“Promise he won’t bite,” she teased. She was wearing a dress again—a soft pink thing that showed off a bit of arm and a bit of leg, but not too much of either. Hell, there was even some chest showing, although not anywhere near as much as I’d like to see. We definitely weren’t entering cleavage territory, but that did nothing to negate the fact that she had a heck of a lot more skin showing than I was used to seeing. And I liked it.

“Does he have a dog that’ll do the biting for him?”

“Nope, and no cats, either.” She grabbed her purse from the floorboard and climbed out of my car, not giving me any more time to delay the inevitable.

I opened my door to follow her. “You do realize this would be a hell of a lot less awkward if we hadn’t—” Already had sex died on my tongue as her father opened the front door, and she rushed ahead to hug him.

“Dad, this is Nate Golston,” she said when she backed away. “Nate, my father, Brian Dennison.”

I climbed the steps, still nervous as hell. “Dr. Dennison. Nice to meet you, sir.”

“Brian’s fine,” he said, holding out a hand for me to shake.

I wished I weren’t sweating, but I wiped my hand on my pant leg as discreetly as possible before taking his.

In no time, he had whisked us both inside the house, which smelled deliciously of steak and potatoes, and was offering me my choice of beer or wine. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

He opened a beer for himself, too, and headed into the kitchen to flip the steaks on his grill pan. Anne followed him and started putting together a salad, both of them looking much like this was something very familiar to them.

“Tough game last night,” Brian said.

“You were watching?” I wondered if it was just because of Anne dating me, or if he was actually interested.

He winked in his daughter’s direction. “I like to stay on top of things when it comes to my little girl. But I also needed to know what happened before I went in to work this morning. My nurses are all diehard Storm fans. One of them is half in love with the one… Oh, what’s his name again?” He looked over at Anne for help. “I told you before.”

“The one Lacey has a crush on? Or do you mean Brenda?”

“Lacey. He’s the new one.”

“Leif Sorenson,” Anne said, winking at me.

I laughed. “I’d say I could introduce them, but I don’t think his wife would like it too much. Or his little girl.”

“Probably better to pretend you don’t know about her crush, then, if you ever meet her,” Brian said.

To my complete surprise, the night progressed much along the same pattern. Anne had been right—there was no reason at all to be nervous about meeting her father. He was as normal and down-to-earth as they came, very similar to my own parents, as far as I could tell. He might be a doctor and be much better-educated than them, but I saw a lot more similarities than differences. He made me feel right at home.

Halfway through dinner, though, the doorbell rang.

Anne looked over at her father. “Were you expecting someone else?”

He shook his head, wiped his face with a napkin, and pushed his chair back. “Probably someone going door to door for one of the candidates. I’ll get rid of them.” Then he turned to me. “Sorry about this.”

“Don’t be sorry on my account,” I insisted.

He disappeared down the hall, but he wasn’t gone long. And he wasn’t alone when he returned.

“Anika,” a woman with a heavy accent said. She was wearing a colorful sari and head covering, and she set a purse down on the table.

Anne dropped her knife and fork on the table, eyes furiously wide. “Mother,” she said coldly. “What are you doing here?” She passed accusing eyes over in her father’s direction.

“She called me over the weekend,” he said. “Apparently I let it slip that you’d be here tonight without realizing it, and she thought that would be her best chance at intercepting you. I’m sorry.”

“What are you wearing?” the mother demanded, sounding scandalized. “All that skin showing. It’s indecent.”

“It’s as far from indecent as she could get,” Brian said, rolling his eyes. “She looks beautiful.” I wanted to give him a fist bump or a good slap on the back. Anne’s father was definitely someone I could get behind.

“She looks like a slut,” the mother said, and Anne recoiled.

“Now stop right there,” I put in. “You’re way out of line with that. She might not dress in a way you approve of, but that doesn’t make her a slut, and it doesn’t make her inappro—”

“And why?” the mother cut in, glaring in my direction. “Why must you go on with this man? Going all over the place with him. Kissing. Touching. Disgusting and brazen, the way you’re behaving in public. But what should I expect from this athlete? He doesn’t even have a college education, but you think—”

“Don’t do this, Mother,” Anne said. “Just don’t. I think it’s time for you to go.”

“How can you think he’s good enough for you?”

Anne stood and picked up her mother’s purse. “I don’t think it. I know it. And I know you don’t understand, and that’s perfectly all right. Your opinion doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care if you approve, because I love him. I do. I love Nate, and that’s all that matters, okay? When I’m with him, I’m happy. He wants me to have what I want, not what he thinks I need because of some twisted values. He doesn’t try to turn me into something I’m not. He doesn’t expect me to do a thousand things because he supposedly knows what I need better than I do. So whether you understand or not, he’s perfect for me. And you need to leave.”

I was so proud of Anne for standing up to her mother that I was shaking with it. Add in the fact that she’d said she loved me, and I was a mess inside. I wasn’t even sure she realized she’d said it, but she had, and that was all that mattered.

“Anika!” her mother shouted. “How dare you speak to your mother this way.”

“I’d say it’s about time she did,” Brian said. “And like Anne said, it’s time for you to go.”

Anne carried the purse toward the front door, but her mother didn’t budge—not until Brian put a hand on her arm and gently but firmly guided her in the same direction.

I waited in the dining room for them to come back, partially because I thought Anne and her father might need a father-daughter moment, but also because I seriously wanted to give her mother a piece of my mind and wasn’t sure I’d be able to bite my tongue. This wasn’t my moment; it was Anne’s, and she’d done brilliantly.

A few minutes later, they returned. Anne walked straight into my arms and buried her face against my neck, which was exactly where I wanted her to be. I held on to her, stroking her back until she stopped shaking.

Brian went back into the kitchen to get another beer, winking at me on his way. I supposed I’d passed his test, whatever it might have been. But that didn’t matter. The only thing important right now was that Anne wanted me.

“I love you, too,” I said quietly in her ear.

She backed away and blinked at me a couple of times. “You what?”

“I love you, too.” I kissed her cheek and winked. “You told your mother you loved me. You said it twice, actually.”

“I suppose I did, didn’t I?”

“Mm hmm. But I have to warn you.”

“What?” she said cautiously, a wary expression drawing her eyebrows together.

“If she ever barges in like that again and tries to tell you anything about how you’re not good enough, I’m not going to hold back. I’m going to give her a piece of my mind.”

Anne laughed quietly. “If she tries that again, I’ll cheer you on.”

“Good. Because I think I told you once before… I don’t like hearing anyone attack the woman I love.”

FOR GAME FIVE, Bergy moved Q up to play left wing on the third line, filling in for Soupy. Jiri Dvorak took Q’s usual place on the right wing on the fourth line, instead of sitting in the press box with the other healthy scratches and guys who were injured. That meant he had no need to double-shift me, which was just as well.

I had what was probably my best game of the playoffs that night, scoring two of the team’s four goals and nearly scoring a third in the second overtime period. We still ended up losing that one, though. Patrick Kane did what he almost always did in overtime during the playoffs for the Blackhawks, and he scored a crazy goal near the end of the third overtime period.

For the first time, we were behind in the series. It didn’t sit well with any of us. Now, we knew we had to win the next two games in a row, or else we would be heading out to the golf course a lot sooner than we wanted to be.

We had two days off before Game Six, thank goodness, so we didn’t have to fly to Chicago in the wee hours of the morning after that one finally came to an end. But there were protests planned across the country for Saturday—including in both Chicago and Portland. The people of Chicago were actually planning multiple protest marches throughout the city all day long. After the higher-ups for both teams talked it over, it was decided we’d all fly out on Friday. They weren’t keen on having us all in the city while the protests were ongoing, but there was no telling what would happen with the airports and traffic if we waited. Better to already be there and ready to go, apparently.

After arriving in Chicago on Friday, Anne was busy with her guys, filming a session with the coaching staff, so I holed up in my hotel room to take the last of my finals for the spring semester. By the time I finished with that, Anne had gone up to the United Center with Drywall Tierney and the rest of the equipment staff. Her text message to me said she didn’t expect to be back until late, so I should find someone else to have dinner with.

I texted a few of the guys to see who was around. RJ was already out with Burnzie and Harry. Babs and 501 were already eating. Hammer, Thor, Jonny, and Vinny appeared to be having a meeting of the Older-Than-Dirt Fathers Club, but they offered to let me tag along. I passed, since I wasn’t in the mood to watch hair videos all night.

Finally, though, I found a couple of takers in Aaron Ludwiczak and Dylan Poplawski. I met Luddy and Pops down in the hotel lobby. After talking to the concierge for a few minutes, we decided to head out to an Italian restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. We wanted somewhere close enough to walk since traffic was unusually heavy and we weren’t in the mood to sit in a cab for an hour to travel only a few miles.

“Why aren’t you out with Anne tonight?” Luddy asked on our way. “Hardly ever see you without her these days.”

“She’s with Drywall tonight.”

“You’ve got competition,” Pops said, laughing his ass off. “Better watch out, or he’ll be stealing your girl.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t doubt he’s flirting with her, the son of a bitch. But I’m not so sure she’ll fall for it.”

“She fell for it with you,” Luddy pointed out. “Drywall might be missing some hair—”

“All his hair,” I cut in.

“—but at least he’s not a fucking shrimp.”

The ribbing went on like that throughout the night, all three of us joking around and picking at each other for our various flaws, real or perceived. The food was good, and the break from all the stress of the playoffs was more than welcome, so we ended up staying for a few hours, our waiter coming back to bring us more drinks a few times. Once we finally decided to return to the hotel, we left him a hefty tip and made our way back out to the street.

Less than a block from the restaurant, we came into a thick crowd of people—so thick we were forced to slow down and take notice. Most of them were black, but there were a few white, Hispanic, and Asian faces among them. Many were carrying signs.

“I thought the protests around the city were all supposed to be tomorrow,” Pops said.

So had I, but apparently we were either mistaken or misinformed. “Come on,” I said, trying to shove my way through the sea of bodies. “Let’s get out of here.” Most of the protests I’d seen on the news in the last few days had been peaceful, but you never knew what might happen when so many people came together over such a heated issue. We would probably be safe out on the streets, but we’d definitely be a hell of a lot safer back at the hotel.

Pops and Luddy helped me push through the bodies around us, but people didn’t want to let us through. It seemed like a big crush on all sides, like one of the New Year’s Eve parties I’d been to years ago, where everyone wanted to be somewhere other than where they were, but they all just did their own thing, not following along with any sort of flow or traffic pattern.

Speaking of traffic, the cars on the street were all at a standstill. I caught a glimpse of a few uniformed police officers blowing whistles and trying to direct people with arm-waving directions, but no one was doing what they were told. In fact, there were dozens of people sitting in the street, blocking traffic completely and refusing to move. With every minute that passed, more people sat down.

This was getting worse by the moment. I pushed harder, trying to create any sort of opening in the crowd, but without much luck. We were only moving by inches, when we should have been moving by feet.

Where the hell was Anne? Was she caught up in a mess like this, too? With any luck, she’d already finished up with whatever they were filming today and gotten back to the hotel before this shit started.

I took out my cell phone, holding it as tightly as I could so I wouldn’t lose it, while I typed out a quick text message for Anne, asking where she was. No response right away, but I wouldn’t expect her to look at her phone if she was still working.

The noise in the crowd started to climb, raised voices chanting the names of Marcus Jameson and the two teenagers who’d been killed.

I glanced over my shoulder to be sure Luddy and Pops were still with me. They caught my eye and nodded, a silent confirmation that they were ready to get the fuck out of there, and the sooner, the better.

Finally, I saw a bit of a clearing ahead—not much of one, but enough to give me hope we would be able to move more freely soon—and I fought my way through to reach it.

A police officer was trying to get people to cooperate, but there was a man standing right in his face and screaming about how the fucking murdering cops needed to watch their racist asses, and no one was doing what he told them to do.

I caught the eye of another officer nearby and pointed toward the other end of the street, trying to show that we just wanted to get out of there. There was no point in trying to say anything from this distance. No one would hear me over the insanity.

He blew his whistle and waved us through. “Keep on moving, guys,” he said as we reached him. “Keep on moving and get out of here.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said. Stay safe was on my lips but got swallowed by the sound of gunshots and screams and the sight of the officer falling to the ground, while someone collapsed on me from behind.

“THANKS FOR LETTING us tag along,” I said to Drywall Tierney as his crew and mine both worked on putting away all of their equipment.

He winked at me and put a cover over his skate sharpener. “Any chance I get to spend time with a pretty lady like you, you know I’m going to take it.”

“Just don’t let your wife hear you talking like that,” one of his guys said, and everyone laughed.

Drywall’s guys had been doing some prep work at the arena to get ready for tomorrow’s practice and Sunday’s game, and I’d brought Ben and Dave along to get some time filming them. I wanted to show all the work that’s involved with a professional hockey team, and not simply focus on the players. Since we’d already spent some time with Jim Sutter and some of the coaching staff, I was starting to delve a bit deeper. I wanted to meet with the trainers, maybe even follow some of the scouts around as they prepared for the upcoming draft.

The family atmosphere surrounding the Portland Storm went well beyond the players and coaches, encompassing everyone involved with the team. The more time I spent with them, the more I wanted to spend with them.

Once everything was situated, we headed for the exits.

Before we got there, though, a security officer stopped us and shook his head. “Can’t let you leave right now. There’s an active shooter situation at a protest not far from here, only a few blocks away. Police are asking us to keep everyone inside.”

My blood froze in my veins. “A few blocks away?” The hotel was within a few blocks, too. Most of the team, the coaches…they could all be out and about right now.

Nate could be out there.

“There’s a television in the locker room,” Drywall said. “Let’s go put it on CNN so we’ll know what’s happening.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, and we headed back in that direction.

While we walked, I tore through my backpack to find my cell phone. All the guys who’d been with me did the same, immediately looking to see who had been trying to reach them and to tell their loved ones that they were safe. The wait for my phone to power on seemed interminable. I cursed myself for my habit of turning it off instead of just silencing it while I worked, but finally the screen came to life at around the same time as Drywall got the TV on and found the news coverage.

I had half a dozen messages waiting for me. One was from Nate, sent about ten minutes ago, simply asking where I was.

I replied that I was still at the arena and was safe, but that they were keeping us there until further notice, then asked where he was.

No reply.

While I waited, I responded to the messages from my father, Ben, Bill, Tim, and the other members of my crew who weren’t with me, keeping one eye on the news.

Everyone but Nate replied almost immediately.

I felt like I might vomit.

Once I’d contacted everyone I could think of, including my mother, to let them know I was safe, I set my phone aside and tried not to worry about Nate. His phone might be dead. He might be somewhere that he couldn’t use it. He might not have heard it at all. For all I knew, he was out with some of the guys at a bar, and they were all none the wiser about the situation going on in the city.

Other than the news reports, the only sounds in the locker room were the message alerts on our cell phones or occasionally one of the guys answering a call to calm a loved one. But the more I watched the news, the more I worried about Nate.

Because he still hadn’t responded. And because what I saw was awful.

A protest in the streets that started out peaceful but quickly got out of hand. People sitting in the roadways. Drivers threatening to run them over. Citizens getting in the faces of police officers and screaming bloody murder at them. It was utter chaos, and that was before someone opened fire with semiautomatic weapons.

The first shots were fired about thirty minutes ago, but there were already reports of at least three deaths and close to a dozen injuries. Not only that, but shots were still ringing out on the live footage.

It appeared the shooters were targeting the police officers. The first reports said there were two gunmen. Then three. Now they were saying they suspected at least four were involved, and they wouldn’t rule out the possibility of more than that. Some people were calling 9-1-1 and reporting bomb threats. It was impossible to know just exactly how bad the situation was. Only that it was horrific.

If he was out there, would I ever see him again? What if he was one of the people who’d been caught in the crossfire? He could be dead or dying at this very moment.

Despite the gravity of the situation, the one thing slapping me over the head repeatedly was that even though I loved him, and even though I knew I wanted nothing more than to be with him, I still hadn’t ever let him see any part of my body other than a bit of forearm and calf. How unbelievably selfish was it of me to keep any part of myself from him? And how ridiculous was it that I was so concerned about modesty when it came to being with a man who clearly loved and respected me?

I hoped beyond hope that Nate wasn’t out there on those streets. But if and when I ever saw him again, things would change between us. I wouldn’t hide from him anymore. I wouldn’t allow my mother’s voice to stand between the two of us. That was a promise I was making to myself, here and now, and I would damned well keep it.

But amid the chaos, the live cameras captured acts of true heroism.

A woman was caught in the middle of the pandemonium with her three small children, one she was pushing in a stroller. When others saw that she couldn’t carry them all and the two walking kids couldn’t run to safety fast enough, they dropped what they were carrying to help her protect her children.

A police officer had two men screaming in his face, but when the first shots rang out, he knocked them both to the ground and covered them with his own body, drawing his weapon so he was ready to take on whatever threat came their way.

A restaurant employee raced out into the streets and ushered dozens of people inside the restaurant, providing them with cover from the gunshots.

There seemed to be no end to the stories of humanity shining through this act of wanton hatred.

The news anchor announced they were going to cut to another bit of amateur footage that had been posted to social media, so I took out my phone one more time to see if I’d somehow missed a message from Nate.

Nothing. Nothing at all. I wanted to cry, but I knew that once I broke down and started, I wouldn’t be able to stop any time soon. Becoming a blubbering mess wouldn’t help anything, so I forced my tears back.

“Shit, that’s Luddy,” Drywall said. “Isn’t it? Looks like Luddy.”

I jerked my head up to see two men, one with his arm draped over the other’s shoulders and limping along, with blood staining one leg of his jeans as he walked.

“It is. And Poplawski,” Ben said. “That’s Poplawski carrying him.”

The tears I’d been trying to hold inside stung the backs of my eyes. But then any attempts to keep myself from crying fell apart, because the camera panned over to show Nate dragging along a police officer, who had a hand pressed to his belly, in much the same way Poplawski was helping Ludwiczak.

The four men were going as fast as they could away from the shots in the background, but they couldn’t move very fast. Then more shots sounded in the distance, and the grainy cell phone video came to an end.

I dropped my phone onto my lap. Dave moved to sit beside me, putting an arm around my shoulders. All I could do was let him hold me, because there wasn’t any chance my tears would stop for a long time to come.

A COUPLE OF EMTs raced over to us, taking the officer I’d been dragging. They helped him onto a gurney. About a block ago, he’d completely passed out from blood loss or shock or something. I’d picked him up onto my shoulders and carried him as far as I could that way, but he was almost as big as I was. He weighed too much for me to get very far like that, so I’d just done what I had to do.

They whisked him off and loaded him into the back of an ambulance. He was gone before I realized I didn’t even know his name.

Two more EMTs rushed over and, checking out the blood all over me, tried to help.

“Not my blood,” I said, waving them off. “I’m fine. But my buddy…”

Pops had been pretty much dragging Luddy along the whole way, too, and I knew they weren’t far behind me. I turned and pointed them out.

One of the EMTs nodded and they wheeled their gurney back to where I’d indicated. Within minutes, they had Luddy strapped in and were rushing him toward another waiting ambulance.

“You two coming?” they asked.

I looked over at Pops, and we both nodded at the same time. “We’re coming,” I said. For one thing, I didn’t want Luddy to be alone right now. And for another, the sooner I could get the fuck off these streets, the better. We knew we’d been moving away from the gunshots, but we could still hear them in the distance. Being out on the streets seemed like a bad idea, especially since we didn’t know who was doing the shooting, how many were involved, or where they were set up.

They sent Pops up to the passenger seat and I climbed in the back. In no time, the siren was wailing, so loud as to be deafening, and the ambulance was in motion.

The EMT in the back immediately started assessing Luddy, asking him where it hurt and how many shots he thought he’d taken while she took his vital signs.

“Think I just got hit once,” he said. “In my left thigh.”

She cut open his jeans and took a quick look, then tossed me a box of gloves. “Put those on. I need your help, since you’re here.”

I dug out a pair and slipped them into place, then looked over at her.

“Put pressure on the wound,” she ordered me. Then she set to work on inserting an IV into his arm.

“If you wanted to cop a feel, there were easier ways to do it, you know,” Luddy joked.

I breathed a hell of a lot easier since he felt up to making jokes.

“Maybe I should’ve been the one in the back,” Pops called out from the front.

“Wanna trade places?” I asked. “Because he’s not anything to write home about.”

We kept up a steady stream of jokes the whole way to the hospital, which helped to keep Luddy calm. I figured that was a good thing. The last thing he needed right now was to start panicking.

Once they wheeled him into the emergency room, Pops and I found seats in the waiting room and took a breath for the first time in what felt like hours.

A woman who had seen us come in walked out for a moment. When she returned, she had bottled water for each of us. “We’ve been watching on the news. It’s horrible.”

Horrible was putting it mildly.

“Thanks,” I said. We took the water. I downed half of mine in a few swallows. Then I turned to Pops. “You still have your phone?” I’d dropped mine when the first shots rang out, and it got lost in the shuffle. But one of us needed to let people know we were all right.

He blinked a couple of times, the shock of what we’d been through still coursing through him. But then he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He took his phone out and got to work.

“Let Jim and the coaches know once you’ve talked to your family.”

“Gimme your parents’ numbers, too. I’ll send them a message. And Anne.”

“Shit.” Anne’s number. I didn’t know it. I’d saved it in my phone, but I didn’t have the first clue what it was.

“You don’t know them?”

“I know my parents’ numbers.” I rattled them off, and he shot them a quick message, his phone going crazy with responses coming in.

“I’ll see if Jim or one of the coaches can get word to Anne for you,” he said. “Surely someone has her number.”

I only hoped that she was safe and sound, somewhere well away from what we’d just gone through. And I wished she was with me now, because there was nothing I wanted more than to wrap her up in my arms and tell her how much I loved her, as many times as she could bear to hear it.

Even then, it wouldn’t be enough.

IT WAS WELL after midnight by the time Pops and I got back to the team hotel, both of us still covered in the caked-on, dried-up blood of the guys we’d carried.

Luddy had needed surgery. He’d taken two bullets in the thigh. One had gone straight through; the other had to be removed. He was in the clear now, though. He’d be perfectly fine once everything healed. They were keeping him in the hospital overnight as a precaution, and he wouldn’t be back on the ice for a while, but those were relatively minor concerns.

The cop I’d carried hadn’t fared so well. The bullets had pierced an internal organ or two, so he was still in surgery when the two of us had climbed into the car Jim had taken to the hospital. He wanted us to go back in it and get some rest while he stuck around with Luddy.

Anne was in the lobby when we walked in, surrounded by RJ and a bunch of the rest of my teammates, looking like she’d been through the wringer. As soon as she saw me, she was on her feet and running. I caught her in mid-leap and wrapped her up in my arms.

I never wanted to let her go again.

Another couple of hours later, I’d finally reassured all of the guys that I was fine, that Pops was fine, and that yes, even Luddy would be fine. Sleep wasn’t on any of our minds. Being together was.

Through it all, Anne hadn’t left my side. For that matter, I couldn’t make myself let go of her hand. I needed the physical reassurance of her presence in a way that I’d never felt before. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel anything quite so profoundly as that again, no matter how long I lived or what else I experienced.

But now, she and I were in my room. Just the two of us. Once we came in, I’d collapsed on the small sofa, and she had curled up next to me, and neither of us had moved an inch. I put an arm around her shoulders. She rested her head on mine, the way she had on the plane that night when RJ had snapped the photo of us.

“I should get in the shower,” I said after a long time.

She nodded. “You should.”

But neither of us got up. I didn’t want to let her go for long enough to wash the blood away, but I couldn’t spend the whole night like this, either.

Finally, I forced myself to straighten away from her and stand. She reached for my hand so I could help her up.

“You going back to your room?” I asked, dreading her answer. Tonight, of all nights, I wanted her to stay with me. I needed her to keep me grounded.

She shook her head but didn’t explain. Still holding my hand, she walked toward my bathroom, bringing me along behind her. Once we were in there, she turned on the water in the shower before turning to help me out of my clothes. My pants came off easily enough, but my shirt was stuck to my skin. It wouldn’t come free without potentially ripping out a bunch of chest hair in the process.

“You’ll have to soak it under the spray,” she said.

I was too bone-weary to argue. Still in my boxer-briefs and the shirt, I climbed into the shower and let the water do the work. Closing my eyes, I put my head under the spray.

But then I felt Anne climbing into the shower behind me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. Not with words, at least. Soapy cloth in hand, she scrubbed the places on my back where the dried blood was causing the most problems. Her touch soothed my nerves more than I’d imagined possible.

From the way her body brushed against mine, I could tell she’d taken off all her clothes before joining me. She was behind me, true, but the lights were still on. This was a huge step for her. So huge it felt like I might have her heart in a vise, much like she had mine. One wrong step, and I could derail everything.

“Turn around,” she said after a few minutes.

But I hesitated. “I can take care of the front.”

She rested her forehead against the back of my arm, wrapping one of her arms around my waist. “Let me.”

“You don’t have to do this, Anne.”

“I know that.” Then she inched around in front of me since I hadn’t turned. “Let me.”

I was too deep in shock to resist her gentle ministrations, too touched to do anything but stand beneath the warm spray of water and allow her to tend to me.

After working silently for a while, she dropped the cloth and attempted to slip her hands beneath my shirt, testing to be sure all the stuck-on places were now loose before dragging it over my head.

“Thank you,” I said, but it felt so completely inadequate for all that had happened.

Anne shook her head, on the verge of tears. Then she came into my arms again, burying her face against my chest. Shaking. God, she was shaking so hard. I squeezed her to me, hoping to soothe her nerves and my own at the same time.

“I was so scared,” she said. “I sent you messages, but you weren’t responding, and we saw what was happening out there, and I didn’t know where you were, and I was terrified. I didn’t know if you were okay, and all I could think was that I’d never see you again. That it would all be over, and I had been so caught up in my mother’s ridiculous thinking that I hadn’t ever let you see me. I’d barely told you that I loved you, but even that’s not enough. Those are just words, you know? But I’m not going to let her have that kind of power over me. Not anymore. Life’s too short to spend it worrying if the things I do or say or wear would meet with her approval. So I thought I needed to put some action behind the words. If I really love you, then I can’t hide any part of myself from you. Not ever again.”

I might have been holding myself together well enough up until that point, but her words shattered me.

THE MEDIA CIRCUS had been bad before, or so I’d thought. The way the press had reacted—or overreacted, in my opinion—to the banana peel incident had been nothing in comparison to the way all the news outlets wanted a piece of me now. They wanted to talk to Pops, too, since he’d been involved, but more of them wanted me. Because I was black, which supposedly made me more qualified to comment on the trauma we’d experienced on Friday night. If Luddy had been made available to the media, I knew he would be getting more attention than he would ever want, since he’d actually been shot. But now he was on the injured reserve, so he didn’t have to deal with the media. Only Pops and I did.

They surrounded me every chance they could, always wanting to get more out of me than I’d been willing to give before.

“Surely now, after being involved in one of the protests, you’ve got something to say,” one of them insisted, shoving a microphone in my face after the morning skate before Game Six.

It turned out I did have something to say, after all. “To start, I wasn’t involved in one of the protests. The guys and I were just trying to walk back to the hotel after having dinner, and we got caught in the mess. But beyond that, yeah, I do have something to say.” I felt Kurt’s tension as he stood next to me, ready to jump in and come to my rescue in case I started to say something I shouldn’t. But I didn’t need him tonight, and I refused to be reined in now. “Black lives matter. Absolutely, and I don’t think there are many people out there who don’t agree with that statement. Maybe a few buffoons who think throwing banana peels at my feet or spewing hateful words somehow makes them better than someone whose skin is a different color than their own, I don’t know. But recklessly going out there and killing cops, who were trying to protect the people who were protesting against them… That isn’t the answer. We’re never going to stop the cycle of violence by adding more violence on top of it. We’ve got to love each other. Period. We need to go back and listen to the words of Dr. King. What was it he said? Hate begets hate, but love begets love? Something like that. He was right then, and he’s still right now. We’re breeding hate. And it has to stop. We have to start loving each other. That’s what I have to say.”

Before they could ask me anything else, I walked out. Colesy and a few of the other guys winked at me on my way.

Luddy had been released from the hospital and was in good spirits, even though he was in a decent amount of pain. The bullets had torn through muscle in the outside of his thigh, so it’d take a while to heal enough for him to get back on skates. At least, that was what the doctors were telling us. There was the distinct possibility that the healing process could take longer than expected, but we weren’t going to let ourselves think or talk like that, especially when we were around him. Everyone wanted to keep his spirits up.

In fact, instead of taking a pregame nap like we usually did, most of the guys got together in Luddy’s room to hang out. Anne brought a couple of her cameramen along to film, but at this point, most of us didn’t even notice the intrusion.

I, for one, was glad to have Anne with us. I wasn’t keen on letting her out of my sight, now that we’d experienced firsthand the evil that existed in our world. The people who left threats for her online might not ever choose to act on them, but I’d rather have her with me, all the same.

It didn’t need to be said—we were playing for Luddy now. As a team, we would be using him as our motivation for the rest of the playoffs.

With Luddy officially out of the lineup, Bergy put me on the top line with RJ and Babs for Game Six—a game we won by a healthy five-to-one margin. We flew home in good spirits, considering all that we’d been through in the last few days, ready to take on the Blackhawks in an all-or-nothing Game Seven situation. But we’d be doing it on our home ice. In our arena, surrounded by our fans.

We’d waited to fly home until Monday morning. Usually when we got back from a road trip, the guys’ families were waiting for them at home. This time, almost all of them had come to the airport. Emotions were running high, as was to be expected in the fallout of the shooting. As soon as a guy made his way off the plane, his family raced into his arms. Since my parents were still at home in Toronto and I’d been able to wrap Anne up in my love while they hadn’t had the same opportunity with their loved ones, I took it upon myself to help Luddy off the plane. Besides, Anne and her guys were filming the homecoming, so she was otherwise occupied.

Harry joined me, which seemed odd, considering the circumstances.

“Isn’t Jasinda here to meet you?” I asked.

“Jasinda?” he repeated, giving me a blank look. “Why would— She’s at work,” he finished suddenly.

I didn’t have a chance to think much of it, as Luddy’s fiancée and parents rushed over with a wheelchair for him, and Dani Weber stalked up to Harry and shoved him hard in the chest with a look of utter fury in her eyes.

He backed away from the rest of us, until they were well out of hearing distance, Dani advancing on him with every step of his retreat. I watched them for a moment, fascinated beyond belief. I had no clue what was going on between those two or how Jasinda fit into the picture, other than the bit Anne had included in Eye of the Storm, but I would love to be a fly on the wall. In fact, there was a part of me that wished Anne would send one of her guys over to capture whatever was going down between those two at the moment, but they were all otherwise occupied with filming the more tender reunions taking place.

That did seem to fit the type of story line Anne had been telling, I supposed, but there was no point in denying my disappointment.

IN SHAPING THE narrative of the next webisode, I decided I wanted to follow the same path I’d been following all along. I chose to veer away from the horrors we’d all experienced in Chicago, instead keeping the focus on the Storm family as a whole.

During Game Seven, I had a couple of my cameramen filming game footage, but I set up Dave and Ben—my two guys who’d done the most work with the more intimate pieces—in the owner’s box with the players’ families, and in the press box with the injured players, respectively. I split my time between the two areas, keeping one eye on the action of the game while I alternated between observing and interviewing the various subjects of focus.

In the owner’s box, everyone was on edge because of what was at stake in the game, but also relieved because their men had come home relatively unscathed following a harrowing experience.

Dani Weber had finished her semester at fashion school and was home for the summer. She wasn’t the only new addition to their ranks, either. Luke had also returned to Portland now that the school year was at an end. I did my best not to pry into the discussions going on between those two and Katie Babcock, but I couldn’t help but hope Dave managed to capture a bit of it.

There was a sense of quiet focus in the press box when I joined Brenden Campbell, Aaron Ludwiczak, Dominic “Bear” Medved, and Andrew Jensen, particularly since the game was still scoreless. It was starting to take on a feeling of first team to score wins. Usually, when I was around a group of the players, they spent most of their time ribbing each other. Not these four. Their focus was fully on the action down below. Every now and then, one of them would make an observation, like “Hjalmarsson is trying to pinch down the wing earlier than normal, don’t you think?” or “Everyone but Coop is cheating on face-offs and getting away with it, so he needs to start cheating, too,” and someone would send a text message to one of the coaches, relaying their information.

During intermission, most of the injured guys went down to the locker room to talk to the rest of the team. Jensen stayed put, though, so I took the opportunity to talk to him, catching Ben’s eye to be sure he was filming.

“We haven’t seen you around much lately,” I said, leaving my comment open-ended.

He shook his head slowly. “Concussion symptoms haven’t made it easy. Still can’t handle being in a big crowd. That’s why I’m not down there with the boys now.”

“You seeing any improvements yet?”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “Maybe? Some days, I think I’m finally getting better. Other days, it’s worse than ever before. The blinding headaches. The inability to focus. Nausea, dizziness… Some days, all I can do is sit in a dark room.” He shrugged. “I’m just in a waiting game now. But I try to hang out around the boys when I can. It’s tough to do, though, other than maybe the other guys who’re injured.”

“So it must be nice to have some company right now.”

“It is, even though I wouldn’t wish it on any of them.”

“No. No, I’m sure you wouldn’t. Do you still want to play? Or are you over it at this point?” As soon as I asked the question, I realized I probably shouldn’t have. Especially if he was over it and wanted out. He was still under contract, so this wasn’t the time for that sort of honesty.

But he looked at me and said, “I’d give my left nut to be down on the ice with those boys right now. It kills me that I can’t play. That I can’t do much of anything right now. I used to know who I was and why I was here. Right now, all I have are questions.”

Down at ice level, they were holding a game of human bowling for the fans, to keep everyone entertained during the break between periods. For every pin a contestant knocked over, the arena set off the goal horn.

After a few of those, Jensen gave me an apologetic look and shook his head. “This is why I tend to stay home. Can’t handle this.” Then he got up and walked out, taking out a pair of sunglasses and putting them over his eyes, reminding me once again that these men were very much real men. They put their bodies on the line to play the game they loved, but sometimes it could have devastating consequences.

Those consequences didn’t stop many of them from playing, though. Or wanting to play, even long past the point when they shouldn’t anymore.

Like Andrew Jensen and his concussion that had left him alone in dark rooms for months.

Like Brenden Campbell and the string of injuries that had plagued his career and had his wife begging him to retire.

Like Nate, playing through a knee injury that would put the average person out of commission for weeks, at the very least.

After the tense few days in Chicago, I’d needed some perspective. About what I was doing with Eye of the Storm. About what I wanted to do with it.

Andrew Jensen had just given me a poignant reminder of my plan. The story wasn’t about black or white, gay or straight, good or bad, right or wrong. It was about life, in all its imperfect glory.

Now I needed to follow through with the plan.

THE STORM WON Game Seven against the Blackhawks, with Nate scoring the only goal in the game. That meant they would move on to face the Stars, who’d been waiting to learn their opponent for the better part of a week, in the Western Conference Finals. The Stars also had home-ice advantage, due to having a better regular-season record than the Storm, so we’d be starting this round on the road.

Despite the best efforts from Nate and his Storm teammates, the Stars won both of the first two games in their home building. We headed back to Portland with them behind two-to-nothing in the series, but full to the brim with determination to change that as soon as possible.

Once back at home, I spent hours on end holed up with my editor and the other guys on my team, making sure we shaped the next webisode to give exactly the message I wanted conveyed. It was painstaking work, particularly since there were so many big stories surrounding the team.

I didn’t want to tell the big stories, though. They’d already been covered ad nauseam by the mainstream media. I wanted to tell the little stories: the decision as to when it’s time to hang up the skates and retire; the loneliness of going from being a core part of a team to being stuck on the sidelines due to injury; the bond of brotherhood; the fear of acceptance faced by a player whose native language isn’t spoken by anyone else on the team; the hijinks that happen when a group of young men are away from their families with more money than they’d ever dreamed of having before; the joy that comes from fulfilling a lifelong dream; the mixed emotions that resulted from a phone call, when the family of the police officer Nate had carried through the streets of Chicago called to thank him for his efforts and, at the same time, let him know that the officer had passed away.

I’d already been telling this story throughout the playoffs, but the newest episode would follow that pattern more than ever before. There would be no coverage of the big issues, beyond delving into how they touched the personal lives of these men. Not only that, but I’d drawn a hard line. If a couple was struggling with something off the ice, unless they specifically invited me to delve into their struggles, it was out of bounds for my show. That meant no tackling the subject of Jamie and Katie Babcock’s fertility issues, and no exploration of whatever was or wasn’t taking place between Cody Williams and Dani Weber.

Making a decision like this was a big step to take, but, as I was already all too aware, I had nothing to lose.

I’d taken to going home with Nate each night instead of heading back to my place, and staying all night with him in his hotel room when we were on the road. In fact, I’d started to leave a few items at his house so I wouldn’t have to go without or borrow from him too much. I had a toothbrush that stayed there, along with a few other toiletries. A couple of times, I’d left some clothes there. He always pulled out one of his own T-shirts and a pair of shorts for me, though. He liked seeing me in them, and I couldn’t deny they were insanely comfortable.

I more than liked the way he looked at me when I wore them, too. He always appeared ready to devour me whole when he came into the kitchen while I was fixing a cup of coffee, wearing his clothes. And when he looked at me like that, I wanted to let him. It wasn’t uncommon in those moments for us to end up back in his bed for a while.

But the way it made me feel to find Nate looking at me with such intense desire only served as further proof that my mother had messed with my head in ways that I would likely be dealing with for the rest of my life. Especially since, following the shootings in Chicago, she was trying harder than ever before to convince me to go along with her plan. She had three more Indian doctors at her beck and call, each of them ready to marry me as soon as I came to my senses, stopped dressing like a slut, left my line of work, and agreed to the arrangement.

I hadn’t stopped taking her calls. I couldn’t seem to make myself draw that line completely, always hoping that somehow, someway, she’d realize she was causing more harm than good. She was my mother, after all, and she always would be. But I was still waiting for her to make the next move.

Back on home ice, the Storm pulled out a win in Game Three, largely due to Nate and Jezek playing like they’d grown up on the ice together. Which wasn’t all that surprising, I supposed, since they had done exactly that. No matter how much of a show those two put on in Game Four, though, it wasn’t enough for the team to come away with a win, setting up a do-or-die situation for the next game back in Dallas. Win and live to play another day. Lose and go home.

The day before Game Five, I gave my guys time off. There were any number of things I could have sent them off to film, but I wanted them all fresh, rested, and relaxed for the game the next day. Beyond that, I got the strong sense that Game Five might be the end for this season. There wasn’t a chance that any of the men on this team would throw in the towel, but they were exhausted—mentally, physically, and emotionally. This season, and in particular, the last couple of months, had drained them in any number of ways. I wasn’t sure how much more they had to give.

I was preparing to wind things down. Most of my crew hadn’t taken a full day off in well over a month. I hadn’t taken more than a few hours here and a few hours there to myself. I knew I needed it as much as anyone, even if I was likely to have more time off than I knew what to do with soon.

Nate and I spent the evening in his hotel room, wrapped up in each other’s arms. Some of the time, we talked. Other times, we made love. For a while, we lay in bed, each reading a different book. He was now reading Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, and at Nate’s urging, I’d started The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Those books led both of us to getting weepy, so we set them aside and held each other instead, content simply to be together.

Less than twenty-four hours later, I was sad to learn I’d been right. The Storm just didn’t have enough juice left to beat the Stars.

Watching Nate and his teammates skate out to shake hands with the Dallas players tore at my heart. These guys had all the motivation in the world, but apparently, in the end, it wasn’t their year. Or maybe they had too much motivation. Maybe there were simply too many other things going on, stealing away their focus.

If so, my crew and I had been part of the problem. Not a happy thought. But the silver lining in that idea was that any part I might have played in their demise was now almost at an end. This meant I could wrap up the introductory season of Eye of the Storm, officially be fired, and move on to whatever the next stop in my career might be. In the process, it would eliminate all the problems I was experiencing with presenting a biased view in my coverage of the team. I could be Nate’s girlfriend, hang out with the other WAGs, and not worry about any of them being concerned I might use something they say or do against them simply in order to further my own career.

I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I headed for the locker room after the handshakes had been completed, but I still got there before the team arrived. My crew positioned themselves on their own, not needing any direction from me, so I stood off to the side to observe, as was my custom.

Nate found me as soon as he came into the room, though. And instead of heading for his stall to begin taking off his equipment and changing clothes, he headed straight for me. He had me off my feet and in his arms in no time, kissing me like his life depended on it.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on for all I was worth.

When he broke off the kiss, he asked, “Is that the end of it, then?”

I didn’t have to search my brain to understand his meaning. The end of my job. The end of the media being so hyper-focused on him because of events outside of his control. The end of all the things that had kept us under a microscope for so long.

I nodded, a laugh trying to bubble up within me. “I think so, yeah.”

“Thank God.”

My sentiments, exactly. Because now, we could just be us—whatever that ended up meaning. Now we had the time to figure it all out, in our own time and our own way.

Together.

“I DON’T SEE any reason to beat around the bush,” my boss said on the other end of the phone. And yes, he was doing this over the phone. He couldn’t even bother to have me come in so he could fire me in person. What a jerk.

It was the Monday morning following the final webisode going live. My crew and I were gathered around a box of Blue Star donuts and coffee, celebrating the conclusion of our initial season of working together.

“Despite repeated reminders that we wanted you to cover the big ticket events surrounding the team during their playoff run, you continued to avoid those subjects and focus instead on making Eye of the Storm into a soap opera. You knew this was coming, and now it’s here. You’re fired, Anne. You’ll have a month’s severance. We wish you well.”

“Understood,” I replied, feeling both relieved and disappointed at once. “Good luck to you and whoever you bring on for the next season. And thank you for the opportunity.”

Ben and Dave both rolled their eyes from across the table.

I exchanged a few more pleasantries, if you could call them that, and then hung up.

“Fuck that,” Dave said. “Thank you for the opportunity? That’s bullshit.”

“Even if we all knew I was only in this for the short term, they did give me an opportunity,” I pointed out. “And I got some great experience out of it that I can use in whatever’s next.”

“So, the rest of us give them notice today,” Ben said, looking around the table.

“Now hold on a minute,” I said. “You guys aren’t throwing your jobs away over me. We all knew this was coming, but that doesn’t—”

“We told them a month ago when they first threatened to fire you,” Bill cut in. “You go, we go, too.”

“But I don’t have anything lined up. I can’t promise you guys another job right away or anything. I don’t even—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dave insisted. “We’ve all been working in this business for a long time, and we won’t have any problem getting more work. We’ll be fine. They need to know that they can’t get away with that. They had Internet gold with the show you produced for them, and they’re tossing you for a bullshit reason. That’s not someone I want to keep working for.”

Ben held up his coffee, like he was making a toast, and the other guys followed suit.

“I’m going to be really pissed off at all of you if you don’t have jobs again within a couple of weeks,” I said. “You got that?”

They laughed, but they agreed.

A COUPLE OF hours later, I arrived at the Storm’s practice facility. I’d promised to meet Nate there so we could go out for lunch together to celebrate the end of my job and the end of his season. It was clean-out day for the team. They were all clearing out their lockers and having exit interviews with the coaches, things like that.

I walked into the locker room to find a few of them giving out what I called guy hugs—the sort where they were slapping each other on the backs. In my time working around this team, I knew that was normal for a day like today. Some of these men wouldn’t ever be back as members of the Storm. They’d retire or get traded or not be offered a new contract with the team. Changes were always taking place. It was hard to see, though, because I’d gotten really attached to all of them over the last couple of months. It felt like a part of my family was leaving.

In an effort to keep from getting teary-eyed, I looked around for Nate, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Ghost’s in Jim’s office,” Jezek told me. “You can go up. They won’t mind.”

I nodded my thanks and made my way up the stairs.

Rachel grinned at me when I came around the corner. “Another season in the books.”

“So it is.” In more ways than she likely knew.

She angled her head toward Mr. Sutter’s office. “Go on in. They’re expecting you.”

They were? I couldn’t help but wonder why Mr. Sutter would be expecting me, but it wouldn’t take me long to find out.

I knocked on the open door as I poked my head inside.

“Anne!” Jim said, coming to his feet. He smiled and took off his bifocals, folding in the earpieces and setting them on the desk in front of him. “Come on in. I was just going over some possibilities for a new contract with Nate, but we’re done with that for now, and I was hoping to talk to you.”

I crossed over and shook his hand before taking a seat next to Nate.

“I’ve been talking to Mr. Engels and the coaching staff about you and the work you did on Eye of the Storm this season.”

This couldn’t be good. I glanced at Nate, who gave me a reassuring smile and reached for my hand to squeeze it. I needed to explain that I’d just been fired before Mr. Sutter got much further. “About that, I—”

“We loved it,” he cut in, not letting me get any headway. “We loved everything about it, actually. When we first hired your production company, we wanted the show produced as an experiment, to see how it would help to bring the team into the public a bit more, before we decided on whether or not to take it on again. Now that we’ve seen the way it’s played out, though, we’re excited to talk about next season. Not only that, but we want to produce it in-house going forward. We’d post it directly to the Storm’s website instead of only linking to it, which will hopefully get even greater reach for your work. But we want you to come on board. Now, I know that would mean changing employers, and I completely understand if that’s not something—”

“Are you serious?” I interrupted, gawking.

“Completely serious. If you agreed to this, we’d give you complete creative freedom, as long as you comply with the rules and regulations the NHL has in place for these kinds of productions. I don’t think that should present any problem for you, though. And we’d need you to bring on a team to work under you… Human Resources can give you all the specifics on that, of course. I’ll understand if you need some time to think about it. This would mean a big change for your future.”

It would mean the best change possible for my future. But I’d never been one to jump into things headfirst without knowing all of the details. “I’ll go talk to HR, then, and give you my answer next week.”

“Excellent. Nate, can you show her the way?”

“You’ve got it, Jim.”

We all stood, and Nate and I both shook Mr. Sutter’s hand. Once we were out in the hall together, Nate pulled me into a corner and kissed me like we hadn’t seen each other in weeks, even though I’d been in his bed with him this morning.

“How perfect was that?” he asked when he came up for air.

“Beyond perfect. Did you know?”

He shook his head. “No idea. But that’s not even all. He wants to offer me six more years. He’ll have to work out the money and other details with my agent, but seriously. Six years! That means I won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.”

“That’s fantastic news. We’ve got even more to celebrate than we thought.”

“Speaking of which…” Nate said slowly. “I know we were going to have lunch, but now you need to go talk to HR. And there’s something else I need to go do, anyway. Let’s do dinner instead. And is there any chance we can get your father to join us?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. He and Dad had gotten along well on the previous occasions they’d met, but I wasn’t sure why he’d suggest bringing my father to dinner when initially our plan had been a day of celebration involving only the two of us. In fact, I’d been hoping our festivities would end up in the bedroom sooner rather than later.

“I think he can probably come along. But why?” I didn’t do a darned thing to hide the suspicion in my tone, either.

“There’s just something I need to ask him, is all.”

“Something you need to ask him,” I repeated.

Nate winked. “What can I say? I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy. I need his blessing for something. Been taking lessons from the books I’m reading…”

And I had a feeling I knew exactly what that something was, too. Beaming, I bit my lower lip. “Is that so?”

“Very much so.”

“I’ll make sure he comes, then. But for now, you need to take me to HR.”

He rolled his eyes. “All business, all the time.” But he put an arm around my waist and guided me down the hall. “Any chance you’ll give me a hint what your answer might be?”

“Nope. You’re just going to have to wait and see.”

Because some things in life were worth waiting for. And he wasn’t getting an answer until I got my question.

Catherine Gayle is a USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty contemporary hockey romance and Regency-set historical romance novels and novellas, with over half a million books sold. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.

If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, her blog, at The Sin Bin, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, at Instagram, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.

GAME BREAKER is Book 14 in the Portland Storm hockey romance series written by USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle. If you enjoy it, look for the other books in the series.

BREAKAWAY

ON THE FLY

TAKING A SHOT

LIGHT THE LAMP

DELAY OF GAME

DOUBLE MAJOR

IN THE ZONE

HOLIDAY HAT TRICK

COMEBACK

DROPPING GLOVES

HOME ICE

MISTLETOE MISCONDUCT

LOSING AN EDGE

GAME BREAKER

DEFENSIVE ZONE

POWER PLAY

There are also currently two boxed sets of books within the series, if you would prefer to purchase them in that way.

PORTLAND STORM: THE FIRST PERIOD (Contains Breakaway, On the Fly, Taking a Shot, and Light the Lamp)

PORTLAND STORM: THE SECOND PERIOD (Contains Delay of Game, Double Major, In the Zone, Holiday Hat Trick, and Comeback)

Also, join Catherine’s mailing list to receive ICE BREAKER, a Portland Storm short story prequel that you can’t get anywhere else.

Want to join in the Portland Storm discussion? Join the Facebook reader group at Cat’s House.

Interested in buying your own customizable Portland Storm and Tulsa Thunderbirds jerseys, T-shirts, and more? Find out how here.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About this Book

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Epilogue

Roster

Other Catherine Gayle Books

About the Author