“No.”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“I don’t care—”
“A journalist wants to do a sympathetic piece about your issues with the stalker—”
“What?”
“It’s not going to stay a secret forever,” Shaun reminded me, “we should get ahead of the curve.”
I pulled the cell away from my ear, and stared at the screen.
“What is it?” Jason was at my side in an instant, and I thrust the phone at him.
“My agent says a journalist wants my story.” He took the phone and I didn’t want to listen to whatever the hell they came up with. “I’m getting a shower,” I said to the now empty kitchen, then headed to my bedroom. I dropped my bag on the bed, then stripped as I moved to the bathroom, tugging the door shut behind me, locking it, then running the water. When it reached the right temperature, I stood under the rainfall setting for a very long time. Typically after a practice like today I would do the cool-down, shower at the arena, get food from somewhere, and then end up here to sleep. The meeting had thrown all my routines, but the water on my back felt good. The All-Star event was still three weeks away, Jason had just said that cases they took on were solved in forty-eight hours, so by the weekend this would be over and done with.
All he needed to do was shut down my stupid asshole of an agent, then find out whoever was doing this shit to me.
Then maybe I could go back to being the happy-go-lucky hockey player, with the popular Instagram account and the legion of followers. Not to mention the shit ton of lucrative endorsements which meant I had a savings account that could buy a house in the burbs three times over. I had an image of somewhere I could make a home for real, maybe with a yard, and garage where I could park the Mustang and spend my off days polishing her. I could even get a dog.
Fuck the asshole messing with my life, and Shaun, and the team’s concerns, and Deamax, and most of all Jason, for making me question the status quo. I didn’t like any of it.
Chapter Five
When I went back out into the kitchen, feeling a hundred times better and more in control of myself, Jason was at the stove stirring something fragrant. He had an intense look of concentration and his profile was gorgeous. There, I admitted it to myself, he was exactly my type: sexy, built, kind of confident, and with bedroom eyes I could fall into. I wondered what his story was. Was he an ex-cop? Or military? Or maybe he had a degree in art and knitted in his spare time. Maybe the dangerous side to him was all an act.
“Hey,” he interrupted my musing and startled me so much that I went on the defensive to cover my woolgathering.
“What did you tell Shaun?”
“Hmm, well, let’s just say there is now no journalist getting your story, and you’ve just lost half a million in publicity, his assessment not mine. I suggested that he back off.”
“Suggested?”
“Encouraged,” he added. “Also the picture from the Jumbotron has gone viral.”
“Fuck. And?”
“My team is dealing with it.”
“Dealing with it how?”
“Nothing I know how to do, but let’s say there is a lot of positive press out there for you right now, along with advocate groups who are all over this.”
“I should post… something.”
He placed a bag of pasta on the counter. “Photograph that.”
“Huh?”
“Hashtag dinner, hashtag life is great, and it’s a done deal.”
“You don’t understand my followers, they want—”
“No posting,” he said, and he was firm.
It occurred to me that my initial thought when I’d seen him standing at the stove had been pushed aside at the far from perfect news that the message about me paying men for sex had gone viral. “What are you doing in my kitchen?”
“Cooking. It’s all I could find.” Jason wiped his hands on the dishcloth and tucked it back into his pants. He’d taken off the jacket, but I couldn’t see it anywhere, and I bet he was the kind of man who hung things up instead of throwing them over the nearest chair. His shirt was ice-white, and he’d loosened his tie and the top buttons. He wasn’t wearing the holster, and I couldn’t see a weapon anywhere, so I assumed that was wherever he’d put his jacket. But, unarmed, how would he deal with random attacks on my life? What if there was someone outside the door right now with a broadsword, just waiting to hack me to pieces.
“I hope to hell my stalker doesn’t dive through the door waving a broadsword.”
“Huh?” He was confused and I realized with a start that I’d just said that out loud.
“Ignore me.” Of course, he did no such thing.
“You can trust that I have taken adequate precautions against any and all stalkers wielding broadswords.”
I ignored him and his attempt at humor, because heaven forbid I should find him amusing, and he knew it. Changing the subject seemed like a good thing and I peered into the first saucepan, found pasta in boiling water, and in the other, some kind of tomato concoction. “What is it?”
“Well, this is pasta,” he deadpanned.
“Whatever.”
“You have a cupboard with pasta, and noodles, canned tomatoes some with herbs already in it, along with twelve varieties of soup. There’s nothing fresh in this place, no garlic, onions, or oregano, so it’s the best I can do, but I’ve eaten worse.”
“You don’t have to cook,” I protested, although my belly disagreed and let out a growl. “We could have gone out.”
He side-eyed me and I knew immediately he thought I’d suggested something horrifically unsafe.
“It’s best we stay here tonight until my team gets a proper handle on everything.”
I pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and handed him one, but he waved it away. “Thanks, but I don’t drink when I’m on the clock.”
I shrugged and put his back, levering the cap of my own, and savoring the first taste of ice-cold beer. I hadn’t drunk since my birthday, which was a month back, but the beer tonight was all about taking the edge off the stress. And since when was I the stressed one? That wasn’t my persona, that wasn’t me.
“Tell me more about this auction?” Jason asked, as he spooned sauce over pasta and pushed a bowl and silverware toward me on the breakfast bar. I sat on the nearest stool, wondering if I was actually hungry at all and whether or not I could be bothered to eat the fragrant meal. How he’d managed to pull together pasta with a sauce that smelled of basil, I didn’t know. But the auction was my focus and I was pleased to talk about it.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning would be good.”
“It was just a few of us to start, chatting in our super-secret gay hockey player WhatsApp, and this is what we came up with.”
“You have a super-secret gay hockey WhatsApp?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” He shook his head. “Your loss. It’s just a few of us; me, and a couple of other guys including Kyle.”
“I should really look at this group and get a feel for who is in there.”