The Elder Wand is what I named my cane.
Yeah, I’m twenty-six, and I use a cane. It looks like smoke glass, but instead it’s acrylic and totally badass. It’s also great for smacking dweebs like Maddox in the nuts.
Matt drops his arm and frowns. “I don’t get you. You’re so hot and cold.”
“No, I’m not, Matt. I run as consistently frigid as a high-end freezer. Don’t put this on me. Just because I’m a female who’s regularly in your vicinity and not fangirling over you like the many troubled souls who buy your jockstraps on eBay does not mean I secretly desire to screw you into next week.”
Matt frowns. “You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“What the hell, Frank?” he yells. Loud enough that everyone in the private room we’re in stops talking for a second and glances over at us.
“Matt, I think you should order an Uber now.”
“I drove,” he growls, signaling Joe.
Seeing Matt call him, Joe walks toward us. When I catch his eye and gently shake my head, Joe stops, pivots, then turns back to continue washing glasses.
Matt curses under his breath. “Did you just shut me off, Frank?”
“Yes.” I turn and smile apologetically at Willa as I otherwise ignore Matt. Tipping my cup, I take a drink of root beer.
“Frank.” He grabs my wrist, which sends the root beer flying from my hand and landing with an ice-cold splatter all over my shirt.
I hiss at the shock of it. “Jesus, Maddox.”
Suddenly a large hand grabs the back of Matt’s shirt and wrenches him off the barstool so violently, he tumbles to the floor. Ren bends, sweeping up my blazer, which fell too, and immediately throws it over my shoulders. When he straightens, my mouth falls open.
Ren Bergman is really not smiling.
And not-smiling Ren Bergman is a whole new animal. No, man.
Move aside, Erik the Red. There’s a new enraged ginger Viking come to slay, and Lord help me, cinnamon sexpots are my weakness. I’ve been relying on the fluorescents we work under to dull Ren’s hair to burnished bronze. I tell myself every time I see him that he’s not actually a ginger god of ice hockey glory. He’s a brassy blond god of ice hockey glory. It helped. Marginally.
But now I have to face the facts: Ren’s hair is the gorgeous copper of a fading sunset, and the anger radiating off of him is equally breathtaking.
I gape at him, Ren the Red, vengefully sexy, and command my jaw to snap shut. It’s time to find my inner feminist. To bolster my walls. Ren throwing down on my behalf should not be affecting me like this. Especially given my history.
Archaic male demonstrations of protectiveness are not sexy. Archaic male demonstrations of protectiveness are not sexy. Archaic—
Dammit, this is sexy, and my body knows it. I can’t deny it any more than I can deny my Harry Potter panties are now as wet as a rainy day at Hogwarts. Ren swivels his pale eyes, a stunning wintry blue gray, right on Maddox. They’re cold fury as they glare at him, then return to me.
“Joey, a towel, please.” His voice holds a tone of command I’ve heard Ren use on the ice countless times before, but never in any conversation involving me. My belly does a somersault as I watch a towel fly his way, before Ren immediately sets it in my hands. “Here.”
“Th-thanks,” I mutter stupidly, dabbing my shirtfront. I’m already shivering from this cold-as-balls wet shirt plastered to my skin.
Abruptly, Ren lurches toward the bar. I glance up and realize it’s Matt who slammed into him.
“Maddox,” I snap. “Stop!”
Ren shoves him off, spins, and deftly grabs Matt by the throat. “You fucking torture her. It’s enough. Leave her alone.”
Wow. Ren never swears. Well, not like that, at least not in public or with the team. Elizabethan oaths are more his speed. Hugger-mugger. Malignancy. Canker-blossom. He’s subtle about it, muttering them under his breath, but I have exceptionally good hearing, and since I caught the first one, I’m always craning to listen when I’m around him, hoping I’ll overhear another.
The worst part? He’s good at it. Like, I have to feign a coughing jag every time he uses them, or I’d run the risk of laughing, maybe even smiling, and then my reputation as resident ice-queen hard-ass would be shot.
Ren’s still throttling Matt. Perhaps it’s time to intervene before our most valuable player gets himself benched for misconduct.
“The chivalry’s unnecessary, Bergman,” I tell him. Standing slowly off the stool, I swallow a groan as my hips scream in disapproval.
We don’t like barstools, Frankie, my joints holler. You know this.
I wrap my hand around Ren’s forearm and try to ignore the soft fiery hairs beneath, the powerful tendon and muscle flexing under my grip. “Please, Ren. He’s drunk. It’s pointless.”
“Oh, there would be a point.” Ren glares at Matt and shakes him by the windpipe. “He’d learn a lesson if I beat his ass.”
“Hey now.” Rob slides in.
I sigh in relief. “Where’ve you been?”
“I had to take a leak.” Rob manages to pull Ren’s hand away from Matt’s throat. “Can’t a guy piss and not come back to the kids trying to kill each other? Ren Bergman, resorting to violence. Never thought I’d see the day. I’m sure Maddox deserves whatever you were about to do, but let’s handle this like adults.”
Matt leers at him. “Bergman’s just jealous.”
I rub the pounding spot between my eyes. “Jealous would imply he has something to envy between us, Maddox.” Or that Ren even cares who does or doesn’t hit on me. Why would he?
“Now, Matthew.” Rob cups his hand around Matt’s neck and pulls him aside. “You’re catching an Uber home. You’re going to sober up. Then, tomorrow, at practice, you’re going to apologize to Frankie.”
Rob catches my eye and furrows his brow. The first few times he did it after I started working for the team, I thought he was angry at me. That’s because I suck at reading facial expressions.
How, you ask, does someone with that kind of interpersonal hang-up work in social media? She watches lots of sports interviews and sitcoms to memorize the context and meaning for as much human behavior as possible, that’s how. But sometimes even that’s not enough, and I find myself in the dark. That’s when I simply have to ask. Which is what I had to do with Rob. Now I know that this particular expression is a nonverbal check-in.
“I’m okay,” I tell him.
He nods and yanks Matt away. Ren’s still glaring in their direction as they disappear down the back hall. When he turns and looks at me, pinning me with those icy eyes, a shiver rolls up my spine.
“Are you all right?” he asks quietly. His voice is deep, warm.
“I’m fine, Ren.” Except for my soaked Harry Potter panties. And my shredded emotional boundaries, after seeing his pissed-off, fiery alter ego that’s made forgotten corners of me blaze to life.
Leaning against the stool, I reach for my purse and signal to Joe that I want to square up. Ren’s still watching me. I feel his gaze like sunshine, heating my skin. “You’re staring at me.”
Ren blinks away. “Sorry. I’m just…concerned.”