“Sylvie, I don’t know. If you come here just for me, you are all alone much of the time. That is not right. The time is not right.”
Alors. I had fallen for Bryce when I’d been a naïve girl of fifteen. But now, at twenty-two, I am a much wiser woman. I know what words of true love sound like, and they don’t sound like that.
After that dreadful conversation, I wised up. I made myself stop dreaming of a future with Bryce. I went to work in the front office of my father’s hockey organization. I even looked around for nice men to date, trying to get my mind off of him.
I didn’t find any, though. It was a lonely, quiet time in the house with my father, both of us straining to hear the echo of my mother’s voice.
Things began to feel easier for me this summer. Less sadness. More ordinary joy. And just when I’d stopped pining all the time, the phone rang, summoning me to Brooklyn.
So here I stand, twenty yards from Bryce in this beautiful rink, wearing a Bombshells practice jersey. My maman would say that fate brought me to his doorstep once again.
She did, in fact, predict this.
If that sounds crazy, it’s because you never met Maman. She believed in fate. So does Bryce, by the way. He is forever seeing signs in ordinary things. So I wonder how he’ll feel when he sees me.
As for me, I really don’t know what to think. Part of me is full of skin-tingling wonder that I’ve been sent by fate or God or luck to be with Bryce again. Maybe he’ll look over at me and understand that our paths are meant to join forever.
The other part of me knows that it’s a long shot. I want to be loved desperately. I want to be cherished. I want a man who needs me in his life even when it’s inconvenient.
Bryce has already failed this test once. But since I’m here, I think I’ll school him on a few things. I’ll show him that I’m strong, and that I am full of life and ready to be loved, even if not by him. I could even have some fun with this. I will show him what he’s missing. He won’t know what’s hit him.
If he ever turns his freaking head and looks in my direction.
Someone else turns, though. It’s that other man—the one with the eyes like the Caribbean Sea. He glances at me and then gives me a quick smile.
And it’s quite a smile. My heart might be broken, but my eyes are not. His eyes linger on me for a long beat, and then he slowly turns his face back toward the coach.
But I still feel his attention directed this way. I don’t know why, but I sense his interest.
The back of his practice jersey says BAYER. I’ve heard that name before. He’s a defenseman, and one of Bryce Campeau’s friends.
No one else glances this way, though, and I’ve been waiting here a long time.
So I turn and leave for the brand-new women’s locker room.
Three
Big No No
ANTON
“Man, I need calories,” I bellow in the locker room after practice. “Pizza at Grimaldi’s? Who’s with me?”
Bryce Campeau raises a hand and gives me a serious nod.
“Excellent. Leave in ten?” I twist my head around, looking for my buddy, Drake. “Anyone seen the Drakerator? Why did he leave the ice early?”
“Blood-sugar crash,” O’Doul mutters.
“Oh, shit,” I say. Drake is a type 1 diabetic. Managing his condition during peak athletic performance is tricky. Sometimes he gets things a little wrong and starts to crash. And it’s often worse at the start of the season, when his metabolism has to readjust to the daily strain of professional sports.
Hoping to check on him, I head for the treatment rooms. But Drake comes skidding into the dressing room, his face red, looking harried.
“You okay, man?”
“No,” he says shortly. “I just fucked up big time.”
“Damn. You want me to find Doc Herberts?”
“Not necessary. And not what I meant. My blood sugar was a little wonky, so I headed off to find the juice and the test kits I keep in Doc’s office, right?”
“Sure.”
“Well, they moved it.”
“The juice?”
“The whole office!” He throws his arms wide. “It’s upstairs now, on the new floor. So I’m, like, dizzy as I climb those new stairs, and I’m in this hallway I’ve never seen before. I don’t know which office is which, so I start poking my head into all of them.”
“Whoa. Did you find it?”
He winces. “Eventually. But first I found this super-pretty girl in a treatment room, grabbing some tape. So I say, ‘Hey doll, could you help me find Herberts’s office?’” He scrubs a hand through his hair.
“Wait, you called a stranger doll?”
“I know, okay? But I was using one-syllable words for a reason. Everything started looking yellow around the edges, and I thought I might pass out.” He heaves a sigh. “I didn’t.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Sorta. Turns out that girl is a player. I think she said defense. There was yelling. I didn’t get all the details.”
“Question.” Jimbo, our equipment guy, raises his hand, like a boy in school. “Do they still call her a defenseman even if she’s a defensewoman?”
“They could say D-man,” someone suggests. “Oh, wait…”
“Does this story have a punchline?” I ask. A guy could go all day without finishing a thought in this room.
“She ripped me a new one,” Drake grumbles. “She went off. And it didn’t help my case that in the middle of her telling me what a turd I am for treating her like a waitress or a puck bunny—her words—I basically staggered away from her, found Doc’s office, and grabbed my juice and chugged it.”
“Oh, man.” I just shake my head.
“So she thought I was an asshole twice—”
“Which you were,” Castro points out. “Even if you were not totally in control of your faculties.”
“Right. And I just kept on being an asshole, trying to stay conscious while she delivered a long lecture about making assumptions.”
“Assumptions you made,” Castro points out again. “And by the way, the women’s team officially starts today.”
“Wow, thank you for that timely information,” Drake grumbles. “The girl was pissed. Now I gotta watch my back every time I walk into this place.”
“Come to lunch with Campeau and me,” I say. “Sounds like you could use the calories. And we’ll guard your six.”
“Thanks, man.” Drake pushes himself off the doorframe. He still looks a little off. I’m thinking we’ll need to take a taxi over to our favorite pizza place.
The three of us leave the dressing room and troop down the hallway together. It still has that new-paint smell from all the work they’re hurrying to finish. We exit via a set of secure doors into a hallway that widens toward a glass brick tunnel. From there, the floor slopes upward from our practice facility to the Bruisers’ corporate offices.
Drake stiffens as we reach the tunnel. “Uh-oh.”
Glancing up, I see three women ahead of us. They’re stopped, as if waiting for someone else to join them. And, whoa, it’s like the Charlie’s Angels of hockey—a blond, a redhead, and the brunette beauty I can’t stop thinking about.