“Data.”
I grinned at her. “Attila. I’m touched. You’ve been studying my hockey stats? How far back does that go? To my youth hockey days in Sweden when I broke all the national records? Impressive for a D-man, isn’t it?”
“First of all, I don’t give a puck about your impressive lats—I mean stats or whatever.”
Lats? Freudian slip, Princess? Do you still have the picture of my bare torso? Because I saw more interest than annoyance in those baby blues after I’d sent it to you.
“Second,” she continued, “I really don’t need to know what specific bra cup size you prefer in your pack of puck bunnies—”
“Hold up.” I refocused. “Where did bra cup size enter this conversation?”
“D-man ringing a bell, Ax-hell?”
“You know, Attila, do yourself a favor and buy Hockey for Dummies so you have the first clue about the sport your boyfriend plays . . . D-man is short for a defenseman, not a bra cup size.” My gaze dropped to her chest. I preferred C’s anyway.
She blushed. “It sounded sexual and you can’t fault me for not knowing much about the sport.”
“I can fault you, because your cousin is a hockey player. You’ve been to Jaxson’s games. What position does he play?”
“You are purposely leading me astray so we don’t have to discuss this.” She waved the folder in the air. “Additional data Peter’s assistant sent to me last week that she compiled from social media.”
This should be fantastic. “What social media data?”
“Women who claimed they’d ‘partied’ with ‘The Hammer’ over the course of the last two seasons in Chicago. By partied, do they mean . . . ?”
“Come on, no euphemisms. Say it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Women you pucked.”
“The night didn’t always end in pucking. And ‘partied’ is a broad term.”
“Then it appears you’ve partied with a lot of broads,” she muttered.
“What’s the magic number I’ve supposedly ‘partied’ with?”
“One hundred and seventy-six.”
I laughed.
“I’m serious. That’s what it says.”
“I was serious earlier about that being impossible.”
Annika cocked her head. “No cracks about getting your stick bronzed for reaching that level of studliness—even if it’s not true?”
I shook my head. “Never been my goal to be the player with the most notches on my stick. My only goal has been to be the best player I can be. I did what I had to do to get out of the cluster fuck that was Chicago”—shut your mouth, man—“so can I tell you why I got hammered last weekend?”
“By all means.”
I paused to take a breath, glad she hadn’t zeroed in on my Chicago slipup. “I’ll summarize for you so I’m not wasting your time. Growing up, as far back as my memory goes, all I cared about was hockey. I lived it, breathed it and was consumed by it. I had that in common with my best friend, Roald. We played in every league in Sweden that would have us. We played internationally. Right after we turned twenty we were scouted by the NHL and invited to Detroit’s training camp. A month before we left, Roald crashed his bike and ended up paralyzed from the waist down.”
Annika reached over and squeezed my forearm. “That is awful, Axl. I’m so sorry.”
“Long story short: I came to the U.S. and lived the dream he couldn’t. It took four years of paying my dues in the AHL before I got called up to the Blackhawks. But Roald never knew. He died the summer before. So Saturday night was the sixth anniversary of his accident. Sounds sappy to admit that I feel lucky every day. But on the anniversary of his death, I can’t escape the guilt that swamps me. I get drunk to try to forget and do stupid shit I don’t remember.” Given the last year I’d suffered through in Chicago, I tried harder for that state of oblivion and I found it sooner than I expected. In the morning I’d woken up facedown on the couch in the lobby of my apartment building with no recollection of how I’d gotten there.
“Total asshat behavior, but sadly it’s behavior I’m familiar with. I have three brothers and three male cousins.”
“I can promise you it won’t happen again.”
“Until next year.”
“Then it won’t be your problem, will it?”
“I guess not.”
She studied me.
“What?”
“Two questions.”
“Yes, that was a true story.”
She bestowed an evil smirk on me. “Good. So I don’t have to be callous and remind you of this awesome opportunity you’ve earned that your friend never got to experience. And ask if a night filled with booze, bunnies and blackouts is worth losing your life’s dream and getting deported back to the land of lutefisk, ABBA and IKEA.”
“Please tell me you plan on following up that comment with an evil witch’s cackle before you fly away on your broom.”
She drilled me in the biceps with her finger. “Consider me your reality check. I may not know a D-man from a goalie, but I did market research. You are twenty-six years old. If you screw this up? You’re back to the AHL for good. No other NHL team will pick you up. You’ll be too old to be a damn rookie.”
“You think I don’t know what’s at stake here?” I exhaled. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I made a few bad decisions and I don’t want to take my frustration out on you.”
“But?” she said with more interest than sarcasm.
“But I’m not convinced a PR scam is in my best interest. That’s what this ‘girlfriend’ angle feels like—as if we’re trying to pull one over on the public. Wouldn’t it be worse if they found out? Wouldn’t it be better if I agreed to stay out of the media spotlight?”
Annika flipped the pen in her hand end over end as she scrutinized me. “For you? No. All your press in the past year has been bad press. The media loves a misbehaving bad-boy athlete. They’re content to saddle you with that moniker your entire career. It happened with McEnroe. No one remembers he was a gifted athlete. So I agree with Peter. We need a positive spin for you. One where we can take you from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. He was the same guy. The only thing that changed about him was the public’s perception of him.”
I looked at her with new admiration. “You’re really good at your job, aren’t you?”
The compliment startled her. Then she granted me a smile sexy enough to tighten my balls and sweet enough that I wanted to lick her lips to see if they tasted like sugar. “Yes, I am.”
Not coy about her skills. I admired them too. “In your professional opinion . . . should we use the ‘we’re a couple’ angle that Peter suggests?”
“It makes the most sense.”
“Don’t sound so enthused,” I said dryly.
“Pulling it off won’t be easy,” she warned. “There are a lot of people in my life who won’t believe that you and I are romantically involved.”
Despite my desire not to react with antagonism, I said, “I’m not a troll or a serial killer, Annika. And I have a list of women who’d be happy to tell the world we’re coupling.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Dude. Think about it. That’s why you have this problem.”
Peter knocked twice and opened the door. He paused, his gaze winging between us. “What’s the verdict?”
“Annika was just about to pucker up so I could kiss her to seal the deal.”
“Puckered up, clenched up . . . same thing, right?”
I laughed. With her smart mouth and that hot body, she intrigued me as much as she annoyed me. Were her fingers as nimble as her brain?
Our gazes clashed and I could almost read her mind.
I’d take clever and cutting over vapid any day. These next few months with her would be a challenge. And I loved a challenge.
“Happy as I am to see that you two have found your own way to work together, there’s one last thing we can all agree on: no one but the three of us needs to know the true nature of your relati
onship.”
“The three of us plus my mother,” Annika reminded him.
Why did she sound more resigned about her mother’s interference than pissed off about it? That bothered me, but it wasn’t a question I’d ask her in front of Peter.
Peter sighed. “So, to keep your personality clashes out of the spotlight, it’d be best if your first few strategy sessions take place somewhere private. Will I need to be there to referee?”
“No. We’ll get it figured out,” I said.
Three
___
ANNIKA
It hadn’t occurred to me until my assistant, Deanna, tried to corner me first thing the next morning that I hadn’t come up with a plausible lie for how things had gone down with Axl last night.
Gone down? Wishful thinking on your part, isn’t it? Since you’re all talk and no action.
My libido had spent her idle time—which she had a lot of—pouting or trying to convince the rest of my girlie bits that I needed to get naked with Axl ASAP to lend believability to our fake relationship. The rest of me was far from convinced it was a good idea, but I suspected my girlie bits would throw a coup and scream Yes! if Axl’s boy bits got involved.
For now, I had to focus on the immediate issue: how to assure Deanna I hadn’t subjected myself to a lobotomy; I’d just experienced a Grinch moment with a change of heart.
Deanna knew the basics about my meetings with Axl, which were already slightly fabricated. I’d been asked to serve as Axl’s interpreter, and that had led him to ask for my PR advice. I’d kept the specifics about our other private meetings basic. So when she approached me yesterday morning with the exact details of what’d gone down in Flurry Saturday night, I should’ve suspected social media would be buzzing. But since I’d lived it and hadn’t wanted to get sucked into pointless speculation, I’d done the mature thing and avoided it. Now I’d have no choice but to dissect the uploads on a purely professional basis.
So what could I say about my new couplehood with Ax-hell that would pass my assistant’s bullshit meter?
Right then a determined rapping sounded on my door and Deanna strode in bearing a bribe, a bag from the Salty Tart Bakery. A bag that contained my favorite breakfast treat—an apple and brown butter scone.
Oh. She was good.
Especially when she nonchalantly asked, “So, how did the meeting go last night after you finally found the place?”
Just come at her strong from the get-go. “D, this cannot go any further than us,” I warned her.
“Now I’m too curious to know what happened to be pissed off that you even had to qualify that, boss. Spill it.”
I sat back in my chair and told the mother of all lies. “You want the details before or after Axl kissed me?”
“He kissed you? Why?”
“Evidently the big, bad hockey player is seriously crushing on me. Last night he hard-core groveled about being such a drunken ass to me at Flurry last weekend. Then the real kicker? None of this ‘hiring me as part of his PR team’ was true! He used it as a way to get to know me so he could ask me out on a date. But he realized he’d made a terrible impression on me . . . blah, blah, blah.”
“What did you do?”
“I went off on him. Ripped him a new one—not easy to do in Swedish when I was literally spitting mad. One minute we were yelling at each other and the next he was kissing me like I was food, air, sunshine all tied up together and better than hockey.” Holy crap, did I suck at this. Who would believe that claptrap? I always felt guilty about lying, so I figured I’d better make it worth it and I tended to overembellish. Case in point: In my head, Ax-hell the smitten Swede had already pinned me to the conference table in Peter’s office as he kissed me. I clamped my teeth together so I wouldn’t start adding elaborate details to an imaginary situation.
Deanna flat-out gaped at me. “Omigod, Annika, that could only happen to you!”
“Right?”
“No wonder you were in a mood this morning. So, what happens now?”
“He’s kind of old-fashioned once he sheds the shackles of hockey player entitlement. He wants us to start a relationship and not sneak around. He’s cooking me dinner tonight.”
“That must’ve been some kiss.”
Don’t respond. You will totally blow this and you’ve convinced her so far.
She leaned forward. “Come on. You have to give me something juicy.”
I imagined Ax-hell’s confident grin if I waxed poetic about the wonders of his mouth—because he did have killer lips and a dirty-boy smile that spoke to me on so many levels—all of them wrong. So I decided to knock him down a peg. It wasn’t like he’d ever know. “To be honest, I think he might’ve been nervous, because the kiss was wet and sloppy and utterly lacked finesse. Kind of like an eager puppy licking your face until you have to push it away.”
“And yet you’re going out with him tonight?”
“I figured it can’t get any worse, right?”
She stared at me hard.
Damn it. I’d raised her suspicions by going into too much detail. “Besides, have you seen his slamming body? The man is solid muscle. His biceps are as big as his head! I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘rock-hard abs’ was coined after seeing him shirtless.”
“Not to mention he’s been gifted with that bronze-worthy face of a Nordic god.” Deanna sighed. “Plus that shaggy, devil-may-care blond mane. Those piercing blue eyes. I am so jealous you’re getting a piece of that, A.”
Her overly detailed description of Axl’s physique bothered me for some idiotic reason. “I’m taking one tiny bite of him at a time because he’s worth savoring.” Oh, gag. “I’ll spare you the particulars to keep your jealousy to a minimum.”
“I can’t wait to see the two of you beautiful blonds together in person and in the media. I bet you look amazing. And it’s so romantic that you speak his native language.” She sighed again. “But the language of love doesn’t really need words, does it?”
Oh for god’s sake. I pointed at the door. “Please get out. You are dripping sap all over my chair.”
Deanna laughed and stood. “This is gonna be a total trip.”
“What?”
She smirked. “It’s too sappy, so I’ll spare you.” She turned around when she reached the door. “Lennox asked to meet with you at two.”
I frowned. “Did she say why she wanted to schedule a meeting?”
“You know how she likes to keep everything that happens in the office by the book.”
I adored my sister-in-law, but her insistence on formality bordered on the absurd. She was married to my brother Brady—the CFO of our family company, Lund Industries. She didn’t have to schedule an appointment with me. “Thanks, D.”
Most days I worked through lunch, preferring to eat at my desk. Deanna sent all the calls to voice mail during her lunch break, so I relished that hour with no interruptions.
I’d started working at Lund Industries—LI—my junior year in high school. But just because my last name was Lund didn’t guarantee me a cushy, high-paying job. Especially not at age sixteen. I’d started in the mail sorting and package delivery department. From there I’d moved up to interdepartmental errand girl. The benefit of being everywhere was I saw the inner workings of every department. So I knew that Finance wasn’t my thing. Nor was Human Resources. I considered Legal as an option and kicked around the idea of heading to law school after earning my undergrad degree. But I also felt the pull toward marketing and had chosen to intern there after I graduated from college.
Luckily I had a great mentor in Suzanne Jones, who ran the Marketing department. Unlike so many people I crossed paths with, she didn’t feel threatened by me because my last name was on the company letterhead. In the ten years she’d headed the department, she’d expanded and redefined Marketing’s role in the company. While I admired that, the cleverest marketing gimmick in the world wouldn’t achieve the desired effect of increasing sales and visibility if the produc
t wasn’t getting into the hands of the
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