Guarding Garrett: A Hockey Allies Bachelor Bid MM Romance #1 (Hockey Allies Bachelor Bid Series)

by RJ Scott

  Chapter Three

  The silence was deafening, and the reality of what was happening was like having a bucket of frozen water tipped over my head.

  “Take a seat and we can talk, Mr. Howell.” Jason instructed.

  I bristled at his tone, “Garrett.”

  “Take a seat, Garrett.”

  I did as I was told, but not before I’d made it deliberately obvious that this wasn’t something I wanted to be doing. It was a petulant, childish thing to do, but for a few seconds, it made me feel better. He tilted his head and stared at me as if he was trying to crack a code, and my defense mechanism kicked in. Being belligerent wasn’t going to help in this situation, but feeling vulnerable and exposed was something I’d never wanted to experience again. My childhood hadn’t been golden, a dad who drunk himself into an early grave, a mom who’d fucked off to god knows where… yeah, not golden at all.

  “I don’t have a choice in this, do I?”

  There was no question there, the Dragons paid me the big bucks and for that, I was a commodity, currently a hot property, and that wasn’t just me blowing smoke up my own ass, that was true. I was a piece of the giant chessboard that is NHL hockey, useful today for my skills, an asset for the time being, but should it change, there would be no hesitation in the team trading me. I’d seen friends move on, and not even my limited no-trade contract was enough to stop them from getting rid of me. All they had to do was leave me open in the next expansion draft, and I was gone. I wanted to stay with the Dragons, end my days there, but if this stranger fucking with my life had messed it up for me, then I had no idea what I’d do.

  “Earth to Garrett?”

  I looked up at him, realizing that firstly he’d been speaking to me, and secondly he hadn’t sat down as I had. Was that some kind of psychological thing? If so, that meant he was probably one of those clever bodyguards with CIA experience or some shady shit that meant he had a new identity or—

  “Garrett? Are you listening?”

  “Sorry, I’m just pissed at this whole thing.”

  “Surprise, disbelief, anger, acceptance.” He pulled a chair toward him then sat at the table. “We’re generally called in at the pissed stage, and I have every confidence we will catch the person or persons responsible for this. Are you listening?”

  My first instinct was to call him a patronizing fucker, but to be honest, he’d had to pull me back to the conversation twice, at least. “Go on.”

  “The Jumbotron incident has already hit social media, but so far it hasn’t gone viral, but that could be because fans of other teams haven’t picked up on it. When it does go viral, we’ll run a counter-campaign, charity photos, playing videos, maybe an interview, but for now, we’ll ride the social media wave. On no account do you post about it on social media, nor acknowledge it in post-game interviews. Understand?”

  “Okay.” That much I could agree to.

  He opened a notebook and clicked his pen, then wrote my name at the top of the page. “Garrett Howell, AKA?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nicknames, middle names, pseudonyms for illicit midnight liaisons with women or men of ill repute?”

  I couldn’t work out if he was messing with me, because his tone didn’t change at all. But the need to snap back at him was right there itching under my skin. Goddamn asshole with his plump lips and his shoulders and his… stop.

  “My middle name is James, guys on the team call me Hooly.”

  “Grindr? Tinder?”

  “Neither.” He looked right at me, and even though he didn’t do that skeptical eyebrow raise, I could see he was going to repeat the question and ask me if I was sure. “I live and breathe hockey, and I’m not stupid enough to think I can hook up anonymously and not get some kind of public legal action thrown at me after. I’ve only ever been with men, yet I’ve been cited in three paternity suits. One of them was a woman in Australia, for God’s sake. She’d never left home, I’ve never been to the place, so unless you can get someone pregnant over Skype then fuck knows what happened there.”

  “You were talking to her over Skype?”

  “No, I didn’t… no, I was using it as an example, it was a joke.”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t joke and that we stuck to the facts.”

  Was he messing with me? I bit my tongue when the fuck you on the tip of my tongue was hovering right there, waiting to escape. “Middle name, James, Hockey nickname, Hooly,” I repeated the simple explanations.

  After a moment’s pause, he dutifully wrote down the names, and he rapidly filled the page with all kinds of information. It ranged from my lack of any sort of family, including first and second cousins, right up to and including the hospital I’d been born in. I had a hard time recalling cousins, but I gave him enough to work on, and he’d made the appropriate sympathetic noises as I explained about my parents and the foster care.

  “You left the foster system at fifteen, is that correct?”

  “That was when I joined my billet family. That’s a place you move to when you play hockey in a new town and you leave your home.”

  “Can you tell me more about the billet parents?”

  “Parent singular, Mamma P. She’s Kyle Pressgrove’s mom. He’s a hockey player for the Detroit Arsenal, and his brother is Bobby.” I saw him smile, but must have imagined it because he was all too quickly back to focusing on the matter in hand. I added the address of the place that Mamma P still lived at, and it was only as he completed the details in the book that I felt a tug in my chest. “All of this that is happening to me? It won’t affect Mamma P, will it? Is she in danger, should I be doing something to—?”

  “We’ll add her to the list, and Kyle and Bobby.”

  “The list of what? Not suspects. Shit, don’t start painting everyone with the same brush.”

  “Not suspects, as people of interest that we will look out for.”

  “Will the Dragons pay for security for her and Bobby? If they don’t, I can. I mean, should I get someone to look out for them?” Everything was spiraling out of control as if suddenly the few things that had happened to me were now this huge mess where everyone I loved was in the worst danger.

  “Protection isn’t just for you. It’s for the team, your family, friends. I’m on it, okay?” He sounded so damn reassuring, and for a moment, I relaxed. “As to your Spotify password for the music?” He finally turned the page and scribbled four words, turning the notebook to face me. “Does the password appear on this list?”

  I peered at the four words and realized that yes, the password was at the top.

  “How did you know that?”

  “It’s the name of your dog when you were ten, plus your jersey number. Sorry to say, but it’s kind of obvious.”

  “Well, shit.” Then it hit me that I hadn’t ever told anyone the name of my dog, “But I didn’t tell you that, I never…”

  “It’s out on the net for anyone to read,” he said.

  Realization flooded when he stared at me then and gave me the time to work through everything in my head. “Shit, I have told people, way back, my rookie year, we did an event with a local dog sanctuary.”

  “That’s the problem. Information is all out there if you know where to look, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure things out. You probably have a complicated password for online banking because in your eyes that is serious, but for something like music, or for locking your phone, maybe you’re less worried.”

  “So, you’re saying that anyone out there could sign into my music account just by guessing my password?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ah, but, what about my email address, they wouldn’t have that,” I said with triumph.

  “Statistically, I can guess at G.Howell at Gmail, or GJHowell, or maybe Hooly and the year you were born, possibly a Dragons email address? Take any of the email providers, keep going, and you can get in. There’s software out there that can run hundreds of permutations and leave you exposed to a lot more t
han just someone switching your music out. Give me your phone.”

  I pulled it out, feeling stupid, and oddly vulnerable.

  He took it from me, and in seconds he had it unlocked.

  “But it only opens to my face,” I protested quickly, because come on, this shit was ridiculous. I was a hockey player, not a goddamn security genius, but everyone knew that an iPhone like mine was secure.

  “And if your face isn’t picked up, you can default to type in six numbers. I guessed at your jersey number repeated three times.”

  I held out my hand for the phone. “Lucky guess,” I muttered and resolved to change all my passwords and email addresses everywhere.

  “Deamax will have a team at the arena, but I’ve been tasked with your specific protection. Unless, of course, you have an issue with that?”

  He stared at me with those intense, dark eyes and waited for me to answer, almost as if I had a choice in the matter. The Dragons employed me, and this mess was making me a liability, and I had zero input on any of this.

  “No issues.”

  He closed the notebook and pocketed the pen. “Good. I’ll be with you at all times.”

  “Wait. What? All times?”

  “Until the current threat is neutralized, yes.” He leaned toward me and frowned. “You don’t look happy about that.”

  “I’m not, I mean my apartment isn’t huge—”

  “It has three bedrooms, four baths—”

  “Jesus,” I snapped. “Is there anything you don’t already know?”

  “I didn’t know your dog’s name this time last week,” he deadpanned. “Getting back to this, we need to run risk assessments on any work or personal appearances to reschedule them for a more appropriate time.”

  “What do you mean rescheduling? You can’t reschedule the freaking NHL.”

  “That would be way more dramatic than is warranted,” he said, and his calm appraisal of everything was wearing my patience down. “Team events that fall outside of the games themselves are a concern, including any personal appearances which will need to be rescheduled.”

  “I’m not changing—”

  He held up a hand. “This is how it works, Mr. Howell. I’m not here to debate with you about what you will and won’t do. This is not a movie, and I’m not Kevin Costner. The Dragons have employed me as your protection officer, so you do as I say, you don’t wander off, you don’t take unnecessary risks, and you listen to my advice. I will accompany you at all times, and you will do as instructed, and as a result, I will keep you safe. Do we have a problem here?”

  Oh god, yes, we had a problem. Someone was out there messing with my life, changing my music, sending me dead birds, flowers for funerals, and telling me I didn’t have long left. So yes, the problem was bigger than me, and I hated the lack of control. I didn’t want Jason in my personal space at all times, and I didn’t need him laughing at me because I used the wrong fucking password. Resentment and self-pity built inside me, and then that became anger, which swiftly became resignation. And through all of this thinking and analyzing, and running the gamut of emotions, he watched me without expression. In my gut, I thought he was waiting for me to tell him to fuck off out of my life, but underneath the strong-willed hockey player, I was freaked out, and my gut told me that something had to be done.

  After a pause I let out a huff, so that he knew I was pissed and that I was done with all of this. “No problem.”

  He nodded and turned the page of his notebook again. “Significant others?”

  “No.”

  “Sex tapes?”

  Just when I thought we’d reached an understanding about the kind of person I was, he asked me that? “What the hell?”

  “These are things I need to know in advance. If anything is floating around out there, that could be a cause for what is happening to you now? A sex tape is just one thing. What about a wronged lover? An admirer who has taken things too far? A hockey player who has issues with you? A man or woman scorned?” He raised that damn eyebrow again.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I play a clean game. I’m gay. So for one thing, there’s no chance of a woman scorned, and two, no hockey player has issues with me. None of what you said makes any sense at all.”

  He tapped the pad and looked thoughtful. “You’re wrong.”

  “Huh? Just like that, I’m wrong? Does being a dime-store psychologist come with your job description?”

  “You don’t have a reputation as being one of the hockey bad guys. If anything you’re the player people want to be. Brilliant on the ice, with skills that earn you the big money, and a team that molds around you. To an outsider, you’re living the dream, and you’ve had it easy. You’ve never been traded, you’re a Dragon through and through, you have a Stanley Cup to your name, and that kind of thing can build resentment in a player who perhaps hasn’t had the same advantages. You have the kind of sex appeal that gets you noticed, women love you and want to turn you, men want to be you. In fact, you have everything that others might want.”

  I was stuck for a moment on his use of sex in the sentence? Who even used a word like that in regular business conversations? Also, what the hell with the implication I had it easy?

  “Hang on, I work hard for what I have, I didn’t get the team and my skills handed to me on a platter—”

  “I never said that—”

  “You just did—”

  “I said that people’s perceptions might be that you are a lucky but untalented man who needs to be shown a lesson or two.”

  “Then they don’t know me,” I snapped, and immediately wished I could’ve taken it back because I’d taken the debate a step further.

  “We can’t discount the man, or woman, who sees you as a challenge.” He was so frustratingly patient as he explained. “It could be a fan who thinks that a gay man doesn’t belong in the high testosterone environment of professional hockey. It could be someone from school, a neighbor, even a fellow hockey player. Hell, it could be the barista from the coffee shop you use.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But there is one thing at least that has made you a target, and we have to find that thing. This action could be personal to you, or in a broader sense it could be directed at the team. Either way, this is what Deamax will find out.” He paused for a moment. “I have your game schedule, so let’s talk about the personal stuff.”

  Until I’d walked into this room, I’d thought it would be easy to forget any of this was happening. Put the whole thing down to a string of coincidences, but the way that Jason talked, it was this web of nightmare scenarios, and I was stuck in the middle like a fly waiting for the spider. I was confident that I could fight back if I were attacked again, I was ready for it, poised on edge most of the time, waiting for someone to try to push me from behind. So yeah, I was irritable and defensive with it, but the way he expanded on this network of possible reasons why someone wanted to hurt me made my head hurt, and my fears ramped up.

  “I don’t have any personal stuff.”

  “You have All-Star weekend?”

  “That’s part of the hockey,” I murmured.

  “It’s still something out of the ordinary, as is this bachelor auction you’re attending.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “I’ve already risk assessed the entire All-Star weekend, and it won’t be easy, but we have to handle the event side of it because the team wants that to go ahead as much as possible. On the other hand, the risk I attribute to the additional auction where complete strangers bid on you makes your attendance there a no.”

  He talked like it was a done deal.

  “What do you mean, no? It’s my event, I’m on the organizing committee, it’s raising money for charity—”

  “The hotel is in Boystown, and it’s old, and not easy to cover.” He interrupted me with impatience in his tone. “You would be exposed and alone on the stage, not to mention the random guests staying in the hotel who are not even there for the event.”


  “I’m not backing out of the auction.” God, how many times would I have to say this today? “And that’s my final word. This event is important and there’s no compromise on this.” I could be just as stubborn and hold my position as if I was fighting for a puck in the corner.

  He glanced up at me and I wondered if he was waiting for me to retract all of that. Well, he’d be waiting a long time.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and pasted on my best badass expression. I probably looked like an idiot, given I was known as the fast skater, the Instagram-using-player, the pretty boy, but not the hard man of hockey.

  Finally, when the stare-off had been heading toward uncomfortable, he nodded. “I’ll take your comments under advisement and a further look at the risk assessment. However, at this time it’s still a no—”

  “You don’t have to be there with me—”

  “That’s not how this works—”

  “The event is my hardline,” I snapped. “All the rest, you moving into my apartment, shadowing me, doing whatever you need to do, that’s okay, but this event means everything to me, and that fucker out there messing with my life will not ruin the good all of us can do for the charity.” By this time, I’d worked up a temper, and my hands were in fists in my lap, weeks of being angry at all of this winding up inside me with nowhere to go.

  “Have you considered you could just donate—?”

  “It’s not about money. It’s being visible, and standing up for every kid who is questioning who they are and wants to play hockey. It’s about showing investors and managers and companies that use my face to sell their products that you can be gay and play professional hockey. It’s for the kids and the game, and it’s important.” I ran out of steam.

  He nodded. “Okay, Garrett,” he said, with reluctance. “Okay.”

  Chapter Four

  I was still in stubborn-ass mode when we broke to leave for my apartment. I picked up my gear, and he followed me like a puppy until we got to the doors, which he opened for me and checked beyond before letting me go through. This was overkill and there was no way I was letting this ride.