Going for the Goal

by Sara Rider

  Seconds of heavy silence ticked by until Jillian finally cut the tension with a rueful laugh. “Hell of a way to get a woman in your bed, don’t you think?”

  “Wasn’t trying to get you in bed at all,” he said with complete honesty, despite the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to take his hands off her. Instead, he let his thumbs trail along her delicate collarbone. “Not this time, at least.”

  “This time?”

  “I was hoping you’d end up in my bed that first night we met in Minneapolis.” He didn’t know why he felt the urge to admit that to her. Maybe because he’d never really talked about the night he’d nearly destroyed his career thanks to his temper. He’d been condemned by the media as a goon after the fight, but she’d seen a different side of him. He’d made her laugh. He’d gotten under her skin, just like she’d gotten under his, and spent the better part of a decade regretting that he’d never kissed her. Wondering if she felt the same. “I tried to find you a couple weeks after everything had settled down, but Pantheon said you weren’t employed with them any longer.”

  She laughed and pulled his hands off her shoulders, breaking the physical connection between them. “I got sick of their bullshit and quit my internship shortly after we met. I guess we were both a little young and stupid back then.”

  “Guess so,” he said, even though his brain was the sole part of him that agreed. His body was still painfully stupid when it came to Jillian Nichols.

  He brushed the hair from her temple where an ugly bump had formed. It was too easy to hear the sound of her breath speeding up in the quiet room. Too easy to notice how her hands found their way back to his chest, stretching his self-control to the precipice of disaster. The slightest tilt of his head would eliminate the space between them, letting him taste her lips the way he’d wanted to all those years ago.

  But this wasn’t the time to revisit the past. And while it felt like his balls were about to explode, her need for rest was more important. He stood up and handed her the water glass. “You should get some sleep.”

  He walked out of the room before she could do anything to make him change his mind.

  It was going to be a helluva long night.

  “How could you do that?” Ben cried dramatically. “It’s an abomination.”

  Nick ignored his brother and dunked his knife back inside the jar of all-natural crunchy peanut butter. “French toast’s good today.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if we’re even related.”

  “Need me to show you a mirror?”

  Ben climbed onto the barstool next to Nick’s and doused his breakfast in maple syrup. “No, I need you to show me that you have a real human heart beneath those giant pecs of yours, and prove to me that you’re not an android.”

  “Humans need protein.” He forked a huge bite into his mouth.

  “Humans eat sugar. We’re evolutionarily designed to crave it.”

  Nick grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl in front of him on the dark granite breakfast counter, held it up, and smiled.

  His brother responded by rolling his eyes. “A Granny Smith does not count.”

  “What are you two fighting about?”

  Nick swiveled around to see Jillian standing in the middle of his kitchen, hair wet from a recent shower. She’d changed out of his old T-shirt and back into her own clothes, which strangely disappointed him even though he hadn’t actually expected her to wander into his kitchen like a one-night stand hoping to sneak in another round before her first cup of coffee. He scanned her face for a sign that he wasn’t the only one who felt a rekindled connection between them after last night.

  He didn’t find it. She was scowling at him with her arms crossed.

  “Brother stuff,” he said. “How’s your head?”

  “Fine.” Her hazel eyes narrowed, raking the two of them over like she was a teacher supervising detention hall. “Oh my god. What the hell, Nick? You hit your own brother?”

  “Uh, you sure your head’s okay?”

  She ignored the question, walked over to Ben, and examined his face. “How did you get this black eye?”

  Nick and Ben laughed at the same time, which only seemed to further agitate her.

  “Can someone please explain what’s going on? You did not have this bruise yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Ben stood up and pulled a stool out for her, urging her to sit. “I just happened to have on some stage makeup, too. That stuff will cover anything. Now, do you want coffee or tea with your breakfast?”

  “What about your fight this morning? And yesterday at the hospital?”

  Ben set a heaping plate of French toast in front of her before retaking his seat. “This morning we were fighting about the fact that my Neanderthal brother puts peanut butter on French toast, which is disgusting. Yesterday we were fighting about Dr. Morgan.”

  She frowned, causing a crease to form between her eyes. “Why were you fighting about him?”

  “Because I was right,” Nick said. “As usual.”

  Ben grinned. “Yes, you were. Dr. Morgan and I have a date to try out that new Ethiopian restaurant in Midtown tomorrow.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you have a black eye.”

  “That’s none of your business,” Nick said before taking another bite of his apple.

  She shot him an unimpressed look, then scooped a giant hunk of whipped cream from the bowl Ben set in front of her and drenched her whole plate with syrup. “After the night we’ve had, I’d say I deserve to be let into the inner circle, don’t you?”

  Ben put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “She’s right.”

  He didn’t like it, but once his brother made up his mind, there was no changing it. To distract himself, he refilled his coffee mug, letting the steaming, bitter liquid fill his throat.

  “Sebastian Liakos happened to my face,” Ben said with the kind of offhand casualness that made Nick’s stomach sick.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because he’s a boil on the ass of humanity that needs to be lanced,” Nick growled.

  Ben sighed, ignoring him. “Nick usually brings me around to the locker room whenever I visit. Most of the time, the guys have been cool with it, but apparently Liakos wasn’t. We went out to McAdam’s Pub afterward, and I accidentally bumped into him in the bathroom. He let me know in his own special way just how uncomfortable men of my ilk make him.”

  Nick poured another two mugs and set them down hard in front of Jillian and Ben, spilling coffee onto the counter. He started on the dishes Ben had left in the sink next, hoping he could distract himself enough to keep the anger from resurfacing.

  “Wait, is that why Nick got into a fight with Liakos? Why not press charges? Why would he risk his career over an ass like that?”

  “Because I’m a high school teacher in small-town Minnesota. All it takes is one parent believing Liakos’s story that I’m some perverted creep lurking around the men’s locker room for my career to be over,” Ben said matter-of-factly.

  Stay calm and keep scrubbing, Nick warned himself. It’d taken all his self-control to restrain his temper around that asshole this week. Hearing Ben talk about the whole thing like it was just another hazard of life as a gay man made him want to explode all over again. He needed to rein it in if he was going to survive the Vipers’ upcoming three-day road trip without earning a suspension.

  “All right. I’ll do it,” Jillian said sharply.

  Nick set down the soap-covered plate he’d been washing and turned around. “Do what?”

  “I’ll represent you. But I have one condition.”

  Well, holy shit. “I’m listening.”

  “Good, because if I’m going to represent you, I expect you to listen to everything I say.”

  He dried his hands on a dish towel. “Sure. I’m yours to command.”

 
She stood up abruptly, causing the stool to scrape loudly against the ceramic tile floor. “I mean it. Every. Single. Thing.”

  He nodded, but it didn’t seem to be enough for her. She walked around the counter to where he stood and poked him in the chest.

  “No more fights, on or off the ice.”

  He put his hands up. “Whoa. I already know how to play hockey. Your job is to secure my contract.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “By turning me into a wuss?” He didn’t just defend the net; he defended his teammates from all the other shitheads on the ice.

  “Enforcers are no longer kings of the rink. They’re practically a relic at this point, and the only reason you’ve hung around as long as you have is because you’re also one of the rare defensemen who can be a true offensive threat. That’s what is going to save your career, but right now the world sees you as a guy who still plays small-town, ice-pond hockey while everyone else has moved on to a slicker, cleaner game. The league’s been clamping down on aggressive play lately. You’re a great player, but everyone in the NHL is starting to wonder if guys like you still have value. It’s my job to prove you do.”

  His left eye started twitching. “I still don’t understand how that’s supposed to help me win the cup.”

  “Most people think being a woman in this business is a disadvantage. And yeah, maybe it is. But there’s also a distinct advantage that comes with it. I know how much perception matters, and how it can overshadow a person’s achievements. I also understand how easily it can be manipulated.”

  He exhaled heavily. This was ludicrous. He’d never had an agent tell him how to play before. Then again, he’d never had an agent who understood that there was more to hockey than money. He examined her face—her full pink lips drawn into a hard line, her high cheekbones that made her look both sweet and regal, and the sparkle in her gold-rimmed eyes. She looked younger in the morning sun without any makeup on, but her expression was one of absolute determination.

  None of it made sense, but there was something deep in his gut telling him she knew what she was doing. “Okay.”

  “Regular public outreach activities. At least once every two months. More if you can handle it.”

  “Fine.”

  “No partying. If you go out for drinks after the game, you stick to water.”

  He nodded. Unlike his dad, he’d never had a problem with drinking. “Anything else?”

  “No puck bunnies, floozies, or anyone else sneaking out of your hotel room at five in the morning.”

  He ran his hand along his jaw, ignoring Ben’s laughter from the other side of the kitchen. “You want me to give up sex?”

  “Casual sex. Just until the end of the season.”

  “Now you’re just messing with me, Nichols.” There wasn’t a chance she was serious. Couldn’t be.

  She straightened her shoulders and set her hands on her hips. “I’m not in the business of wasting people’s time. Least of all my own.”

  He leaned forward, tilted his head toward hers, and whispered, “What if I get lonely?”

  The side of her mouth twisted upward in a devilish half smile. “I’m pretty sure you figured out the solution to that by the time you were fourteen, like all other men on this planet.”

  Ben howled.

  “Look, I know this doesn’t sound easy, but you’ve got to trust me.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “A little abstinence might be good for you,” Ben said mockingly.

  Nick shot his brother a sidelong glance.

  “This isn’t about torturing you. It’s about redefining your reputation as a leader. As someone who can get the job done on and off the ice. Something you’ve been doing for years but never got any credit for. If we can get your teammates and the public behind you, the Vipers’ management might reconsider your worth on the team instead of dangling you out for a midseason trade. That’s what you want, right?”

  “Yeah, absolutely.”

  She smiled victoriously. He took the hand she was offering and almost jumped from the electric shock that passed between them. Judging by the way her expression faltered for a quick second, she must’ve felt it, too. Not that it mattered. As his agent, she was off-limits. Finding a woman who was interested in his body or his money wasn’t hard, but finding one who could salvage his career was invaluable. As attractive as he found her tenacity and intelligence he needed to stay focused on the one thing that mattered.

  What the hell was she thinking? Emotions had no place in business, and sympathy was the worst emotion of all. It was at the root of every bad decision. And there was no doubt a guy like Nick would barrel into her life like a steam engine and blow her right off her tracks.

  And yet, knowing that still didn’t stop her from planting herself in his office, remotely logging on to her work computer, and drafting up a representation contract. Boilerplate wouldn’t work. She struck out the typical language on general conduct and client responsibilities and replaced it with every last condition she’d forced upon him. Her fingers flew madly over the keyboard, as though at any instant her still aching brain would catch up to what was happening and stop them.

  Unfortunately, her heart was also mounting a pretty solid defense against her head right now. She’d followed Nick’s career for almost a decade and there was no question he was an unpredictable, unrepentant, aggressive egomaniac. The kind of athlete she’d vowed never to work with. But seeing him with Ben this morning made her doubt that conviction. Even her own hands had curled into fists when she’d learned what an asshole Sebastian Liakos was.

  And then there was the way he’d tiptoed into her room all those times last night, reigniting the burning attraction she’d felt for him that first night they met.

  Yep, she definitely needed to get a second opinion on the state of her brain.

  With the contract finished, she printed it off and dashed back to the kitchen. Nick was crouching in front of his hockey bag, laying out every piece of his gear in a row while Ben watched from behind a giant Vipers coffee mug.

  She set the papers on the counter. “I’ll trade you a contract for a coffee.”

  Silently, Nick stood up and filled another mug. Apparently the only kind he owned were ones with the black-and-green Vipers logo. He set it in front of her, grabbed a pen from the counter, and flipped to the last page.

  “You can’t sign without reading it first,” she said, aghast.

  He looked up at her from beneath his dark lashes. “You’re supposed to do that for me.” With a quick scratch of the pen, his signature was on the paper.

  Her entire body tensed. “I could’ve written that you need to pay for my shopping spree at Tiffany’s as a year-end bonus, or that you need to dress up like a panda and dance around the stadium before every game.”

  “Number one, I’ll buy you all the jewelry you want if I win the Stanley Cup. Two, I look damn good in a panda suit.”

  He slid the contract along the counter to her. She slammed her hand down on top of the papers before they flew off the edge. “That’s not the point.”

  “No. The point is that I’m choosing to trust you. And I don’t want to be late for the game. Unless that’s also part of your brilliant strategy.” He raised his eyebrows, half mocking, half challenging her.

  She pursed her lips to keep from screaming while he turned his attention back to his gear and began packing everything up with meticulous precision. What kind of person cared more about the number of tape rolls in his hockey bag than the contents of his contract? Had she really just staked the fate of her entire career on such an infuriating man?

  There was something wrong with this picture, more than just his obvious disinterest in the crucial business decision at hand. “Is that what you’re wearing to the game?” she said, finally figu
ring out the problem.

  He straightened and glanced down at his jean-clad legs. “Yeah. So?”

  “You’re supposed to be wearing a suit.” Not that the dark jeans and crisp white shirt didn’t highlight his broad frame quite nicely. But the league rules were firm. Full suit and tie. And he needed at least one more button done up on that shirt.

  Ben laughed. “He hasn’t worn a suit since the time he stole his ninth-grade teacher’s car and Dad made him dress up to apologize.”

  “That’s not true. And I wasn’t the only one who had to put on a monkey suit that day.”

  Ben smiled and raised his mug. “Guilty! No one ever believed I was the evil mastermind behind all our childhood misadventures.”

  She made a mental note to ply Ben with martinis and learn some of those stories at some point, but for now her focus was on her client. “Well, you should’ve read the contract better if you have a problem wearing a suit.”

  “I’ve been dressing like this for the past ten years. No one’s complained.”

  “Until now.” She downed half her coffee and set off to find his room, guessing correctly that it was on the second story.

  The floating wood staircase led up to a giant open bedroom with exposed beams and clean white walls—a subtle mix of warmth and masculine minimalism. There was a small terrace beyond the sliding glass doors, with a hot tub and a sunken fireplace.

  Nick’s clomping footsteps echoed into the room, a clear warning, since he normally moved with such panther-like grace. She ignored the nervous thrill tingling down her spine and dashed to the massive walk-in closet before he could stop her.

  She found a proper suit pretty quickly. He had decent taste in clothes, which suggested that his resistance to the NHL’s dress code had more to do with a bad attitude than preference for comfort.

  “Find what you were looking for?”

  “Just about.” She thrust the suit toward him. “Change.”

  He tossed it on the bed, locked his eyes on hers, and unbuttoned his jeans.