So Over You

by Kate Meader

  “The eggs are always better in the restaurant.” He placed his knife and fork down. “You’re late to the begging party. I’ve already had St. James and DuPre knocking down my door this morning, not to mention the whole defensive line stopping by to give their opinion before I had my coffee.”

  “Then you won’t mind one more. Not a peep on social media, so we’re in the clear. You need to reinstate Vadim for tonight’s game.”

  “The decision has already been made. We have a zero-tolerance policy for violence”—he acknowledged her brow lift with one of his own—“off the ice. It would be one thing if no one had witnessed it, but there were other players there. We can’t be seen to favor one team member over another.”

  “If it hasn’t made it online by now, then it won’t at all. Reinstate them both. Put it down to bad judgment, crappy alcohol, cabin fever. This game is important, Dante. We have to win twelve of the next fifteen to be in with a chance of qualifying for the play-offs. Petrov needs to be on the ice tonight.”

  She’d left him in the early hours, sleeping off a night of use and abuse by hers truly. Hopefully he’d have enough energy left to play if Dante made the right call. And on the subject of use and abuse, she shifted in her seat, her body sensuously sore after the night’s exertions. The Czar of Pleasure had finally lived up to his royal title.

  “You know what I said when I came on board, Isobel. I’m not taking orders from the owners.”

  “I’m not asking as an owner, Dante. I’m asking as a coach, a team player, and a Rebels fan. We’ve all got something to prove, but let’s not allow what I need to prove to be at cross-purposes with what you need to prove. The team is all that matters.”

  He smoldered in her general direction for several seconds. Fortunately her time with Vadim had built up in her a semidecent immunity to hot masculine glaring.

  Finally, he muttered, “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “Dante—”

  He held up a hand. “My eggs are getting cold, Isobel, and whining only makes them inedible.”

  Sensing victory, she hid her smile as she stood before she and her whining left the restaurant, feeling pretty damn optimistic.

  FIFTEEN

  Two months.

  Two months since Vadim had skated onto the ice as part of a starting lineup. Tonight against the Spartans should not have been that night, but Coach Calhoun had approached him during morning skate and given him the news.

  His temporary suspension was lifted.

  Vadim sensed the hand of Isobel here. He had sent her a text of thanks. She had responded with: Thank me with goals, Russian.

  There was no sign of her before the game. Usually she would show up in the locker room, or at the very least, rinkside, but no. Perhaps she was worried he’d be unable to hide what had happened last night.

  And this morning.

  And this morning, again.

  Warmth flushed his veins, and it was not because the crowd had cheered his name. It was the memory of Bella’s heavy-lidded gaze as she arched into his hand, her body seeking his magic fingers, her inner walls tightening around his cock.

  Pride at the pleasure he had brought her puffed him up, fueled by the knowledge she had gone to bat for him to plead his case. Having Isobel in his corner invigorated him. Made him feel anything was possible. He hoped she didn’t think there was an ulterior motive to his seduction of her. Although, looking back, he would say Isobel had seduced him.

  Completely.

  Once the game started, all thoughts of Isobel fled his brain. In the months since he had last played competitively, the pace appeared to have increased. More likely, it was Vadim’s need to adjust. Blink and the game moved on. Hesitate and your mark left you behind.

  By the end of the first period, he was sweating buckets and had barely touched the puck.

  “Vad, you dill-hole, hit the damn puck!”

  Vadim’s sister, Mia, pounded the glass of the visitors’ box at the Spartans’ arena and let out a groan. For the last ten minutes of the first period, she had spent most of her time on her feet and all her speech haranguing her brother.

  Harper and Isobel shared a smile.

  “I think you’re scaring Gordie Howe,” Isobel said. She wasn’t, because the pom, currently sitting in Harper’s lap, looked right at home. Dogs were normally verboten in hockey arenas, but the pup was certified as a therapy dog because of Mia’s prior illness.

  Mia turned around and took the dog from Harper’s arms. “Come on, Gordie Howe, time to see how your uncle is playing.” She caught the eyes of the adults, including an amused Dante. “I’m sorry. I just get so excited when I see him play, and with him spending so much time on the bench last season, I freak out. He really should be playing better than this, shouldn’t he?”

  Yes, he should. Vadim looked slow out there, a step behind everyone else. Isobel could have watched from the sidelines but she didn’t want him to feel awkward. Or perhaps she was more worried about how weird she would feel. How obvious her desire would play on her face. She may as well have well-fucked tattooed on her forehead and a Vadim Petrov wuz ’ere sign pinned over her jeans zipper.

  You’re his coach, Chase. Time to defend her player and her methods to the Rebels’ management.

  “He’s a little rusty. Practice is all well and good, but nothing substitutes for actual game play. He just needs to get his ice legs under him.”

  Mia looked unconvinced, especially as Vadim was immediately dispossessed of the puck for the third time in the last five minutes. The end of the period couldn’t come soon enough.

  Had Isobel let her attraction for Vadim influence her decision to sign off on him? So far, he wasn’t displaying the sharp skills and canny moves she’d come to expect. He looked awkward playing on the left wing, which was supposed to be his natural fit. She wouldn’t be surprised if Coach Calhoun pulled him for good.

  With the end of the period, Mia stood. “Time to go pee-pee!”

  Dante raised an eyebrow at Isobel.

  “She means the dog.” And then to Mia, “Right?”

  “Yeah, I do. He has a bladder the size of a pea.”

  Her phone rang, and her face crumpled. “Oh, I have to take this. Could you—do you mind—” She dropped Gordie Howe in Dante’s lap, then left in a gust of wind.

  Dante stared at the dog, then shifted so he was more settled in his lap. The pom gazed adoringly at all that Italian pretty and unmistakably preened.

  “Vadim will improve,” Isobel said defensively before Dante could light into her.

  Their GM gave a rare smile. “I know. I just think we should have second- or third-lined him for this game. At least we’re still scoreless.”

  “Yeah, Burnett’s playing a barn burner,” Harper said. “Some great blocks in that last five. Thank God he stayed.”

  “He wanted to leave?” Dante asked with surprising sharpness.

  Harper nodded. “The possibility of a trade was floated a couple of weeks before the deadline, but I spoke to Cade and it seemed like it was coming from his agent more than him. He’s so young that I think he’s susceptible to suggestion.”

  Cade Burnett was only twenty-three and had been with the Rebels for two years. Isobel saw that in hockey a lot—players looking for fast results, disappointed that it wasn’t all happening immediately.

  Dante was off in some weird headspace, his gaze focused on the empty ice, his hand rubbing through Gordie Howe’s shiny coat.

  “Don’t worry, Dante,” Isobel said. “Petrov will start playing better.” He had to.

  “From your lips to the hockey gods’ ears.”

  Someone up there must have been listening, because when the second period started, so did the miraculous return of Vadim Petrov to pro hockey glory. The turning point looked inauspicious: the Russian in a one-on-one situation with a defenseman, which usually meant the goalie had the advantage. Really a one-on-two. Typically the defenseman’s presence allowed the goaltender time to get to the
top of the crease, and for most forwards, the opportunity was already dead because there was no opening. All you could see was the goalie crowding the net.

  What did Vadim do? He changed the angle with a toe drag. Holding the puck at a distance outside his body, he then pulled it to his feet before taking the shot. Surprised by the release point, the goaltender had no time to react to the new angle and the Spartans’ D-man had no chance to deflect.

  First blood drawn by the Rebels, courtesy of the mighty Vadim Petrov.

  Vadim sat heavily on the locker room bench, bent over while he unlaced his skates and caught his breath. His entire body was shaking, every cell burning with the aftereffects of a hard game. Adrenaline was still streaking through him. The Rebels had won, and nothing felt better.

  Except perhaps being buried inside Isobel Chase.

  “Good game, young Padawan.”

  He looked up to find the green-eyed witch herself standing over him. She wore a black turtleneck sweater that covered so much skin it should not have been sexy, yet it hugged her breasts in a way that was a capital crime. As for her dark-rinse jeans making love to every curve? Worth at least fifteen to life.

  “Spasibo. Though the second goal was down to Bren. I was just there at the right time.”

  Bren shouted over to him. “As much as I love taking undue credit, Petrov, NHL rules dictate that whoever touches the puck last is assigned the goal. That first one you buried was a thing of fuckin’ beauty, however. And it was all yours.”

  Vadim fought his smile. He was pleased, and especially pleased to get the kudos from a man he respected. Their captain was a straight shooter and didn’t dole out compliments to just anyone.

  He raised his eyes to Isobel. “This is down to you, Coach.”

  Two spots of color flagged her cheeks and her smile looked wobbly around the edges. “I’m glad if anything I did helped.”

  He held her gaze. Oh, you helped, all right. You helped so well that I would really love if you helped again.

  She must have read his thoughts because she backed up a step and thumbed over her shoulder. “I should probably . . .”

  “Yes, you probably should.” Before he surrendered to temptation and pulled her down into his lap.

  Violet had just come in with a loud shout of, “Ready for inspection, boys?” Dante followed, looking strangely pissed off. The GM said something to Cade, and Alamo’s response only seemed to irk him more. Could the man not be happy that they had won after losing three in a row?

  Vadim lowered his chin but watched while Isobel headed out. To keep up the illusion, she stopped and said something to Coach Calhoun and then to a couple of the other players. Wouldn’t want to look like she was playing favorites. Ten minutes later, Vadim walked out of the locker room to a bank of microphones in his face.

  “How’s it feel to be back, Vadim?”

  “The knee holding up okay?”

  “We’ve heard you’re receiving private lessons from team owner Isobel Chase. Care to comment?”

  So it begins.

  He needed to be extra careful about how he handled questions about Bella. Cade’s warning came back to him: You want to make that harder on Isobel or you want to calm the fuck down and figure out a plan? Protecting her was key.

  He gave clipped answers to their questions, careful not to dwell overlong on how Isobel had helped. He was also conscious that she was standing with Harper nearby, being interviewed by another reporter. When had his body become so aware of her presence, every cell thrumming to the beat of his need for her?

  As his answers weren’t interesting enough, the reporters moved on to other players, and Vadim headed down the tunnel on the lookout for his sister. The charter flight back to Chicago would be leaving soon, so there wasn’t much time. That’s when he noticed her.

  She was not alone.

  That woman. He had expressly forbidden her to come.

  “Vadim!” Mia threw her arms around him, and the leash on her wrist pulled at the silly dog’s collar. He tried to jump up on Vadim, wanting in on the affectionate exchange. “Bro, you played great. I was a little worried about you in the first period, but you sooo pulled it out in the second. I’m mighty proud of you.”

  He nodded, the rock of bile in his throat impeding any communication. He had told her not to bring Victoria. But his sister was barely sixteen, a child, who thought all problems were fixable. Leukemia, an injured knee, an irreparably broken relationship between a son and the mother who had discarded him like one would scrape shit from a shoe.

  Sixteen months ago, he had seen the woman at the bedside of his sick sister for the first time since he was ten years old. The sister he had learned about one day prior. Fifteen years was a long time to go without seeing a once-beloved parent. Those years had added fine lines around her expressive blue eyes, yet left her beauty undiminished. Glossy onyx-black hair had framed her face in soft waves, different from the severely pulled back style she had worn when he was a boy. She was also shorter—or perhaps he was taller.

  Tonight she glowed, and just as at that moment over a year ago when he had met her at the hospital, he wanted to stare at her all day.

  “Hello, pchyolka,” she said to him now.

  His heart thrashed fiercely. That nickname—little bee—he would have happily gone the rest of his life without hearing it again.

  Mia must have seen the look on his face. She leaned in close, still holding on to him. “I know you said not to bring her, but she wanted to see you so much. You can’t ignore her forever.”

  He saw the desperate love rolling off the woman behind his sister, and it firmed his resolve.

  Can’t ignore her forever? Just watch me.

  “I’ll see you the next time I play in New York,” he murmured to Mia, and kissed her on the forehead. She was a meddling menace, but he understood her desire to play at happy families. “Keep practicing.”

  “Vad,” she said, her voice cracking slightly, its plaintiveness a fist around his heart.

  “Thank you for coming, Mia.” And then he walked by the woman who bore him without a second glance.

  SIXTEEN

  “Good game tonight, Russian.”

  Isobel plopped down in the seat next to Vadim, waiting for him to acknowledge her. If he didn’t want company, he should have sat on the aisle.

  He pulled his earbud from his right ear, his smile like the sun had gone supernova. He raised his head to check on the rest of the flight cabin. Most everyone was asleep, but they both knew they had to be careful.

  Besides, that’s not why she’d joined him. Or, not the only reason.

  “Who was that woman with your sister?”

  His smile faded. “No one.”

  “Well, we know that’s not true. She’s your mom, isn’t she?”

  He opened up his iPhone and started scrolling through the music. Isobel didn’t know much about Vadim’s relationship with his mother beyond the fact that she and Vadim’s father divorced when Vadim was ten and she moved back to the United States. When Isobel knew him as a nineteen-year-old, he didn’t speak of her much. Meaning not at all.

  “You guys on the outs?”

  “We have never been on the ins.”

  “You and your sister are friendly. Close, even.”

  His expression was dark. “She is an innocent and had no choice in this. Victoria Wallace chose to walk away from her family because motherhood was too hard.”

  “Yet she raised your sister.”

  His eyes sharpened to slits. “You know nothing of it. She was pregnant when she left and never told my father about his daughter. Never told me until my father died and she needed something. Do not paint her as a saint, Isobel.”

  Oh. Well, that was just awful. She’d seen how he cut his mother dead at the arena, but only after that slow moment when the world seemed to stop for both of them. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, but she clearly wants to talk to you now.”

  “She can continue to want.” Di
smissing her, he returned to his iPhone. “You should get some sleep now before people wake up and start gossiping.”

  Five minutes later, Isobel stepped from the airplane bathroom to find a big, brooding Russian waiting outside. Two seconds after that, she found herself back in the bathroom.

  The big, brooding Russian was still a big, brooding problem as he was now taking up all the space and using up all the oxygen.

  “Can I help you?”

  “This business with my mother, I will not answer questions about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “You will not use your powers of persuasion to get me to open up.”

  “Got it.”

  “It is in the past. My relationship with my sister is separate, and just because a child wants everyone to get along does not mean everyone should. Or can. We do not live in a fairy tale.” He folded his arms, taking up more precious space, and stared so hard she felt she might combust. At this rate, the air supply didn’t stand a chance.

  Talking to someone about the thing you didn’t want to talk about was a strange strategy, but then Vadim had clearly decided that more was less. Or something.

  “I can see how difficult it is for you,” she said in a neutral voice.

  He gave a helpless shrug that cracked her heart a little. “It is difficult for everyone.”

  She rolled her lips in to hide a smile. Empathy was the first step. He might have been referring to his sister, but if Vadim recognized that his mother was suffering as well, then there was hope for them yet.

  She placed a hand on his chest. “If you want to talk about anything, I’m here.”

  “As my coach.”

  “As your friend.”

  Heat flared in his eyes. “Last night, Bella . . .” He circled her waist and clamped a hand on her ass. “Was so fucking good.”

  Flames of lust licked along her skin. “It was, but . . .” She removed his hand from her ass, which was a damn shame because she’d never found a hand to fit said ass so perfectly.