The Code (Ice Dragons Hockey Book 1)

by RJ Scott

  Something indefinable right in the center of her began to grow. His tone was so patronizing, how had she never seen that before?

  Because you were always on shifts. You used work to hide away.

  “Touchy?” she repeated.

  “You’re likely tired. And now you’re not eating.” He waved at the glass of water that sat in front of her. “Everything will be okay in a few days.”

  He wasn’t listening, wasn’t taking her seriously, and that thing inside her was growing faster: a need to get away, to get back to Nicky and sit and watch trashy TV.

  “No, it won’t,” she began patiently. “When I was in the precinct, in the family room, I wanted my brother there.”

  “Of course you did,” he said with great compassion and a small smile. “He’s a good man, even if your relationship is a little too much for me to understand.”

  “What? You don’t know him at all. You don’t know either of us.”

  He blinked at her. “You’re being irrational now.”

  “You think you know him, but all you know is his money, and his name, and the fact he looks good to the partners at your firm.”

  He pressed a hand to his chest, “Kathryn, darling—”

  “I am not your darling,” she hissed, the emotions inside forcing themselves into her words. “You’re not listening to me. Let me finish.”

  He waved a hand to indicate she should carry on, and she concentrated on what she wanted to say.

  “I was in that room, and they handed me my phone, and I couldn’t call Nicky, because I knew he’d likely be sleeping full of meds. So I automatically went to the next most important man in my life, Evan, and it wasn’t you. You weren’t my first thought; you weren’t my second. Hell, Ally was my third, and failing that, I’d call one of the firefighters I work with, and if that failed, I would have made my own way home, police be damned.”

  “Kathryn—”

  “You know who I called?”

  He seemed to be considering the question and then understanding dawned on him. “I can guess. Ryan.”

  Evan said the words very carefully as if he had to try to say them without adding a curse at the end. Evan and Ryan had met maybe once or twice, and each time they’d retreated to opposite ends of wherever they were.

  “Ryan, who is just a friend, and not you who is supposed to be my boyfriend. What does that tell you?”

  Evan shook his head. “You’re naive if you think Ryan is just a friend.”

  She wasn’t even rising to that comment. He’d said it before, implied Ryan looked at her in ways he shouldn’t.

  She hated him for that.

  “Evan, I’m sorry.” She stood and smoothed her shirt, anything not to have to look at him for a few seconds. “Find someone you can really love. I’m honestly sorry, but it won’t be me.”

  And she left, because she couldn’t stay with him sitting there judging her as though she didn’t know her own mind.

  She stopped outside the restaurant, the warmth of the Burlington day caressing her skin. She settled herself, trying not to cry for all the confusion inside her.

  And then she made her way back to her place and stood for a second outside. Nicky had helped her buy it, with his first salary after signing for the Dragons. He’d wanted to pay for the whole thing, but she’d turned him down.

  Everyone else saw Nicky and Ryan as blank checkbooks.

  Just as Evan had.

  But that wasn’t Kat at all.

  Her shifts went from bad to worse over the next few days, the last to a fully invested fire that was a wall of heat and pain. She didn’t have time to talk, only work, attempting to save the father of a family of four who had helped his wife and kids to safety before becoming trapped. He was burned bad, but alive when they took him to the hospital.

  When they left him in the ER, she knew it was touch and go as to whether he would make it. But the shifts helped; they kept her occupied, and she was heading for her off days overthinking her feelings.

  Evan texted her a brief apology, saying he understood where she was coming from, and he’d see her at the charity dinner.

  She’d forgotten about that.

  “You okay?” Ally asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You looked a million miles away.”

  “I was thinking about the charity dinner. Nothing exciting.”

  “Oh, that.”

  Kat didn’t like that tone, which implied Ally was going to say something else. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Ally, please don’t back out on me now.”

  “I wasn’t.” Ally looked affronted as she sorted through supplies and signed off on the forms. She stopped what she was doing and sat down, her feet on the steps. “It’s just… I don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “I know Nicolas is your brother. I get that he’s a professional athlete, and God, I get how hot he looks.” She looked up at Kat with a smirk. “They all do, all big muscles, and thighs, and asses…” she parodied fanning herself. “I love the twins. They’re so cute in interviews, always finishing each other’s sentences. And Ryan, he’s all big and bad, and the captain? Simba’s….” She trailed off and just made a shape with her hands. But what she meant to indicate by it, Kat didn’t know.

  “So, what don’t you get?”

  “It’s the ice skating part I don’t like.”

  “The ice skating part is kind of important.”

  “I know. I looked up some stuff when you asked me to help you with the charity thing. Like what it meant by a power play, and I watched that guy who hit your brother, and I get what they mean when they say that the bad guy on the other team hit him in the numbers. Right on his back, when he was turned away.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I looked up the teams, and there are some cute guys out there. It’s just I don’t understand why they do it. Screaming in each other’s faces, keeping them in a constant state of positive, simmering aggression, deliberately targeting the other team with intent to maim—”

  “That isn’t all it’s about,” Kat defended, but Ally pressed on.

  “And, like, they talk to reporters afterward, and even if it’s been bad, they’re never allowed to express a moment’s doubt or uncertainty. It just all sounds to me like an expression of toxic masculinity at best and abuse at worst.”

  Kat knocked elbows with her new friend. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but for my brother, Ryan, Simba, and the twins, hockey is their lives. It’s what they love to do. It’s not violence, not all of it.”

  “Seems to me it mostly is. Hot, but again, dating a guy who could get hurt like that for no reason but money? Not interested.”

  Kat wondered how she could summarize. She knew it was a harsh sport, but she also knew her brother and Ryan. “It’s this utter beauty of the skaters, their physical presence and the abrupt stops and turns. The team are brothers, so close that it’s unreal sometimes. They have this unwritten code, to always be there for each other, to have each other’s backs. And when they fight it’s for a reason, because something happened to a team mate.”

  “I get that, I do, but why would they willingly do that to themselves? Not that it isn’t hot, but seriously, your brother when he was hit? I’ve seen some injuries, but the way he fell to the ice and then tried to get up. And then the big guy with the hair, Simba, had to help him off. And that guy on the other team, I forget his name.”

  “Rafferty.”

  “Yeah. Him. He just skated away, stony-faced, like he didn’t care what he’d done.”

  Kat nodded, she could understand the absolute coldness of what teams did, pushing hard to get away with as much as they could before getting caught. But there was more to it all.

  “I remember I was ten, and my dad took me to every one of Nicky’s games I wanted to go to, and in this one game, this kid hooked Nicky with his stick. He was taller than Nicky, had all this aggression and focus when he was skating. Nicky got up, dust
ed himself off, went toe to toe with this boy, all shouting and annoyed. And then you know what happened? They started laughing and became best friends. Ryan’s been part of our lives since that day.”

  “We’re talking the hunk that hangs off your every word? That Ryan?”

  “You’ve only seen us together once,” Kat said.

  “And in that single five minutes, you were his entire focus.” She looked down at her chest and made a face. “I even adjusted my uniform, so the puppies looked real good. He was polite, but none of it worked.”

  Kat couldn’t help the snort of laughter. “You have some nice puppies.” Then she made sense of what she’d just laughed at. “Wait, you like Ryan?”

  Somehow that didn’t bear thinking about.

  Ally winced and then frowned. “God, no. I’m still not feeling all that pent-up aggression. And what do I talk to them about? They don’t like to talk about their injuries, and I know nothing about hockey.”

  “You just said you researched some.”

  “I looked up Nicky once, then spent the rest of the time finding pictures of the captain, who’s pretty freaking hot. I was focusing on hair and eyes and muscles, and their thighs, and jeez, those tight asses, not technical things. Anything I did learn? I’ll use that up in a few seconds and end up looking like a complete idiot.”

  “You like Simba?”

  “No,” Ally said. “Just, he’s nice to look at, and big. Can you imagine him in bed? I bet he’d be all growly and hot.”

  Kat smirked. Simba was a pussycat, and she’d never actually imagined him in bed. The only hockey player she’d ever thought of in bed was Ryan, and she’d shut that down pretty damn quickly.

  “They’re just men,” she pointed out and pulled the conversation back to the original point. “Talk about what you normally talk about at events.”

  Ally gestured at the ambulance. “Work.”

  “On a date, then.”

  “I haven’t dated in six months. Men are a foreign concept. But you know, if we could skip the talking and head straight to sex, I’d be okay. Anyway, is Nicolas bringing any friends to the charity event this year?”

  Kat assumed he would; his charity event last year had included several Dragons players. But last year, Nicky been more involved. This year, after his accident, it was in her lap. She hoped he did bring some friends because she’d sold tickets in the hospital on that very basis.

  “Definitely.”

  “So, what are you wearing?”

  Kat jumped up from her seat and clipped the gurney back in place, then took some wipes and disinfected surfaces as she considered what to say. Ally was one of those women immaculately put together, their makeup perfect even on shifts. Her hair was never out of place, and likely she’d thought about what she was wearing to the event, one hell of a long time ago. She’d probably end up going home with one of the skaters, or one of the doctors they’d sold tickets to, and she’d have a night of mindless hot sex.

  As Kat watched the rhythmic movement of her hands rubbing the disinfected wipes over the stainless steel surfaces, her mind wandered.

  She’d bet Ryan was good in bed. After all, he’d had a few women, hadn’t he? Some were even repeat one-night stands, if that was possible. And he lifted her effortlessly, and she’d liked it, even though she’d called him a Neanderthal.

  “Earth to Kat?”

  “Sorry?” She blinked back into the room. “Oh, red. My dress is red.”

  Ally nodded appreciatively. “I’m going for black. You can never go wrong with black.”

  Kat listened to her friend, about her expectations of a charity dinner with hockey players, and Kat was happy to work with the background noise. Something about Ally calmed her down; that was all it was.

  Certainly, nothing to do with thinking about Ryan in bed, all laid out, calling her over and showing her how things were done. She’d be so small against him, and the thought of him pressing her into the mattress, holding both of her hands in his, and keeping her still as he kissed his way from her lips and down her body—

  “Kat? Anyone in there? What’s with you today?”

  Ally tapped her forehead, and she snapped out of her daydream. Ryan in bed was something she didn’t have the time to contemplate.

  Shift over and back in her car; she sent a quick text to her brother. He wouldn’t see it until morning, but she had to know who Nick had organized to attend the annual Lecour charity dinner.

  She wasn’t surprised when she woke up to a text.

  No one, yet. Will get on that.

  She just hoped he followed through, because otherwise the tickets she’d sold at the hospital and the fire station would have been sold on false pretenses.

  What was a hockey charity night without hockey players? She texted back.

  Let me know. You don’t have long.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ryan Flynn sunk down in the seat, half listening to Loki talking, and hoping to hell he would forget Ryan was there. No way was Ryan getting sucked into a charity event on the only two weeks downtime he had this entire year. Not even if it was for Kat.

  Especially if it was her, actually.

  He’d somehow managed to avoid visiting Loki whenever she was there, choosing instead to sign up for extra conditioning throughout the summer alongside Loki, and to sofa-crawl at his friends’ places. The team were pretty flexible about who slept where, so long as the visitor was cool on a sofa. So far he’d had conditioning in Burlington, coaching in Alberta with the James twins, one to two anger-management sessions with the hotheaded Maximillian “Karly” Karlson, and there were still two weeks of hockey-school coaching planned in Vancouver, with Simba.

  “Ryan? You in?”

  Ryan clearly hadn’t sunk far enough to be entirely ignorable, probably because folding six four into this stupidly small plastic seat would be difficult on a good day. “Two weeks,” he muttered.

  Loki stared at him and he had that expression on his face: the one that conveyed surprise and disappointment all at the same time. Ryan had already had the lecture about how they didn’t spend time together, so he’d accused Loki of turning into a sentimental idiot. Or a girl. He couldn’t remember entirely, because there had been beer involved. On his side, anyway.

  Asshole was playing him, and Ryan knew it. They’d only talked about this last night over beers in front of a rerun of Air Accident Investigation. What with conditioning, hockey school, and everything else he’d jammed into the summer schedule, Ryan had exactly two weeks where he was responsibility-free. No hockey, no people, no nothing, except a beach in Oahu calling his name. And books. Lots of books and sleep and just being himself.

  So, why did Loki look so damned surprised? Ryan did his bit for charity, whether it was mandated by the team or not. From kid’s hospital visits no one knew about, right up to the casino night where he was entirely on show.

  “She just needs a few of us to be there to round out the numbers, wear our suits, charm some money.”

  “No,” Ryan said again. Because evidently reminding Loki of his fourteen days and the concept of doing nothing at all hadn’t worked.

  “Simba is up for it.”

  “Who says I am?” a growly voice interjected.

  Ryan felt vindicated; if Simba wasn’t up for this event in the middle of their break, then he shouldn’t need to get involved. Even if it is for Kat.

  “There’s food, and free beer,” Loki threw over his shoulder.

  Simba huffed a laugh. “In that case, I’m in.”

  “And me,” one of the twins said. Cody, Connor, who knew? And did it really matter when they shared a brain?

  “I’m up for free food and drink,” the other twin said, confirming Ryan’s view.

  Traitors, Ryan thought, but didn’t say the word out loud.

  “Ryan?” Loki nudged him with an elbow and waited.

  “Still no.”

  “This is Kat….” Loki trailed away, leaving a lot unspoken: My little sister, the o
ne I warned you away from. The girl who idolized you as a kid.

  “You have Simba. You don’t need me.”

  “I need more than just him,” Loki said quickly.

  “Fourteen days to sit and do fuck all, Nicky, that’s all I have,” Ryan said under his breath so only Loki would hear.

  He’d used an old tactic, moving away from Loki’s hockey nickname and going right back to the moment when they first met as kids, on opposing teams in the Triple A. When Nicolas became Nicky, it was a way of Ryan getting under his skin.

  Nicky had stuck until he was drafted into the NHL and became Loki.

  Ryan didn’t really have a nickname, unless some idiot on the ice called him Flynnster, a favorite among the guys he then slammed into the boards.

  Ryan only pulled out Loki’s real name when things were on dangerous ground.

  “You’re an asshole,” Loki muttered. “You were happy to delay your vacation for this prospect camp, what’s another few days?”

  That was true. But attending prospect camp was for all kinds of real reasons. Checking out the invited hopefuls wanting up from the minors was a professional’s way of keeping in the loop. Hence why there were ten or so Dragons sitting up in the nosebleed seats watching the session. This was work. Any team player wanted to see who the potential newbies were, but that didn’t mean Ryan wasn’t on a break.

  “I like being an asshole,” he said simply.

  Loki narrowed his eyes. “Flynn, this is for Kat. It’s one night, and….” He paused and a light sparked in his eyes.

  Ryan groaned. This wasn’t going to be good; they’d been friends for too many years for Loki not to know all the buttons he needed to press. “And what?” he prompted.

  “My knee hurts.” Loki pressed a hand to his knee, which was healing just fine. He was still on crutches, still dealing with pain when he overdid things, but he was at conditioning sessions and therapy, and everyone was hopeful he would start next season.

  Jesus, Loki was pulling the guilt card, knowing Ryan was feeling like shit for not stopping what happened to him, even if everyone told him it wasn’t his fault. For a second, Ryan wavered. And then he caught the calculating glint in Loki’s eyes.