Telling him here, like this, wasn’t fair, but it worked to her advantage. She deserved one after the night she’d had.
The next line change came and went. She continued to spell it all out for Mark.
She told him about Garrick, and Mark turned to stare down the bench. She sent Garrick a weak smile over Mark’s shoulder, sorry he would be dragged into this further.
When she finished, Mark repeatedly promised to address it and assured her it would never happen again.
She hoped that meant Bobby’s ass would get fired, but she didn’t think she was that lucky.
Another line change caught her attention. Garrick rose to his feet, ready to go on the ice. He was almost seven feet tall in his skates, a veritable wall of jersey, pads, and man as he moved in front of her. He tossed one leg over the boards before lifting his hand to her.
Without a thought, she bumped her bare knuckles against his huge gloved fist, grateful for his support.
Garrick threw himself into the game while she studiously ignored the looks from Mark and a couple of the players on the bench. The truth hit her hard. In all her time with the Ice Cats, she’d never done anything as familiar as a fist bump.
They all must think I’m an uptight bitch. And why wouldn’t they?
She’d been hell-bent on making the right impression as a professional, as a qualified trainer. Somehow, she’d lost sight of the fact that she was also supposed to be a team member.
She searched for signs Garrick’s groin hurt, that any of the players on the ice were having an issue, all the while wondering when she’d sucked the joy out of the game she’d loved all her life. But she loved the job, too.
When had she decided these two things were mutually exclusive?
Probably about the same time Garrick had hit on her that first day. Or when she’d turned down two more dates within the following hour. By day four she’d turned down two more players, an assistant coach, and Sheila, the lovely woman who ran the box office. She’d also determined that she was the only straight, single woman under the age of sixty who worked for the team. And that the people of Moncton really needed to get laid.
Which was most definitely not in her job description.
In the end, she’d erred on the side of isolation. The operative word being erred. Three months later, she was lonely, didn’t feel like she’d ever settle into her new home, and her teammates were surprised when she engaged one of them in something as benign as a fist bump.
The next line change was in motion and she yanked Mike Erdo’s jersey loose from where it was caught in his back protector. How many times had she done this for teammates, her brothers, students she’d coached? Why had she never said to a member of the Ice Cats all the things she’d shouted from the benches of countless other ice rinks?
Mike was already sailing over the wall when he called out his thanks. She responded by suggesting, loudly, that he apply his foot to their opponent’s posterior. Only not in those exact words.
It felt good. Really good. Like she’d reclaimed something she hadn’t known she’d lost—her spirit.
Mike smiled as he sailed past, already in the game.
The joy returned.
Chapter Three
Garrick strode into the arena, his teeth locked together with grim determination.
He was not going to limp.
He was not going to limp.
He refused to fucking limp.
A midday all-team meeting at the beginning of a series of home games was unusual. Likely someone had been fired, hired, drafted in, dealt out, or was in deep-shit trouble. He dreamed fleetingly that Bobby Kramer was getting his ass fired, as he so richly deserved, but Garrick doubted he or Savannah would be so fortunate.
He’d known the moment Mark had caught up with Bobby a week ago. If looks could kill, Garrick and the team’s esteemed trainer would have died one hundred times over. Bobby was in a rage, but it was a quiet rage he was keeping to himself, so Garrick couldn’t do much about it.
He strode without a hint of a goddamn limp into the meeting room and scanned the crowd. He immediately caught Bobby’s gaze and was treated to another death-ray stare.
Whatever.
Rhian sidled down a row of seats at the front of the room. Garrick found Savannah when Rhian sat down next to her.
Of course the most handsome man in the room was sitting next to Savannah. His friend’s ridiculous good looks didn’t usually bother Garrick, but this morning they absolutely irritated the shit out of him.
He slid down the same row and sat on Savannah’s other side. She acknowledged him with a glance and something that might qualify as a smile before turning back to Rhian. “I think the increased reps will make a difference, build strength…”
Garrick shook his head. They were talking about work, of course. What else did Savannah talk about with anyone on the team?
Garrick glanced over his shoulder. Bobby was still trying to burn holes in the backs of his and Savannah’s heads. The dude had issues. Big buckets full of issues.
Garrick worried those issues would spill onto Savannah again before this thing was done.
Mark, Rick, and the rest of the team’s senior staff came into the room, and people moved to their seats. When Rupert Smythe entered the room, instant silence descended.
Rupert was a tall and slender man—and as far as Garrick could tell, perennially nervous. His hand worried the handle of his briefcase, his gaze darting around the room. Garrick would bet his last nickel Rupert’s palms were sweaty and that he’d scream like a little girl if someone sneaked up behind him and yelled “boo!”
As entertaining as that thought was, Rupert’s attendance at this meeting likely meant bad news. Garrick had only met Rupert three times in twelve years, for all of which the team had been owned by Edwin Lamont, a notorious recluse who reportedly never left his estate on Cape Breton Island. Instead, Lamont sent Rupert as his proxy to play the role of business manager and mouthpiece.
The “someone is in deep-shit trouble” category was now at the top of the list of possible reasons for this meeting.
From the stifling silence that held the tongues of the usually bawdy and outspoken crowd, Savannah knew the stranger at the front of the room was either very important or very dangerous. The way Garrick watched the man through narrowed eyes made her think their mystery guest might be both.
He looked to be in his thirties. His bespoke charcoal suit flattered his broad shoulders and long legs, and if she wasn’t mistaken, was likely more valuable than her entire wardrobe. Even the fluorescent lighting couldn’t dull the gleam of his oxblood leather briefcase. Gold flashed on his wrist. His fingers shook. Her unease multiplied.
“Hello, everyone!” He addressed their group in a crisp English accent.
No one responded.
The man blinked a few times, swallowed hard, and smiled weakly. Her dread, along with the tension she was picking up from everyone in the room, grew. She looked around and saw all eyes stared straight ahead. A movement in the back of the room caught her attention and she hid her wince when her gaze locked with Bobby’s.
His brows went up and his smug sneer morphed into an evil smile.
She turned to face forward.
“As many of you know, my name is Rupert Smythe and I am Mr. Edwin Lamont’s business manager.”
That solved the mystery of his identity and the crowd’s reaction to him.
He launched into a tale about how much Mr. Lamont had enjoyed hockey over the years, how he played as a boy and other drivel Savannah assumed was meant to be reassuring.
It wasn’t, particularly when he ended with, “I’m sorry to say, though, that Mr. Lamont has decided to put the Moncton Ice Cats up for sale.”
Murmurs rippled across the room. Savannah sat perfectly still, her heart pounding, her hopes for Moncton being the first leg of a long, successful career in hockey taking a serious hit.
“Why?” someone called from the back of the room.
Mr. Smythe grimaced. “Well—” He paused, staring out at the crowd as if searching for the answer. The silence drew out until Savannah wanted to smack the man in the back of the head to get him to spit it out. “In truth, the team has been losing money. The arena, too.”
Both were owned by Lamont.
“Other teams make money. What are you doing wrong?”
Savannah almost smiled at that question. Bless Sheila’s heart. She had brass ones.
Rupert Smythe’s cheeks turned red. The man was handsome, even when flustered and blushing. Almost pretty. “Yes, well, it’s long and complicated, actually. But trust me, it’s not something that is easily changed.”
Pretty and dim-witted, apparently. Insulting the intelligence of a woman like Sheila in a room full of her colleagues was going to end badly.
The players shifted in their chairs, no doubt fighting the urge to stand up and act. Hockey players weren’t known for being passive. Most of the people in this room lived to come off the boards fighting.
She clenched her fingers in her lap and resisted the urge to put a soothing hand on Garrick’s bouncing leg. New ownership, and possibly new management, didn’t bode any better for a twelve-year veteran with a stubbornly sore groin and hip than it did for the only female athletic trainer in the league.
“It is our hope,” continued Rupert over the rumblings of the crowd, “indeed our goal, to find a buyer soon who will be interested in keeping the team intact.”
The words helped silence some of the agitation.
“You’ll be kept aware of the progress through Mark, your manager.” As if everyone in the room didn’t know who Mark was.
Mark’s thin smile spoke volumes.
“And of course, all questions should be directed to him.”
Of course. Mr. Rupert Smythe appeared to be fully prepared to run from the room screaming before the barbarians got hold of him. Maybe he wasn’t that dense after all. Right then, she sure wanted to body check him and that shiny briefcase of his into the cement wall.
Garrick rose from his seat as soon as the meeting was over, careful to keep the wince off his face. Stupid fucking hip. He and Savannah had been slowly making progress on his groin pull, but the hard work was provoking the arthritis in his hip.
Arthritis.
The word made him feel…geriatric. It didn’t help that he was damn close to hobbling as he stepped into the aisle.
He caught Savannah watching him and stopped, forcing his teammates to detour around him as they moved toward the door. Her narrow gaze was fixed on his legs until it shifted to his throbbing hip.
“What?” he asked. Defensive much?
She shrugged. “Nothing.”
Her pursed lips told him it was something, but he wasn’t about to argue.
She cocked her head and moved toward the door. “Come to my office. I have something you can take and we’ll do some stretching. Maybe stick you in the tub.”
He opened his mouth to decline, to steer clear of the lovely Savannah and her lair, but a soak in the tub would be bliss for his sore hip and would ease the tight muscles in his groin. He could only hope the deep water would disguise any other groin issues, should they arise.
“Okay, sure.”
Bobby leaned against the wall just inside the door to the hallway, his eyes fixed on Savannah. Garrick stepped forward—without anything resembling a hitch in his gait, damn it—and crowded Bobby back against the wall, blocking his view. He held out a hand to indicate Savannah should precede him through the door.
He was enjoying being able to fuck with Bobby and appear chivalrous all at once—a win-win for him—until Savannah shot him a dirty look.
Right. Not supposed to treat her differently than the guys.
He smiled at Rhian instead. “Come on, Rhi, let’s get going.”
He fought not to laugh at Rhian’s deadpan stare. Garrick didn’t often hold the door for the perfectly capable defenseman as if he were the Queen of England. Indeed, this was a first.
Luckily, Rhian caught on.
With a smirk, he leaned down to murmur in Savannah’s ear. “Excuse me.”
She hesitated, then rolled her eyes and passed through the door. Rhian shot him a quizzical look and Garrick tilted his head toward the locker room, indicating he’d explain later.
Now, though, he had a date with a beautiful woman and her hot tub.
Savannah almost felt guilty when Garrick lowered himself into her tub and let out a long, painful groan. The cistern was filled with one hundred and three degree water that reached the middle of Garrick’s bare and magnificent chest, which she studiously did not to notice at all.
It would not be appropriate for her to admire the heavy swell of muscle. The skin stretched over each curving pectoral appeared velvet soft, his cinnamon nipples puckered tight in spite of the warm water and steam. His shoulders were possibly the broadest she’d ever laid her hands on—professionally or otherwise. Certainly the thickest, her hand barely able to span their width while stretching him.
He’d come to her office after the team meeting earlier, pretending his hip wasn’t killing him—as if she couldn’t see that from a mile out in poor visibility. He’d eagerly asked her for “at least four” ibuprofen before promising he’d go change into something he could wear in the tub and come right back.
The crestfallen look on his face when she’d informed him he wasn’t that lucky and she wasn’t that careless had been priceless. She’d forced him up on the table to investigate with her own eyes and hands.
Finally, after the second wince he couldn’t hide, he sighed. “It’s arthritis, okay? Just send me off to the nursing home already.”
She’d laughed. “No shit it’s arthritis, but it’s been there are all season and not bothered you this much before.”
He’d been surprised she’d known. Men were always convinced of two things. One, that they should never admit to any physical ailment or weakness. And two, that this actually worked as a means of hiding these weaknesses from the women who cared about them.
Not that she cared about Garrick. Well, she did. The way she cared about all her players and their physical condition. It was her job.
They’d worked through a vigorous set of stretches together, then she’d sent him to the weight room to do more, and to get on the equipment and run through a modified version of the program she’d developed for him at the beginning of the season. In the meantime, she worked with a couple of other players, stopping by the weight room under the guise of showing Alexei Belov, the Ice Cat’s starting goalie and resident crazy Russian, a leg stretch that worked best while straddling the bench press. Not that she’d really believed she’d find Garrick goofing off, but she was concerned he might cut reps or weights to ease the burden on his hip. Or worse, keep going when his body was telling him to stop.
She was good at her job, but her dictates were still best guesses on how hard the body could be pushed, and no creature was more stubborn about ignoring biological messages like pain than the hockey-playing male.
Garrick had appeared only appropriately miserable, so she’d left him to it.
Now, though, the guilt nipped at her. His arms had trembled as he’d lowered himself into the hot water, obviously taking all his weight in an effort not to rely on his legs. Usually when one of the guys was in her tub, she would work at her desk and catch up on emails, but today she was too wound up after that damn team meeting to sit still.
She approached the tub, careful not to brush the thickly muscled arm running along the edge. His eyes were closed, his head resting on the rim. Dark hair, damp with the sweat of his workout and the steam of the tub, curled over his ears and along his neck. His long lashes rested on flushed cheeks, a fringe of inky silk against his warm skin. He would have looked peaceful if there hadn’t been a crease marring the skin between his eyebrows.
“What did you think of the meeting today?” she asked.
His eyes flashed open and he held her
gaze. His dark amber irises deepened to chocolate as she watched, fascinated, her feet rooted to the floor.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I keep telling myself it will be fine and we’ll just have a new owner, which won’t matter much since no one ever saw the old owner.”
Garrick nodded. “I guess that’s true. But then why do I feel so damn nervous?”
Savannah sighed. “Because we’re screwed.”
Garrick laughed, though he didn’t sound like he found it funny at all.
Chapter Four
Garrick raced back to the locker room like the rink was on fire and the showers were the only safe place to hide. Their win that night had been a long and hard-fought. But as much as he wanted to sit and bask in the glory of a good night on the ice, he had other things to worry about.
Specifically, Savannah.
For the past few weeks she’d been a changed woman on game nights, moving around the bench, working more proactively with the team, and shouting encouragement like a seasoned, slightly foul-mouthed professional.
The good news was the team was starting to view her as something other than an uptight bitch. The bad news was her growing popularity had provoked Bobby into finding new ways to harass her.
Garrick had made it a habit to keep an eye on them both as much as possible. She ignored Bobby at all times. Bobby, though, was proving remarkably adept at finding ways to bump into her, crowd her, or just generally make a nuisance of himself. Like how, after four years on the team, Bobby suddenly had taken to using the door right in front of where Savannah stood for the games instead of jumping the boards.
To Garrick’s knowledge, she hadn’t complained to Mark about any of it. He wanted to be mad about that, but even he couldn’t point to any particular incident where Bobby had done something wrong, per se. He was just being an asshole in a more general sense.
Garrick suspected the cat-and-mouse routine, in addition to Savannah’s game duties, was exhausting for her. Tonight, apparently, she had hit her limit.
The Hat Trick Box Set Page 3
