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Parvo slapped a hand on Cal’s shoulder and made a comment about how Plante’s decision to play outside the crease was more important than the fact that he was the first goalie to wear a mask. The man had it completely backward, but Cal was too preoccupied watching Astrid to do more than grunt a noncommittal response. Unlike last night, instead of jeans, she had on a skirt that stopped just above her knees and a tank top with these thin little straps that would definitely snap if he pulled just right.
And that was a mental image he really didn’t need right now. Later? Oh, he’d revisit it in depth while he had his hand wrapped around his cock, but now wasn’t the time.
When Parvo finally took a whole breath in his diatribe about how goalies these days were soft, Cal took the opportunity to escape. He hadn’t meant to end up next to Astrid at the huge windows overlooking Harbor City, but there he was. There was at least a foot of space between them, but that only seemed to amplify his awareness of her. He gripped his beer bottle tighter and shoved his empty hand into his pocket to keep from reaching out.
“What are you doing at my dad’s house?” Astrid asked, her lips smiling but the look in her eyes saying she’d rather be stabbing him in the nuts.
He almost dropped his beer. “Coach is your dad?”
Cal tried to make it make sense. Yeah, he’d known Coach had a daughter that used to work with him but hadn’t been connected to the team for years. Still, something tickled at the back of his mind, something about a wedding and—
Holy fucking shit.
His gut cramped, and realization hit him like a hard slap to the balls. “You’re the fiancée.”
“Was the fiancée,” she said in a scary-calm voice.
He knew that voice. It usually came from his sisters right as shit was going down.
Astrid’s jaw tightened in an almost exact replica of the way her dad’s had as she glared at him with fire and brimstone in her eyes. Coach was known for having a temper that didn’t show up often, but when it did, he just about burned everything in the general vicinity to the ground and salted the earth after. Like father, like daughter?
Fucking A.
“I’m sorry.” He took a breath. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”
“Yeah,” she interrupted, “I wouldn’t have, either.” She let out a pissed-off huff. “Just tell me you aren’t the backup goalie.”
He shook his head, still trying to figure out if he’d already fucked his second chance at a hockey career by having a one-night stand with the coach’s daughter. “I’m not.”
“Thank God.” She shot back her finger of whiskey in one gulp. “I fucking hate goalies.”
They both went back to staring out the window, but his gaze kept going back to her reflection.
“Oh good,” Coach said, stopping next to them. “I was hoping to talk to the two of you together.” He laid his arm around Astrid’s shoulders. “Cal Matsen here is the team’s new goalie coach.”
She leveled a glare at Cal that put his sister Roxy’s death stare to shame and then tilted her face up to her father, her expression wiped neutral in a split second. If it hadn’t been so damn impressive, Cal would have been scared shitless.
“What happened to Alfie?” she asked.
“Well, Alfie is still with us. Cal here is a specialist of sorts. He’s our goalie whisperer,” Coach said. “Cal, Astrid is finally returning to the hockey family fold as my girl Friday. She was with us when I coached the Rage until…” He paused, his jaw going tight. “Well, until she decided to strike out on her own.”
No one said anything for a moment, and Cal kept his gaze on Astrid’s reflection. It didn’t flicker at all.
Coach cleared his throat and went on. “And since you both are part of the team, we have to find a way—together—to yank Tig’s head out of his ass or this season is over before it even begins.”
Hurt shot across Astrid’s face and then disappeared so fast that Cal would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching her so close.
“No,” she said and took a step away from her dad.
“That’s fair, Astrid.” Coach nodded, clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him. “One hundred percent fair but you know I wouldn’t ask if there was anyone else I could turn to who could help. No one knows him better than you do, and you’re the one who told me more times than I can count that what happened between you two doesn’t bother you at all. You guys were too young. You said it yourself.”
Cal had never heard so much bullshit in his life. What kind of father would put his kid in that position? It was just cruel. “Sir, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why?” Astrid turned on him, anger sparking in her dark eyes. “You think I’ll be too emotional? Or you worry I’ll distract Tig and make him feel guilty? Or you can’t imagine that someone like me—someone who’d been left at the altar—could even move beyond that because there was no way a woman could ever move past that? Is that why? You think I’m too fucking fragile and delicate?”
Cal may not have come close to getting a perfect 1600 on his SATs, but even he knew that there was no right answer in this situation if he wanted to keep his dick attached to his body. Plus, he made a helluva better target for her displaced anger than her dad did, so there wasn’t much he could say at this point.
He fumbled for a response and came up with jack shit. “I don’t know—”
