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I must stay quiet too long, or there’s something showing on my face because even I can tell the question was meant to be funny, teasing, but it doesn’t last. “Hey.”
My hand drops from his forearm as he steps into my body again. This time it’s his hand that comes up to cup my elbow. I can feel the heat of his skin through the silk of my blouse. He’s right. I’m dressed to stay behind a camera, not to get up-close and personal with anything with fur. Blue silk shirt, tailored black pants, and red-soled heels.
“I’m…” my gaze skates away from his. “I’m not that comfortable with animals.”
I brace for the inevitable. I’ve heard it all before.How could you not like animals? Only sociopaths don’t like animals. Who doesn’t think kittens and bunnies and puppies are adorable?But it doesn’t come.
“We can go somewhere else.”
And we both know that we can’t. We had to get permission to film here. Permission to post and tag the shelter. Everyone knows the reach Varg can get for the cause. The organization knows the appeal of fluffy little paws and puppy dog eyes.
Varg looks over my shoulder for a moment, running his free hand through his hair. It’s longer now than it was at the start of the season. I know he pushes the strands back before putting on his helmet so they don’t fall into his eyes. In another few weeks, it will curl up under the bottom of his helmet when he plays.
“It’s a school day, so I can’t ask Quinn or Jen until after three, but Erik might be free. I can ask him to come film. Or—”
I shake my head to clear my thoughts, but also because… no. I knew this was the plan. I agreed to this. I can’t back out now. That’s unprofessional and ridiculous and those are two things Irefuseto be in front of anyone, but especially Victor Varg—team captain, Arctic golden boy, and a man who could completely derail my career. Again.
“I’m fine,” I say and I regret the bite in my voice when he drops his grip on my arm. Snapping at him isn’t very professional or controlled. I can admit that it was kind of him to offer me an out, even if it grated against my nerves.
Evidently the “thank you” I tack on to soften my tone works, because there’s Varg’s grin curving up the corners of his mouth.
“It’s okay to be scared, kitty cat. I won’t say anything. Wouldn’t want to bust your tough-girl rep.”
It takes superhuman effort not to roll my eyes. It’s not a rep. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was a survival mechanism. I don’t have the luxury of looking soft, or unsure, or vulnerable. I’m a woman fighting for a spot in a man’s world. Marketing might be a career heading towards a more even split over gender, but it isn’t there yet and the world of professional sports teams is even further away.
I’m already facing an uphill battle to prove I deserve a spot at the table, and while my height and hair color shouldn’t matter, I’m not naïve enough to believe they don’t. Maybe if I were average height, or brunette, my male counterparts would take me more seriously. Instead, I feel like a child at the grown-ups’ table. I have to be twice as calm and collected. Twice as prepared with twice the results. No weaknesses, no distractions.
“I’m not scared,” my voice cracks and I pinch my brows together, hoping he didn’t notice. Of course he did. Hockey is more than just speed and agility. It’s more than strength and guts. The good players, the best ones, know how to read people—their teammates, their opponents—to stay one step ahead of the puck. Varg certainly does. I can see it in the way his gaze moves over my face.
“I didn’t have pets growing up.” I square my shoulders, because I’ll give him this tiny piece and then we’re going to go inside and get the footage we came for. “There wasn’t anyone to take care of them, so we didn’t have any. But I’m not scared.”
I step around the massive hockey player and head for the front of the building. I suck air in through my mouth and let it push my ribs out as I hold my breath to the count of three. I let it out atom by atom. Keep my heart rate low and everything will be okay. It’ll be an hour—tops.
“I didn’t have a pet growing up either,” Victor Varg says as he catches up to me easily and matches me stride for stride. He grabs the door handle before I can and ushers me into the quiet lobby. I was expecting to be bowled over with sound and smells, but this isn’t terrible. “Between two hockey players and a figure skater on a single mother’s salary, there wasn’t a lot left over for animals. Not to mention we basically lived at the rink. And when we got older…” He scrubs a hand over his face.
When he got older, he was drafted.
I know he joined the juniors at sixteen and left home to live with a host family. Even if his mom had gotten a dog then, he wouldn’t have been home to enjoy it. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but an older woman scrambles around the counter, her jaw open in wonder as she stares at my companion, and I force a smile so I don’t roll my eyes. Victor Varg is just another guy. It’s not like he single-handedly cured cancer or saved orphans from a burning building. He’s just good with a stick and is easy on the eyes.
The woman shakes Vic’s hand, pumping her arm up and down like it might detach from the socket, and I tune her out as she talks about a litter of puppies that will be up for adoption in the coming week. They’ll all get homes, of course, but they also have the highest marketing appeal. I try to slow my pulse as I think of Vic cuddling small golden pups against the wide expanse of his chest. Puppies crawling over his stretched-out legs, pushing their noses against the edges of his ears. It’s not really helping at all, but at least my heart isn’t pounding out of fear now. It’s racing for an entirely different reason, and if I think about it for too long, that might actually be worse.
“You good with puppies, kitty cat?” Vic’s eyes are warm on me. I can’t see the woman at all behind his overlarge frame. How much damage can puppies do? I nod once. “Lead the way,” he tells the shelter volunteer, and then we’re following her down a dim hallway and she’s ushering us into a small room with peeling vinyl tiles and white paneled walls. I take out my camera and open my tripod, aiming it at one of the blank walls. I’m determined to be ready when the dogs come in. The less I wait to do, the faster we’ll be in and out.
The puppies are cute. I knew they would be, but I wasn’t expecting Marjorie—the volunteer—handing seven of them over the top of a wooden baby gate and letting them run loose around us. Vic sinks to his haunches, and I try not to stare at the bulge of his quadriceps. The little yellow fluffs swarm at him. They look tiny against the bulk of his muscles, scrambling over the curve of his biceps, pressing little paws against the width of his chest until he sits back hard on his ass.
I watch him play for long minutes; the puppies letting out little whimpers and mewls that tug even at my own heartstrings. Vic is talking to the camera, telling our future viewers when the puppies will be available for adoption and about the shelter’s mission and needs. His words occasionally cut off as he presses his face to the side of a puppy determined to climb him like a tree. I’m fully disassociating from the moment, trying to reorganize my mind until I’m not consumed with the way our chests bumped into each other out in the parking lot, not drowning under the way the little paws pull at his clothes revealing strips of tan skin. How is he so tan? Doesn’t he spend twenty-three hours a day under the rink’s angry fluorescent lights?
“Hold on guys, I’m needed for a rescue.”
The words break through my haze, and I frown. Vic is extricating himself from a mess of wagging bodies and he’s staring at me. I cast around the room, trying to make sense of where this is going, when I notice the pup heading straight for me. His pink tongue flops out, little black spots in the center, and his fluff is so voluminous that he looks like a little sphere rolling in my direction. I can see the hint of small white teeth, sharp ones, before Vic scoops him up and cradles him against his body.
Me.
He was coming to rescue me.
“You okay, kitty cat?” Vic says, staring down into my face as his hands stroke through the golden fur. I can feel the heat spread up my neck to my cheeks and I pull in air through my nose to stop that right now.
“It’s just a puppy,” I say, and I know he can hear the catch in my voice when he smiles. It’s not his normal ear-to-ear grin. This one is soft at the edges, full lips closed over his teeth, a shadow of a dimple in one of his cheeks.
