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“Don’t worry, kitty cat,” I say, and her jaw flexes as she grinds her teeth together. “I don’t have practice until two. I’m all yours for the next several hours. Take your time.”
“Of course.” Her tone is drier than the soft pretzels the arena sells on game day. “Anything to makeyourday easier.”
“Weappreciate,”Chris leans into that word until Tristan’s shoulders twitch. “Your time, Victor. The Arctic wants to create additional buzz around the team and draw in some new fans. You’d be helping us out.”
There’s more going on here. I’m not dumb enough to miss the tension in Tristan’s body, or the practiced shrug that Chris sends my way, but it doesn’t matter what they need from me. Cooperation with the marketing and PR teams is part of my contract. Not that I need to be strong-armed. Part of being on a professional hockey team means being in the spotlight. It means being a role model for younger players, someone to help bring the community together, to raise money for the right causes. It’s important. Someone from the team has to do it, and I don’t mind.
“I’m your guy,” I say and drop into one of the cushioned chairs.
“It doesn’t have to be only one player.” Tristan’s hands are folded around a leather folio, but I can almost imagine her with them propped on her slim hips, tapping those shiny black spike heels on the floor.Tap tap tap. I’m pretty sure the only thing stopping her is her sense of professionalism. “I thought we could bring in a few of the guys. Maybe rotate.”
Chris shrugs, as if the idea isn’t awful. “Who were you thinking?”
She lists a couple of names, and her boss shakes his head. “You know as well as I do we need someone charismatic, attractive, and well-known to pull this off. This series needs to be personal. Focusing on one player gives a more intimate picture.”
I’m not sure I like the word “intimate” in this context, but it can’t be worse than the promo photos we took in just our hockey pants and skates. My shirtless chest glistened across the I-9 billboard for months and I had to send my mother out to get groceries to avoid being accosted in the produce aisle. And the dairy aisle. Every aisle. I don’t mind signing autographs, I don’t mind posing for photos with fans, but when a single trip to the store turned into a three-hour ordeal with several attempted squeezes of parts of me I’d rather not have squeezed… well, it’s an experience I’d prefer to avoid.
“You need to hit the trifecta here,” Chris says. “Looks, personality, and fame.” He gestures at my whole body. “Varg is our guy.”
“Right,” she says, circling the wrist of her left hand with long, tapered fingers. Her knuckles go white as she squeezes and then releases, never letting her notebook so much as budge from where she has it tucked under her arm. “Welcome aboard, Varg.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say something tongue-in-cheek, to call her kitty again and watch her clench her jaw, but she’s already at the end of her tether. Even I can tell. I meet her gaze and wink instead. I swear the color of her eyes shifts from the palest blue of a clear winter morning to the gray that precedes a blizzard. The wink was a mistake, except I don’t regret it at all. Tristan Grant looks like nothing in the world would rattle her, but up close…. Up close, she’s not as unflappable as she tries to seem.
“I’m needed at another meeting,” Chris says with a pointed look at a very expensive watch. “I trust you two can take it from here?”
I’m not sure why that comment makes Tristan close her eyes and suck in a deep breath, but we should be fine. I have no intention of making this difficult. Well, nottoodifficult. Not for Tristan. She might pop like a Christmas cracker full of confetti. Just explode into tiny pieces and scatter in the slight breeze from the room’s heating system. Contrary to what she clearly thinks of me, based on the glares and the pointed looks and the jaw clenching, I’m not trying to cause problems. I’m here to help. I just don’t think Tristan wants help. From anyone.
“We’re good,” she says to her boss, “I’ll send you a summary and proposal by end of day, and if you approve, we can get started right away.”
I wait five seconds after the door closes behind the marketing executive to ask, “So, I wasn’t your first choice, kitty cat?”
In response, she slams the leather folio down on the tabletop and drops her head to take a breath. Her white-blonde hair swings forward, curtaining her face until I can’t see her, but I imagine that she’s mouthing the numbers one through ten.
“Who was?”
Tristan straightens up and I watch her put herself back together. Chin comes up, shoulders shift and square, chest moves with a deep breath, one long blink, and then she’s looking at me—looking through me—as she says, “Oakes.”
“Robbie Oakes.” There’s a tickle in my throat that I refuse to clear. It’s a bad time to have the overwhelming urge to cough. It feels like we’re in some sort of standoff, and I refuse to be the one to stand down. Obviously, Tristan has the same thought.
“Robbie doesn’t talk,” I say. He might be my best friend, but that’s putting it mildly. Robbie curses and Robbie grunts, but rarely does he do more than that. Especially not for social media.
“Trust me,” Tristan says, her gaze dropping down my chest and over my hips and legs. I’m proud that I don’t squirm under her perusal. Even more proud that I don’t flinch when she says, “It’s one of his strengths.”
He’d have been a horrible choice for a social media campaign, no matter how much I love the grump. Robbie barely keeps up with his own. I’ve taken to reminding him to post so that he can avoid the pint-sized blonde’s shit list, but even then, it’s photos of his meals, pictures of him in his game-day gear, or working with the local youth camps. Even surrounded by nine-year-olds who hero-worship the guy, Robbie still doesn’t smile.
“He’s not as pretty as me,” I say, and Tristan’s eyes snap right back to mine. I don’t know why I’m baiting her, but I wait for a reaction. For something that indicates she doesn’t mind the way I look—that’s not arrogance either. I just have a mirror and my job is literally to be in peak shape. She shrugs, an effortless roll of her shoulders under her cream-colored sweater that gives less than nothing away.
“A lot of people find the tall, dark, and stoic thing attractive.”
Do you?I don’t ask the question shoving against my brain, but I’m surprised by how much I want to.
“Tell me about this project,” I say instead, and she sinks into the seat next to me.
Tristan studies me like I’m a bug under a microscope. Pinned down under glass so that I have to sit still for her perusal. I feel her gaze slide from my eyes down my nose and over my mouth. She doesn’t linger, I’m sure of it, but my grin turns up the corners of my lips just the same. Her eyes continue to drop over my chin—I didn’t shave before my early morning skate—over my throat and centers on my chest. I almost flex under her stare, but she isn’t admiring my muscles. She’s looking at the howling wolf logo over my heart.
Her pale brows tip together, a small line furrowing between them, and even when I cross my arms over my chest, she still doesn’t shift her gaze.
The interesting thing about lies is that the best liars are also the best at catching them when others fib their way through any situation. That’s how I know Tristan isn’t telling me the truth when she repeats her boss’s words about team and community building, fan base, ticket sales, etc. I wouldn’t call myself a liar, but I have a lot of practice in putting on a facade. Faking my way through difficulty. She doesn’t have a tell because it’s not that kind of lie. It’s not meant to be malicious or impressive, but there’s a shimmer there just the same. A shiver of something she’s holding back.
