Page 31 of In Love with My Secret Husband

And right on cue, Fleming's question was the perfect follow-up.

"So what brings you here?"

Laina found herself fighting back tears once again as she looked back at the commentator's platform, which was now also being broadcast on the jumbotron above the ice. Troy's face, forty feet tall, looking directly into the camera.

"I thought I'd clear up a few things," Troy had answered in a gruff voice.

"Ah." Old Goldie nodded understandingly. "Marriage trouble."

The crowd laughed. Old Goldie, blunt as always.

"I've always thought my personal life was my business alone."

"Not when you look that pretty, I don't think so."

The comment from Old Goldie had Camilla wincing, but when she took a peek at Troy's wife, she was relieved to see that the words just had Laina laughing along with the crowd.

"It was why, seven years ago, I kept my marriage a secret."

And to Laina's shock — the camera swung to the Ericsson Suite, and her face appeared on the jumbotron. Right there. In real time. Forty feet tall, with her wide eyes and her trembling mouth, and twenty thousand people looking up at her.

Oh no no no no!

She could feel herself starting to panic. Her hands gripped the edge of the couch, and her first instinct was to duck, to hide, to make herself invisible the way she had always made herself invisible—

"Is that Mrs. Barrymore?" Fleming was asking with a smile.

This wasn't right. Her presence might cause trouble. But just when she was about to jerk to her feet—

"That's her." Two words. But spoken with such quiet pride that her heart...

It just started beating for all the right reasons again, and she could only think...

I love him.

I love you.

So, so much.

It was that love which pushed all the panic away, and she was able to stay in her seat and remember that she had given him her word.

I love you.

I will never leave you again.

"I wanted to keep her to myself. To keep her safe. I mean, don't get me wrong. This game, I love it. The management, my team, the fans of the Waymakers. It's all good. But that's the good side. And we know in this world, every business has its ugly side, and that's what I wanted to protect her from." Troy's jaw clenched. "But in my effort to keep her a secret, while focusing all of my energies on winning one more championship for the Waymakers, I didn't realize what all of that was doing to our marriage."

Laina started shaking in her seat as she covered her mouth, unable to believe what she was seeing. Because while Troy had been speaking, the jumbotron had started playing footage from all the years...all of them, oh God.

Footage ofher.

In Section 308, Row 14. Season after season. Her face caught by the arena's security cameras in a crowd of thousands. Cheering with the rest of the fans every time he scored a goal, leaping to her feet with her fists clenched. Protesting alongside them whenever he was fouled, her small voice lost in the roar but her face fierce and furious. And that one time — the time she had the biggest scare in her life, when Troy had taken a devastating hit and had to be rushed out on a stretcher — the cameras had caught her breaking down completely, her hands over her face,her shoulders shaking, a stranger in the next seat putting a hand on her back because she looked like she might collapse.

All those years. All those games. And he'd never known she was there.

"My wife is more a Waymakers fan than a hockey fan, if you know what I mean?"

Old Goldie grinned. "I believe many of us married folks understand what you're saying."