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CHAPTER6
GINNY
“Here isyour pass for the games. You’ll be in the family box. The ushers will direct you. Meet me back here after games and we can go idea, together.” Boone handed me the pass.
I held it up by the Harpsburg Rangers’ logo lanyard attached and gave the holographic seal a closer look. It was such a simple act, but one steeped in so many memories. He didn’t need to give me a rundown. It was a different rink and a different year, but the process was the same.
I nodded and looked over Boone’s shoulder. There were at least twenty reporters snapping photos and waiting for a story. The same story we’d avoided giving them for over a decade. It was surreal that now, after everything, we were public.
Boone’s lip curled. “Time to give them a show.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, issuing a warning. He was already enjoying this too much. When he tipped his head toward the reporters, I sighed and leaned across the console and for the first time in eight years pressed my lips against Boone’s.
The kiss was familiar. It felt like coming home. Boone’s hand found its way to the back of my neck, pulling me closer. The surrounding world faded away, and for a moment, it was just the two of us. I could hear the camera shutters click, and the murmurs of the crowd, but they were distant and meaningless. All that mattered was the pull of Boone’s lips, the feel of his hard body against my palm. I felt like a teenager, experiencing my very first kiss with him all over again.
Boone broke the kiss, grinning at me. “Looks like we gave them more than just a show,” he said, his voice low and husky.
Once I processed the full weight of what he was saying, I leaned back. He was right. The kiss we’d shared wasn’t just for show. But it was too soon for me to allow him that kind of hold over me again. Nostalgia alone wasn’t reason enough to lose my head. We needed to work in the present and in a way that we hadn’t in the past.
Until that moment, his kisses were seared into the recesses of my mind. But now those memories were front and centre. Thoughts of stealing kisses from one another when we were young came rushing back. So too did being told to stay away from him because I had a more promising future than falling for a hockey player and following him around for the rest of my life.
But the spark between us was as dangerous as it had always been, and I already needed a breather. “I’m going to be late for work.”
He grinned before reaching over to open the door, taking my hint. Reporters swarmed the car, and Boone pulled away from me. “See you after practice.” He winked at me like he always used to before leaving my car.
I watched him walk into the arena with a trail of reporters behind him before I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and closed my eyes, trying to calm my nerves. After a few years, driving him to the arena became too stressful. He was quiet, lost in his prep for games, and it was when cracks started to appear in our relationship. I stopped driving him and quit going to games. Any advice I had to offer about games was scoffed at, when I had once been a trusted part of his process. Early in our marriage, we’d pore over game tape together, analyzing every play, dissecting every time he touched the puck. But after the injury, it got to be less and less. He would spend late nights at the practice centre, and game tape stopped making its way home. A knock on the window startled me back to the present, and I looked into the face of a reporter. I held my hand up against the window, trying to avoid letting them get a picture, and I shifted the car into drive and left the facility.
Driving to the clinic was a blur. In all honesty, I wasn’t even sure how I got there. I grabbed my laptop bag from the backseat and walked into the building. My clinic had its own entrance on the backside of the building. It was private and only accessible by an access code. It was a top priority to keep the patient’s confidentiality protected. I even had a secure garage for them to pull into so they wouldn’t be seen. A hockey player’s health was precarious at best. The game wasn’t known for being gentle, and their bodies paid the price. Reporters seemed to find everything out, but if I could keep my clients out of the public eye during treatment or rehab, I was going to do it.
Christy, my receptionist, smiled at me and watched me walk by the desk to my office. “Really? That’s how it’s going to be? You aren’t even going to talk about it?” She followed me and sat down in the chair across from mine. “You’re married to Garrison Boone, NHL’s most eligible bachelor. Who, I guess, isn’t a bachelor at all? And I had to find out on social media. I almost choked on my breakfast burrito when I saw the headline this morning.” She relaxed back into the chair and waited for a response.
I sifted through the patient files on my desk before giving in and matching her posture. “Fine. Yes, I am.”
“Ginny! How long have you been married and why are you’re here so early?” Christy wiggled her eyebrows waiting for me to spill my guts.
“We just slept.”
“What do you mean, you just slept? As long as I’ve known you, there’s never been a man. Now I assume you’ve got some good toys, but it’s a man, in your bed. Not just a man, but your husband. A very hot husband who you haven’t touched for eight years, and you just slept?” I thought she was going to fall off her chair. “Did you even feel anything when you saw him?” I raised my eyebrows and took a sip of my coffee. “I knew it.” She squealed and tapped her toes on the ground. She grabbed her phone and pulled up a gossip website. “You kissed him.” She turned her phone and showed me the picture.
“What does the afternoon look like? I have to be gone by four.” I opened my computer and waited for the appointment program to open.
“You’re going to the game, aren’t you?” She asked, eyes wide.
I nodded, “and apparently I’m being given a leave of absence so I can follow the team around to make it seem like we’re a happily married couple, so I will need to go over the schedules in the next few days. Nothing matters until playoffs really. I will come in on the days he isn’t playing. I will have to work later every day to make up the time, but I can be here alone. We will make sure simple things are booked after you’re gone.”
“Are you going to wear his jersey?” She asked, clasping her hands.
“No, I’m not. I have to sit in the family sky box and that’s bad enough. If you don’t know, I’m pretty anti-social.” Crossing my arms I stared into the dark liquid in my cup.
CHAPTER7
GINNY
There wasn’tenough coffee in the world to get me through the day. Sleep had eluded me. All I could see every time I closed my eyes was Boone’s face. His gorgeous, chiselled jaw, dark eyes that looked into my soul, and perfectly kissable lips. The memory of his Adonis-like figure asleep in my bed after all this time taunted me. My blood pressure rose just thinking about it, and the warmth that spread through me was typically reserved for my bedroom.
“Good morning,” a familiar voice said, breaking me from my daydream. I smiled up at Garth, my coworker, and fellow doctor that specialized in injury rehab and prevention standing in my doorway.
When he applied, I was sure he wouldn’t fit in. He knew nothing about sports, but his credentials were impeccable, so I brought him in on a trial basis. That was six years ago, and he’d proven himself to be an asset to the team. Thankfully for him because otherwise, I’d have let him go. The man didn’t understand the word no. He was like a dog with a bone. No matter what I said, he kept asking me out and trying to make us an item, as he put it.
