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I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Try not to worry. Greg’s probably worried about that bill Wayne hasn’t paid.” I can’t help but feel sorry for Brian. Since most of the management got fired, he’s been trying to run the place with a skeleton staff. But this really isn’t my problem. Not unless they interfere with the team.
And Wayne wouldn’t let that happen.
“Go home, Brian,” I tell him, because like me he’s been here all day getting ready for the first game. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Finally, he smiles. “You’re right. Thank you. I’ll do that.”
* * *
The mood on the rink the next morning is intense. Everybody’s pissy because I made them arrive at the center at six-thirty sharp and not one of them is a morning person.
Two of the players are in the rehab room getting therapy for injuries they got from the game last night. But as for the rest, I put them through the usual drills, letting them warm up their muscles and joints by skating around the rink, followed by long rushes – skating from end to end as fast as possible, before I break them into three groups and have them doing short rushes.
They get competitive, trying to beat each other with each rush, and I start to relax. When I sense they’re getting bored, I tell them to grab their sticks and we go through some set plays.
“What was that?” Carter asks.
“What?” I say, slamming my stick into the puck to show the impact I want them to use.
“That scream.”
I blink. “Nobody’s screaming.”
“Yes, they are.” We both go silent. And then I hear it. The scream is so high pitched it makes me wince. I frown because all but two of us are out here on the ice, so it has to be Goran or Max coming back from rehabilitation.
Please God, don’t let the therapist have made their injuries worse. I can’t afford to have either of them out for months.
“Keep playing,” I tell the team. “I’ll see what’s going on.”
I take less than thirty seconds to make it through the tunnel and into the locker room. The first thing I see is Max, naked as the day he was born, one hand holding his shorts, the other shielding his genitals.
His eyes are wide and staring at the locker room door. I follow their direction and get a ringside view of Goran’s bare ass, his legs straddled as he stands over…
Is that a woman?
She’s on the floor, flat on her back, her legs splayed out as she stares up at Goran. He’s saying something to her that I can’t hear, but then she groans and touches her cheek.
“What the hell is happening?” I ask Max, who’s trying to put his shorts on while still covering himself. He has to hop on one leg to do it.
“She walked through the door and then stopped dead when she saw us,” he tells me, finally decent. “The door swung back on her and hit her in the face. She kind of fell. It’s not our fault.”
“Who is she?” Everybody knows not to come into the locker room without knocking. “Somebody’s girlfriend?”
The woman groans and sits up, her hand still cupping her cheek. I get a closer look at her. Her dark hair falls over her shoulders. Her silk blouse is unbuttoned far enough for me to see the swell of her breasts.
Not that I’m looking.
She’s also wearing a skirt and the kind of shoes that everybody knows not to wear near an ice rink. The kind that make your legs look good but are bound to cause some kind of accident.
And yeah, her legs do look good. I drag my eyes away and grunt, because this isn’t what I need right now.
Somebody sneaked their girlfriend in and they’re gonna get it from me.
“What? Oh!” She blinks when she sees Goran’s genitalia right in front of her face.
“Are you okay?” he asks her. “Can I get you something?”
“Get a fucking towel, Goran,” I growl at him. Because seriously? Her eyes are wide as she stares at his balls perilously close to her face.
