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But when Gray smiles at me, I go up in flames.
Maybe I should have taken him up on his offer to fire me.
Because the more time I spend around him, the harder it is to tell him no.
I think I'm in serious trouble here.
Warning
This older hockey player knows exactly what he wants…the heart of his younger, curvy publicist! If you enjoy laugh-out-loud hockey romance, over-the-top declarations, and steamy-sweet romance, you'll love Gray and Camila's story! As always, Nichole Rose titles come complete with a sticky-sweet and guaranteed HEA.
Chapter One
Gray
"Idon't want anew publicist," I growl, glaring at Kelsey Lane across her desk. She's barely tall enough to see over the stacks of paper piled on top of it. For a short person, she's awfully bossy. And I don't rememberbossybeing in the job description for the team publicist when we hired her a couple years ago.
"Gray, your last publicist quit," she says, throwing her hands up. I'm not sure why she's annoyed with me. I'm the wronged party here. Did I ask her to come in at the ass crack of dawn? No. I was perfectly content rubbing one out in bed. Especially since I don't have to be on the ice for another two hours.
We're closing in on the Cup, and Coach MacAthie is working us hard to make sure we're ready to bring it home to Nashvilleagain. We've got a damn good shot at it. Which means every other team in the league is just itching to knock us out of the running.
"Uh, no, he didn't," I say. "I fired him."
"You punched him."
"Which is a pretty strong indication that he was fucking fired." I pick up a little ballerina off her desk and twirl it between my fingers. Cal Hopkins is lucky all I did was punch him. I kind of wanted to run him over with the Zamboni after the shit he pulled.
Last month, Kelsey decided every bachelor on the team was going to take part in aWin a Datecontest to boost game attendance and do a little good for charity. It worked out great for Weston Davies, my teammate. He met Laney Briggs and fell in love, and now they're happy as clams. We all love Laney. But I don't date, and for good reason.
I may be a beast on the ice, but I'm a fucking nerd off it. I like spending my downtime at home, hanging out with my asshole cat, Schrödinger, and reading comics. I'm the farthest thing you can get from a manwhore. But women have this preconceived notion that hockey players are down to fuck, and they treat us accordingly.
Case in point: myWin a Datedate. She got sloppy drunk and tried to blow me in a public elevator. Before I managed to get her off her knees and into a cab, she threw up all over me, which made me throw up all over the sidewalk and her shoes. Now, considering that she started the whole vomit-fest, you'd think she would have been a little understanding. But oh no. That is not what happened. She freaked out, hit me in the dick, and then jumped into the cab, sobbing and yelling that I was an asshole.
It was not a good time for me.
So I was not thrilled when I woke up the next morning to find out that there were pictures of her hitting me in the dick andthen fleeing into the night, and that half the world was debating what I might have done to deserve it.
My asshole publicist thought having a cameraman follow us in secret would be a great way to drum up a little more publicity. Everyone went crazy over Weston and Laney falling in love on their date, so he figured he'd capitalize on it. And because that wasn't bad enough, he then decided the best way to prove that I didn't deserve to get dick punched was to release video of the whole ordeal.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather not have the world debating what I did to deserve a crotch shot. Rhonda was a nice girl before she started drinking. I don't want people thinking I tried to pressure her into sleeping with me or some shit. But I feel like there was probably a better way to go about absolving me than by humiliating me and the poor girl in the process.
He didn't care. He made a killing selling the video.
So I fired him by punching him in the face.
It seemed like a reasonable response to me.
"Regardless of what happened to Cal," Kelsey says, reaching over the desk to grab the ballerina out of my hands. She shoots me a glare that says she'll murder me in my sleep if I don't stop fucking with her stuff. "You need a new publicist."
As much as I hate to admit it, she's not wrong. I need someone to deal with all the bullshit so I don't have to do it. I don't have time, and I don't know the first thing about what a publicist does other than make us look good. Considering the sheer amount of dumb shit we do to blow off steam, I need someone I can trust to know where the line is at and not cross it like Cal did.
Which is exactly the problem. There isn't another publicist I trust more than the tenacious blonde sitting on the opposite side of her desk.
"Then you're hired," I say.
"I am not hired. I can't represent you," Kelsey says, opening a drawer and tossing the ballerina inside. I don't know how she finds anything. Her whole office looks like a tornado hit it. The giant Predators logo on the floor is covered in stacks of paperwork, and the only parts of her desk that are visible are the sides and the legs. The tops of her filing cabinets are lost in what looks like a craft store explosion. For someone so efficient, she's awful messy.
"Why can't you represent me?" I ask instead of telling her that.
