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1.
Hope
“Don’t listen to him,” Lola said, her eye roll delayed on the spotty video feed. Behind her, Reid pulled a face. “Your brother is a beast on ice, as always.”
“Nate got creamed today because this beast was looking the wrong way,” Reid grumbled. Lola shot him a look over her shoulder, and I exchanged an amused glance with Jamie. “I’ve just been a little distracted with everything going on.”
Lola’s unconventional love connection with half the Denver Prospectors hockey team and their coach had gone viral, with pictures and video clips popping up on social media and sports news of the tiny, adorable blonde out and about in Denver, surrounded by hulking hockey hunks like a battalion of handsome, overprotective bodyguards. They’d all become overnight celebrities, at least in the world of professional hockey. The owner of the franchise, Mr. Branson, was furious. He was still scrambling to find a PR strategy that would calm the furor, and he’d read the riot act to the players and coaches on both teams. But he hadn’t fired Lola, or cut any of her guys. Losing Lola’s boyfriends would leave the Prospectors playing worse than their development team. And if he fired her, they’d all walk. They’d told him as much when he called a meeting to confront them with the pictures that had been splashed across the sports re-cap and even a few tabloid rags.
Nate slouched in the chair on her other side with a very obvious shiner. Even with the black eye and his personal business on the nightly sports news recap, he looked happier than I’d seen him the whole time he lived in Casper.
“I’ll try to make it down next month,” I said, smiling at Reid. It was no wonder his game was suffering, with his entire life on display for the world to dissect and discuss. “Maybe by then, you’ll be playing right.” He scowled. Lola tipped her gorgeous blonde head back and laughed out loud.
“Sounds wonderful, babe,” she said. Huck Hart, head coach of the Prospectors, walked by behind her and then stopped and bent down to wave. Jamie and I both raised our hands in return. “Let me know if you’re coming down, and I’ll drag my massage table out of the guest house to make room.”
“Will do,” I said, blowing a kiss at my laptop screen. She returned it, and Reid and Jamie exchanged bro-nods. Then I slapped the titanium lid shut and sagged back against my live-in boyfriend’s chest. He chuckled and kissed the top of my head.
“What’s wrong?” Jamie asked. I sighed.
“I don’t know how she does it,” I said. “I’m exhausted just looking at all those men. And now people everywhere recognize her because her sex life is all over the internet. She looks completely unbothered. I’d be a nervous wreck. Just one of many reasons why one boyfriend is enough for me.” Jamie snorted loudly and locked me in a vice-like embrace.
“Have I mentioned lately that I love you?” he asked. I tilted my head back against his chest and rolled my eyes up to meet his.
“What, you don’t want to share me with eight guys?” I asked innocently. A devilish grin split his face.
“Well, I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind.”
I scrambled away from him and then turned back from a safe distance, with wide eyes, to study his face for any hint that he was teasing me. But he just smirked, reclining into the cushions and resting his arms on the back of the couch.
“The thought of sharing me with eight guys hascrossedyourmind?” I squeaked. I felt like I was going to choke on my heart. It was thumping at the base of my throat.
Jamie’s casual confession brought up so many conflicting emotions, that I couldn’t tell what I was actually feeling.
But one question kept rising to the top over the noise in my head, the same one that had been dogging me for a year.
Emboldened by his boldness, I finally asked it out loud.
“Did you ever…”
“Participate?” he asked. He cocked an eyebrow, and for a second he just let me squirm. “Hell, no. I was too busy obsessing over you to spare any extra energy for Lola.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding in a whoosh as a tingling sense of relief spread through my body.
“Do you regret not getting in the mix when you had the chance?”
He sat forward now, pinning me with his sky-blue eyes.
“There’s not a thing in this world I regret except waiting so long to get into your bed, Hope Wright,” he said sternly.
Then that wicked smile was back as he reached out and dragged me back down into his lap.
I was kicking and screaming, but I was holding onto him for dear life.
2.
Jamie
Hope’s dark blonde hair fanned out around her face and she gazed up at me with parted lips as I lowered her onto our bed.
