From Chapter One...

©Mira Lyn Kelly

Chapter 1

Greg

“NO GAG REFLEX, you don’t say?”

This is what I get for coming to the rookie’s housewarming party. Preseason’s barely started and already I’ve lost interest in the puck bunnies. Cracking the cap on the water I pulled out of the built-in fridge, I take a long swallow. Should have stayed home to catch up on the The Walking Dead.

The bleach blonde with enhanced everything leans into me, pressing her tits against my arm.

“Uh-huh.” She plucks a wad of gum from between her lips, stretching and twisting it around her finger, before blinking up at me with a promise-filled smile. “I could show you.”

And in case I’m somehow missing the deeper meaning, she goes for my junk.

Dodging out of reach, I give Grabby Hands a look that assures I’m both surprised and delighted by her incredibly thoughtful offer. It comes with the wink and smile that have been getting me in and out of trouble from as far back as I can remember… and a hard pass. But a nice one.

I’m not a dick. I’m just not interested in the bunny my right winger backdoored last week. Sweet as I’m sure she is.

Grabby heads off in search of her next box to check, and my teammate Ruxton Meyers strolls over, eyes glued to her swaying ass.

“What I wouldn’t give not to know where she’s been.” He rubs his mouth with a scarred knuckle.

“Or that Vsevolod didn’t wear a rubber?” I offer with an evil smirk.

Rux’s head snaps around.

“I think my dick just crawled back into my body, dragging the boys along.”

I laugh. “Probably the safest place for them.”

Vsevolod’s a good kid and a fucking great hockey player, but at nineteen he’s got even less sense about women and self-preservation than I did at that age. I’ve tried to warn him, like the older guys tried to warn me. But he’ll have to figure it out on his own. I just hope it happens before his dick falls off or some bunny in a three-inch skirt “accidentally” gets knocked up for the sole purpose of hitching herself to his bank account.

“What the hell?” Rux asks, distracted by the roar from the front room. “Baxter, man, he put on football.”

Football? “Et tu, Vsev?”

Only then, I get a better look at the screen, and it’s not actually the game he’s got on, but the sideline interview. Or rather, the reporter. He’s paused the feed so her face fills the screen.

Like always, I recognize the twenty-four-karat shine of her hair, the full lips that launched a thousand dirty high-school fantasies, and the heavy-lidded eyes that seem to be perpetually gleaming with some kind of private joke. Julia Wesley. The coolest girl at Bearings High, and one of the few with the good sense to shut me down.

That good sense is why, ten years later, we’re friendly enough that I’m pulling out my phone to grab a shot of Vsevolod pointing to her lips.

Little pervert.

She’s going to love this.

Me: He swears he doesn’t actually watch the games… he just beats it to the interviews.

It’s less than ten seconds before her message pops up.

Julia: You ass! Is that Vsev? God, now I need a shower.

I grin. Of course she knows who he is. Football is her bread and butter, but Jules knows her sports and is privy to more locker room gossip than I am. So her disgust at making it into his spank bank is based on information above the average joe’s pay grade.

Me: Absolutely, you should take one. Send me a picture.

Five seconds this time.

Julia: In your dreams.

Me: More than once.

It’s been a few years, but I’m serious. We might be friends of the just variety, but Julia Wesley’s a stone-cold fox. Wood-worthy in all the best ways—most of which have less to do with her slamming bod and more to do with her mouth and, specifically, what comes out of it. The girl’s sharp as fuck, knows more about sports than anyone I’ve ever met, and her confidence. Damn. I adjust my fly, sending a silent reprimand to the man downstairs. We’ve been through this before. He knows better.

Regardless, the big guy’s got his back up, and I can’t blame him.

Me: Ready for the reunion next week?

I imagine her shaking head and a huff of breath tossing a bit of blonde from her eyes. Maybe some muttering. She’s working a game, so no dirty four-letter words.

Shame.

A full minute passes.

Julia: The reunion, yes. The rest? You can’t seriously think that’s going to happen.

I don’t, but no way am I going to tell her that. This is way too much fun. Instead, I fire off the picture I took from my yearbook two weeks ago, my chicken scratch “contract” taking up a page in the back:

Presuming we are both still single, I, Julia Wesley, agree to let Greg Baxter kiss me at our ten-year reunion.

Beneath is her curvy signature underlined with Xs and Os.

Julia: Yeah, about that… I think I feel a fiancé coming on. And umm… a really painful cold sore. That tingle. Something’s definitely going on there.

Liar. I grin and pull up Amazon to overnight her a tube of Abreva. I love Prime.

Me: See you next week.

 ***   

Julia

“Come on, Julia, let me take you out after the game. What do you say?”

I beam up at Mike Rylan, who’s giving me the one-dimpled aww-shucks grin that, combined with his killer combination of dark skin and light eyes, has landed him as many advertising contracts as his throwing arm. He’s cute and genuinely nice, one of my favorite players to reach out to in the run-up to game night, but… “You know I don’t date football players.”

Or any players, for that matter.

“You’re breaking my heart,” Mike says, placing his hand over his chest pads.

Pretty sure there’s a line around the stadium of available women to help him out.

My cameraman Eddie starts flashing a countdown of fingers.

Three, two, one… On air.

I turn my smile to the camera and the millions of viewers beyond.

“Mike, what was the tone in the locker room coming into today’s game?”

Five questions later, Mike jogs back to his team, and Eddie lowers the camera.

“You know how many women would kill for that guy to give them a second glance, and you’ve shot him down, what, three times this year alone?”

I laugh, but I take my career and my rule not to date anyone in the sports industry zombie-apocalypse seriously. Which makes me think about this weekend and Greg Baxter’s threat to collect on the throwaway promise I made ten years ago.

There’s no way he thinks I’m actually going to kiss him.

He’s joking. He’s always joking.

He has to be.

And I have a rule.

Don’t get me wrong, Greg’s seriously hot, with thick dark hair cut long enough to curl a little at the ends, a brawny built-tough body, and long eyelashes framing the brightest, most sparkly blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Kissing him would be no hardship. But it would be weird.

We’re friends. For-real friends. And that’s not something I take lightly.

But even if I did, I’ve seen too many promising careers derailed by relationships with the wrong men. In my field, reputation is everything. It only takes one screw-up. The smallest hint of a rumor, and all credibility is shot. No way is that going to be me. I’ve worked too long and too hard to allow some guy to mess with my career.

So ix-nay on the issing-kay with Greg.

Even though I’m sure he’s not serious. Mostly sure.

Chapter 2

Greg

THERE ARE A handful of reporters staked out behind the metal gates put up by security when I arrive at the reunion. I stop to shake hands, smile for a few pictures, and laugh when they ask if there’s anything I wish I could go back to high school and do again.

“Nah, once was enough.”

It’s a safe answer, but not even close to the truth. There are too many things to count that I wish I hadn’t missed, sacrifices I made for a sport that, at the level I was playing at through high school, meant the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change what I have—no way. But if I could go back, knowing I’d still end up where I am today? Yeah, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Julia’s probably the only person I’ve ever admitted that to. The only one who really understood.

I smile for a few more pictures and then take the steps up to the front doors.

It hasn’t been that long since I’ve been back to Bearings High. I never actually played with their hockey team, but I’ve got good memories from my years here, so supporting the program made sense, and walking the halls of the sprawling brick mammoth isn’t as unfamiliar to me as it is to some. Still, there’s always something strange about pushing through the main doors and walking the locker-lined halls as an adult. The rational part of my mind knows I’m not going to round the corner and find Julia laughing by our lockers, and yet it feels like I’m about to have those honey-brown eyes meet mine anyway.

Tonight’s different, though. I know I’ll see her, but not hanging out at the end of South Hall.

There’s gotta be a few hundred phones at the ready when I make it to the gym. And no, not because of me. Don’t get me wrong, my ego is definitely a full-size package, but I’m not conceited enough to think all these people are here to see me. At the reunion, I’m just another graduate from the class, just another guy looking forward to catching up with friends I haven’t seen since graduation.

Just another guy looking forward to catching up with Julia.

Speaking of, she’s standing at the name tag table, surrounded by what looks like half the varsity football team she managed from our year, and I laugh, wondering if that’s as far as she made it before they swarmed her. Can’t really blame them—I caught sight of her three-point-five seconds ago and already I feel the pull to get closer. To see her smile. Make her laugh.

Julia isn’t trying to tone down her looks the way she does on the field or at the few network parties where our paths have crossed over the years, so she looks more like herself than I’ve seen in a long time. Her blonde hair is loose and a little wild, falling in wavy layers that break above her shoulders. Her dress is blue with a lacy top that’s fitted across her rack and falls in a flirty tease above her knees. Her eyes have a smoky look to them and her mouth—damn, that mouth has always been my weakness. Wide and full, that mouth has been putting dangerous and dirty ideas in my head since I moved to Bearings my sophomore year to be within range of a Tier 1 team. And tonight, that mouth is glossed pink and spread into the smile I’ve missed seeing.

I take a step in her direction, but suddenly there are a dozen guys in front of me and someone’s pumping my hand like I handed them a check for a million bucks.

“Baxter, man, great game last night!”

“Thanks,” I answer back, trying to place faces. One dozen turns to two, and a chorus of voices surrounds me.

I’m used to this after the games and at fan events, but it’s different knowing these are the people I went to school with. Worse, because while they all seem to recognize me, I’m only getting hits on about three faces out of the crowd.

 ***   

Julia

The look on Greg Baxter’s face is priceless, but what did he expect? He’s the local hero, star center for the Chicago Slayers hockey team—who kicked ass last year when they signed him. Greg should have shown up with bodyguards and some razor wire to string around himself.

Things aren’t much better over here, but I’ve been back in Chicago for years. I’ve been to weddings and baby showers and come home to find my little sister hosting half her old high school class in our apartment. There’s less mystery with me. And while we’re both nationally recognized, the biggest difference between my crowd tonight and his is that these guys were like family to me in high school. And Greg, well, he didn’t have the time to forge those kinds of relationships.

His head comes up and our eyes meet. It’s a quick look, followed by the tilt of his lips and a flash of teeth, but it’s enough to have me laughing as I turn back to my guys. Enough to make me wonder how far he’s going to push the joke sitting between us. Fortunately, it looks like I’ll have some time before I have to find out.

“Guys, much as I’d love to hang out all night rehashing games from the glory days, I see a couple people I want to say hi to. Catch up with you in a bit?” The men surrounding me are big, but they’ve got nothing on the guys I’ve made my career handling, and I easily cut through the crowd to where a couple of my girlfriends from back in the day are giggling and waving their drinks at me.

Forty-five minutes later, I’m in line for the bar when I feel the skin along the back of my arms and neck begin to heat.

“Hope you brought your cherry ChapStick.”

I’d know that low rumbly voice anywhere and, turning around, I offer Greg a cheeky grin. “Why, you got a girl for me to kiss? Think I might like it?”

Greg makes a strangled noise, his eyes glaze over, and his chiseled lips start to curve.

“You’re imagining it!” I gasp, swatting at his shoulder and then resisting the temptation to touch it again when I realize how massive it is.

His hands come up between us. “You started it, Jules. Where do you think my mind’s going to go when you throw an image of you and Candy like that at me?”

“Candy?”

Greg grins. “I’m a respectful guy. Even scantily clad ChapStick-lovin’ girls conjured by my imagination get names.”

I roll my eyes for his benefit, but I should’ve known better. This is Greg. Over-the-top, outrageous, bad boy Greg Baxter.

Rocking back on his heels, he crosses his arms against his broad chest and looks me over top to bottom. It’s not one of those leering, perverted looks—it’s one old friend enjoying the sight of another. I know, because I’m doing the same. It’s funny, but even though it’s been less than a year since I’ve seen him in person, I’m still struck by how tall he actually is. How he’s broader than he looks on TV. And that hair—standing at all angles, it’s an artful mess I’m guessing took less than fifteen seconds to perfect. He looks criminally good in his navy suit and tie, but a part of me wishes I could see him back in his worn jeans and one of those well-loved hockey T-shirts that never seemed quite big enough for the body within it.

After a deep breath, he grins and pulls me in for a bear hug that makes this reunion everything I’d hoped it would be.

“It’s great to see you.”

I close my eyes, enjoying the feel of his big arms around me and the clean, woodsy scent that somehow hasn’t changed since high school. “You too, Baxter.”

He lets me go and puts a step between us while keeping his rough hand on the back of my arm.

“So when are you gonna stop playing with those football pansies and start covering a real sport?”

I laugh at the old joke between us and nod toward a couple of open seats at a nearby table. I could ask Greg about the game the other night or how his rib has been holding up after the injury from last year. But the answers to those questions are back at my network office, and it’s not what I want to know.

“How’s it been living back in Chicago—aside from hockey?”

His eyes crinkle at the corners, and he pulls me closer to give me a squeeze.

“The first non-league related question I’ve gotten all night, and it comes from the sports reporter.”

“I had a feeling.”

“You always do.” He pulls out my chair and we sit, smiling as we look at each other for a moment. Then he answers, “It’s good. I like living downtown, and while the bulk of my time is spent with the team, it’s nice to be close enough to see Natalie… whenever.”

Thinking about Greg’s sister puts a smile on my face. He used to call her Goon, like she was a little enforcer on the ice, but when it came to the guys who were interested in her—he was the enforcer. “She doesn’t play anymore does she?”

“Nah, blew out her knee in college. You know she graduated from Wisconsin, right? But now all her ice time is coaching a 12U girls team. Loves it.”

We talk about his parents, who moved back when he got traded to the Slayers, and me having my sister Cammy and my four-year-old nephew as roommates. About having Jack Hastings as a landlord, and how our former schoolmate thinks the guy who moved into Hank Wagner’s old place is a douche. He asks me about my mom, and I’m trying to figure out how to change the subject so I don’t have to explain about Florida and what her latest mistake, Chuck, is costing me, when the music cuts off and Tabby Jennison takes the stage at the front of the gym. Greg smirks, and I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts he’s thinking of the time she drank too much at Tucker Lawry’s party and I had to hold her hair out of the toilet for half an hour before helping him drive her home. It was one of maybe three parties Greg got to attend through all of high school, and he spent it driving a drunk girl home when her own boyfriend wouldn’t.

Greg’s big hand reaches across the table and pushes my cosmo back, and I know I was right. Like always, I find myself quietly laughing at the unspoken jokes we share, smiling a bit wider because that’s what this guy does to me. Always has. I haven’t been paying attention to what Tabby’s been saying, but suddenly the gym lights go dim, and the spotlights start swirling through the crowd until they land on us and stop.

There’s an introduction, and I wave along with Greg, expecting the spot to move on to someone else. Only it doesn’t. Tabby’s eyes gleam as they meet mine.



“So, about a week ago, I got this text from Julia’s little sister, Cammy, with a picture of an IOU written in the back of Greg Baxter’s yearbook.”