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I sit up. “Would you consider a different ringtone since this one makes me think my home is being raided?”
She lifts a shoulder. “It’s the only thing that works. I have to put my phone across the room and force myself out of bed to shut it off.”
“I can come up with some different ways to get you out of bed.”
She laughs. “What about when you’re out of town at a game?”
“You can sleep in on those days.” I stretch, my eyes still tracking her movements around my room.
“I need to shower and get ready for work. Since all my stuff is in the other room, I’ll just, uh, leave you to it,” she says.
“What do you want for breakfast?” I ask.
“Your cock.” She blushes after she says it.
I groan. “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
She giggles. “Those breakfast croissants again, maybe? Those were amazing.”
I nod. “Coming right up.”
She joins me in the kitchen just as I’m finishing up, and she goes over a few things with me—namely, getting in touch with my publicist so she can take over my Instagram account so she can start her plan to align my socials with my tequila branding.
When she’s talking about my social media, she seems like she’s really in her element. Like she knows this stuff. I wonder for a brief moment why she didn’t pursue it as a career because I see a real talent there.
But I don’t ask. There must be some reason she majored in fashion even though it turned out to be something other than what she wanted.
She heads off to work, and I think back to my conversation with West about a potential date night with Ivy, and I’m ready to let her into a part of me I’ve let very few people experience.
I pull up the schedule for our practice facility on my phone. We share the rinks with other teams, including our American Hockey League affiliate and the Vegas pro women’s team. When the ice is free, the rinks are often rented out to the local high schools or youth leagues. There’s almost always something going on here, but it looks like the youth league will be out by eight tonight.
I text Martin, the rink scheduler. It’s not uncommon for any of us to ask for a late-night slot on the ice.
Me: Can you hold a sheet for me from 8:30 to 10 tonight?
His reply is quick.
Martin: I’ll leave rink one open. Stay as late as you want, but turn off the lights when you’re done. I’ll be out of here just after the last youth league finishes.
Rink one is my favorite, mainly because it’s the nicest and the one we use to practice most often. It’s closest to the locker room, and since Martin told me to turn off the lights when I’m done, that means we’ll likely be alone. I can give her a full tour of the entire practice facility, take her out on the ice, and have some private time in one of my favorite places in the world…one of the places I feel most at home.
Once Ivy’s home from work, she settles onto a stool in the kitchen with her laptop. “So what does a big hockey star like you do on free weekends?”
I can’t help but chuckle at her question, but I answer it anyway. “In the offseason, I do whatever the fuck I want. Like, for example, going to a club and meeting the woman who will eventually become my wife.”
She smiles at that.
“Sometimes I head home to Minnesota and visit my mom. Sometimes I meet up with the guys and we work out. It varies. What about a hot girl like you? What do you do on the weekends?”
She narrows her eyes at me, bypassing the compliment. “Sometimes I head back home to Chicago. But half my family lives out here now, and my best friend is married to my brother, so I tend to hang out with her or one of my siblings.”
“What if we have a husband and wife getting-to-know-you kind of weekend?”
She laughs, but truthfully, it is kind of a ridiculous thing to say.
Still, we’ve been married for three weeks now, and we have yet to spend an entire weekend together.
“Okay then, husband, what sorts of things are we going to do to get to know each other this weekend?”
