Page 22

Lucky for me, I'm about to find out what today's treat is.

Because the doors to the heated viewing area swing open, and there she is.

Wearing a red skirt with black stockings.

Fuck me.

The skirt ends above her knee, and the stockings cling to her legs all the way down into little snow boots, and my brain performs a complete system shutdown right there at center ice.

I genuinely question whether captaincy comes with the authority to ban clothing that threatens team concentration, because that skirt is a goddamn workplace hazard.

She looks like the best thing I've ever laid eyes on, and she's not even looking at me. She's looking at Colin Holden, and… oh.

She's furious.

"—a whiskey tasting, a children's skating event, AND a shirtless calendar shoot?" Audrey's voice carries across the ice as she waves a printed schedule at him. "In the same hour, Colin?"

Colin Holden adjusts his mirrored sunglasses. He's wearing a ski jacket, a Santa hat and resort slippers. In the snow. "The calendar shoot only takes twenty minutes. These boys have abs. Abs photograph fast."

"They cannot be drunk, shirtless and teaching children to skate simultaneously!"

"In Beachside we call that a regular Tuesday."

"This is a mountain, Colin. There are no Tuesdays like that on a mountain."

Nate coasts up beside me, resting his stick across his knees. "Twenty bucks says she makes him cry."

"Fifty says she cancels the calendar shoot."

Aidan slides in on my other side. "She won't cancel it. She'll reschedule it, color-code it, and Colin will thank her for the privilege."

We watch Audrey snatch the pen from Colin's hand, cross out two lines on his schedule, write something in the margin, and hand it back. Colin reads it, nods slowly, and shuffles away in his slippers like a scolded child.

"Told you," Aidan says.

We all laugh, because the woman really is terrifying.

She's attended every practice for the past three days. Just yesterday, she convinced Coach Dave to stay awake through an entire tactical meeting, which since he retired from professional hockey, apparently hasn't happened once.

She even taught Aidan how calendar alerts work so he's not late.

She has organized everyone.

Everyone except me, because I've spent three days making sure we're never alone together. Since I stood close enough to count her eyelashes and told her I wasn't using a line.

I can handle her in public. That's easy.

So long as we're surrounded by players, cameras, sponsors and several dozen reasons to keep my mouth off her, I'll be fine.

I won't get distracted.

We were even at the Ski Bar two nights ago, where the whole team crammed into booths while Dylan played cover songs on his guitar and everyone got progressively drunker. Audrey sat directly across from me the entire night, laughing at Nate's stories, stealing fries off Aidan's plate, and I survived by gripping my beer a little too tight.

What I can't risk is a hallway. An elevator. Any enclosed space where Audrey Fields might look at me the way she looked at me under that mistletoe.

Like she wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted her.

But that can't be right… can it?