Hot for the Hockey Player

Welcome to San Camanez, a humble, peaceful little island in the Puget Sound and home to the Vino Vixens. Four cousins—and single moms—who run a vineyard, love the wine they sell, raise their kids together, and still hold out hope that not all men are like the ones they married. This is Gabrielle’s story …

Maverick

Eight years ago, Gabrielle Campbell was the untouchable woman I lived with—sophisticated, stunning, off-limits. I was just a teenage hockey player with a hopeless crush. Now I’m twenty-six, a pro athlete sidelined by injury, and she’s back in my sights … watching me get carted off the ice. When I head to her sleepy island to rehab, I don’t expect her to still haunt my thoughts—or for that fire between us to burn hotter than ever. She’s trying to keep her distance, but I didn’t come this far to stay in the friend zone.

Gabrielle

Maverick Roy is temptation wrapped in muscle and charm … and completely wrong for me. I’m forty-one, a mother of two, and I don’t do impulsive. He’s younger, temporary, stirring up gossip on the island and trouble in the league. He’s a risk I can’t afford.But when he looks at me, I forget every reason I should say no. He’s patient. He’s kind. And when he touches me, I forget how to be careful. I swore I’d never gamble with my heart—or my kids’—but Maverick is breaking down every wall I’ve built.Letting him in could ruin everything—but denying him might ruin me.

Thwack!

“Gotcha, Roy,” Henderson guffawed as he walked behind me, having whacked my ass with a twisted-up towel.

“Fucker,” I grumbled with zero humor, casting a cursory glance his way.

Henderson was such a douche. Even when we were on the ice, down by two and with less than five minutes left on the clock, the idiot refused to take things seriously. Everything was a joke to him. Probably because he was a joke.

Rolling my eyes, I focused back on my cubby in the locker room and grabbed the muscle balm I had specially made for me by a pain-relief wizard here in Portland. The guy infused the cream with cannabidiol, or CBD—a chemical found in the cannabis plant that’s non-psychoactive. Along with menthol, it worked wonders on the aches and pains in my back. I also made sure to pop an Aleve before I pulled my jersey over my gear.

“Mouth like a fucking Hoover vacuum, bro. Swear to god. The chick nearly sucked off my foreskin. But it was worth it.” Garver, one of our defensemen, sat down on the bench beside me to tie his skates while chatting with his fellow womanizer in crime, Franks.

Franks snorted. “Chick I was with last night had these long-ass, bejeweled fake nails.” He wiggled his fingers like grass in the wind before bending down to start tying up his skates as well. “Would have loved her to stick a finger in my ass, but not with those claws. She scratched up my back real nice though.”

If I tuned in hard enough, I could pick up more conversations than just these two assholes talking trash about women they hooked up with. Even some of the married guys were laughing at the “desperate” puck bunnies they brought back to their hotel rooms on away games.

I knew a lot of their wives and it made it tough to look these women in the eye and not say anything, knowing what I knew about their husbands. Because while I loved the comradery and brotherhood of being part of a team, being on a team was a lot like being part of a family; you couldn’t always pick who you were forced to spend endless waking hours with. And as much as I “liked” my “family”, there were definitely a few “twigs” I wished would get “pruned” or simply fall off in a windstorm.

“Hey, Mav. Saw you chatting with that big booty bunny last night. You get some?” Franks asked, his Savannah drawl extra thick as he grabbed his jersey to yank over his head. “She was fine. Had a dump truck of an ass I’d loved to take a spin in.”

Franks had a pregnant wife at home and a two-year-old daughter named Cambria, who worshipped the ice her father skated on.

I glared at him for a half a second, then tossed on a face of tolerance. “Naw, man. She’s cute, but we just chatted about the season. She does a sports podcast.”

Henderson made a disgusted face. “A chick who has a sports podcast? What does she have, like, six listeners? Do they talk about how cute our jerseys are?” His chortle made me cringe.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to rustle up a half-hearted response to Henderson because Coach Nilsson walked in and most of the chatter died down. “All right,” he said, climbing up onto the bench in the middle so we could all see him. “The Riptides have a strong defensive line. So that means we need to create space, utilize our offensive depth, and employ smart defensive strategies.” He focused on Pierre Allard, one of our left-wingers. “That means no showboating.”

Allard rolled his eyes.

“We pass when our teammate is open. I want to see quick footwork. Speed. Good puck handling.” His gaze once again drifted to Allard. “We do not take a shot from the center line when a teammate is closer to the net, open, and has a better shot.”

“Why does he keep looking at me?” Allard murmured in his thick French-Canadian accent.

“Because you’re a puck hog and a glory hound,” replied Woodman.

Allard frowned but didn’t say anything.

“What is one thing that the Riptides’ defensive line lacks?” Nilsson asked.

“Decorum?” Garver, our team captain, said with a snort. We all glanced at Franks, who ended up with a badly sprained wrist and had to sit out for five games after the last time we played the Riptides. Barbier, their left-defenseman, hooked him hard and Franks took a nasty fall, which also landed him at the bottom of a pileup on the ice with two Riptides on top of him. He was lucky all he got was a sprained wrist.

“A defenseman with more than two brain cells?” remarked Silby, our goalie.

“Okay, besides a meatbrain like Barbier,” Nilsson said with an eye roll.

“It’s meathead, Coach,” Franks corrected. “But I actually like meatbrain.”

Several of the guys murmured among themselves and nodded.

“They don’t always effectively back up their teammate in the offensive zone,” I said.

Nilsson pointed at me, and his head bobbed in a silent “thank you.” Then he said, “That’s right. So when the puck is there, I want you all there too. Pounce. Overwhelm them, get the puck away and back into their defensive zone, then into the net. Swarm them like … like piranhas on a fresh piece of meatbrain in the water.”

A few guys snickered at Nilsson’s analogy. It sounded especially funny since our coach had a fairly strong Swedish accent and was prone to slightly messing up his idioms and metaphors, but always in the most endearing way.

Nilsson gave us a few more words of wisdom. Then it was time to head out onto the ice and warm up in front of the crowd. I felt like a piece of meat getting dangled over piranha infested waters being forced to stretch and warm up with an audience, but it was all part of the deal. The fans loved every second they got to see us on the ice, whether we were playing, fighting, stretching, or spitting.

I grabbed my mouth guard from my cubby, strapped it to my helmet, and followed the rest of the team out onto the ice.

We were playing another away game tonight, this time in Seattle, but since I spent a lot of time in Washington state in my early career, it felt more like coming home. After getting scouted and recruited to the Spokane Chiefs when I was fifteen, I spent three years playing for them before moving to Seattle to play for the Thunderbirds. Then I left the WHL for the NHL, and have been playing in the big leagues ever since.

I was fourth round draft pick my first year, getting a one-year contract with the Colorado Mustangs, before being traded to Vancouver and becoming a free agent, where I played two years for the Sea Wolves. I loved Vancouver and could have easily finished out my career there, but my agent managed to get me a great three-year deal with the Portland Storm—my current team—and I couldn’t say no. My only request was that I got to stay on the West Coast. I didn’t care where I played or who I played for. I just had no desire to be landlocked in the middle of the country, or on the Eastern seaboard. I grew up in West Virginia and had absolutely no desire to ever see another East Coast hurricane for as long as I lived.

The crowd—as always—was a mix of cheers and boos. Those who came from Portland to watch us play applauded our arrival on the ice, while die-hard Riptides fans let us know we were going down. Most of the time, it was all in jest. So we ignored the boos and heckling. Every once in a while, some nutjob fan would take it a little too far and need to be escorted out of the arena.

The stands weren’t full yet, but they would be by the time the puck dropped.

I skated around the ice a few times to warm up, then dropped to my knees to stretch.

“Yo,” Woodman said, coming to stretch beside me. “You okay?”

Roman Woodman was probably my best friend on the team. Like me, he didn’t air his dirty—or clean—laundry in the locker room. He had a long-time, steady girlfriend back home in Portland, and as far as I knew, he was faithful to her. He also seemed to share my opinion that a lot of our teammates were womanizing douches. The two of us would often take off and go have a beer elsewhere when the team decided to party hard with puck bunnies at a nightclub.

I shrugged, pulling in a deep breath of the frosty air. I loved the smell of the ice. “Yeah. Fine.”

“Weird being back in Seattle?”

“Naw. I like it. It was home for a bit. Love Washington. You missing Julie?”

“She wanted to come up for the game, but got called in for a shift at the hospital. Hard to make a pediatric oncology nurse feel bad about missing my game when she’s literally putting smiles on sick kids’ faces.” He rolled his gray eyes and tossed on a crooked half-smile.

Snorting, I leaned forward a bit more in my frog pose to help open up my hips.

“You really just talk to that chick last night? Or were you just brushing Franks off because he’s a tool?”

“Just chatted,” I confirmed. “Jasmine is great. She played hockey as a teenager. So she really knows the sport. She asked better questions than ninety percent of the sports reporters that corner us after a game.”

Woodman nodded at the same time unease flickered in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“My agent said there’s talk of me getting traded.”

My brows hiked. “Traded to where?”

“Detroit has expressed interest.”

We both cringed at the same time. “Detroit?” While I tried my best to put a positive spin on whatever I could, it was about as tough as stale beef jerky to do so at the idea of Roman getting traded to Detroit.

He nodded. “Apparently, it’s just chatter, but … I dunno, man. I don’t want to leave Portland. I’ve got a great thing going with Julie. She can’t leave her job. Her whole family is in Portland. And it’s fucking Detroit, dude.”

With a heavy heart, all I could do was shake my head. We knew this was part of the job when we all signed up to play. Players got traded all the time. Unless you had an ironclad contract with a no-trade clause in it, it was always an option. And while Roman Woodman was a great right-winger, he was second-string and, like me, this was a contract renegotiation year for him too.

Murmurs about contracts and trades made up a lot of the locker room chatter. Everybody who was in a contract year feared for their future. Some players were eager to move, while others—like Roman and myself—were happy where we were, as we attempted a bit of normalcy in our lives and aspired to set down some shallow roots.

After the national anthem was sung by a local teenage girl from some prestigious choir, it was time for the puck drop. As first-string center, I took my position at center ice, ready for the face-off.

The Riptide’s center—Maxim Hoff—joined me there. “Roy,” he greeted. “How’s it going?”

“Had a fantastic night’s sleep.”

He grinned. “Me too.”

We both put in our mouth guards as the ref skated up with the puck. “All right, guys. Let’s have a clean game, hmm?”

Hoff and I both merely snorted and glanced at the ref before focusing back on the ice.

The puck smacked dead center in the middle of the decorative “R” and it was game on.

Once my skates hit the ice, I thought of nothing else besides the game. Everything else in my life, everything outside the two hundred by eighty-five-foot frozen rectangle—including the crowd—got shoved to the back for later. I had a single goal for these three periods, and that was to score goals, or help my teammates score goals.

I got the puck first and passed to Henderson, my left-winger who was open. He took it up the ice, closing in on the goal. The scrape of sharp blades and my teammates hollering at each other filled my ears. The Riptides’ strong defensive line launched themselves on Henderson. Their defenseman, Barbier, shoved Henderson hard into the boards, but I raced up and grabbed the puck before Hoff could get it. That opened me up for a shot, but before I could take it, their other defenseman, LeBlanc, hooked my skates with his stick, sending me to the ground.

The ref blew the whistle, and LeBlanc was handed a two-minute penalty. Henderson came over and helped me to my feet. “You okay?”

I nodded, then faced off into the defensive zone with Hoff. Hoff and I played together briefly for Colorado, and he was a good dude. A bit older than me, with a family, but he tried to play a clean game. Not a lot of fighting or penalties. He was one of the good guys and I liked playing against him because I knew it would be a fair game.

“Y’all right?” The Texas native asked me.

“Never better.”

The puck dropped again and we were off. The Riptides were one man down, which was to our advantage. We needed to use these two minutes wisely and keep the puck in their defensive zone for a better chance at scoring.

Franks hollered that he was open, so I passed across the ice to him on the left. He launched it to Henderson, who shot it back to me. Barbier was on me again, but I handed off the puck to Franks again before Barbier could swoop in. Franks took a shot on goal, but the Riptides’ goalie, Neyman, deflected, passing it to Hoff. Hoff took it up the center, and we swarmed him. Our defensive line got ready, rushing Hoff in offense.

I was the first to catch up with Hoff, but just as I was about to swoop in to try to steal the puck before he reached the blue line, Barbier came up on my right and checked me hard from behind, sending me flying into Hoff.

I’d been checked from behind before, but something about the way I fell sent alarm bells ringing in my head as my skull rattled in my helmet when I hit the unforgiving ice.

A sharp, stabbing pain in my lower back had me flopping onto my belly as I tried to wiggle my toes in my skates. The din of the crowd’s gasps faded into the background. All I could hear was the deafening thud of my pulse in my ears.

Something wasn’t right.

The ref blew the whistle and my teammates, as well as Coach Nilsson, rushed over.

Hoff was there too, having recovered from his bail better than me. “Roy, you okay?” he asked crouching down, concern on his scruffy face.

“No, man,” I said, fear sending shots of adrenaline through me. “Something’s wrong.”

“Just stay still,” Nilsson said, dropping to one knee beside me. “Paramedics are coming.” He rested a hand on my shoulder and gave me his best “dad” face, since he really was like a father to all of us. Stern, but fair. Encouraging, but not demeaning. He was honestly the best coach I’d ever had.

I swallowed and nodded, the flash of the paramedics’ red jackets coming into my peripheral vision. They had the spine board, and after asking me some questions and assessing things, they lifted me onto the board and strapped me in. My helmet was off now, and my eyes shifted over the crowd as the gurney rolled me to the exit.

“On three,” the taller paramedic said when we reached the step to leave the ice. “One … two … three.” They lifted me, but it was a smooth transition.

The stands erupted into thunderous applause. But that just made the pounding in my head worse. I was about to close my eyes when dark-brown, chunky curls framing a heart-shaped face, and alert amber eyes caught my attention.

I would remember those eyes anywhere.

Gabrielle Campbell, the mother of my hockey host family for three years, stared back at me with fear and worry. She had two children—two teenagers—with her. It’d been ages since I’d seen Damon and Laurel. They were just toddlers when I lived with them, but Gabrielle hadn’t changed a bit. She was still gorgeous. Still had that serious, guarded way about her. When we locked eyes, her cheeks pinked up in a very sexy way. They were right on the edge of the bottom bowl, against the glass for the exit. A great spot to watch the game and see the players as they entered and left the ice.

All I could do was blink. My arms were strapped to my sides, and I was told not to move.

She followed me with her gaze.

“Hi,” I mouthed, offering her a faint smile.

Her throat moved on a swallow, and the intensity of fear in her eyes increased. She mouthed “Hi” back, prompting my heart to do an extra little jump.

And then I was gone, rushed into the ambulance and off to the hospital as my mind swirled with memories from my time spent living with the Campbells, and panic that I’d never play hockey—or walk—again.