©Mira Lyn Kelly
Vaughn
What’s pissing me off isn’t the phone call from my agent warning me that Coach is going to scratch me from the lineup if I don’t knock off my “confrontational” bullshit.
It’s not that I walk into Belfast, the one bar I like in this city, and find Greg fucking Baxter and half our team cheering for some chump as he pops the question to his girl.
It’s not even that I can’t get a fucking beer because all the waitresses are standing around moony-eyed, or that any plans I might have had of getting laid tonight are now securely in the shitter. Trusting my dick to some chick who just watched a happily ever after in action? Hard pass. Might as well cut the hole in the rubber myself.
No. What’s pissing me off is her, and that for a single second I wasn’t pissed at all.
For one second, my only thought was she’s here.
In Chicago.
In the bar I’ve been coming to once a week for the past month and a half.
Allie. The girl from Vancouver eight months ago. The one with the dark curls, gypsy blue eyes, and the sweetest, wettest mouth I ever tasted. The girl who blew my mind and then blew out of my life without even giving me her number.
Hell, I was half off my barstool, the beginnings of an honest-to-fuck smile fighting my chronic case of resting prick face when it registered… She’s not alone.
And it’s not some random hipster or suit with his arm slung around her shoulders, either. It’s Ruxton Meyers, my teammate. Fucking Baxter’s best friend.
That’s what’s pissing me off.
I thought she was different.
Hell, I knew she was a fan. She was wearing a Canucks jersey and hanging out at a bar with a bunch of players the first night I saw her. But she wasn’t on the prowl. She wasn’t eyeing every player there like a prize to score. Instead of some skintight getup that left next to nothing to the imagination, she’d had on jeans. Beat-up, loose, frayed-around-the-hems jeans. And a pair of white Chucks. Her hair was this sexy mess of dark brown waves that I watched her put up into a ponytail in the middle of the bar without a mirror, while she was talking to another player. She didn’t care what she looked like. Didn’t care what anyone thought. Didn’t even have her phone out taking selfies.
So not a puck bunny.
I’d have bet my life on it, especially when I saw her in the hotel lobby the next night. She was buying a Hershey’s bar and a lemonade from the convenience store and she just looked up and smiled. Like we were old friends or something. Like she recognized me without the double take. Without the rest of the team. Just me, standing in line behind her buying a water I didn’t need because I’d seen her there.
And hours later when I could still smell her on my skin, the only thing I had left of her was the note in my hand that no bunny ever would have written: I can’t do this. I’m sorry.
She’d told me from the start. She doesn’t date players. So what the fuck is she doing with Rux?
Was she lying? Because she sure looks comfy tucked beneath his arm.
My knuckles crack as fists form at my sides.
This is the kind of bullshit I’m supposed to be avoiding if I want a contract with Oregon. And shit, Allie isn’t mine. She’s just a chick who isn’t as different as I thought she was.
I can walk out of here. Forget I saw her.
Hit another bar and find another girl.
Great plan.
Thing is, I’m not going anywhere.
***
Natalie
Life isn’t fair.
After months of dodging out on plans and skipping games it killed me to skip, I join the guys for one stinking night to share a moment I’m honored to have been included in. One night and who the heck shows up but the one player I’ve been busting my backside to avoid since he was traded to the Slayers this summer.
Vaughn Vassar.
He’s our second-line center, my brother’s longest-standing rival, and the indiscretion I should have known would come back to bite me. Hard.
I gulp, hazarding another quick peek past the bulk of Rux’s arm. My belly knots around the butterflies that have been launching like missiles since the guy walked in. It’s definitely Vaughn. Even if I didn’t know every face on my brother’s team and most of the league really… for reasons I’d rather roll in hot coals than admit out loud, I would know his.
And in the eight months since I was this close to him, he hasn’t changed. The dark waves of his hair still hang loose around a jaw that’s heavy and square. But it’s that hard edge screaming doesn’t play well with others chiseled into every line of his rugged face I recognize first. Maybe because I know exactly what happens when it softens… when those hard eyes crinkle at the corners and that slash of a mouth lifts, changing his whole face.
Like the rest of him, that contrast is hard to forget.
Hard not to think about when I’m not supposed to be thinking about him at all.
Cripes, why does he have to look so good with those dark jeans hugging around the mass of his solid thighs, the assortment of tats peeking out from beneath the deep vee of a T-shirt that’s barely keeping up with the body it’s been tasked with covering? And why when I’ve been surrounded by guys with this body type for most of my life—guys I wisely don’t look twice at—is this guy so hard to ignore?
A breath shudders past my suddenly dry lips, and I lean back.
This is bad.
Honestly, the chances of him remembering a girl he spent a handful of hours with eight months ago are next to none. Most of the single guys I know in the league wouldn’t. But Vaughn Vassar is a man too many people sell short and I’m not willing to risk being one of them.
Which is why I need to get out of here. And why I’m going to continue missing games and dodging out on plans with the team until Vaughn’s contract is up and Chicago’s most reluctant player moves on to a team he actually wants to play for...
