Chapter Eight

Shelby was standing in the sheriff’s office lobby in front of the glass doors already bundled up in her coat and more than ready to get the hell out of there when a black SUV with Ice Knights vanity plates pulled into the partially plowed parking lot. Relief seeped into her shoulders and she relaxed them about halfway down from touching her earlobes. Why only halfway? Because OMG, the tension flowing off Ian even though he was on the other side of the lobby was strong enough to be a battering ram.

So much for their tentative truce. He’d gone totally grumpsterville on her again. Was he regretting last night? God knew the smart part of her was, even if she knew it could never work out between them. He was a hockey star; she worked for the team. How in the hell was she supposed to cover the team if she was fucking one of the players? Not to mention, he was all about the snarl and believing everything was at its worst. She had to believe that there was always a silver lining; if she didn’t have that inside her, she wasn’t sure she would have made it through rehab. It was the right call to limit sex to the cabin. They’d gotten it out of their system.

Still…it sure would have been nice to have another few nights on that rug.

Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t just take the surly down a couple of notches. They weren’t enemies, just former onetime lovers.

Thanks to the power of reflections, she was able to watch the SUV park in one of the empty spots and see the lines in Ian’s forehead deepen as he squared his jaw. She took half a step back toward him before she caught herself.

Clean breaks were the best kind. If she didn’t, she’d get tangled up in feelings that were one-sided, and that way lay trouble. There were things she could control and things she couldn’t. The best option for her was to stick with what she could control.

Forcing her gaze away from Ian, because the man was the word “uncontrollable” in human form, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath to center herself. Okay, this drive home was not going to be fun, but at least she’d have the back seat to herself while Ian and Alex did their awkward no-talking thing. Or they would fight the whole drive back. Even worse, it could be hours of passive-aggressive snipping back and forth at each other until they got back to Harbor City.

Fuck me. Forget pretending to be asleep—I’m going to pretend to be dead.

Wouldn’t that be nice if she could. Instead, she had to be a grown-up about things.

“Hey, Ian. Alex is—” The word “here” devolved into a muffled “oof” as she turned and managed to smack her face into the wall of muscle that was Ian Petrov’s chest. A delicious shiver worked its way through her—the kind that was a taste of out-of-control wildness she couldn’t afford but damn her, she wanted to give in to it anyway.

“Yeah,” he said, taking a step back and breaking contact after he’d moved so silently to right behind her. “I see.”

All right, she did not miss his touch—inadvertent or not—at all. Not a single bit.

Liar.

Annoyed at her own reaction, Shelby crossed her arms and matched him glare for glare. “Try not to make this completely awful. The guy did us a huge favor.”

“Thanks for the lesson in manners.” He kept his attention focused on the SUV outside. “I’ll be sure to let my mom know what a shitty job she did with that.”

She gasped and her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. That’s not what she meant. Why did he always have to take everything as an attack? “There’s no reason to go all total asshole with me.”

“Well, we’re heading back to reality, right?” He leveled a heated look at her. “Everything in the cabin was just the exception that proves the rule.”

What should have been relief hurt too much to call it that. “Ian.”

He shook his head. “Let’s keep it to Petrov. Better yet, let’s just keep it silent.”

“You are a giant prick.”

“You would know.”

He smirked down at her, equal parts infuriating and addictive. Her temper, the one she kept on firm lockdown, flared to light. However, she was saved from committing murder in the lobby of the Buffly County Sheriff’s Office by the massive guy with short, dirty-blond hair getting out on the SUV’s driver’s side and the one and only Lucy Kavanagh getting out from the passenger’s side. She’d never been so glad to see someone so much in her life. Rushing out of the doors, she made an open-armed beeline toward Lucy.

Wrapping her arms around the Ice Knights PR head, and technically her boss despite the firewall between marketing and the media hub, Shelby gave a grateful hug. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“I’ve been freaking out since your message,” Lucy said, returning the hug with a reassuring firmness. “I’m so sorry. The Airbnb said the cabin was a duplex, not just one building. I would never have done that to you had I known.”

Shelby let loose a wry chuckle. “Well, if either of us had actually ended up at the right cabin, things may have been different.”

“Right cabin?” Lucy’s eyes rounded and she took a long gulp of her Mountain Dew. “What are you talking about?”

After she gave Lucy the short version—the one minus all the sexy naked parts—Lucy gave her another bone-cracking hug as Shelby looked over her shoulder at the two men ignoring each other with all the ferocity of two hockey players in the face-off circle in a triple-overtime game with the Stanley Cup on the line.

“Oh, wow. I’m surprised you’re both still alive,” Lucy said as she opened the SUV’s back passenger-side door. “I’ll sit in the back.”

“I’ll take the back and you can sit next to”—Ian cut his focus over to Alex—“him.”

The other man let out a derisive huff of breath but didn’t say anything.

Shelby shook her head. The two men may share only half their DNA, but it was obviously the stubborn and angry half.

“That works for me,” Lucy said. “I have a lot to tell all three of you. I have a plan to fix all of” —she waved her hands around in the general direction of the others—“this.”

Oh, great. Shelby’s stomach sank. Whatever had happened while she and Ian were out of communication with the rest of the world, it must have been something.

“Nothing needs fixing,” Ian said, each word coming out in a grumpy rumble. “I apologized to Shelby for mistakenly assuming that she leaked it all on purpose.”

Lucy clapped her hands together and grinned at him like a proud mama. “You know what that is, Ian? Personal growth. Excellent. However, our troubles—the team’s troubles—don’t end there, do they? Lucky for you, I have a solution.”

While Shelby was retreating into silence as guilt and dread swirled around inside her like a tornado of terribleness, the brothers didn’t suffer the same problem. Both were grousing immediately.

“I’m not going into therapy,” Alex said as he yanked open the driver’s side door.

Ian narrowed his gaze in another of his signature glares. “Why do I think I’m not going to like whatever you’re about to say.”

“Because you’re not completely brain dead,” Alex said without ever looking over at his half brother. “Shocker.”

“No one asked you, asshole.” Ian tensed and puffed out his chest like a rooster about to go into full-tilt attack mode. “Shut your pie hole.”

“Boys,” Lucy said as she looked at Shelby and rolled her eyes in one of those woman-to-woman moments that needs no words. “You’re probably both going to hate it, but if you want to keep your place on the team, you’re going to do it. The word came down all the way from the owner’s suite. This PR play is nonnegotiable, and it involves all three of you.”

“Why me?” Shelby asked, shocked out of silence with her already squeaky voice going up to nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying even to her own ears.

“Because.” Lucy bared her teeth in a smile that was anything but friendly. “The Biscuit as part of the Ice Knights media hub is the perfect place to tell the story of brothers reuniting on the road as they fight to win the Stanley Cup together.”

Ian let out a string of mumbled curses before saying clearly, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Lucy turned to face him, her hands on her hips and her attitude just daring him to try it. “I’m not, and if any of you think of bucking the system here, it will not end well for you. You might rule on the ice, but I can scare the shit out of Godzilla without even breaking a sweat. You do not want to fuck with me.” She gave Shelby, Ian, and Alex the stink eye and then jerked her head toward the SUV. “Now, everyone get in and I’ll explain everything on the ride back to Harbor City.”

…

The next two hours were already going to be absolute hell, but to add into it even the idea of getting all brotherly with Christensen—even if it was only for PR purposes—had Ian’s gut churning. At least that made him forget the fact that he was sitting next to Shelby in an enclosed space.

Not that he was paying attention to that.

Or the way her black jeans clung to her long legs.

Or the way her cheeks got a little pink every time she looked at him, as if she couldn’t stop thinking about last night, either.

Or the—

Fucking A, pull it together, man. She’s not interested. Stop being such a rejection junkie.

“So here’s how this is going to work,” Lucy said as soon as they hit the interstate and a straight shot back to Harbor City. “Due to a freak glitch in the schedule, the Ice Knights have an extra-long road trip starting tomorrow.”

“I thought I wasn’t going on that because of this.” He held up his busted thumb, which meant he still had about a week of off-ice time left.

“You can finish healing up on the road.” Lucy shrugged. “Plans change.”

That static-electricity shock of oh-shit-he-was-not-going-to-like-this sizzled up the back of his neck. “So what’s the new one?”

The smile on Lucy’s face in response to his question would have scared the meanest goon in the league; it sure as hell had him prepping for a body blow.

“You two are going to room together on the road and you’ll go to dinner together.” Lucy turned her gaze on Shelby. “And our own intrepid correspondent from The Biscuit will be with you every step of the way to document and share with fans on the Ice Knights’ social media hub.”

It was an illegal hit to the head, and it stunned him into silence so solid that he would have sworn all his automatic bodily functions—his heartbeat, the ability to breathe, the little zaps of information from his brain that told his body how to work—stopped doing what they were supposed to and said, To hell with it.

“Fuck no,” he and Christensen said at the same time.

“Oh look, you two are agreeing with each other already.” Lucy clapped in sarcastic glee. “I’m overwhelmed by the power of this moment.”

Everyone in the SUV fell silent after that. Ian’s gaze met Christensen’s in the rearview mirror and held for a moment before the other man looked away. Yeah, this was not going to work. Ever.

“How much coverage are you wanting?” Shelby asked, her quiet voice sounding resigned.

“Three to five posts a day,” Lucy said. “This is going to be the bromance that takes the hockey world by storm, and we will control every moment of it.”

Christensen scoffed. “People are going to see right through it.”

“Then you two had better make it realer than real,” Lucy responded.

“Oh, come on,” Ian said, unable to stop the bitter words from coming out. “You’ve been faking it for years; you should be a pro at it, Christensen.”

The other man’s grip on the steering wheel went white-knuckled. “I wasn’t lying about a damn thing, Petrov.”

Yeah, like he would ever believe that. “Whatever lies you have to tell yourself so you can sleep at night.”

“Boys,” Lucy cut in. “Stop glaring at me, Ian. I’m impervious, and it’s just going to give you a headache. Don’t smirk, Alex. You get in a wreck because of your speeding, and my husband will be the first firefighter here with the jaws of life to get you out just so he can beat you to a pulp. Understood?”

The SUV slowed perceptibly.

Ian couldn’t blame Christensen for that. Lucy’s husband, Frankie Hartigan, was the size of a small redwood tree with hands as big as baseball gloves. Hockey players never backed away from brawling, but taking on Hartigan wouldn’t be a fight, it would be suicide—especially when it came to even maybe sorta having hurt Lucy. The man did not fuck around when it came to the woman he loved.

“All right, now that we’re on the same page, I look forward to reading all the wonderful coverage on The Biscuit,” Lucy said, her tone leaving no doubt that she didn’t give a single solitary fuck if they agreed with her or not. This wasn’t a her-way-or-the-highway. There was only Lucy’s way. “Until then, I’m going to nap. The baby woke us up five times last night. If that kid ever learns to sleep through the night, I will never complain about anything ever again. Now, don’t kill each other while I sleep. This shirt is one of the few I have without baby spit-up stains on it, and I don’t want any blood splatter to ruin it.”

There were rumors that Lucy had a softer side—and he’d even seen it at her wedding when she was around her friends and family—but outside of that one time, he’d never witnessed it again. She was always in his top five scariest people he’d ever met in real life, and he played on the same line as Zach Blackburn, formerly the most hated man in Harbor City. Translation, Lucy was a take-no-shit badass.

Kind of like the other woman in the SUV.

He glanced over at Shelby. Her eyes were closed and her breathing steady, as if she’d followed Lucy’s lead and had fallen asleep immediately, but he wasn’t buying it. There was tension around those soft, way-too-kissable lips of hers that gave her away.

Fine. He could take a hint delivered with a two-by-four.

Out of habit, he opened his mouth to start shooting the shit with Christensen; then he realized what he was doing and closed it with enough force to make his teeth hurt. The two of them had spent every road trip debating which was the best Star Wars movie, busting chops about whomever the other was dating, and basically yammering about whatever popped into their heads nonstop until the plane landed or the bus arrived at the hotel. All of that was gone.

Good riddance.

Oh, he’d play nice with Shelby, who wanted to pretend that what had happened at the cabin hadn’t actually happened. He’d fake being able to tolerate Christensen, who’d spent years lying about who he really was straight to Ian’s face. However, that’s all it would be. None of it would mean a damn thing.

He was better off without either of them.