Chapter Twelve
Shelby was going to hyperventilate and pass out alone, all because of one stupid headline and an out-of-context pic. She wasn’t even out of her softest cotton nightgown and hadn’t started the hotel room coffee maker, but she was 100 percent fully awake at the ungodly hour of six a.m. thanks to her social media notifications going on a buzzing spree. Ignoring the sound would have been the best plan. Then again, so would sticking to her original plan of not lusting after one Ian Petrov. That hadn’t worked out, either.
So in a move that would surprise absolutely no one, she’d looked.
Underneath the headline on the sleaziest hockey gossip site on the entire internet was a photo of Ian, Alex, and her in Chicago last night. She had no idea what they’d been talking about when the picture had been taken, but at first glance it definitely looked like there was more to last night’s dinner than just deep dish. It was cropped so the viewer couldn’t see the other table with the rest of the team sitting at it. Also, the angle was shooting downward so it looked like the V-neck of her shirt went deeper than it did. And whatever filter or magic the photographer had used to make it look like Ian was gazing adoringly at her as Alex refilled her water glass without a doubt made it seem as if they were at an intimate dinner for three.
Just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, she made the mistake of reading the article. There was every single double entendre connected to hockey possible, a deep dive into the rumors of a rivalry between Ian and Alex since it became public knowledge that they shared a dad, and for the cherry on the puke-flavored ice-cream sundae, there was a quote from someone who’d been at rehab with her noting that she’d turned to hockey when she gave up the bottle.
Making the supremely smart move to back away from the internet before she scrolled down and read the comments, Shelby turned her phone over and laid it on the hotel pillow. It sat there like a speck of blue in the sea of cream that was the hotel’s expansive, downy comforter, calling out to her like a siren. Even knowing that finding out what was in the comments would be akin to smashing her head against the rocks, the temptation had her twitchy.
How bad could it be?
People were generally skeptical of salacious gossip, right?
What if the commenters would give her the benefit of the doubt as opposed to calling her a slut like some kind of misogynistic reflexive action?
What would it hurt to take one quick look to gauge the reaction?
She picked up the phone, but the unexpected sound of someone banging on her door when it was still o’dark hundred shocked a yelp right out of her and she dropped her cell back down on the pillow.
“Shelby,” Ian said through the door, sounding barely awake himself. “Let me in.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and went bunny-hears-a-noise still. No doubt he was here to yell at her, probably assuming that she’d tipped off the tabloid photographer just like he’d figured she’d leaked the story about Alex being his brother. Maybe he hadn’t heard her squeal. She hadn’t been that loud.
“I know you’re in there—I heard you.”
The breath she’d been holding whooshed out of her on a well-fuck-me groan and she went and opened the door, regretting it immediately. Ian stood in the hallway wearing joggers, an Ice Knights hoodie, and a surly expression.
“It wasn’t me,” she said and started to shut the door before her pheromones got a whiff of him.
He stopped the door with his hand. “You saw it?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was hoping to warn you before you saw it. Tell me you didn’t read the comments. I swear to God, I’d like five minutes alone with some of those jackholes. It’s bad enough that there was that lying article without having some dim-witted numbnuts call you a—” He stopped abruptly and grimaced. “Never mind. They’re assholes.”
Great. So not reading the comments had been her best decision ever. It had to be bad if Ian was all grumbly bear about it when he had barely spoken to her after one of her worst decisions ever to kiss him after that big goal.
“No comments. Got it.” She looked pointedly at his hand on the door, already planning to sprint for her phone as soon as the door clicked shut because she was a total glutton for punishment. “Thanks.”
He didn’t let go of the door. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, looking everywhere but at her as the tips of his ears got redder with each second. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was embarrassed for coming to warn her. But that couldn’t be right.
She pressed her palm against her stomach that was suddenly all sorts of jittery. “Do you want coffee?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
Ian followed her inside, and all of a sudden her normal-size hotel room felt extra small. They were three tiny steps from the bed. Two normal steps to the couch. Four steps to the shower where they could get naked and—
“You gotta promise you won’t read the comments,” Ian said, interrupting her thoughts that had no business going the direction they were.
Doing her best to keep her hands steady, she put a pod in the coffee maker, poured in water, and hit start. “Are they that bad?”
His silence served as confirmation.
How completely awesome. This was just the way she wanted to start a new job. First, she accidentally spills a parentage secret, firebombing a friendship and sending the team into a losing spin cycle, and now she was the team skank. Did it get any better than this? God, she hoped so.
Straightening her shoulders, she lifted her chin and looked at a spot over Ian’s left shoulder, determined to lie her ass off.
“Okay, well, as long as it wasn’t anyone I care about saying it, I guess I’ll live.” She added a sassy chuckle as if absolutely none of this bothered her in the least. “I’ll save reading the comments for when I have peanut butter cake nearby.”
“Make jokes all you want, but thanks to my dad and my choice of careers, the media has made sure I know about other people’s negative opinions of me for as long as I can remember,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes, everything about him focused on her. “You don’t want to let these people inside your head—it can be hard to get them out.”
The way he said it without even a hint of sarcasm or teasing but with absolutely sincere concern hit her right in the chest and sent her pulse into the stratosphere. “Ian Petrov, are you looking out for me?”
He took a step closer so that they were nearly touching. “Yeah.”
“Why?” The question was out before she thought about the fact that she may not want to hear the answer.
Really, who wanted to hear because I pity you or we’re part of the same team or because we’re dinner buddies? Not her—not when it came to someone she was having inappropriate thoughts about on a way-too-regular basis.
He gave her a look. It was the kind where his eyes went dark and intense and every fluttery part of her body—which she would have sworn hadn’t existed—rose up in response. Maintaining eye contact was unimaginable. Glancing away was an impossibility.
“Because,” he said, dipping his head lower, “I like you.”
She laughed, that stupid high-pitched squeak of a giggle that always seemed to come out at the wrong time—like when the last guy she should be kissing looked at her like that. Luckily—or unluckily, she wasn’t sure—he didn’t pull back.
Instead, he cupped her face with his hands and kissed her, sending a sizzle of desire through her entire body. It wasn’t hard. He teased her with his tongue, drawing her out until she couldn’t help but kiss him back, closing the distance between their bodies and demanding more. All the reasons why this was a bad idea melted away under the heat of his touch. And just when she was ready to climb him like a tree because not being as close to him as possible wasn’t an option, he broke the kiss and stepped back.
For as dazed and sexually frustrated as she felt at that moment, it was nothing compared to the want in his eyes. Fucking A. Whatever happened next was going to go down in the history book of oh-my-God-yes, right next to standardizing bread being sold in sliced loaves and whoever thought of double espresso lattes.
But then, Ian just brushed his lips across her forehead and left without even one of his signature grunts. Meanwhile, she stood there, dumbstruck with her fingers pressed to her kiss-swollen lips, trying to untangled what in the world had just happened and what would happen next.
…
Attempting a breakaway while pulling a Zamboni would have been less difficult than leaving Shelby’s hotel room. But he’d done it. Kissing her hadn’t been part of his plan when he’d gone to her room.
Yeah, like you even had a plan, buddy.
All he’d known was that he didn’t want her to have all those shitty comments in her head. The need to spare her that had gotten him out of his room before he’d even considered what he was doing. And then he’d kissed her, because not doing so was pretty much impossible and he didn’t have a single fucking regret about it.
Not until he noticed that Christensen was standing in his open hotel room door, watching Ian as if he were the best reality TV show there was. He really should have checked the hallway first before walking out of Shelby’s room. God knew what Christensen must be thinking.
Pretty much the same as you would be, boy-o.
Ian glared at the other man. “Why do you look so damn happy?”
“Because I was starting to lose patience waiting for you to make your move,” Christensen said without any hint of embarrassment about getting caught gawking.
“What are you talking about?” He regretted the question as soon as it was out of his mouth.
This was what came from that practice session yesterday. Now the door had been cracked open between them, and keeping Christensen out would be that much harder. The guy knew him too well. That’s why he’d had to shut everything down between them with brutal efficiency. The Ice Knights forward had the skill on and off the ice to find an opening.
“You walking out of Shelby’s room with what looks like a smile on your face,” Christensen said. “I mean, I can’t be sure, since it’s been so long since you’ve done anything but glower.”
“Fuck off.” Ian crossed over to his door.
“What, you’re not interested in her?”
As if he was going to tell Christensen that. Instead, he just grunted and used his key card to unlock his door.
His former best friend made an exaggerated huh sound. “I’ll take that as me being cleared to move in.”
Ian knew what this was. It wasn’t the first time Christensen had busted his chops like this—or he’d done it to him. Used to be it was their preferred pregame warm-up. Talk shit, let out the nerves, and get ready to go kick ass. If he thought he could use the same tactics to make him jealous, he had another think coming because he knew Shelby like Christensen never would.
“You really think she’d go for a never-shuts-up pretty boy like you?” he asked.
“Why not?” Christensen smirked. “Women find me irresistible.”
Oh yeah. This guy was very much not Shelby’s type. Who was her type? Ian was. “Okay, go for it. Knock on her door and try your best.”
“I will.”
“Go ahead.”
Christensen looked at her closed door, the first twinge of oh-fuck-what-did-I-get-myself-into giving his face a pinched look. “Now?”
Ian crossed his arms and waited. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
Finally, the other man walked over to Shelby’s door and gave it three quick taps.
Shelby opened it. “Hey, Alex. What’s up?”
Christensen leaned against the doorjamb and gave her a grin that graced the billboard ads he got the big money for. “Just came by to say hi.”
“Um, okay.” She looked over at Ian, her eyebrows raised in question, and then back at Christensen. “Hi.”
“So,” Christensen said, “did you want to go grab coffee?”
“I’ve got some already brewed,” she said. “But you’re sweet to have thought of me.”
He winked at her. “Anytime.”
“Okay, then.” She started to shut the door, first making eye contact with Ian as if to ask what was going on. “Bye.”
As soon as the door shut, Ian did the slow clap. Okay, maybe he was the cocky asshole, but he had to go with his instinct. The Shelby who’d nearly laid him out with a Taser wasn’t the type of woman to melt at Alex Christensen’s insincere flirting.
Mind obviously blown, Christensen turned to him, his face scrunched up with confusion. “What the hell, man?”
Was he enjoying this moment a little too much? Probably, but he could live with that. “You don’t understand a woman like Shelby.”
Christensen scoffed. “And I suppose you do.”
“Without a doubt.” Now that was definitely a step too far, but he understood her a helluva lot better than his brother.
She had no time for bullshit. It was something they had in common.
The elevator dinged its arrival at the end of the hall, and Coach Peppers walked out, carrying a steaming cup of coffee in a to-go cup. “There you are, Petrov.” He took a sip and twisted his mouth in revulsion. No doubt because there was actually coffee in the cup as opposed to the 99 percent milk and sugar the coach was used to. “Doc’s given you the all clear. You’re playing tonight. I expect to be amazed by you two. Morning skate in an hour.”
On. The. Ice. He was finally getting back. Jacked up on an instant shot of adrenaline, he turned to Christensen and held up his hand. His brother high-fived him before Ian even realized what he’d done. It’s exactly what he would have done in the same situation before he’d found out they were brothers.
Christensen grinned at him. “Try to keep up tonight.”
“Not gonna be a problem,” he shot back and then went into his room to get ready for the morning skate.
Doing lazy loop-de-loops on the ice was one thing. Being in the mix of a morning skate was totally different. It was fucking magic. It always had been. Even when his dad had warned him that professional hockey wasn’t for everyone when Ian got drafted late, he hadn’t lost his love for it. The crisp air. The slice of his blades on the ice. The sound of the puck smacking on his stick. The high of watching the opposing goalie do a pretzel-bend trick and still not be able to stop the biscuit from crossing the line.
Three hours later, still riding that wave after a killer slap shot, he skated off the ice at the end of practice right toward the spot in the stands where Shelby sat typing away on her laptop. No doubt she was about to upload another update about the Ice Knights and the Petrov and Christensen show to The Biscuit’s blog.
“Hey, Petrov,” Alex called out from his spot by the bench. “Coach says to go see him before showers.”
Fuck. Really?
Without missing a stroke, he pivoted away from Shelby and toward the tunnel. But when he looked back over his shoulder, she was watching him skate away, her fingers pressed to her lips again, a slight blush making her cheeks pink, as if the rink had suddenly gotten twenty degrees warmer. Looking at her, he felt that heat wave himself.
“I’m sure it’s just to go over the plan for tonight, since you’ve been out for so long,” Christensen said, falling into step with him as they both got off the ice and walked on the rubber mats leading from the rink to the visitors’ locker room.
“Pregame milks in the locker room?” Ian asked, pausing for a second before he had to turn right outside of the locker room to go to Coach’s makeshift office.
Christensen’s eyes widened with surprise. They hadn’t chugged pregame milks in the locker room since the news that they shared a dad broke.
“I’ll bring them,” Christensen said, looking off past Ian as if there was something super interesting about the plain beige walls of the hallway.
Yeah. He got that. What did they have to say anyway? What was done was done.
Ramming his fingers through his sweaty hair, he turned and started toward Coach’s office. A brother. How many times growing up had he wished for one? Too many to count. His sisters were great but a brother, that was just different. Now he had one. Maybe that wasn’t the worst thing after all.
…
“What do you mean you’ve never been ice-skating?” Ian was trying to wrap his brain around that as he, Christensen, and Shelby had their usual team dinner at what everyone on the team was calling “the kiddie table.”
It made no sense. To a man, every guy on the team had probably been in skates almost as soon as they could walk. Professional hockey players started young, and they never stopped if they wanted to make it to the NHL. Shelby—someone who lived and breathed hockey almost as much as he did—smoothed her fingers across the close-cropped side of her hair and shrugged.
She fidgeted with her napkin. “You say that as if everyone has been ice-skating. I really don’t see what the big deal is.”
Didn’t.
See.
What.
The.
Big.
Deal.
Was?
The feel of fresh, smooth ice in a rink was all speed and adrenaline. A frozen pond? That was agility and quick reaction to the dips and divots in the top layer. Either way, skating was about as close to total freedom as he’d ever gotten, and that’s what made the game so great. It wasn’t just speed and skill, it was being strategic and knowing just when to lay a good hip check to take all that freedom away from an opposing player—and the puck, too.
Eyes practically popping out of his head, he glanced over at Christensen, who had the same big-eyed, what-the-fuck expression that Ian was sure he had on his own face. His brother looked over at him, and it was as if the past few months had never happened. In an instant, they had that old line of silent communication back again.
Raised eyebrow: She has no clue what she’s missing.
Double raised eyebrows: What do you think, go grab some unofficial ice time?
Quick look around followed by a conspiratorial smile: Really, it’s the right thing to do.
Clink of his glass to Christensen’s: You should do this.
They both got up while Shelby looked from one of them to the other. “What’s going on?”
“I’m taking you ice-skating,” he said as he got up. “It’ll be fun. I’ll hold on to you and everything so you don’t have to worry about falling.”
As she stood up, a nervous giggle squeaked out and she slapped her palm over her mouth as if to hold in any more high-pitched noises. Her cheeks turned pink and she immediately looked over at the big table of Ice Knights players. It wasn’t the first time she’d reacted like that whenever her volume went above the minimum. For someone who looked like such a badass, she seemed to just want to only be heard at the keyboard when she was writing for The Biscuit.
He couldn’t explain the urge that had him reaching out to bring her hand down; he just went with it. “You have a great laugh.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but it seemed to do the trick and the tension in her shoulders seeped out.
He and Shelby said their goodbyes to the rest of the team and walked out of the restaurant right into the blinding flash of the lone photographer lying in wait outside the door.
“So what’s the story?” asked a guy with drips from today’s lunch mixed in with the bright flowers of his Hawaiian shirt. “A little brotherly sharing?”
Ian had Shelby behind him and was in the other man’s face in an instant. “Fuck you.”
“Go ahead, big boy.” The photographer took a few steps back as he lifted his camera and grabbed a few quick shots. “I’ll get the whole thing in pics and sue you for all you’ve got.”
“You’re an asshole,” Ian snarled, an angry fire eating its way up from his gut.
“That may be,” the other man said as he walked away. “But at least I don’t have to fight for the scraps left by my dad and brother.”
And that’s when all of Ian’s locks clicked into place, one after the other, dead bolts turning closed so that the anger was shut away behind layers of steel and titanium. His breaths became longer, slower, his gaze cleared as all the red fury dissipated, and everything inside him went icy cold. It was exactly what had happened when he’d heard that he and Christensen shared half their DNA, exactly what had happened the first time in college when a national sports reporter said he was a cheap copy of the old man, and exactly what happened every time his dad stood on the other side of the wall at the rink and watched Ian’s practices with barely concealed disappointment.
Shelby stepped closer, slipping her fingers between his and squeezing. “We can just head back to the hotel.”
“No, that asshole isn’t going to stop us.” He’d learned that early. People would talk, they’d try to cut him open and take a peek inside, but he’d never really let them see. He refused to open up in front of them. It’s how he stayed safe. He wasn’t about to forget that lesson and let the gawkers win now. “Come on—it’ll be fun.”
…
Shelby and Ian obviously had different definitions of fun. His was balancing on teeny-tiny blades without letting his ankles wobble while going backward. Hers was eating store-bought raw cookie dough from a bucket.
“You’ve got this,” Ian said, his hands holding hers in a strong, steady grip as he guided her around the practice facility’s ice. “Just keep it steady.”
That was easy for him to say—he didn’t feel like a newborn calf out here all jelly legs and lurching from foot to foot.
“You’re doing great,” Ian said, clearly in his element. He hadn’t teetered once.
Keeping her eyes on her borrowed skates—who knew the team trainer and she had the same size feet?—she did a shuffle sorta glide thing to move forward. “You’re a horrible liar.”
“I don’t do it often.”
“I know. That’s what I like about you.”
They took one more half turn around the ice before he led her back over to the wall so she could clutch the top of the divider between the rink and the bench. Meanwhile, he went over it like he was hopping a fence. Show-off.
Yeah, one you can’t take your eyes off now that you aren’t afraid of face-planting.
She could look. It was touching that was the problem. She was totally in control about that. Nothing to worry about. Nope. Which was why she was ignoring the “danger, danger” siren blaring in her head and her breath caught when he lifted his arms to stretch and the hem of his shirt went up, showing off the bottom half of a six pack she desperately wanted to lick.
That is very much not a good idea, Shelby, no matter how tempting.
And it was so very, very tempting.
“So your parents never took you to a rink?” Ian asked as he unscrewed the thermos he’d brought from the visitors’ locker room along with the skates.
“My mom was usually working a couple of jobs and hunting for her next husband in her off time.” The drama, the excitement, the loosey-goosey thrill of first falling for someone, that’s the part that had always been addictive for her mom. “There has never been a person who loved love like my mom. It was her hobby.”
“Not yours?” He handed her the thermos.
The smell of hot chocolate wafted up from the opening, and she took a small sip before answering. “No, I went in for peach schnapps and then cheap gin.”
“Started early?”
Did freshman year of high school count as early? Probably. “Quit early, too.”
“What happened?”
Usually people danced around the subject. Not Ian. He went at it head-on, just like a face-off in the circle. It might annoy some people, but she appreciated the honesty of it. Somehow it made whatever was sizzling between them feel more solid, possible. That way was dangerous thinking, but she couldn’t seem to help it around him.
“I went to rehab after hitting rock bottom.” More like landing with a hard splat against it. “I’d lied to myself about not having a problem. I woke up one morning in the drunk tank, no money, no apartment anymore, and no friends who weren’t sick of my self-destructive behavior. I went back home. I thought that would fix everything.” Naive? Hopeful? Delusional? Probably a mix of all three. “Can you believe it didn’t? It went badly. My mom got a counselor and staged an intervention. It sure wasn’t pretty, but we got through it. I went to rehab. Then I went again a few months later—relapses are no joke. And now here I am, six years later flirting with disaster again.”
“My name’s Ian, not disaster.”
Oh God. The man was bad at jokes. Still, she was chuckling even as she attempted to glide back from the wall while maintaining her balance. “I’m talking about this job. It changed everything for me, gave The Biscuit some legitimacy. Do you know how hard that can be for a woman-led hockey blog?”
She wobbled left and then right and threw her arms outward to grab hold of the wall, but she missed it. Instead she clamped on to a strong forearm right as she tipped backward. The motion pulled him forward and he let out a loud “oof” as he hit the half wall in front of the bench. Fast as a heartbeat, he grabbed her flailing free hand and pulled her to the wall so she could grasp it and get her balance back.
“Oh my God.” Heart beating so fast her pulse sounded like a tsunami in her ears, she looked up at him as he grimaced. “Did I break you?”
One side of his mouth shot up in a smirk. “You should definitely check me out.”
“Why? What hurts, I—” Realization hit. He was fucking with her. “I don’t get it. You’re grunting one minute and joking the next.”
He shrugged and came back out on the ice with her. “Like you said, I’m an onion.”
“Okay, Shrek.”
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to take his hand—for balance support, of course—as they slow skated around the rink.
“You don’t think I’m a man of great depth?”
He did a spin move so he was again going backward and they were face-to-face, holding hands, alone together in the practice facility. Her mom would call it romantic. She knew better. This was trouble in man form.
“What happened back there with the photographer?”
He pulled his arms in, tugging her closer but still leaving space so their skates didn’t tangle. “He was a jackass.”
She wasn’t in disagreement there. “Yeah, but I’m talking about when you went into robot mode. You just shut down completely.”
“So what? You as a member of the media are trying to get me to spill my trade secrets for surviving the media?”
“Is that how you think of me?” Ow. That landed with a big thump right against her solar plexus. “That I’m like the paparazzi guy?”
“Of course not.” Ian did a half turn so they were hip to hip, holding hands as they skated.
She glanced over at him, having instant lusty ideas about the feel of his beard scruff against her skin before yanking herself back to reality. “Then ’fess up.”
“For as long as I can remember, there has been media.” His jaw hardened and he looked up into the stands as if he expected a reporter or photographer to be up there now documenting his every move. “First it was all about my dad; then they started to actually look at me. They weren’t really doing that, though.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice one, more of a defense mechanism than a sign of happiness. “They were looking to see how I measured up against the old man. The judgment was always the same: a poor man’s David Petrov.”
Those fuckers. She wanted to find them now and she’d…well, she didn’t know what but something. “That’s not fair. You’re—”
“A journeyman player,” he interrupted. “I get that. I’ve made peace with it. I love the game, but I’m not going to be a Hall of Famer like my dad or a career that lasts decades like Christensen—the real recipient of the Petrov hockey talent.”
He said it as if it didn’t matter, but she wasn’t fooled. No one got to this level of play unless they wanted to be the best. Ian may not be good at lying to her, but he seemed to excel at lying to himself.
“I’ve got another year or two, and then I’ll go into coaching. I’m actually looking forward to it.” This time his grin was genuine, but it faded quickly. “Of course, that’s not the story the media will report. For them it will be all about my failures.”
“Change the narrative.” The ideas popped into her head one after the other. “You could—”
He lifted their hands, brushing his lips across her knuckles in a move that sent a sizzle of desire zinging through her.
“It’s not worth it.” He lowered their hands again. “There is nothing in the world worth opening myself up to everyone’s judgment and splashing myself all over the hockey sites.”
“Is that why you grunt so much?” she asked, lightening the mood with a teasing question.
“Maybe it’s because I don’t know what to say around you.”
She snorted in disbelief. “Like the girl with the voice of a ten-year-old is in the least bit intimidating.”
“I’m not intimidated,” he said, bringing them to a stop right at center ice and turning all of his attention to her. “I’m fascinated.”
Oh my.
Oh.
My.
His gaze dropped to her mouth as tactile as a touch that set her on fire and all she wanted was to get licked by the flames.
“We’d better get back to the hotel before curfew,” she said, fumbling to hold on to her better judgment. “Can’t break the rules.”
“Not that one anyway.”
Not any of them, because when it came to Ian Petrov, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to go back again to pretending there was nothing between them.