Page 50 of Doc Defence

“Thanks. I don’t need to ring your mum. I’ve already Googled—“ Hel bit off her sentence.

Frost pounced on her words. “Have you Googled me?”

Hel flushed, the colour rising up her cheeks. “No,” she denied.

“You have!” Frost began to bounce gleefully in his seat but stopped when his stomach flipped from the hangover and his leg burned from the break. He was a mess.

“Maybe,” Hel conceded.

“Maybe means yes. What did you see?” He was genuinely interested to find out what she knew.

“You’re from Vancouver,” she said and stopped.

“That’s it?” He pushed.

“Yeah.” The flush that increased in colour suggested she was lying.

He waited, but she didn’t say any more, and he finally said, “You went on my Wikipedia page?”

“No,” she answered too quickly and blushed more.

“Uh-huh.” Frost’s lips twitched up about the fact she wanted to find out more about him.

“Okay. I glanced at your Wikipedia page.”

“Is that all you looked at?” he pushed. He really hoped she hadn’t seen about Frosty’s Females. He found that all very embarrassing.

Staring at her, he saw the redness increase on her cheeks as she answered.

“That’s all I read,” Hel mumbled.

“Uh-huh,” he said again but didn’t make any further comment about it, as he would like to avoid talking about his fan club if he could.

Instead, he chose to go back to trying to persuade her to stay with him. “You’ve barely Googled,” he hesitated, then added with a grin, “and not read much about me on Wikipedia. How about I tell you about myself and let you phone my mom. Then you’ll have no reason not to stay at my house?” Frost didn’t know why he was pushing so hard—okay, he was lying to himself. He did know. He wanted to get to know her better, and if she stayed with him, that would happen.

“I’m not phoning your mum,” Hel said adamantly.

“Fine, I’ll tell you about myself.” He waited for her to respond.

Finally, she rolled her eyes and grumbled, “Fine.”

“My name’s Jake Winston Forster.” His eyes swung to hers, even as Hel looked resolutely at the road in front. “Which you know, because you full named me in the ambulance.”

Hel opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, then muttered, “I didn’t think you would remember that.”

“I was drunk, but that had a very sobering effect on me. Anyway, my name is Jake Winston Forster. I was born and raised in Vancouver. I grew up with my mom and dad, who are both teachers. I have an older brother, Garret, who is an engineer and a younger sister, Jessica, who is a stay-at-home mom. They’re all back in Canada.

“I’m thirty-six years old, and I’ve been an ice hockey player for as long as I can remember. But I turned professional when I was twenty-two. I spent a year playing in the AHL before I got called to the NHL.”

Hel interrupted him. “What is the AHL?”

“You really know nothing about hockey!” Frost was delighted. It was refreshing to be talking to someone who didn’t have an ulterior motive because of who he was.

“Nothing at all,” she admitted with a shrug.

“It’s the American Hockey League. It’s like a feeder league to the NHL. Which I assume you’ve heard of?”

Hel nodded. “Yup. I’ve heard of that one.”

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