Page 8 of The Triple Play

“Don’t look at me like that,” Elliot said hushedly to Annie as I scrawled out my signature on one of the napkins. “He’s one of the oldest players in the NHL. He’s a living legend.”

I snorted, half annoyed at his jab and half out of patience for pretending I couldn’t hear him. “A living legend? I wouldn’t go that far.”

Elliot paled as I handed him the signed napkin, a quiet ‘thank you’ spilling from his mouth. He slipped out a folder from Annie’s bag, bending down and fully distracted, and I used my opportunity to do what was likely the stupidest thing I’d done in a while.

I signed another napkin for Annie.

And I wrote down my phone number on it.

I passed it to her with her pen, watching as she confusedly took it, reading it back with narrowed eyes. A blush spread across her cheeks almost instantly, and when she looked back up at me, I could see a hint of heat in her gaze. “Why…?”

“I’ll see you around,” I chuckled, taking a couple of steps backward toward the bar before spinning on my heel.

I may have done this purely to get the boys to shut the hell up, but god, it felt nice to have someone her age looking at me like that — someone who wasn’t throwing themselves at me in a jersey with nothing on their brain except fucking a hockey player.

And it didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous, too.

Chapter5

Annie

“An, why didn’t you tell me so many of them would be here?”

I shot Elliot a glare as I grabbed my bag from the ground, depositing it on a nearby sticky table to do up all of the straps.

I’d already stuffed the napkin deep into my pocket, but it felt like it was burning a hole there, a dirty little secret that I needed to keep hidden.

That and my fantasy.

“Because I thought that was obvious,” I huffed, forcefully shutting one of the zippers. “I’ve told you before that a lot of the guys stop by after the games. It’s like, the number one spot to pick up puck bunnies.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t mention thattonight.” Elliot hovered next to me, his eyes focusing in on Cole across the bar, the two guys on either side of him. “That’s Xavi Moreau and Colton Miller. Oh my god, I want to pick their brains.”

Jesus. All three of them.

I buckled the last strap and threw the bag over my shoulder without an inkling of his help. “El, stop. I work here. You’re going to embarrass me if you keep ogling over them.”

But he didn't hear me. Ofcoursehe didn't. “Can you get me their autographs?” he asked, not even bothering to look at me as his gaze darts around the bar, looking for even more players, but only coming up with a few from tonight’s opposing team.

“No.”

Thatgot his attention.

His head whipped to me in an instant, his brows furrowing beneath his glasses, little lines appearing on his forehead.

“What? Why?” he snapped, his gaze turning more into a glare. “Annie, youknowI’m writing a book on the NHL. I’m not just doing this because I’m some desperate fan.”Debatable.“Please, babe. Just go ask. It can’t hurt to ask.”

I almost recoiled from his insistence. “Thenyoudo it.”

His mouth opened as if he had a retort, but he closed it a second later, his jaw working. “You’ve served them before. It’ll be less weird if you do it.”

I looked across to where he’d been staring at Cole, taking in the two guys on either side of him. All of them were taller than Elliot, and the other two, Xavi and Colton, stood taller than Cole. Cole looked older than the two of them, somewhere in his mid to late thirties from what Elliot had said. His hair was cut fairly short, the salt-and-pepper strands contrasting his somewhat tanned skin. I’d clocked his gentle brown eyes almost immediately when he’d approached me, his harder, stocky exterior almost softened by them alone.

But the other two… they were younger, probably closer to my age at twenty-five. I remembered the three of them from the last time they’d come in when I was working — the one with the ponytail had tried to hit on me, and the other had stared at me drunkenly for so long that I’d almost laughed at him.

Christ, I didn’t want to have to approach them.

How could I?

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