Page 15 of Just One Season
I wish I’d learned this lesson earlier and not dated Ron at all.
Kellen’s face from last week appears in my mind. Those dark strands of hair on his sweaty forehead when he pulled his helmet off, the light blue eyes. He might have made an impression on me, and I definitely made one on him. Not in a good way. Could it have been any worse? My escaped dog peed on the ice. Peed! In the rink! And that poor player scraping the stained ice off with askate. Lordy.
None of that matters though. I just need to do well in this role so I can impress Lina and get her to agree to be a reference.
I can’t have things like Taco or fantasies about one of my brother’s teammates distract me from that.
I shake my head and pause in the hallway, counting doors. The farthest door on the right—before the exit to the arena—is the player gym. It’s got a fierce abominable snowman painted on the entrance in Blizzard colors of purple and yellow. The second door from the end of the hallway is less fancy but also decorated with the Blizzard logo. Makes sense for the coach.
It’s a keycard access door but it’s propped slightly open with a rubber door stop.
“Hello?” I pull the door and step inside a small area leading to another door. Weird. My phone buzzes with a ten-minute reminder for the meeting.
Exude confidence. Project how much value you’re going to add to the team, not just be a pain-in-the-ass PR person. Don’t think about the Taco incident.
I knock, but there’s no answer.
So, I push through the door.
A split second before it opens, I wonder why his office has double doors. And why it doesn’t have a normal doorknob. This one is just one of those swing doors that pushes out into…
A locker room.
A locker room full of men.
A locker room full of men in various states of undress.
My body turns into a statue. Holy mother of god. I’m a tree. A giant, trembling, out of place tree in a landscape of not-trees. Do I blend in? No, I definitely do not.
I’m a purple tree. The carpet in the locker room is a deep purple and there’s a yellow Blizzard logo in the center. Maybe no one’s noticed me. Maybe I blend in. My eyes dart around the room in terror.
There’s a bare ass. A man ass. I can’t help the gasp that escapesmy throat. A bare, round, man ass that leads to long legs and feet that are stepping into a pair of boxer shorts. That man—I squint my eyes—is mostly naked.
One of the guys sitting on a cushioned bench in front of a wall of wide, neat cubbies looks up at me and raises his eyebrows.
“Are you lost?” His hair is wet, and he’s blessedly wearing a shirt and a pair of athletic shorts. He tosses a towel into a wheeled laundry bin. I try to keep my eyes on him, but there’s just so much skin on display in this room, and somewhere deep down inside me a voice screams to turn and run, don’t just stand there, remove yourself from this situation immediately.
But I cannot.
Because trees have roots and are not mobile. And maybe some blink like a malfunctioning neon sign so everyone will notice them.
Just like me at the moment.
“Hey,” that same man says. “You’re the woman with the dog that peed on the ice.”
“No,” I whisper in despair. I shake my head and another pair of shirtless dudes with abs for days turn in my direction, pausing their conversation.
“Oh my god.” Am I whimpering? Impossible to tell through my veil of horror and fear. I whip my head away from the shirtless men.
My body comes to life starting from the tips of my toes, and as I’m about to try to leave this place, around the corner walks a man who’s obviously fresh out of the shower with hair dark and wet and a towel wrapped so very low around his waist. My eyes rake up his body and land on his face. His eyes meet mine, and he stops in the doorway to the showers.
Oh no. Blue eyes I can see from across the room, the same dark hair that was peeking out from his helmet last week when he handed Taco—then Waffles/Zeus—to me at the edge of the ice rink.
Kellen Bassey.
“Lucy. Good to see you again.” Kellen leans an arm against the doorframe, posing like he’s in a damn cologne commercial on a yacht off the coast of Italy. His six pack—sparkling with droplets of water that must’ve evaded his towel—twitches.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more gorgeous specimen of man. The side of his mouth quirks up. That smile. I’m melting. Dying.
