Page 4 of Hard Hitter
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In the visitors’ locker room, he took the longest, hottest shower of his career. Adrenaline was an amazing chemical. It always kept the pain at bay until after the buzzer sounded. But the comedown was a bitch. He ached everywhere. The soreness radiated outward from his hip. It climbed down hisquadriceps and into his groin. It wrapped around to his lower back, gripping him like a vice.
Every athlete played through pain. It’s just that the trajectory worried him.
He was toweling off when Henry, the head trainer, stopped behind his bench. The man crossed his freckled arms and gave Patrick an appraising look.
“What? You checking me out? The female fans always say I have a nice ass.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “It’s top notch, which is why I want to see it out on the ice for the rest of the season. So I need you to cooperate with your training staff.”
Patrick fished a pair of clean underwear out of his bag. “I always cooperate in the gym.”
“I set up a massage appointment for you and you blew it off. Twice.”
“Stretching works just as well,” Patrick argued, pulling on his shirt. “Massage is too time-consuming.”
“You know what’s also time-consuming? An injury. By the third period you were skating like an old lady trying to protect her handbag. I’m setting up massage appointments for five out of the next seven days. And I’m checking up on your attendance.” Without waiting for a response, Henry marched off.
Five appointments?Hell.
Patrick finished getting dressed. The screen of his Katt Phone lit up with a picture of a bus, meaning that one was now outside. And he was going to be on it. A good night’s sleep would do wonders for his muscle strain.
But when the bus pulled up in front of their hotel, Leo Trevi didn’t let him escape upstairs like he wanted to. “Come on,” he said. “I want you to meet Adam Hartley. Can’t believe I played an NHL game against my college buddy. Unreal.”
Patrick knew he could beg off after one whiskey, so he let himself be led to a table in the corner of the bar where a couple of his teammates already sat. He eased himself intothe chair like an old man, hoping the painkillers he’d taken would kick in soon. “Evening, Georgia,” he said to the publicist, who was also Leo’s fiancée. “Thanks for leaving me out of the press conference.”
Georgia Worthington grinned at him. “Why, Doulie! If someone else said that, I’d think he was being facetious.”
“Fuck, no.” Everyone laughed. “Who skates off the ice, drenched, and says,I’d love it if someone shoved a camera in my face right now?”
“Nobody loves the camera itself,” Castro argued. “You love beingworthyof it.”
“Dude, you’dbreakthe camera,” somebody said. Castro wadded up his cocktail napkin and threw it down the table.
Their drinks arrived, and Patrick had just taken his first sip when a voice rang out. “Somebody order some cookies?” A smiling guy approached the table with a giant bakery box in his hands. O’Doul recognized him as the rookie whose shots he’d blocked all night.
“Hartley!” Leo jumped up and hug-tackled the guy. “What’s in the box?”
“Cookies.Duh. After I lose a hockey game to my buddy, I like to eat cookies.” He slapped Trevi on the back. “Buy me a beer, punk.”
Trevi introduced his college friend to everyone, starting with his fiancée.
“Damn,” Hartley said. “Trevi’s getting hitched? Who would have thunk it?” He gave Georgia a potent smile. “Can I just tell you how relieved we all are? He dated the most awful girls in college.”
She laughed, and Trevi groaned. “This again?”
When it was Patrick’s turn to shake hands, he reached across the table without standing up. If the guy thought he was rude, it wouldn’t be the first time someone did. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Trevi sat back down, one arm around Georgia, the other around his college friend. Hartley opened the box andpassed cookies around the table, and then the boys began to reminisce. They had several years of memories to chew through, apparently. Pranks and dormitory shenanigans. “And then you hid that thing under Orsen’s bed! Gawd. The stench...”
Patrick listened with half an ear. He didn’t have ye olde college tales, like these kids. And the idea of living in a dormitory gave him the willies. It sounded too much like the group homes where he’d grown up in Minnesota. Too many people. Too loud.
The minute he got his first paycheck from the minor leagues when he was nineteen, he’d started apartment hunting. He was still in the Midwest then, where housing was just cheap enough that he’d found something. It was a room over someone’s garage, but it had a private entrance and it was all his. He liked his silence. On the team, he had a reputation for being fair, and a sturdy team captain. But he wasn’t cuddly, that was for damn sure.
Across the table from him, Georgia sat up a little straighter and began to wave at someone across the room. A moment later, O’Doul caught a whiff of lavender. He didn’t even need to turn to know who’d come to stand beside him. Ari Bettini, the team’s massage therapist and yoga instructor, greeted Georgia. She did this by putting a hand on Patrick’s shoulder and leaning over to kiss Georgia’s cheek.
