Fuck me. Forget pretending to be asleep—I’m going to pretend to be dead.
Wouldn’t that be nice if she could. Instead, she had to be a grown-up about things.
“Hey, Ian. Alex is—” The word “here” devolved into a muffled “oof” as she turned and managed to smack her face into the wall of muscle that was Ian Petrov’s chest. A delicious shiver worked its way through her—the kind that was a taste of out-of-control wildness she couldn’t afford but damn her, she wanted to give in to it anyway.
“Yeah,” he said, taking a step back and breaking contact after he’d moved so silently to right behind her. “I see.”
All right, she did not miss his touch—inadvertent or not—at all. Not a single bit.
Liar.
Annoyed at her own reaction, Shelby crossed her arms and matched him glare for glare. “Try not to make this completely awful. The guy did us a huge favor.”
“Thanks for the lesson in manners.” He kept his attention focused on the SUV outside. “I’ll be sure to let my mom know what a shitty job she did with that.”
She gasped and her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. That’s not what she meant. Why did he always have to take everything as an attack? “There’s no reason to go all total asshole with me.”
“Well, we’re heading back to reality, right?” He leveled a heated look at her. “Everything in the cabin was just the exception that proves the rule.”
What should have been relief hurt too much to call it that. “Ian.”
He shook his head. “Let’s keep it to Petrov. Better yet, let’s just keep it silent.”
“You are a giant prick.”
“You would know.”
He smirked down at her, equal parts infuriating and addictive. Her temper, the one she kept on firm lockdown, flared to light. However, she was saved from committing murder in the lobby of the Buffly County Sheriff’s Office by the massive guy with short, dirty-blond hair getting out on the SUV’s driver’s side and the one and only Lucy Kavanagh getting out from the passenger’s side. She’d never been so glad to see someone so much in her life. Rushing out of the doors, she made an open-armed beeline toward Lucy.
Wrapping her arms around the Ice Knights PR head, and technically her boss despite the firewall between marketing and the media hub, Shelby gave a grateful hug. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“I’ve been freaking out since your message,” Lucy said, returning the hug with a reassuring firmness. “I’m so sorry. The Airbnb said the cabin was a duplex, not just one building. I would never have done that to you had I known.”
Shelby let loose a wry chuckle. “Well, if either of us had actually ended up at the right cabin, things may have been different.”
“Right cabin?” Lucy’s eyes rounded and she took a long gulp of her Mountain Dew. “What are you talking about?”
After she gave Lucy the short version—the one minus all the sexy naked parts—Lucy gave her another bone-cracking hug as Shelby looked over her shoulder at the two men ignoring each other with all the ferocity of two hockey players in the face-off circle in a triple-overtime game with the Stanley Cup on the line.
“Oh, wow. I’m surprised you’re both still alive,” Lucy said as she opened the SUV’s back passenger-side door. “I’ll sit in the back.”
“I’ll take the back and you can sit next to”—Ian cut his focus over to Alex—“him.”
The other man let out a derisive huff of breath but didn’t say anything.
Shelby shook her head. The two men may share only half their DNA, but it was obviously the stubborn and angry half.
“That works for me,” Lucy said. “I have a lot to tell all three of you. I have a plan to fix all of” —she waved her hands around in the general direction of the others—“this.”
Oh, great. Shelby’s stomach sank. Whatever had happened while she and Ian were out of communication with the rest of the world, it must have been something.
“Nothing needs fixing,” Ian said, each word coming out in a grumpy rumble. “I apologized to Shelby for mistakenly assuming that she leaked it all on purpose.”
Lucy clapped her hands together and grinned at him like a proud mama. “You know what that is, Ian? Personal growth. Excellent. However, our troubles—the team’s troubles—don’t end there, do they? Lucky for you, I have a solution.”
While Shelby was retreating into silence as guilt and dread swirled around inside her like a tornado of terribleness, the brothers didn’t suffer the same problem. Both were grousing immediately.
“I’m not going into therapy,” Alex said as he yanked open the driver’s side door.
Ian narrowed his gaze in another of his signature glares. “Why do I think I’m not going to like whatever you’re about to say.”
“Because you’re not completely brain dead,” Alex said without ever looking over at his half brother. “Shocker.”
“No one asked you, asshole.” Ian tensed and puffed out his chest like a rooster about to go into full-tilt attack mode. “Shut your pie hole.”
“Boys,” Lucy said as she looked at Shelby and rolled her eyes in one of those woman-to-woman moments that needs no words. “You’re probably both going to hate it, but if you want to keep your place on the team, you’re going to do it. The word came down all the way from the owner’s suite. This PR play is nonnegotiable, and it involves all three of you.”
“Why me?” Shelby asked, shocked out of silence with her already squeaky voice going up to nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying even to her own ears.
“Because.” Lucy bared her teeth in a smile that was anything but friendly. “The Biscuit as part of the Ice Knights media hub is the perfect
