“So what’s the story?” asked a guy with drips from today’s lunch mixed in with the bright flowers of his Hawaiian shirt. “A little brotherly sharing?”
Ian had Shelby behind him and was in the other man’s face in an instant. “Fuck you.”
“Go ahead, big boy.” The photographer took a few steps back as he lifted his camera and grabbed a few quick shots. “I’ll get the whole thing in pics and sue you for all you’ve got.”
“You’re an asshole,” Ian snarled, an angry fire eating its way up from his gut.
“That may be,” the other man said as he walked away. “But at least I don’t have to fight for the scraps left by my dad and brother.”
And that’s when all of Ian’s locks clicked into place, one after the other, dead bolts turning closed so that the anger was shut away behind layers of steel and titanium. His breaths became longer, slower, his gaze cleared as all the red fury dissipated, and everything inside him went icy cold. It was exactly what had happened when he’d heard that he and Christensen shared half their DNA, exactly what had happened the first time in college when a national sports reporter said he was a cheap copy of the old man, and exactly what happened every time his dad stood on the other side of the wall at the rink and watched Ian’s practices with barely concealed disappointment.
Shelby stepped closer, slipping her fingers between his and squeezing. “We can just head back to the hotel.”
“No, that asshole isn’t going to stop us.” He’d learned that early. People would talk, they’d try to cut him open and take a peek inside, but he’d never really let them see. He refused to open up in front of them. It’s how he stayed safe. He wasn’t about to forget that lesson and let the gawkers win now. “Come on—it’ll be fun.”
…
Shelby and Ian obviously had different definitions of fun. His was balancing on teeny-tiny blades without letting his ankles wobble while going backward. Hers was eating store-bought raw cookie dough from a bucket.
“You’ve got this,” Ian said, his hands holding hers in a strong, steady grip as he guided her around the practice facility’s ice. “Just keep it steady.”
That was easy for him to say—he didn’t feel like a newborn calf out here all jelly legs and lurching from foot to foot.
“You’re doing great,” Ian said, clearly in his element. He hadn’t teetered once.
Keeping her eyes on her borrowed skates—who knew the team trainer and she had the same size feet?—she did a shuffle sorta glide thing to move forward. “You’re a horrible liar.”
“I don’t do it often.”
“I know. That’s what I like about you.”
They took one more half turn around the ice before he led her back over to the wall so she could clutch the top of the divider between the rink and the bench. Meanwhile, he went over it like he was hopping a fence. Show-off.
Yeah, one you can’t take your eyes off now that you aren’t afraid of face-planting.
She could look. It was touching that was the problem. She was totally in control about that. Nothing to worry about. Nope. Which was why she was ignoring the “danger, danger” siren blaring in her head and her breath caught when he lifted his arms to stretch and the hem of his shirt went up, showing off the bottom half of a six pack she desperately wanted to lick.
That is very much not a good idea, Shelby, no matter how tempting.
And it was so very, very tempting.
“So your parents never took you to a rink?” Ian asked as he unscrewed the thermos he’d brought from the visitors’ locker room along with the skates.
“My mom was usually working a couple of jobs and hunting for her next husband in her off time.” The drama, the excitement, the loosey-goosey thrill of first falling for someone, that’s the part that had always been addictive for her mom. “There has never been a person who loved love like my mom. It was her hobby.”
“Not yours?” He handed her the thermos.
The smell of hot chocolate wafted up from the opening, and she took a small sip before answering. “No, I went in for peach schnapps and then cheap gin.”
“Started early?”
Did freshman year of high school count as early? Probably. “Quit early, too.”
“What happened?”
Usually people danced around the subject. Not Ian. He went at it head-on, just like a face-off in the circle. It might annoy some people, but she appreciated the honesty of it. Somehow it made whatever was sizzling between them feel more solid, possible. That way was dangerous thinking, but she couldn’t seem to help it around him.
“I went to rehab after hitting rock bottom.” More like landing with a hard splat against it. “I’d lied to myself about not having a problem. I woke up one morning in the drunk tank, no money, no apartment anymore, and no friends who weren’t sick of my self-destructive behavior. I went back home. I thought that would fix everything.” Naive? Hopeful? Delusional? Probably a mix of all three. “Can you believe it didn’t? It went badly. My mom got a counselor and staged an intervention. It sure wasn’t pretty, but we got through it. I went to rehab. Then I went again a few months later—relapses are no joke. And now here I am, six years later flirting with disaster again.”
“My name’s Ian, not disaster.”
Oh God. The man was bad at jokes. Still, she was chuckling even as she attempted to glide back from the wall while maintaining her balance. “I’m talking about this job. It changed everything for me, gave The Biscuit some legitimacy. Do you know how hard that can be for a woman-led hockey blog?”
She wobbled left and then right and threw her arms outward to grab hold of the wall, but she missed it. Instead she clamped on to a strong forearm right as she tipped backward. The motion pulled
