by Avon Gale
His head throbbed, protesting his sudden shout. But Emmitt didn’t care. He was going to be playing the entire season against the best the league had to offer, under the lights and in stadiums full of excited and loud fans. The Venom were a good, solid team and Atlanta was a cool town. Emmitt couldn’t wait to call his mom.
Of course, that also meant he had to get dressed, go downstairs, and tell his teammates he’d been traded. A little bittersweet, given he was here to celebrate the team’s Calder Cup victory...but this was a part of hockey, and they all knew it. Besides, they’d be happy for him. They were good guys, and they, too, were hoping for the day they got that phone call.
* * *
“I still can’t believe it, Army. I mean, it’s awesome, but I’m gonna miss you next season.”
It was three-thirty, and Emmitt and his teammate Seth were back by the pool, drinks in hand. Seth, who played forward, was one of Emmitt’s closest friends on the Raiders.
“Yeah, that part is hard. You know I love playing with you guys.” Emmitt leaned back in his chair, sunglasses shielding him from the bright midday sun. He turned his head and regarded Seth. Seth was a redhead, and after three days his skin was starting to match his hair. “Your white boy skin isn’t looking so good, dude.”
“Yeah. I’m made for more Northern European climates.” Seth winced, glancing down at himself. Then he grabbed his spray sunscreen and liberally applied it, though Emmitt wondered if it would do any good at this point. What he needed to do was put on a T-shirt, but he was probably hoping his six-pack abs and tats would get him some attention from the ladies.
It’d worked the last few days, but that was before Seth burned the tip of his nose and his skin turned lobster-red. Still, there were a couple of ladies at the bar that seemed to be checking Seth out, though it could be they were concerned he was going to burn into a pile of ashes on his chair.
“Still, I can’t believe the Marauders didn’t call you up. Especially since Brisbois hasn’t been playing that great,” Seth said, sipping his margarita. He was referring to the Marauders goalie, whose play the last two seasons had drawn some considerable criticism. Seth moved his arms, making elaborate creaking sounds. “He looked like a reincarnated mummy monster at the end of the season.”
“Hey, quit it. It’s bad luck to make fun of goalies, even if they’re not me.”
“You don’t have to be superstitious anymore,” Seth pointed out. “We won.”
“We did.” Emmitt took a drink of his beer. It was some kind of light beer, and it had already warmed in the sunlight. He shook his head. “Crazy that I’m gonna play for the Marauders’ archrivals, though. You think they’ll try and jump me when I walk in the locker room, ‘cause I was with the Raiders?”
“Nah. If they had that kind of spirit, they might have beat the Marauders in the playoffs.” Seth grinned, resting his hands over his stomach. “I’ll miss you, though, Army. Especially your save percentage.”
Emmitt snorted. They all knew trades were part of hockey, and no one really had expected Emmitt to spend another season in the AHL. But he’d miss Seth, who was one of the few people on his team who knew Emmitt was bisexual. “Hopefully I haven’t ruined the celebratory trip by announcing my imminent departure.”
“I won’t miss your ego,” Seth said, dryly.
“More room for yours.” Emmitt picked up his phone and angled it to take a selfie, tipping his sunglasses down and peering at the camera. He made sure the picture included his own defined abs, his light-brown skin glistening with sweat. No sense in working out to keep the body he needed to be at the top of his game and not show it off. He snapped the picture and hashtagged it with #raiderspride, #cabo and #caldercupchamps then posted it on Instagram.
They were joined a few minutes later by their other teammates, Colton White and Blake Appleby, with some girls they’d apparently met while body surfing. Two of them immediately began cooing in distress over Seth’s sunburn, so maybe he had some kind of sneaky plan in place to woo women with sun poisoning or something. Not that he’d be able to do anything later.
“Hey, so, Amber and Jen here want to know if we want to go on a snorkeling trip.” Colton tossed his long, dark-brown hair out of his eyes. He grinned. “We made some friends, and they say it’s a party boat with great views.”
Emmitt wasn’t sure he wanted to do anything more adventurous than sit in his chair and drink a few beers, soak up the sun, and maybe take a nap. Unlike Seth, Emmitt was smart enough to actually re-apply his sunscreen at regular intervals. But the girls were cute and hey, who knew what sort of interesting people he’d meet on a party boat. He’d worked hard and just had the best season of his career. And he was going to the fucking NHL. Hell yeah.
“Party boat sounds right up my alley,” Emmitt said, getting to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Don’t miss
Goalie Interference,
available June 2019 wherever books are sold.
Please note that the above excerpt is from an uncorrected proof; any errors will be corrected in the final version.
www.CarinaPress.com
Copyright © 2019 by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn
Authors’ Note
We’re so thrilled the Hat Trick series has found a new home with Carina Press! Aside from minor edits, this book remains mostly unchanged from the first edition. We wanted to keep the story as close to what it was originally, both for the readers who are already fans of Tristan, Sebastian and all the other Hat Trick boys, and for the new readers we hope will join us along the way.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, we’d like to thank all our alpha and beta readers, especially Annie, who is a rock star and the best cheerleader any author duo could ever ask for.
Thanks also to our agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, our editor, Stephanie Doig, and the entire Carina team for giving this book and the series a new home. Also, thank you to our sensitivity reader, Marianne Collazo, for her helpful comments and suggestions.
Lastly, thank you to our readers, who showed us so much love for Permanent Ink, our first collaboration.
There will be more of the Venom boys to come. We hope you stick around for the next season!
Coming Soon in the Hat Trick series from Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn
Goalie Interference
Trade Deadline
Coming Soon from Avon Gale and Carina Press
Tour Dates series
The Love Song of Sawyer Bell
The Ballad of Whiskey Jax
Also Available from Avon Gale
Heart of the Steal (with Roan Parrish)
Thrall (with Roan Parrish)
Conversation Hearts
Let the Wrong Light In
Old Acquaintance
Whiskey Business
Art & Soul series (with Piper Vaughn)
Permanent Ink
Scoring Chances series
Breakaway
Save of the Game
Power Play
Empty Net
Coach’s Challenge
Also Available from Piper Vaughn
Art & Soul series (with Avon Gale)
Permanent Ink
Clumsy Cupid Guidebooks series (with Xara X. Xanakas)
The Party Boy’s Guide to Dating a Geek
Hard Hats series
Wood, Screws, & Nails (with Kade Boehme)
Hook, Line, & Sinker
Lucky Moon series (with M.J. O’Shea)
Moonlight Becomes You
The Luckiest
Moonstruck
One Thing series (with M.J. O’Shea)
One Small Thing
One True Thing
Portland Pack Chronicles (with Kenzie Cade)
Prickly Business
Prickly By Nature
Avon Gale was once the mayor on Foursquare of Jazzercise and Lollicup, which should tell you all you need to know about her as a person. She likes road trips, rock concerts, drinking Kentucky bourbon and yelling at hockey. She’s a displaced Southerner living in a liberal Midwestern college town, and she never gets tired of people and their stories—either real or the ones she makes up in her head.
Avon is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan at Handspun Literary Agency.
Connect with Avon:
Website: avongalewrites.com
Twitter: Twitter.com/avongalewrites
Facebook: Facebook.com/avongalewrites
Piper Vaughn is a queer Latinx author and longtime romance reader. Since writing their first love story at age eleven, they’ve known writing in some form was exactly what they wanted to do. A reader to the core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great book.
Piper grew up in a diverse neighborhood in Chicago and loves putting faces and characters of every ethnicity in their stories, making their fictional worlds as colorful as the real one. Above all, Piper believes there’s no one way to have an HEA, and every person deserves to see themselves reflected on the page.
Connect with Piper:
Website: pipervaughn.com
Twitter: Twitter.com/pipervaughn
Facebook: Facebook.com/pipervaughnauthor
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ISBN-13: 9781488053757
Off the Ice
Copyright © 2019 by Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn
This is the revised text of the work first published by Riptide Publishing, 2017
This edition published by Carina Press, 2019
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
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