Breaking the Ice: A Sports Romance Novel (Ice Breaker Series Book 1)

by Victoria St. George

  Ignoring the look that Evan was giving me, I walked past him toward the sauna. I knew that he wasn't going to follow me there and that I would have the opportunity to work through my thoughts. I wasn't accustomed to this. Especially in the last few months, as my team was trying to restructure after our goalie suffered a broken leg in the closer from the season before, I wasn't spending nearly as much time showing the fangirls the finer points of being an athlete. Now I wasn't just thinking about how fast I could make a hotel reservation or how I was going to convince her that staying the night wasn't a good idea. Instead, I was fascinated by Hannah. She didn’t seem at all star-struck by me, and that was intriguing in an almost irresistible way.

  Hannah

  I followed the gesturing of the parking attendants and slid my car into place in the parking lot outside of the hotel. This was already shaping up to be a bit more involved than I had prepared myself to handle, but I had given my word to Gloria and I knew that I at least had to deal with the fanfare for a few minutes.

  Climbing out of my car and hitting the remote to ensure the doors were locked, I looked around for Gloria. I had followed her out of the parking lot at the station but had managed to lose track of her most of the way to the hotel and had to rely on my GPS to get me there. Still, I assumed that she would still be close by. I didn't see her face among those roaming through the lot on the way into the hotel and after a few moments, I decided to go inside to look for her. I was nearly to the door when I heard her voice calling to me.

  "Hannah!" she shouted. "Wait for me!"

  I turned toward her and saw Gloria running toward me wearing a tight red dress and sky-high black heels. She had added a few extra layers of makeup and her hair had been pumped up to almost epic proportions.

  "What happened to you?" I asked.

  "You know that they are doing valet parking for VIPs, right?" she asked at the same time.

  "I'm not a VIP," I said. "When did all this happen?" I asked, gesturing at her completely transformed look.

  "Yes, you are," she said. "You're the hottest thing in sports reporting right now. Well, figuratively speaking."

  I noticed that she was looking me up and down, evaluating me. I shook my hands in front of me as if trying to brush away the confusing dual conversation.

  "First, even if I was a VIP, I don't do valet parking if I can avoid it. That makes getting away a lot more complicated. Second, I look exactly like I did when I left work. And third, when the hell did you totally change?"

  "Exactly. You look exactly like you did when you left work, which is exactly what you look like when you go to work, and I’m fairly certain exactly what you look like when you are at home or sleeping or working out…"

  Her voice trailed off and I gave a sigh.

  "I don't look like this when I'm at home."

  "Well, you shouldn't look like it now. We're at a party. You should have done what I did – changed in the car."

  "You did all of that in a car?" I asked, shocked.

  "I have a lot of practice. I also have a lot of makeup. Come on, I'll fix you up."

  Before I could protest, Gloria grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me into the parking lot, using her other arm thrust in front of her to push our way through the crowd that was trying to move into the hotel. She brought me to her car and opened the door to reveal a truly impressive array of beauty products spread across the backseat of her little red car.

  "Do you travel like this all of the time?" I asked.

  "Only when there may be a beauty emergency."

  She reached up and pushed my blazer back over my shoulders, tossing it over the headrest onto the front passenger seat.

  "Does that happen frequently?"

  "You would be surprised."

  She stepped back to evaluate me again and reached forward to pull the hem of my blouse up out of the waistband of my skirt. She tied it into a knot at my ribcage and unbuttoned the first few buttons.

  "You are a beauty superhero," I said.

  Gloria made an affirming sound and pulled a cosmetics case toward her. It looked like a tackle box made of black patent leather, and when she flicked the gold latch on the front open and flipped the lid open, it revealed layers of every type of makeup imaginable. I am no slouch when it comes to primping, but this display made me look like a middle school girl experimenting with her first pearl pink lip gloss and brown mascara.

  A few minutes later I had a new mask of makeup and she had bumped up my hair with a blast of hairspray and a slightly intimidating-looking pick.

  "I wish that you were wearing higher heels," she said, looking down at my simple black pumps.

  "What? You don't have a shoe rack or two that will pop out of your trunk if you open it?" I asked.

  "If only," Gloria said slightly dreamily.

  Finally, she was satisfied that I looked party-appropriate and it sank in that she wasn't going to let me escape from the party after the agreed-upon 15 minutes. We walked together into the hotel and followed the signs toward the private ballroom. Attending these mixers wasn't new to me, but I felt a fluttering in my belly as we stepped through the doors into the cacophony of voices and music. My eyes scanned the room without me giving them permission. No matter how I was trying to convince myself, my mind was betraying me and searching for Jake's face.

  Two days before

  I heard a light rap on my office door and looked up to see Gloria standing in the doorway, leaning toward me. The sheepish look on her face told me that I already knew what she was going to say.

  "That was him again."

  I sighed and propped my elbows on my desk, digging my fingers back through my hair. It was the third time that Jake had called me that day. Part of me felt bad for ignoring his calls, but the other part of me knew that the last thing that I needed in my life right then was getting wrapped up with any man, much less an athlete.

  "Who is this guy?" Gloria asked, stepping into my office and closing the door behind her. "He only ever says 'Jake.' It's all very mysterious."

  "He's nobody, Gloria. Just a guy."

  "If he was just a guy you wouldn't be so adamantly ignoring his calls," she pointed out. "He's been calling for two days now. You must have made some sort of impression on him."

  "He just wants an interview," I lied, hoping to deflect any more questions from my delightful but nosy friend.

  "Are you sure?" she asked in a slightly teasing tone. "He seems a bit more eager to talk to you than someone who just wants you to interview somebody."

  I flattened my palms on the desk.

  "Don't you think that if this was a man who had some sort of non-professional interest in me that he would be calling me on my cell phone rather than at work?" I asked. "Or that at least he would be calling me directly rather than just the main line?"

  Gloria looked at least somewhat convinced, but I knew that I was completely making this up as I went along. The truth was that he couldn't call me on my cell phone because I hadn't given him my number, and he hadn't stopped at just calling the main desk of my department and asking for me. The day before he had gone so far as to have his coach call my boss. Fortunately, he was out for the day on an integral golf appointment and his secretary had decided to bring the message to me directly rather than waiting for him to get back. I had convinced her that I could handle it and that she didn't need to let Mr. Jones know about it. I knew that if she had mentioned the call, I would immediately be expected to set up an exclusive interview. That might be the next step in pushing my career to another level, but I was going to need some time to really prepare for that so that when I sat down across from Jake I could concentrate on his answers to my questions rather than the shimmer in his eyes and the sweet, low rumble of his voice.

  Jake

  I stepped out of the backseat of the SUV and breathed a sigh of relief when I noticed that I had been ushered directly to the back entrance to the hotel. None of the fame-hungry photographers had managed to finagle their way i
nto a place to snap shots of me and my teammates making our way into the party. Usually, I wasn't one to shun attention and loved to see my face splashed across the screen, even if that meant having to deal with the frustration of answering the deluge of questions. The last few days, though, had put me on edge and I just wasn't feeling like playing the role of rag mag attaché for the team.

  "Let me know when you are ready to leave and I'll be waiting for you here," the driver said.

  "Thanks, Anthony," I said, turning to shut the door behind him.

  Another SUV pulled up behind mine and two of my teammates climbed out. I caught Evan's eye and nodded.

  "You showed up," he said.

  I gave him a quizzical look.

  "Did someone say that I wasn't?"

  "I thought you might be too busy repeat dialing that girl."

  He laughed and punched my arm playfully.

  "Yeah, yeah," I said. "That's enough. Come on. Let's go in and give our adoring media what they want."

  Anthony stepped to the side and gestured dramatically at the back entrance to the hotel. As we walked inside and heard the loud music from the ballroom, the usual excitement started to settle in. These parties were nothing new to me, and they were always good for a quick hook up when I was feeling lonely. Even though I had promised myself that I was going to shy away from picking up a bunch of women while I was on my home turf and just wait for an away game to get my fix, I wondered to myself if this might be the perfect opportunity for me to take my mind off of Hannah by finding a discreet fan or cocktail waitress to entertain me for the evening.

  I couldn't say that my reputation wasn't earned. I wasn't necessarily proud of the broken hearts I had left scattered behind me, but at the same time, I wasn't ashamed of it either. It wasn't like I ever made any promises to these women. I never led them on or told them anything that I didn't absolutely mean. If they had sparkles in their eyes and dreams of making me their ultimate catch, that was their problem. I couldn't be held responsible for the emotional reaction of a woman who threw herself at me and then built up her dream of our happily ever after without me ever giving my consent to it.

  Even as I scanned the crowd in the room looking for a pair of pretty eyes looking me over or a soft body that might be open and willing, however, I was starting to realize that that was exactly what was different about the situation with Hannah. I was accustomed to the women coming to me and being the one that had to let them down as carefully as possible. Now it was me that couldn’t seem to let go of my phone or stop thinking about this one woman. I couldn't help but wonder if I was just excited by the challenge that she was presenting to me, or if there was truly something special about this young reporter that was drawing me to her.

  We made our way across the room to the bar where a woman in a tight white shirt and black vest was pouring out cocktails and offering bright smiles to dodge the attention of the men who were lined up along the front. Anthony and I slipped in between some of them and Anthony smiled at the bartender. The artificial grin that had been plastered across her face throughout our walk toward her melted into a genuine smile and I noticed a touch of color splash across her cheeks. He had definitely made his catch for the evening.

  Anthony ordered us drinks and I turned around to rest my back against the bar and look out over the crowd in the ballroom. I laughed at a couple of our teammates trying to dance in the middle of the floor, their spastic moves making it look as though they were still wearing all of their pads and skates.

  "Alright, so you have to tell me more about this girl," Anthony said, tapping me on the shoulder with my drink.

  I took the glass from him and took a long sip.

  "What is there to tell?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Anthony said as we stepped away from the bar and headed toward our reserved table at the front of the room. "All I know is that you've been acting strange since the first time I heard you mention that you met some girl at the rink. You haven't even told me her name."

  I shrugged and took another sip of my drink to avoid having to give him any kind of response. He was right. I knew I had been acting strange. I just didn't know if I wanted to snap myself out of it and get my focus back on the season ahead of me, or if I wanted to keep trying to find her and see what this feeling inside me was all about.

  The day before

  I walked around the perimeter of the ice trying to look inconspicuous. Occasionally I looked across the rink and nodded as if I had noticed something going on in the practice. In reality, I was checking to see if Hannah had come back to watch this practice and maybe set up a couple of interviews. I had really thought that having the coach contact her boss was going to work. No media outlet could resist an exclusive with me and I was sure that talking to him would make it so that she had to at least come and sit down with me for a little while.

  Going over that plan in my mind sounded much creepier than I had intended it to when I first arrived at the rink. I forced myself to turn away from the wall around the ice and head toward the locker room. It was another practice that the coach wanted me to stay after so that I could run through extra drills with him and when I stepped into the locker room it was completely quiet. That was uncommon and I took a few moments just to enjoy the solitude.

  When I was geared up, I walked back out to the ice and took my place in the box. As I pulled the guard off of my blades, I watched my teammates move across the rink, practicing some of the new formations that we had just devised. I cringed at the mistakes and made a mental note that I would have to go over them again to make sure that when we faced our first match, they wouldn't just hand the points over to the other team.

  "Did you ever hear back from that reporter?" the coach asked, stepping into the box with me.

  I shook my head.

  "No."

  "That's strange," he said. "Are you sure that you gave me the right name?"

  I looked up at him.

  "Yes," I said flatly. "You know who Hannah Garcia is?"

  He nodded and shouted a few commands at the players still maneuvering their way around the ice.

  "That's true. She's a little hard to ignore."

  "Yes, she is," I agreed.

  The coach looked at me with a knowing curl to his lip.

  "Is there something more to you wanting to see Miss Garcia than just an interview?" he asked.

  I tried to look nonchalant as I stood and positioned my helmet on my head.

  "I just think that any kind of publicity is good, right? Everybody is trying to get the big story on the injuries and new players, and I think that it would do us better to have some official stories out there than just whatever people can pick up."

  "Yeah, I agree," he said slowly, "but everybody in the media circuit is after you. You have your choice of whatever reporter you could possibly want. Why are you so determined to go after this one?"

  "She's the best, isn't she? I mean, she's the one that everyone is talking about and she's getting more and more gigs. I figured that going after the next hot thing would be the best for the team. She has over a million followers and I've heard that every news outlet in the country is courting her. Getting her to interview me would appeal to all demographics of fans."

  I was trying to pull out every catchphrase and buzzword that I had heard them use when it came to reporters and I was hoping that I was pulling it off. For a moment it seemed like I had convinced him and then Coach Blaise smirked.

  "The fact that she's gorgeous doesn't have anything to do with it, does it?"

  I glanced his way and saw that the hint of a smile was gone from his lips and Blaise was now giving me a glare that said he was teasing at first but now was not amused by the thought that had just crossed his mind.

  "It is purely professional," I told him, trying to sound as convincing as possible.

  "Make sure that it is," Blaise said. "With all of the shit that this team is facing right now, the last thing I need is for you to get tangled up with so
me cute reporter and get us smeared because of it."

  "Understood," I said and pushed onto the ice.

  Hannah

  "Alright, I came. I did three full laps of the room. I ate six canapes. I think it's time for me to go."

  Gloria grabbed onto my arm and tugged me back as I tried to make my way toward the exit of the room. I groaned slightly and stepped back to stand beside her.

  "Not so fast," she said. "You did your laps and you ate your fancy snacks, but you haven't spoken to a single person other than me since you got here. That doesn't count as attending a party."

  "Really? I thought that just getting to the location and walking into the room constituted attending a party."

  "Common misconception." Gloria looked out over the group and suddenly her grip on my arm tightened as she drew in a sharp breath. "Omigod. They're here."

  "Who?" I asked. "The Feds? The asylum? Are they after you?"

  "No! The hockey players. There are at least five of the Vikings over there right now."

  She ducked behind me and I glanced over my shoulder to see her frantically trying to fix her hair. Clawing at it with her acrylic-enhanced fingernails only resulted in making it messier, but I didn't want to tell her that. She popped up beside me again and struck a pose with one hip thrust out to the side and her hand planted on it.

  "Subtle," I said.

  "There's more!" she said, nodding her head toward the bar. "I see Jake Wilson! He is so gorgeous. How does he not melt the ice when he skates out on it?"

  I felt my heart sink but couldn't help following Gloria's eyes to the other side of the room to where she had seen Jake. He held a drink in one hand as he and another man I recognized as Anthony Pechaulk, a Viking teammate, wove their way through the tables that had been set up around the dancefloor in the center of the room. When they reached the table at the front of the room, he reached for one of the chairs and pulled it toward him.