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

by Victoria St. George

  As if he could feel my eyes on him, he looked up. I hoped for a few moments that he wouldn't see me, that somehow even though I was able to view him clearly through the people dancing he would be unable to see me. Of course, this was ridiculous and as soon as my eyes fell on his face, he met my stare. Beside him, Anthony kept talking, but it was obvious that Jake was no longer listening to him. I didn't know if I should pretend that I didn't see him and just go about my plan to get out of the party as quickly as possible, or if I should just admit defeat and wave at him.

  I didn't get much of an opportunity to choose before he gave me a wave. I braced myself for him to walk over to me, preparing what I was going to say to explain why I had been completely ignoring him for the last few days. It turned out that I didn't need to pump myself up so much because as soon as he lowered his hand from the wave, Jake pulled the chair out the rest of the way and settled down at the table, turning his attention back to the conversation that he was having with Anthony.

  I wasn't sure if I should feel relieved or hurt. Seeing him was something that I had been adamant that I didn't want, yet now that he wasn't making any new effort to be near me, I was feeling a bit put out.

  "Was that Jake Wilson?" Gloria asked. Then she gasped, drawing in a long breath as if a major realization had just hit her. "Was he waving at you?"

  "Was he?" I asked, my voice perhaps a touch too high to sound casual. "It looked more like he was swatting at something. Maybe there's a fly in the room."

  I made a big show of looking around as if anticipating being dive-bombed by a fly at any second.

  "I highly doubt that, Hannah." Gloria gasped again and I was grateful that there wasn't actually a fly in the room or she would have inhaled it with one of these dramatic breaths. "He was waving at you!" she hissed in a loud whisper. "That's the Jake who's been calling you!"

  Her voice had reached a conspiratorial tone and Gloria was looking around them like she was waiting for one of their rival reporters to turn the phone calls into their next scoop. I gestured at her to quiet down even further and pulled her a little closer.

  "Shhh," I said. "It's not a big deal. I was up at the rink a few days ago and we met. We talked for about 30 seconds and that's it."

  "If it's not a big deal then why has he been calling you nonstop and waving at you from across the room at a party?"

  "I told you, he wants an interview. That's why he's been calling. I'm guessing that he is waving at me because we met the other day and he doesn't want to seem rude or like he's ignoring me."

  "Like you're ignoring him?" she pointed out.

  "I'm not ignoring him. I've been busy. I'm just delegating him to another point in my thought process."

  "You're ignoring him."

  I sighed and glanced at the bar again.

  "I think I need a drink."

  Jake

  I felt ridiculous waving at Hannah and then just sitting down at the table without doing anything else. As soon as I saw the boisterous blonde beside her, though, I knew that there was no way I could just approach Hannah right then. No matter how subtle I tried to be, that woman would be the one to call attention to us the second that I got close to her.

  Anthony was still talking, but I had lost track of what he was saying. I took another sip of my drink and nodded, feigning interest in the conversation. Fortunately, my teammate was one of the most self-absorbed people I had ever known, so staying silent and just occasionally nodding or making a sound of acknowledgment was enough to keep him going without even noticing that I wasn't fully engaged in whatever it was that he had to say.

  I wanted to glance over at Hannah and see if she was still looking at me, but I stopped myself. If she was still looking my way, I didn't want her to notice that I had turned back to her. If she wasn't, I didn't necessarily want to feel that sense of rejection. I was really hating what this woman was doing to me, and even more, I was frustrated that I couldn't seem to get away from the feeling.

  Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I swigged down the last of my drink and shook it in front of Anthony.

  "I seem to have run dry. I'm going to grab a refill real fast and then you can finish up your story."

  I stood and he nodded at me.

  "Yeah. I was just getting to the good part."

  "I'm sure you were."

  I turned away from the table before he could start talking again and started back toward the bar. Just because I knew that my intention was actually to get to Hannah didn't mean that I couldn't actually get another drink while I was at it. Soon the season would start and I would go into my self-imposed alcohol restrictions that would keep my drinking to the occasional beer when I was at home in between games.

  When my drink was full and the bartender had the slip of paper on which I had written Anthony's phone number in her pocket, I looked out over the room again to see if Hannah was still in the same place. She had moved, but within a few seconds, I was able to find her standing in a far corner as if trying to disappear into the shadows. The blonde woman was no longer at her side and I felt like I had my window. I sank toward the back of the crowd, avoiding making eye contact with anyone, and sipped my drink casually as I made my way toward the corner and Hannah.

  She was looking down as I approached her, seemingly lost in a tiny red berry tart that she held in her fingers.

  "Ice Girl audition not work out?" I asked as I got closer to her. "Now you're aspiring to own a bakery?"

  She looked up at me sharply and I thought for a moment that she was going to be angry, but she shook her head and looked back down at the tart.

  "I'm just trying to decide if I eat this tart really fast if I can sneak it past my thighs without them realizing that I ate it."

  I laughed and stepped up closer to her.

  "Maybe if you eat a piece of broccoli right before it and then right after, it will just blend in and your body will think that it is all the same."

  "Ah. Vegetable camouflage. Good technique."

  She shrugged and popped the tart into her mouth. I felt a little thrill rock through me. Far too many of the women who I encountered were so obsessive about their weight or with seeming delicate and feminine that they just wouldn't eat. The way that Hannah tossed the treat back with such abandon attracted me to her even more and I couldn't help but smile.

  "Was it good?" I asked.

  Hannah chewed a few more times and then made a slight face.

  "Not really. It tastes a little like canned pie filling on Play-Doh."

  "Tasty."

  "Yeah. For some reason, the food at these things is never good. I would think that the sponsors would do their best to come up with something a bit better when they are entertaining the best of the best."

  She wiped her hands off and looked up at me, her expression somewhat embarrassed, as if she hadn’t realized what she was saying.

  "So I'm one of the best of the best?" I asked playfully.

  Hannah opened and closed her mouth a few times like she was trying to come up with the right words. Then she shrugged.

  "Yes."

  "But the food is not."

  "No."

  I laughed.

  "Are you having fun?"

  "Also no."

  "So do you want to get out of here and go find some real food?"

  "Absolutely."

  I grinned and we started sneaking along the wall toward one of the side doors. We had gone a few paces when I stopped.

  "Where is that woman who was with you? She's not going to come looking for you and blow our cover, is she?"

  "Gloria?" she asked. "Oh, no. She got swept away by someone claiming to be a fifth alternate for the forward position."

  "That's not a thing," I said.

  "No. No, it's not. She doesn't know that, though. I'm guessing that would be why she is currently being extremely friendly with said faux fifth alternate on the dancefloor right now."

  I followed the tip of her head and saw the bubbly blonde dancing rat
her enthusiastically in the center of the dancefloor with a man I happened to know drives the Zamboni at our practice arena. I didn't know how he had managed to get invited to this party, but at that moment I didn't really care. All that mattered right then was that he was keeping the woman Hannah called Gloria distracted enough that we should be able to get out of the party undetected.

  Grabbing Hannah's hand, I pulled her a few more feet down the wall and ducked out of a door that I thought would lead to one of the back hallways of the hotel. My plan was to make our way back to the side of the hotel so that I could call my driver and we could make our escape. Instead, we stumbled out into an alley with the high, piercing sound of a fire alarm blaring around us.

  Hannah's hand flew up to cover her mouth, but I could hear her laughing. The door slammed behind me and we started running down the alley toward the back of the hotel. I could hear the door slam open behind us and a loud voice yelling obscenities, but I didn't look back. We skidded around the corner and found the car already waiting for us. I grabbed onto the handle of the back door and yanked it open. Hannah ducked inside and I jumped in beside her, closing the door as quickly as I could.

  "Go!" I shouted to Trevor.

  He cranked the engine and sped out of the parking lot, the squealing of the tires drowned out only by the sound of our laughter.

  Hannah

  I let my head fall back against the smooth leather seat of the SUV and waited for the laughs that were coursing through my body to quiet. I couldn't believe that not only had I agreed to escape from the party with Jake, but that our stealthy exit had been through an alarmed fire door.

  Beside me, Jake's broad shoulders were still shaking with his laughs and he had one hand over his eyes.

  "That was very subtle," I said.

  "Nothing but," he chuckled. "That was so smooth and seamless that I don't think anyone is going to notice we're missing until the end of the party."

  Just as she said that, my phone rang. I fished it out of my tiny wristlet and looked at the screen.

  "Oh, no," I said through a new cascade of giggles. "I think that we've been made."

  I turned the phone toward him so that he could see Gloria's name on the screen. He laughed and shook his head. I saw him leaning toward the driver in the front seat as I answered the phone.

  "Hi, Gloria," I said, foregoing the greeting to streamline the conversation right to the panic and accusation point.

  "Did you just get kidnapped?" she asked, her voice high again. "Where are you?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, trying to keep my voice as casual and even as I possibly could.

  "The fire alarm just went off in the ballroom and I thought I saw you getting dragged out of the door."

  "That's so strange," I said.

  There was a long pause and then Gloria's voice dropped yet again to a conspiratorial whisper. I would have to remember never to include her in an actual conspiracy.

  "Are you alright? Can you not talk? Was that really you and you can't tell me now? Where are you? Do you need wine coolers?"

  I rolled my lips in between my teeth to control the laughter that was trying to bubble its way up through my throat.

  "No, Gloria. I don't need any wine coolers. Thank you, though. I'll see you at work on Monday."

  I slipped my phone back into my purse and looked over at Jake.

  "Wine coolers?" he asked.

  I nodded.

  "Last summer when there was that string of abductions a couple of towns over Gloria decided that we needed to protect ourselves by having a code word. That way if one of us got snatched and managed to either write something down or get on the phone with the other one, we could have something to say that wouldn't sound suspicious enough to upset our abductor, but would also tip each other off," I explained.

  "And she chose wine coolers?" he asked.

  "Yeah. Neither one of us drinks them so we figured that that was a pretty obvious giveaway."

  Jake nodded and shrugged.

  "That's actually a pretty good idea."

  "Gloria can be impressive when she wants to be."

  Half an hour later we were sitting on the floor of the expansive living room in his penthouse apartment with an open pizza box in between us. I laughed and covered my mouth with the hand that wasn't holding a slice of meatball pizza as Jake reached for the bottle of soda that we were unceremoniously drinking directly out of.

  "No, no, no," he said, waving his hands at me after putting the bottle down. "That's not it. So afterwards we went back to the hotel and Anthony was still talking about this girl that he had hooked up with after the game. He just wouldn't shut up about it. He wouldn't admit it, but it was pretty obvious that this was the first time that he had picked up a local and somehow he thought that screwing her in the women's locker room so that no one would catch on was just the most brilliant tactic ever."

  "But then he told everyone about it?" I asked.

  "Exactly! So he's going on and on about her and we are just so tired of listening to it. We finally get to our hotel rooms and I got in the shower. It was not ten minutes after I got out and got in bed that I heard someone frantically knocking on my door."

  "Anthony?" I asked.

  "The one and only. When I looked through the peephole, he was pale as a ghost and was looking around like someone was going to come after him any second. So I opened the door and he ran in, jumped in the extra bed, and pulled the comforter up to his chin like he was asleep."

  "Subtle," I said, reaching for another slice of pizza.

  Jake nodded.

  "So, of course, I ask him what the hell is going on. It turns out that that 'groupie' he had met in the rink and brought back to the locker room was actually a housekeeper at the hotel. When she found out that we were staying there, she rearranged her shifts so that she would make sure that she was the one who would be cleaning our rooms. Then she went to the game and seduced him. He, of course, thought that he had pulled off this great love-em-and-leave-em plan and was never going to see her again. When he got out of the shower, though, he found her sprawled naked across his bed drinking bottles of liquor from the room's mini-bar."

  I nearly spit out the bite of pizza in my mouth.

  "What?" I asked through my laughter.

  Jake rocked back, letting out a deep belly laugh and nodding.

  "She had used the key card that they have to access the rooms so that they can clean them to get into his room. As soon as she saw him, she scrambled up and threw herself at him, talking about how wonderful their future was going to be together and their beautiful children. He said that he wasn't able to catch all of it because she was already a bit drunk and speaking at least two different languages."

  "How did he end up in your room?" I asked.

  "He told her that he had a sudden craving for honey barbecue chips and that he was going to run down to the vending machine to grab a bag of them. I guess she was just too wrapped up in her envisioning of their amazing future together that she forgot that that hotel didn't have vending machines." He took another sip of the soda. "Needless to say, I have never heard another story of him hooking up at a game again. In fact, I'm not even sure that he's had another date since then. I think that might have scared him into unintentional celibacy."

  By this time I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face and my jaw was hurting from trying to chew at the same time. I put my partially eaten slice of pizza down onto the box and used a napkin to wipe my face as I finished my bite, then reached for the bottle of soda. When my lips touched it, I was suddenly very aware of the strange intimacy that we had established with that drink. My hands grasped the bottle as his had and my lips touched where he sipped. The thought made my growing attraction to him even more evident deep in my belly and I glanced up at him to find Jake staring at me, his intensely blue eyes seeming to sink into me.

  I was lowering the bottle back to the floor when I heard what sounded like footsteps coming down the hal
lway that led off of one side of the living room. Glancing that direction I saw a tiny figure coming toward us. A moment later there was a little boy standing a few feet from us, one hand rubbing at his eye and the other gripping a well-loved teddy bear at his side.

  "Daddy?" his sweet little voice said as if he wasn't sure that he was really seeing us.

  "Gavin," Jake said, getting up off of the floor and moving toward the boy. "What are you doing up, sweetheart?"

  "I missed you," Gavin said sleepily.

  "I missed you, too," Jake said tenderly, scooping the toddler into his arms and cradling him against his chest.

  I immediately felt my heart melt. The little boy looked so genuinely, completely content and happy to be in his father's arms, and Jake's shoulders looked more relaxed than she had seen them since meeting him. This was a beautiful, peaceful moment that I would never have anticipated encountering when I came along with Jake to indulge in the type of greasy, delicious pizza that I adored but rarely ever allowed myself to have.

  "I'm going to bring him back to bed. I'll be right back," Jake said over his shoulder.

  "Of course. Go ahead."

  He lifted the little boy up higher on his shoulder and started back in the direction of what I assumed was Gavin's bedroom.

  "Who is that, Daddy?" I heard Gavin ask as they disappeared down the hallway.

  "That's my friend Hannah."

  "She's pretty."

  The little boy's sleepy voice was adorable and I felt my smile growing even more.

  "I think so, too," Jake said.

  His words had a completely different effect on me than Gavin's and I felt my heart tremble a little. To distract me from the thoughts that were starting to course through my mind, I stood and walked around the living room, looking at the pictures tucked onto the mantle of the large fireplace against one wall. I hadn't noticed them before, but there were several images of Jake with Gavin. This small collection of pictures was like a privileged glimpse into Jake's life. Just that one moment, that one experience, brought me closer to him in a way that I would never have anticipated.