WILD ZONE, A Rough Riders Hockey Novel

by Skye Jordan

  Instead of backing off, she matched Olivia’s step forward. “You hurt him. You hurt him like you hurt everyone who cares about you. You and your cavalier European attitude. Why can’t you ever just leave that behind when you come home?”

  “Everyone else who cares about me? If you’re talking about you and mom, try looking in the mirror, Quinn, that’s where you’ll find the person you really care about. People who care about someone stand up and do the right thing even when it’s hard. They say what needs to be said even if someone else doesn’t want to hear it because they know the alternative will hurt so much more. People who care about you don’t take the coward’s way out, and don’t steal the most precious thing in your life.”

  “We. Didn’t. Steal. Him,” she said with barely controlled impatience. “Cancer took him.”

  “But you took his last months from me. You and Mom stole all that time I could have spent with him. You stole my chance to say goodbye. To tell him how much I loved him one more time. To support him through the illness. Through the therapy—”

  She choked on a sob. It took her so by surprise, she shut down. She held her breath and tightened her muscles and clenched her hands to hold the ripping sorrow and the fiery rage inside.

  Quinn said nothing. She stood completely still, staring at the floor.

  This was a ten-year-old tear in the fabric of their family that no one and nothing could repair. This kept Olivia living on the other side of the country, feeling like half of her was missing because her family was somewhere else, yet knowing she couldn’t live with them.

  A never ending spiral that left Olivia feeling incomplete.

  She did everything she could to make her visits home brief and enjoyable, but inevitably, every second or third visit things between either her and Quinn or her and her mother blew up.

  In a more controlled voice, Olivia told Quinn, “Tate and I both knew what we were doing. I don’t know why you think what you do, but I assure you, he’s not hurting over our one night.”

  Quinn crossed her arms and sniffled back tears. “And I assure you, I don’t need dozens of men in my background to recognize the feel of an erection pressed against my ass when a man pulls me close from behind. Or the signs of affection when he whispers “I’ve missed you” at my ear and kisses my neck. Or the look of pain in a man’s eyes when he realizes he’s just like all the rest. Because that’s what happened, Olivia, all because he thought I was you.”

  Quinn yelled the last words in anger.

  Olivia’s mouth dropped open. Her heart skipped two full beats, then hammered hard and fell straight to the pit of her stomach. “When? Where?”

  “Today. At the warehouse.” She dropped her arms and drew herself up. “So I may not take as many risks as you, but this is why. Because I have mom to think about.” She stabbed her finger at the floor. “Now, you’re going to go find him, talk to him and do whatever you have to do to make sure he doesn’t badmouth our family into bankruptcy or fire us from his job.”

  Olivia was already shaking her head. Tate would be humiliated. He would be livid. He would hate her. Aside from the deterring thought of over six feet of muscle furious with her, the realization of how far his opinion of her had fallen cut into her heart. She couldn’t face seeing it in his eyes. Especially not after all this turmoil.

  “He’s not going to—“ She started. “Wait. What job?”

  “The banquet, Liv. Tate is our client for the banquet. So you’re going to talk to him, because not only do we need that job, but you have to work with him.”

  “I— But—”

  “You make sure that Tate Donovan has nothing but good things to say about all the women in this family before you board another fucking plane.”

  6

  Tate pushed toward the net with a puck on the blade of his stick.

  Wait. Fire. Score.

  Wait. Fire. Score.

  Beckett came at him and reached in.

  Wait.

  Tate let the puck glide just beyond his teammate’s blade.

  Beckett’s reach tipped his body weight past the center point, creating space on the ice for Tate to shoot without interference.

  Fire.

  Tate slammed the puck, rocketing it toward the net, right past Beckett. His teammate was way too far off balance to recover in time to block.

  Score.

  “Yes,” he hissed as he let the forward momentum swing him around the goal.

  Beckett picked up one of the many stray pucks on the ice and took up Tate’s previous position as offense. Tate claimed defense and did what he could to crowd Beckett, messing with his attempt to master calculated hang time.

  They’d been running drills like this for over an hour. All after already picking up a practice game earlier that day with eight of their teammates and chasing after a bunch of rambunctious ten-year-olds for four hours that morning. But Beckett didn’t complain. He didn’t bitch. He didn’t beg off and tell Tate he had to go home to Eden, who had the day off and was home with Beckett’s daughter, Lily.

  Even when Tate knew Beckett would rather be home with them, he was still sweating his ass out with Tate because Beckett understood the therapeutic value of working out your frustrations on the ice. And Tate needed it because even two days after mistaking Quinn for Olivia, he still felt like an absolute fool.

  Beckett scored and Tate picked up another puck, switching positions again.

  “All right.” Beckett wiped his sweaty face on his shirtsleeve. “I’m done takin’ it easy on you now.”

  Tate laughed, though it sounded more like footsteps on gravel.

  “No net for you pretty boy,” Beckett said, putting force into his skates and coming at Tate hard.

  Adrenalin spiked and muscle memory had Tate maneuvering to get past Beckett. But his teammate was as good as they came and when Beckett kicked up the heat, he was like a fucking cement wall. The only thing Tate had on the man was speed. So he poured on the juice, used a little fancy footwork, added some well-honed stick work, and still couldn’t get past him.

  “Goddammit,” Tate complained. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  “Bet you say that to all the boys,” he said as he blocked again. And again. And again.

  “Motherfucker.”

  “Can’t go through me.” Hip check. “Can’t go around me.” Another block. “What are you gonna do?”

  Go under you. Tate tapped the puck between Beckett’s legs then reached around him and dove for it, stick outstretched. The edge of his stick tapped the puck a second before Tate landed chest first on the ice. His momentum propelled the puck into the net.

  Score.

  Tate pounded the air with his free fist, “Yes!” Then rested his helmet on the ice, laughing.

  Beckett skated a circle around Tate, also laughing. “You lucky son of a— Oooooh…”

  Tate didn’t need to look to know someone had walked into the rink. And by the language shift, that someone was female. Tate’s stomach might have been numb from the slab of ice beneath him, but that didn’t keep the butterflies from taking flight.

  He tried to catch his breath while he constructed those walls Lisa had taught him to build. Walls that worked relatively well against the woman who had lied to him and cheated on him within a year of their wedding vows. Not so well against a woman who’d made no promises, given Tate nothing but pleasure, and pulled him from a darkness he’d been wallowing in for far too long.

  “Hey, Olivia,” Beckett said. “I was just using Tate as a Zamboni.”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a game,”—her voice touched his ears and a pleasure-pain sensation cut through his gut—“but it looked to me like Tate smoked that puck past you.”

  In any other situation, Tate would have found that both hilarious and sweet. But there were too many emotions dogging him. And hearing her voice now, he didn’t know how he could have mistaken Quinn’s voice for Olivia’s. They were very similar, no doubt. But Olivia’s held an in
tangible quality of…seriousness wasn’t quite right. Maybe worldliness. Olivia’s voice held a certain sultry, mysterious, knowing, jaded edge. Where Quinn’s was straightforward, open, compassionate and sweet.

  “It’s not always about the score,” Beckett told her. “We’re working on techniques. Donovan’s mastering the corpse on ice. While he’s trying to figure out how to get back on his feet, I promised Eden I’d talk to you about our wedding.”

  Tate rolled his eyes, pulled his knees in, and only now realized how the last week had caught up with him. He hadn’t been sleeping and he’d been working out like a lunatic. All of which he was feeling now.

  He shook the ice from his jersey and looked up, tensed for the sexual punch at the sight of her. But she wasn’t the vixen he’d been expecting. Maybe the one he’d built up in his mind. She had wandered into the bench area were a half wall separated her from the ice. She was wearing faded, worn jeans and a sweater, one with an uneven hem and thick fringe all around the edge. Her hair was pulled back on top, loose on the bottom and a few stray strands fell across her forehead and around her face.

  And man, what a face. He hadn’t been drunk that night. It hadn’t been too dark. And she was even more fucking beautiful in full fluorescent lighting.

  Those big blue eyes shifted from Beckett to Tate, and they were filled with apprehension and apology. Her lips turned in a cautious smile, but it was real. And warm. And even sparkled with an enthusiastic little light, as if she were excited to see him.

  Fuck me to hell and back.

  Like a boxer guarding one area, he’d left another vulnerable. His heart took the brunt of this kick, and the pain put enough fear into him to spur some self-preservation. Because Tate knew in his gut Olivia hadn’t come on her own. He’d bet his next signing bonus—God willing he got one—that Quinn had marched home and given Olivia a piece of her mind two days ago.

  He should have known Quinn would tell her. And God… Mortification burned through him in a thick swath of fire.

  Beckett was asking her about catering the wedding, but Olivia never took her eyes off Tate. And Tate never moved from center ice.

  “We chose the last Saturday in August,” Beckett said, “because that still gives us ten days for a honeymoon before training camps start.”

  When Tate didn’t move toward her, the sparkle in her eyes dimmed. She returned her gaze to Beckett. “Thank you for the offer. I really appreciate it, and if I were going to be here, I would absolutely be all in. But I’m starting school soon, and in late August I’m going to be learning to use blades as well as you do, but for a whole different purpose.”

  Beckett turned on the charm, pulling out the playboy smile he hadn’t used on anyone but Eden since his fiancé walked into his life. “I’ll make it worth your while. Next to Lily, Eden is the most precious thing in the world to me, and I’d do anything to make her happy.”

  Olivia’s shoulders softened. Her head tilted. She pulled her hands out of her pockets to cross her arms against the chill. “That is so ridiculously sweet it makes my heart hurt, but the truth is, I’ve been working ten years for this forty-thousand dollar scholarship, and if I don’t use it, I lose it.”

  Beckett propped a hip on the wall of the rink a few feet from Eden. “Forty grand? Where are you going?”

  “Le Cordon Bleu.”

  That soft, fluid French accent cut through Tate’s chest like a sharp knife through butter and set his groin on fire.

  “Tate… N'arrete pas, n’arrete pas… Dieu…”

  “Tate… Don’t stop, don’t stop… God…”

  He’d ended up learning a little French that night. And even though the memories still thrilled him, they also cut at him. As did the fact that they’d spent eight intimate hours together and she hadn’t once mentioned a fucking forty thousand dollar scholarship. He’d tried to get her to talk about herself, but she’d always turned the conversation back around to him or to sex and he’d fallen for it, thinking he’d be able to talk her into a date, another night, something…

  But no. She’d bailed before the sun came up. Such a player move.

  He was done. He’d been through this. This trying and hitting a brick wall. He wanted to escape to the locker room, but she blocked his exit.

  “Do they do four year programs there?” Beckett asked.

  Forget it. He wasn’t staying for this conversation, blocked path or no blocked path. He started toward the exit.

  “No. Three months to two years depending on the program. The scholarship is for the one-year track. Tate,” she said as he headed toward the door at her left. “I need to talk to you a minute, please.”

  Beckett glided over to Tate and pushed him back a ways. “Let me take your gear.” His friend reached out and grabbed Tate’s hockey stick, but grabbed Tate’s glove as well, holding him there. He met Tate’s gaze deliberately, and kept his voice low. “She’s real. She may not be perfect, but no one is. Including you, bro. But she’s real. She’s got a good heart. And she is two hundred percent zeroed in on you.”

  He didn’t want to hear that. Beckett was one of those guys who could get a sense of a person within five or ten minutes of meeting them. He could read their true nature through things like eye contact, word choice, body language, facial cues, voice tone and other intangible, unquantifiable characteristics. And he’d been so dead on accurate over the years, guys on the team often asked him to vet women before they invested emotionally or financially in them.

  Beckett had told Tate several times he didn’t think Tate should marry Lisa. But he’d never mentioned it again once they were married. And never once rubbed the breakup in Tate’s face.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tate told him. “Remember? The whole France thing?”

  Beckett jerked the stick out of Tate’s hand. “Get. Over. It. Get over it or you’re going to spend your whole goddamned life alone and miserable. Is that what you want?”

  “No. But I don’t want to spend it getting fucked over either.”

  “Then put up some fucking walls, take the hits, get a few scars and get your ass back in the game, just like you do out here. This is only half your life. Don’t live only half your life. Stop being a pussy and take some control.”

  He skated off the ice, said goodbye to Olivia and disappeared into the locker room, leaving Tate and Olivia alone in a huge arena, staring across the ice at each other. And Tate got that sick feeling in his gut, the one he got right before he and Lisa had always started fighting.

  So he did what Beckett told him to do. He put his head down, planted his hands at his hips and glided her direction while he shored up the skeletal barriers he’d put in place over the last week. Because he knew how freakishly sophomoric it was to be twisted over a woman he’d known, what? A day? Could he even say he’d known her a week when they’d only spent one night together?

  He was disgusted with himself when he slowed near the wall where she was standing with her hands piled on the ledge. When he met her gaze, he found her grinning, A silly little grin that lit up her pretty eyes with a familiar mischief. One that did all sorts of crazy things to him, heart, body, and soul.

  “Hi,” she said, soft, but chipper. Then she pulled the corner of her lip between her teeth and bent over the wall, grabbing for his jersey.

  “Whoa…“ Tate shot backward hands up, then realized how stupid he looked, and skated a circle as if he hadn’t just acted like a first grader trying to get away from a girl. He huffed a laugh, “No, no, no. Been there, done that. Learned my lesson.”

  “Tate,” she complained, leaning on the wall with her forearms. “Come here. I just want to say hello.”

  He skated random slow patterns just out of her reach. “You say ‘I just want to say hello’, I hear ‘I just want to fuck you up’.”

  She sagged, propped one elbow on the wall and dropped her chin in her hand. “I’m sorry about what happened with Quinn.”

  “So am I.” He still felt the mortification of the moment burn
in his gut. “And she wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

  “Pffft. She couldn’t wait to ream me.”

  “Is that all?” he asked, trying really hard to keep his voice even, cool, unemotional. “Cause I’ve been working all day. I really want to take a shower, get food and pass out.”

  She straightened and frowned at him. He could have handled it if that damned pouty lip of hers hadn’t come out. “Can’t we talk a minute?”

  “I don’t want to cut into the little time you have left here.” He started toward the exit again.

  And, sonofabitch, she stepped in his path. “You know we need to talk.”

  Fuuuuuuuuuck. They did need to talk. It was inevitable. But he didn’t want to do it now. He skated backward to put some distance between them, then made a small circle trying to get his emotions under control.

  When he turned toward her again, he found her sitting on the half wall, her legs hanging into the rink, plain white Keds with no laces on her feet. He had no damned idea why he found that so freakin’ adorable, but it pulled at his heart in half a dozen different ways.

  He scraped his skates to a halt, put his hands at his hips, met her gaze and waited. Memories pressed in from all sides. Split second video clips of their night. Olivia arching into him as he sucked her nipple into his mouth, moaning and riding him faster. Calling out his name and driving her hands into his hair as he bit down. Sprawled out on his stomach, still panting when Olivia sauntered back from the bathroom, draped her still-sweaty body across his back and released a handful of condoms on the mattress in front of his face with, “Catch your breath, stud. I want more of what you’re dishing tonight.”

  Olivia’s exasperated exhale pulled Tate back as she glanced toward the hundred foot ceiling and straightened. “Can we, I don’t know, go for a drink or something?”

  He frowned. “Really?”

  Her face fell into a belligerent expression that reminded him a little too much of Lily when she didn’t get her way and humor bubbled in Tate’s chest.