Body Check: Thor
Nashville Sound Book 4
Alicia Hunter Pace
Contents
About this Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Also by Alicia Hunter Pace
About the Author
For Joe and Daniel, my number 11 and 39. You lived through it with me!
JPH
About this Book
Body Check: Thor
(Nashville Sound Book 4)
By Alicia Hunter Pace
Hockey is all he has left. Until a one-night stand with the boss’s daughter gives him something new to fight for…
* * *
Nashville Sound enforcer Thor Eastrom has been married, divorced, engaged, and dumped. But the hardest thing he’s ever done is bury his twin babies. The last thing he wants or needs in his life right now is a relationship. Over the past nineteen years he’s hoisted the Stanley Cup seven times and won gold and silver Olympic medals. All he wants is one more year in the NHL so he can go out as a member of the twenty-year club. Then he’ll decide what comes next.
* * *
Tradd Davenport’s dream is to succeed in the hardscrabble world of country music. Being daddy’s little princess has its perks, but it’s no longer enough to fulfill her—especially when she’s lost more than she ever gained by it. She has the talent and the drive—and she’s ready to work hard for something that her father’s money can’t buy her.
* * *
But sometimes life doesn’t give you what you want. It gives you what you need. Tradd knows her father’s hockey players are off limits. Thor knows that nobody touches the boss’s daughter. But Thor likes to play with fire—and Tradd wants to burn. When they discover their one-night stand has consequences, can they find a way to have everything they want? Or will navigating their new reality be as perilous as a broken skate on slick ice?
* * *
Sensuality Level: Sensual
Chapter One
It was not possible for heads to literally explode—at least not without external trauma. Pure anger with a side of stress couldn’t do it.
Lars “Thor” Eastrom knew this because otherwise, there would be blood, gore, and gray matter splattered on every wall of his ostentatious, over-priced, multi-turreted study in excess of a house. He’d known when he bought it that the mansion looked like it had been designed for someone with too much money and no taste, but Jonteau had wanted it and he’d thought he was going to marry Jonteau.
She’d thought it, too, until she thought better of it and ran off with an Italian soccer player, which was just as well except that now he was trapped in this part spaceship, part castle, part hotel. He had to admit now that the most attractive thing about Jonteau was that she had emphatically not wanted children. When Jonteau walked out, he’d half expected to sink into despair as he had after his divorce from Julia, but the sorrow had never come. If anything, he’d felt a bit foolish.
But back to the house—he should have refused to buy it when he walked through the front door for the first time and it struck him that the doubled-sided staircase and the balcony above it looked like a Transformer. It might be. It could pop into a monster at any minute. Maybe it would be one who ate annoying people, which would be everyone here apart from himself.
At this particular moment, Thor wouldn’t mind seeing his guests cannibalized, and even better that Tradd Davenport would end up being a tasty little morsel—except for one thing. Her father, Pickens, owned The Nashville Sound, the NHL team Thor played for, and Pickens would not be happy to learn that his princess had been a snack for Thor’s Transformer staircase.
It was New Year’s Eve, and as much as Thor hated this house, he hated this night more.
He didn’t like to go to parties, let alone give them. But he’d let Sparks Champagne and Robbie McTavish talk him into “Just a little get together—you know. For the team and dates.”
Truth was, he had a soft spot for those two. They reminded him of himself when he’d been fresh from Sweden to this country and the NHL—seventeen years old, happy, carefree, and the wildest thing on two skates. But that had been a long time ago—nineteen years—back before he’d been married, divorced, concussed, battered, won some, lost some, engaged, and dumped for a soccer player. (And about that—he’d be impressed with soccer players when they strapped on skates and played eighty-two games a season.)
That soft spot for Sparks and Robbie was a thing of the past now—at least for the moment. The last time he’d seen those two wild asses, they’d been standing on his imported Italian marble kitchen countertop spraying beer on what must have been fifty people smashed up against his Meneghini Arredamenti refrigerator, La Cornue Grand Palais stove, and each other.
If he had known even one of those people, he might have stopped the beer shower, but as it was, he left them to it. Robbie had been wearing a kilt and no shirt. Sparks had been wearing a half-naked girl with so much hair it had to be a weave.
Inasmuch as Sparks and Robbie certainly had embraced the situation, the hundreds of people jam-packed into this house were not the making of the wild twins. They didn’t have the wherewithal to corral or tenacity to invite that many people.
No. No. Tradd Davenport was the cause of this, though Thor was not completely without blame. He’d allowed her to get in this business.
A week ago at the Davenports’ house, after having dinner with Pickens and Mary Lou Davenport—something that never happened for any other Sound player but was a semi-regular occurrence for him—he’d met Tradd on the front porch coming as he was leaving. She technically didn’t live at Greenwood, Mary Lou’s ancestral mansion, anymore, but as much as she was there, she might as well have.
After exchanging pleasantries, he’d mentioned in passing that he was having a small party for the team—maybe their last New Year’s together in Nashville since Pickens was considering selling the team to someone in Massachusetts.
She’d said, “You know Sharon Orlov told you that one of the best ways to sell a house is to have a party and let people see it.”
It was true. Sharon was his teammate Mikhail’s wife and a real estate agent. She’d sold him his house and had been diligently trying to help him unload it ever since Jonteau had taken off two years ago.
“This will do no good,” he’d said. “It’s just the team. None of them want the house.”
Tradd had nodded. “Tell you what—there are a few bundles of new money in town. First hit record, first CMA award, and all of that. Why don’t you let me see what I can do about sending maybe a half dozen people by your party?” Tradd had been trying to break into country music as long as Thor had been in Nashville. Her stage name was Rita May Sanderson—something that sent Pickens into orbit every time he thought about it. Thor could have recited from memory what he’d come to think of as the “Rita May Rant.” He’d heard it numerous times on the golf course, at the dinner table, on the Sound plane, and once in a public restroom at the Ontario airport. “Rita May Sanderson, my ass! Who is that, anyway?
I’ll tell you and won’t even charge you for the information. It’s nobody. Is she ashamed of the name I gave her? That name means something in Charleston, South Carolina, where my people are from, and it ought to mean something to my daughter. But does it? No. I could get behind this country music thing if she were serious, but she’s not. She plays at it for a while and then goes on some kind of sabbatical like she is congratulating herself for doing a little work. There are no vacations, Thor. Not for successful people.” And on and on. Tradd had been a backup singer in some videos and made a record the year before, but it hadn’t done very well. Still, she’d been around enough that she knew people in the business, and he would take any help he could get off-loading that house.
“So, should I ask these people to your party?” she’d asked. “They’re just the kind who might be interested in a property like yours.”
He hadn’t exactly loved the idea of people he didn’t know at his party, but he wanted to be done with the Transformer, people-eating house. “Do you think they’d come?”
Tradd had laughed that laugh that reminded him of soft rain in the summertime. “Darling boy, you really don’t get it, do you? New money people want to meet famous people—politicians, actors, pro athletes. They will bust a gut getting there. Have you drained and covered your pool?”
“No.”
“Do that. And order some outdoor heaters if you haven’t. The night might be mild, and if anyone is interested, they will want to see the grounds. I wouldn’t be surprised if you sold the house that very night.”
He liked the sound of that.
He’d sincerely thanked her, though it wouldn’t have occurred to either of them for him to invite her. Single Sound players were not allowed to fraternize with Tradd unless her parents were present, and Thor was no exception. He wouldn’t have been speaking to her then if he had not run into her on her own porch.
“Call your caterer and increase your food and liquor order by twenty.”
“You said a half dozen.”
She’d nodded. “They might bring dates. And I’d like a little leeway in case I think of someone else. Besides you want to have plenty of food.”
He did. He had never gotten around to following her directive to cover the pool and rent heaters. If people wanted to walk around outside, they would just need to put on a jacket. But he had increased the food and liquor order.
Maybe he would check on the food and drinks now. At least it was something productive to do. Before leaving the kitchen, he noted that someone was sending the $500 margarita maker that Jonteau had insisted they had to have on its virgin voyage. He was not a margarita drinker.
He swam through the sea of dancing people in the reception hall, past the live band that he hadn’t known was coming. If they expected to be paid, they were going to be severely disappointed, unless Tradd intended to do it.
Finally, he made it to what Jonteau had called the banquet room, which was really just an oversized dining room and another room he’d never used. Come to think of it, he’d never used the small dining room either, or the breakfast room. He generally took his pizza upstairs and ate in bed. But since it was connected to the kitchen by a service hall, the banquet room was where the caterer had set up shop.
People, people everywhere. Someone spilled a drink on Thor as he plowed through toward the buffet—where he found empty platters and Remy Metoyer directing his staff to break down the chafing dishes and pack everything up dirty.
“What are you doing?” They couldn’t be leaving.
“We’re leaving.” The rotund little man put his hands on his hips as though he defied Thor to argue.
“Leaving? But the party started less than an hour ago.”
“The food is finished.”
“All gone?” But the empty platters told the story—not a bite of sushi, pork tenderloin, pizza, or a hot wing left.
Remy looked livid. “What did you think was going to happen? You originally told me a hundred people max. Then you added twenty more. There are at leave five hundred people in this house and more outside.”
Remy had a point. It was probably too to expect food to keep appearing like magic.
“What about the breakfast buffet that you were going to put out at midnight? Couldn’t you do that?”
“No!” Remy raised his hands and shook them. “I cannot. Even if we could get into the kitchen to make the food, there’s enough for 130 people. I allow for generous portions, but even at that, it would be like spitting on a bonfire.”
“Maybe you could go out and get something? It wouldn’t have to be fancy.”
“Believe me, it wouldn’t be.” Remy looked at Thor like he was the biggest idiot who had ever skated and bought a Transformer house. “Do you really think I am going to drive around from convenience store to convenience store buying Ritz crackers and dry roasted peanuts?”
Judging by the look on the man’s face, Thor guessed the answer to that was no.
“What a mess.”
Thor had been speaking to himself but Remy answered him anyway. “You should have thought about that when you invited all these people.”
“I didn’t invite them. They just came.” Though he knew that wasn’t true. Tradd was at the bottom of this.
Remy looked a little more sympathetic. “I’m sorry, but I can’t fix this, and I won’t hang around here and tell people what they would have eaten if there had been enough. My reputation is at stake.”
“At least the liquor seems to be holding out,” Thor said.
Remy shook his head. “Only because people are bringing it with them.”
There were probably seven or eight hundred bottles in the wine cellar that Jonteau had bought at auction from some former minor European royal. Maybe he should break those out, but like Remy said—it would be like spitting on a bonfire. If people got desperate, they could always go in the kitchen and let Sparks and Robbie spray them with beer.
Remy was speaking again. “I realize I’m in breach of contract because I’m not serving breakfast and we’re leaving before the appointed time, but you are also in breach. We were supposed to have total access to the kitchen, including an empty refrigerator and clear workspaces. The last time I looked, there were two hockey players standing on the counter and someone was passing around the fruit platters and pastries that we had already prepped for breakfast. We can’t even get in there to wash our equipment.”
“I’m sorry.” What else was there to say?
“So am I. Let’s just call it quits and call it even. I’ll leave and take my people with me, and you don’t have to pay me.”
Thor nodded, but he would pay him, plus a generous tip. He had screwed up enough in life that he’d learned how to apologize a long time ago. There would also need to be a gift. He’d have his agent, Oskar, figure out what was appropriate. Maybe some of that wine from the cellar. It wasn’t as if Thor ever thought about it, and he certainly wasn’t going to drink it. He was a beer guy.
What was he to do? He couldn’t feed his guests, couldn’t offer them liquor. He moved through the crowd trying to catch sight of someone—anyone—he knew who might help him.
Then he turned around and there she was, standing right in front of him.
She wasn’t Tradd Davenport tonight in her silk blouse and pearls. She was Rita May Sanderson from the top of her sleek, pale blond head to the tip of her tooled, knee-high, silver cowboy boots. In between, her long, thin body was encased in tight jeans that left nothing to the imagination and a top with spaghetti straps that was exactly the color of an excited nipple—and hers might be. Either that, or she was cold, which was a real possibility since the shirt looked more like underwear than anything else. In any event, the headlights were definitely on.
But Rita May Sanderson’s nipples were not for his viewing pleasure, because regardless of what she was wearing and what she was calling herself at any particular moment, she was still Pickens Davenport’s daughter.
She lifted a heavy cr
ystal wine glass to her lips and sipped what looked like red wine. Unless he was mistaken, that was one of those glasses that Jonteau had bought in Paris, and he wondered idly where Tradd had found it. He didn’t remember the brand, but he’d been startled at the charge that had shown up on his card. Remy had brought plain glasses—but then this woman was not one to drink out of a glass that could go in the dishwasher.
There were no rings on her elegant, long fingers, but she wore several heavy silver bracelets on each wrist, and he got the feeling the silver buckle on her belt was the real thing.
It took a while for his eyes to find their way to her face. She raised her chin defiantly, bringing attention to those cheekbones that looked like they could cut glass. Her full lips landed in a pout, and when she dropped her lids to shade those eyes that were exactly the color of a clear spring sky, it was hard to miss that she hadn’t spared the glitter around them.
Mary Lou would not have approved.
“So this is the half dozen people and their dates who might be interested in buying my house?” he said.
She shrugged and one of those tiny straps fell off her shoulder, causing the thin fabric to cling to her barely there little breast. “So they brought a few friends,” she said. “What of it?”
The air froze in his lungs. It was the What of it? that did it. She didn’t even try to deny it or defend it!
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