by Amy Olle
But at that moment, Haven didn’t hate the idea of attending Emily’s wedding. She wanted to see her friend and she was beyond curious to meet the man Emily, a girl too afraid to talk to boys in college, had fallen in love with and agreed to marry.
Though not exactly on the way from Seattle to Atlanta, Michigan fit her requirement for a change, and it’d put a fair distance between herself and the suddenly smitten Charlie.
She typed a reply. I can’t wait to see you and meet your guy! Maybe we can find the time to get into a little trouble, for old time’s sake?
Then she hit Send.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later, Haven peered through the tiny window at the blur of snow and ice pelting the airplane’s aluminum exterior. A wall of dark clouds engulfed the tin aircraft and when the turbulence shook the wine from her plastic cup, she sucked down the beverage in one terrified gulp.
Miraculously, they managed to land safely in Chicago, but to a noisy refrain of cancelled flights and delays. The next twenty-two hours were a special kind of hell for her. Travel delay hell.
She slept on the airport floor at the gate to her connecting flight, which finally touched down in Traverse City, Michigan a day later and an hour after the start of Emily’s wedding ceremony.
Haven picked up her car rental and set off for Thief Island. But the snowplows, overwhelmed by the storm, didn’t have the roads cleared, and what should’ve been a forty-five-minute drive along Michigan’s scenic western coastline instead became a harrowing slog through enough snow and ice to bury the car, along with her body, so completely that neither of them would be found until the spring thaw.
By the time Haven boarded the car ferry out to the island, Emily’s wedding ceremony would have ended. The boat lurched and pitched in the choppy waters of Lake Michigan and when they reached land thirty minutes later, Haven resisted the urge to drop to her knees and plant a kiss on the solid scrap of earth.
Dressed in the blue jeans and sweater she’d first donned almost two days before, Haven decided to drive straight to the Winslow Inn to change before heading to the restaurant where Emily and her guests had gathered to celebrate her marriage.
With Emily’s instructions, Haven easily found the stately home perched atop a hill overlooking the lake. Storm clouds darkened the early evening sky and warm lights from within the massive house glowed softly through the windows.
The front door swung open as she climbed the steps, and a handsome college-aged kid named Max showed Haven to a second-floor bedroom. After he’d left, she flipped on the bedside table lamp and hoisted her suitcase onto the wrought iron bed.
The room boasted high ceilings, wide-plank hardwood floors, a stone fireplace, and a set of French doors to frame the view of a darkening sky and churning lake waters. Haven seriously contemplated starting a fire and crawling beneath the shabby-chic quilts to sleep away the nightmare that was her trip.
With a weary sigh, she dug out a crumpled black pencil skirt and white wrap blouse. She hung them on the bathroom door while she showered, hoping the steam would loosen some of the wrinkles.
After her shower, she did a quick blow-dry of her hair, then put on a slapdash of makeup and her slightly less rumpled clothes before climbing back behind the wheel of her car to make the return drive to the quaint downtown she’d passed through on her way to the inn.
Darkness had settled over the island and as she neared the heart of Main Street, a tiny breath of wonder slipped between her lips. Decked out for the upcoming holidays, large pine wreaths hung from the vintage streetlamps while strings of golden Christmas lights zigzagged down the street, connecting the lampposts to one another.
She found a parking spot across the street from the lone Irish pub. Snow piled high along the sidewalks, and the freezing fluff and slush seeped over the edges of her heels to soak her nylons as she crossed the street.
A blast of warmth and noise greeted her when she ducked inside, and she drew up at the wall-to-wall bodies packing the pub’s interior. Emily had described the post-ceremony gathering as a small family dinner, not the rousing revelry Haven saw before her.
She squeezed between the crush of bodies, winding her way across the dimly lit room to the massive mahogany bar. She peered into the faces of those she passed by, keeping watch for her friend. At the bar, she rose up on her tiptoes and made a more thorough scan of the room.
That’s when she saw him.
A dark-haired man seated on a barstool at the opposite end of the bar. He wore a black tuxedo that hugged his broad shoulders and set off his dark coloring. His thick hair, cut short on the sides and longer on top, lay in playful disarray while a shadow clung to his square jawline. Brilliant white teeth flashed in his tanned face when he laughed at something the man next to him said, and Haven experienced a dizzying rush of pure appreciation.
Whoa.
Her breathing hitched a little higher.
The man at his side, also in a tuxedo, shared a likeness, but Haven didn’t get the chance to examine their similarities before a form appeared before her, blocking her view of the men.
“What can I get you?”
With a start, she looked up at the bartender, who also wore a tux. His vivid blue eyes glittered in his taut, youthful face, so at odds with the shock of his grayish-white hair.
Suddenly warm, she removed her wool coat. “A white zin, please.” She laid her coat atop her purse on the bar.
Against her will, her gaze slipped back to the careless-haired man.
To find him watching her.
Dark eyes of an indeterminate color eased over her face. No traces of humor touched his features, and the intensity of his gaze whipped heat into her cheeks. Blindly, she reached out for… something, and her hand knocked into the wineglass the bartender had set in front of her. The glass teetered and she lurched to steady it with both hands.
The hot guy’s puffy mouth curled with a slow, knowing smile.
Haven plucked a bill from her purse and thrust it at the bartender.
He held up his hands. “Drinks are free. Enjoy.”
She dropped the cash into a tip jar, snatched up her things, and twisted away from the bar.
With the desperation of a castaway seeking a life raft, she searched the faces in the crowd for Emily. When finally she spotted a flash of bright hair and a bulbous white gown, Haven plunged into the mass of people and fought her way to the booth in the back of the pub.
She didn’t allow herself another glimpse of the dark-haired man with the hot gaze.
A sexy groomsman was exactly the kind of chaos Haven did not need.
Jack Nolan wasn’t a romantic guy.
Some thought him intense, and he supposed that much was true. His emotions ran high and hot, and he’d learned a long time ago to let his passion guide him.
As a power forward in the National Hockey League, he wore it all on his sleeve, and that passion, along with a tireless work ethic, unwavering discipline, and a borderline insane willingness to put his body in harm’s way, had fueled him to a lucrative, decade-long career at the highest level of his profession.
No, Jack didn’t have the time or the inclination for romance, but even he grasped what a colossal shitstorm his brother’s wedding had become.
Already a hastily thrown-together affair, the sudden emergence of a blizzard on the eve of the nuptials managed to further inconvenience everyone. Meanwhile, the youngest Nolan brother, Leo, who after months of being missing in action, not only bothered to show up in time for the wedding, but proceeded to get drunk and drive his car into a tree. The groom, a local cop, managed to track down their wayward little brother, but in the mayhem, he missed the start of his own wedding by more than an hour.
Things went downhill from there.
Leo passed out in a church pew and provided a serenade of drunken snores throughout the rushed, tension-filled ceremony, and when the family arrived at the eldest brother’s pub for a private dinner over an hour past the scheduled
time, tired, hungry, and on edge, they found the place packed with people. Island folk, wishing to get a look at the woman who’d finally snagged Jack’s popular, outgoing brother Luke.
Now, from his vantage point on a stool at the bar, Jack watched one townsperson after another trap the obviously miserable groom in shallow conversation while the bride retreated to a corner by herself.
“How the hell did he coerce her into marrying him, anyway?” Jack posed his question to his older brothers, Noah and Shea. “She seems smarter than that.”
From the barstool beside Jack, Noah slipped him a sidelong look. “I don’t think there was all that much coercing involved.”
“It’s the face, isn’t it?” Jack said, referring to Luke’s uncommonly good looks. “Damn. I used to be that pretty, before I broke my nose.”
Shea, leaning with both elbows propped on the bar top, shook his head. “Was before then. When ye took that puck to yer teeth.”
“You got hit in the face with a puck?” Noah’s dark-eyed gaze dropped to Jack’s mouth. “Your teeth are perfect.”
“Are now. It happened five or six years ago.”
“When did you break your nose?”
Jack frowned, chasing the memory. “I was playing with the North Stars, so I must’ve been seventeen or eighteen.”
“You must’ve had a good doctor.” Noah examined Jack’s face. “I can’t even tell you broke it.”
“Neal made sure we were taken care of.”
“Who’s Neal?” Noah sipped his Guinness.
“Neal Thompson,” Jack said. “I lived with him and his family when I played in the junior league.”
Having moved overseas when Jack was fourteen, Noah hadn’t been around when Jack’s career in hockey took off after a scout spotted him playing and extended an invitation to him to play for some bigwig’s junior league hockey club.
So at fifteen, Jack had moved to Detroit to live with Neal Thompson, a former NHL player and guardian to several kids like Jack, young boys with a natural talent and enough hoped-for potential that they might one day turn into the next hockey star.
“How long did you live with them?” Noah asked.
“Just until I went to State.” Jack rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off the uneasy tension that arose with the memories. “Three years, I guess.”
At first, Jack had hated being away from his brothers, but his family didn’t have money, and with an ex-convict for a father, his future was less than certain. So he moved six hours away, suffered years of homesickness and grueling, ball-busting workouts for a chance to make something of himself. To make the name Nolan mean something more than ex-convict, drunk, or deadbeat.
He’d done it for himself, and for them.
A thoughtful frown puckered Noah’s brow. “If Neal oversaw your medical treatments, he was your guardian then?”
Jack inclined his head. “That’s right.”
Noah’s gaze shifted to Shea. “You were okay with that?”
A subtle current passed between the men.
“It was the opportunity of a lifetime.” Shea straightened to his full height. “He had a real shot at doing something great, so I convinced Dad to sign over guardianship.” After a pause, Shea added, “I’d do it again, if given the choice.”
“Judging by the results, it’s probably safe to say you made the right decision.”
Noah wasn’t the only brother who knew so little about Jack’s life. As much success as he’d had in his hockey career, there’d been a price, and nowhere was that price more evident than in an awkward conversation with any one of his four brothers.
Ready for a change of topic, Jack scowled at Noah. “What’s with you and Luke throwing these pretty redheads in front of me? You know I have a thing for redheads.”
With mention of his new wife, Mina, a satisfied smile spread across Noah’s face. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not exactly pining for female attention?”
Shea snorted. “Maybe because every available woman here tonight has tried to capture his notice at some point and he hasn’t gifted any one of them with his attention?”
Jack gritted his teeth. In the last three hockey seasons, he’d survived a lockout, an injury, months of rehab, a re-injury, more rehab, and at present, an increasingly pesky overreliance on painkillers.
The passing of his thirty-second birthday two months back had only served to remind him that time was not on his side. Hockey required everything he had just to stay competitive, but the sad fact remained that over eighty percent of his peers would retire by the age of thirty-three. Unless he proved to be an exception, going forward, every year would get a little harder. His body would grow a little weaker. A little slower.
It’d already begun. The recovery from his last injury, a minor groin pull, had taken twice as long as he’d expected. Now in his thirties, he was a half step slower than he’d been in his twenties, and his speed would only continue to deteriorate. Injuries would only accelerate the process.
It all added up to one thing: sooner rather than later, he’d cease to be a professional hockey player.
Then what?
He had no answers for that question. All he saw before him was emptiness. A future without passion or the need to push himself and his body beyond the point he ever thought possible. He’d go back to being a regular guy.
One of those Nolan boys. Not the oldest or the youngest, not the genius or the beautiful one. He’d be the one who used to play in the NHL. Or worse, he’d go back to being the idiot brother.
This year, and the next few after, was likely all he had left. If he was going to continue making it in the league and stave off retirement a few more seasons, his singular focus needed to be on hockey.
So instead of prowling the bar, he bared his teeth to Noah. “I don’t have time for women right now.”
While Shea slipped away to tend to a thirsty partygoer, Noah chuckled.
“You don’t have to make time for women,” he said through his laughter. “It’s a bit like a pit bull taking your balls between her teeth. When it happens, she becomes the single most important thing to you.”
But Jack was no longer listening to his brother.
A woman had detached from the swarm of bodies crowding the bar to emerge at the far end. He’d never seen her before, though he wasn’t sure how he knew that with so much certainty. He no longer knew most people living on the island, and those he was supposed to know he often didn’t recall having met.
But her, he would’ve remembered. Her long dark hair shimmered with lighter strands of caramel and honey, and her buttery smooth skin glowed in the dim lighting.
As Jack stared, her wide mouth fell slightly ajar and her huge dark eyes fixated on him. She blinked, as though confused or dazed, and the tip of her pink tongue slipped out to take a tiny taste of her full bottom lip.
His balls tightened.
She startled, as if coming to, and her hand knocked into her glass of wine. With goalie-like reflexes, she steadied the wineglass and, snatching up her things, whirled away from him.
Jack’s gaze dragged down the length of her body, admiring the way her skirt stretched tight across the generous swells of her hips and her lush, round ass. Long legs and shapely calves pulled him down, down, to the fire engine-red high heels on her feet.
He swallowed hard. He’d never been one to be swayed by a woman’s style choices—a naked woman always won out over one clad in a bikini or some silly lingerie—but those shoes screamed “fuck me!” and though he knew he shouldn’t, Jack very much wanted to oblige.
Luke appeared at his elbow then, a nasty scowl marring his perfectly formed features. “Have either of you seen my wife?”
Jack pointed to the booth in the back corner of the pub and Luke twisted around. He started forward, only to draw up sharply when Emily spotted the brunette with the hot ass approaching her table and a radiant smile lit up her small face.
The first smile Jack had seen on her that day. He
r fucking wedding day.
The air wheezed from Luke’s lungs with a low hiss.
“Who is she?” Noah gave voice to the desperate question banging around inside Jack’s chest cavity.
Luke gave his head a small shake. “That must be her friend. I forget her name.”
The two women embraced before sliding into the booth. Soon they chatted away. Jack had been around his brother’s new wife only a couple of times, but he’d never known her to be much of a talker.
By the slightly stunned smile on Luke’s face, he suspected her sudden animation was as much a surprise to him as it was to Jack. Luke’s smile lingered when he lifted his pint to his lips and sipped his drink.
Just then, someone slapped him on the back. “My man, congratulations.”
Luke coughed. “Thank you,” he croaked.
The man had a large middle and a receding hairline. “We’ve been wondering where the hell you been lately. Should’ve known you were holed up with some female.”
While the man ribbed Luke some more, Jack’s focus remained riveted by the woman in the red shoes. A frenzied storm made up of lust and need, and a fair bit of curiosity, whipped inside him.
He’d been a pro athlete for ten years, a college star before that, and in that time, he’d seen it all. Hookups and STDs, escorts and prostitutes, groupies and gold-diggers. Domestic abuse and infidelity. Unhappy marriages, unhappy mistresses, and messy breakups, complete with paternity tests and custody battles. He’d heard accusations of every kind, some true, some false, all with the potential to be reputation-destroying, or even career-ending. Each and every scandal had come with a media write-up of all the varied and perverse details, from penis size to kinks and fetishes, and performance issues.
Having watched successful, seemingly intelligent men risk everything they’d fought years to achieve for a blowjob from some skeezy stripper in a seedy back alley, Jack had chosen differently.
He’d yet to meet any one of their women and think she was worth the trouble, let alone the risk to his career.