by Sara Rider
“That’s right, you prefer to act like a thug on camera.” The handful of players still in the locker room hushed.
“Just sign the damn jersey.”
“Sure thing. After you say sorry for your anger management problem last week.”
“You want me to apologize for giving you a beatdown you deserved?”
Liakos puffed his chest out and nodded. “On camera.”
Nick’s fingers curled into the rayon jersey. “Yeah, no problem. I’ll gladly do that after you publicly apologize for being a raging homophobe.”
“On second thought, I’m late for a meeting.”
“That’s all right,” Nick called after Liakos, who was storming out of the room like a child. “No one really wants a jersey from a rookie with more attitude than skill.”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, wondering how one kid could get under his skin so much.
“Hey, man,” Mike said, coming up to him. “I think you need that beer after all.”
“Yeah, I’m in.” Jillian wouldn’t be happy, but he didn’t care. He’d worn the damn tie and played as nice as he could with Liakos, and she’d still gone against his wishes with the merchandise. He’d earned a damn beer.
8
Jillian had been representing Nick for less than five hours and things were already falling apart. She’d waited for him outside the Vipers’ general manager’s door for more than twenty minutes before giving up. It would’ve been a heck of a lot easier to convince Allan Tyson that Nick was committed to a public image overhaul if he’d bothered to show up to the meeting, but she’d sucked it up and dealt with the circumstances like a professional.
It didn’t take her long to track Nick down at the pub he’d gone to with his teammates—the same one where Liakos had sucker-punched Ben last week. She should’ve predicted Nick would get territorial about the place, not wanting Liakos to claim the team hangout spot for his own. Still, a damn text would’ve been nice.
She maneuvered across the peanut-shell-covered floor to the table where a large group of oversize men with only about 75 percent of their front teeth intact sat, suit jackets and ties thrown over the backs of their chairs. A smaller group of the guys was ensconced in a booth at the opposite end of the room. Nick in one corner, Liakos in the other. At least her guy had the bigger support base at the moment.
She stepped in between two of Nick’s teammates, ignoring their looks and snickers, and reached across the long wood table to snatch the pint glass from his hand a half second before he brought it to his lips. She knew she’d surprised him just by the fact that she’d managed the feat, but he didn’t show it. He leaned back in his seat and gave her that dirty smile that somehow managed to look a million times sexier on his thirty-two-year-old face than it had a decade ago. “A word, Nick?”
He raised his eyebrows slowly. Arrogantly. “Sure.”
She crossed her arms and straightened her back. “Somewhere a little more private?”
The guy sitting next to Nick pushed his chair back with a screech and stood up. From his blond hair, boy-next-door good looks, and the sling on his arm, she recognized him immediately as Luke Anderson, the star left wing and all-around heartbreaker. “Hey, I’ll gladly take you somewhere more private if this chump is dumb enough to pass up the opportunity,” he said with a grin.
Nick was on his feet instantly, glaring at Luke. “She’s mine.”
She cleared her throat, set the pint glass down, and handed Luke a business card from her purse. “His agent,” she corrected coolly. “Jillian Nichols. Nice to meet you.”
Nick came around the table, picking up his beer on the way, and escorted her to a quieter corner of the pub with his hand on her back. She hated how the fine hairs on her nape stood up just from the feel of his large, possessive hand.
He pulled a chair out for her at an empty table and sat across from her. “Came to scold me?” He sipped from his glass defiantly.
Undaunted, she leaned forward and set her forearms on the table. “No. I came to see if you got all the stuff for the hospital visit. And to tell you I’m in talks with a company about a potential endorsement deal already—that is, if you haven’t blown it yet thanks to not one, but two fights with Liakos in the locker room today. Oh, and to tell you I got a text from Ben saying he’s having such a great time on his date that they decided to go out dancing after watching the game. He texted me because you turned your phone off and he didn’t want you to worry if he didn’t come home tonight.”
The barest hint of a smile creased his lips. “Good for Ben.”
The anger simmering inside her from his refusal to take anything she said seriously started to bubble over. “Look, you’re not the only one with something to lose here. I need to know working together isn’t going to be a problem.”
“You knew I wouldn’t like it if you turned my visit to the pediatric ward into some kind of publicity stunt.”
“I also knew that was the only leverage I had to keep you from getting suspended today after management heard about your locker room scuffle before the game. You didn’t give me much of a choice. But for the record, I negotiated to have only the team publicist show up to the ward and take photos that can be distributed to the local news outlets. No reporters. And I’ll be there to make sure things go smoothly. Besides, if you’d met me after the game like you promised, we could’ve talked about it first. Instead, I had to track you down here.”
He shifted forward, entrapping her arms inside his across the table. “We just got our asses handed to us. The mood in the locker room was pretty shitty. Add in Liakos screwing around with the pregame music and almost getting into it with our goalie, and it was pretty clear we needed a team beer. I couldn’t not show up.”
Her jaw dropped. “What kind of asshole messes with the goalie’s music? That’s sacrilege. Everyone knows that!”
“The same kind who wouldn’t sign a jersey for the kids unless I publicly apologized to him.”
Disgust curled her fingers into tight fists. No matter how much Nick had pissed her off tonight, Liakos was a million times worse. “Where’s the merchandise now?”
He gave her a cautious look, probably because of the sudden venom in her voice. “My trunk. I’m parked right out front.”
She raised her hand, palm up. “Give me your keys. I’ll take care of it.”
He hesitated for a moment with his eyebrows drawn tight but handed them over. With the distinctive Tesla keychain, she didn’t need to bother asking what he drove.
Ten minutes later, she was back in the pub with the size-small Liakos jersey pulled over her camisole, clinging to her meager curves. “Excuse me, Sebastian Liakos?” She found him at the bar and tapped him on the shoulder.
He turned around with a scowl that was replaced almost comically by a slick smile when his eyes traveled down to her chest, which was pushed out by an unnatural arch in her back. “I’m a huuuge fan. Would you sign my jersey?” She had to bite back the urge to vomit while speaking with such flirtatious perkiness.
“Anything for a pretty girl.”
Gag. She had ten years on him. Not to mention he looked like a teenager. Only someone with an unhealthy amount of arrogance would think she was actually interested in him. “Great!” She turned around so he could sign across his name on the back.
“So, you got plans tonight, beautiful? You’re welcome to come back to my place for a private party.”
“Will your fiancée be there? I’d love to meet her. She has, like, the best hair ever.”
Liakos scowled. She gave him a little finger wave and hightailed it back to the table where Nick waited.
“Clever,” Nick said in a low, hard voice as she scooted into her chair. “Now take that off.”
“Gladly.” She pulled the jersey over her head and tossed it to him, followed by his car keys.
He examined the
signature with a satisfied nod. “You’d look a lot better in a Salinger jersey. I know a guy who can hook you up.”
He flashed a quick smile—she could tell it was genuine rather than a smirk by the slight crinkle around his eyes. Nope, not handsome at all. Nothing but a bridge troll.
“Actually, I look a lot better in a thousand-dollar designer suit. Especially when I barged into the general manager’s office to demand they include me in any closed-door trade talks involving you.”
“I don’t imagine that went over very well.”
“I’m rather persuasive, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to convince a general manager to trade a player who wants to leave than keep one they want gone. Your GM is too influenced by what people think of his decisions. He traded one of your top players and two future draft picks to get Liakos from Tampa Bay. And now that Whittaker’s daughter is engaged to him, you can bet he’s getting pressure from her, too. I’ve heard she’s a real peach.”
Nick snorted. “She’s not so bad.”
Jillian raised her eyebrow. Alexa Whittaker’s reputation as a whiny socialite was well known throughout the city thanks to her tabloid-worthy antics.
“I’ve known her since she was a ten-year-old tomboy hanging around the stadium.”
“Regardless, Tyson put all his eggs in one basket with that deal, and he’s not willing to let it fail, no matter how bad it gets. I get the impression things have been rough with Liakos since day one.”
Nick chuckled. “Understatement.”
She pressed on. “Which means you’ve become the convenient scapegoat. It’s easier to blame an unwelcoming teammate than admit he made a bum deal. Trading you frees up a lot of dollars and signals that the Vipers are planning to rebuild from the ground up. But for now, we have the advantage of your no-trade clause. Theoretically, you can only be traded if you agree to the terms. But once this season is over, all bets are off.”
“ ‘Theoretically’?”
“There’s a behavior clause written into your contract. Probably something your previous agent didn’t think much about when he negotiated it. It wasn’t long ago that hockey stars could get away with just about anything off the ice. But the public’s not putting up with that anymore. Teams have been using that to turf undesirable players who get DUI or assault charges.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I know.” She wanted to grab his hand to reassure him further, but she didn’t trust herself to touch him without crossing a line. “But the clause is vague enough that they could use it for any kind of perceived offense. If the team really wants you gone because they think that’s the only way to solve their problems with Liakos, then they’ll find a way to do it. I’ve seen it before. They’ll make you so miserable that you explode and then they’ll use the behavior clause to terminate your contract early. That’s why you have to toe the line. Wear the suits, show up on time, and keep your mouth shut around Liakos. If he’s as bad as you say he is, one of you is going to self-destruct before the season ends. Let it be him, not you. In the meantime, you need to keep playing the way you did tonight and let me handle the rest. I need to be the one to run interference while you remind the world you’re more than just an enforcer.”
He stroked his thumb over the condensation on his glass in precise lines, making her think the challenges they were facing were finally starting to sink in. “It’s not easy for me.”
“Letting someone else handle things for once?” She was only guessing his meaning, but she’d learned a lot about him over the past few days. He didn’t like asking for help. Coming to her office and doing so had probably been harder for him than she’d realized. It was a huge step, but it wouldn’t be enough if he couldn’t find a way to trust her completely.
He nodded.
“Do you know who my father was?”
The faint lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled from the curious look he gave her. She didn’t blame him for not answering. It wasn’t something she advertised widely.
“Max Nichols.” She braced herself for the inevitable moment of realization. His eyes would go wide, first with surprise, then with pity. A dramatic wince or condescending smile—depending on which aspect he felt like judging her on—would follow.
But Nick surprised her. He sipped his beer, revealing no trace of his thoughts in his expression. “I’d wondered. Nichols is a pretty common name, but it explains why a girl from Boston ended up obsessed with hockey. Your dad was a pretty great goalie in his day.”
She exhaled, uncoiling some of the tension in her lungs. “Then you know he was screwed over by his agent.”
He nodded again, saving her from having to explain the sordid history of how her family lost everything thanks to an unscrupulous agent who stole every penny her dad had earned in his modest NHL career before disappearing off the face of the earth. How her dad died of a heart attack two weeks later, forcing her mom to find a minimum-wage job after decades out of the workforce.
“I didn’t take you on as a client to exploit you or get rich at your expense. I’m in this business to help you. You’ve got enough on your plate already. You need to keep being a leader on and off the ice. Leave the stressful stuff to me. It’s what I do.”
“That mean you aren’t going to give me a hard time for going out with the guys once in a while?”
She crossed her arms. “I can admit that maybe the no-beer rule was a bit harsh. How about we compromise? Go out all you want, but stick to one beer.”
He leaned forward and said in a low whisper, “How hard was it for you to just admit that?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m capable of admitting when I’m wrong. I just don’t do it very often. Or enjoy it.”
“Should I buy you a drink to celebrate this moment of personal growth?”
She grabbed one of the cardboard coasters from the table and threw it at his chest like a Frisbee. It flew wide of his left arm, proving she really couldn’t hit a brick wall from two feet away. “No, thanks. Not supposed to drink for forty-eight hours after a concussion. Doctor’s orders.”
His expression changed, concern etching a frown on his full lips. “Shit. I forgot about your head.”
“It’s fine. I’m going to go home tonight, catch up on some other work and maybe some sleep.”
She stood up to go. He rose to his feet, rounded the table, and caught her by the upper arm before she managed to slip her coat on. “You should stay with me again tonight. You shouldn’t be alone.”
She fought the urge to rub her suddenly sweating palms against her thighs. Nick was dripping with so much raw masculine intensity, he was pretty much incapable of not sounding like he was hitting on any woman he spoke to. It meant nothing, and even if it did, that wasn’t a line she was willing to cross. The arrangement between them was purely professional. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will. But you were hurt pretty badly. Don’t you want someone to take care of you just this once?”
His fingers tightened around her arm. The pressure against her tender skin was just shy of painful, but his expression was soft with pity, making her throat go dry. “I can take care of myself, just like I take care of everything else. It’s what I do.” She shrugged off his hand and walked out of the bar before her second thoughts could catch up with her.
9
Nick hadn’t grown up with any kind of organized religion—not unless you counted his dad’s daily worship of Jack Daniel’s—but even he knew that working on Christmas Day was sacrilege.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” he said to Charlie, a ten-year-old boy who’d just told him he used to play goalie for his hockey team before he got sick. Nick waved Mike over, knowing it’d make the kid’s day, then headed out to the hallway, where Jillian stood next to the boxes of Vipers gear and presents with her phone surgically attached to her ear. Even in jeans and a cream-colored swea
ter with a wide neckline that offered a teasing hint of her shoulders, she looked more polished than casual.
“I don’t care how small she is. Jaime Chen is not sleeping in a double bed. She’s soccer royalty, which means she needs at least a queen bed. Preferably a king. If you can’t get her a proper hotel suite, then you can find someone else to endorse your event,” she barked into the phone, oblivious to his presence. “Good!”
She ended the call before leaning her head against the wall with her eyes squeezed shut and letting out a frustrated growl.
“Do you ever stop working?”
She opened her eyes and yelped with surprise. “You scared me,” she said breathily, placing her hand on her rising chest.
“You didn’t see a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man in a Santa costume walking toward you in a fluorescent-lit hallway?”
She gave him a look that suggested she had no patience for his teasing, but he could see the subtle curve of her pink-stained lips she was trying to repress. “I can get a little bit single-minded when I’m working. And for the record, your beard needs to be white and your stomach is not nearly big enough to make for a convincing Santa Claus.”
He liked seeing her smile. More than that, it bugged him when she didn’t, which was a strange realization for him. One that made the fake-fur collar feel extra hot and itchy against his neck. He’d spent his life surrounded by men from the time he’d first shown an inkling of hockey talent as a ten-year-old. There’d been women—lots of women—but none who lasted long enough for him to care about. Even though Jillian was his agent, the way she had fought for him over the last few days was completely different from how his previous agent had operated. She had the same kind of fierce protectiveness he did for the select few people he considered family and friends.
“You don’t think I’m getting a little flabby around the middle?” He slapped his hand against his red-velvet-covered belly, hoping to coax another smile out of her. Her expression remained impassive, but a pink flush swept across her cheeks.