Rhian sidled down a row of seats at the front of the room. Garrick found Savannah when Rhian sat down next to her.
Of course the most handsome man in the room was sitting next to Savannah. His friend’s ridiculous good looks didn’t usually bother Garrick, but this morning they absolutely irritated the shit out of him.
He slid down the same row and sat on Savannah’s other side. She acknowledged him with a glance and something that might even qualify as a smile before turning back to Rhian. “I think the increased reps will make a difference, build strength…”
Garrick shook his head. They were talking about work, of course. What else did Savannah talk about with anyone on the team?
Garrick glanced over his shoulder. Bobby was still at it, trying to burn holes in the backs of his and Savannah’s heads.
Bobby had issues. Big buckets full of issues. Garrick worried those issues would spill onto Savannah again before this thing was done.
Mark, Rick, and the rest of the team’s senior staff came into the room, and people moved to their seats. When Rupert Smythe entered the room, instant silence descended.
Rupert was a tall and slender man—and as far as Garrick could tell, perennially nervous. His hand worried the handle of his briefcase, his gaze darting around the room. Garrick would bet his last nickel Rupert’s palms were sweaty and that he’d scream like a little girl if someone sneaked up behind him and yelled “boo!”
As entertaining as that thought was, Rupert’s attendance at this meeting likely meant bad news. He had only met Rupert three times in twelve years. During that time, as now, the team was owned by Edwin Lamont, a notorious recluse who reportedly never left his estate on Cape Breton Island. Instead, Lamont sent Rupert as his proxy to play the role of business manager and mouthpiece.
The “someone is in deep-shit trouble” category was now at the top of the list of possible reasons for this meeting.
From the stifling silence that held the tongues of the usually bawdy and outspoken crowd, Savannah knew the stranger at the front of the room was either very important or very dangerous. The way Garrick watched the man through narrowed eyes made her think their mystery guest might be both.
He looked to be in his thirties. His bespoke charcoal suit flattered his broad shoulders and long legs, and if she wasn’t mistaken, was likely more valuable than her entire wardrobe. Even the fluorescent lighting couldn’t dull the gleam of his oxblood leather briefcase. Gold flashed on his wrist. His fingers shook. Her unease multiplied.
“Hello, everyone!” He addressed their group in a crisp English accent.
No one responded.
The man blinked a few times, swallowed hard, and smiled weakly. Her dread, along with the tension she was picking up from everyone in the room, grew. She looked around her. All eyes stared straight ahead. A movement in the back of the room caught her attention and she hid her wince when her gaze locked with Bobby’s.
His brows went up and his smug sneer morphed into an evil smile.
She turned to face forward.
“As many of you know, my name is Rupert Smythe and I am Mr. Edwin Lamont’s business manager.”
That solved the mystery of his identity and the crowd’s reaction to him.
He continued on, launching into a tale about how much Mr. Lamont had enjoyed hockey over the years, how he played as a boy and other drivel Savannah assumed was meant to be reassuring.
She tuned back into the details of Rupert Smythe’s message when he said, “I’m sorry to say, though, that Mr. Lamont has decided to put the Moncton Ice Cats up for sale.”
Murmurs rippled across the room. Savannah sat perfectly still, her heart pounding, her hopes for Moncton being the first leg of a long, successful career in hockey taking a serious hit.
“Why?” someone called from the back of the room.
Mr. Smythe grimaced. “Well—” He paused, staring out at the crowd as if searching for the answer. The silence drew out until Savannah wanted to smack the man in the back of the head to get him to spit it out. “In truth, the team has been losing money. The arena, too.”
Both were owned by Lamont.
“Other teams make money. What are you doing wrong?”
Savannah almost smiled at that question. Bless Sheila’s heart. She had brass ones.
Rupert Smythe’s cheeks turned red. The man was handsome, even when flustered and blushing. Almost pretty. Probably not a great attribute when speaking to a room full of alpha-male hockey players.
“Yes, well, it’s long and complicated, actually. But trust me, it’s not something that is easily changed.”
Pretty and dim-witted, apparently. Insulting the intelligence of a woman like Sheila in a room full of her colleagues was going to end badly.
The players shifted in their chairs, no doubt fighting the urge to stand up and act. Hockey players weren’t known for being passive. Most of the people in this room lived to come off the boards fighting.
She clenched her fingers in her lap and resisted the urge to put a soothing hand on Garrick’s bouncing leg. New ownership, and possibly new management, didn’t bode any better for a twelve-year veteran with a stubbornly sore groin and hip than it did for the only woman athletic trainer in the league.
“It is our hope,” continued Rupert over the rumblings of the crowd, “indeed our goal, to find a buyer soon who will be interested in keeping the team intact.”
The words helped silence some of the agitation.
“You’ll be kept aware of the progress through Mark, your manager.” As if everyone in the room didn’t know who Mark was.
Mark’s thin smile spoke volumes.
“And of course, all questions should be directed to him.”
Of course. Mr. Rupert Smythe appeared to be fully prepared to run from the room screaming before the barbarians got hold of him. Maybe he wasn’t that dense after all. Right then, she sure wanted to body check him and that shiny briefcase of his into the cement wall.
Garrick rose from his seat as soon as the meeting was over, careful to keep the wince off his face. Stupid fucking hip. He and Savannah had been slowly making progress on his groin pull, but the hard work was provoking the arthritis in his hip.
Arthritis.
The word made him feel…geriatric. It didn’t help that he was damn close to hobbling as he stepped into the aisle.
He caught Savannah watching him and stopped, forcing his teammates to detour around him as they moved toward the door. Her narrow gaze was fixed on his legs until it shifted to his throbbing hip.
“What?” he asked. Defensive much?
She shrugged. “Nothing.”
Her pursed lips told him it was something, but he wasn’t about to argue.
She cocked her head and moved toward the door. “Come to my office. I have something you can take and we’ll do some stretching. Maybe stick you in the tub.”
He opened his mouth to decline, to steer clear of the lovely Savannah and her lair. But a soak in the tub would be bliss for his sore hip and ease the tight muscles in his groin. He could only hope the deep water would disguise any other groin issues, should they arise.
“Okay, sure.”
Bobby leaned against the wall just inside the door to the hallway, his eyes fixed on Savannah. Garrick stepped forward—without anything resembling a hitch in his gait, damn it—and crowded Bobby back against the wall, blocking his view. He held a hand out to indicate Savannah should precede him through the door.
He was enjoying being able to fuck with Bobby and appear chivalrous all at once—a win-win for him—until Savannah shot him a dirty look.
Right. Not supposed to treat her differently than the guys.
He smiled at Rhian instead. “Come on, Rhi, let’s get going.”
He fought not to laugh at Rhian’s deadpan stare. Garrick didn’t often hold the door for the perfectly capable defenseman as if he were the Queen of England. Indeed, this was a first. Luckily, Rhian caught on.
With a smi
rk, Rhian leaned down to murmur in Savannah’s ear. “Excuse me.”
She hesitated, then rolled her eyes and passed through the door. Rhian shot him a quizzical look and Garrick tilted his head toward the locker room, indicating he’d explain later.
Now, though, he had a date with a beautiful woman and her hot tub.
Savannah almost felt guilty when Garrick let out a long, painful groan as he slowly lowered himself into her tub. The cistern was filled with one hundred and three degree water that reached the middle of Garrick’s bare chest, which she studiously pretended not to notice at all.
Though, she’d have to be dead not to admire the heavy swell of muscle. The skin stretched over each curving pectoral appeared velvet soft, his cinnamon nipples puckered tight in spite of the warm water and steam. His shoulders were possibly the broadest she’d ever laid her hands on—professionally or otherwise. Certainly the thickest, her hand barely able to span their width while stretching him.
He’d come to her office after the team meeting earlier, pretending his hip wasn’t killing him. As if she couldn’t see that from a mile out in poor visibility. He’d eagerly asked her for “at least four” ibuprofen before promising he’d go change into something he could wear in the tub and come right back.
The crestfallen look on his face when she’d informed him he wasn’t that lucky and she wasn’t that careless had been priceless. She’d forced him up on the table to investigate with her own eyes and hands.
Finally, after the second wince he couldn’t hide, he sighed. “It’s arthritis, okay? Just send me off to the nursing home already.”
She’d laughed. “No shit it’s arthritis. But it’s been there are all season and not bothered you this much before.”
He’d been surprised she’d known. Men were always convinced of two things. One, that they should never admit to any physical ailment or weakness. And two, that this actually worked as a means of hiding these weaknesses from the women who cared about them.
Not that she cared about Garrick. Well, she did. The way she cared about all her players and their physical condition. It was her job.
They’d worked through a vigorous set of stretches together, then she’d sent him to the weight room to do more, and to get on the equipment and run through the standard program she’d developed for him at the beginning of the season, with a few modifications. In the meantime, she worked with a couple of other players, stopping by the weight room under the guise of showing Alexei Belov, the Ice Cat’s primary goalie and resident crazy Russian, a leg stretch that worked best while straddling the bench press. Not that she’d really believed she’d find Garrick goofing off, but she was concerned he might cut reps or weights to ease the burden on his hip. Or worse, keep going when his body was telling him to stop.
She was good at her job, but her dictates were still best guesses on how hard the body could be pushed, and no creature was more stubborn about ignoring biological messages like pain than the hockey-playing male.
Garrick had appeared only appropriately miserable, so she’d left him to it.
Now, though, the guilt nipped at her. His arms trembled as he lowered himself into the hot water, obviously taking all his weight in an effort not to rely on his legs. Usually when one of the guys was in her tub, she would work at her desk and catch up on emails, but today she was too wound up after that damn team meeting to sit still.
She approached the tub quietly, careful not to brush the thickly muscled arm running along the edge. His eyes were closed, his head resting on the rim. Dark hair, damp with the sweat of his workout and the steam of the tub, curled over his ears and along his neck. His long lashes rested on flushed cheeks, a fringe of inky silk against his warm skin. He would have looked peaceful if there hadn’t been a crease marring the skin between his eyebrows.
“What did you think of the meeting today?” she asked.
His eyes flashed open and he held her gaze. His dark amber irises deepened to chocolate as she watched, fascinated, her feet rooted to the floor.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I keep telling myself it will be fine and we’ll just have a new owner, which won’t matter much since no one ever saw the old owner.”
Garrick nodded, looking down at the swirling water. “I guess that’s true.” He turned those chocolate eyes back to her. “But then why do I feel so damn nervous?”
Savannah sighed. “Because we’re screwed.”
Garrick laughed, though he didn’t sound like he found it funny at all.
Chapter Four
Garrick raced back to the locker room like the rink was on fire and the showers were the only safe place to hide. Their win that night had been a long and hard-fought. But as much as he wanted to sit and bask in the glory of a good night on the ice, he had other things to worry about.
Specifically, Savannah.
For the past few weeks she’d been a changed woman on game nights. Now she moved around the bench, worked more proactively with the team, and shouted encouragement like a seasoned, slightly foul-mouthed professional. The good news was the team was starting to think of her as something other than an uptight bitch. The bad news was her growing credibility had provoked Bobby into finding new ways to harass her.
She ignored Bobby at all times, Garrick had noticed. He’d made it his habit to keep an eye on them both as much as possible. Bobby, though, always found a way to bump into her, crowd her, or just generally make a nuisance of himself. Like how after four years on the team, Bobby now used the door right in front of where Savannah stood for the games instead of jumping the boards.
To his knowledge, she hadn’t complained to Mark about any of it. Garrick wanted to be mad about that, but even he couldn’t point to any particular incident where Bobby had done something wrong, per se. He was just being an asshole in a more general sense.
Garrick suspected the cat-and-mouse routine, in addition to Savannah’s game duties, was exhausting for her. Tonight, apparently, she had hit her limit.
Bobby had come sailing through the door, caught his skate, and careened directly into Savannah. He’d slammed her into the tunnel wall with sufficient force to bounce her head off the concrete while pinning the rest of her with his full weight and equipment—hockey and otherwise.
Garrick had leapt to his feet, heart pounding, not knowing how badly she was hurt. He’d wanted to leap the length of the bench and pound Bobby, the stupid fucker, into the floor mats.
But Savannah had yanked herself free at the same moment Mark’s hand landed on Garrick’s arm. She’d stared Bobby right in the face, bright color in her cheeks, and shoved him, repeatedly and with all her weight, forcing him to stumble toward the bench while she tore into him.
“You’re a fucking baby who needs to learn some manners. Go home to your momma if you want to cuddle. I’m here to work.”
Her last shove had nearly dumped Bobby on his ass. Heads had spun and Mike Erdo’s loud guffaw was audible above the noise of the crowd.
Before Bobby could react, Mark was in his face. “Sit there and shut the fuck up, or you’re out of the game.”
Bobby’s innocent exclamation of “what the fuck?” didn’t fool anyone, but everyone went back to what they’d been doing, preparing for the next line change.
Mark had checked on Savannah, but she waved him off. She hadn’t spared Bobby another glance, so she hadn’t seen the glare he’d drilled into her back. The death-ray was going nuclear and so, Garrick suspected, was Bobby.
Garrick dashed out of the showers, a towel barely clinging to his hips, and jogged back to his locker. He ignored Rhian’s raised eyebrow, only cocking his head toward Bobby’s locker before throwing on his clothes. He’d told Rhian about what he’d walked in on in Savannah’s office, as well as the ridiculous staring contests and bench antics, so Rhian merely nodded and got out of his way.
Garrick’s hip twinged, a bolt of pain shooting down his leg as he thrust it into his pants, and he smiled griml
y. He even had an excuse to go visit the trainer.
Five minutes later he was dressed and outside her door, waiting while she cut tape and unwound bandages from the last of her customers. He entered her office as she scribbled some notes on what Alexei told her, while Mike listened in with interest. Garrick smiled. Savannah was growing a respectable fan club.
Fortunately, there was still no sign of Bobby.
Once she sent his teammates out, he dropped his wraps in the bin and went to her medicine chest.
“Mind?” He indicated the ibuprofen bottle. He was eating the damn things like candy these days.
Savannah smiled. “Sure, help yourself. No more than four though. And only two tomorrow until after you work out.”
He sighed. “You’re mean.”
She laughed. “I’m careful. And you’re trouble. The last thing you need is to dull your body’s myriad messages telling you to stop.”
And isn’t that the sad fucking truth?
Savannah saw his no doubt pathetic expression and cocked her head. “What?”
He shook his head, feeling stupid. And old.
“What?” she asked again, coming closer. “Did I say something to upset you?”
She didn’t usually care if she did or did not say something to upset anyone, but she probably didn’t often see grown men hanging their heads like sad puppies in her office.
“It is telling me to stop, isn’t it?” He hadn’t intended to ask the question. At least, not out loud—to Savannah or anyone else. Silently, he asked himself every day.
She drew up short, her eyebrows pinched together. “Your body?”
He sighed. “Yes. My stupid, beat-up, crappy old body.”
One side of her lips quirked up. “It’s not a crappy body.” A hint of a blush crept into her cheeks. “It’s a strong body, Garrick. It’s a body that’s in better shape than ninety percent of the men on earth, and probably ninety-nine percent of the men your age.”
Garrick winced. “Holy crap, you just said men your age.”
Savannah laughed. “Stop it. You’re what? Thirty-four? I’m sorry if it’s hard to accept, Garrick, but the truth is you can’t play hockey forever. Not professional hockey.”
Fair Play (Hat Trick, Book 1) Page 3