Defending the Reaper: A Standalone Steamy Sports Romance (The Playmakers Series Hockey Romances Book 5)

by G. K. Brady

  “Yes. I copied it from the paperwork. You’re Darryl—or is it Daniel?— Grimson.”

  The balloon deflated. “David. Dave.” Why hadn’t he thought to discover her name? “And your name is?” Fuck. Could he sound any stupider? He acted like he was meeting a dance partner at a hoedown. Next he’d be asking if she wanted a cup of punch.

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yeah,” she bit. “You can replace the gardenia plants and the thousands of lights you destroyed, take them to my client’s, and get them arranged in the next, oh,” she tilted her forearm and glanced at a rugged watch that was too big for her slender wrist, “two hours, so I don’t lose this project.” Before he could ask what she did for a living, an old-fashioned ringtone chimed. Her voice softened when she answered. “Hey, Finn.”

  Dave turned away while she gave Finn her location. He pulled up his Uber app with a sigh and ordered a ride.

  Behind him, the other driver was ending her call. “See you in ten.”

  “You’ve got a ride to … wherever it is you need to go?”

  “I’m covered,” she retorted.

  “Okay. Good.” He stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his track pants. “Um, so pick out whatever replacement vehicle you want, and I’ll pay for it.”

  She snorted. “I doubt the vehicle I need will be covered by what insurance pays.”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. This is on me. I’ll cover whatever insurance doesn’t. In fact, keep the insurance money, and I’ll pay for the whole thing.”

  Her arms seemed to cross her chest on their own, and her eyebrows pinched together. “Are you for real?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Tilting her head, she scanned him and seemed to see him for the first time. “So what are you? A trust fund Wookiee?”

  “A … what?” He didn’t school the bewilderment that surely commandeered his features.

  “A Wookiee. You know, Star Wars. Big, hairy animal that growls and scares the crap out of people.”

  Unable to hold back, he burst out with a humorless laugh. “Is that the impression I give off?” Okay, so maybe the beard needed a trim—and the hair. And oh, that’s right: he hadn’t put his front teeth in before he’d stormed out of the arena. Not that he usually did anyway. Why bother? He didn’t go to the trouble unless he was making an appearance at a black-tie fundraiser. Or going out with a woman he wanted to impress. Which he hadn’t done since before Nicky.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know my impression of you,” she snarked.

  You’re probably right.

  Chapter 2

  Let's Get It Started!

  Ellie Hendricks slumped against the passenger door and stared out the window at nothing in particular. Like her thoughts, the view was one big blur. “What a shit day this turned out to be,” she mumbled.

  From the driver’s seat, Finn side-eyed her. “You sure you don’t need to see a doctor? I mean, what if you’ve got a neck or back injury that won’t show up for months?”

  She smoothed her dirt-stained pants over her thighs. God, she needed to find some time to shop for new clothes, even if they came from Amazon and didn’t fit right. But when she got the rare hour of free time, she invariably wound up vegging out, all good intentions falling to the wayside. “If it’s not going to show up for months, then how will a doctor see it now? Besides, I don’t have the luxury of being injured.” The curse of the self-employed. She cut him a look, and the concern on his face made her regret it instantly. She reached out and squeezed his forearm lightly. “Finn, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be snippy.”

  “It’s okay. You’re entitled.”

  Remorse took some of the iron out of the dark cloud pressing down on her head. “Thanks again for coming to get me.”

  “No worries. It’s what we do for each other, El. God knows you’ve done it for me more times than I care to count. I still have a long payback road to travel before I’m caught up.” He squirmed in his seat.

  True.

  An uncomfortable history hung between them by a thread—one he wouldn’t want to be reminded of—so she ran in a different direction. “And thanks for handling Mrs. Monroe. How did she deal with the fact we won’t be finished until tomorrow?” Ellie couldn’t keep from cringing. She’d been walking a tightrope with Mrs. Monroe for months and had won the job decorating her mansion for her daughter’s wedding by the slimmest of margins. That margin had been the promise that everything would be completed days before the wedding. Which was tomorrow.

  Finn chuffed and swiped at a lock of sun-bleached blond hair that had fallen in his eyes. “After she recovered from her stroke, I explained what happened to you and reassured her all the decorations would be done in time for the wedding.”

  Inwardly, Ellie groaned. Finishing the job while the caterers were setting up was specifically the scenario Mrs. Monroe didn’t want. And despite Ellie’s meticulous planning, fate had decided to toss a few roadblocks in her path to trip her up. Such as Mrs. Monroe deciding at the last minute that gardenia plants were the perfect accent—and only choice—for the indoor venue. When Ellie’s special order for said gardenias was accidentally shipped to a different customer, she and Finn had spent days scouring the planet for replacements. The last plants had been in Ellie’s vintage Toyota Sienna van on their way to the Monroes. Now those plants were debris swept to the side of an intersection littered with her crushed van parts.

  And that was only one of the stacks of dominoes that had cascaded from the get-go on this prestigious, highly coveted job. This doomed-to-fail job.

  The white globe lights she’d ordered had arrived in time—in the form of garish color-change lights. They’d looked like something that belonged in a brothel, not Mrs. Monroe’s elegant white-and-gray marble spaces. The substitutes for that screwed-up order had shipped just in the nick of time. Thousands upon thousands of white twinkle lights. And the lion’s share of them had also been in the wreck.

  As for the very cool curtains of LED lights Ellie had planned to hang around the venue, the supplier had lost her order and was too backed up to get her new ones.

  So much for impressing the tony guests and picking up higher-end jobs. If anything, this would earn her negative publicity, which she did not need. She’d spent the better part of the last two years cleaning up the debt and countering the bad press her ex had garnered. This was not where she’d expected to be at the ripe age of twenty-eight. She’d always seen herself with kids by now—two at least, with the third and fourth coming before she turned thirty-four—working from home as a landscape architect so she could be a full-time mom while Will ran the landscaping business. When he was home, they’d go bike-riding or camping or skating. They would be the perfect family she and Will had dreamed of when they’d started dating in college.

  “Just a little longer, Ellie,” he’d reassured her during the mayhem of their early years launching their landscaping company. “The business is almost to a point where we can start that family we’ve always talked about.” But he’d been living a lie. That lie had grown and compounded and splintered into a million other lies, and she’d never seen any of it coming. She’d been blindsided, her happily-ever-after shattered to smithereens.

  What she’d been left with were the shards of a company on the brink of bankruptcy, the aftermath of a sham marriage, and the anger and resentment that went with it all—not to mention the same unanswered question: How had she missed every single sign?

  She sighed and circled back to her current … challenge. “Did Mrs. Monroe calm down?”

  “Eventually. As we speak, Felipe’s picking up bloomless star jasmine from a dozen different nurseries—that’s the closest they had to gardenias—along with fake blooms everyone in his family will attach tonight. He swears they’ll look like the real deal.”

  Ellie pictured lots of hands twisting white pipe cleaners around stems laden with glossy green leaves, and her ey
es almost rolled back in her head. No way would they resemble the real deal, and no way would the fakes sneak past Mrs. Monroe.

  Fortitude, girl! her inner Ellie barked. Or was that her dad’s voice? What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger! Shouldn’t she be strong enough to give Superman a run for his money by now? At least the imitation gardenias wouldn’t kill her, so there was that. Besides, what choice did she have this late in the game?

  “He’s doing this at no charge, you know,” Finn added quietly. “He feels really bad about what happened.”

  “As he should! Nothing like being busted by ICE for hiring workers he recommended, who happened to have fake documents.” She shuddered as the memories slammed into her, stirring up a riot of terror, outrage, and humiliation that swamped her just as they’d done the day the ICE agents had raided her client’s work site. She’d been appalled and utterly impotent to stop it—they’d had surprise and a federal warrant on their side. The sound of the agents barking orders, the workers shouting in fear, the metallic clink of handcuffs, and the neighbors’ horrified gasps still swirled in Ellie’s head. They’d hauled her team and her away so fast she hadn’t been able to pull up all her company signs and contain the bad publicity.

  I’ll never get work in that subdivision again.

  Other recollections from that shocking day included spending time in a cramped, dingy interrogation room seated at a shabby table with nothing but a cold cup of coffee that tasted like yesterday’s bitter dregs while an unsmiling officer grilled her over and over. Ellie prided herself on holding back tears, but that day she’d been mortified by how often they had completely overrun her.

  It’s over. For now anyway, though ICE still suspected her of misdeeds. Still watched for her slip-ups. Still showed themselves from time to time as a courtesy reminder she was on their radar.

  She slouched a little farther into the seat with a resentful grumble. Felipe had assured her it had come as a shock to him too and was, in his own indomitable way, trying to help. She might have fired him if she could have afforded to, but she was shorthanded. Besides, he was Felipe. He’d been part of the business since the beginning and was the only employee loyal enough to stick around after the Will fallout. Sure, he screwed up—who didn’t?—but loyalty was worth its weight in … gardenias.

  A sigh escaped her. She couldn’t count on her Monroe dreams panning out. What else could she do to generate enough revenue to keep regular paychecks coming for Felipe and Finn? They both relied on her, and right now she was failing them miserably. But they never complained—which made her feel worse.

  Ellie straightened. “What about replacement lights?” She braced herself for more bad news.

  “Ah. Now there I have some good news. The big box stores are already selling Christmas merchandise—can you believe that?—so I’ve placed a shit ton of orders I’ll be picking up as soon as I drop you at the car rental place.”

  “If Felipe and his family are doing the plants, who’s doing the lights?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Finn?”

  “You and me?” He offered her a weak smile. “It’ll be fun, El. An all-nighter, like in high school. Minus the keg.”

  “And the fun,” she snorted. “Not to mention that was ten years ago, and I don’t have those kinds of energy reserves anymore.” She drummed her fingers on the armrest. The thought of spending hours stringing lights … “Wait. What about your latest squeeze? What’s her name? Kimmie? Kammie? Eighteen-year-olds always think stuff like this is fun.” She pictured a young woman bouncing in place, holding a lit string of lights and squealing with delight.

  Finn blew out a breath through flapping lips, making a motorboat sound. “Keira, and she’s twenty. We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

  “Twenty. So only seven years younger than you. Why did you break up? Didn’t you just start up like a week ago? You’re losing your touch, Finn,” she tsked teasingly.

  “Nah, I’m just taking a break from dating.”

  “Whoa! Has hell frozen over? Wait. She didn’t dump you, did she?”

  “She totally did.” He didn’t convey anything remotely close to disappointment. Probably because he’d have her replacement lined up in a day or two with a flick of his pinkie. With Nordic blue eyes, a tall, tanned hardbody, and a Colorado cowboy attitude, women couldn’t resist Finn. There’d been a time when she and her other stepsiblings had entertained themselves by placing bets on how quickly he could get a woman to leave a bar with him. Over the years, Ellie had had a hard time keeping up with his cavalcade of conquests.

  “So why’d she dump you?”

  He cleared his throat. “Megan asked to come over a few nights ago.”

  Ah. Finn’s last ex. Now it made sense. “She needed a Finn fix, and you were happy to oblige.” Ellie chuckled in spite of herself. “After all, who can resist a booty call from an ex?” Me, that’s for damn sure. Not that Ellie got them herself—she hadn’t collected that many exes. And why would she when she shied away from getting into relationships in the first place? She thanked Will for that too.

  “It’s not like Keira and I had been together that long,” Finn protested, “or that it was anything but sex with Megan. Why don’t women get that?”

  “You mean the ‘It was only sex, she doesn’t mean anything, you’re the one I really want, oh baby, baby,’ spiel?”

  “Yeah. Why can’t they understand it’s not about them? Men are just wired that way.”

  God, I hope not all men, or I’ll be that crazy woman living with thirty cats in her dilapidated house yelling, “Get off my lawn!” at all the neighborhood kids.

  No point in arguing with Finn that being “wired that way” did not excuse the entire male side of a species—she’d already tried multiple times over multiple years to make her case. “Fidelity is so overrated,” she said dryly instead.

  “What happened to you is different, El.”

  Ignoring that comment, she said, “Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. How would you feel if you found out a girl you were seeing was sleeping with another guy? Or girl?”

  “Girl? Interesting.” Had she been looking, she would have no doubt glimpsed a dirty flicker in his eyes.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s never happened.”

  “That you know of.”

  A cocky grin crept over his face. “No, I know. It’s never happened.”

  Can I throttle you now? She blew out a disgusted breath. The truth, she suspected, was he was killing time until the “right one” caught all his attention … and Ellie couldn’t wait to meet her.

  “I think that after you pick up all the lights, you should troll your favorite watering hole and kill two birds with one stone: you can get us extra free help tonight and get yourself laid afterward.”

  The grin spread. Of course it did. “Not a bad idea. Must be why you’re in charge.”

  “No, I’m in charge because Will left me no choice when he took off.” She could feel the black cloud moving in again, threatening to rumble and rain down bolts of lightning on her head. It had been two years; she needed to finish picking up the pieces.

  “Maybe it’d be easier to let go of the past if you stopped working so hard, El. You need to cut loose once in a while.”

  “Easy for you to say.” You’re not the one scraping to pay the bills. But he was right: time to go on a quest and get her sunny self back again. Hadn’t that been on her list of New Year’s resolutions, along with finally firming up her thighs? Well, forget the thighs—they’d be back on the list next year, as they’d been the past ten years—but she still had two months to put her life with Will in the rearview mirror.

  Let’s get it started!

  In her mind, she was rocking out in her neon-pink-and-yellow bedroom to the Black Eyed Peas. The only place she’d felt safe dancing because she was that bad—Elaine Benes from Seinfeld had nothing on Ellie Hendricks’s dance moves. She’d barely danced at her own wedding for fear of terrify
ing the guests.

  Weddings. Twinkling white lights. Mrs. Monroe.

  She heaved out another sigh. The search for her happy place would have to wait until after the lights were done.

  Chapter 3

  No Girls Allowed in My Man Cave

  Dave climbed out of the Uber in front of a luxury garage condo complex. He placed his hand on a remote keypad, a side gate clicked open, and he strode to his six-bay garage. Once he unlocked the service door and stepped inside, he flipped on lights and drew in a satisfied breath. This was his space, bought and paid for. And these were his babies. Every slot filled. Nothing disturbed. Everything as it should be. A bright note in an otherwise wholly dismal day.

  Each of his six vehicles sported a cover, but he didn’t need to take them off to know what hid beneath. Every detail of every piece of machinery was tattooed in his brain and his heart. He loved his cars. Some he’d bought new, and others he’d restored, but they were all works of art. And right now he needed to free his mind of the ping-pong balls bouncing around inside it. Being here, breathing in the oil and rubber, running his hand over steely, gleaming surfaces, was the best way he knew to ground himself.

  Some of his buddies found their zen on the ice. Well, not buddies anymore, which caused prickles of resentment to stick in his throat as though he’d just swallowed a thistle. Maybe he’d screwed the pooch, but he’d done it for them. For his team. Maybe not the smartest decision he’d ever made, but he’d been paying for it this past year and then some. Not only in everything he’d lost, but in his never-ending struggle to give doping up for good—a struggle no one ever saw. And though he’d tried his damnedest to prove himself worthy of his teammates’ respect, nothing he did would ever be good enough. He’d worked harder to get back in their good graces than he’d ever done to earn the C. Well, he hadn’t actually worked for that. More like it had been foisted on him at a time when the team had been in turmoil, and he’d been dumbfounded they’d picked him. Was still dumbfounded and couldn’t figure why they hadn’t stripped it from him when he’d offered to give it up.