Coasting (Gold Hockey Book 8) Page 5

  He paused. Coop wasn’t much for primping in front of the mirror, but he liked to think that he had slightly better than average looks. But maybe he was delusional and his smile really did make him look possessed like his older brother had always said.

  Hockey players don’t smile, Coop, Brendan had told him when he’d seen his first promotional pictures when Coop had finally made an NHL team. You look like a pussy flashing all those pearly whites. You’re supposed to be missing teeth by the time you make it to the big leagues.

  I paid a lot of money for that smile, his mom had chimed in. So, no, he’s not. Then she’d smacked Brendan on the back of the head and had told him to never use that word—meaning pussy—in front of her.

  Brendan hadn’t.

  Instead, he’d switched pussy to possessed when their mom was around, taking it so far as to say that he could see the devil in Coop’s eyes when he smiled.

  Asshole.

  But also . . . heh.

  He’d gotten Brendan back, though—sending him a sexy devil singing-gram to the fire station where his brother worked.

  Those guys could razz as good as the players on the Gold.

  Fuck, he needed to go home.

  He missed his pain-in-the-ass sister, though she was closer now, having recently moved to San Diego, and his parents. He even missed his brother. But also, Coop missed just being in the neighborhood where he’d grown up in Atlanta. Not that his current situation was bad. San Francisco was pretty great, too, and living out his dream of playing professional hockey was doubly so.

  But it wasn’t home.

  “Why do you look like you swallowed a rotten egg?” Calle asked.

  He shrugged, brushing off the homesickness, the little twinge of doubt it came from thinking about his smile and his brother’s teasing. “No reason.”

  “Coop—”

  Thankfully, at that point, the guy from Sam and Cheese called their number and Coop was able to escape before he said something along the lines of, “My big brother says my smile looks possessed, is it true?” or “I miss my mommy and want to go home.”

  “Should we grab a table?” he asked when he came back, paper trays of food and drink carrier balanced in his hands.

  Calle nodded and led the way to a picnic table.

  The sun was going down, the strings of lights crisscrossed overhead had turned on, and because it was a weeknight, the space wasn’t too crowded.

  In fact, it felt cozy and a little intimate.

  Well, not more intimate than being in the same room as she’d undergone the exam, as stripping down with his back turned, and all sorts of scary-looking medical instruments put in—

  “I’ve always liked how you smile with your whole face,” she said.

  Coop jerked his head up. “What?”

  Her eyes were soft. “It’s what I meant before. It’s just . . . you have a great smile.”

  “I—uh—” He fumbled with his sandwich, gaze darting to hers and away.

  “Have I struck the unflappable Cooper Armstrong mute?” she asked, head tilting to the side, ponytail swinging out behind her, skin glazed golden by the lights above them.

  And fuck, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “I never thought I’d see the King of the Soundbite at a loss for words.”

  His cheeks felt hot, and there was something about this woman, some special Calle Stevens magical fairy dust that made him feel about twelve years old again. And like a twelve-year-old, he also had all the smoothness of sandpaper. Which was why he blurted, “My brother says I look possessed when I smile.”

  Her brows drew down.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  He shoved his sandwich into his mouth, took a huge bite. Partly because it was delicious, but mostly because he needed something to shut him the fuck up.

  She reached across the table and snagged a cranberry that had fallen into the paper tray, plucking it up between thumb and forefinger and sliding it between a set of lush lips that made his cock twitch. He was reeling from revealing too much, his cheeks burning, and Calle Stevens still gave him a hard-on.

  Yeah, she had fucking magical fairy dust all right.

  “I think you have a very nice smile,” she said in between bites. “So many of the guys try to do this tough guy bullshit in the team photos, and I’m like I’ve seen you scream like a hyena when Max hides somewhere and jumps out at you.” A grin. “So no, you’re not that tough, you’re a giant teddy bear, and I like that you don’t try to pull something over in the publicity photos.”

  “PR-Rebecca would not agree.”

  She shrugged. “Probably not, but that’s why she gets paid to do the PR and I get paid to help you guys play . . . and sometimes that’s by keeping the egos in check.”

  PR-Rebecca was a media-spinning genius and the two Rebeccas together—PR and Nutritionist—along with Mandy, Calle, and Dani, meant the team’s support staff was both diabolical in their planning ahead (and ego-checking) skills as well as totally kickass.

  “I imagine the ego portion of the job gets to be a lot,” he said.

  “You’d imagine right,” she said, tone teasing. “You know those professional athletes are so fragile.”

  “Definitely.”

  She did that head-tilt thing again, but her eyes had gone soft. “Why do I think that you looking possessed isn’t the full story?”

  “Why do I think that you’re the one who told Max about his new hiding spot?”

  “Why did I enjoy you jumping about six feet off the ground when he scared you?”

  “Why did you bust out laughing when everyone jumped six feet off said ground?” he asked. “Well, everyone except Brit, because she’s apparently got nerves of steel and is never scared or bothered by Max’s pranks.”

  Aside from not jumping out of her skin when he popped out of random places, she’d not even batted an eye when Max had pasted her prom pictures—with Blane as her date (long story, but they’d grown up together, with Blane being madly in love with Brit until he’d gotten together with Mandy and realized that he and Brit would have never actually worked).

  The fact that her fluorescent pink dress and their tough-as-shit goalie wearing about a pound of makeup and heels that matched had been plastered over every available inch of the locker room hadn’t fazed her in the least.

  She’d shrugged, said, “Cool.”

  Just Cool.

  Then had gotten dressed.

  See? A total BAMF.

  As in, Brit was a badass motherfucker.

  “Or . . . she has advanced intel.”

  A BAMF who apparently had inside information. He narrowed his eyes at Calle, demanded, “Who?”

  She snagged another cranberry. “I never divulge my sources.”

  He scowled. “Angie,” he accused.

  Angie was Max’s other half and Mandy’s sister. Mandy was tight with Brit.

  Calle just looked at him with an innocent expression he wasn’t buying for a single minute.

  “Traitors,” he muttered. “The lot of you.”

  She snorted. “The lot of us?” she asked. “I think you mean the small but merry band of women who keep the ship on track and have had to band together against the cloud of egos and masculinity?”

  His gut sank.

  He reached for her hand. “Shit,” he said. “Is it really that bad? I thought that since the organization was moving toward fifty-fifty men to women for the support staff that things had gotten better. Who’s—”

  “I don’t need you to fight my battles, Coop,” she said. “There is still some work to be done, people who aren’t thrilled to be coached by a ‘girl’ or play with one, but I’m a grown woman and can handle my own shit.” A pause. “As can Brit. And the rest of our posse.”

  Putting aside the term posse for the moment, he tried to pinpoint exactly who was giving her a hard time. Most of the guys had reserved judgment on Calle when she’d initially been hired, a few had been very hesitant in
accepting coaching from someone who played a different version of the game. Women’s hockey had contact, but no checking was allowed. That wasn’t to say it didn’t happen and the games between the US and Canada were particularly physical, but just as the men’s game was starting to move toward speed and away from a plethora of bone-jarring, and potentially CTE causing hits, the women’s game was much more about transitions, team play, and puck movement. Which were right in the Gold’s wheelhouse—they generally had smaller, quicker players, and less of the enforcer-led play that had dominated the game he’d watched growing up.

  So, Calle had the gameplay experience, but she was also able to transform that into information and suggestions the guys could easily pick up.

  Which meant that any reticence had quickly transmuted into respect the previous season.

  Still, Coop knew there had been a bit of a learning curve after training camp this year, a few of the younger guys who’d been picked up weren’t used to either a female in the locker room or one giving them orders. Luckily, Bernard—their head coach—had absolutely zero patience for bullshit on a good day. And having one or more of his players questioning his assistant coach had not, in fact, made for a good day.

  Asses had been chewed.

  Calle had kept doing her thing.

  The players had removed their heads from said chewed asses and things had gelled.

  Or maybe they hadn’t?

  “Who—?”

  She stood, grabbed their empty paper trays. “Brownie time.”

  “Call—”

  But she was already walking toward Molly’s food stand. He hurried to catch up with her, taking the trays from her hands and tossing them into the trash.

  “Who’s—”

  “Stop,” she snapped, whipping around to face him.

  He froze, the tone far colder than anything he’d heard from her before.

  “Look,” she said, still frosty, “I appreciate you stepping in today, but I don’t need a hero or someone to save me.”

  “I—”

  “I’ve been on my own for long enough that I know how to take care of my shit, and I certainly know how to deal with men who don’t think I know as much about hockey as them. There aren’t many on this team, but occasionally one will let loose, and I can handle it. Okay?” She sucked in a breath. “What I don’t need is you fucking up my job because you saw me in a situation that is decidedly un-coach-like and think that it means I’m going to fall over myself just because I said you have a nice smile and we hung out for a few hours.”

  The words clocked him across the face, stinging like he’d been sucker-punched. But, look, he got it. Circumstances meant that Calle had needed to prove herself, that sometimes she still needed to.

  Fucking sucked that was her reality.

  But the world was the world, and while most of those in their circle were cool, she couldn’t control every asshole in the league.

  Which meant she needed him to be cool now.

  To let her handle her own shit.

  To not get protective and overstep just because when he’d heard that heartbeat on the ultrasound machine, stared at the tiny human on the photographs the doctor had printed, Coop had felt . . . moved.

  As though a piece inside him had shifted.

  Because it was fucking magic and beautiful and amazing and fragile . . . and it was inside Calle.

  But she didn’t need him to think about magic.

  She needed him to think about hockey.

  About the team.

  About her job.

  “Calle—”

  She didn’t let him get out that he understood where she was coming from, that he would shut up and allow her to buy him a brownie, then he’d take her back to the rink. Nope. She didn’t let him get any of that out.

  Instead, she let loose on him.

  “Fucking stop, Coop,” she snapped. “I know all about men like you. They come on tough and sweet and strong, pretend to care, pretend to be protective.” Her inhale and exhale were as sharp as her next words. “But the trouble with men, especially with supposedly protective and sweet and strong men, is that it’s all fucking bullshit. You don’t really mean it. You pretend to protect, just long enough to worm your way into our lives and fuck things up and—”

  He’d heard enough.

  He was not that guy, and he certainly wasn’t anything like Jason fucking Marchand, as she was implying.

  Coop leaned close, near enough to smell the lightly floral scent of her shampoo, near enough to see her eyes darken, near enough to smell the cranberry on her breath. “Forgetting for a second that you’re lumping me in with that piece of shit you let shoot his load between your legs, you should know me well enough by now to understand that I don’t pretend at anything.” He leaned closer, heard her inhale sharply. “It’s why I fucking smile in the promo pictures, why I tolerate Max’s bullshit jokes, why I’ve given everything I have to this team.” Closer still. “And that’s just the team. The job. Because in my outside life, in the real fucking world, if it were my woman who was carrying my tiny, perfect baby in her belly, I sure as shit wouldn’t be halfway across the US, doing fuck knows what in a career I didn’t have a chance at advancing. I would have sorted my shit and been in that chair, in that room, watching with fucking tears in my eyes as I saw my baby for the first time.”

  Her lips parted, and he saw her eyes go damp. “Coop—”

  He nodded at the stand. “Get your brownie if you want,” he said, not looking at her. “I’ll be in the car.”

  Six

  Calle

  Well, the drive back to the rink had been glorious.

  Gloriously awkward, that was.

  And perhaps because she was a glutton for punishment or maybe because she was just lonely and realized she had unfairly unloaded on the only man who seemed to give a shit about her in her life of late, she didn’t call Coop up to apologize when she got back to her condo.

  Instead, she sent Jason a text.

  Saw the doctor today.

  Along with the bland statement, she sent over a snap of the ultrasound. More being a glutton. More punishment. More idiocy.

  Because his response was pure Jason.

  Asshole, succinct, and crystal clear.

  Either get rid of it or send me whatever papers you need to. I’m out.

  Not unexpected.

  Still hurt.

  “Dumb ass,” she muttered, setting down her cell and wiping the back of her hand over her cheeks, brushing away the tears that had escaped unbidden. She would not waste her tears on that asshole. Plus, “What did you expect?”

  Nothing.

  She expected nothing from the men who’d been in her life.

  It was so much easier that way.

  Sighing, she got up and snagged an apple from the fridge, making short work of slicing it and scooping up a spoonful of peanut butter to go along with it. Coop had been true to his word, waiting in the car while she’d bought two brownies. Not for her. She’d been an ass and didn’t deserve brownies.

  But she knew that Coop had a weakness for cheesecake, so after watching him storm off, after the guilt of taking the easy camaraderie they’d developed over the last two years and shredding it to pieces with her unnecessary explosion had swelled within her to overfilling, she’d seen the special of the day was a cheesecake-swirled brownie and had bought him two.

  Yes, she’d been freaking out about the way the intimacy had seemed to grow between them as the hours passed, but he didn’t deserve her ire. He’d been nice, albeit a little pushy, but he’d stepped in, taken everything in stride, and made sure she’d gotten what she needed—whether it was to the doctor’s or food or back to the rink so she could call Triple A to come fix her car.

  And though, on the way back to the rink he hadn’t spoken much more than in single-word replies and grunts, and she’d all but fled the tense atmosphere that was filling his SUV to make the call then sat in her own car to wait, Coop still hadn’t left.r />
  He’d waited until the tow truck had come, until the new battery was installed, until she was buckled in, her engine started, and until she was pulling out of the spot before he’d turned on his SUV and followed her out.

  All the way to her condo south of the Gold’s practice facility.

  In the complete opposite direction of where he needed to go, since she knew he lived in the city.

  “Ugh,” she muttered, stomping to the kitchen and scooping out another spoonful of peanut butter.

  She was going to get fat. She might as well embrace it by eating her favorite foods. And while Coop might have a sweet tooth and be obsessed with all things cheese and cheesecake-related, Calle loved peanut butter.

  A spoon of it straight out of the jar.

  Peanut butter M&Ms.

  Peanut butter cups.

  Peanut—

  Well, the point was that peanut butter was her happy place, and after the day she’d had, after the text she’d just received, she deserved a little happy.

  The only good thing about the whole situation with Jason was that she wasn’t surprised about his reaction, and the timing was such that because the team had a game tomorrow night, there wasn’t any practice in the morning, aside from an optional morning skate.

  So, she’d already made an appointment with her lawyer.

  Loads of fun for a rare weekday morning free.

  “Too bad I couldn’t get into the doctor tomorrow,” she muttered, shoving the food in her mouth so the words came out garbled. Luckily for her, she was talking to herself, so the words in her head already made sense because . . . well, they’d been in her head.

  Snorting, she scooped out another spoonful—and forget lecturing her about double-dipping, this was her personal jar of scooping peanut butter. She had a separate jar for company.

  Not that she got a lot of company.

  Not that she was going to lie and say the company jar of peanut butter didn’t sometimes become her second personal jar of scooping peanut butter.

  But a girl had to live, right?

  Considering her mouth was all but sealed shut from the delicious, sticky concoction, Calle screwed the lid on, put the jar back on the shelf, dropped the empty spoon into the sink, and then headed back into the family room.