Mister Hockey (Hellions Angels #1)
Lia Riley
Chapter One
Jed West’s stomach curdled faster than overheated hollandaise sauce as he squinted at the menu for Zachary’s, Denver’s popular all-day breakfast hangout. Ghostlike shadows haunted the specials list, blurring the descriptions for peanut butter French toast, country fried steak benedict and sweet potato pancakes. Ah, shit. Not fucking now. There went the prices too—the dollar signs and numbers blurring until barely legible.
No point blinking. He knew the drill. Jaw tight, he reached for his orange juice, took a swig and waited. Short bouts of double vision had dogged him ever since game seven, the pattern the same. After a minute or two, his focus would snap back to normal as if nothing had happened. Until then, he needed to follow one of Coach’s favorite axioms: Suck it up, buttercup.
Who cared about the damn menu anyway? He pushed it to one side, having already ordered the “Hunger Blaster,” chorizo and eggs smashed between a jalape?o cheddar biscuit—the kind of breakfast that wanted to kill you in the best kind of ways—and crunched ice. Too bad the cubes didn’t pass on their chill, because this . . . situation for lack of a better word, was getting under his skin and it shouldn’t.
No—scratch that. It couldn’t.
Unexplained double vision wasn’t a walk in the park, but facts were facts. And the ugly truth was that if he didn’t quit batting his lashes like Scarlett O’Hara with a fly in her skirt, The Post’s toughest sports columnist would glance up from across the table, mistake his tic for a cheesedick wink, and go Lord of the Flies on his nut sack.
At least for the moment, Neve Angel was occupied. She hunched over her digital voice recorder, dark bangs obscuring her sharp gaze as she fiddled with the control settings. Her lips moved to the upbeat Buddy Holly song piping over the sound system while she plucked a mic from her messenger bag. His vision came back online in time for him to read the orange button pinned to the front.
Had a Ball at The Rock Creek Testicle Festival.
Christ, looked to be an authentic souvenir too.
Slamming his knees together, he forced a grin, the one that had potential endorsements lined up around the block, eager for him to shill everything from vitamin-infused coconut water to shaving cream. He unwrapped the paper napkin from around the fork and knife, and began tearing the corner into neat strips.
No doubt the eye thing was fatigue-related, an inevitable toll from the grueling NHL season and subsequent hard-fought playoffs. Everything would be all right in the end. If it wasn’t all right, it wasn’t the end.
“You plan on telling me what’s up with Mount Napkin Shreds?” Neve leaned her elbows on the recycled wood tabletop, a signal they were shifting into interview mode. Her brows arched beneath her thick-cut bangs. “Nervous about being in the hot seat, princess?”
“Yeah, terrified,” he answered laconically, not missing a beat. Hiding his true feelings behind a mask of confidence was a reflex; it came with the territory of having the C stitched on the front of his jersey. A good captain never showed fear to an opponent. “A jackal’s bark is worse than its bite.”
“Jackal? Don’t tell me you’re using Gunnarisms now.” She rolled her eyes. “And I’d so wanted to enjoy my bagel without gagging.”
The Hellions head coach, Tor Gunnar, had a reputation for dismissing the press as “jackals.” He fostered a tense relationship with journalists, in particular, the tiny woman sitting opposite. Neve had run a piece on his divorce a few years ago. He retaliated by refusing to call on her during press conferences. Neve hit back with increasingly critical op-eds. Their mutual enmity had devolved to the stuff of local legend.
“Big words, but don’t you and Coach G have a love-to-hate thing going?” Jed teased, “Could be masking some serious sexual tension, you should look into that. Plus if he got laid, he might smile more than once a year. The whole team would owe you one.”
“Hmm,” Neve mused into her glass. “How many of these ice cubes could fit up your nose? Hard to say. My money is on ten. Five up each nostril.”
He chuckled, sliding one of his arms over the back of the leather booth. A busser clearing a nearby table caught his idle glance and the top plate slammed against her chest, smearing ketchup over her white blouse.
Jed pretended not to notice her flustered screech and instead focused on a framed poster that read A Yawn is a Silent Scream for Coffee. It never stopped being weird, even after all this time, to be that guy. The one who got the second look, the screams from the fans, slipped numbers scrawled on a bar napkin every time he went out for a beer. A few times a year, push-up bras came in the mail.
When he landed on Cosmo’s Sexiest Men in Sport list last year, the guys on the team had given him a world of shit. “Miiiiiiister Hockey,” they’d catcall in the locker room, using the nickname from the article. “Strike a pose. Come on, man, do your best Blue Steel.”
Not that female attention was bad. It was just that he woke up each morning and put on pants one leg at a time. He liked his job and was damn good at doing it, but it wasn’t pulling kids from burning buildings or defending his country. Hero worship could mess with a guy’s mind. Make him think he was invincible. And he’d seen firsthand where that kind of mentality could land an athlete.
He massaged his left temple in a slow circle. Nowhere good.