Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(21)

Shit. Maybe Gemma was right. Maybe it was time she shook things up a little bit in her life.

Slipping out of her strappy sandals, she put on her Keds. “Leash?”

Anchovy dropped his slobbery mess of a ball at her feet and sprinted off to go get his leash out of the basket by the door.

Her phone dinged, and she glanced down to see a notification from Bramble come through. Caleb had accepted date three. Oh boy.

…

The next morning, the Ice Knights weight room was nearly deserted when Caleb walked in for a preseason workout session with the other guys on the first line. Along with the line’s other defenseman, Zach Blackburn, he and forward Alex Christensen, center Ian Petrov, and forward Cole Phillips had settled into an unofficial off-season workout schedule.

Today, though, the team gym somehow magically managed to smell like melted chocolate and warm vanilla instead of sweat and funk. There was only one explanation for that. Petrov.

“Why does it smell like cookies?” Caleb asked the forward, who was obviously on another one of his weird kicks in his efforts to get off the injured list faster than the team doctor expected, even though the dude was pretty much unofficially healed already.

Sure, his methods were bizarre, but Caleb was starting to think the man was on to something, because Petrov was ready to get out on the ice in time for the season way before he was supposed to. All he needed was the team doc to sign off on him.

Sweat ran down the other man’s forehead as he stood with a fifty-pound dumbbell held close to the center of a weight vest that Caleb knew from personal experience clocked in at forty-five pounds. “It’s this new thing.” Petrov lifted one leg off the ground and executed a single leg squat. “I can’t eat them according to the nutritionist, so smelling them pisses me off.”

Caleb moved his head from side to side, stretching his neck and then rolling his shoulders, waiting for Petrov to explain what in the hell that had to do with anything. When he didn’t, Caleb prompted, “And…”

Petrov cut a glare his way while Smitty, the team trainer, laughed as he set up the agility ropes on the Astroturf across the gym.

“That means,” Petrov said, his voice coming out strained as he did another single leg squat, “I lift harder and longer when I’m mad.”

What did it say about him that Petrov’s latest theory kind of made sense? Nothing good. “Why can’t you just have one cookie instead of a dozen?”

“I have to do whatever it takes to get back on the ice. Anyway, who can stop at just one cookie?” Petrov asked as he switched legs.

Caleb raised his hand, holding it aloft and smirking at his line mate as he walked over to the elliptical to warm up.

“Fuck you, Stuckey.”

He blew the other man a kiss and cranked up the incline on the elliptical. This part of the near-daily routine he didn’t have to think about. Smitty varied up the rest of the off-season training so it wasn’t the same every day, but it was always some form of weight lifting, agility training, stretching, and biometrics.

Unlike athletes in other sports, they couldn’t afford to show up to training camp at anything other than tip-top shape. Their camp only lasted a few days, with rookies going in two days early for athletic testing and on-ice skills. After that, the returning lineup had two days that followed the same pattern. Then the team went straight into seven preseason games spread out over two weeks before the puck dropped for real.

When it came to hockey, there really was no off-season—just a slower one, which made the fact that it was just him, Petrov, and Smitty in the gym that much weirder. Sure, it wasn’t official, but it was usually the entire Ice Knights first line here at the crack-ass of ten in the morning.

“Where are the rest of the guys?” he asked as he jogged.

Petrov put the dumbbell away on the rack and then took off his weight vest. “Blackburn is doing some charity gig with Fallon, Christensen just left a little bit ago, and Phillips is buying enough flowers for a funeral to try to get back on Marti’s good side.”

“I thought they were done for real this time?” Of course, he’d thought that every one of the sixty billion times the coach’s daughter and the star forward had broken up.

Petrov shrugged. “Give it a couple of weeks; it’ll change.”

“So much for our regular preseason workout today.” He was supposed to be running agility races with Christensen, which was pretty much an advanced course in getting his ass kicked, but he wasn’t about to give up until he won.

“You feeling lonely, Stuckey?” Petrov moved over to Smitty, who had his stopwatch ready and was standing next to a metal sled loaded up with close to five hundred pounds of weight plates. “Need me to set you up with a hot date?”

Caleb hit the stop button on the elliptical with more force than necessary, got off, and made his way over to the free weights. “You’d be better than my mom.”

“How’s the lovely Britany?” Petrov asked, just like he did every time his mom got mentioned.

“Shut up, asshole.” Now it was his turn to flip off his line mate as he strapped on his own weight vest and picked up a dumbbell to do a round of single leg squats. “She’s my mom.”

Petrov shrugged and got set behind the sled, readying to push it the forty-eight yards down the turf. “Your mom is hot, deal.”