So Over You (Chicago Rebels #2)(12)

She unearthed her iPad from her messenger bag and leaned against the massage table while it came to life. Damn, he smelled good. Why did the jerk have to smell so good?

She opened up her spreadsheet, each hour she planned to spend with him linked to a core set of skills they would focus on. Quickly, she whipped through the daily tasks: strength training, skating skills, knee exercises.

“I worked with two guys in Montreal last year and turned their recovery from a projected eight weeks to five.”

“Linberg and Costigan,” he murmured, close to her ear.

She drew back, surprised that one, they were so heart-stoppingly close, and two, he knew the players’ names on the minor league team she had worked with.

“Right.” She cleared her throat because he was staring at her now, all blue-eyed ferocity, his stance aggressive even though he was seated and hadn’t moved a muscle.

“I will not need eight weeks, Isobel. Or five.”

“No.” She tore her gaze away and focused on the iPad. “I’m thinking more like two. Three max, if we work hard but are careful not to overdo it. My job is to get you back in the rink in time for the big push.” The Rebels were at 28–20 win-loss right now with five losses in overtime. This left twenty-nine games in the regular season. “We need you in there for the last twenty games, Vadim.”

Looking up again, she found his eyes magnetized to her, his focus burning holes into her soul. What was it about Russians that amplified the simplest look to the nth degree?

“The conventional wisdom is that you and your sisters are lucky to have done this well, considering.”

“Considering we’re women?”

“Considering you’re coming off fifteen years of bad results. This year should be your rebuild, yet you have decided to trade aggressively and bring in players you would not normally acquire. Veterans at the end of their careers. Injured men who may spend the season on the bench. You are gambling, Isobel.”

They were. At first she’d thought it was some cruel joke her father was playing on Harper. Her older sister was supposed to inherit the team, and while Isobel felt invested in her father’s legacy, she hadn’t expected this role. Joint owner, on the spot, where her decisions affected whether the team stayed in the family or was sold off.

Isobel wondered if her father had wanted to give her purpose after her failed career. He had been so disappointed that she’d had to resort to coaching, not pleased at all that she had found a job in the minors. Fucking Canada, Izzy? Even now, she felt guilty that she had enjoyed the time outside his Eye of Sauron–like focus. But he had the last laugh when he drew her back into his orbit.

The requirements of the will stipulated that she had to attend every home game. Fine for Harper, and even for Violet, who didn’t seem to mind uprooting her life in Reno. But for Isobel, something had to give. The tensions between coaching in Montreal and having to be on site for the Rebels in Chicago were too demanding. She had quit her coaching gig two months ago.

Part of it was to force Harper’s hand. Let me be a Rebels coach. Let’s make this history you’re always talking about. But she realized that the job wasn’t going to be handed to her.

She turned back to Vadim, his accusation that she was gambling still hanging between them.

“We want to make a big splash our first year out.” He didn’t need to know about the pressure they were under. All he needed to know was that she—and she alone—could get him back to the face-off circle.

“This is how I remember you. Striving to be the best. Living with no fear. Back then, nothing could get in your way. The Girl with the Blazing Skates.”

That silly nickname he had given her would have sounded almost forgiving if that jibe about nothing getting in her way hadn’t canceled it out. But he was right about one thing: there had been a time when fear was meaningless. She’d felt invulnerable. Unbreakable. And now? She was a frightened, scarred little girl begging the man who had made her a woman to give her a chance.

“It’s a lot to ask, I know. Especially if you’ve never been coached by a woman before.”

He appeared to consider what she said; the air between them thickened and charged. Maybe he had a point. Maybe their past history would impede the mission.

“Playing the woman card is not necessary, Isobel. I will submit to your will on the practice rink. You have two weeks to get me back on competitive ice.”





THREE




Vadim stared at the egg white omelet in front of him, the same breakfast he ate every day during the season. “Perhaps you could mix it up one of these days,” he said to the chef in Russian. “Add some cheese.”

The chef, Alexei, regarded him with disdain, which should have been difficult for a man wearing an apron with the words Squeeze Me, I’m Delicious! But with Alexei, disdain was his resting face.

Vadim should have fired him years ago. A grown man did not need a minder. He’d only kept him around because Alexei had been so upset after the death of Vadim’s father. The loyal retainer, assigned by the Petrov family to ensure Vadim’s safety after a botched kidnapping attempt when he was eleven years old, had expressed no interest in leaving. Threats to Vadim these days, except from predatory women, were few and far between, yet Alexei remained.

He supposed it was good to have someone to run errands, a male assistant who did not simper with puppy dog eyes. If Alexei wanted to move on to another position, he could. For now, Vadim paid him as much as he was worth. He lived nearby in a smaller property and did not spend every waking moment with Vadim. Sometimes he was gone for entire weekends.