SIXTEEN
“Good game tonight, Russian.”
Isobel plopped down in the seat next to Vadim, waiting for him to acknowledge her. If he didn’t want company, he should have sat on the aisle.
He pulled his earbud from his right ear, his smile like the sun had gone supernova. He raised his head to check on the rest of the flight cabin. Most everyone was asleep, but they both knew they had to be careful.
Besides, that’s not why she’d joined him. Or, not the only reason.
“Who was that woman with your sister?”
His smile faded. “No one.”
“Well, we know that’s not true. She’s your mom, isn’t she?”
He opened up his iPhone and started scrolling through the music. Isobel didn’t know much about Vadim’s relationship with his mother beyond the fact that she and Vadim’s father divorced when Vadim was ten and she moved back to the United States. When Isobel knew him as a nineteen-year-old, he didn’t speak of her much. Meaning not at all.
“You guys on the outs?”
“We have never been on the ins.”
“You and your sister are friendly. Close, even.”
His expression was dark. “She is an innocent and had no choice in this. Victoria Wallace chose to walk away from her family because motherhood was too hard.”
“Yet she raised your sister.”
His eyes sharpened to slits. “You know nothing of it. She was pregnant when she left and never told my father about his daughter. Never told me until my father died and she needed something. Do not paint her as a saint, Isobel.”
Oh. Well, that was just awful. She’d seen how he cut his mother dead at the arena, but only after that slow moment when the world seemed to stop for both of them. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, but she clearly wants to talk to you now.”
“She can continue to want.” Dismissing her, he returned to his iPhone. “You should get some sleep now before people wake up and start gossiping.”
Five minutes later, Isobel stepped from the airplane bathroom to find a big, brooding Russian waiting outside. Two seconds after that, she found herself back in the bathroom.
The big, brooding Russian was still a big, brooding problem as he was now taking up all the space and using up all the oxygen.
“Can I help you?”
“This business with my mother, I will not answer questions about it.”
“Okay.”
“You will not use your powers of persuasion to get me to open up.”
“Got it.”
“It is in the past. My relationship with my sister is separate, and just because a child wants everyone to get along does not mean everyone should. Or can. We do not live in a fairy tale.” He folded his arms, taking up more precious space, and stared so hard she felt she might combust. At this rate, the air supply didn’t stand a chance.
Talking to someone about the thing you didn’t want to talk about was a strange strategy, but then Vadim had clearly decided that more was less. Or something.
“I can see how difficult it is for you,” she said in a neutral voice.
He gave a helpless shrug that cracked her heart a little. “It is difficult for everyone.”
She rolled her lips in to hide a smile. Empathy was the first step. He might have been referring to his sister, but if Vadim recognized that his mother was suffering as well, then there was hope for them yet.
She placed a hand on his chest. “If you want to talk about anything, I’m here.”
“As my coach.”
“As your friend.”
Heat flared in his eyes. “Last night, Bella . . .” He circled her waist and clamped a hand on her ass. “Was so fucking good.”
Flames of lust licked along her skin. “It was, but . . .” She removed his hand from her ass, which was a damn shame because she’d never found a hand to fit said ass so perfectly.
“I think we need boundaries. Sex-free boundaries.”
“If you wish me to discuss my many, many problems, it is better we do it after sex,” he said gravely. “When I am at my most vulnerable.”
She laughed. “My office door is always open for a chat with my players.” Sliding toward the exit required she rub herself against him. So she might have lingered longer than necessary, but he had started this. “And my door will stay open when you visit so you don’t get any ideas.”
“I already have ideas, Bella. They are in my head and spreading to other, more interesting parts of my body.”
Every time he called her Bella, her resistance reached for the white flag. Stay strong.
“Keep those ideas, and your body, to yourself, Russian.” She opened the door, slipped outside before anyone saw her—and ran right into Dante coming from the galley. He appeared to be much more annoyed than a GM who’d just broken a three-game losing streak should be. Was it possible he’d seen Vadim coming in after her? That’s all she needed.
She gently pulled the door shut behind her, praying that Dante didn’t need to use the facilities. “Okay there, Dante?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” He walked by her, back to his seat, his mind clearly elsewhere. Phew. It seemed everyone was in a mood tonight.
Swish, swish.
Vadim raced to the end of the rink, took the shot in the empty net, and raced back. Then he did it nine more times. He glanced over at Isobel, who lifted her eyes from her iPad.
“Two seconds faster than yesterday.”
His knee was better. The urge to favor his other leg was gone, but the urge to win was as strong as ever. Other urges, too.
Three days since New York, and they were never alone. Even during these sessions, there was usually someone in the stands. Another trainer. Another coach. Yesterday, Dante sat through the entire hour, his thumbs working his phone feverishly. As soon as regular team practice started, he left, which meant he was taking a special interest in Vadim’s progress.
In five minutes, the rest of the team would be on the ice. Removing his helmet, Vadim skated over to Isobel, who was making notations in his iPad chart like a doctor.
“I was worried game play might take it out of you,” she said, not looking up, “but it’s made you hungry. There’s no question about you being back on the roster full-time.”
As she continued to talk about gait speeds and skating motions, he assessed whether there was tension between them because he had shut her down when pressed on the subject of his mother.
His relationship with that woman was not Isobel’s concern. True, she had her own parental issues, but she’d had their support through her formative years. Vadim’s father, on the other hand, had not been the warmest of individuals, and had become even frostier after his wife left him.
Left them.
Weeks would go by without Vadim seeing Sergei Petrov. Instead, he left Alexei as his proxy, ordering him to pick up a young Vadim from hockey practice, attend his first competitive games, even teach him chess. Alexei, the faithful retainer, had always been there.
Vadim’d had plenty of time to come to terms with Victoria’s heartless decision, and he certainly did not need Isobel to play at therapist. Lost in a gloom, he realized that he’d missed much of what she was saying.
“. . . these sessions should stop.”
His neck snapped back. “Repeat, Isobel.”
“If you’re playing games and attending regular team practice, then we have to be careful about overdoing it. The gym conditioning has to continue, so something else has to give. It should be this.”
Nyet. Something about Isobel’s tutelage brought out the best in him, and he wanted that to continue—in all the areas. Between the inability to touch her when others were around and the temptation of her beautiful ass at every turn, the last three days had been hell.
He weighed these competing needs.
“Fine.”
Her green eyes widened. “Fine?”
“You will not be my coach anymore. That is fine.”
A flicker of discomfort crossed her face. He hated to cause it, but his next words would dull any hurt. “If you’re not my coach, then we can continue with what we have started. Properly.”
“Oh, we can, can we?”
“Da, Bella. I have tasted you, drunk you down, yet my thirst has not been quenched. Any scruples you have about us will be wiped away now that this conflict of interest is a thing of the past.” He looked at his watch. “As of three minutes ago, we should be in bed.”
She laughed, and his balls took the hit. “One night only, Russian. That’s what I said.”
“Seven orgasms do not equal a one-shot deal. My throat is dry, and I think you’re still thirsty, too.”
Her breathing had picked up, her eyes flared with want.
He continued with his campaign to break her shallow resistance. No woman could withstand the Czar of Pleasure. “You’re under my skin, Bella. I wake each morning, my cock hard and seeking your wet heat. The lessons will continue off the ice.”
“I’m a team owner, Vad—”
His eyebrow reminded her of her sister’s relationship with a player.
She countered by going in an unexpected direction. “Might be time to call Kelly off the bench.”
“Yes, I’m sure he would love to hear he was your second choice.”
She thumped him on the shoulder, a pointless exercise due to his pads. “You and I aren’t about choices! It’s just letting off steam because we rub each other the wrong way.”
“Yes, Coach. Whatever you say, Coach.”
She looked flustered and beautiful. Time to press home his advantage. “We’ll start with nights in my bed and work to dinners. This is happening, Bella.”
Not wanting to hear any further rebuttals, he skated away. Other team members were starting to come out on the ice, so it was a good time to cut the conversation short. He was confident he could steer her to his way of thinking. Her stubbornness was no match for that of a born-and-raised Russian.
Thirty minutes into morning skate and confidence was flowing through him like a torrent. Many reasons could be given: his goal-scoring performance in the last game, maybe, or the renewed strength in his body. But really, he attributed it to his mood. He had always been a player affected by the goings-on in his personal life. With sound mind came sound body and play. With Isobel came an improved Vadim—in every way.
In previous practices, he’d been aware of his knee, and somehow that hesitation had spread like a contagion to the team. They were too careful around him, too conscious of his injury. This affected their own play, and while practice was not supposed to be overly rough, it was at least supposed to test a player’s limits.
Since New York and his excellent turn on the ice, the crew had enveloped him in the fold. Coming into a new team injured was never a good way to start. There was no time to establish a rapport; you were always treated as “other” until you could contribute fully. Now he was one of them.
Yes, he was feeling invincible, his body close to its peak, his woman back in his bed. His. That was how he had felt about her then, and though he could deny it to her—or at least not scare her off so soon—he saw little point in lying to himself. Isobel had been his from the moment he had seen her on the ice eight years ago, her wild hair streaming from her helmet as she dispossessed a male player twice her size.
“Who is that?” he said in awe to the man beside him.
“My daughter,” the man replied. “She’s going to change the world.”
Little did Vadim know that the world she would change was his.
An unexpected noise drew his attention, the sound a loud echo in the practice arena. Was that a bark? In the stands, Isobel had reappeared, now with a girl carrying a dog that looked just like his sister’s yapping beast, the little dog with big shits. He skated closer, unsure that he should believe his eyes and ears.
“Mia, why are you here?”
Passing the dog off to Isobel in a leather bag, his sister stood when he reached rinkside and threw her arms around him. “I had a weekend off, so I thought I’d visit. See you play tomorrow.” She clutched him tightly as if it had been months rather than mere days since he’d seen her.
He set her back and searched her face. Pale as ice, her lips dry and chapped. Outside in the March cold for too long, perhaps, but he remembered this cast to her pretty features when he had first met her at the hospital.
Isobel stood behind her with the stupid dog. “Vad, I don’t think she’s well. She lost her wallet and needed someone to pay the taxi. I think she might have the flu.”
Mia waved that off with typical Petrovian drama. “It’s just a little cold . . .”
At which point his sister—dramatically—fainted.