EPILOGUE
Isobel skated to the face-off circle and assumed the position. Stance wide, body bowed, blade at the ready. Her opposite stood a few inches taller than her, but that’s where the superiority ended.
The puck dropped.
She touched it first, whipped it left to Gabby, and still found time to shoot a gotcha grin at the man she loved as she left him eating her ice shavings. One minute later, her team of U-12s—all girls—scored and won the game.
She called the entire class over to the circle and high-fived them all. “Nice work, guys! Remember what I said: speed will always win over might.”
Vadim removed his helmet, his dark hair falling like glossy silk over his brow. The girls sighed, and Isobel’s hormones joined in. He really was unbelievably dreamy.
And all hers.
The boys on the team, while not overcome in quite the same way by Vadim’s perfection, gazed in wide-eyed wonder.
“Can you show us the goal from the Philly game?”
Vadim stroked the beginnings of a scruffy beard, another check in the hotness column. “The goal? You mean the one that got us to the play-offs?”
Isobel rolled in her lips. Vadim would be dining off that goal for the foreseeable future. Scored in overtime against Philly, it won the Rebels the last spot in the play-offs, starting in one week. They’d made it! Sure, during the first round, the wild card was up against the best team in the Western Conference, Dallas, but when had the Rebels ever gone the stress-free route?
The kids took the positions of the final play of the last Rebels game, and Vadim skated them through every pass, feint, and hit that got the win. Isobel watched her man, loving this playful side of him.
Happy Vadim plus happy Isobel equaled happy life. For them both.
She was considering her next career steps. Seeing the Rebels through to the play-offs, keeping the team in the family, and teaching the kids here were enough to keep her busy for now. Life had a habit of unraveling its knots. Supporting Vadim satisfied her, and when she was ready to figure out what came next—maybe her own foundation promoting leadership in sports to girls—she knew he’d have her back.
Finished with the reenactment of only the greatest goal ever in a final regular-season game, Vadim gathered the kids around.
“Who would like tickets to the first home game of the play-offs?”
Every hand shot up. “Me! Me! Me!”
“I will have a special box for you all to sit in, but only if you promise to do something for me.”
A sea of bright-eyed faces looked up at him, ready to sell their souls for a seat in an executive box. Little hucksters.
“You must always listen to your coach. She is the reason why I am the success I am today, and she will make all the difference to your game. Okay?”
That’s all? their expressions said. On a chorus of okays, they skated off.
“Did you let me win that face-off, Russian?”
He glided over and reached for the strap of her helmet. “This should be tighter, Bella. You know that.” He removed his gloves, then her helmet, dropped it, and kissed her with enough heat to melt the ice beneath her feet.
Not so fast, Russian. She cut the kiss short. “Did you?”
“No. Your advantages over me are many, and I would not dream of giving you one more. You have always been faster.” He grabbed her ass, pretty fast himself. “In every way.”
That hand plus her ass: perfection.
Satisfied she wasn’t being totally played, she threw herself wholeheartedly into being kissed by a pro, and probably would have risked freezer burn on her butt if she hadn’t heard a cough behind her. Jax Callaghan had just arrived with his next group, older kids than hers, but still completely in awe of the Russian. While they crowded around Vadim with questions, Jax nudged her shoulder.
“Pretty surprising about Burnett.”
Her heart lurched. “What about him?”
Jax pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen to show her a headline from the Sun-Times website: “Cade Burnett, Rebels D-Man, Comes Out.”
Holy shit. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, just announced it at a press conference an hour ago. The media’s going nuts.” Jax shook his head, a wry grin on his lips. “The Rebels have never chosen easy, though, have they?”
No, they had not. Alamo was gay? And he had decided to unveil this nugget right before the play-offs? First in the NHL, too. Wow, the kid was brave, and bravery on the ice, in life, and especially in love would always be rewarded. The Rebels would rally around and support him like the family he was to them.
That exchange she’d witnessed between him and Dante at the fund-raiser opened a Pandora’s box of speculation. These next few weeks were going to be most interesting.
“So how’d it go?” Jax asked, snagging her attention once more.
“How’d what go?”
“That shot you wanted to take?”
She watched Vadim, the man who loved her too much to bear the thought of a life without her in it. Joking and laughing with the kids, he peeked up and delivered one of his patented Smiles of Destruction.
She fought her own grin—but not too hard—before giving Jax an answer.
“I took it, I scored big, and I won. The whole freakin’ shebang.”