Ryan

“Where’s your new girlfriend?” Alec asked as we laced up our skates in the locker room. We’d been at the arena for a couple of hours already, but we’d spent most of that time with the trainers. It’s how most of the players usually started their day since we all dealt with injuries throughout the season. They’d treated Alec’s ankle and determined he was okay to skate on it today, but they wanted him to go a little easy on it so he’d be okay for our home game tomorrow night.

“She’s not my girlfriend, asshat.” Not that it wasn’t what I was aiming for with her, which was a completely new experience for me.

“Hey, wait. What’d we miss? Yesterday she could barely stand to be on the same ice with you, and now Rourke is calling her your girlfriend?” one of the rookies asked.

“It’s none of your damn business,” I growled.

“Ooohhh...he sounds super sensitive about the whole thing. Something definitely happened,” our starting goalie laughed. “It’s a good thing your slap shot’s on point since that’s the only scoring you’re going to do around here.”

“I don’t know; when I stopped by this morning, they looked awfully—”

I grabbed one of my elbow pads and tossed it at his face to shut him up. “Like I said; it’s nobody’s business but mine and Tamara’s.”

I tuned the guys out and focused on getting ready. If I let them get to me, the razzing would only get worse. It’s just how things were.

Jason waited until we were walking through the tunnel out to the ice to ask, “Something happened, right?”

“Yeah.”

He tapped my stick with his. “That’s all you’re going to give me? You know I’m not going to give you shit. Hell, I’m the one who told you to go after her in the first place!”

“Coach set her up with a place in my apartment complex; two doors down from me.” I flashed him a satisfied smirk as I yanked the rink door open.

“Nice. Although I’m guessing there’s more to the story based on your shit-eating grin,” he drawled, skating past me onto the ice.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“That’s a definite yes.” He shook his head and glided towards the bench to set his water bottle on the wall.

I scanned the rink, looking for any sign of Tamara and frowning when I didn’t spot her anywhere. “Hey, Coach!” I called out. “Is Tamara sticking around after her training to watch our practice before she does her session with us?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Forrester. She isn’t scheduled to be here until Noon, for her power skating drills with the team.”

I skated over to where he stood. “What about her training? The Olympics are only eleven months away. She can’t take the months she’s coaching us off from her training; not if she wants to make the US team again.”

“When we were negotiating the contract with her, she was specific about not being able to do morning sessions because it’s when she prefers to train.” He shrugged. “But she didn’t say anything about what rink she was going to be using.”

I looked around the ice like Tamara would magically appear before me. “She’s not skating here in the mornings?”

“Nope.”

“Where’s she skating then?”

“Like I said. She didn’t say. Is there a specific reason you’re hell-bent on finding her?” His eyes narrowed as he considered me, and he held up a hand when I opened my mouth to answer him. “Forget I asked. Just don’t fuck things up to the extent that we lose our power skating coach.”

“I can’t fuck things up if I don’t know where she is.”

“She’ll be here in a couple of hours,” he reminded me. This time, it was me who narrowed their eyes, making him sigh. “I think there are a couple of local rinks that have speed skating clubs who set up short tracks. Maybe she reached out to one of them and asked if she could use their ice. It’d be a great opportunity for them to see her in action and learn how to improve their own skating. If they’re smart, it could even increase awareness and help build their numbers.”

“We have a whole sheet of ice right here that nobody uses in the mornings while we’re all with the trainers,” I reminded him.

“And your point is what exactly?”

“Some of those advantages you described for the local speed skating club apply to us too,” I explained. “I bet the public relations team would love the opportunity to get some reporters in here and talk about how we’re using an Olympic speed skater from the women’s team to help improve our speed while gearing up for the playoffs.”

“Aren’t you the same guy who pissed her off enough to earn himself a slap upside the head and a challenge on the ice that he lost?”

“Yup.” I grinned at him.

“And now you’re her biggest advocate. Young guys and their dicks,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Do me a favor and don’t let yours get you into trouble until after we’ve earned ourselves a championship cup.”

“I won’t.” My dick was finally pointing me in the direction of the right woman. I had no intention of messing things up with her.

“If you can get the PR team on board—which we both know you’ll be able to do since Jason’s girlfriend will love the idea of helping you impress a woman—and facilities management is okay with the extra work they’d need to do to clear the ice between her training and our practice, then it’s fine by me if she uses it on days we don’t have a home game.”

“Consider it a done deal, starting tomorrow.” I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, not when it was within my power to make Tamara’s stay in Chicago easier on her. It wasn’t just because I wanted back in her pants, either. It bugged me that she had to go hunting for ice when we had an empty sheet of it here that she could use and nobody thought to offer it to her. She was an Olympian, for fuck’s sake. She deserved some goddamn respect as a fellow athlete.

“It’s a good thing you’ve got the skills on the ice to back up that cockiness, Forrester. Or else I wouldn’t put up with your shit.”

I skated away, determined to remind him why I was worth the bother. I turned in one of my best practices in a long time, and still had energy to spare during the power skating session with Tamara. It was one of those days when everything went my way, and I even ended up beating two of our fastest forwards in a couple of the races. I felt on top of the world when I headed upstairs to talk to Cee-Cee.

“Hey, Ryan,” she greeted me when I rapped my knuckles against her open office door.

“You got a minute?” I asked, flashing her a charming grin.

“Sure,” she laughed. “Just remember I’m still new around here. Don’t make me regret it or else I’ll have to sic Jason on you.”

I dropped down onto the chair in front of her desk, chuckling. “He might be your boyfriend, but he’s my line mate. He wouldn’t hurt me.” She rolled her green eyes and smiled confidently. “Okay, he’d hurt me for you. But not too badly when we’re in a race for the playoffs.”

“You’re probably right,” she sighed. “So what can I help you with?”

“Coach hired an Olympic speed skater to run power skating drills for the team.”

“And that means something to me because...?”

“She’s in training for 2018 in PyeongChang, and I’m trying to swing it so she can use our ice to do it.”

“She is?” Cee-Cee squealed, clasping her hands together. “That would be amazing! Is she open to the idea of doing interviews? I could easily line some up, and it’d be both to her benefit and the team’s since good press means more butts in seats.”

“I’m pretty sure I can talk her into some interviews if it means she gets to skate here since the arena is so close to her apartment.”

“Wonderful! I’ll get to work on it as soon as she gives me the green light.”

“Plan on it being soon,” I told her as I stood. “Thanks.”

“Hold it. Not so fast there, buddy.” Her green eyes narrowed. “Anything else you want to tell me about the woman you’re running around doing favors for? Like when you guys met, and if she has anything to do with the way you’ve been avoiding all the puck bunnies who throw themselves at you?”

“As our publicist has drilled into our heads, I’ll have to go with ‘no comment,’” I answered.

“Well played,” she laughed.

Cee-Cee’s excitement about publicizing Tamara’s role with the team added to my good mood. A quick conversation with the Zamboni driver, and I had his agreement to clear the ice after Tamara was done with it each day.

What I didn’t have was any way to reach Tamara to share the good news. I hadn’t asked for her phone number before she left my place that morning. I figured I’d be able to easily find her since I’d see her at the rink, but she hadn’t been there until right before our power skating session and then she’d left again before I had the chance to talk to her about my plan to get her ice time at the arena.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal since her apartment was so close to mine, but she hadn’t answered her door any of the times I’d walked down to knock on it. I’d been home for a few hours already and had basically been walking the hallway hoping to bump into her the entire time. Like a damn stalker.

“Desperate times and all that bullshit,” I muttered to myself as I pulled my door open, for what felt like the thousandth time, and almost collided with her in the hall.