The Sycamore Room inside the Four Seasons glowed with golden candlelight. Gold tablecloths and fine white china adorned round tables with centerpieces made of exotic flowers. Hockey legends crowded the tables, paddleboards in hand. “Next up we have an all-inclusive trip to Honolulu,” the auctioneer announced. “Let’s start this off at two thousand. Two thousand—can I hear twenty-two.”

As the bidding escalated around him, Sean glanced at the woman pretending to be a statue by his side. A beautiful statue in a red dress. Waist cinched in, cleavage spilling out. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

He hadn’t seen Lexie for two days. Not since she’d stormed out of his apartment.

“Your dress is too low on top.”

She held up her paddle. “I don’t care what you think.”

She was pissed off? So was he. She’d done that thing women do when good sex made their heads all soft and mushy. He’d thought Lexie was smarter than most women. “Is that one of those standard responses you write in your memos?”

“Yes.” She lowered the paddle without even glancing in his direction. “Section one, subsection b, under ‘leave me alone, Sean.’”

He didn’t know what she was the most mad about. That he hadn’t gone soft in the head, too, or that he’d reminded her of how many times she’d thought she was in love recently. “Love is never angry,” he pointed out. “Section five. Random bullshit.” He’d tried to contact her repeatedly, but she’d returned only one of his texts. I’m going with Marie to the benefit, she’d written. I don’t need you to pick me up. He’d debated on whether to even show up tonight. In the end, he’d put on a suit and tie because he was expected to show. Not because he hadn’t been able to stay away.

He was exhausted, Lexie was pissed off, and to top it off, her friend Marie sat at a table behind him, her eyeballs burning holes in his back.

“I’m going to the bar. Need anything?” he asked the statue.

“No thanks.”

Sean set his paddle on the table and stood. He and Lexie were good together, in and out of bed. When she realized that what she felt was lust, not love, she’d come around. He just hoped it was sooner rather than later and she didn’t waste any more time on her temper tantrum. They had only a little over two weeks before the whole fake breakup thing.

Two weeks, he thought as he moved into the next room and sat at the bar. And she was wasting it. “Vodka. Splash of tonic,” he told the bartender, and pulled out his wallet. Yeah, it was a vodka kind of night.

“Hey, Knox.” Chucky patted him on the shoulder and ordered a Bud Light. “I just lost out to Olsen for that vacation.” The left wingman then said, “Lexie looks hot tonight. Damn.”

Sean had an irrational urge to punch Chucky in the head.

“Hey, Knox and Chucky.” Butch hobbled up to the bar, still walking slow after the high stick incident. “Lexie is looking hot tonight.”

Sean stuffed the tip jar. “How’s your dick, Butch?”

“It’s my groin.”

He stood. “Same thing.” Drink in hand, he moved out into the hall. There were several former Chinooks and hockey greats at the Four Seasons. Sean purposely chatted up Sam LeClaire, Ty Savage, and old-school enforcer Rob Sutter. None of the three men knew anything about him and Lexie. Their fake relationship was the last thing he wanted to talk about, and he could relax and shoot the shit with guys who knew what it was like to play in the finals and win the cup. He swallowed half his drink and felt the tension between his shoulders ease. He laughed at jokes that only men in their positions understood. Lexie would come around. If not, there were plenty more beautiful women in the world.

“Paul’s out with a torn rotator,” he said as they talked Stanley Cup strategy. Out of the corner of his left eye, he caught a flash of red. He looked past LeClaire’s shoulder, and his gaze landed on the tight waist of Lexie’s dress and full skirt. She moved into the women’s restroom, and he excused himself before he thought better of it.

He pulled up the cuff of his shirt and glanced at his watch. Eight-thirty. He could leave without appearing to dip out early. He shoved a shoulder into the wall and waited a few moments for her to appear. There were plenty more beautiful women in the world, but he liked Lexie. Her life interested him. She interested him.

“Lexie.” He straightened and stepped in front of her. “I’m leaving.”

“Okay.”

She looked beyond him, and he raised a hand to the side of her face. “Come with me.”

“No.” Her gaze finally met his. “That’s impossible.”

“No. It’s not.” His hand dropped from her soft cheek. “All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other.”

She shook her head.

“If you can’t walk, I’ll carry you.”

Her blue eyes filled with tears.

Shit.

“I don’t want to cry here in front of everyone.” She blinked and blew out her breath.

She was crying. That meant he should apologize for something so she’d stop. “I’m sorry I blamed your period, the other night.” That was true. He shouldn’t have said that. “Come with me and I’ll make it up to you.”

Her nose scrunched like he’d just made everything worse. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be your pretend girlfriend.”

“Sure you can.” He looked at her mouth and bare throat. She said she loved him. She said he was a good guy. He wanted to back her against the wall and put his hands on both sides of her head, kiss her breathless, and show her how good he could be. “For two more weeks.”

“Sean, I can’t—”

He cut off her rejection with his mouth and pulled her against his chest. She stood stiff within his arms as his lips teased and coaxed, trying to warm her up and turn her all soft like the Lexie he knew.

“No, Sean.” She stepped out of his arms and raised a hand to her lips. One big tear rolled down her cheek. “Don’t do this to me. I love you and I can’t pretend that you love me, too.”

“It’s only for two more weeks,” he repeated.

She shook her head and wiped the moisture from her face. “I’m going to announce our breakup.”

That wasn’t what he wanted, but he couldn’t do anything to stop her. “When?”

“At the grand opening of Yum Yum’s Closet. Sylvia will be there, so it might be big news for a few days.” She shook her head. “Then it will all be over.”

“It’s not the middle of March yet.” He wanted to argue. To convince her she was just overreacting. The emotion pooling in her blue eyes stopped him.

“I’ll say we had an amicable split and are going our separate ways.”

He didn’t want to hurt her. That’s the last thing he wanted, but he was so pissed off he couldn’t think straight. “Are we going to be pretend friends now?”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” She stepped around him and moved in the direction of the front door. He wanted to go after her and shake her and hold her against his chest. What he wanted didn’t matter, and he watched her walk away.

The next morning, the Chinooks’ DC–9 took off for a three-game stretch. Sean wasn’t in the mood for chitchat and stuck his headphones over his ears. Lexie was going to end things. Fine by him. The minute she’d launched herself into the Sea Hopper, she’d caused drama in his life. He didn’t need it. He didn’t want it, and he was positive that by the time they touched back down in Seattle, she’d be nothing to him but a distant memory. One he could forget because he needed to get his head in the game. His dreams of Stanley Cup glory were more important to him than a pain-in-the-ass runaway bride. More important any day of the week, but getting her out of his head was harder than he anticipated. She was stuck front and center as he took the ice against the Sharks, and her memory didn’t fade when the jet touched down in Columbus or Tampa Bay, either. And certainly not by the time he returned to Seattle six days later. The whole team seemed to feel his mood and made a wide path around him.

“Is something wrong?” John asked him as the team waited to take the ice in the Key Arena for a match-up against Buffalo.

“No.” He shoved his helmet on his head and stepped onto the ice when his name was announced. What else could he have said to Lexie’s dad? Your daughter’s drama is fucking with my head? He took off skating from one end of the rink to the other, then sent up a spray of ice as he took his place on the centerline. The fans whistled and chanted his name. Number 36 was at the show and it was time to do his job. Time to put points on the board. He adjusted his shoulders beneath his pads and looked up into the third tier. Her seat was empty. He knew it would be, but that didn’t keep the disappointment from his brow or extinguish the angry flame burning in the pit of his belly.

Several times during the first frame, he forgot that she was no longer a part of his life, and he caught himself glancing up, expecting to see the flash of her white smile. Each time, his brow furrowed a little deeper and the flame burned a little hotter. It didn’t help that Buffalo’s defender, Ed Sorenson, kept his gums flapping and his hits late and from behind. A solid defense was a part of the game, and a good, big, solid defenseman was worth his bulky weight in gold. Then there were instigators like Ed.

Halfway into the second period, Sean had just about enough of Ed’s stick in the small of his back. The whistle blew for an offsides and Sean skated to the face-off circle.

“Having a bad night?” Ed asked as he took his place next to Sean.

He’d been pretty much having a bad week. “It’ll take more than you, Special Ed, to make me have a bad night.” He bent forward, his gaze focused on the ref’s hand, waiting for the puck to drop. Inside his head, he went over the next play. If Paul got the puck, he’d shoot it to Sean. Sean would one-time it center ice to Brody and get in position to take a shot. He needed to keep his head in the game. It would take more than Special Ed’s insults to make him lose control.

“Hey, Knox, what’s it like to have Pete Dalton’s sloppy seconds?”

Sean’s stick fell to the ice and he swung even before he turned his head to see where to plant his fist. A low buzzing shot up his spine and blew out his ears. For one of the only times in his life, he didn’t even bother to control the anger blasting through him. Before Ed could recover, Sean slammed a shoulder into the bigger guy’s chest and punched him in the side of the head. The defender staggered and swung, landing two good blows before Sean got him in a headlock and fed him lunch. Punching as the bigger man flailed, Sean felt hands on his arms and back, pulling at him, but he didn’t stop until someone pushed him hard and a ref trapped him in a tight bear hug from behind. “I’m going to kill you the next time I see you,” he yelled as he got a glimpse of Ed, the guy’s jersey half off and his face bloody.

“Are you done, Knox?” a referee screamed in his face.

Sean blinked a couple of times and looked around him. The buzzing receded and he flexed his sore hand. The ice around him looked like a yard sale filled with hockey gear. The benches for both teams had emptied, and KO and a Buffalo player were still throwing punches in the corner.

“Yeah,” he said between big panting breaths, and the arms holding him fell away. Blood dripped from Sean’s nose and he wiped it on the back of his hand.

“This isn’t over, Knox someone,” Ed yelled as his teammates skated with him off the ice.

“Bring your mom next time, Ed!” Sean wiped blood from the side of his mouth and winced. “She has a better right hook than you.”

By the time the ice was cleared of players and gear, a variety of penalties were called; the most serious ejected Sean from the game. The adrenaline that had pumped through his veins as he’d whaled on Ed began to fade as a team trainer stuck a plug up his nose. The corner of his left eye stung, and a trail of blood had dried on his neck and the front of his jersey. Someone handed him a towel and he hung it over his head. He looked down at his right hand packed in ice and couldn’t remember how it got there. That whole fight had been stupid. So damn stupid. Chaos.

“What the fuck was that?”

He pulled the towel from his head and cracked open his good eye. John Kowalsky stared down at him as if he wanted to finish him off. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? That dance of yours resulted in thirteen penalties. KO and Marty are cooling their asses in the box for twenty-five minutes.” His scowl got more thunderous by the second. “That’s some kind of fucking record! You were brought on this team to add points, not empty benches!” He folded his arms across his chest. “Explain that to me.”

“He said Lexie is sloppy seconds.”

All the air went out of John and his hands fell to his sides. “Jesus, Knox.” He sank to the bench next to Sean. “I was afraid of that.”

For instigating the fight with Ed Sorenson, Sean sat out the next game, too. It was the first time in his life his name had been dropped from the roster for misconduct. These kinds of things just didn’t happen to him. He was a franchise player; he put points on the board. Unless he was dog-sick and unable to lift his head from his pillow, he played every game. He’d never been dropped, ever, until he’d met the runaway Gettin’ Hitched bride.

He’d always known Lexie would cause trouble if he let her. He’d known she was drama and chaos. He’d known it all along. He’d known she could mess up his career, too. He’d been right about everything, and he’d let her into his life anyway.

For the first time in his life, he’d let his personal life interfere with his career. For the first time in his life, he’d let a woman mess with his head. He didn’t know when or how Lexie had slipped into his brain and taken over, but it had to stop. He had to stop it.

When he was eligible to return to game-day practice, he was more focused. More determined and ready to give the Chinooks one hundred percent.

He felt good as he stepped on the ice for the first time in two days. His passes were sharp. His shots perfectly timed. His attention focused . . . then he remembered that it was Monday. He glanced at the big clock on the scoreboard. In an hour, Lexie would officially open the doors to her new store in Bellevue. At some point during her grand opening, she’d announce that he and Lexie were no longer together.

I’ll say we had an amicable split and are going our separate ways, she’d said. Then it will all be over.

The two of them would be done for good. The charade over. I can’t be your pretend girlfriend, she’d told him. She said other things, too. She’d said that he made her heart pound really hard. She’d said that she saw him. No one had said that to him before.

“Are you going to shoot that thing or stare a hole through it?”

Sean glanced across his shoulder at Stony standing on the centerline beside him. She’d said she loved him. Ridiculous. No one fell in love in so short a time. It took more than two months. Six at least. Maybe even a year. Not that he was an expert, but two months was just crazy. Like the woman herself. Lucky for him, she was some other man’s crazy now. Without a word, he loaded and fired three pucks into the net.

“You look like someone ran over your dog.”

Some other man’s crazy. The thought of her being some other man’s crazy felt like a big truck ran into his chest. The thought of any man but him touching Lexie suddenly made him feel crazy. It spun his head and made his face hot.

He took off toward the other end of the rink, dangling a puck in the curve of his blade as he skated a familiar pattern between orange cones. He wanted peace. He didn’t want crazy. Not in his life. Not in his head. Not hitting him like a truck.

The cool air brushing his cheeks and pushing his hair from his forehead felt good against his flushed face. He shot into the net, then skated around the boards and picked up another puck on the goal line. This time as he approached the cones, he plowed over the first and tripped over the second, almost falling on his ass. Chaos and crazy rushed across his hot skin, squeezing his chest and making him drop his stick. He’d never felt so muddled in his life. So out of control, not even when he’d listened to Lexie’s schemes or read her bossy texts. Not when he listened to her laughter or crazy stories of making clothes for chickens or chasing pigs.

He shoved one glove in his armpit and picked up his stick. He would never hear her laughter or wild stories. He would never touch her face or kiss her lips. The thought of another man looking into her eyes as he made love to her made him stop in a spray of ice. The thought of Yum Yum jumping in another man’s lap and crunching his nuts as she searched for the perfect place to lay her hairless body brought him upright.

Lexie was crazy but his life without her was the worst kind of crazy. It made him want to beat his head against a wall. In two short months, she’d caused him nothing but drama. Hot, sweet chaos that he couldn’t imagine living without.

The thought of her never waving to him from the third tier squeezed his chest and sent him skating toward the tunnel. He stepped onto the mats and moved past the rack of carefully honed hockey sticks. He’d wanted a life without chaos. He didn’t know what that felt like or what it meant anymore. He only knew that he wanted a life with Lexie in it.

In the dressing room, he unlaced his skates and shed his gear. Perspiration soaked the armpits of his practice sweats and wet his back where his shoulder pads had rested. He quickly exchanged the sweatshirt for a Nike hoodie and grabbed his running shoes. He headed out of the locker room, hopping on one foot and then the other as he moved down the tunnel toward the exit. He needed to breathe. He needed fresh air. He needed to stop her.

John stuck his head out of the manager’s office and called after him, “Where are you going in such a rush?”

Shit. Sean looked back over his shoulder. “To tell your daughter that I love her,” he said without stopping. He moved through the twists and turns of the tunnel, picking up the pace until he was jogging when he hit the door and stepped out into the fresh Seattle air.

Lexie was many things to different people. Daughter. Boss. Pet rescuer. Gettin’ Hitched bride. To him, she was sunshine and chaos. Laughter and lover. She was madness and peace. She was his and he loved her. It hadn’t happened in six months or a year. He didn’t know when he’d fallen for her. The exact time didn’t matter. The minute she’d shoved herself onto the Sea Hopper, he’d been a goner.

A cold breeze blew across his cheeks and through his damp hair, and he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt to cover his head. He’d walked to the arena that morning, and he glanced at his watch. “Shit.” She was his, but she was about to leave for her grand opening and announce to the world that the Gettin’ Hitched bride was back on the market.

He jogged to the parking lot, didn’t see any other players leaving, then he took off toward the front of the Key Arena. He figured his best chance of stopping her was to head her off at her apartment. If he ran to his own place to get his car, he wouldn’t make it in time to stop her. He glanced around, his gaze searching for a friend or a cab. A steady stream of traffic filled the road, but he didn’t recognize any vehicles exiting the arena and didn’t see one cab.

His glance moved past tourists studying maps as he ran to the curb, looking up and down First. He stopped next to a cement security bollard, and his gaze landed on a bright red scooter parked on the sidewalk. A big metal cooler was bolted on the back with a local phone number and a big sandwich painted on the side. Sunlight caught on the silver key dangling from the ignition, shooting sparkles into the air like a sign from God. Before he could think it through, Sean hopped on the red seat and fired it up. He’d had a Ducati once upon a time; he could surely manage a Vespa. The thing didn’t have a clutch and he looked around for gears.

“Hey! Get off my scooter.”

Sean looked up at a guy in a red jumpsuit moving toward him.

“I’m borrowing it,” he said, and turned the gas handle. The Vespa shot across the sidewalk and off the curb with more spunk than he expected.

The deliveryman called after him, “Come back or I’m calling the police.”

Sean couldn’t worry about a little thing like grand theft, and merged into traffic. He gunned the piece-of-shit scooter and shot down Pike. He wove in and out of traffic, but by the time he made it to her apartment building, her parking space was empty.

He’d been to her store once, but he’d relied on his GPS. He wasn’t all that certain he even knew how to get to the right shopping center in Bellevue, but he didn’t let a little thing like directions keep him from heading toward the 520.

Wind whipped off the hoodie, and a bug hit the same eye Ed Sorenson had hit a few days earlier. The Vespa topped out at fifty. Cars whizzed past and people honked at him for either driving in the fast lane or because they wanted a sandwich. A Good To Go! toll pass had been taped to the inside of the short windshield. On the east side of the bridge, he took a wrong exit and ended up in an old neighborhood. A dog chased him, biting at the Vespa tires before Sean made his way out again. At a stoplight, he asked directions from a guy on a Harley next to him. The man revved his engine and pointed, as if talking to a guy on a Vespa was beneath him. By the time Sean pulled into the right parking lot, he was bug splattered. His good eyeball was dry, his bad eye was watery, both were dusty. He didn’t see anyone out front or the “Grand Opening” banner he knew Lexie had ordered. He didn’t see her car, either, just the bright red storefront. He figured she’d parked out back, and was so relieved to make it in one piece, he felt like crying like a girl. Whether from exhaustion or delirium, he accidentally hopped the curb in front of the store. The front tire stopped, the bike flipped over, and he landed on his back in the middle of the sidewalk, gasping for air and surrounded by sandwiches.

“What are you doing here?” Lexie’s friend Marie appeared over him, her eyes kind of squinty behind her glasses. “And what are you doing with Jimmy’s Scooter Sub?”

“Where’s Lexie?” He swallowed past the dry patch in his throat and hoped it wasn’t a fly.

“Gone.”