Chapter 2
Jo walked in on a team meeting.
Not her team; not the big burly firefighters that formed her life and mostly sat around looking all kinds of badass whenever they had a meeting.
Nope, it was the key members of the Ice Dragons hockey team that had congregated in her friend Kat’s living room. Of course, it was also Ryan’s living room, given that Kat and Ryan were recently engaged, and it was their new house. Hence why Ryan would be there.
“Excuse the noise. We’ll study upstairs again where it’s quiet,” Kat said.
“It’s a team meeting then?”
“Less meeting, more smack-down and telling Alex like it is. Poor guy can’t stay at his own place because of all the media attention, so he’s staying here, but he’s pissed and probably scared of being off-ice for far too long.”
“It’s fine,” she said, although she wasn’t exactly concentrating on what Kat said, so had missed most of it.
And all because from there she could see the center of attention, one Alexandre Simard, or Simba as his teammates liked to call him. She knew that Simba was his nickname because he’d done those ridiculous car sales ads for a local Toyota dealership a couple years back. They’d made this whole thing about his blond hair and his name, likening him to a lion based on his hockey nickname.
She’d seen the ads so many times she could almost recite them from memory; too much down-time at the firehouse between calls.
Of course, his face had been fixed firmly in her mind after she and Mitch had been the ones who’d dragged his trapped and heavy ass out of that car, the flames burning through his jacket and the jersey beneath. He’d been the one who’d looked up at her and asked not about himself, but about the baby.
The damn man had crawled back into the burning car for the dad. He could have died. Jo had been furious about his actions—the last thing professionals needed was civilians getting involved—but when the action of the call had faded, she’d thought past the rookie checklist for civilian interaction on scenes. Instead, she’d gone from seeing him as a man who’d helped to sell cars, played a game for a living, to a man who’d risked his own life for a child and father.
With no thought for his own safety.
He was pretty much a local hero if you listened to the news—a tall, gorgeous, blond-haired, blue-eyed hero. Could the guy be any more of a cliché? And why did he have to look so sexy and handsome even when he was angry?
“They’re all mad,” Lieutenant Dennison had said when they’d been working on getting the car clear. “Hockey players—all mad,” he’d elaborated when she’d stared at him, not really understanding at first.
Seemed like they weren’t just mad for putting themselves in danger, but they were mad-angry as well. So it wasn’t so much a meeting she’d been warned was happening at the same time as her study session, as a heated debate.
There was some language she didn’t understand, although it was deep and guttural and likely Russian, and then one hell of a lot of cursing. She caught some of it, a shouting match over ice time and why couldn’t their fucking captain understand the concept of fucking rest.
She didn’t watch hockey that much, sometimes caught highlights on shift down-time, but being the probie at the firehouse kept her busy. That would all be ending soon when she passed probation and her exams, but for now, it sucked. She kind of wanted to watch hockey. The way her fellow officers and the paramedics talked about it, the game was fast and changed on a dime. Burlington had an expansion team, or so she’d read in the paper that morning. In fact, she’d learned a lot about hockey over the past few days. Ever since the accident, actually, because the articles on it were everywhere.
To be fair, every article she’d read about the Dragons’ captain and him risking his life had begun with the words Alexandre ‘Simba’ Simard, Captain of The Dragons, the NHL’s newest expansion team… She’d looked it up, knew what expansion meant, that it was a new team, only five or so years old, and that this year they’d started strong before setbacks had them trailing in the rankings.
Not to mention they’d lost their captain for at least four weeks. Maybe six. One writer pointed out that the team didn’t have the chance to label it a generic upper body injury so that other teams wouldn’t know the captain’s vulnerabilities. Nope, there were pictures and news reports of burns and a fractured radius.
According to news reports, the team losing their captain was critical, and Jo could understand that. A captain was a key piece in his team—the leader, the one everyone looked up to. He was also a real American hero, or at least that was what the news was painting him as. Without thought for his own safety, he’d rescued a father and baby from their car only seconds before the fire spread.
Brave. Not everyone was a trained firefighter; not everyone would risk their own life to rescue others. Not everyone was trained like her. Brave, stupid…they were different sides of the same coin.
She glanced into the main seating area in the beautiful place that Kat and her fiancé had bought, the one with the views out over Burlington. They’d only just moved in, but this was the third time Jo had visited. The view included shouting, sexy, angry hockey players; men who were clearly pissed at something.
“You’re not coming back early,” one strong, steady voice said, and Jo recognized Ryan, Kat’s other half, as the owner of the voice.
“Fuck you, Flynn,” the captain snapped.
“This is not up for discussion, you hard-headed idiot,” Ryan shouted louder. Seemed it was the kind of meeting where each person shouted louder than the last just to be heard.
She counted it as a win that they hadn’t spotted her; there was something compelling about being able to see them in person. Kat was watching with amusement on her face. Of course, her fiancé was one of them, and she probably knew more about the whole thing than Jo ever would.
“Ready?” Kat asked with snacks in one hand, drinks in the other.
“Is that coffee?”
“You can have it after you answer your first questions right,” Kat teased, but didn’t stop Jo when she “helped” her by taking the coffees and falling on hers like she hadn’t had caffeine in days.
Still unseen by the hockey players, whose anger had dialed up a notch, Jo followed Kat up the stairs to the office at the top, taking her usual seat by the window. It might well be her third visit, but the view from up there was enough for her to want to go there every day. If she lived in that house, she would have a sofa there and build shelving for her books, and she would sit and read snuggled in blankets, with coffee and cake at one side. Bliss. And up there she couldn’t hear the shouting. Either that or the team had all killed each other.
“So,” Kat asked. “What are we studying today?”
“Spatial orientation, page two-eight-four,” Jo said, her nerves already knotting inside her. Diagrams and figures weren’t her strongest skill. She might have a degree, but art history wasn’t helping her with her firefighter exams. Get her in a room full of smoke, she could work out what she needed, but writing out calculations made her mouth dry. Her sister was the one who’d got all the brains.
Loud laughter echoed up the stairs, so they were still alive and teasing each other, apparently.
Kat shut the door. “Sorry about all that. Alex can’t go back to his house, so they called the meeting here.”
“Why not?”
“News cameras; they all want a piece of him.”
“Poor guy.”
“Yeah, he’s all, I’m getting back on the ice, and Ryan’s having none of it. I’m staying out of it, because whenever I go near them, I have Alex asking me for my medical opinion and support, and Ryan telling him that I have to be on his side when it comes to keeping Alex off the ice.”
Jo didn’t ask what Kat actually thought Alex should do. He’d looked fine from where she’d been standing. His blond hair soft, his skin warm-toned, his right hand mobile as he’d sketched his argument in the air. The only things that had given him away had been the stark white bandages on his upper arm and the cast on his wrist and lower arm that hid the burns and fracture beneath.
“How is he actually doing? Alex, I mean.”
Kat smiled at her, placing her coffee carefully on the desk and dropping the books next to it. “Annoyed and annoying,” she said, her voice low. “He’s irritated because he has to sit and chill, and they’ve told him there are no visits to the rink. He hates it, but he’s back next Tuesday, or so he says, for no-contact practice.”
“With his arm still in a cast?”
She sighed and then shrugged. “Hockey players. There’s no way he’ll be dressing for the game, but keeping him off the ice is another matter altogether.” She sat cross-legged on the sofa in the window, looking so effortlessly gorgeous and at peace with everything it was difficult not to be envious.
The view from the window was of the lake, and the sky was that curious sapphire blue, cloudless beyond frost-covered trees, that you only got on a cold November day. The last snow had been a few days back, but the view from Kat’s place wasn’t like the slush on the roads—it was untouched and beautiful. Something about it made Jo feel sad, and if she dug deep enough, there would be a memory of her father mixed in with the sorrow. Seemed like her dad was always only one thought away from everything she did.
“I love this room,” Kat murmured, more to herself than to Jo.
“Me too. There’s a room like this at my mom’s place, and I would sit there for the longest time, just drawing or reading.”
“You draw? I didn’t know that.”
Jo wasn’t entirely sure what to say. She hadn’t picked up her pencils in years, not since she’d left college, but she’d loved nothing more than sitting and sketching the changing light over her parents’ extensive gardens. Her dad had had a whole series of the drawings in his office, after her mom had found one on the fridge held there with a magnet. Seemed like the casual use of magnets and kids’ drawings was a step too far for Iris Glievens. She hadn’t take them down with malice; she’d carefully explained that they needed framing, then hung them where they still were now. In Simon Glievens’ office, with his golf bag and his paperwork and the rainbow of pens he kept in the mug that Rose had painted at summer camp when she was ten or so.
Maybe since her last visit, a short hour a few weeks back, her mom had emptied the office and taken the drawings off the wall. Jo knew she should visit, but somehow time had gotten away from her. She was avoiding the house, the office, her mom. All of it.
The view in her small apartment was of a wall surrounding the offices next door, but when she stood on a chair, she could see the distant hills over the barrier. She didn’t do it often—only when she needed something she’d stored on the top of the limited kitchen cabinets—but still, the view was there if she needed it. She’d needed the place to be close to the firehouse, much to her mom’s disgust. In fact, her mom had outright said that Jo couldn’t use the small inheritance she had from her grandparents on such a horrible little place.
Jo’s money, Jo’s apartment. But nothing with such a gorgeous view as this.
“Anytime you want to study here, you’re welcome,” Kat offered. Kat was the only one from work who’d visited Jo’s apartment. Jo shared the floor with one next door neighbor, who, to be fair, she never really saw.
“Thank you. You could rent out this room to all the probies so they can concentrate.”
“I’ll draw up a schedule,” Kat said, smiling as she spoke, then passed over cookies. “And yeah, it’s perfect.”
The way she said that, Jo got the impression that she wasn’t just talking about the house, but her life with Ryan.
Or am I reading too much into the softly spoken words?
“You seem happy with your man and your new place.”
“I am,” Kat said, then looked down at the book, but not before Jo had seen the light in her eyes.
Jo would have that one day, but not until she’d achieved certain things; passing her exams, being the best at what she did, and coming to terms with the grief that refused to leave her alone. Her younger sister, Rose, seemed to have a much better handle on the grieving process, taking her new role at the family engineering firm very seriously. And her mom? Well, who knew with Mom? She was an enigma who didn’t give much away.
“Jo? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Kat looked like she didn’t believe her.
“Promise,” Jo added.
Kat smiled at her. “You want to start?”
Jo was relieved Kat hadn’t carried on with the “are you okay” line of questioning, and had included the ideal question for Jo to hone in on. “Yep,” she said. “Page two-eight-four.”
She would worry about the whole my life is under my control mantra she had going on in her head later.
Much later.