TWENTY-SIX
Isobel couldn’t sleep.
Too much plagued her: the play-offs, the tryouts, her future.
Vadim. He was worried about her since the news of her failure to make Team USA. He wanted her to snap out of it, but it would take time to wrangle her self-confidence and make it her bitch again. And with this slip in her assurance, all those niggling doubts about her worth returned.
Like Vadim, confidence in one arena of her life had a direct impact on the rest. Injured and not playing, she’d lost what little mojo she had around men. But these past six weeks with him had boosted her up: coaching him back to his winning ways, feeling useful for the first time since her injury, Vadim’s attraction to her—all combined to create a heady cocktail of “Yes, you can!”
Now her confidence was at dirt-low levels, and relying on Vadim to buoy her up would be a mistake. He would tire of her soon. Of that she had no doubt.
Her phone buzzed with a call from someone she’d been avoiding. She hadn’t spoken to Jen since Plymouth, and the last thing she wanted to hear was her friend’s pity.
But things were looking up, weren’t they? She tried to force cheer into her body, so it would be heard in her voice. A coaching gig with the Rebels, a spanking-new career in the pros! Plan B was better than no plan at all.
Answering, she pressed the phone to her ear. “Hey, Jenny-Benny!”
“Congrats, Iz! Great game tonight. Your boy was on fire.”
She covered her mouth to hide her smile. You’re heading for a crash. “He’s not my boy.”
“Well, he seems to think he is.”
She could feel the stupid smile slip from her face. “What does that mean?”
Jen coughed slightly. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“Tell me what?”
Another throat clearing. This was getting ridiculous. “Jen?”
Finally, her friend spoke, and Isobel listened with a sinking heart while the last shreds of her strength shattered into dust.
She opened the front door of Chase Manor and let him envelop her. But her body refused to respond, her arms dead weight at her sides.
“What is it?” he whispered against her temple, and when she didn’t speak—when she couldn’t because her anger choked off her words—he drew back, his beautiful sonofabitch face crumpled in confusion. “Bella, are you all right?”
“No, I’m not.”
He moved forward. She stepped back.
Hurt came over him briefly.
“You killed it,” she whispered, each word torn and raw. “You killed my dream.”
He inhaled a breath, and in it she heard his relief. He was glad to have it out in the open. Maybe it had been eating him up inside.
He expected her anger, then he expected her forgiveness.
According to Jen, Vadim had called Coach Lindhoff and threatened to go to the media if Isobel was chosen. He would tell everyone that Team USA didn’t take concussions and player injuries seriously. That they’d do anything to win, even risk killing a player in their desperation to win gold.
He had known all along. That night at the practice rink a week ago when she had gone to mourn, he had come onto the ice with her. Skated with her. Made love to her.
All this time the reason she would never play for her country again—for herself again—was because of him.
“Yes, I called him,” Vadim said, his mouth hard with self-righteousness. “Lindhoff is using you for his own glory. He does not care if you live or die. He cares only for the gold.”
“I care only for the gold!” she spat out. “You had no right to do that. This is my career—”
“This is your life, Bella,” he boomed. “There’s a reason you retired from play after your injury. The doctors told you of the dangers, and you were willing to heed them at the time. But then your father died. You were lost, unmoored, not yourself. I know how this feels and I know you think you have failed him by not getting back to competitive ice, but that is no reason to risk everything. You are incapable of seeing this, so it must be shown to you. For your own good.”
For her own good. Where had she heard that before? Oh right, the mantra of the late, great Clifford Chase.
“You condescending prick! I’m a grown woman, Vadim. I make my own decisions, and that was my decision.”
He held her face with both hands, all drama because everything he did had to be drenched in it. “I have waited my entire life to love you and I refuse to let your stubbornness take you away from me.”
Her heart beat faster—or faster than before—at his mention of love. But love didn’t sneak around crushing dreams because it knew best. Love didn’t get to sugarcoat this turd.
She jerked away. “That’s not good enough. You can’t throw out the love card and use it to excuse this.”
“I can and I will. That night in Buffalo, you nearly died. So don’t tell me that my love for you isn’t big enough to excuse my behavior. My will to protect you will always be bigger than anything you can throw at me.”
A tiny kernel in her brain saw his viewpoint, even if he couldn’t see hers. He wouldn’t back down, because Vadim Petrov always knew best. How to recover his skills. How to handle his mother. How to deal with the woman he supposedly loved.
“Isobel, tomorrow is not promised, but there are things we can do to make it more likely. For you to go onto the ice, play hard, risk the life that means so much to me . . . these are not on the list of those things.”
Always back to him. “So you’re not sorry?”
He set his chin, all Slavic imperiousness. “Nyet.”
Having reached this impasse, they stood staring at each other in a frigid face-off. Pound for pound, she had always been a better player than him, but the time for games was over. This was her life, her future, and he had damned it with one phone call.
“Then what comes next, Vadim? You’ve made this decision for me. What’s next for Isobel Chase?”
She sounded so forlorn—she was referring to herself in the third person, for fuck’s sake—and she hated it. She hated him. Yet she wanted this man she hated to soothe her and tell her it would be okay. Then one night while he was sleeping, she would lodge a puck in a very uncomfortable place.
Vadim, the man with all the answers, now outlined his plan for Isobel’s life. “You will be a coach. You have done well with me and other players want to work with you. Moretti will hire you. He will do this when I tell him how good you are.”
Maybe he was behind Moretti’s offer. “So you’re going to fix it. Again. I skate by the grace of Vadim Petrov’s favor.”
His brow lined in recognition of that little dose of sarcasm. “You will have me stand back and let you put yourself—put us—in jeopardy?” He stalked her until she was back against the banister in the marble-walled foyer, making his intent clear. “It has been a circuitous route, but we are here now. Together, the way it’s supposed to be.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, don’t you? I’m exactly where you want me. Fawning over the great Petrov, second fiddle to his career. Working to ensure you’re the center of the hockey universe.”
He placed hands on either side of her, gripping the handrail. “I know you are angry, Isobel. In recognition of this, I will not rise to your bait. In time, you will realize that this is for the best.”
The best? Her skates yanked from under her by the man who has everything? The god who can have anyone? Was she supposed to feel blessed that he had chosen her to love above all others? Because it didn’t feel like a blessing. It felt like a leash, on which she was forced to stay two steps behind. Vadim was the sun, and she was a pale moon, whipped by forces beyond her control.
“I want to live my life on my terms, not yours.”
“There are always checks on our lives. Years ago, I had mine, but I made it out. I made it here. You will adjust in time.”
“And meanwhile I hang around with the other WAGs following the career of my man?”
He smirked in victory at how she had referred to him. My man. Apparently the dumbass Russian’s sarcasm meter was broken.
“Good, this is what we will talk about. Real things, our future.” He cupped her jaw, his touch so tender after he’d bruised her beyond belief. “So you want to be a W or a G?”
She jerked out of his grasp. “Remember how my dad pushed me, how he blackballed you in the NHL because he was worried I’d throw my career over for a boy?”
“And he was wrong. You would never have done that.” He stared, recognition arriving a second later. “I’m not asking you to do that.”
“Yes, you are. You’re asking me to hang tight at home while you hit the road and get hit on in return.”
“You do not trust me? There is no one else. There has been no one else since I returned to Chicago.”
“Not even Marceline with her tittie tat? Yeah, I saw that text, Vadim.”
He didn’t have the decency to look cornered or guilty. “That is history, and sometimes women from my past will contact me. You know there is only you.” He said it so simply that she never doubted it for a second.
She trusted he wouldn’t stray—at least not immediately—but there were other ways trust could be frayed. Broken. And by going behind her back, he had shown what loving Vadim would be like. His way or none at all.
Isobel a WAG? It was ridiculous.
Yet she was tired. So tired. Staying still wasn’t in her nature, but maybe taking a break . . . No. Once she did that, it would be over. Once she submitted to Vadim’s dominance and his definition of love, she would be finished. Subsumed.
He held her by the shoulders. “Have I ever treated you as second best? Have I ever told you that your career was secondary to mine? I know what hockey means to you, but you cannot use this need to prove yourself worthy to throw away our chance together, Isobel. We’re not kids anymore. Your father wanted you to be independent, not to rely on anyone, to be second to no man. And perhaps he meant that you should grab life by the balls, but no father would want his daughter to put her life in danger. No father would want his daughter to slap love in the face.”
Then he didn’t know Cliff.
“I can’t do this. I see you on the ice, and my body rages with envy. I want your career, your skills, your resilience after injury. Even if I can get past what you’ve done—and that’s a big if—I’m going to end up resenting you because you have everything I don’t have.”
His look was all pity. “Isobel, that’s crazy.”
Yes, it was. Since her injury, she had been grieving for her lost career like she’d miscarried a child. Seeing Vadim on the ice—this man she loved—was like watching him nurse the child that should have belonged to her. Deep down, she knew this made no sense. It wasn’t as if he had stolen it from her or only one of them could have it. But why did it feel like it? And her bitterness at losing this thing that had defined her for so long would end up destroying them both.
“You took away my last chance, Vadim. I know you think it was for my own good, but all my life I’ve had people telling me that.” Train harder. Study more. No boys. Skate, skate, skate. There had to be something to show for it. There had to be.
Dumb tears were falling now. “This was my decision to make, and you ripped it away from me.”
“Bella.” Two sad little syllables.
She pushed at his chest, absorbing the beat of his big heart, loving and hating the owner. “Go. Please.”
He looked torn, but she checked him again, using the last vestiges of strength in her failure of a body until he stood outside the threshold.
Anger glittered in his shockingly blue eyes. “I will not watch you die on the ice.”
“Instead you’d watch me shrivel to nothing off it.”
Then she shut the door, knowing her heart lay on the other side.
And as she sank to the floor, one thought fought its way out of the tangle of all the others: eventually she’d rise above these setbacks, both her crushed ambitions and her ambitious crush.
It’s what her father would have expected.