28
The first week in Colorado was busy and exciting, for which Dani was grateful. She was far too busy getting to know her coach and teammates, and learning her way around Colorado Springs, to worry about Sergei or her broken heart. Her teammates were great and their head coach, Laurel Saunders, was fantastic. A gold medal Olympian herself, she was smart, tough and a lot younger than Dani would have imagined, just thirty-two. They worked hard but so far everyone got along and Dani was glad that the only time she thought about Sergei was late at night, after she dropped into bed. The rest of the time she was on the go, and usually so tired that when she lay down she fell right to sleep. So she was wholly unprepared for Coach Saunders’s announcement the following day.
“I have news,” the attractive woman said as they gathered for their pre-practice meeting. “Some really exciting things are coming up, so get ready. First, we’re going to Las Vegas on the twenty-fifth for an exhibition game against the Sidewinders. It’ll be mostly their rookies and prospects, but it’ll still be NHL-level hockey in front of a huge crowd.” She cut her eyes to Dani. “I believe there will be at least one veteran player on the team who’s going to be on the ice.”
Dani laughed. “My brother won’t go easy on me just because I’m his sister.”
Her new friend and roommate, Hailey Dobson, nudged her. “He can go hard on me, though.”
“He’s engaged, goofball.”
“A girl can dream!”
“Okay, ladies.” Coach Saunders was shaking her head. “We’ll leave on the twenty-fourth, play on the twenty-fifth, come back the next day. Everyone up for a real game?”
Cheers went up and she smiled before continuing. “Good, but be ready to work your asses off. We don’t want to embarrass ourselves in front of a very loyal Vegas crowd. Okay, second. It can’t be all work and no play around here, so we’re going to attend the season opener in Denver as a team. Colorado is playing the team from Anchorage—”
Dani didn’t hear the rest of her sentence because of the roaring in her ears. Damn. They were going to the Colorado game against Anchorage and Sergei would be there. Close. Close enough to touch. Touching him would be good. It would probably be bad in the long run, but short-term it would feel good. Too good. She tried not to think about him too much, but she missed the hell out of him. There was nothing wrong with a booty call, right? He’d already broken her heart and she was too busy with hockey to sulk, so a few good orgasms wouldn’t hurt. Right?
“Are you paying attention?” Hailey nudged her.
“Sorry.” Dani snapped back to the present, focusing on the rest of what Coach Saunders was saying.
“…along with Aaron Ferrar, from the Blizzard, flying in for the all-day goaltending clinic.”
“Aaron’s coming?” Dani spoke without thinking. “He’s a great guy.”
A few eyebrows raised around the room and someone said, “He just got divorced. How well do you know him, Dani?”
She flushed. “Just friends. I nannied for Sergei Petrov part of the summer and—”
“You were Sergei Petrov’s nanny?” Petra Santini’s eyes widened. “He’s soooo hot.”
The other girls snickered.
“Yeah, and we bought Aaron’s house so—”
“We?” Petra asked, cocking her head.
Dani was blushing furiously but tried to laugh it off. “I helped him choose the house, buy furniture, get everything set up. You guys know what I mean.”
“I think we all know what she means,” someone chortled on the other side of the room.
The girls all laughed but there was no malice in it and Coach Saunders picked up where she’d left off, telling them about more additions to their schedule and a few other things she needed to mention.
Aaron took her to dinner on his last night in Colorado and though it wasn’t a date, she wore her pink dress just to be able to wear the matching shoes and purse Sergei had bought her. Other than maybe Christmas, she wouldn’t have many opportunities to wear a dress between now and February, so she took advantage of it.
“You look lovely tonight,” Aaron said as they walked into the restaurant.
“Thank you.” She let him pull out her chair and she sank into it with a smile at the waiter, who’d been eyeing her legs.
“So how’s it going?” he asked after they’d ordered.
“It’s busy. I’m pretty much on the ice or in the gym, all day, every day.”
“Sounds familiar,” he nodded.
“It was good of you to come down for the clinic.”
“I was bored,” he admitted. “I’m divorced, living in a furnished condo while I look for a house, with no family nearby and nothing to do. I hang out with Jake a little, but he and Adrianna are having issues so I try to keep my distance.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize they were having problems.”
“They’ve always had problems. He just gets to ignore them once hockey season starts. I guess there was an incident at the team BBQ last weekend, but since I wasn’t there, I only heard about it secondhand from Sergei.”
At the mention of his name Dani’s stomach rolled a little but she managed to keep her face neutral. “Did he tell you what happened?”
“The story is Addy had too much to drink and made a comment about… Well, you know they’ve had a bunch of miscarriages, right?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, and she really wants a baby, so supposedly they had an argument and she told him if he was a real man, his little swimmers would be stronger or something to that effect. Sergei said he only heard part of it but apparently Coach Sylvester said they had to go to couples counseling. Jake didn’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
She grimaced. “I’m kind of glad I wasn’t there. You never know how to behave in those situations, or whose side you should be on.”
“Jake told me everyone asked about you but all Sergei would say was that you were training for the Olympics and that you’re just friends.” His blue eyes found hers. “Is that true?”
“Yes. We decided it would be too hard to be together with me here and then at the Olympics in Seattle.”
“So you’re single?”
His eyes burned with something she couldn’t quite read and she looked away, suddenly uncomfortable and embarrassed, unsure what to say. Sergei was the only mature, attractive man who’d ever been genuinely interested in her and she had zero experience telling guys who weren’t idiotic college students that she didn’t want to go out with them.
“Hey, if you’re not interested, it’s no problem,” he said when she didn’t answer right away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just… I’m still…”
“You’re still hung up on Sergei.”
She nodded miserably. “I’m really sorry. You’re good-looking and sweet and we’re friends but it probably would be a disaster with both of us on the rebound.”
“Wait, if you’re still hung up on Sergei, why’d you break up with him?” He frowned. “When we talked, he made it sound like you dumped him?”
She smiled sadly. “He did that because I asked him to, because I didn’t want anyone to know my first-ever boyfriend dumped me.”
“He was your first boyfriend?” Aaron looked shocked.
“Why do you look so surprised?”
“Because you’re beautiful. How could guys not be all over you?”
“I guess because I’m too much of a tomboy and they don’t like women who can out-skate, out-run and out-lift them.”
He laughed, a hearty sound that rang through the restaurant. “Then they’re pussies who didn’t deserve you,” he said in a quiet voice. “But tell me what happened. Sergei wasn’t acting like a guy who did the dumping. In fact, he seemed pretty bummed.”
“It’s complicated. We’re complicated. Geographically, it’s my fault. I can’t be with him and Niko. I want to be here in Colorado Springs—not many people get the chance to compete in the Olympics, you know? And then I have a job offer with the Sidewinders as an assistant trainer, which is really tough to get. So that’s a big obstacle. But emotionally, it’s all on him. He’s gun-shy after two marriages, doesn’t think he’s good enough for me or some bullshit. We could compromise on things like careers and locations, after the Olympics is over, but his inability to commit again? That’s all him. I won’t give up everything for a guy who says he’ll never love me.”
Aaron made a face. “Then he’s a dumbass who doesn’t deserve you, either. Except there has to be something else going on. He was really bummed, but I thought it was because you’d dumped him.”
“It doesn’t really matter. He won’t commit and I refuse to give up everything for a guy who doesn’t know what he wants.”
Aaron was thoughtful for a bit. “We could…make him jealous.”
“We?”
He smiled. “I’m here and if we go somewhere a little high profile after dinner, we’ll probably end up on social media. It happens to me a lot. We don’t have to actually do anything, he’ll just think we are. Or he’ll think I’m moving in on his girl. Nothing gets a guy thinking straight more than jealousy. And, since I live in Alaska too and it can’t possibly be serious, he’ll think I’m using you and get really riled up!”
She frowned. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Why would you want to upset him like that if he’s your friend and teammate?”
Aaron laughed. “Because he’s being obtuse and the truth, if it was to get ugly, is that nothing has happened between us. Nor will it, unless you were truly interested, and even then, I would talk to him about it first because that’s the kind of man I am. However, in the interest of playing matchmaker, I’m willing to be a short-term sacrificial lamb.”
“You’re sweet, but even if you made him jealous, I don’t see that we have a future. What good will making him jealous do?”
“It might shake him up enough to make him admit to the feelings he doesn’t want to accept, make him realize he’s a dumbass?”
She lowered her eyes for a moment but couldn’t help the wistful feeling that whipped through her. Maybe this would work? It probably wouldn’t, for a million different reasons, but going out with Aaron couldn’t be a bad thing. There was the off-chance it would change Sergei’s mind about her being better off without him, but if it didn’t, it would still be fun to be out with an attractive, interesting man. A man who wasn’t Sergei. Just to see. She wasn’t going to sleep with him or anything, but there was nothing stopping her from having an evening of drinks and conversation with someone other than Sergei. After all, he was her first and only everything, so maybe that played into her feelings for him. A casual date with a friend might be just what she needed.
“Let’s do it,” she said after a slight hesitation.
They went to a popular club downtown, where the cover charge alone was fifty dollars per person. She’d never been to a place like this and her eyes widened as she took in the women wearing more jewelry than she’d ever seen in her life, the expensive bottles of champagne, and the number of easily recognizable celebrities.
“Wow,” she breathed against Aaron’s ear. “This is wild.”
He grinned. “Great place to see and be seen.”
“Nothing over-the-top, Aaron,” she warned, meeting his eyes. “We can be here together, sitting together, opening doors for me or whatever, but I’m not going to do something to embarrass Sergei.”
“Absolutely not,” he said somberly. “He’s my friend. I’m doing this for him, not to be a dick. We’ve already talked about the fact that you’re not interested—I would never do anything like that.”
“I would like to dance, though,” she admitted.
“Fast or slow?” he teased.
“Fast!”
He pulled her onto the dance floor. A popular hip-hop song was playing and they found it easy to get into the rhythm. He twirled her around a few times, smiling down at her, and Dani started to relax. He wasn’t Sergei, but she was enjoying his company. He was funny and good-looking, a nice guy who definitely wouldn’t stay single long. It was possible to imagine dating a guy like Aaron, but when he moved up behind her, his front pressed to her back, longing slowly burned through her. Not for just anyone, though. Her body ached to be touched, but she wasn’t even capable of fantasizing about anyone but Sergei. Having Aaron pressed up against her made her uncomfortable, though she loved to dance. Well, at least now she knew.
Without making it obvious, she danced away from him, eventually finding her way back so that they were face-to-face again. This was better, and Aaron didn’t seem to mind. Thank goodness. She wasn’t nearly as naïve as she’d been a few months ago, but she wasn’t ready to dip her foot in any kind of dating pool either. Just the last twenty minutes with Aaron had proven that.
Eventually they made their way to a table and he ordered a beer while she got a white wine spritzer. It wasn’t her favorite, but lower calorie than most other drinks and she was conscious of everything she put in her mouth right now. She burned a ridiculous number of calories everyday, but she needed to be at the top of her game, which meant paying attention to every detail.
“Dani?”
She turned her head, realizing Aaron had been talking to her. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“I asked if you were having fun?”
“Just thinking about the time and not staying out too late.”
“No worries. I figured we’d stay an hour and then head out.”
“Thank you.”
He reached out to brush his knuckles across her cheek. “You’re a great girl. I hope Sergei figures that out before someone snatches you out from under him.”