“Baking a cake, dumbass,” she yells and I giggle as he waves her off.
“No, jerk. I mean, like, why are you here? Where’s your husband?”
“I’m mad at him, and I am mad at my dad. So I came to blow off steam. What are you doing?” she asks and then her gaze falls on me. Her brow rises. “Don’t deface our rink, Jace. It’s tacky.”
When he punches her shoulder and she smacks him back, I have no clue what’s going on. Are they friends? Enemies? Looking back at me, Jace says, “This hostile brat is my sister-in-law, Baylor. She’s married to my brother Jayden. Hostile brat, this is my friend, Avery.”
She smiles. “Hey, don’t take offense to my comment. I just like messing with him.”
“It’s fine,” I say, waving her off. “But I’m confused. I thought you called her Moore?”
“Yeah, she’s dumb and didn’t take our name,” he accuses and she laughs.
“Um, no, it’s Moore-Sinclair, hyphenated, and we did that so there is no confusion on the ice.”
Then it clicks. “Baylor Moore, first woman in the NHL.”
She grins. “In the flesh. So you know hockey?”
“Just a bit,” I say with a grin and I kind of feel honored to meet her. It was a huge deal when she was drafted last year. My whole family was there since Laurence was in the draft. Come to think of it, I remember seeing Jayden go first.
Small world.
“Cool. About time you got with someone who isn’t a ho.”
“Are you talking about your best friend?”
Baylor laughs as she nods. “Ha! I’m so telling her you said that.”
“You’re the one who said it,” he challenges as he laughs. “But whatever. Okay, I’ll let you get back to being a hostile brat.” Jace laces his fingers with mine. “We have a special place to go.”
Her lips quirk at the side. “The special place?”
“Well, yeah. It’s a Sinclair honey hole.”
She rolls her eyes. “You guys are losers. It was nice meeting you, Avery. Love you, Jace.”
“You
too,” I say as he starts to pull me away.
“Love you,” he calls as he slams the door shut and then waves. Taking my hand, he heads toward some stairs and then we are climbing. He’s taking them two at a time, and I struggle to keep up. “She’s a pain in my ass.”
“She’s nice.”
“Ha. Nice is not in Baylor’s vocab, but she’s mine, so we deal.”
He’s full of it and I know it, but I don’t comment as we climb. Finally, he pauses in front of a door and turns to me. “Hold on.”
“What?” I ask, shivering from the bitterness of the air.
He grins. “Give me two seconds.”
Before I can protest, he turns and heads inside the room, shutting the door behind him. Turning, I look out at the rink as Baylor skates around and plays with the puck. I can still remember how my brothers threw a fit she was drafted before Laurence. While she went straight into the NHL, Laurence didn’t get drafted and decided to finish school because of it. The guys in my family don’t do rejection well, but Laurence was never as good as Seth or Matty. But he plans to finish college and then go back to the farm team. If they’ll take him. But knowing my dad, they will.
When the door opens behind me, I turn to find Jace grinning at me, beckoning me to come in.
And when I do, I gasp.