Quick Trick (Rough Riders Hockey 1)

Grant wondered what Patrick saw that he didn’t. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “You’ve always gone for the hoity-toity type.”

“How do you know who I date?”

Now Patrick lifted his brows. “Hel-lo. Have you not heard of this newfangled thing called the Internet? Have you also not noticed that you are one of the top fifty best-paid NHL players in the nation? I keep telling everyone I’m not as dumb as I look. Nobody listens. Anyway, I’m sure you’re already aware of this, but you may want to know for future reference that every time you date someone, the press wants to sneak into your bedroom and take pictures. So, yeah, I know you go for the high-maintenance chicks. Faith’s real pretty. She’s just kinda…I don’t know, simple, in comparison. But then we are in Holly, North Carolina, not Washington, DC. What’s a guy gonna do?”

While Grant was surprised and, yeah, even pleased, that his brother had developed enough interest in Grant’s career to actually look him up, there was also enough truth to Patrick’s statement to turn Grant downright surly. But he couldn’t blame anyone for that except himself.

Still, he shoved Patrick’s shoulder in the direction of the bar. “Do you want me to buy you a tonic and lime or not?”

“Ho, look at you, big spender. But I actually prefer root beer nowadays. Think you could manage a root beer?”

Grant laughed.

“And maybe some pretzels?” Patrick asked.

“Okay, now you’re pushing it.”

Patrick thought that was hilarious and laughed his way toward Yuletide Spirits.

Grant followed, grinning reluctantly. His brother had come back from the brink of disaster and not just survived but thrived. It seemed like he might even have become fun again.

“And, for the record,” Patrick said as they came up to the bar’s front door, “I’m all for you looking at changing the type of women you see.” He paused at the steps and turned to Grant. “My girlfriend and I have been together six months. She’s nothing like the women I usually drifted toward, but she’s at least half the reason I was successful at rehab, about twenty percent of the reason I’m still sober, and accounts for ninety-five percent of my happiness. She’s the best fuckin’ thing that ever happened to me.”

Grant grinned. “Hey, man. That’s great.”

Patrick nodded and continued up the stairs to the doors. “Faith’s always been a real nice girl. Even when I wasn’t so nice to her, she believed I could be and do better. She’s worth taking a long, hard look at, bro.”

His brother pushed into the bar, but Grant stood there a moment, absorbing the wisdom his little brother had just bestowed upon him. Grant already knew Faith was beautiful—inside and out. But his brother’s experience of internal transformation with the love of the right woman, spoke to something Grant had been trying to pin down for the last couple of days.

When Grant got a minute to himself, he was going to have to start thinking about his own life and how he might manage to pull his head out of his ass.

9

Faith piled one more extension cord on the mountain of supplies needed for the ice-sculpting competition and checked that box off her list. “Done.”

She leaned against the wall, hung her head, and closed her eyes. God, she was so tired. And not just no-sleep tired, but her-body-hurt-in-a-million-new-ways tired. Ways that made her smile, despite the discomfort.

The thought of Grant hanging with his brother warmed her heart, and she couldn’t wait to hear about their talk after years of estrangement. She didn’t like Patrick as a drunk or a womanizer or a compulsive liar-borderline-narcissist. But she’d heard he’d been sober for a while and hoped his time with Grant gave them both a little healing from the wounds their family carried.

At the same time, it made her sad. She missed her dad. Last night, falling asleep in Grant’s arms, was the first night she hadn’t cried herself to sleep in longer than she could remember. Faith knew it wouldn’t be the end to the loneliness or the tears, but she was deeply grateful for the reprieve and the glimmer of hope he’d given her.

And, yeah, she realized there would be another gaping hole in her life when he went back to DC after Christmas. But she’d deal with it when it happened. She certainly wasn’t going to rush it one second faster than she had to. Faith was going to enjoy that boy right down to the wire, and when it was time to let him go, she’d let him go. And she’d be happy for him, because he’d be going back where he belonged, with people who loved and respected him. Who understood and supported him.

She couldn’t want more than that.

Except…

Her mind whirled with possibilities that were really just pure fantasy. Faith laughed at herself and shook the impossible from her mind so she didn’t get unnecessarily hurt when this little fling ended.

She rubbed at tired eyes and refocused on the list. The door to her store chimed, and Faith pulled her phone from her back pocket to check the time. But even before she could begin to wonder who would stop in at this late hour, the light clip-clip-clip of high heels sounded in the store.

Dread coiled in the pit of her stomach. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and told her dad, “Leaving me to deal with her was cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Faith?” Natalie called. “Where are you?”

“Back here.” She set the list aside and straightened the supplies headed to the festival tomorrow.