Knox (Chicago Blaze 4)

In the time I’ve been with the team, I’ve only gotten nagged by the PR people once. Some photos of me partying with a bunch of models on a yacht came out, and it turned out one of the women on my lap, with her hand on my crotch, was married to some hotshot businessman who got pissed off. But I didn’t even know her name, how was I supposed to know whether she was married? She didn’t have a ring on.

I probably deserved to get called out on it, though. I used to spend my off-season chasing down all the ass I could get. The past couple of years, though, I’ve preferred to keep a low profile. It’s too much fucking work to wine and dine women. I like to have a few I can call when I want to hookup, as long as they know that’s all it’s ever gonna be.

“Knox Deveraux being considered for The Bachelor?” Jonah snorts with laughter from the other side of Luca’s massive kitchen.

“Not anymore.” I shake my head. “I told my agent to tell ‘em to fuck off.”

“Really?” Rhett gives me a confused look. “There are always hot chicks on there.”

I balk at that. “Yeah, and they expect a ring when you’ve known ‘em for a couple of months. No thanks.”

“Aw, you’d be a cute husband to a trophy wife,” Anton says, laughing. “I can picture you carrying some blonde’s purse while she shops on Rodeo Drive.”

They all seem to think that’s hysterical, the laughter taking a while to die down.

“No fucking way,” I say with resolve. “And can we get this grilling show on the road, fuckers? I want to go meet some Hawaiian chicks.”

“Thought you wanted to go to the beach,” Luca says.

“I can do both. I don’t have a warden making me go to bed at nine sharp.”

Luca shrugs, grinning. “I’ll go to bed with my wife anytime she wants.”

He passes me and Rhett some knives and two cutting boards, putting us to work cutting up the pineapples.

By the time we all sit down for dinner at the table of the outdoor patio, I’m so hungry I just eat in silence until I’ve thrown back half of my steak. I’m sitting next to Luca’s niece Emerson, who keeps grinning at me.

“What?” I finally ask her.

Her eyes get wide, but still have that mischievous sparkle. “Can I touch your beard?”

A single note of laughter bursts out of me.

“Have at it,” I say, setting down my fork and bending closer to her.

She extends her little hand tentatively, pausing right before she gets to my dark, short beard.

“It doesn’t look like Santa’s,” she whispers.

When her fingertips graze over my beard, her lips part with surprise.

“It’s so…hairy,” she says.

“That’s because he’s part wolf,” Victor says from across the table.

Emerson’s eyes grow as big as saucers as she pulls her hand away.

“If you hear howling tonight,” Vic tells her with a serious look, “it’s him.”

When Emerson turns to me questioningly, I just shrug.

“He scares our opponents on the ice by growling at them,” Vic continues. “One guy pooped his pants when Knox growled at him.”

From beside him, his girlfriend Lindy gives him a look. “Really? While we’re eating?”

I can’t help laughing at the memory. Chris McMorrow did shit himself as I was taking off my gloves to throw down with him on the ice during a game a couple years ago. He gave me a look of horror that made me freeze in place.

“I think I’m sick,” he’d said. “I just shit myself. Can we do this another time?”

Dumbstruck, I’d told him we could and called one of his teammates over to help him off the ice. Poor dude found out he had a nasty infection in his colon. But from then on, I was known as the guy who made another enforcer shit himself at the thought of fighting me.

Emerson now looks terrified of me. I don’t like that. I lean closer to her once again.

“I’m a nice wolf,” I assure her.

She lowers her brows, still looking concerned. “I don’t want to poop my pants.”

“Never. I only do that to the other team’s enforcers on the ice.”

A smile plays on her lips as Abby sets bowls of pineapple on the table for “dessert.”

I speak into Emerson’s ear. “Hey, I snagged some chocolate chip ice cream at the store, what do you say we go get some?”

She nods enthusiastically and we head for the kitchen together, the crashing of the nearby ocean waves still calling to me.

After we finish our ice cream, Luca and Abby’s housekeeper takes care of the dinner cleanup so we can all head to the beach. I let the kids bury me in the sand and I have a couple beers before I give in to the pull I’m feeling for some alone time.