Ryker (Cold Fury Hockey 4)

"Maybe a dinner out and I'll have the waiter put the ring in her glass of champagne?"

"Boring," I say with a mock yawn.

"A skywriter?" he asks with his eyebrows raised in hope.

"Man, with the way your luck has been going, the plane would probably crash down on top of you."

"I give up, then," Zack says in frustration as he pushes out of the chair. "I'm just going home right now and as soon as she walks in the house, I'm going down on one knee."

"Wait a minute," I say to calm him. "Sit down and let's think this through."

Zack throws himself back down into the chair and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks a little...pouty.

Whatever.

"This is Kate," I say logically. "What would mean the most to Kate?"

Zack shrugs his shoulders, but I can tell by the look in his eyes he actually knows exactly what would mean the most to her. He knows it and he doesn't want to say it, and I'm perplexed.

So I push him. "Kate isn't into big and splashy stuff. She doesn't need the expensive trips or balloon rides."

Rolling his eyes, Zack sits up in the chair and leans toward me. "But I need it," he blurts out.

"What?" I ask in astonishment, because I think he may have just grown a vagina right here and now.

"I need to make a statement to Kate and to everyone and anyone that will listen. I want the entire world to know how much I love her and that I can't wait for her to be my wife. I'd write it across the sky in every state if I could."

And fuck...I think I just grew a vagina, because that actually chokes me up a bit. Zack is going overboard in his need to make Kate understand just how committed he is to the idea of marriage.

"Zack," I say seriously, holding his gaze. "No, you don't need that. You only need Kate."

His shoulders sag a bit and he seems to deflate right in front of me. His face lowers and he sighs. "I know. I just want her to never doubt what I feel."

I'm silent for a moment, because he's actually talking about the difference between words and action. He feels the words aren't enough so he wants to make up for it with action.

The way in which we do things speaks almost as loud as the actual words we say.

A prime example...the way Gray touched me this morning.

Do. Not. Fucking. Go. There.

"I got it," I say suddenly and in a supreme effort to push Gray from my thoughts. "Propose in front of the team. At the Christmas party. You can't fuck that up...just show up with the ring in your pocket and do it in front of the whole goddamned team. That right there will make a statement."

Zack's eyes light up. His lips curve upward in a smile. "A Christmas proposal?"

"It's just a little less than three weeks away."

"A Christmas proposal," he muses again, then shoots me a big grin. "You're a fucking genius."

A-a-a-a-and, that gets me thinking of Gray again. She's a certified genius. And I want to feel her hands on me again.

Just fucking stop it, I yell at myself.

I close my eyes and gingerly rub at my temples, because this war inside my head is causing the mother of all headaches.

"You okay, man?" Zack asks.

Opening my eyes back up, I give him a sheepish smile. "Yeah...just a little stressed about seeing Hensley next week."

Not a total lie. It's not what I had been stressed about right at that moment, but I am in fact not looking forward to her arrival.

The girls are beyond excited, but then children have very forgiving hearts. When the girls first came to live with me, Hensley called them every day. Then when the hockey season started, and she was traveling with her young boy toy, the calls started to decline. Maybe four or five times a week, then down to just a few times, and now she calls every Sunday. That's her pattern at the moment.

I've had to deal with the fallout. Ruby occasionally won't sleep in her bed and cries for her mom. Violet will sometimes get off the phone with her mom and she'll lose that dreamy look in her eyes. It's replaced with something that looks a bit colder...a bit flatter.

Frankly, it freaks me out.

But then Hensley will call and they'll get all excited again, because when it boils right down to it, she is their mom.

"Are you going to have to suffer the douche's presence?" Zack asks as he drums his fingers on the kitchen table.

"God, I hope not. I better email her just to make sure she doesn't bring him to the house."

"You'd kick his ass again, huh?" Zack laughs.

And I realize...no, I wouldn't.

I broke Sutter's nose when I first found out that Hensley slept with him, because I was angry and betrayed, not just by my wife but with him as my teammate. But now I don't feel anger. In fact, I don't feel much of anything when I think about him. Just like I don't feel much of anything for Hensley other than a vague fondness for her role as the girls' mother.

I'm not a psychologist, but I think that might mean that I may not have been as invested in that marriage as a spouse should be. We had grown apart and things just got...comfortable.

For me, at least.

Hensley, of course, was anything but, and so she went out to sow her wild oats.

The stomping of feet down the staircase has me standing up from my chair and ignoring Zack's question. With the girls about to make an appearance, we simply do not talk about the way Daddy punched out Mommy's boyfriend.

The girls come scampering into the kitchen, Ruby chattering like a squirrel and Violet calmly telling me about the homework she has to do tonight. Zack hangs around for a bit and we sit out on the back deck and enjoy the ability to drink a beer out there in December.

He keeps me entertained for a while.

He keeps my thoughts off Gray.

I know after he leaves I'm going to be busy with the girls the rest of the night and I almost...almost dread where my thoughts will turn after they go to sleep.

Chapter 6

Gray

I glance at my watch as I exit the elevator and head toward the executive office suite. Two hours until the game starts and I want to be at home, in my pajamas, and watching from the comfort of my bed by then.

The Cold Fury is playing an away came in D.C. tonight and I didn't go. I didn't go for only one reason, which isn't a very good one. It's actually following me out of the elevator at this moment.

Chad Sykes, the senior columnist at Sports Elite, the nation's biggest and most influential sports magazine. I'm apparently going to grace the cover next week, and while this isn't my first interview I've given in the past seven days since I was appointed general manager of this club, it is the most important.

Per my father's suggestion, Chad has been shadowing me all day, watching how the first female general manager in this league handles the operations of a $437 million franchise. For the most part, he just watched me, furiously typing away on his tablet when something I did interested him. I think he almost fell asleep when I met with our director of merchandising to go over loss leader products for the previous year. By the third spreadsheet I was reviewing with her, I actually saw his head nod.

Chad perked back up when I met with my replacement as head scout for the Cold Fury. Billie Mantle was my selection, and that's a she-Billie, not a he-Billie. I chose a woman to succeed me because I thought it made a bold statement. It shows the world that women can have critical roles in men's hockey.

Billie and I went over the reports from the scouting staff. We have twenty-one scouts currently who spend most of their lives on the road seeking talent that can one day translate into a solid score for our team. Chad had a few minor questions, easily answered, and he spent a great deal of time watching us with interest.

I think he may have nodded back off when I was testing a new software program I was having developed to help me analyze my data. Right now I am using some generic SAS software for my analytics, but I want something that is particular to the sport and isn't available to the other teams. So I'm paying an exorbitant amount of money to an ex-SAS programmer to work for me directly.