Hard Pass (St. Louis Mavericks 3)

“And what if he’s exactly who he says he is, except really unattractive?”

“Believe me, I’ve thought of all these things. He’s just so easy to talk to. We have a lot in common. He’s down-to-earth, a really good listener, and he loves animals. He has a busy career like I do and—”

“That could be a lie.”

I opened another letter. “Look, you’re not telling me anything I haven’t already considered. I’m just not sure what to do about it yet.”

“Promise me if you decide to meet him in person, you’ll tell me when and where so I can be there for backup.” Her dark eyes gleamed with intensity.

“I promise.”

She patted my hand, temporarily mollified. “Meanwhile, let’s talk about these coffee breaks you keep taking with Nash.”

Chapter Fourteen

Nash

* * *

“Are you kidding me?”

Eric Alvarado pulled a block of ice from his locker and glared at me.

“Why is there ice in your locker?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“It’s because you have the intellect of an eight-year-old,” he grumbled, setting the ice down on the bench.

“Pop that sucker under a hot shower and you’ll have your jock on in no time for practice,” Wes said, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’ll be wet, though.”

Alvarado balked. “My jock is in that thing?”

“Yeah, dipshit,” Drew said. “Did you think it was just a big chunk of ice?”

Yesterday, I’d had to dump a bag of ice out of the front office’s employee break room freezer to make room for a bucketful of water with Alvarado’s compression shorts in the middle, and now it was frozen solid.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Alvarado asked. “I need my jock for practice.”

I gave him a serious look. “Don’t worry, we won’t deliberately shoot pucks at your crotch. We promise.”

A snicker sounded from a few lockers away.

“You’re an asshole,” Alvarado said, pointing at me and then picking up the block of ice. “I’ll wear it wet.”

He turned and stormed toward the showers. Wes grinned at me and spoke in a hushed tone.

“I assume there’s Icy Hot in it, too?”

“You know it.”

He set his roll of tape down on the bench. “Any reason you’re hitting him so hard?”

I shrugged. “Because he’s being such a douchebag about it.”

“Is everyone dressed in here?” a female voice yelled into the locker room.

We all looked over to see that the door to the locker room was cracked open, but no one was walking in.

“Everyone but Boone, but it takes a powerful magnifying glass to see his junk!” I answered.

The voice laughed. “Seriously, is everyone dressed? I need to come in.”

Lars walked over and opened the door, dressed only in his jock and leggings. “We are all dressed. Come on in.”

“Oh.” Sariah walked in, averting her eyes from Lars’s bare chest.

Her gaze immediately landed on my bare chest, and she looked down at the floor. Her cheeks were tinted pink with embarrassment.

“We’ve all got pants on,” I assured her.

“That’s good, it’s just…I’m used to seeing you guys with shirts on, too.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Wes said. “Most of us usually don’t have shirts on in here.”

“I’m sorry to barge in,” she continued. “But I need this jersey signed by as many players as I can get so I can close a sale on a VIP box, and I figured it would be easier for me to come to you guys than to ask you all to stop by the front office.”

“We appreciate that,” Wes said, taking a Sharpie and the jersey from her. “You want it personalized?”

“No, just your signatures would be great.”

“Who’s the big dog buying the VIP box?” I asked her.

“It’s a friend of Rosa Romano’s. I asked her if she had any leads for me, and she had several.”

Rosa Romano was our team owner. She and her late husband had made a fortune together, and she liked people with initiative. I was betting she liked Sariah a lot.

Everyone passed the jersey around for signatures, and then Sariah checked the list on her clipboard.

“I’m just missing Eric Alvarado. Is he here today?”

“He’s occupied, but I’ll take it to him real quick,” Wes offered.

“Thanks.”

I sat down to put my skates on and looked up at Sariah. “You keep going at the pace you’re setting and before long we’ll need a new arena with more seating.”

“That would be a good problem to have.” She smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I feel like I should have brought you a coffee. This is like your office, right?”

“My office is the last stall in the bathroom,” I quipped. “But you definitely don’t want to bring me coffee in there.”

“Do you guys drink coffee?”

“Some of us do.”

Drew made a face. “Not me, dude. Coffee gives me the shits.”

“Yeah, because you drink like five cups at a time,” I said.

I looked at Sariah again. “It’s a big problem for a goalie to have the shits because he can’t leave the ice.”