Excerpt
Gloves Off
Chapter 1AlexeiThe morning of the Vancouver Storm’s season opener, I wait for the elevator up to Coach Tate Ward’s office at the arena when I hear it—heels clicking.
She steps into my periphery, and a familiar scent washes over me—vanilla, violets, and sandalwood. My shoulders tighten.
Here we f***ing go. My blood starts to hum. On my wrist, my watch beeps in warning as my heart rate rises above resting rate, and I silence it.
She looks up from her phone, those warm whiskey eyes cooling. “Oh. You.”
I reach for the elevator call button and press it again. I don’t want to spend more time with this spoiled brat than I have to.
I cannot f***ing stand Dr. Georgia Greene.
“Thanks, Volkov.” She offers me a mock grateful smile. “I don’t want to spend more time with you than I have to.”
Like always, her auburn hair is down around her shoulders, loose, wavy, and thick like one of those laughing women on shampoo commercials. It’s not red, it’s not brunette, it’s something in between, with gold strands that catch the light. A crop of new freckles span her nose and cheekbones, probably from sunbathing on a yacht all summer, lounging topless while being served drinks on a silver tray by some employee whose name she doesn’t know. My teeth grit.
She stands next to me and faces the doors as we wait, still reading emails on her phone while I try not to inhale her. “I’m surprised you’re back at work this season.” Apparently, I can’t stop myself from provoking her. “I thought you would have bagged a rich husband by now.”
I give her a sidelong look, taking in her flawless hair, her makeup, the outfit she has chosen to fit her every curve. Her skyscraper heels. The expensive handbag dangling from the crook of her arm. The Greene family is notorious for owning half of Vancouver. She’s exactly like my ex—superficial, self-centered, and obsessed with wealth and image.
“I’m ignoring you,” she says, eyes on her phone.
I’ll never get married, I heard her say last year. Still, it pisses her off when I talk about her wanting to find a rich husband, and the only thing I love more than pissing off the doctor is hockey.
“Isn’t that your deepest desire?” I ask. “Land some old guy on the brink of death and cash in when he crosses over to the afterlife so you can quit your job and live out the rest of your days doing what you love most, spending money on yourself?”
I don’t know why I act like this around her. I don’t talk to anyone the way I talk to this woman.
At the words
old guy, her lips curve into a sick smile. “Maybe I’ll marry you.”
“When hell freezes over.” I would never marry, let alone marry
her. “And I’m not old.”
I’m thirty-six. For an enforcer defenseman, I’m old, but I’m still in incredible shape. The Norris trophy is awarded to the NHL’s best all-around defenseman. I haven’t won it three times because I let myself go.
“Hellfire,” I add.
She stiffens, and I fight the urge to smile. She hates that nickname.
“Don’t call me that.”
“That’s where you’re from, isn’t it? Forged in the fires of hell?”
A feeling expands in my chest, like the moments before a game starts, and the air between us crackles.
“You want to know what my deepest desire is, Volkov?” She whirls on me, eyes flickering with fire, and my heart hammers harder. “My deepest desire, which I wish for every birthday, is that you’ll fall down a very narrow, very deep hole. You won’t have your phone on you. It’ll be in the middle of nowhere, and I’ll be the only person around.” She puts on a high, sad voice. “
Help me, you’ll call up the hole.
Please, Georgia, help me.”
“I’d never ask for your help. And I don’t sound like that.”
“You will, because you’ll be starving, thirsty, and very scared. It’s a hundred feet deep, and there are snakes at the bottom.”
“That’s what you wish for on your birthday? That’s kind of pathetic, don’t you think?”
“You know what else I wish for? That you’ll finally retire.” Her gaze trails over me, cataloging every injury, every pin and steel plate in my body from seventeen years in the NHL. “And I never have to see you again.”
Her words hit me in the gut like an arrow. I can control my diet to a tee, can do everything to heal and play my best, but I can’t stop time. My impending retirement is the shadow I can’t shake.
Where the hell is this elevator? I watch the number above the doors. “Do what you do best, Doctor, and make shopping your fulltime job so we can hire a real doctor.”
She doesn’t say a word, but I can feel her irritation. Bull’s-eye.
“Asshole,” she mutters.
She’s not wrong. A beat of silence stretches between us before the elevator doors open and we step inside.
“It must be Friday,” I say to the doors as the elevator ascends.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Friday. How do I know that?”
“Oh my god,” she whispers in mock awe. “You can read. This whole time, we weren’t sure.”
My competitive instincts wake up. “Making fun of my immigrant heritage? That’s a low blow, Doctor, even for you.”
She gives me a flat look. “That’s not what I meant.”
My parents fled Russia when I was a kid, and worked around the clock to pay for hockey. “Not all of us could afford private school.”
Our upbringings couldn’t be any different. We couldn’t be any different.
Her face turns a shade of pink that makes my watch go off again. I silence it, victory coursing through me. She’s about to say something when I cut her off.
“Violets. Every Friday, you wear the perfume that smells like violets.” It took me months to identify that note. I only figured it out because I was picking something up at my mom’s flower shop and the scent stopped me in my tracks.
She blinks up at me in shock. I bet she hates that I know this about her. I bet she hates that I’m on to her.
“That’s the one you wear when you go out, trying to catch a rich husband, isn’t it?”
She straightens up an inch but she’s still almost a foot shorter than me. Deep in my lizard brain, I like how much taller I am. In her heels, she’s tall, but I’m taller. I’m twice her weight. It would be no problem to throw her over my shoulder.
“Don’t be such a stalker, Volkov.” She turns back to her phone
