DeHardt threw up his arms. “Wow. You’re really gonna be mad at me because some girl slipped me a note? As if I have any control over that?”
“No, I’mmadbecause you lied about it all along.”
“I never even read the stupid thing! How was I supposed to know what she wrote? There were cameras filming us, and I didn’t want to read it in front of them!”
“I don’t know what kind of girl you think I am. Butthiswas a mistake.” Austen crumpled up the note and threw it at DeHardt. “Here. You can keep your stupid note. Maybe you should call her over? Sounds like she’ll be more than happy to tuck you in.”
She stormed out in a huff.
“I’ll keep an eye out for your scarf!” DeHardt yelled after her sarcastically.
Whatever, asshole.
Thankfully, he didn’t bother chasing her.
She ran out of DeHardt’s house and hopped in the waiting SUV.
“I’m ready. Let’s go,” she told her crew.
“That took a while,” Johnny commented as he put the car in gear. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Austen nodded. “Sure did.”
“Thank God,” Frederick said. “Because that guy’s a fuckin’prick. The less time you have to spend with him, the better.”
“You’re telling me.”
Chapter 14
Dane
A smirk creased Dane’s lips as he crossed the red line with the puck on his stick, galloping up to full speed. A Colorado defender stood in his way, anchoring his body at the blue line.
A flat-footed d-man?Dane thought as he turned on the jets, intending to simply rush past the defender.Might as well defend the blue line with a traffic cone.
The hometown Dallas crowd began to stir with excitement—they were thinking what their captain was thinking, too. They’d seen him turn this exact play into a scoring opportunity hundreds of times in the past.
But as Dane blazed past the Blizzard d-man, the crowd’s excitement fizzled into a disappointed murmur. The Blizzard d-man had swatted the puck right off Dane’s stick. The surprised Devil slammed on the brakes, spraying snow high into the air.
Dane put his head down and skated hard, trying to catch the Blizzard as they rushed the puck back up the ice on the counter-attack. Dane caught up to the d-man first to let him know he’d just dodged a bullet.
“Next time I catch you flat-footed, you’re fucked,” he told him, giving the d-man a harmless cross-check to the back.
But the Blizzard defender tried to sell the call, all two-hundred-thirty pounds of his body dramatically crashing to the ice like a redwood.All that commotion caught the ref’s eye, whose arm shot into the air to signal a penalty.“Two minutes, interference!”
Dane yelled at the ref. “Are youkiddingme? Watch the replay! That was a love tap!”
But his pleas fell on deaf ears. His punishment was to sit in the penalty box for two minutes and watch his shorthanded team try to defend against the Blizzard powerplay.
The hell’s wrong with me tonight?he thought, fuming. Tonight, his shot was a tier below where it should be. His passes not as crisp. His timing off.
He banged his stick against the penalty box glass.
Slept like shit last night.
And it wasn’t just because he’d been rejected. Yeah, Dane had his pick of the hottest women Dallas had to offer—but hey, rejection was part of the game, too. He liked to think he handled rejection pretty well, all things considered.
It wasn’t even the first time a girl got him all hot and bothered, only to have a change of heart and run off, leaving him with an aching pair of balls. Usually, though, that happened because the girl suddenly remembered she had a boyfriend.
