Dirty Hit

Chapter One

Sadie

The neon paint won’t budge from my cheek no matter how hard I scrub.

Perfect. Just what I need when I’ve got a six-foot-four bruiser waiting for me upstairs who, if history is any indication, will not be thrilled to see me.

Assuming Leo even remembers who I am.

A few hours ago, the general manager of the Portland Fury—my boss, Jax—acquired the league’s broodiest defenseman, igniting a media frenzy with less than a day until training camp.

And because Jax didn’t bother to warn me, I’m now about to march into our business suite to greet my new player—and all of upper management—looking like a cracked glow stick.

Vivi’s voice pipes through my car’s speaker. “Do you keep emergency makeup wipes in your purse?”

“I wish.” I scrub at my skin with a crumpled napkin doused in day-old Aquafina. “I’d even settle for an Armor All wipe at this point.”

“I just got a phantom whiff of leather cleaner and full-body shuddered,” she groans. “At least this is just an onboarding meeting with a player you don’t even want. You don’t have to look perfect.”

As my second-in-command, Vivi should know better than anyone that I don’t just have to look perfect at work.

I have to actually be perfect.

In every meeting, at every practice, and especially at every game. There is zero room for error professionally, tactically, or socially.

At least if I want to remain the head coach.

Too bad the remnants from the Glow Away, Heart Disease! 5K we ran this morning for Vivi’s birthday are as good as tattooed on my body. Despite my shower, blue and pink streaks slash across my cheeks, a slice of green bisects my collarbone, and shimmery silver glints on my elbows and biceps.

“Yeah, maybe,” I hedge.

Her sigh crackles the speakers. “I’m sorry. If anyone gives you shit—sorry, when they give you shit, because we know Eric will run his mouth—tell them it’s my fault. I never should’ve—”

“Agreed to let me celebrate with you on your birthday? On a Sunday, no less? Don’t be silly.”

“Yeah, but it’s the day before training camp,” she argues.

A yellow cab, old and spitting exhaust, barrels into the staff-only parking spot beside me and slams on squeaky breaks. I jump in my seat. Good thing I’m not applying eyeliner.

I glance out my passenger window. The cabbie parked too crookedly to fit in just one spot. The nose of his vehicle is aimed at my hood like it wants a kiss.

“You’ve got to get up there,” Vivi informs me, ever the keeper of my time. “Are you sure you don’t need me? I can be there in ten. Or better yet, I can be hella late and make a spectacle of myself to draw attention away from your face paint. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“You’re not coming up here on your birthday. I won’t allow it.”

“But I’d enjoy playing court jester! Distracting judgmental men is my true calling.”

Even after several Olympic gold medals in figure skating and years of successfully coaching skaters for Team USA, Vivi loves to pretend she’s a personality hire and not one of the most skillful athletes to ever grace a rink.

She looks like Tinkerbell when she hits the ice, so fluid and fast she might as well be flying.

“Absolutely not. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow. Go enjoy the rest of your day. Have an extra lobster roll for me. I’ll be…”

The back driver’s side door of the cab springs open fast and hard, diverting my attention.

A tall, broad-shouldered man emerges, wearing a fitted black suit and a scowl.

Recognition washes over me in a wave; the boy I once battled at a juniors camp over a decade ago is all man now.

Even if we hadn’t met before, anyone even remotely into hockey would recognize Leo McLaren from a mile away.

Legendary defenseman. A physique carved from stone and a hardened demeanor to match. Cocky rookies love to bait him and seasoned vets fear him on the ice. Or they used to, before last year.

And my new D-man, apparently.

He performs a sweeping up-and-down look at the towering arena. Not even the dark sunglasses perched on his nose can hide the distaste written all over his face.

“…fine?” Vivi asks, mad-libbing the end of my sentence.

I blink myself back to life. “Yes, that. I’ll be fine. Gotta go, Viv.”

She bids me a quick goodbye as I size up the Portland Fury’s new left shot. He’s sporting dark stubble and rumpled hair, like he’s emerging from hibernation. His suit, however, is tailored to perfection, doing his long legs and strong body every favor in the world.

I bet he knows it, too.

Most of these players use a car service, especially when traveling to or from an airport, but Leo chose this beater of a yellow cab. At least he made it on time, which is more than I can say for other high-level players who operate as though time bends to their will.

With a little too much force, he unloads a single black suitcase from the trunk and hefts it onto the curb. He briefly pauses to stretch his neck side to side before striding past the hood of my car—

Wait.

He can’t beat me inside.

No one will care that I was only given thirty minutes’ notice about this meeting—they’ll only care that I’m late. And lord knows they’ll comment on it.

I throw open my door. “Hey there!”

Leo doesn’t spare me a glance. Not even a reflexive over-the-shoulder check at who’s yelling.

I’m about to hop out of the car when my shimmery arm catches a ray of sun. I twist to check my back seat for a cardigan or jean jacket. Something.

A windbreaker with Fury stitched on the chest lies on the floorboard.

Not the best match for houndstooth pants and a silk blouse, but desperate times call for polyester measures. I hastily pull it on to cover what I can, grab only my keys, and hop out. The car beeps as I lock it behind me and step up on the curb.

“McLaren!” My heels click on the smooth concrete as I try to catch up. He’s already at the entrance. “Wait up.”

“Not interested.”

In fairness, I’ve changed a lot in the last twelve years, so it’s possible he doesn’t know he’s being chased by his new head coach, especially since he didn’t bother to look.

It’s also possible he does.

“You sure?” I half walk, half jog, catching him as he closes in on the front door. We’re in the shade of the massive building now, reprieved from the sun. “You haven’t even heard what I’m offering.”

“Doesn’t this place have security?” In an impressive linguistic feat, he makes the word “place” sound exactly like “dump.” “I said I’m not interested.”

I briefly purse my lips so as not to laugh. “Our multimillion-dollar facility doesn’t do it for you, Leonardo?”

He slows to a stop.

Gives me a quarter turn.

A slight tilt of his head suggests he’s scoping me out.

I’m about to ask if he remembers me, but I’m not sure dredging up the carcass of our unpleasant first meeting—in which I tried to talk to my scrimmage teammate, and he scoffed at me—is the best way to kick off this new professional relationship.

And there’s no hint of recognition in his expression, unless he’s good at hiding it.

His lips remain firmly turned down. “It’s just Leo.”

Like every other hockey fan, I’ve followed Leo Adriel McLaren’s career ups and downs like a doctor watching the cardiac monitor of an unstable patient. But to me, Leo is more than the sum of his goals and assists.

He’s thirty-two years old with stats most players only ever aspire to.

The son of Finnish Olympian Hugo McLaren and Portuguese filmmaker Eva Romero-McLaren, he has his father’s fair skin and light eyes, his mother’s dark hair, and a voice that sounds the way driveway gravel feels scraped against bare skin—rough and a little gritty.

He’s god-awful in interviews.

And just gullible enough to fall into conversational traps, like being called the wrong name by a coach who would presumably know such basic information.

“Leo. My mistake.” I step closer and extend my hand. “Sadie Rivers, head coach for the Fury.”

He looks at my waiting hand like he’s never seen one before.

A biblical length of time passes before his calloused hand grips mine for one firm shake. “I know who you are.”

My brows lift. Maybe he does remember, after all. “And yet you let me chase you?”

“I recognized the name, not the voice yelling across the parking lot.” As though it physically pains him, he grits out, “Everyone in the hockey world knows who you are.”

Satisfaction pulses beneath my skin at his words, however begrudging his delivery.

Most people know me from my golden era with Team USA and the win we ripped from Team Canada’s hands one foggy night in the French Alps when all the odds were against us. Others remember my time with the PWHL, or as Team USA’s coach after a labral tear took me out of the game for good.

But my past successes are not what commentators or the press or Redditors like ArmchairGM and GodsOnIce fixate on. The world only cares about only one thing: whether or not I can take a last-place franchise and turn them into a viable threat.

And while that may seem like a tall order for any coach, being the only female HC in the NHL means this year will be a litmus test for whether or not my job title is deserved, and if it’ll stick past next spring.

If I can’t get my team to the playoffs this year, the answer to that is a big fat no. The Fury Powers That Be were clear in my interview that I need to turn their ship around immediately.

There is no room for error.

Jax calls me his Hail Mary, since his last two coaches failed to deliver. GodsOnIce calls me a test run for what a woman can do in this role.

And those are about the only nice things people say about me, not that I’m listening.

I clear my throat and my mind as I reach for Leo’s suitcase. “Here, let me take that for you.”

He bristles, his shoulders lifting up and back as if I’ve offended him. “My suitcase?”

I cock my head, mirroring his confusion. “Yes, your suitcase.”

“But you’re the coach,” he says slowly, as if he’s explaining the finer points of a lemonade stand to an irksome toddler. “What do you want with it?”