The Complete My Hockey Romance Collection

Chapter 1

THE DOG ATE MY UNDERWEAR

Trina

Let me state for the record—I love my dog madly. This little stinker of a Min Pin mix is my baby, with his three legs, slobbery kisses, and burrow-under-my-covers-and-snuggle-all-night soul.

But there’s one thing I don’t love about my dog, Nacho. He eats my underwear.

You’d think a four-foot-high hamper with a lid that shuts would deter him. You’d be dead wrong.

As a hockey game blasts on the TV next to him, the twenty pounds of trouble lounges in his cuddler cup, licking his naughty lips without an ounce of remorse, the spoils of our lingerie war in his paws. Again.

“Seriously? Did you have to make them crotchless?” I ask as I bend down to grab the panty leftovers.

He doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty. Just wags his tail. Too adorably.

Gingerly, I pluck the remains of my pink polka-dot boy shorts from his pervy paws while my boyfriend Jasper shouts at the TV, “Are you kidding me? That was cross-checking.”

With an outrage only known to the species of rabid sports fans who wear jerseys of other men, Jasper jumps up from the couch, barking at the refs, telling them they’re blind, he’s going to give them a piece of his mind when he goes to the game later this month, and blah, blah, blah.

It’s just hockey. Who cares? Well, besides Jasper, though caring is an understatement to describe how he feels about hockey.

Come to think of it, so is the word obsessed.

With the half-eaten undies in hand, I walk behind the couch, not in front of it, so I don’t block his view as I head to the trash bin.

I don’t dare disturb him during a hockey bout.

Or match. Or whatever it is the guys on screen are doing with sticks and ice and stuff.

“Guess I’ll be shopping for new panties later today,” I say to myself as I drop the remains of my dignity in the garbage bin.

“What, babe?” Jasper calls out, and that must mean there’s a cross-checking time-out. Is that a thing? Who knows?

As a jingle about chicken wings with burn-your-tongue-off hot sauce plays from the TV, I answer him, “The dog ate my panties again. I’m going to go shopping for new ones. He went on a tear this week.”

“Oh, could you get thongs this time? Those are hot.”

That’d be a hard no. “I don’t want to floss my ass all day long at the bookstore.”

“But you’d look so good in them,” he says in his sexy baby pretty please voice. “You could wear one when we use those VIP tix later this month.”

Ugh. Don’t remind me. One of my life goals is to avoid ever going to a sporting event.

Naturally, I had to fall for a sports junkie.

But I’ll make the game fun by turning it into a gift that keeps on giving.

I bought Jasper some jerseys for each team, and some pucks, and I’m going to get them all signed by the athletes as a surprise for him.

“Let me get this straight,” I call out as I grab my phone from the counter. “You want me to wear a thong and nothing else to the VIP thingie?”

He wiggles his eyebrows my way. “A thong and a short dress and those hot glasses. Yowzers.”

Well, I wear the glasses everywhere. But I don’t point that out.

“Sounds perfect for a game played on ice,” I tease, stuffing my phone in my pocket, then grabbing my purse and keys.

But on the way to the front door of our apartment in the Mission District, a terrifying sound catches my attention.

A dry heave, then a wheezing hack, and then a horrible gasp of air.

Oh no! My baby!

I spin around. Nacho is puking up panty parts like a priest is conducting a lingerie exorcism of his esophagus.

My heart rockets with worry. I fly over to my darling, scoop him up, and race off to the vet around the corner as Jasper yells obscenities at the screen.

* * *

“He’s going to be fine.”

I can breathe again.

I press my palms together in gratitude. “Thank you so much, Doctor Lennox. I can’t thank you enough.

” Then I wince, filled with worry. “But what do I do if Nacho does it again? I honestly didn’t think he ate that much.

I mean, how much underwear is too much underwear?

He’s done this before but he usually only eats—”

I stop myself before I say the next thing out loud.

The panel. Seriously. How gross is that?

My dog eats the panel of my panties after I take them off and I’m telling the story to the guy who’s known online as The Hot Vet, since he shoots helpful tips for pet owners.

No wonder my older sister thinks I’m the family hot mess.

In this moment, she’s not wrong.

I might as well just hold up a sign for his vid that says, The dog likes the way I taste.

Gross.

Well, not gross. I’m sure I taste fabulous. But I don’t want to discuss my peach flavor with my dog’s doctor.

“They usually only eat the panels,” he says, and that’s not totally embarrassing to hear him say even though he delivers this dog truth nugget with a completely straight face.

“But I don’t want you to stress, Trina. Dogs eat a lot of non-food items and sometimes they just need their stomach pumped.

He’s resting comfortably right now and should be able to go home in about thirty minutes.

” He flashes a warm smile, then sets a hand on my arm. “Besides, it was just a thong.”

“Well, that’s good,” I say, still relieved that Nacho is fine and that we’re no longer talking about the panel of my panties.

Except.

Wait.

Hold the hell on.

What did he just say? “A thong?” I ask. It comes out thoroughly skeptical because there’s no way my dog ate a thong. I don’t own any thongs.

Maybe Dr. Lennox is just bad at identifying women’s underwear. I mean, he wouldn’t be the first man who couldn’t tell a bikini from a cheeky or a high-rise from a hipster.

“You just mean that that’s what was left, right? That it looked like a thong? The pink polka-dot pair? I threw the rest of it out at home.”

Dr. Lennox tilts his head, like I’m the one not making sense. “There was a tiny bit of fabric that was pink, and he vomited that first. But then there was a red lacy bit for the floss. That came out in three pieces, but honestly, it wasn’t that hard to puzzle the words together.”

“The words?” I ask, feeling like he’s speaking another language.

The vet has the good grace to look at the counter as he says, “The front had the words bad girl written on it.”

Somehow he manages to say all this with a straight face. Which tells me that many dogs eat many weird things and that an important skill for a vet is being able to not laugh when he learns what type of underwear you wear.

And I’m not laughing either.

Because my dog did not eat my pair.

My jaw hangs open. My heart doesn’t want to compute what he just said. But my brain has already processed this awful news. And my momentary shock is laced with hurt and chased with a giant ball of anger.

My boyfriend didn’t only screw another woman.

That charmed-my-parents, won-over-my-tough-as-nails-sister and obviously-fooled-me-too boyfriend screwed someone else at our apartment.

To make matters worse, that cheating scumbag of a boyfriend screwed that bad girl in front of my dog.

Wait.

Make that soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

* * *

“I can explain.”

I seethe as Jasper utters those three awful words. They’re the kiss of death to any relationship. Not that I had much hope that there would be any sort of reasonable excuse for the presence of another woman’s shredded panties in my darling dog’s digestive tract.

Still, I’m part investigator (and I can tell you which Enneagram types all my friends are too), so I’m damn curious how Jasper’s going to spin this dirty laundry.

I’m back home now, facing off against the man I was sure I’d been falling for.

As I clutch my drugged dog, who’s still woozy from the meds, I sweep out my free arm, inviting the stinking, no-good cheater to present his case—right here in the living room.

His favorite room, since it’s got that damn symbol of his real love.

The TV that blasts every freaking hockey game.

“Have at it,” I bite out. “And bear in mind I’ve read about five thousand romance novels so I’ve heard pretty much all the excuses. But by all means, you take the floor.”

I’ve got the evidence though and I confronted him with it when I walked in the door two minutes ago, wagging a ziplock bag and asking him coolly, calmly, “Any idea why another woman’s panties were in my dog’s belly?

” Because damn straight I took that evidence from Dr. Lennox.

“I would really, really like to know what the explanation for this is.”

Jasper backs up against his living room wall, right next to the framed tickets of the first ever hockey game his dad took him to. Hair from his man bun falls loose, framing his guilty face. He gulps so visibly it’s like a bullfrog just crawled up his throat.

“I was d-doing laundry,” he begins. “The other day. Down in the basement of the building.” In case I don’t know where the washer and dryer are, I presume. “And our neighbor—you know the redhead from the second floor?”

I growl. The one whose ass I caught him staring at the other week when she walked up the steps in front of us, asking how Nacho’s weave-pole classes were going.

Gah. I’d been bamboozled by dog talk. “Delilah,” I supply, anger lacing my tone, but I’m angry with myself.

Why didn’t I realize that his ogling of her was a sign? “Continue.”

With a rough swallow, he soldiers on. “All the machines were full so I said that she could wash her clothes with ours.”

“How noble.”

He breathes a clear sigh of relief, missing my sarcasm. “Right? I just wanted to help her, Trina,” he says.

“Naturally. Sharing a washing machine is neighborly.”

He hazards a smile. “I’m glad you agree.”

This guy. He thinks he’s getting away with fooling me. But actually…I think for a few seconds. Yes, maybe this’ll work. Yeah, I’ll let him think I believe him.