Well Played (Romance Café Collection #36)

Chapter 1

1

HALLIE

“Way too sexy for this office.”

“For our own good.”

“Shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Fuckkkkk…”

The communal groan went up as my office manager bent over at the water cooler, presenting her peach-shaped behind to the ogling masses that made up the Jericho Chimeras’ Ice Hockey pro team.

The WAGS congregating in the corner giggled as one of the team—I didn’t lift my head from the tower of proofs scattered across my desk, you know, work to check on who—broke off from the group and sauntered across to the cooler. I was sure the WAGS chattering, sashaying ranks were about to swell with one more member.

Not that I’d ever want to be one, thank you very much.

My glasses slid down my nose a fraction as I studied the blurring words on the pages before me. I shuffled them and blinked rapidly, but the new view didn't change anything. I’d been staring at the proofs for way too freaking long, and I needed a break. But getting up in front of the team was premeditated social, personal suicide and I liked my life.

Kind of. Mostly.

Liar, liar, marketing proofs on fire.

That was me. Hallie Newman, marketing pleb for the best ice hockey team in the south.

Only, it might have been a better idea fangirling from afar than actually working side by side with some of the team. Or all of them. Because so much of that glam-fangirl-glitter wore off so fast I couldn't keep up four months into a job I loved or hated, depending on the minute.

“You know you’re sexier than all of them put together.”

I blinked at my papers and reshuffled them, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. A shadow obscured my light—a really big freaking shadow. I stared right up into a pair of dark eyes the entire country knew belonged to Solace Hunter, the Chimera’s defender. Goalie. Whatever.

Loyal to his team, unmoveable to a fault. And vicious to anyone who got on his other side.

Because I saw that when he belted the crap out of a guy who decided to key his captain’s car the first night I worked late and locked up, thinking I was still alone in the building.

Thank God he didn’t see me , because who knows what he would have done to the witness when he dragged the guy’s unconscious form to the back of his sports car, threw him in the trunk, and drove away.

I never mentioned the incident afterward. Some long dormant survival instinct kicked in. The next day the captain's car was fixed, and the guy’s existence just never came up.

I managed to stay well away from Solace Hunter, Chimera defender after that…until right now. Coal dark eyes stared down at me, not a flicker of amusement or flirtation in sight.

Because Solace didn’t flirt.

Like the rest of his actions, everything was done with a potent degree of determination. He was often the first of the team in the gym working out in the mornings, and the last to leave at night, checking the building when he thought no one was left.

I knew, because those quiet hours were when I got my best work done, when no one bothered me. The empty building left me quiet time to deal with the chatter my desk screamed at me that I couldn't deal with during the day in an overpopulated office. And knowing he was around offered a kind of safety.

I mean, who would screw with a guy like that?

No one. Certainly not this girl.

Lost in my head, I stared up at him and managed to swallow on a dry throat. “Huh?”

Solace smirked, though something impossibly darker flickered behind his eyes as he leaned closer. “You really don’t pay attention to the bullshit out there, do you?” he murmured, sweeping a hand almost triple the size of mine out to encompass the rest of the room where I still refused to look.

I didn’t want to see the faces that wouldn’t be looking down at me, anyway. Or worse, gawking back at the shitshow that was about to go down.

Heat climbed my throat, heading for my cheeks. I didn’t want to know where it originated, especially when this man had been the centre of too many late night fantasies that should never have been a part of my spank bank repertoire.

My fingers shook the tiniest fraction as I pushed my glasses back up my nose where they drooped. “I don't really fit in over there.” I matched his soft tone, unwilling to bring more attention my way, and doubly unsure why I bothered to engage him anyway.

This conversation wouldn't end well. For me, at least.

For Solace…I was just another girl he’d shrug off. I was certain he had puck bunnies flying out every orifice on a daily basis. Shoulders that could lift a small planet, abs to support that and all the accompanying pucking bits…I should know. I got to stare at all the promo shots on a daily basis and make sure everyone’s other bits–titles, names, and stats–were presented correctly.

Hell, I probably knew their numbers better than half the players.

“You’re right.” He didn’t straighten, still invading my space and continuing this godforsaken conversation that headed exactly nowhere. “You don’t fit in there.”

“Exactly. So. Work.” I let out a controlled breath and dropped my gaze back to my desk, shuffling my proofs out of order to give myself something to do because what did a fangirl do when a hulking behemoth mountain of hockey sex god leaned over one’s desk?

Answer: shuffle the proofs like a Vegas card counter, and pray for absolution.

“Like I said, you’re sexier than all of them. Any one of them.” He refused to budge.

I bit my lip, squeezing my eyes shut. “I know you get whoever you want, Solace. I know you have loads of time in the middle of the day between training sessions, and I know you work your ass off. Maybe you could, you know…let me do some of that last right now, too?” I bit back the please that teetered on the tip of my tongue, because begging with this man seemed wrong. Dangerous.

His breath huffed against the back of my neck when he laughed softly. “This is what makes you sexy, Hallie. Unlike them, you understand what a work ethic is. It’s fucking beautiful.” His fingers trailed lightly along my spine to my nape beneath my shoulder length dark hair and rested there, the touch hidden from sight to anyone else. Intimate. “Like you. This brain is the prettiest damn thing in here.”

I swallowed hard and made to push my chair back, but his bulk blocked me in. “Let me up,” I breathed. “We– I’m just the marketing pleb. I can’t do this. I’ll lose my job.”

“You can’t be told you’re beautiful?” He massaged my neck in gentle circles, the callouses and strength in his massive fingers belied by the sweetness of his touch.

My body ached for that. Craved it. I hadn’t had contact with another person, anyone actually, apart from my cat, since?—

Nope. Not going there.

“I have an aversion to puck bunnies.” That’s what fell out of my mouth as one of the WAGS headed in our direction. One without a flashy diamond ring on her finger, which, in my limited experience, was the most dangerous sort.

A black Chimera branded coffee mug stamped with her name that I forgot the moment I read it slammed down on my desk along with a few strands of bleached, split hair. “Coffee, honey. Black. Nothing in it. Just give me the dregs today. It’s all in the effort of…you know.” She shimmied at my desk while I tried not to look at her.

I sighed, pushed my proofs into an incomprehensible pile that would take half an hour after they all departed to sort back out, and grabbed the mug. “Sure, Cindy.”

She flared. “My name is–”

“She doesn’t care what your goddamn name is, Mindy,” Solace snapped, corded arms straining beneath his shirt as he towered over us both.

Cindy-Mindy preened while I cowered. If I played dead, he’d forget I existed, right?

Nope. The hand on the back of my neck tightened and drew me out of my slump. “Don’t you dare get up,” he growled at me darkly, then switched his attention forward, his tone hardening. “She’s not your fucking doormat. Go back and play with things at your own level,” he snapped at the WAG throwing her tits in his face.

I didn’t think she was attached to him, but then I never paid attention to the revolving door of the WAG squad anyway.

“Okay,” I breathed, unsure who I answered.

Cindy-Mindy huffed and flounced off, snatching her mug back from my hands and grazing me with her razored talons in the same lurid fuscia that lit her name in neon.

“Sit up,” Solace ordered.

I squiggled about in my seat, craning up at an uncomfortable angle. “You’re ridiculously tall,” I informed him.

The hard lines around his mouth eased a fraction. “And you’re tiny.”

I laughed at him, loud enough to turn heads, but then who hadn’t just heard that little office level domestic? The rumor mill would be going after that, anyway. “I’m so far from tiny it’s not funny,” I giggled, taking off my glasses to swipe at the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes, and gestured at my curved tummy. That one curved out, not in. No concave bits on this girl.

“Stop,” he ordered again.

I froze and looked up at him curiously. “Do people always do what you say because you say it?” I asked politely.

His mouth twitched. “Yes. But not you, apparently.” He caught my wrist and liberated my glasses, cleaning them absently on the hem of his shirt. His eyes roamed over my face, then he placed them gently back on the bridge of my nose and nodded decisively. “Nah. So much better on.”

I wasn’t sure if my stomach was in freefall, or if he just gave me a backhanded compliment. “Thanks?” I opted for a dry tone.

The small smile was back. He leaned in until his lips grazed my ear and my temperature spiked.

“Sexy as fuck, Hallie.”

Then he straightened, his face clean of emotion, and wandered away like nothing at all just happened.