Chapter 2
Amelia
Hockey’s Favorite Widow Seen Without Her Wedding Ring?
Weddings are a time for love! And it may be that Amelia Blaire—wife to the late-Shiloh Blaire, center for the Professional Hockey League’s Peaks—is ready to find someone to heal her heart.
Our sources say she’s been spending a lot of time around members of the Peak’s hockey team, and they all flew to Winterhaven together for the wedding we’ve been anticipating for months.
Could a secret romance be brewing between Amelia and a hockey player?
Follow us to stay updated on all Peaks gossip!
—Hot Goss Magazine
Death By Moose sounded like the title of a cozy mystery novel, not what I wanted written in my obituary.
The enormous moose standing half the length of a hockey rink away snorted in my direction. White puffs escaped his nostrils in the cold night air behind Winterhaven’s Italian Cafe and American-Style Pizzeria, locally known as the Icy Asp.
All I’d wanted was a breather from endless condolences about Shiloh.
This week needed to be about our friend’s wedding, not about my loss.
I also needed an escape from the tantalizing scent of pizza I couldn’t eat but never stopped craving—no matter how much someone claimed their gluten-free version tasted exactly the same.
Instead, I wandered away from my well-meaning but suffocating friends and into the hands—hoofs? antlers?—of a very tall, very attentive moose.
Moonlight glinted across its raised hackles as it flicked its head to the side but otherwise remained still.
My mystery novels and true crime podcasts had prepared me for serial killers and spurned lovers seeking revenge, not wildlife with antlers bigger than my entire body.
Should I make myself big and loud to scare it off? Play possum and pretend to be dead? Run as if I wasn’t wearing four-inch heels—one of which was caught in a drainage grate and was the reason I hadn’t noticed the moose until this moment?
And why wasn’t the plural of moose meese?
That last one didn’t really matter for my survival, and was probably more a reflection of lack of oxygen from my shallow breaths than actual curiosity.
At least Quinn had stayed inside with her three absolutely besotted honorary uncles. Never had a little girl been showered with so much attention and carbs.
But she’d already lost her dad. She would not lose me too.
As I inhaled a huge breath to scream my lungs out, a hand clamped over my mouth.
“Be quiet,” a low, growly voice whispered next to my ear. He slowly removed his grip from my mouth. Two firm hands took me by my upper arms and his mouth dropped close enough to my ear that I felt his lips graze its sensitive inner shell. “Don’t move.”
I shivered. It had been way too long since a man had touched me. And I was just too dang lonely.
Whoa, Amy. Desperate much?
For all I knew, this could be that crusty pilot who’d brought me and the Peaks Hockey team into Winterhaven this morning sending my heart all aflutter. Or that annoying reporter who kept writing stories about the Peaks.
Or the serial killer I thought I’d know how to handle.
Where were my survival instincts?
I shivered again, but this time because it was cold and I was in real danger, not because the potentially crusty murderer whispered, “Breathe, Amelia. It’s going to be okay.”
Only one person ever called me by my full name.
I sagged against Hudson Blaire, never so glad to recognize someone’s voice in my life.
He was my late husband’s younger brother and one of my favorite people in the world.
I didn’t even know he was in town yet. He wasn’t supposed to get here until tomorrow.
In a calm, gentle voice, he called out to the moose. “Hey, moose friend. We’re not here to disturb you. Just passing through.”
The moose licked its snout, which couldn’t be bad, right?
Hudson swore, and his grip tightened. “Do you see the dumpster over there?” I shifted my eyes to the side and nodded when I spotted the huge, rusted bin about fifteen feet away, right by the restaurant’s back door. “On my count, we’re going to run toward it like a moose is chasing us.”
“My foot is stuck,” I said, my words barely more than air. I’d worn my favorite pair of heels—they were strappy, white leather and wrapped around my ankle and calf and tied in the back. They were magic and made my legs look long and toned.
Death By Strappy Heel. That was a little bit better.
The moose snorted again, and my heart sank into my stomach when I noticed its ears were pinned back. I didn’t have to know a lot about animals to understand that wasn’t good.
Hudson knelt behind me and drew his hand softly along my calf. Then, with a snick of cool metal against my skin, I felt the straps cascade down around my foot.
Before I could stop him—these were expensive shoes—he cut the other strap free of my leg as well.
The moose took a step toward us.
“Run!” Hudson whisper-shouted as he took my hand and nearly dragged me toward the trash bin, his long legs eating up the distance so much faster than mine.
I couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of my heart in my ears, but imagined I could feel the moose’s breath on the back of my neck as it charged us.
When we got to the dumpster, Hudson picked me up and tossed me inside it like I weighed nothing more than a bag of library books. He vaulted in after me, landing on top of me as garbage squelched beneath us.
The moose sniffed and snorted around the dumpster for a moment, its antlers scraping against the metal, before we heard it cantering away.
“It must have babies nearby,” Hudson said breathlessly into my neck. His heart pounded wildly against my chest.
“Oh,” I breathed out. “That makes sense.” Even I knew not to mess with momma animals.
He pushed his body up so he hovered over me. He studied my face slowly, that gaze of his always taking in more than I wanted him to. Was he seeing the dark circles under my eyes? The stress lines around my mouth? Of course he was. The real question I wanted answered: What conclusion had he come to?
“You’ve always got to make an entrance, don’t you?” I asked, sounding more breathless than I’d intended.
He snapped out of whatever reverie he’d been in. He pulled himself up to sit beside me in a bed of trash bags. He offered me a hand and tugged me up beside him.
“How’s Winterhaven been so far?” he asked.
I looked around at the rancid trash and then down to my bare feet. “It’s treating me well.”
His lips twitched in an almost smile, and victory zinged through me. He tipped his head back against the wall of the bin. I could see his pulse still racing in his neck. “I’ve lived here my entire life, and a moose has never once charged me.”
“Good thing I’m here to give you new experiences, then.”
“Good thing,” he repeated, his voice sounding strained.
In every way that Shiloh had been outgoing and playful, Hudson was serious, reserved, and so delightfully dry. It made teasing him way too much fun. And when I managed to get a reaction from him, it felt like the biggest win.
You would think that we wouldn’t be such good friends with a dynamic like that, but since we’d met in our college Freshman English class, we’d clicked. Jane and Lizzy. Delicious bread and gluten. Lists and the Oxford comma.
He tilted his head toward me. “But if you could cool it with close animal encounters for the next couple of weeks, I’d appreciate it.”
“No promises,” I said. “And you’re welcome for giving you the opportunity to be a hero.”
He scowled, but I saw the glint of humor in his eyes.
“Do you think it’s gone?” I asked, afraid to peer over the edge and see it glaring at me. I might talk a lot of smack for someone my size, but I had zero desire to go toe-to-hoof with a moose again.
He stood and scanned the forest behind the restaurant. “It’s gone, but probably not far if its babies are anywhere nearby.”
“So, we'll sleep here tonight, then?” I said, only half-kidding.
“Yep. At least we won’t go hungry.” He motioned to the split open trash bags where flies buzzed around creamy pasta that smelled like it had turned hours ago.
My stomach lurched. “Too far, Hudson.”
“My apologies,” he said dryly. “I should never joke about gluten.”
“It was insensitive, and I’m offended.”
“I’ll find a way to make it up to you.” He paused as if deep in thought. “I know! I’ll save you from getting stomped on by a moose.”
“Meh. Already been done. You’ll need to go bigger.”
He grinned, the full one that made me feel like sunshine was lighting up inside of me. It had been way too long since I’d seen that smile.
We settled into a comfortable silence, the kind I only ever seemed to manage with Hudson. With everyone else, I felt compelled to fill any quiet with chatting, but with him, I could take a deep breath and just exist.
I was so happy to gain him as a brother when I married Shiloh, but then Hudson started med school right after the wedding, and for so long, we were lucky to see him in person once or twice a year.
Then Shiloh died two years ago, and Hudson saved me.
He moved to Montana and worked nights at a local hospital.
But during the day, he cooked and made sure my bills got paid and registered Quinn for preschool and encouraged me to wash my hair at least every other week and did a million other things I didn’t notice and couldn’t care about at the time.
He kept our lives functioning until I awoke from the sleepy haze of acute grief six months later.
Then he went back to his life in Alaska, and things at home weren’t the same without him.
“Where’s Quinn?” Hudson asked.
“Inside the restaurant with Dylan, Bret, and Gage wrapped around her tiny finger.”
“We’re all completely helpless in the face of such cuteness.
” He knew as well as I did that they would protect my five-year-old daughter with their lives.
Dylan, Bret, and Gage had played hockey with my late-husband and had been his best friends.
A relationship they took seriously, even this long after his death.
We were in Winterhaven for Dylan’s wedding.
He’d professed to want something simple and small with their closest friends and family, but between Dylan’s hockey fame and his fiance, Rosie’s, famous sister-in-law, Winterhaven had enticed eager gossip reporters to come cover the wedding and interview the guests.
Including me.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to sleep in here tonight if it meant dodging the persistent reporter from Hot Goss Magazine.
I leaned back against a trash bag and used my arms to make a pillow behind my head.
His gaze narrowed in on me. “Why do you look like you’re getting more comfortable?”
“Make the best of things. That’s always been my motto.”
“I thought your motto was: Everything tastes better with Nutella.”
That was the problem with people who knew you so well. You couldn’t make up new mottos on the spot to fit the situation. “Eating Nutella does make the best of things.”
He slow-blinked in protest. He hated Nutella. And chocolate. And most sugar-based foods, the psychopath. Man, I’d missed him.
“Okay, up and at ’em.” He held out his hand to tug me out of the sinking grasp of trash. “The moose is gone, and I’m uncomfortable with how willing you are to sleep here.”
“I’m comfortable with making you uncomfortable.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he muttered, which made me laugh. I let him pull me to my feet and help me escape the trash can—no easy feat in my tight skirt. I finally made him close his eyes while I hiked the fabric up around my waist, slung a leg over the side, and dropped to the ground.
“How does my hair smell?” I asked him as I readjusted the skirt around my thighs.
He tore his gaze away from my ringless left hand, an unreadable expression on his face.
Would he think it was disloyal that I’d taken off my ring?
I held my breath, waited for what he would say, but he only leaned close and sniffed my head exaggeratedly.
“It smells like happiness.”
“Like garlic bread?”
“Yep.”
“Hey, I need a real hug.” I tucked myself into his side before he could become awkward like he sometimes did and keep me at a literal arm’s length. “It’s been too long.”
“Agreed.” His arm tugged tighter around me. My ear was pressed into the side of his chest, right by his heart. I loved Hudson’s side hugs. They were the personification of a heated blanket on a freezing day.
“Thanks for always being a great friend,” I said into his sweater.
He stepped back with a nod and focused on brushing the remaining trash from his pants. “Anytime,” he said. “Should we head in?”
I nodded. Back into the trenches. But with Hudson at my side, the prospect didn’t seem quite as daunting as before.