Chapter Ten
VIVI
The security guard checks our passes and waves us through to the executive level.
Adeline practically bounces down the hallway ahead of us, her handmade HARTLEY jersey sparkling with the rhinestones she and Berkeley spent hours applying yesterday, while Berkeley decorated her custom ALTMAN jersey with her dad's retired number on the back that Isla designed.
"Wait up!" Berkeley calls, racing to catch up with Adeline. Oliver does his best to keep up. The girls’ matching rhinestone Hawkeyes jerseys catch the overhead lights, throwing tiny rainbow prisms across the walls.
"Girls, no running!" Isla calls after them. “And watch out for your brother. He’s following you,” she warns, but they're already around the corner, all three of their giggles echoing off the walls.
I adjust my own jersey—also bedazzled, though I tried to protest. Not because I don't love all of their hard work—and what girl doesn't love a little sparkle—but because wearing Trey's name on my back and his number feels oddly personal.
Maybe because I'm not just a fan, I'm his nanny, and to pretend there isn't sexual tension between us would be silly and potentially dangerous to our working situation if one of us gives into it.
We're too old for games anyway, and Trey’s concern that anything happening between us could hurt Adeline is a valid reason not to let anything go beyond a working relationship.
"They'll get lost," I say, moving faster to follow.
"Berkeley knows where they're going." Isla loops her arm through mine. "She's been coming here since she was two. Besides, Cammy's already up there waiting for them with goodie bags. Hawkeyes stickers, hats, foam fingers, and coloring books."
The engagement ring on my left hand catches the light, and I resist the urge to take it off.
Genevieve's texts were clear—wear it in public or risk everything falling apart faster.
Somehow, it feels heavier tonight, more constricting than it did for the six months Jameson and I were engaged.
Now it feels especially out of place with HARTLEY stretched across my shoulders.
We reach the owner's box, and I take it all in.
I've been to games before, dozens in the Hawkeyes stadium, sitting in Kaenan's season ticket seats with Isla, but I've never been up here.
The space is massive, easily able to hold a hundred people, though tonight it's just the usual crew, some of the legal team and corporate employees, players' wives, girlfriends, and families.
Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch across the entire front wall, offering a perfect view of the ice below.
The walls are decorated in team colors—turquoise and black—with jerseys from every player mounted in between.
A massive mahogany bar with an illuminated blue top that looks like ice dominates one wall, while a buffet that could feed half the stadium lines another.
"Vivi! Over here!" Cammy, Brynn, and Penelope wave from one of the high-top tables along the windows. It’s only half the crew, but some of the wives, like Coach Haynes’ wife, Juliet, sit in her husband’s seats with her brother, opting to be closer to the ice.
Adeline, Berkeley, and Oliver are already loading plates with everything from sushi rolls to barbecue ribs and everything in between.
"This is…" I trail off, taking it all in as I follow Cammy and Isla to the buffet table.
"Different from the regular seats?" Isla finishes.
I nod. I've watched dozens of games from the family section, but this feels more intimate somehow. Like I'm crossing over into a territory only meant for someone who’s close to the team…or in my case, close to a player.
"Come on." Isla tugs me toward the buffet. "Let's get food before face-off."
As we load our plates, I catch snippets of conversation around us.
"Did you see what that reporter wrote about Trey's stats?"
"The playoffs are going to be intense this year."
"I can't believe Everett Kauffman hasn’t been here much. Where is he?”
That last one has me curious too. Everett Kauffman, the new Hawkeyes owner, has been as elusive as Jameson with his lack of correspondence back to me.
I know how these circles work in the Hawkeyes world—how fast gossip travels, how quickly assumptions become truth.
Sure enough, when I turn around, several WAGs are watching me with poorly concealed interest. I've known these women for too long for them to hide anything from me, and if they’ve been talking to Isla…
they’re all sitting there wondering if I’ll be the next one to join the WAGs roster.
Everyone here's heard about my runaway wedding, but I'm hoping the conversation doesn't come up, because the truth is, I have no idea what to say at this point.
"Vivi!" Peyton, Hunter Reed's girlfriend and the host of the sports podcast Bleacher Report, waves us over. "Come sit with us. The girls said you're helping out Trey? Thank God, poor Adeline. Having Charlotte drop them like that…it really sucked."
"It's just temporary. Until he can find a replacement,” I say, forking a spiral noodle from the pasta salad and taking a bite.
"How is it going with Adeline? She's really the sweetest. I hate how much she's gone through," Cammy says, her voice low, checking to make sure Adeline isn’t close enough to hear us, and then chomps down on a carrot dipped in garlic hummus.
"We're still getting our schedule down, but so far we haven't hit any issues.”
Isla snickers. "You mean besides the ballet mom trying to use her kid to get her claws into Trey?
Or how about the fact that Trey bought you a brand new Range Rover and you won't admit that things are heating up between you two," Isla offers up, while she takes a sip of the lavender blood-orange kombucha that the wet bar has on tap up here.
What is this place? Seriously? I’m half expecting them to roll out an entire pig roasted on a spit at this point.
"Thanks for the subtlety, Sis…" I say with a scowl.
I love these girls, I do, but their men are the biggest gossips in the locker room, and if even one of them says anything about Trey and me to a Hawkeyes player, there is no stopping the rumor mill.
It's worse than the sorority I went to in college. Even those girls can keep a better secret than this group can. I just hope the tabloids don’t get their hands on any of the gossip circulating in the Hawkeyes stadium.
"Just paying it forward," she grins, reminding me that I sort of did something like this to her when I was trying to get her to see that Kaenan was the guy she was meant to be with when she first started nannying for him.
"What?" Peyton perks up, her jaw dropping. "I'm not even sure which one to start with. Crazy dance mom or grand gesture purchases."
“So, what’s going on with you two?” Penelope Matthews—team GM and wife to the Hawkeyes’ forward, Slade Matthews—asks as she returns from the buffet, clearly having kept one ear on our conversation the entire time.
"Nothing. I just have some time off from work for the next little while and he needs someone to help with Adeline until he finds someone else. That's it."
"Well, that jersey looks good on you," Cammy says with a knowing smirk.
Before I can respond, the lights dim and the crowd below roars. The team skates out for warm-ups.
"Uncle Trey!" Adeline presses against the glass. "He's on the ice."
I glance down as the announcer calls each of their names. Then I see him. Trey Hartley, number fourteen. The same number I've watched score countless goals, throw bone-crushing checks, and carry my niece around on his shoulders at team barbecues.
"Earth to Vivi." Isla nudges me. "You're staring."
I tear my gaze away, but not before I catch Trey looking up at the owner's box. Even from this distance, the heat in his eyes makes my skin tingle.
God help me. This is going to be a long night.
I watch him as he moves with lethal grace. Power and control wrapped in tattoos and layers of protective hockey gear.
"Admit it. You're glad you're here and not in Santorini with Jameson," Isla says, standing next to me with Berkeley, Adeline, and Oliver on the other side of me, elbow deep in blue cotton candy and a mountain of nachos and cheese, not paying attention to us as their eyes are glued to the ice and the players.
"You know I can't say that. I might lose my CEO position, and even worse, I might have cost Jameson his entire inheritance and family standing."
"Then look at that ring on your finger," Isla says gently. "And then look at that jersey on your back. Which one feels more like you?"
Before I can answer, Adeline jumps with excitement.
"Uncle Trey scored in warm-ups," Adeline announces, blue cotton candy already staining her lips and fingers. "Did you see that?"
"I saw," I say, helping her settle her snacks on the high-top tables near them. "Are you going to share any of that?"
She tears off a piece of cotton candy and holds it out. "Only because you're wearing his jersey."
I accept the sugar with a laugh, trying to ignore the fact that I miss this—miss being a nanny—being part of a family. Every minute with Adeline feels like I'd never get sick of this … being with her.
The lights dim again, and the team circles up for final instructions. Trey glances up one more time, and this time I'm sure he sees me. His eyes lock onto mine for just a moment, but it's enough to send heat flooding through my body.
I catch Isla watching me with knowing eyes.
"What?" I whisper.
"You know," Isla says as we wait, "some things are worth more than corner offices and merger deals."
I touch the ring on my finger. "Some things aren't our choice to make."
"Everything's a choice, Vivi." She squeezes my hand. "You taught me that, remember?"