16. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
I am absolutely not qualified for this. But fuck it. Let’s see what happens.
Nyah was lucky Luca was in a tailspin about this hockey team he’d inherited, and so didn’t notice her kiss-swollen lips, or the way her hair suddenly looked like a flock of seagulls had nested in it.
I raised one eyebrow at her, and she elbowed me so sharply I couldn’t help but grin.
Dax was smart enough to stay in the bathroom, but I doubted he’d stay there long, so I swiftly urged Luca and Nyah away from the bathrooms and back to the ice.
Nyah squinted out at it and the team there, training. “What are we doing here anyway?”
Luca folded his arms and watched the team from her side. “We’re watching the bottom of the ladder hockey team I apparently now own and have to somehow make good, so it can make some money.”
Nyah’s gaze ran over his perfectly wrinkle-free suit. How the hell he kept it like that, even though we’d been squished up in the back seat of his car was beyond me. Mine was crumpled to hell. Had to be the expensive material his was made from that mine definitely was not.
Her eyes turned squinty, studying him. “You seem like more of a wine-and-cheese guy than a hockey guy.”
He glared at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
She lifted a shoulder, keeping his attention on her, I suspected because Dax was probably sneaking out behind us.
But then again, she seemed to like verbally sparring with Luca. “It just means you’re kind of…rich. I don’t see you getting your hands dirty. Hockey is all sweat and clashes of bodies…”
He glanced over at her, a smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. “Would you like me to show you exactly what I know about sweat and clashing bodies, Nyah?”
Heat prickled across the back of my neck at the sexual innuendo between the two of them. But if it affected Nyah, she didn’t show it.
She just smiled sweetly at him. “You could, but then I’d just be comparing you to your daddy…”
The face Luca made had me snorting my laughter. I picked up one of the helmets from the pile of equipment kicking around at our feet and handed it to him. “Here. If you’re going to puke, do it in that.”
He shoved it away, and I dropped it back to the floor with a laugh.
I put my arms around both of them, trying to lighten the mood.
“I thoroughly love when the two of you are bickering. It’s so entertaining.
” I put on my best female, Nyah-sounding voice.
“Oh, Luca, you’re so annoying!” and then switched to a deeper, more Luca-sounding voice.
“I hate you but really I think you’re super hot and wouldn’t mind getting between your legs.
” And then switched back to my Nyah voice.
“Oh, yes! My pussy gets all wet for you every time you’re in the room, but no touching! I’m for your daddy only!”
They both shoved me off them and stared at me.
I laughed. “What? That’s exactly what the two of you sound like.”
“I don’t want to fuck my father’s fiancée,” Luca said, though the red-hot blaze in his cheeks told me I’d hit the nail on the head.
“And my pussy doesn’t get wet for him,” Nyah hissed, equally pink in the face.
I put my hand over my heart and made a horrified face. “Oh, my mistake then!” My response was about as sarcastic as they came.
But the two of them put a good foot of space between them and quit bickering long enough for two men to walk over to us.
The taller of the two, probably in his fifties, with a black baseball cap and Saint View Vipers team shirt that had Coach embroidered over his heart, offered Luca his hand. “Luca Guerra, right? I’m Coach Buckle. This is my assistant, Coach Hogan.”
Luca shook both their hands. “Good to meet both of you.”
Nyah, by my side, couldn’t help but whisper, only so I could hear, “Oh look. Luca is being all professional. I didn’t know he had it in him.”
As if he’d heard her and just had to do the very opposite of whatever she said, Luca let go of the men’s hands. “You’re both fired.”
They both blinked at him.
Coach Buckle was the first to regain use of his tongue. “What?”
Luca turned back to the ice. “You heard me. You’re both fired.”
Coach Buckle’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t just come in here and fire us!”
Luca glanced over at him and then pointedly at the ladder on the electronic scoreboard. It announced that four weeks into the season, the Vipers were dead last on the table. “Give me one good reason I would keep two coaches who clearly can’t create a winning team? Sorry, but you’re out.”
Nyah and I just stood there awkwardly while Coach Buckle went red in the face. But eventually he got the idea that Luca wasn’t changing his mind. He and Coach Hogan stomped off in a huff. But it wasn’t quietly.
“This is my team, Guerra! You can’t just come in here and take it from me.”
Except we all knew that as the owner, he absolutely could.
I squinted at Luca. “Okay, genius. You just fired the coaches. Now what the hell are you going to do?”
“Hire new ones.”
“Great plan! Who?”
He turned to me. “I was thinking you, actually.”
Nyah’s eyebrows shot up so high they were practically in her hairline.
I suspected mine were the same. I laughed. “You want me to coach your hockey team?”
Luca looked me dead in the eye. “I did a bit of research after you said you used to play. Took me a bit, because you didn’t go by Lynx back then.
But it was easy enough to find your legal name since you’re on my father’s payroll.
” He winked at me. “I’d go by Lynx too, if my name was Torin Cross, by the way. ”
I flipped him the bird. “Fuck you.”
He ignored me like I hadn’t even spoken. “Turns out that back in the day, you were quite the hockey superstar. Destined for the pros, they said. You had sponsorship deals on the table and recruiters up your ass until…”
Until I’d fucked the entire thing up.
I didn’t need reminding. “And then I spent ten years in prison and haven’t touched a puck since.
” That wasn’t quite true, but knocking around a puck in the Slayers’ parking lot hardly counted as getting back in the game.
“And even if I had, even if I was still well practiced, what the fuck do I know about coaching?”
“More than I do,” Luca said, without so much as a waver in his voice. “More than those two chumps who couldn’t even coach the team out of a paper bag.”
I shook my head. “I already have a job. So thanks, but no thanks.”
But Luca was staring at me like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “So now you have two jobs. Work it out.”
I shook my head.
Luca’s brown-eyed gaze didn’t falter. “Are you seriously telling me that I’m offering you this team on a silver fucking platter, and you’re going to turn it down?”
“You’re only offering it because you’re desperate.”
Luca took a step closer. We were almost identical heights, though I was a hell of a lot bulkier than he was. Not that he wasn’t fit, he was just leaner than I was. I was all too aware of exactly how his body looked in that suit because I’d barely stopped staring at him all day.
And he knew it. “Or maybe I’m offering it to you because I think you have the skills to be good at it. Do you know how much hockey Coach Buckle has played?”
I didn’t say anything because we both knew I didn’t.
Luca answered for me. “None. He coached his kid’s team twenty years ago and then just kept coaching, even when the kid quit playing. Got decent enough at it to turn it into a job. But he can’t even skate, from what my sources told me.”
Well, that was pretty fucking sad. But not entirely surprising either. Saint View didn’t exactly attract a ton of talent. Anyone who had even a scrap of it got the hell out as early as they could.
“Just because I played, doesn’t mean I can teach,” I protested.
Luca’s gaze felt like it pierced right into my fucking soul when he said, “If you don’t want to try, I’ll hire someone else.”
And I found myself blurting out, “No. I’ll do it.”
Luca grinned and slapped me on the back. “Thought you might. Let’s go meet our new team, shall we?”
He strode away, clapping his hands to get the attention of the players on the ice.
I glanced over at Nyah. “Why do I feel like I just got played?”
She laughed and tucked her arm into mine. “You probably did. Or…”
“Or what?”
She shrugged. “Maybe Luca just did a nice thing for you.”
I really wasn’t at all sure how I felt about that.