Ice Ice Babygirl

Chapter One

The Crime

What they don’t tell you, Robbie Zeiger reflected as he eased himself into lotus position, what they never say during all the long hours of training and practicing, game days and off days, wins and losses, when they’re telling you everything else about glory and pride and professionalism and giving just a bit more, is that all that hard work fights back.

Robbie wasn’t yet forty, but his knees and hips begged to differ.

Once upon a time, he’d taken up yoga so he could keep limber and strong.

You needed to be a bendy bastard if you were going to guard the net and catch pucks and not spend every night icing your pulled groin.

But these days, Robbie did yoga because it was the one thing that stopped him from waking up feeling like a half-chewed pretzel every morning.

Sitting cross-legged on his mat, Robbie breathed deeply and did his best to clear his mind—a futile task.

His mother had only enrolled him in hockey in the first place to help him burn off all that excess energy.

According to family history—something Robbie took with a grain of salt, given his tenuous relationship with his parents—Robbie initially hated it.

But by the time he was seven, his cousins and his older brother had taught him that playing goaltender for them meant being included in the older kids’ games.

His coaches spotted the extra work he’d put in, and amazingly it paid off.

Robbie had stayed in hockey because it was the one way he could make his parents proud.

His neanderthal father had been elated that he could boast about Robbie’s manly exploits on the ice instead of mumble about his interest in theatre.

His mother was relieved her socially awkward kid was finally making friends his own age.

Shaking away the bad memories, Robbie breathed deeply and tried to focus on his body, the placement of his limbs.

Naturally, just as he was achieving some inner fucking peace, Sawyer banged into the house.

“Robbie? Are you home? Is dinner ready?”

Robbie sighed. Heaven forfend he get a moment to himself to breathe and be maudlin about his recent retirement. Why were people so gung-ho about this whole early retirement business anyway? Robbie was bored.

And it hadn’t even been three weeks.

Sawyer practically fell into the room, lanky teenaged limbs everywhere, and grinned when he saw Robbie. “Oooh, yoga time.”

He plopped down, arranged his legs into lotus, and rested his hands palm-up on his knees, thumb and pointer together, like a fucking cliché. And then he Ohmed.

“Sawyer,” Robbie groaned. He loved this kid, but Sawyer was also clearly karma for the bubbling ball of energy he’d once been.

“Yes?” The past twelve months had been a hell of a transformation—Robbie had bullied his brother into signing a medical consent form so Robbie could take his kid to get braces…

and then took the initiative to get him a supportive therapist and doctor.

He’d grown a couple of inches and his jawline had sharpened since he started T last year.

It wasn’t like Vince was around enough to care, so long as Robbie footed the bill.

“Shockingly, taking up half my mat and wailing is not actually helping me ‘yoge.’”

“Not gonna lie”—Sawyer rearranged his limbs so he could hug his knees—“I’m offended that you think my offer of comradery and support is not beneficial.”

“Lotta big words for someone so short,” Robbie said, but Sawyer barreled on.

“When I ignored my grumbling stomach, my own bodily needs, in favour of joining you here? Even though you stink because you obviously just finished some sort of cardio. I am offended, sir.”

“Sawyer?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

Grinning, Sawyer jumped to his feet and made a show of dusting off the seat of his pants, as if Robbie’s yoga mat was dirty.

“Fine. How about I order us some food while you yoge.” He pulled his cell—the brand-spanking-new iPhone that Robbie had bought to replace Sawyer’s old crappy one and which Robbie probably got conned into spending too much on because he was a sucker—and waggled it in Robbie’s face.

“What do you think? Thai or pizza tonight?”

“Thai.” Robbie might not be the world’s best guardian, but he could at least make sure the kid had some nutrition with his salt and carbs. “And order vegetables!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, old man.” Sawyer was already nose deep in his phone, texting. Robbie just hoped the kid didn’t forget about dinner. Now that Sawyer had mentioned it, he was kind of hungry and Thai sounded nice.

Fortunately, Sawyer didn’t forget, and dinner arrived just as Robbie was making his way to the kitchen from the shower.

He wondered if the fact that they had a standing order from the local Thai restaurant made him a bad minder. Then again, at least it was one with lots of veggies. Also, he reminded himself, he couldn’t be worse than his brother.

“So,” Sawyer said, clumsily grabbing noodles with his chopsticks, “I’ve been thinking.”

“A dangerous pastime,” Robbie said solemnly.

He felt so old when Sawyer didn’t get the Beauty and the Beast reference. “Har har. I’ve been thinking about your post-retirement life.”

“Oh?” Just because Robbie didn’t know what he wanted to do next, now that his hockey career was over, and was maybe in a bit of a funk about it, didn’t mean that he wanted his ersatz kid to worry about it. Or worse, plan it for him.

“Yes. Have you?”

Once upon a time, Robbie’s day-to-day life was not filled with teenage sass. But now that Robbie wasn’t country hopping a couple times a week, the available space in his life had been taken up by his nephew.

It could definitely be worse. Being alone, for example, would definitely be worse. That didn’t mean Robbie had to enjoy the sass.

“Of course not. I just stare at the wall all day while I wait for you to return home.”

“No one could blame you. I’m him. But you need more in your life than just me, Uncle Robs.”

Robbie wasn’t actually sure if the kid was matching sass for sass or if the sarcasm had just gone right over his head.

“At least watch some porn, jeez.”

Could you still sell children to wandering knights and the like? “Let me guess: you know exactly what I should be doing.”

“Well…,” Sawyer started. “No, not exactly, but come on! You can’t just do yoga all day. You could do colour commentary.”

Robbie pulled a face. “No thanks.” He might have enjoyed his career in hockey, but he didn’t want to just jump right back in.

Actually, he didn’t want to jump into anything yet—not when the future felt so open, so nebulous, so…

undefined. If he took a job in hockey right now, it would be easy not to think about the future and what he wanted.

Sawyer rolled his eyes. “Why not? You’d be so good at it. You have lots of opinions, and for some reason other people think you’ve got rizz.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You collect novelty magnets, tell dad jokes, and dress like you only shop at Goodwill.”

“You say that like those are bad things.”

“Your last contract paid you more than eight million a year,” Sawyer said unhappily. “You could at least dress like it.”

“Ah, but then I wouldn’t have the funds to support your Minecraft habit.”

“Like my games have emptied your coffers.” He ate another noodle. Robbie hoped that his tragically short attention span had moved on to the next subject. “Though I have been thinking about the future.”

“And?” Here we go.

“Well, I plan to attend college for approximately twenty years, so you’re going to need a lot of money—”

No such luck on the subject change. “Kid, you can’t complain about my unused NHL salary in one breath and then tell me I need a second job to send you to college in the next.” Sawyer pouted. “Try again.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrowed, and Robbie instantly regretted those words. Where most people would hear a brush-off, Sawyer heard a challenge.

Robbie almost dropped his head to the kitchen table in defeat. Lord only knew what Sawyer would come up with next.

“I’ll remind you that you said that,” Sawyer said cheerfully.

Jesus Christ. That was definitely a threat.

While Robbie might have a brain under his beautiful head of hair, he was still a jock at heart, and he forgot to be on his guard.

Or at least he forgot to be on his guard more than minding a fourteen-year-old megalomaniac usually required.

Two weeks later, when he received an email thanking him for his interest in being a contestant on Dance Your Ice Off and welcoming him to the team, he spent several moments blinking in confusion before it occurred to him that Sawyer had made good on his threat.

He had to hand it to the kid, though: apart from the whole thing where he apparently pretended to be Robbie’s agent and told these people Robbie would be “just thrilled” to be on their show, he’d represented Robbie well.

To twist the knife just a little, he’d selected the LGBT Youth Line as Robbie’s charity of choice, which would receive a $50,000 donation if Robbie won the competition.

So if Robbie told the truth or pretended to change his mind, he’d feel immense guilt.

Robbie took a moment to Google what the competition entailed, which seemed to be hockey players of all genders pairing up with figure skaters to see who fell over in the least embarrassing way. He didn’t bother watching the videos; the thumbnail images made the contents clear enough.

He took a few moments to wonder where Sawyer got the audacity, then decided he probably didn’t want to know and hit Reply.

If he also immediately invited Sawyer for dinner, that was hardly unusual.

There was a fine line between playing it casual and ratcheting up Sawyer’s sense of unease. Robbie walked it by making Sawyer’s third-favourite main dish with a vegetable he despised.

Then he waited until Sawyer was frowning at his plate in confusion to say, “So I got a weird email today.”

Warily, Sawyer looked up. “You did?”