The Player Who Stole Christmas (A Chance Rapids Christmas #2)

Chapter 1

ONE

NICK

The one set of traffic lights in town turned amber then red.

Snow crunched under the tires of my truck as I eased to a stop.

To my right was the downtown core, to my left was a gas station and a gazebo with a life-sized nativity scene.

It looked like Christmas had vomited up and down the main street, went and got more bad tuna, and came back to chuck up more red and green lights. Decorations. Were. Everywhere.

I’d been in town for less than five minutes and I already hated Chance Rapids.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I whispered under my breath as I followed the instructions from my phone.

It was eight o’clock at night, but the glare from the lights made it seem like mid-afternoon.

I tried to make out the street signs as I crept along.

It was tough because the snowbanks were more like mini mountains, some of which had swallowed up the street signs.

Wet snowflakes swirled, landing on my windshield before they were squished by my wipers.

“Oak Street, Oak Street,” I whispered to myself as I squinted to read the signs. It had been a long day and all I wanted to do was get to the hotel, jerk off, and go to sleep.

“Please make a U-turn, if safe to do so.” The GPS lady with the British accent obviously didn’t know that the streets were far too narrow for my vintage Chevy Silverado to make a three-point turn, let alone execute a U.

I glanced into the mirror, there were no cars on the road, and I realized that there were no people around either.

God, I hated small towns. “I guess they roll up the main street at sunset here,” I muttered to myself.

Which meant I could do one of my favorite maneuvers—a brake turn that would put a U-turn to shame.

After one more glance in the rearview to confirm I wasn’t going to crash into anyone, I stomped my foot on the gas, turned the wheel, and then slammed on the brakes.

The truck whipped around like that ride I remembered from the fall fair, the Scrambler, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.

“Turn left onto Oak Street,” the British lady repeated herself.

I hadn’t driven by it; Oak Street didn’t exist. “There’s no Oak Street,” I said.

I usually found my GPS’s voice sexy, but tonight, when she started sounding like a broken record, I inhaled and jabbed at the screen on my phone, trying to get her to stop telling me to turn where there was no goddamn street. When I looked up from my phone, the Christmas lights were flashing.

It took me a minute to realize that the flickering red and blue lights weren’t coming from the ugly garlands over my head—there was a cop car behind me.

“Argh.” I groaned and dropped my forehead to the steering wheel.

The cop car made one of those whoop-whoop sounds, but the officer didn’t engage the sirens. The road was so filled with snow, there was nowhere to pull over. “Stupid town.” I stopped right in the middle of the road and put the truck in park. “Fine. I’ll stop. Right here.”

This time the cop’s voice came through the speaker. “You’re blocking the roadway. Pull into the gas station parking lot.”

I cranked down the window and pointed to the stoplights to acknowledge that I’d heard the order. I didn’t trust cops and wasn’t going to get set up for an outrunning the law ticket. Although I doubted that this backward town even had a jail cell.

There were a couple of cars in the diner parking lot and shadows of people inside. Finally, signs of life. I pulled in next to a Range Rover and turned off the engine. The officer got out of his car and was every bit the stereotype, complete with a pot belly, mustache, and cocky saunter.

Authority and I didn’t do well together. Getting kicked out of the league for arguing with a ref, and maybe giving him the shove he deserved, were evidence of my disdain for any and all people who enforced the rules.

My window was still down. I leaned my elbow on the frame while I waited for the walrus in the uniform to finish his leisurely stroll to my truck.

“Do you mind turning down the radio, son?”

I pointed to the spot on the dashboard where the radio used to live but was now an empty space. “It’s not on.”

The police officer shook his head. “These damn Christmas carols, I hear them in my sleep.”

“Deck the Halls” was playing from a speaker that was hung on the lamppost behind him.

“The only good song is ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’”

The sides of the cop’s mouth turned up. It looked like I had run into a fellow Christmas hater. “Do you know why I pulled you over, son?”

“I’m not your son.” I crossed my arms, shoving my hands into my armpits.

The temperature was at least twenty degrees colder on this side of the mountain pass.

When I’d stopped for gas in the neighboring town of Windswan, I hadn’t needed my gloves—now, on the western side of the Sugar Peaks range, it was an entirely different climate.

“Don’t get sassy with me.” The cop rested his notepad on his belly. If he had white hair and a beard, he would’ve been a dead ringer for Santa. “License and registration.”

I got my documents from the glove box and handed them to him.

“City guy,” he said as he read my license.

It wasn’t clear whether it was a statement or a question, so I decided my best course of action was to shut up. I would get the damn ticket so I could continue my search for the street that didn’t exist.

“What are you doing in Chance Rapids? Skiing?” He glanced into the truck bed, where there were clearly no skis.

“That’s my hockey equipment.” I shivered, hoping that Inspector Tubby Pants would pick up the pace.

The cop, whose name badge read Henderson, folded up his notepad and handed me my paperwork. “Are you the new player for the Bobcats?”

Temporarily, but that wasn’t public knowledge.

I had been hired by the assistant coach to play in the Christmas Classic.

A fancy name for a game on a shitty outdoor rink.

When he’d called me, my first response had been hell no.

But, after he bribed me with ten thousand dollars, I decided that it might be time to spend Christmas in the mountains.

It was a crappy little mountain league, and they certainly weren’t allowed to pay their players, let alone recruit a semipro.

Although I wasn’t technically a player at all—not until my suspension was lifted.

That was our work-around. I was also from the East Coast in the Northern Professional Hockey League, and no one from this town would have heard of me. I was good, but I wasn’t famous.

“I am the new goalie for the Bobcats.” I hated the cutesy name.

A grin spread across Henderson’s face. “Harry.” He extended his sausage-fingered hand.

I shook it. “Nick.”

Harry tucked the pen into the pocket of his coat. “Nick, how about you save those fancy spinning moves for the ice.”

He was letting me off. If he wanted to be a dick, that e-brake turn could’ve easily been considered reckless driving, a charge just as bad as an impaired one. “Will do, Officer.”

“It’s Harry from now on. Welcome to Chance Rapids, Nicholas Tinsel.”

Coach told me that hockey players were like celebrities in Chance Rapids, but I hadn’t believed him. After all, it was a crappy little league that had only turned out one or two good players to the major leagues.

“Harry.” I caught him before he walked away. “I’m staying at Snowy Peaks on Oak Street, but I’m having a hell of a time finding it.”

Harry chuckled, which turned into a barking cough. “They plowed the entrance to the street so that no one can drive on it. It’s the skijoring street.”

Skijoring? It was a weird word, one that I didn’t know, but I was starting to feel light-headed and realized that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I also realized that I didn’t care what skijoring was; it sounded like a ski-joke. “So, how do I get to the inn? I’d like to get some dinner.”

The directions were pretty simple, and I committed them to my brain. For a hockey player who had been knocked around his whole life, I had a pretty decent memory. I thanked Harry and started up the truck, rubbing my hands together to try to get the feeling back into my fingertips.

Harry’s hand was still on the frame of my window, so I couldn’t roll it up. “They only serve breakfast at Snowy Peaks. This time of night your options are the Brew House or the G-Spot.”

“Excuse me?” Unlike ski-what-cha-ma-call-it, this word intrigued me enough to ask about it.

Steam puffed from Harry’s mouth as he laughed.

“I forget how bad that sounds.” He pointed to the frosty windows of the building next to the variety store.

“It’s short form for the general store. Someone started calling it the G-Spot years ago, and I guess it just stuck.

They’ve got a great roast beef sandwich.

Tell Muriel that you’re the new player and she’ll probably pour you a special coffee.

” He winked, patted the truck, and sauntered back to his car.

A trendy beer house or a dingy diner. Those were my two options. My stomach growled, answering me—it needed food now. An old-fashioned roast beef sandwich, likely served open faced with peas and mashed potatoes, was just what I needed.

The bells jingled above my head as I entered the diner.

“Have a seat anywhere you’d like,” a white-haired woman yelled from the little cutout at the back. The place smelled delicious, in the deep-fried, I probably shouldn’t be eating this kind of way. I slid into a booth and pulled a laminated menu from the metal jam holder.

The white-haired lady wore an apron and horn-rimmed glasses. “What can I get for you, son?”

I bristled, but unlike the cop, I wasn’t going to be a dick to an old lady. “I’d like your roast beef sandwich.”

“Fries or mashed?” She wasn’t writing any of it down.

“Who gets fries when mashed is an option?” I shot her a smile.

She gave it back to me. “Mashed it is.” Even though it was eight o’clock at night, Muriel came to the table equipped with a coffee carafe in her hand. “What are you doing here in town?” She took the mug from the table setting and filled it without asking if I wanted coffee.

Testing out the theory that everyone in town loved the hockey players, I shot her another smile. “I’m the new goalie for the Bobcats.”

Muriel’s hand went to her chest and then she squeezed my shoulder. “I could’ve guessed—a big boy like you.”

Women hit on me all the time, and it rarely fazed me, but Muriel’s comment set my cheeks burning. For once in my life, I was rendered speechless.

Muriel pulled a flask from her apron. “Want to make that a winter coffee?” She shook it and gave me a very obvious wink.

“How about a light winter coffee.” I nudged the mug toward her and she poured some of the amber liquid into the coffee.

“That’ll warm you up.”

While I waited for the roast beef sandwich, I sipped the winter coffee.

Muriel was right, the whiskey did send a warming sensation into my limbs, and I relaxed into the booth.

The restaurant was quiet. There were a couple of old guys in the corner, a family with a sleeping baby in one of those car seat things, and a beautiful woman who looked to be in her thirties drinking something from a mug while looking at some papers in a file folder.

The bells over the door jingled and a whoosh of cold air curled around my feet. I sipped the coffee and glanced at the entrance. A girl with sandy-brown hair tucked under a red wool hat stepped into the diner and stomped the snow off her boots.

“Hi, Evie,” Muriel shouted from the kitchen.

I tried not to stare as the girl named Evie walked by my table.

Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and her eyes were the same green as the stripe in her long scarf.

It was the longest one that I’d ever seen; the scarf was wound around her neck a couple of times, and still, its fringes hung down to her knees.

She was beautiful, but she looked like she’d robbed an eighty-year-old woman and walked away wearing her clothes.

Her red peacoat had a sparkly thing pinned to the lapel—I think that my grandma called them brooches.

The buttons of the coat were undone, revealing a knitted vest with reindeer on it.

Bells hung from her ears, tinkling as she walked by me.

She may have been dressed like an old lady, but she smelled like a hot twenty-something.

Vanilla and the expensive shampoo that they all use lingered in the air.

My cock stirred in my boxers and I had to remind myself that I was only there to throw the game.

Still, my mind flashed to the sound those earrings would make if I was thrusting into her hard and fast.

I shook my head. If I wanted to get some action while I was in town, this beautiful woman with the terrible outfit did not look like the type to jump in the sack for a one-night romp with a hockey player.

Which was too bad, because, like the coffee, she’d managed to warm up my body from the inside.