Chapter 2
JO
“On a scale of zero to ten, where is your pain now?”
“Uh… Maybe… Five…?”
The nurse types something into her iPad then offers me a smile before she heads out of the room with the reminder, “Hit the button if you need anything. Try to relax. Maybe enjoy some of your deliveries.”
After a few hours of examinations and care, I’m finally alone in my hospital room.
Or as alone as one can be with a five-foot-tall teddy bear, a dozen bouquets of flowers, multiple boxes of chocolates, a basket of salty snacks, and another of personal items that include a blanket, socks, lotion, and a small tin of potpourri.
The gifts started arriving shortly after I did, the bear and personal items delivered by a man named Malcolm King, who introduced himself as the assistant to Nico Tremblay—the reason I’m laid up with a sprained wrist, concussion, and gash on my head that required eight stitches.
Sean and I had been taking some action shots of practice today when it happened.
Being his assistant for the past three years means I’m used to the rink and working in the sports photography environment, but I’ve never been hurt on the job, let alone knocked unconscious.
One minute, I was capturing Luca Abramova lining up for a shot in the net, and the next, I was in an ambulance. With one hell of a headache.
In the hours since, I’ve been patched up and told I needed to spend at least another day or two in the hospital for observation.
Apparently, they want to make sure my brain doesn’t swell or bleed.
I’ve been warned that my good condition can become worse, and since I was knocked out for a while then threw up, they want to make sure I’m all right.
Which I’m sure I am.
Though I had a tough time convincing my parents of it. My mother even demanded she talk to the doctor. Still, I don’t think she’s going to listen to me when I said she doesn’t need to come here.
I’m fine.
Really.
I’m fine.
“Josephine? You have a visitor.”
“I’m fine,” I say before turning to the door, assuming it would be my mother here already, only to find the puck blaster himself.
“Oh my god. I’m so, so, so sorry,” he says, bypassing the nurse to come right up to the side of my hospital bed. He raises his hands as if to touch me but winces and lowers them. “I feel terrible.”
“I’m fine.”
He ignores that and coasts his gaze around the room. “I’m glad you got all this, but I didn’t know what your favorite food is. Otherwise, I would’ve ordered you dinner.” He pulls his cell phone from his pocket, looking at me expectantly. “Can I do that now?”
“Really, I’m fine. You don’t need to order me food.”
He shakes his head as if mentally reprimanding himself then pockets his phone and helps himself to taking a seat in the chair he drags over before letting his eyes roam the length of me, covered by the hospital sheet.
The man is a known womanizer, and even though he’s clearly studying me for evidence of bumps and scrapes, I’m not immune to his natural charisma.
His eyes are blue like a spring day, while his jaw is cut like winter ice.
Despite how his mouth is pinched with tension, it’s still a perfect complement to his nose that is wide in the middle and slightly off-center, like it was broken at some point in his past. His skin is permanently tanned, and his shaggy blond hair is the perfect amount of sun-kissed gold.
He’s a young Robert Redford, if the actor ever played a professional hockey player, and once posted a naked picture of himself on his Instagram with his hockey-gloved hand covering his junk.
I don’t know what it is about the mix of sex appeal and goofy idiot that has women falling at his feet, but he is irresistible.
Even to me.
The woman he doesn’t know, save for the whole puck-to-the-head fiasco.
“So, JoAnn, what’s the prognosis?”
“Josephine,” I correct.
He frowns. “What’s that? A type of disease?”
I inwardly groan as I rest my head back against the pillow and close my eyes for a moment. From experience, I know hockey players don’t only have dust mites and hockey slang between their ears. I know it. And yet…
Here he is, asking if I’m a disease.
“That’s my name. Josephine. Not JoAnn.”
“Oh shit.” He thrusts his fingers through his golden locks, sweeping them off his forehead. “You probably think I’m such an asshole. I am. First, I knock you out. Then, I don’t even know your name. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I mumble.
“It’s not. It’s really not. I’m gonna make this up to you.”
“You’ve done enough.” I gesture to everything around the room. “I don’t need anything else.”
He swipes his hand through the air. “I’ve got the hospital bills covered. Okay? Don’t worry about that. And anything else you need, something at home, whatever, I’ll take care of it.”
I saw my teeth into my lower lip, and I notice his gaze dips, following the motion, so I immediately stop and pull my legs up, as if that’ll conceal me. Shield me from his attention.
I feel naked. I always do without my camera, but being the only person in this little room with Nico’s huge personality feels stifling. It must be all the anxiety he’s causing me that I reveal, “It’s my camera I’m worried about.”
“Your camera?”
He waits while I consider what to tell him. “I broke it when I fell. It was mine. The team pays for Sean’s equipment, but—”
“Sean the photographer?”
I nod. Sean is one of two full-time Iron photographers, and at the beginning of every season, each player gets seated in a studio for photos, and since the photographers are the ones there, directing it all, the players are all familiar with them.
I’m merely Sean’s assistant, meant to be unseen and unheard.
Welp…
I was seen and heard today.
“I was using my own camera,” I explain then tip my chin over to the baggie my now-busted camera has been put in. Nico immediately takes out his phone and starts typing, asking for the information about the camera so he can replace it.
“You don’t need to do that,” I say, but that really is the one thing I care about. It’s just a reflexive notion that I should stay unseen and unheard.
“I told you, I’m gonna make this up to you. Whatever you need, I’ll take care of it.” He hits me with that blue steel, and I’m unable to do anything except nod.
Because his easy yet dominant orders override my ingrained insecurities.
Once he’s finished on his phone, he puts it away and moves even closer to me, angling his chair so he’s positioned in line with my knees and facing me. “So, Josephine…”
I swallow, unsure what is happening here. Why this hockey player is in my hospital room, gazing at me like we have anything to talk about. Like he’s here to visit me…as if we’re friends.
We absolutely are not.
Aside from being aware of him as a person in my orbit, I don’t have a clue who he is.
I know his full name is Nicholas Tremblay III, and he’s a left winger for the Philadelphia Iron.
His mom is Paulina Luciano, the Italian supermodel from the 1980s, and his dad was some big-time real estate developer in California.
He wears number 20, for his birthday, and he’s left-handed.
Okay… Maybe I know a little bit about him.
More than he knows about me.
“So, Jo—can I call you Jo?” Without letting me answer, he tosses me a smile that I’m sure has caused many a girl to lose her panties. “You’re a photographer, huh?”
I focus on the thin hospital blanket, picking at it with my index finger, half of my dark green nail polish chipped off. “Yep.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
I flick my eyes over to him to find him staring then go right back to picking at the blanket. “Not necessarily sports photography, but…yeah, I enjoy it.”
“How long have you been working for the Iron?”
“I’ve been Sean’s assistant for about three years.
” When I hear him shift in his seat, I take another peek at him to find him scooted closer, his left hand on my bed, long, thick fingers loosely curled so I can spot a scar on his middle finger’s knuckle.
He’s totally relaxed, lounging in what has to be an uncomfortable chair, while I’m all twisted up in this bed, trying to take up the least amount of space possible.
I don’t understand it, and I blurt out the question, “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to check on you, and—why do you do that?”
I lift my eyes to him. “What?”
“Not look at me.”
I attempt to hide my frown because he’s used to people fawning over him. They’d probably stare at him even if he weren’t a hockey player, but I don’t know why he wants me to look at him.
I bite my lip, unsure how to answer. “I…I don’t know. It’s not you, it’s everyone.”
“What’s everyone?”
I blink a few times, really struggling to hold his gaze. Or anyone’s. “It’s hard.”
“What is, Jojo?”
I let a squeak of surprise escape my throat at the nickname, and I feel more than see or hear him lean into my space.
“You shy? Is that it?” Though he sounds proud to have puzzled it out. “It’s all right. That’s cool. I figured I’d sit with you a bit, but if you’re uncomfortable with that, I’ll leave.”
He gives me a moment to answer, and when I finally turn my focus on him, he lifts his thumb as if to motion that he’ll follow through on his offer. But when I shake my head, he smiles. Less showboating stranger, more…friendly acquaintance.
“So,” he starts again, leaning back in his chair. “They treating you well in here?”
“Very well.”
“Good.” He grins. There really is something about him. An irresistibility. It’s infectious.
He asks me some more questions, about where I’m from—West Virginia—if I went to university—community college for my associate’s degree—and what my favorite cereal is.
When I tell him I don’t really eat cereal, his eyes practically bug out of his head, and then he proceeds to go on and on about his favorites, which are Froot Loops—saved solely for between-period snacks—Cap’n Crunch—the “every day” cereal—and his personal rainy-day favorite, Apple Jacks.
“So what do you eat in the mornings?” he asks, and I shrug, comfortable enough with him to mostly meet his eyes, letting my back relax against the adjustable bed and extending my legs so I’m no longer scrunched up.
“I don’t usually.”
“Oh, Jo, no good. We gotta get you eating in the mornings. Start your day with some fuel.”
“With sugar, like you?”
He shrugs a thick shoulder. “Whatever floats your boat, but how about I have some groceries dropped off at your place when you get home? Whatever you like?”
“You really don’t have to do that.”
He waves me off then points to the remote control. “Should we see what’s on TV?”
I hand it over, and he aims it at the television hanging on the wall, moving so he can view it, basically leaning halfway onto my bed, his elbow almost touching my thigh.
I could lift my hand a few inches and comb my fingers through his hair, but that is something only a weirdo would do, so I claw my way out of the mental straitjacket he’s tied around me with all his charm and the squareness of his jaw.
“Oh, sweet. Twilight. I love this movie.” He glances over his shoulder at me. “Okay if we watch?”
“You like Twilight?”
“Yeah. Big fan of the fated mates trope,” he says casually, as if every professional hockey player has a favorite trope, and pushes his chair back so we’re next to each other, then sets his right foot on the edge of my bed, crossing his left foot over. As if we’re in a living room…hanging out.
“You’re different than I thought you’d be,” I murmur, and I assume it’s the pain meds that are making my tongue loose.
He cocks his head my way, the corner of his mouth tipped up. “What’d you think I’d be like?”
I shrug. “Different.”
“A douche?” When I nod, he laughs. “I get that a lot. Not unwarranted sometimes, I guess.”
“Why don’t you go home?”
“Because, I told you. I felt bad, and I wanted to come see you for myself. I needed to know you were okay. Despite what people think about me, I’m not that big of an asshole.
I try not to be, at least. Besides, I’d only go home and play video games or something.
Why not hang out with you? Get to know the lady making me look good in pictures. ”
“Well, I don’t know about that anymore. Might take only ugly ones from now on.”
He huffs and runs his hand over his hair and down his chest. “Impossible.”
Yeah. He’s right.
It’s impossible to make him look bad. He’s beautiful, classically beautiful.
The exact opposite of me.
And yet he doesn’t make me feel like I want to hide. He doesn’t make me worry about hiding my teeth or my body or covering my face with my hair. He’s disarmed me completely.
So after the movie is over, and he stands to leave, I don’t fight him when he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow after practice, Jo.”
I merely lift my hand. “Thanks, Nico.”