Chapter 2
IT’S A THING
CORBIN
Sometimes you just need to pivot. Like when you’re skating backwards, but you need to open up to receive a shot.
Or, say, when you’re at a Webflix event with your buddies before a game, and one minute you’re checking out cookies, and the next, you spot your best friend’s little sister landing in the middle of the cake she’d been making.
Sure, Mabel was ad-libbing like a pro, but a good teammate has your back. That was all I’d wanted to do back there.
Now, I shut the door to the closet-sized trailer and place the towel Ronnie’s assistant gave Mabel on the few square inches of counter.
There’s a tiny couch, a dollhouse-sized table, and a bathroom smaller than one on an airplane.
The sink there is too small to be useful, but there’s a bigger one between a microwave and a coffee machine.
That’ll do to get her ready for the pic.
Tossing my suit jacket on the couch, I turn to Mabel and finally ask, “Smash cake, huh?”
“It’s a thing,” Mabel says with a little jut of her pretty chin.
“That save you attempted was worthy of a top goalie.” Even if that faux-badass judge wasn’t impressed with her song and dance, I sure as hell was.
“Thanks,” she says dryly. “But I’m pretty sure I’ll need a new career after that.” Her shoulders drop, and she shudders out a heavy breath, slumping against the trailer door and groaning like a wounded creature. “What have I done?”
Ah, hell. Can’t let her go all woe-is-me. “Hey now,” I say, reaching for her shoulders, cupping them to reassure her. “You handled that with aplomb.”
She peers at me, the corner of her lips screwing up. “Aplomb? Seriously? More like I bombed.”
“Nope. You fell down and you picked yourself right back up.” I rub her shoulders through her T-shirt.
I’m not usually a shoulder man, but hers feel damn good under my palms, strong and toned, probably from lifting heavy bags of flour and mixing batter.
But I probably shouldn’t be rubbing Theo’s sister’s shoulders with so much—I look down at my hands—gusto.
I drop my arms to my sides.
“Didn’t do much good. I’ll never get my—” Mabel’s voice catches, and she doesn’t finish the thought.
“Never get what?” It sounds important to her, what she didn’t say.
She blows out a breath, then shakes her head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. It’s one contest. I’ll move on after the photo opp.”
I want to reassure her that no one will remember what just went down. But I don’t like to make empty promises.
She waves toward her hair, the swoopy tendrils tumbling out of her clip. “I’ll move on if I can ever get this frosting out of my hair, that is.”
Now that I can promise. “Let’s do it.”
She lowers her hand and studies me with narrowed eyes. “Don’t you have a game to get to?”
“Yes, but the arena is three blocks away, and for a six-fifteen puck drop, I don’t need to be there till four-fifteen.”
But that doesn’t satisfy her. “What exactly are you doing here, Corbin? Did you come with Theo? Is he looking out for me? That would be just like him.”
True. Checking up on her is her brother’s style, but I’m not here with him.
Officially, I’m here for my teammate Riggs, who has a dangerous crush on the hostess of Romance Beach.
This morning in the weight room, while scrolling socials in between reps, the left winger blurted out Holy shit, my future girlfriend is in town.
I’d bet a hundred bucks she’d never give him the time of day.
Our goalie, Miller, got in on the action.
So, we’re here to check on our investment and, fine, wingman if Riggs needs it.
But I have ulterior motives too. Retirement from the ice is still a couple years away, but someday, when I hang up my skates, I’ll open a bakery in Cozy Valley like my mom always wanted but wasn’t able to. It never hurts to keep up with trends in the baking world.
I flash her an easygoing grin. “It was field-trip distance from the rink,” I say, then move the hell on from my why. I hold out a hand so I can get her to the sink. “Let’s de-cakify you.”
Mabel gazes at her arm, coated in frosting, which is…hmm. Sort of gray, maybe white? “Goodbye, cake,” she says to the remains of her creation. “You were a good cake. One of the best. You would have served me well.”
Ah, hell. There’s real sadness in her cake eulogy. She’d been working hard on that confection before it all went south with a rogue butterfly. I can’t let her wallow.
I swipe a finger through the sugary mess coating her arm. “You’re right. It did go out in a blaze of glory.” I bring the frosting to my lips for a taste. “It’s fantastic.”
Not the first time I’ve said that about her baking.
I’ve tried the caramel chocolate brownies and chocolate chip candy cane cookies Theo’s brought to hockey games.
Mabel and I even made raspberry lemon ricotta cupcakes together for the surprise party she threw for him last year.
She’s magic with dessert, and her frosting is almost, almost, as good as sex.
“Thanks,” she says. “The universe giveth and taketh away. Good baker, but a terrible competitor.” She shakes her head in obvious frustration.
“Good thing baking isn’t a—” I’m about to say a competitive sport, but there’s no such thing as a competition-free job.
I backpedal. “You can be a great baker without winning fancy competitions. And I bet you’ll start a smash-cake trend.
Now let’s get you cleaned up. I’m under strict orders to return you in”—I check my watch—“thirteen minutes now.”
And I’m the kind of guy who follows orders. Well, most of the time.
But when Mabel shifts her gaze to me, her frustration shifts with it. “Look, I appreciate the whole knight-in-shining-armor thing you have going on. It’s on brand and all. But you don’t have to stay. I can clean myself up.”
“I know you can,” I say evenly. She radiates independence. I swear I see it shimmering, like waves of heat. I’m not going to treat her like she can’t manage the situation on her own.
“Why are you helping then?” She’s skeptical, but I realize I’m not the target of her suspicion. Just the bystander.
“There was a whole crowd out there not helping,” I explain, because it’s that simple. “Didn’t want to be like them. That work for you?”
She squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds, dragging her hand through her hair, and oh shit…Before I can stop her, the damage is done. She’s combed frosting all over her pretty locks.
I wince but then school my expression when she opens her eyes.
“It’s not you,” she begins, her tone tinged with sadness. “It’s, well, my ex just told everyone who watches Romance Beach, which, for the record, is pretty much the entire world, that I suck at life.”
What the fuck? I’d tuned out the Romance Beach promo and lasered in on Mabel’s mad cake skills, so I missed that. But I’ll deal with it later.
“He’s wrong.” I hand her the towel from next to the sink. “Now, let’s get you ready for the photo. Show the crowd out there that when you fall, you get back up.”
She frowns apologetically. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have argued with the one person being nice to me.”
“I’ve been hit harder in hockey games. I can take it.”
“Stop trying to make me smile,” she mutters, but she’s smirking, and that’s good. I’d rather see that than her feeling sorry for herself.
She tosses the towel over her shoulder and scrubs her arms over the sink. Once they’re clean, she dries them off, then wipes most of the frosting from her apron too. She peers around, like she’s looking for a mirror before she asks, “I think there was some in my hair?”
I stifle a laugh. “Some being the operative word.”
“Seriously?”
I point at her hair. “Remember when you got so annoyed with yourself you shoved your hands in your hair, oh, about three minutes ago?”
She lets out a low moan, like a tire leaking air. “Noooo.”
“Yesssss.”
Since there’s no mirror, she has to rely on me. “How bad is it?”
I should resist touching her again, but my hands seem to have a mind of their own around her today. Maybe I have a thing for cute women in aprons with llamas kissing on them.
Maybe you have a thing for the woman you wanted to ask out the day you met her.
Setting a palm on her shoulder, I spin her around and…wow…it’s a fucking nest of frosting and cake. “On a scale of one to desperately-in-need-of-a-wash, I’d say it’s one hundred.”
The sound that emanates from her is now death-moan level.
But Mabel’s undeterred, and that’s nearly as sexy as her attempt at a smash-cake save.
The woman doesn’t let the small stuff get her down.
She beelines for the locker-sized bathroom and squeezes in to deal with the problem.
She attempts to wipe off bits of frosting from her hair with her towel, but her elbows bump against the wall.
The bathroom’s so small she can’t quite get the right angle.
She turns back to me with a look of surrender. “Fine. Go ahead. Be nice if you insist. Help.”
I give her an I told you so look as she emerges. “I insist,” I say.
When she’s standing in front of me a second later, I pace around her, reviewing the damage. Once I’ve done a full loop, she meets my eyes and says: “Level with me. Is it time for a buzz cut?”
“Hmm,” I say as I take the towel from her. “Have you got clippers in that apron pocket?”
Her brown eyes pop. “It’s that bad?”
I don’t mince words. “Mabel, you are the smash cake. It’s everywhere.
” But I’m fast on my feet and quick with a solution.
Years of taking care of my mom, of raising my little girl, and of executing plays on the ice mean I don’t fuck around when it comes to taking care of people or problems. “I have an idea.”
She holds up her hands, but she’s not defeated. Her words crackle with a spark that hasn’t been snuffed out from a rough day. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Game on,” I say and reach for the clip in her hair.
“That’s my lucky clip,” she says.