Knot Your Pucking Baby (Heat & Havoc #1)

Prologue

Lennon

My father's headstone is brand new.

There isn’t a piece of granite out of place, unlike the neighbors on either side of him, their markers worn smooth by years of rain and sun.

Cancer.

It’s always fucking cancer.

Stage four. Spread to every single corner of his body.

They gave him twenty hours. Twenty fucking hours after the diagnosis.

I spent ten of those hours in a courtroom fighting for my client, a man who had committed a triple murder.

I was disgustingly close to making it one more before I finally got my client to plead guilty.

A man will say and do anything when he’s begging for his life.

It was inevitable that he would receive life behind bars.

The evidence was stacked so high against him that it was laughable.

DNA. Witnesses. Security footage. Three dead bodies.

An open and shut case. The kind senior partners dumped on associates like me when they were too busy sipping cocktails in the Maldives and pretending billable hours were beneath them.

All while my father lay in a hospital bed. Dying.

I wasn’t there when he got the news. I wasn’t there when he cried. Did he cry? I don’t even know if he did. When the nurses began increasing his Morphine, or when he took his last breath…I wasn’t there for that either.

“I’m sorry, Coach,” I whisper to the wind as tears slip freely down my cheeks. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you. That I didn’t hold your hand. Daddy, I’m sorry you had to do it alone.”

My voice breaks on the last word. Alone. Because that’s what I am now.

My knees hit the damp grass as grief begins to consume me. I can’t breathe. Not properly. Not around the ache clawing through my chest.

My father was everything to me.

I was his shadow from the moment I learned how to walk.

Being one of the greatest hockey players in the country never afforded him much free time, but when he was home, he made every single second count.

He never let me miss what I didn’t have.

Never let me mourn the lack of a parental pack.

His love was always enough. That, and I had twenty-two Alpha uncles at my disposal. A watery laugh escapes me.

Once I was old enough, my days were spent at the rink with my tutor, splitting time between algebra and screaming at grown men twice my size for slacking off during practice.

They called me the Mini Coach before I could even spell the words.

By the time I reached high school, Dad had retired and purchased the Vadena Cardinals.

The team he used to play for. And somehow, hockey became even more ingrained in my life.

Most girls hung posters of celebrities on their bedroom walls.

Mine were defense formations. Player statistics.

Draft predictions. I studied games like they were sacred texts.

Because the ice runs in my blood.

And it’s a love that’s impossible to shake.

It's the thrill of the game. The adrenaline that thumps through your body when players are smashed up against the glass, the raw excitement that fills the stadium when the puck slides through the goalie's legs, landing directly in the net.

It was something Dad and I both loved. It was all we could ever talk about.

While I never took an interest in actually playing the sport, the developmental side was where I blossomed.

I watched the plays night after night until my eyes were too heavy to stay open.

It was the topic of our first real conversation, and our last.

Eventually, reality came knocking. Law school, internships. The long nights I was used to had nothing on the long nights I spent studying law. And…it took over. Hockey may have faded into the background, but a love like that never really leaves you. Just like the love I have for my father won’t.

“Miss Gilmore?” A deep voice startles me. Turning, I find an older man standing a respectful distance away, a stack of documents tucked beneath one arm.

I snuffle, wiping the tears off my cheeks. “Yes, that's me.”

He offers a sad smile, one that tells me he’s had this conversation before.

“My name is Jack Anderson. I was your father's attorney.”

Something inside me twists. Was. Past tense. Because everything is in the past now.

“How can I help you?”

He straightens, carefully pulling a document from the stack. The moment I see the words Last Will and Testament in elegant cursive above my father’s name, my stomach drops. This isn’t real. None of this is real. Because real… Means he’s gone.

My coach is gone.

The world spins in a blur around me as I try to listen.

Mr. Anderson begins reading through the Will.

The first part is exactly what I had expected.

The house. His assets. The investments my dad spent years building.

Being an only child and the only family he had left, I already knew that it would all come to me.

It doesn't make any of this any easier.

If anything, it makes it worse. Real. Real in a way that I still can’t stomach.

Because as long as things still belonged to him, some stupid part of me could pretend he was coming home. That he’d walk through the front door, complaining about traffic and asking what I’d made for dinner. That, after a few rings, he’d answer my calls like always.

That I would be able to unload the heaviness of my day. For him to be there to listen and afterward give me that fatherly advice I am currently craving.

Because how are you meant to mourn your father? The only family that you have ever known?

I barely hear Mr. Anderson until something cuts through the fog consuming my mind.

“Vadena Cardinals.”

My head snaps up. “Sorry, what did you say?” I ask, my pulse starting to pound against my ribs. Mr. Anderson grimaces.

“It states here that the Vadena Cardinals are to be given to Miss Lennon Gilmore. Conditions for inheritance specify that she must coach the men’s National Hockey League team for a single season before the position of Majority Owner can be approved.”

I stare at him, waiting. For the punchline. For the ball to drop. For the person behind the bushes to jump out and shout surprise! For the TV crew to tell me that I am being punked or some other ridiculous saying that will make any of this better.

“Surely not,” I whisper, looking down at the document with trembling hands. I reread the clause once. Twice. Three times. The words that threaten to blur at the edges until they finally make sense.

Coach the Vadena Cardinals.

For one season.

Then inherit the entire team.

My father’s team.

A strangled laugh escapes me because grief apparently wasn’t enough. My father had decided to leave me with a professional hockey team.

And all I can think is…

Fuck.