Lucky Puck (Portsmouth Whalers #6)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

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My mouth opens before my eyes because it’s uncommonly dry, and when I open my eyes, I’m very sorry I did. The glaring sunlight blinds me, and that’s when I notice the pain shooting through my head like someone’s taking a slapshot at my eyeballs from the inside.

Well, shit. I’m hung over.

Not the first time, but I’m surprised because I made sure to limit my drinking last night.

Last night… the details are fuzzy, but there was a woman. If I can calm the slamming in my head and clear the fog, maybe I’d be more sure.

Maybe she’s still here.

The idea of morning sex helps clear the fog and dulls the slamming puck in my head as I sit up and swing my feet to the floor. I’m stark naked with the morning wood ready to go, but looking around, I see no signs of a woman anywhere.

The bathroom door is open a crack, and I move that way with the promise of feminine wiles propelling me.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember the woman’s name—Star? Mostly I remember calling her baby, and she was fine with that. Some of the exciting bits from last night come to mind as I call out, “Baby, you in there? How about a hot shower together?”

Nothing but silence answers me, and when I push open the door, I find the spacious bathroom empty. No sign anyone has been here except me. My shaving kit sits untouched on the counter.

“Well, fuck.” I push a hand through my hair as I wander back into the bedroom of my suite, pushing aside my disappointment. Until my hand snags on something. I stop short.

Pulling my fingers gingerly from my disheveled mop of hair, my eyes nearly burst from my head when I see the problem on my left-hand ring finger.

There’s a ring there. A wedding band, to be exact, shiny and gold and so fucking out of place that I shut my eyes, blinking to clear my head in case I’ve lost my mind and I’m seeing things.

“Fuck. Where the hell did that come from?” I hold my hand away from me as if the ring is infected with the plague or made of kryptonite or some such shit, all as deadly as marriage.

The urge to get the damn ring off my finger has me yank at it full force.

Fuck. I nearly break my knuckle when the ring slams against it hard.

And then doesn’t budge any further past the now throbbing spot.

But I don’t stop trying until I realize I can’t slip it past my swelling knuckle no matter how much I pull on it.

“Fuck. How the hell did I get this thing on my finger? More importantly, why the hell is this ring on my finger?” But even as I talk to no one in the empty room, I realize that she, the nameless woman I insisted on calling Star Baby, then spent the night with, is the one who forced the ring on my finger.

Stomping back into the bathroom, I grab one of those small bars of soap and liberate it from the wrapper with my teeth, lather it up, and soap up my ring finger.

I remember this trick from my sister Kara when she needed to rid herself of a certain diamond engagement ring she got stuck with, literally and figuratively.

Luckily, she banished the cheating bastard who gave it to her, and she’s happily living her best life as a free woman playing for the Boston Fleet in the Women’s Professional Hockey Association—WPHA.

With my finger worked into a lather, I smile and pull more gingerly this time. I twist it, move it up and down below the first knuckle where it glides smoothly, then I tug harder. And harder.

Shit. That hurts like a bastard. And it’s swelling up. Great. Since the last thing I need to do is injure my hand or any of my fingers—key appendages when it comes to shooting the puck accurately—I finally stop.

I need to get ready for the game. I look at my wrist to check the time.

But my watch is gone. What the…

I stomp to the bed and check the bedside table. No watch. No phone. I rummage through the bedclothes and find my phone, thank fuck.

Shit. I don’t have a lot of time to get ready—not enough time to get to a jeweler and have the ring removed the hard way. As I hunt down my clothes, I guzzle down a bottle of fancy hotel water with some kind of pink flower on the label, and my headache subsides enough to think.

The question of what the wedding band on my ring finger could signify pops to the top of my mind—then I ruthlessly shove it back down with the hammer blow of resounding refusal to deal with the possible answer to that question right now.

Surveying the room, I realize my bag isn’t on the stand where I left it. And my suit isn’t hanging in the closet where I put it.

Shit. Am I in the right room? Did we go back to star baby what’s her name’s room? Taking care not to expose my bare body, I check the outside of the suite’s door.

Shit, it’s the right room. What the hell?

As I flop into a chair, my gut sinks and I realize she’s taken everything except my shaving kit and my phone.

And I have a vague recollection of two wedding bands and her crying.

Concentrating hard, which only brings back my headache with double the thrill, I get flashes of her slipping the ring on my finger—and her wearing a matching ring. Shit.

Then I jump to my feet, my heart pounding with the beginnings of alarm. “Where is my fucking wallet?”

Slamming drawers as I search them, one after another, I scour every square millimeter of the room, looking in every corner and under anything that can be lifted. I come up with nothing but dust bunnies and slight rug burn on my knees.

The pounding in my head is now relentless, and I take a deep breath.

You’re okay. You’re in one piece. Nothing wrong with you—aside from a sore ring finger from tugging at it and a little rug burn, none of which amounts to a fraction of what I’ve experienced in my hockey career.

So what am I worried about? I’ll replace my credit cards and license, buy some new clothes, and I’m back in business.

And I’ll see a jeweler about getting this damn ring off my finger.

But the dread that lives low in my belly rises because under my devil-may-care attitude, I have a keen instinct for survival.

There’s one big problem I’m not sure about. Why did she put the ring on my finger and why was she wearing a matching one?

Also, I have a hockey game in a little over an hour and I need some clothes to get from here to there.

Shit. I stare at my phone for a hard second, knowing who I need to call and not happy about it.

The fact that I need help from her, that I need to call the last person I want to call for help, burns me like I’ve eaten a combination of humble pie and the most powerful aphrodisiac oysters ever dug up.

I do not want to confess my predicament to Bianca Brooks knowing she’s the main reason I got myself into it.

I swear when this fiasco is over, I’m going to be smart. I swear I’m done making decisions with my dick.

Although, if it weren’t for Brooks following me around at the party, I wouldn’t have needed to escape with the handiest woman I could find. Brooks drives me crazy—and I mean that in a carnal temptation way.

But she’s so far off limits and the exact kind of woman I avoid at all costs—older and smarter. Not that I can’t hold my own with older, smarter women because my older sister’s best friend took care of educating me in a master class when I was too young and—never mind.

Heaving in a deep, bracing breath, I man up and pick up my phone to call Bianca Brooks, the assistant agent with the Jett agency chaperoning me—I mean accompanying me—on this trip, certifiable dynamite in a pinstripe suit. I bet she wears blood-red lingerie under that suit. Don’t go there.

Clamping down on the kind of wayward thoughts that got me into this situation, I continue to stare at my phone for a full minute before I force myself to stop wasting time and stamp my thumb on the icon for Brooks, which is a cartoon of a bikini-clad body because, hell, I have a filthy imagination, I admit it.

If there’s one thing I do remember about last night, which is slowly coming back to me in its fucking gloriously mad entirety, it’s Bianca’s warning to watch out for the so-called showgirl I invited to my room. And my promise that I could handle the showgirl who I still only remember as Star Baby.

The wait for my babysitter for the weekend to answer her phone is short because, of course, she picks up after exactly one ring. She’s erotically efficient, and I wonder waywardly how that would translate in bed as I put the phone to my ear.

“Good morning, Brody. You ready to go?”

Too ready. But Brooks is still as off-limits as ever, so I ignore my hot and bothered state and the sensual resonance of her voice in my ear.

Sitting naked in a chair in my suite’s living room, I stare at my ring finger, my memory continuing to become less fuzzy, which not coincidentally coincides with a more pronounced pounding in my head.

I clear my throat. “I have a problem.” I stop talking because I don’t know where to go from here.

“Don’t we all,” she says. “Can you be more specific?”

I chuckle, still hesitant to tell her the details.

I’m not looking forward to giving her the opportunity to say I told you so and further cement my reputation for trouble in her mind.

I’ll have to examine later sometime why the fuck my reputation with her matters.

It shouldn’t. She’s hot, but she’s not for me.

While I’m still puzzling out the events of the night and exactly what I want to settle on telling her, I settle on confessing to the crux of the problem.

“I think I may be married.”