4. Brynn
brYNN
“Why did I get the feeling I’d find you in here?” I asked as I rested myself against the doorframe of Mom’s office at the Caldwell Arena.
Well, it wasn’t Mom’s office. Her office was at home. But it used to be Dad’s office, and ever since he died…
“You know the house gets too stuffy,” Mom muttered as she continued checking something with some paperwork before typing on the keyboard of the desktop she had yet to change or switch out.
You know, since it was the one my father used to always use.
“Mom,” I said as I walked inside the office and set a cup of coffee down in front of her, “have you even stopped to eat lunch yet?”
“I will at lunch time,” she said mindlessly, her fingers flying a million miles a second.
I pushed the coffee toward her a bit more. “It’s three in the afternoon.”
That made Mom pause before she peeked at the clock in the desktop corner. “Shit.” She shook her head. “I mean, shoot.”
I chuckled as I flopped down into the chair in front of the desk. Not her desk, though. I refused to call it that. It was Dad’s desk.
And she needed to unchain herself from it.
“I’m twenty-six, Mom,” I said with a giggle as I sipped my own afternoon pick-me-up. “You can cuss in front of me. My ears aren’t little anymore.”
She shot me a look. “You’re my daughter. I’ll always try and protect those ears.”
I grinned. “Is that what you tell yourself whenever you slam your elbow into the fridge?”
She grimaced. “Hey, funny-bones are no laughing matter. That shit hurts.”
I barked with laughter before I took another long pull of my coffee. “Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Drink.”
I sighed with a force before she stopped what she was doing, grabbing the coffee, and took a long pull.
Which bled into another long pull. Which turned into her practically gulping the damn drink down before she reclined back into the leather chair she sat in, opened her snack drawer, and pulled out a bag of chips.
“Have you eaten at all today?” I asked.
She just shrugged as she opened up the chips, set them on her desk, and plucked them from the bag with her fingertips, one by one.
There were a lot of people who wondered how the hell she and I were related.
If we didn’t look like one another, someone would probably think I was adopted.
Mom had always been self-made in the way that only women who already have money can be.
She came from it, old family money that she never talked about and never leaned on any harder than she had to.
She was stoic, barely ever cracked a smile, and was never caught dead outside without a pair of her infamous heels on.
She bought the team for Dad when he retired from playing and wanted to coach, fought for the expansion slot herself while people in suits told her Las Vegas wasn’t a hockey market, and when Dad died, she just kept going.
Kept his name on the building. Kept his office exactly the way he left it.
Kept proving every single one of those suits wrong.
And then, there was me, the English Lit graduate who had somehow ended up running community relations for a hockey team she grew up watching from the nosebleeds.
“Mom,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said back mindlessly as she messed around with something on the desktop.
“Why don’t you take all of this stuff home? You know, work from the couch in your robe like you do sometimes.”
She shook her head as she plopped another chip in her mouth. “I’m waiting on something.”
I quirked an eyebrow. I’d heard these excuses before. ‘I’m waiting on something.’ ‘I’m waiting for someone.’ ‘I just need to get this last thing done.’ Anything to revel in the unhealthy shrine she had made of Dad’s office.
I missed him more than words could possibly express.
But it was almost like my mother was… trapped.
“Mom,” I said flatly. “I know you don’t have anything you’re waiting on. Not today. It’s Friday at three, and the team isn’t even—”
“The new coach arrives today,” she said as she flickered her gray eyes over toward me.
I paused as I leaned forward. “Wait, he took the job? Why didn’t you tell me that he accepted?”
She shrugged. “Because I still feel like it is too good to be true. I didn’t want to get you or the teams hopes up if everything fell through. I got a call from his agent this morning that he is here in Vegas, so I’m just waiting for him to show up.”
Holy fuck, we did it. We actually had a new coach for the team.
We’d been running on fumes since Coach Harry handed in his retirement papers in the spring.
He was a good man, steady and patient in the way older coaches sometimes were, and he had gotten us through the first four years without completely falling apart.
But steady and patient wasn’t going to take us anywhere new.
Mom knew it. I knew it. Harry had probably known it before either of us did.
“What time is he expected?”
Her face fell flat as she tossed another chip into her mouth. “An hour ago.”
“Oh.”
“So, stick around and shake his hand before you head to your shift at the bar.”
I checked my watch and groaned. I was due in forty-five minutes, and my only saving grace was that The Hideout was right across the street from Caldwell Arena.
The area itself was far enough from the Vegas strip that we weren’t right in the middle of all the action.
It made The Hideout feel more like a dive bar than one of the overpriced lounges filled with tourists.
Mom downed the rest of her coffee. “Honey, if you can’t stay—”
I waved my hand in the air. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ve got another half hour before I really need to head across the street, anyway.”
A large, lumbering set of footsteps trudged down the hallway.
Mom leapt out of her seat, smoothing her hands down her blouse and fixing her pencil skirt.
I watched her slip back into her heels, which she must’ve kicked off underneath the desk, and as she fluffed her hair, I stood, wearing nothing but jeans and a t-shirt with the bar’s logo strewn across my chest.
A mountainous outlined shadow darkened the doorway of the office where me and Mom sat.
“Ladies,” he said in a gruff voice as he strode through the threshold.
When he stepped into the fluorescent lighting of the office, I was stunned.
The man had to be at least six-foot-six.
I mean, he had to duck a bit to get through the doorway in the first place.
He wore a black button-front shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his forearms were covered in black hair and little faded, nicked scars.
His knuckles were thick. His chest, barreled and broad.
He had these bright brown eyes with golden specks in them that twinkled in the harsh white light of the office space.
On his left wrist sat a watch that probably cost more than my car.
I had no idea what brand it was, but it looked like the kind of thing you didn’t buy yourself, the kind someone bought after they’d already run out of things else to spend money on.
He was a bear of a man.
And perfect for Mom.
Because have mercy, that woman needed to get back out there. She was much too stuck in the past.
“Coach Mercer,” Mom said as she held out her hand to him. “Lovely to finally meet you. I’m Victoria Caldwell, owner of the Las Vegas Vipers.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said as he shook Mom’s hand once and dropped it.
Mom laced her fingers in front of her, all prim and proper like she always did. And I stood there. Waiting. I mean, Mom looked hot. A pencil skirt and a ruffled blouse with heels? That was every man’s dream.
Yet, the coach didn’t even take a second look at her.
Especially when he turned those speckled brown eyes toward me.
“This is my daughter, Brynn,” Mom said as she introduced me. “She heads up community relations for the team. She’s the reason anyone in this city still knows our name.”
I was suddenly very aware that I was standing next to my mother in jeans, a bar shirt, and the glasses I’d been wearing all day because I forgot to put my contacts in that morning.
That stare of his raked down my body before climbing back up, and I couldn’t help but notice that he certainly didn’t look at Mom like that.
I ignored the heat crawling up the back of my neck as I cleared my throat and nodded. “Coach.”
“Call me Colton,” he said as he held his hand out for me to shake.
I looked down at his behemoth hands, covered in calluses.
I slipped my hand into his and shook it, and I couldn’t help but stare at the way his thick digits wrapped around the expanse of my hand.
His dwarfed mine completely, which was impressive, given the fact that I’d never once considered myself a small woman by any means.
Average height. Average build. Average weight.
Average, in general.
Yet, the way he looked at me felt anything other than average.
“So, Colton,” Mom said, and for some reason, I hated her calling him by his first name. He didn’t say that she could call him that. Wait a second, what the hell was wrong with me? “Follow me, and I’ll give you the formal tour of the stadium.”
He nodded, pulling his gaze back to Mom. “I appreciate it, thanks.”
Mom took the reins, marching out of the office with her head held high and her heels clicking softly against the tiled floors of the office hallways and spaces in the corridors of Caldwell Arena.
But I certainly didn’t miss the way Colton looked back over his shoulder at me before following in pursuit of my mother.
I found myself chasing after them, despite the fact that I needed to get geared up for work.
“Down here and to the left is the weight room,” Mom said as she reached down for the two door handles and threw them open.
All three of us grimaced at the stale smell of sweaty feet that permeated from the room.
“Jesus,” Colton muttered.
“As you can smell,” Mom said as she closed the doors, “the boys run rampant and rarely clean up after themselves.”
“Yeah, it won’t be that way for long,” Colton practically growled.