Chapter 7 #3
I follow the team off the ice and into the corridor, skates loud on the rubber matting.
The locker room fills up fast, showers running, steam drifting out, the usual post-practice noise rising.
Twenty minutes pass. Brody is walking around with a towel slung around his waist looking for his phone.
Samuel has just come out of the shower, water still dripping.
Two of the boys are arguing over a celebrity they’ve never even met.
When the door swings open, nobody notices.
Miranda walks in, and my head whips up.
She stops dead in the doorway.
Her eyes go wide, and a flush crawls up the back of her neck. Everybody is half-dressed. Then she clears her throat, lifts her clipboard, and looks at a point approximately six inches above everyone’s heads.
“I need to schedule blood draws,” she says, and her voice only wavers slightly on the first word before she gets it under control. “Ideally before your next session so results don’t get skewed by physical output. I’m thinking Wednesday morning, seven a.m., before warm-ups.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” Brody says immediately, and I can hear the grin in his voice without looking.
I cross the room in six strides, grab her by the elbow, and steer her straight back out the door.
“Hey!” She digs her heels in. “I’m in the middle of—”
“You’re in the middle of a locker room full of half-naked men,” I say, pushing the door open with my shoulder and pulling her through it into the corridor. “Which you would know if you’d knocked.”
She spins to face me the second we’re out, yanking her arm free. “I did knock. Nobody answered.”
“Then you wait.”
“I have a schedule, Grayson.”
“So do they. It’s called getting changed.” I pull the door shut behind me and lean back against it. “You can’t just walk in there.”
She stares at me. “I’m a nurse. I have seen more male bodies than everyone on that team combined. You really think a locker room full of hockey players is going to rattle me?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
I open my mouth and then snap it shut.
She tilts her head. Waiting. The cap she’s wearing has slipped slightly to the left, there’s a strand of hair across her cheek, and she looks annoyed.
“The point,” I say, “is professional boundaries.”
She stares at me. “Professional boundaries?” she repeats.
“Yes.”
“You,” she says slowly, “are lecturing me about professional boundaries.”
“I am.”
“You had me pinned against a locker a week ago.”
“That’s different.”
“How?” Her eyes go wide. “How is that different?”
“You weren’t part of the team then.” I cross my arms, smirking. “Now you are. I’ll send them out when they’re decent. Give me ten minutes.”
She makes a sound that sounds like she’s being strangled. “What is your problem? I came to deliver information about a blood draw. I wasn’t in there for ten seconds before you manhandled me out the door.”
“I didn’t manhandle you.”
“You grabbed my arm.”
“Gently.”
“Grayson.” She says my name like a warning, low and pointed, and I feel my wolf sit up in attention. “I have a job to do. Your coach hired me to do it. Either let me do it or call Ramirez right now and explain to him why his new medical staff can’t access the team.”
I hold her gaze. She holds mine right back, chin up, not giving an inch.
“Wednesday,” I say finally. “Seven a.m. I’ll make sure they know.”
“I already told them.”
“The ones who heard you before I pulled you out.”
Her jaw tightens. “Fine.” She flips her clipboard shut and points at me. “And next time, when I knock and no one answers, I’m coming in anyway.”
“Over my dead—”
“Daddy!”
The shout comes from the end of the corridor. I turn, and Ethan is sprinting full-tilt toward us, his sneakers squeaking against the floor, arms pumping. Linda is trying to keep up, but I can see she’s out of breath.
He bypasses me entirely and hits Miranda at full speed, wrapping both arms around her legs, face pressed into her thigh.
She catches him automatically, one hand dropping to steady his shoulders, and the sharp look she’d been aiming at me vanishes.
“Hey, you.” Her whole voice changes. Softer. Warmer. She crouches down to his level. “What are you doing here?”
“Linda brought me.” He pulls back to look at her with those enormous eyes. “I wanted to see Daddy.”
“I’m right here,” I remind him, but he ignores me, his eyes bright and only focused on Miranda.
Ethan has already launched into a detailed account of something that happened at breakfast involving a piece of toast and the family of sparrows that lives in the garden.
Miranda is listening with her full attention, nodding at the right moments, asking questions.
Ethan beams. He gets louder. More animated.
My wolf goes quiet.
Not tense, not restless. Just still. That low hum settles in my chest, deep and warm and satisfied, the same way it does when Ethan is asleep and the house is safe and everything I need to protect is exactly where it should be.
I turn my head away before the feeling can finish forming into a thought I’d have to deal with.
“Ten minutes,” I say to no one in particular and go back through the locker room door.