Center Ice (Boston Rebels Book 1)

I turn to walk up the driveway toward the backyard and I’m pretty sure I see Mathieu Coltier, the Rebels star goalie, affectionately known by Boston fans as Colt, walk through the gate ahead of me. Colt is essentially a local Boston celebrity, so it’s no surprise he has his baseball cap pulled low across his forehead. Boston can be kind of nuts about their professional athletes.

I pick up my pace, but when I get to the top of the driveway, I don’t see him amid the small crowd of people in the backyard. I thought this was a smaller gathering than it is, apparently. I push the gate open and look around, trying to locate Colt or my agent, Jameson Flynn.

“Hey,” a woman with long red hair says as she walks toward me, “I’m Lauren.”

Oh, so this is Jameson’s fiancée—the single mom who converted him from a confirmed bachelor to a family man.

“I’m Drew. Jameson has said lots of great things about you.”

“Well, that’s a relief to hear! Drew…” She pauses, like she’s trying to place me, and then her face lights up. “Oh! You’re Drew Jenkins.” She slaps her forehead with her palm. “Of course. I work in marketing for the Rebels. Welcome to the team.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t realize she worked for the team, but I don’t mention that in case Jameson told me and I forgot. “I’m really excited to be back in Boston.”

“Yeah, Jameson mentioned you have family here?”

“I grew up in West Roxbury,” I tell her. “My whole family’s still there. My sisters live on the same street as my mom.”

“They must be very excited to have you back here. Where are you living?”

“My family has a cabin up on Lake Winnipesaukee, so I was up in New Hampshire for most of the summer, but I just bought a place in the Back Bay. Moved in earlier today.”

“You’ll be right in the thick of things, then,” she says with a smile.

I start to tell her that I picked it because it’s easy to get to the arena and the practice facility. But then I hear “Jenkins!” from across the yard, and when I glance over, Colt is motioning for me to join him and Jameson.

I glance back at Lauren, who says, “I think you’re being summoned by your team elder.”

“Oh my God,” I laugh, “do people really call him that?”

Colt has been in the league for like fifteen years. He’s an amazing goalie, and one of the most notorious playboys to ever walk this planet.

“Only if they want to piss him off. I wouldn’t recommend starting off that way… In fact,” she says, grabbing my forearm, “definitely don’t do that.”

And suddenly, I know my reputation has preceded me. Either that, or Jameson’s told her what I told him about getting off on the wrong foot with my former team. But more than likely, everyone knows. “I won’t. It was nice to meet you, Lauren.”

As I walk across the yard toward Jameson and Colt, I feel like I’m being watched. But when I glance over my shoulder, I don’t notice anyone overly focused on me.

“Alright, Jenkins,” Colt says when I approach. “We’ve got a problem.”

Fuck, no. I haven’t even been in town for twenty-four hours. I can’t possibly have mis-stepped already. I hold in the groan, because I’m a grown-ass man working on self-control both on and off the ice, and instead say, “What’s that?”

“Renaud broke two fingers in some sort of a bar fight last night.”

David Renaud is a Boston winger who plays the unofficial role of an enforcer. He’s a very physical player who some games spends as much time in the penalty box as he does on the ice. Boston fans love him, and he’s one of those players other team’s fans love to hate.

Colt looks at me expectantly, but I’m not sure what he wants me to say. “That sucks. How long is he out?”

“He’s not out,” Colt says, like I’m a moron. “They’re fingers. Fucking tape them together and you’re good. But he’s sure as shit not going to be able to punch someone in the face.”

I don’t know how Colt thinks Renaud is getting his fingers in his glove when they’re broken and taped together, much less how he’ll grip his stick and control it with the finesse necessary to play at this level. Training camp starts this week, and pre-season games follow, but at least the season opener is still weeks away. Maybe he means Renaud will be healed enough by then?

“It means you’re going to need to step it up out there, rookie,” Colt says.

“He’s not a fucking rookie,” Jameson says as he elbows Colt.

“On this team he is,” Colt says.

I’m so tempted to ask him if he’s still pissed about the hat trick I scored on him last season, but we’re not friendly enough for that yet. I know better than to piss off the most senior member of my new team.

“Literally one of the things Boston said when they signed me was that I needed to tone down the fighting,” I tell Colt, then glance to Jameson for confirmation.

After a year in the AHL, and then playing for Vancouver for my first three years in the NHL, Colorado offered me a great contract. But then I got off to a bad start with the team and it affected my play. I found myself in too many fights with other teams on the ice, and even more with my teammates off the ice.

I never lived up to what Colorado was paying me, and when they traded me to Boston, I took it for what it was: a chance to start fresh. I have one year to prove to Boston that they should keep me after my contract ends.

This is my year to buckle down. Nothing can mess this up.

“That’s right,” Jameson says. “A well-timed fight is always going to pump up the fans, but AJ didn’t take over his contract to have him spend all his time in the penalty box.”

In fact, according to my conversations with Jameson during the negotiations, one of the things that AJ—Boston’s general manager and the only female GM in the league—insisted on was that I clean up my act. Less partying, and less fighting. I’ve always been a bit of a wildcard, and she wants me to be a steady presence on the ice.

“AJ knows we need someone to step up for Renaud,” Colt says.

“She told you that?” Jameson asks, and it’s clear he already knows the answer.

Colt rolls his eyes. “She would have, if we’d talked about it.”

“Well, I actually did talk to her about it, and you’re wrong.”

Colt’s neck stiffens, and he turns toward Jameson. In addition to being former teammates and Jameson now being Colt’s agent, I think they’re also close friends. But while Jameson is so serious he comes off as aloof, Colt is flashy and a bit hot-headed.

I don’t catch what Colt says to Jameson because the back of my neck prickles with the sensation that I’m being watched, again. Scanning the backyard once more, I don’t notice anyone focused on me. That is, until I lift my eyes to the deck, where a woman with dark hair falling in loose waves well past her shoulders is staring at me with the most beautiful blue eyes rimmed in long, dark lashes. She’s talking to Jameson’s wife, and she looks a bit panicked as she looks away from me. She also looks…familiar?

I continue to stare at her, trying to place how I know her, and then her eyes widen, and she spins on her heel and heads into the house. And that’s when I remember. She had that same look one morning right after I’d graduated from college, when she rushed out of my apartment because she’d fallen asleep in my bed the night before and was worried about being late for the first day of some summer class she was taking.

Audrey. She was a year behind me at Boston University and super smart. She’d tutored me through calculus—the one math course I needed to take to graduate and had stupidly put off until second semester my senior year—and we’d slept together once. Then I was drafted, and we never talked again.

Is she pissed about it now, all these years later? And what is she doing here? I wonder how she knows Jameson and Lauren?

“Where’s the bathroom?” I turn and ask Jameson after Audrey shuts the screen door behind her.

“Through that door.” He nods his chin to the door Audrey just walked through. “Go through the kitchen, and it’s down the hall on the right, before the stairs.”

“Thanks,” I say, and walk purposefully toward the house. Once I step through the screen door, I see Audrey. She’s pacing and looks like she’s about to crawl out of her own skin.

“Audrey, what’s wrong?” I ask, and she spins toward me.

Her eyes are full of panic and what I might even describe as fear. “Drew.” The word is not friendly, so I slow my steps, stopping when I’m still a good six feet from her. “I was just leaving.”

“Don’t go yet,” I say, even though I have no right to make demands like this. But now that she’s standing here in front of me with those bright blue eyes, her skin creamy and her cheeks flushed, I remember how beautiful I always thought she was. I also remember being a bit intimidated by how serious she was and how things like math just seemed to come easily to her. I was initially also a tad embarrassed that she was a junior tutoring me because she’d taken calculus in high school. But the more time we’d spent together, the more I’d liked her—and not just because she was pretty. “I haven’t seen you in, what…five years?”

“More like six. But anyway, I was just leaving.”

She grabs her bag off a hook near the front door, but I can’t stop myself from trying to keep her talking, hoping she’ll stay a little longer. “How have you been?”

She swallows, the sound is audible in the silent house. “Goodbye, Drew,” she says, but she doesn’t make a move to leave.

The screen door slams open behind me, and I turn in time to see a little boy barreling straight toward us. “Mommy!” he says. “Are we going already?”

I glance at Audrey, then back at the boy. His hair is a lighter shade of brown than hers, and his eyes are familiar.

“Yes,” she says definitively. “Sorry, Bud, but I don’t feel good. We need to go home.”

“What’s your name?” the boy asks, looking up at me like he just noticed me standing here.

“I’m Drew,” I say as I squat down next to him so we’re eye to eye. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Graham.” He gives me a lopsided smile as he stares back at me with his big brown eyes. It’s like looking into a mirror.

“How old are you, Graham?”

“I’m five and I’m in kindergarten.”

Heart stuttering, I glance up at Audrey, and I’m sure there’s confusion written across my face. Even I don’t need a tutor to do this kind of math.

Her arms are folded across her chest, and her voice holds a certain level of finality when she says, “It was good seeing you again, Drew.”

I’m being dismissed. Fuck that.

If there’s a chance that Graham is my kid, then I deserve to know, and to know why the hell she didn’t tell me.

“Wait,” I bark out the demand as I stand quickly. It’s only when I look down at her that I realize I’m much closer now, so I soften my voice. I don’t want to spook her like before. “We need to talk.”

“We really don’t,” she says as she squeezes Graham to her side.

“We do.” My whole reality just shifted, and while I haven’t even had time to process it yet, I’ll be damned if we’re not discussing this—that’s non-negotiable. “And we can either do it here, now, or you can give me your number and we can talk later. But we will be talking.”

“You can get my number from Lauren,” she says. “We’re leaving.”

“I’ll call you tonight,” I promise. “Make sure you answer your phone.”

A scoff bursts out of her so quickly it seems to surprise us both. “Oh, like you did all those times I called you when you moved to Vancouver?”

“Audrey…” I say, hoping I can placate her. I was a stupid twenty-two-year-old who’d just been drafted into the NHL.

“Don’t ‘Audrey’ me,” she says. “I will answer my phone if I can. And if not, I’ll call you back. That’s what people normally do when someone’s left them a message. Or twenty.” Now she sounds pissed off, and she spins on her heel and heads toward the front door with a blonde woman I hadn’t even noticed hot on her heels.

“Who was that, Mommy?” Graham asks when they make it to the front door.

“He’s no one,” Audrey replies right before the door shuts behind them.

Ouch.

With my stomach in my throat, I turn around, and my eyes meet Lauren’s. I hope she can’t tell how upset I am right now.

What is Audrey talking about? What twenty messages? I vaguely remember that she called me a few times and left a couple of messages. But I had a lot going on that first year in Vancouver, and I ignored her calls because I needed to make a clean break from my life back in Boston—I couldn’t handle anything else on my plate. But twenty messages? I don’t remember that. I’m trying to wrack my brain and remember what happened six years ago…

“You want to help me carry the s’mores supplies out, please?” Lauren asks me, shaking me from my stupor.

“Yeah, sure.”

I follow her to the kitchen island, where two large platters with graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows sit.

“So, how do you know Audrey?” I ask her as I pick up one of the platters.

She holds up her left hand so I can see her engagement ring. “Future sister-in-law.”

“Wait…Audrey is…” I try to make sense of this in my head. “She’s Jameson’s sister?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I had no idea.”

“Weren’t you already working with Jameson when you were playing hockey in college, with plans of him becoming your agent after you were drafted?”

That’s how it usually works with college players if they haven’t already been drafted. “Yeah,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief, “but I didn’t know Audrey was his sister.”

Getting a girl pregnant in college is bad enough, but my agent’s little sister? How did I not know they were related? How did I not know she was pregnant?

Fuck…I’ve not even been back in Boston for a full day, and I’ve already seriously screwed up. Or I guess I screwed up years ago, but I just didn’t know it.

“Did she know Jameson was going to be your agent?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned it specifically, but it was definitely public knowledge.”

“How did you and Audrey know each other, again?” she asks with curiosity.

She obviously knows we know each other from college, but maybe Audrey didn’t tell her anything aside from that? “She tutored me.” I’m tempted to ask her for more details about Audrey and Graham, but if I have a kid, it really feels like the type of thing I should talk to Audrey about directly.

Outside, Lauren and I set the platters down on the table nearest the fire pit, and then she gives me Audrey’s number. I consider leaving right then, just driving back to my place and calling Audrey to figure out what the hell is going on. But then I notice Jameson and Colt watching us, and I figure I better go finish my conversation with them.

No matter what is going on in my personal life, I have to start off on the right foot with this team. Everything depends on it. And since Colt is the longest playing and most highly respected member of the Rebels, I can’t just ditch. So I head back across the yard toward them, forcing myself to put what just happened aside for a bit. Getting the Boston Rebels to sign me to a new contract after this still year has to be my single greatest priority.