Santa’s Pucking Hat Trick (The Forbidden Reverse Harem Collection)

4. Sawyer

4

SAWYER

T he cheap beer I’d ordered went down easy as I sipped, watching Wes, Michael, and Roman struggle through a piss-poor game of darts. We may have been a killer team on the ice, but here in the Rowdy Reindeer, Mistletoe’s only decent place to get a drink after practice, my friends were just a bunch of regular guys.

I watched as Wes lined up his next throw and absolutely beefed it, hitting just outside the board. Roman and Michael cracked up together, and I smirked from my quiet perch of observation, content with my usual role on the outer edges of our friend group.

Maybe it was an age thing. I was almost the oldest guy on the team, still well within appropriate hockey-playing age, but there was a big difference between Michael’s twenty-two and my thirty whole years of life. Wes was about the same age as Michael, and Roman was only a ripe old twenty-five. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling—a strange melancholy that didn’t go down as smooth as the beer—and though I’d never been a social butterfly, I was once way more fun than now.

It was Alicia, of course. Before my ex-wife broke my heart, which I’d never realized was breakable before, I’d been a less broody version of my current self. I was always a man of few words as a general rule, but ever since Alicia left me for another fucking hockey player—a professional one, no less, not minor leagues, with more money and fame and all the bullshit I’d never known her to care about before—I was different. Worse, probably.

I didn’t miss her, really. It had been years since all of that went down, and though I didn’t regret marrying her when I did, I knew now that she and I wouldn’t have worked out long term even if she hadn’t become the ultimate fucking puck bunny. But there was a part of me that missed the idea of the future I had with her. The comfortable, settled feeling of being married suited me. That, and the idea of one day having kids of my own, fulfilling the whole cliché fucking fantasy I’d never admit to any of my teammates was my real dream.

I’d always wanted to be a father. And even though in theory I had time to find someone else, to take that step with someone who was ready for it and wanted it with me, part of me felt sure I never would. It didn’t help that I hadn’t dated or even looked at another woman since my divorce. Too messy. Too…not worth the effort and the risk of being wrong about someone all over again.

I swallowed down my self-pitying bullshit with the last dregs of my beer, willing myself to clear my head, focus on the doofus dart game in front of me. I tuned in just in time to see Roman obnoxiously hit a bullseye.

“Fuck yeah, motherfuckers!” He celebrated, pulling Wes down into a headlock and noogie, which didn’t have the same effect when it was on a short buzz cut, but Wes was a good sport about it.

“You still have to get the overall score, asshole,” Michael reminded him, and Roman shrugged.

“Winning’s what I do, Mikey. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

“Dick,” Michael muttered as he came to sit beside me. “You sure you don’t want in on a round, Sawyer?”

“Positive,” I answered. “Let me drink in peace.”

“You act like you’re about eighty-five instead of thirty,” Michael told me, but he settled in on the stool next to me at the table, gesturing toward our bartender buddy, Roger, to grab us another round of beers.

Mike and I chatted for a while about basically nothing, until he got into the topic that really made him get animated.

“I’m just stoked as hell my sister is back in town, you know?” he said, bringing to mind the dark-haired beauty who’d busted my balls at her own welcome-back party. Her gorgeous gray-blue eyes seemed to look straight through me, and they may have been haunting me a little ever since. “She’s been gone so long, it feels like we’ve sort of drifted. I miss being close to her.”

Michael had always been a bit more touchy-feely than me, but that wasn’t why I was a little uncomfortable with this line of conversation. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“And I think one way to kinda get us back on track is if I help her find a job,” he said as if I wasn’t even here. “I know her. She doesn’t do well being on her own. I feel like it’s the least I can do for her, y’know?”

“What kind of job is she in the market for?”

“Well, her degree is in marketing, PR, that kind of thing. So I guess she wants to do something like that, but I don’t know shit about any of it.” He shrugged, happily uncertain in a way that I envied. “I’m just trying to keep an eye out.”

“Aren’t they hiring a new marketing person for the team?” I shouldn’t have suggested it, but hell, maybe I was a glutton for punishment. I’d never considered myself a masochist before, but now I’d suggested this even though I knew it would be painful to have to look at Michael’s hot sister around the ice center all the time, especially after our first meeting was prickly at best.

Michael’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. Fitting for a Mistletoe boy, born and bred. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Sawyer, man, you’re a genius. It’d be so great to have Rach around the rink!”

“Is she much of a sports girl?” I asked out of sheer curiosity. Michael let out a bark of a laugh.

“Ha, no. Not at all. But who cares? She’d be marketing, not playing hockey. I bet she’d be great at it.”

Before I could try to un-put my foot in my mouth, get the silly idea of inviting his attractive sister to hang around at my place of work regularly out of his impressionable head, the opportunity passed. Mike’s attention shifted as the dart game he’d abandoned ended abruptly because Roman was distracted. He ditched all of us for some busty blonde at the bar, and within seconds, he had her giggling and hair twirling.

“Found his next conquest, I guess,” I commented as Wes joined us at the table. “Can’t deny he’s effective.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.” Wes smirked.

“More like obnoxious,” Mike rebutted. “Glad I’ve got Violet and I don’t have to throw myself at women that way.” Even when he said his long-term girlfriend’s name in passing, his face looked like a kid on Christmas—giddy, awestruck with wonder. The poor bastard.

“Somehow, I doubt any of us would have as much luck as he does,” I commented as I watched Roman move in closer to the woman at the bar, one hand on the small of her back as he ordered her a drink. “Too much baggage.”

“If that’s a comment about Sharon, just know that…well, yeah, it’s still kind of a shit show.” Wes grimaced as he took a large swig of his beer. “She hasn’t texted me in a few days, but that definitely doesn’t mean she’s given up hope that we’ll get back together. God, I wish she would.”

“Yeah, I never liked her,” Mike told him with a shrug. “She didn’t seem to get you.”

“And yet she’s so attached even after you dumped her that she’s still hanging around,” I mused. “Must have been something there, I guess.”

“Please. She cares more about not dating Wes Robbins, defenseman for the Skatin’ Santas than about me.” Wes shrugged off the whole subject, then pivoted quickly to my least favorite topic. His blue eyes focused on me. “Any news on your quest toward hermithood?”

I couldn’t help but snort, and Michael chuckled along with his long-time friend as the two of them zeroed in on their mission to harass me back into the dating pool.

“It’s not like you’re lacking in options,” Michael pointed out after my first denial of interest on that front. “Not that I’ve noticed, because I’m very committed to my beautiful girlfriend, but there are practically fan clubs of women who come to our games just to see you.”

“Men too,” Wes added. “If you decide you’re into that after your ex wronged you. No judgment.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not gay, and I’m not a hermit. I just don’t see the point in putting time and effort into something that’s just going to end in a breakup, divorce, or death regardless.”

“Jeez, Sawyer. Real cheery outlook,” Mike grumbled.

“I’m being realistic. Besides, no women have really even interested me in years, anyway. I’m not game for another puck bunny.”

It was an excuse, sure, but it was mostly true. I hardly ever noticed a woman who was particularly beautiful or dazzlingly charming anymore, and it wasn’t just because it was slim pickings in a town the size of Mistletoe. Even when we went on the road for away games, it was like everyone blended together for me. No one stood out.

Well, except for a certain fiery brunette who’d hated my guts on sight. I flashed back to Michael’s twin sister’s welcome home party, the brief and disastrous introduction the two of us had without her twin there to facilitate. The bite in her slightly husky voice when she said, “Oh, please.”

Fucked up as it was, my body had stirred at her presence more than it had for anyone else since Alicia. That wicked twist in her lips, and the lithe body I glimpsed against my will—sweetly flared hips, long legs, perfection.

Of course, I couldn’t tell any of that to her freaking twin brother, one of my best friends and a family-oriented sap through and through. Even though Mike liked and respected me a hell of a lot, I knew his sister was off-limits to everyone in his mind. Not that I was planning to make any kind of moves on her regardless. That was a bad idea for more reasons than I could count.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Roman and his blonde moving away from the bar and toward the front door, his hand still placed possessively on the small of her back, which was partly exposed by her crop top. As Michael voiced his disapproval about Roman’s ever-changing roster of bedmates and Wes shook his head, I felt the first burning of envy. That Roman had the freedom, the guts, to take a woman home. Unburdened by the bullshit I’d carried since my divorce.

It was hard not to picture myself taking the same step with Rachel Henning. My hand at her back, her laugh filling me with anticipation for the pleasure to come.

Having her around the ice center would be dangerous for my health, if Michael really got her that marketing gig. A distraction at best, and a temptation at worst. But in a moment of ill-advised horniness, I was excited for the prospect too.