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

7. Rachel

7

RACHEL

I nterviews with the team were well underway, and I was surprised to find that the process didn’t suck. I had fun, almost, as I lobbed softball questions to the guys on the team who I didn’t know. I learned that a player named Young—first name Ernie, but most of them became last names to me, as that was what they were used to on the ice—had a chihuahua named after Dolly Parton. I learned somewhat against my will that Farthing was a Gemini with a secret thing for astrology, and Hogart told me he preferred crunchy peanut butter, which sparked a conversation about how that was 100 percent the correct take on the nutty snack.

I also learned that interviewing the players I didn’t already know, the ones who I hadn’t formed any kind of opinion on in my head, was the easy part. Needless to say, I was dreading getting to Sawyer, Wes, and Roman.

Luckily, as a player named Nakamura left my newly decorated office, the next person to duck his head in was none other than my brother.

“Hello, Ms. Henning,” he said with a stuffy, fake formal tone. “I’m here for my interview, please.”

I laughed as I told him, “Get in here, you dork.”

He clambered into the chair across from my new desk, leaning back into it for maximum comfiness. He let out a low whistle. “Nice digs, sis. You’re like a real businesswoman.”

“Thanks,” I chuckled. “It’s a big girl job, that’s for sure.”

“Hell yeah it is. Because my baby sister is all grown up.” He mimed wiping a tear that didn’t exist.

“You’re like two minutes older than me.”

“Still.”

As I started the interview, letting Michael ramble about his love for hockey and his preferred workout routine and his best Christmas memory from childhood, I felt a lightness I hadn’t experienced since I’d been back home. Like the puzzle pieces of Michael and me, our bond as twins, were clicking into place. He got off topic a few times, and our interview ended up being longer than I’d anticipated—I thought I knew my brother well enough to answer all the questions for him. But I was learning that he’d grown up in the years I was away too. Like when I asked him a deeper question, hoping to ask a lot of things and just pick the best answers for the social media profile I’d post, I got more than I bargained for.

“So, tell me something a bit more personal. What keeps you going?”

He cocked his head to the side like a puppy. “What do you mean?”

“Like, when you have a bad day on the ice, and you need that motivation to make it to the end of the period, what’s your ‘why’?”

In an instant, my brother transformed into a shy, pink-cheeked creature that I hadn’t seen since we were prepubescent. He looked down at his hands and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said Violet,” he answered sheepishly, looking up at me again. He was smiling a little, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m in love, sis. Like, batshit crazy in love even after all this time. And I haven’t told anyone else this, so you have to swear secrecy, but…I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

“Oh my God!” I almost shrieked, which earned me a shush. Then, quieter, “When? What’s your plan? I need details. ”

“At Christmas time, of course. When else?” He laughed at himself, but we both knew it was a perfect idea. “I just…haven’t really made the concrete plan yet. Like, where I’ll take her, if I want it to be a big thing or just us two…What I’m going to say, even.”

“Well, I think you should say what you just said to me. That she’s your ‘why.’ But like…prettier than that, obviously.”

Michael grinned at me. “You’ll help me pick out a ring, I hope?”

I’d love nothing more, and I told him so.

“I’m so relieved,” my twin confessed as we were wrapping up and I was mentally preparing for my next player interview—one of the last ones I’d be doing today. “Like, with you helping with the ring, and Wes helping me out with the proposal, I feel way less stressed out about it.”

I made a face at the mention of Wes, remembering both times we’d interacted since I’d been home. The way he’d loomed over me, tall and broad and utterly climbable, in the ice center parking lot. How I’d been mean to him in part to keep myself from jumping his bones.

“What’s your deal, Rach? I know you weren’t best friends with Wes like I was, but I always thought you kinda liked him back in the day. Like, just on a basic level, not a crush or anything.”

“Yeah, well,” I started, looking down at my fingers as I fidgeted with them against the purple wrist pad I’d bought for my desk. “Back in the day, he wasn’t some arrogant hockey bro.”

“Arrogant? Wes?” Michael let out a laugh that startled me into looking up at him. “You can’t be serious, Rach. I don’t know what gave you the impression that he’s full of himself, but Wes probably has the opposite problem. He’s way too hard on himself. Puts everyone else first—especially his mom. He’s a good guy, really.”

Before I could mull that over or make any attempt at reconciling Michael’s opinion with the bad first impression I’d gotten, there was a knock at my office door.

Speak of the devil.

My brother left the room, but not before giving Wes one of those slapping high-five hugs guys did with their friends. And then Wes Robbins was in my office, sitting in my chair with his spine rigid and his jaw tight, and an awkward silence descended.

Unfortunately, as the person conducting this interview and the current owner of the office we were sitting in, I had to be the one to break it.

“So,” I started, trying my hand at a casual tone. “I just have, uh, a few questions. I’ll be recording the answers on my phone so I can try to get genuine quotes when I write up the social media posts. They’re, uh, pretty basic questions, but you can be as broad or as specific as you want.”

“Alright,” Wes answered gruffly when I expected him to fight back like the other night. Maybe you just caught him on a bad day, I considered for the first time, my brother’s glowing endorsement of his friend still ringing in my ears.

I started with the easy one. “When did you first know you loved hockey?”

I expected Wes, the Wes I’d established in my head after our two near-spats, to roll his eyes at the question. Instead, those gorgeous sapphire blues focused on the wall as he took a long second to truly consider what I’d asked. He was taking this seriously, at least. Maybe because he was a secret narcissist who was stoked to be talking about himself.

“Honestly, I think it was when my mom took me to my first game,” he said carefully. His hands were sort of wringing themselves, since he didn’t seem to be conscious of the nervous energy he was trying to expel. “She got so into it, dressing up in a jersey and painting my face, and she was so patient as she explained what was happening to me even though I was probably too little to really understand. I owe a lot to Ma—hell, everything, really. I’ll never forget that day.”

Okay, that didn’t sound like a narcissist. It didn’t even sound like a jerk, or a hockey bro. Maybe he’d practiced this answer ahead of time, since I did email all of the guys the full list of questions I might ask.

Or maybe Michael was right, and the real Wes, the one who wasn’t already frustrated by something before I stoked the flames of his annoyance with my attitude, just so happened to be endearing as hell.

I cleared my throat. “That’s…really nice, Wes. Thank you.”

He blinked at me, gave a short nod, then looked back down at his hands in his lap. It was the first time I’d seen him as the same shy boy next door I’d known all those years ago. Had he kept some of that sweetness after all?

One taste, and I could find out, the horny gremlin in my brain tried to say, but I beat it back with a stick.

“Um. Right. So, the next question—” I started back into the interview, thanking past me for picking a less potentially adorable question for the next one.

Wes didn’t quite loosen up as he shared bits of himself with me, but there was a gentle opening, like a flower at the start of the morning preparing to greet the sun. And even when I asked him hockey questions, things about his hopes for the upcoming season and favorite moments on the ice last year, somehow he found ways to be genuine and goddamn lovable. One story he told involved Michael, even, and the two of us ended up laughing together, breathless and uncontrolled, borderline bonding over the one thing we had the most in common—how much we both cared about my brother.

By the time I got to one of my last questions, I was almost embarrassed to ask it. Like he’d become a human being to me rather than a subject to study, just through the half hour or so we’d been talking in my office. Christ, had it really almost been a half hour? Time really flew by.

“Okay, I’m sorry to ask this,” I winced as I flipped the page in my list of questions I’d prepared. “But one thing a lot of Santas’ fans want to know about is, um, your dating life. So I won’t pry too much?—”

“I’m single,” Wes hurried to say, and I hoped how quickly my eyes snapped to his wasn’t too much of a dead giveaway that I wanted to jump his bones. And damn it, his cheeks were all blotchy and red, which was too cute to be fair.

“Um, actually, I knew that,” I told him quickly, blushing too. I hoped my makeup hid it well enough. “Facebook status.”

“Ah,” he let out, a little hoarse.

“The, uh, question is actually about what you look for in a girl—a woman. Someone you’d date.”

Again, there was a long, thoughtful pause. Compared to the silence when he’d first entered the room, this one was far more comfortable to endure. He cleared his throat before he answered.

“I really just want someone…genuine. Someone who will like me for me, and not for whatever dumb status symbol they might see in the prospect of dating a hockey player. Someone who—” he cut himself off, as if thinking better of what he was going to say next, but he decided to spill the beans. “Someone who challenges me. Calls me out on my shit. Like if I’m being arrogant, or not acting like myself.”

Oh my God. It had to be intentional, the way he threw my own words back at me like that. Why did I suddenly want to giggle like a schoolgirl? The entire vibe in the room changed, a crackling sort of tension that I was positive he could feel too.

“That’s…a good answer,” I told him, staring down at my desk to avoid his eyes. They were too blue, maybe. That shouldn’t be allowed. His sincerity knocked me off balance, and I found myself struggling to find my footing.

“Well, I think that covers everything,” I hurried to say, trying to keep my voice steady as I shuffled my notes together. “Thanks for coming in.”

Wes stood up slowly, giving me that same intense, thoughtful look that had become all too familiar during our interview. “Anytime, Rachel.”

He strode toward my office door, but before he opened it, he paused, the corners of his mouth curling up into a small, almost shy smile as he looked back at me, “Make me look good, alright?”

He left before I could respond, and the moment the door closed behind him, I exhaled loudly, slumping back into my chair. What just happened? My pulse was still racing, and I couldn’t get his last words out of my head. It wasn’t flirting—at least, I didn’t think so. But there was something…more. Something I wasn’t prepared to confront.

I glanced at my schedule, grateful for a distraction. Sawyer was supposed to be next, but when I checked the time, I realized he was already ten minutes late. Of course I’d gotten distracted and run over time. I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to his interview, but the idea of him ignoring my directive completely pissed me off. Sure enough, when I checked in the hallway outside of my office, he was nowhere to be seen. I got a sick feeling he’d never shown up to begin with.

Another five minutes passed with no sign of Sawyer. And of course, there was no sight of Roman either, who was the only other player I had left to talk to, since I’d been avoiding him. Instead of screaming like I sort of wanted to, I snapped in a quieter way. Grabbing the first thing I could reach—a stress ball shaped like a miniature hockey stick I’d been given in a “Welcome to the team!” care package Lulu had arranged—I hurled it at the wall. It collided with a thwack , and I watched as it bounced to the floor, rolling to an anticlimactic stop by my foot.

“Great,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. “Just great.”

I let out a slow breath. I wasn’t sure what had happened with Wes, or why I was so rattled by it. And I certainly didn’t know what I was supposed to do about two of the star players blowing me off. But one thing was clear: if this job was going to keep throwing curveballs like this—er, shooting trick shots? Something more hockey appropriate?—I would quickly run out of nonbreakable things to throw.