The Romance Line (Love and Hockey Book 2)

Everly

This avocado sushi is melting in my mouth. It’s so good, I want to groan. No, I want to Food Network moan. But that’d be wildly inappropriate for a business dinner.

Which is clearly what this is with Max, which is why I dressed for work. Trim slacks, a white blouse, and my hair in a high ponytail. I always wear it back at work.

I’ve learned that in a male-dominated field, it’s extra important to have boundaries. I’ve set plenty for myself—dressing only in a professional way, looking the same day in and day out with my hair and makeup, and acting above board.

Most of all—having no crushes on players.

At least, no crushes on players that I’d admit out loud to anyone but my friends.

“This is amazing,” I say after I finish the piece of sushi. That’s a much safer assessment than going all orgasmic eye-closing .

“Yeah, it sure seemed like you liked it,” Max says dryly.

What’s that supposed to mean? Except, fuck a duck. I think I might know. “Well, it’s good,” I say defensively.

His smile is ludicrously cocky. “I could tell you were enjoying yourself.”

Shoot. Was I food moaning even when I tried not to? That’s a bad habit of mine, and I blame Marie. Heat creeps across my cheeks, and for a few seconds, I stall, hunting for a plausible excuse, then offering up the first one that comes to mind. “I haven’t had sushi in a while. So I was excited.”

And that was weak. But I add a big smile to try to sell it. Like, maybe he’ll think I’ve just been smiling because of my love for this food. That’s all. Just a sweet, innocent smile.

With his chopsticks in that big right hand—how much of my ass could he cover with that hand? No. Don’t think that —he reaches for a yellowtail roll, takes his time swirling it in a soy sauce and wasabi mix, then leans closer, dropping his voice to a bedroom whisper. “I think they could even tell you liked it in the restaurant next door.”

My jaw drops. I was food moaning. And he caught me red-handed. I don’t know how to backpedal on this one, but…maybe it’ll help us work together. I can admit something awkward about myself, then we can get to the reason for this dinner—the battle plan I have with me on my goes-with-me-everywhere tablet. “I’m sorry,” I say, then shake my head. “It’s this thing my best friend and I used to do. We had contests every time we went out to eat. We pretended we were Food Network chefs. She wanted to be one—a chef. She was an amazing cook.”

And holy shit. I just went full word-vomit confession .

His smug smile evaporates. He sets down the soy-sauce-and-wasabi-drenched roll before he even brings it to his mouth. “ Was ?” he croaks out.

A one-word question that asks everything.

But it’s hard for me to say everything that happened the day I lost her, and a part of myself too. So I say the simplest thing. “She died three years ago. In a car accident.”

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and for a few blurry-eyed seconds, I think he’s going to squeeze my hand, and for a few more seconds, I want him to.

Maybe he senses it. As my vision swims and I blink back unwelcome tears, his hand settles on my wrist. Warm, comforting, reassuring. “You must have been close to her,” he says gently, squeezing my wrist.

I nod, unable to speak and feeling foolish for the intensity of my reaction. It’s been three years. I should be able to say she died without crying. But sometimes I just can’t. I was the driver, after all. Even if we were hit by another car, I was still the driver. I’m also the survivor.

Instinctively, I reach for my shoulder, feeling the silk strap of the lacy lavender bra I’m wearing today, then the hypertrophic scar there under my shirt, the harshest reminder of what happened. It’s hard not to touch it when I think of her, or that evening, or the terrible broken days that followed as I tried to heal. A choice she never had.

But I have to stay rooted in this moment.

Quickly, I take inventory of the surroundings. How does the table look? Like bamboo. What’s on the walls? They have Japanese art, stylized prints of blue waves and orange line drawings of fish. Where is the door? To the left, past the hostess stand. Crowds stream down the corridor of this complex in the heart of Japantown, a mall of sorts full of sushi, ramen, and shabu-shabu places along with gourmet grocery stores and tchotchke shops. I’m here, not caught in the pull of the past.

I blink away the sting as best I can and meet Max’s gaze. “She was like a sister. I’m an only child and we were best friends since we were kids. We met in kindergarten, and we rented an apartment together here in the city. Before…” I take a deep breath and scan the room again. The art. The table. The door.

“I get it—why it’d hit you hard,” he says, his hand still on my wrist. “I haven’t lost a sibling, but I imagine it must be like having your heart ripped out every time.”

“Yes,” I say, then swallow past the knot of emotions clogging my throat.

His blue eyes are usually piercing, icy even. But now they’re softer, gentler. Filled with heartfelt sympathy. He gives one more squeeze then lets go. My skin feels lonely without his touch.

“Tell me more about this Food Network moan,” he says. It’s asked genuinely, without his usual teasing or taunting—it’s like he really wants to know.

I should move on. Talk to him about my three-step plan for the makeover. But I’m a car, stuck in first gear. Or maybe I don’t want to shift just yet. “She made me watch a ton of cooking shows, so it became this thing we did. Perfecting the orgasmic food moan.”

His eyebrows shoot up, saying tell me more .

I can picture Marie perfectly—her short dark hair, cropped in a pixie cut. Skull earrings crawling up her lobes, right alongside butterflies. “I am a rebel and an animal that won’t hurt you,” she’d said of her favorite jewelry one night when she lounged on the couch in the two-bedroom apartment we shared. Best friends for life. That had been the plan, at least. But later, I learned that skulls and butterflies had more in common than I’d thought—they could both mean a new life, and the life beyond.

I shake off the memory, focusing on the story instead. “Every time she made a new dish—and she was always making new dishes and always saying just try it —if it was good, we’d do the food moan.”

I laugh, and wow that feels surprisingly good, the shift from tears to laughter in a few minutes. “Which is weird, I guess.” I sigh, then shrug. “It was our thing.”

He nods, his eyes serious. “Let’s get a new thing.”

“What?” I ask, like I didn’t hear him right when of course I did. But I didn’t expect him to say that.

“Try a new thing,” he says. “They have a good menu.”

Call me skeptical, but one kind moment does not change the prickly dynamic between us. I’m not his buddy. He’s not mine. We are strictly professional. I don’t want to let him into the food moan world. “So I can food moan?” I ask, my guard all the way up again.

He rolls his eyes, then sears me with them. Now they’re piercing again. Gone is the softness. In its place is the cool, unknowableness of Max Lambert. No wonder he’s so good at playing the grump. He doesn’t act out the role—he lives it. His expression is impenetrable and unflinching for a long beat. But then he shifts again. “Sunshine, I’ve already heard the sound you make when you like something,” he says, his voice deep, raspy, a little smoky—and far too sexy. We’re talking about food, but he’s looking at me like he knows what I’d sound like if he touched me after dark. If he brushed those fingers along my jaw, down my throat, over my collarbone. “I meant…let’s try some new sushi,” he adds .

Right. Yes. Of course. I grab the menu from the holder, and scan it again. But it’s hard to focus with the heat still flaring through me. I even catch the faint scent of his Midnight Flame cologne, and it’s making my mind a little fuzzy as I look at the offerings, barely able to read them.

Focus, girl.

“Have you had octopus?” he asks.

The question grounds me. “Actually, I don’t eat fish. Or meat,” I say.

He peers quickly at the food I ordered. Avocado rolls and cucumber rolls.

With a quick nod, he jumps to the next page, then frowns. “Well, shit.” He looks up, meeting my eyes again. “They only have avocado, cucumber, and asparagus rolls. Also, tamago. You eat eggs?”

“I do.”

Then, with a quickness I didn’t see coming, he’s flagging down our server who’s here in seconds. “Question for you, my man. Can the chef put all four of these together? In a specialty roll? If you can, that’d be awesome.” Max flashes a rare smile the server’s way.

“I think so. I’ll ask the chef.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate it immensely.”

When the server leaves, I give Max a knowing stare. Maybe topped with a bit of an I was right smile.

“What’s that for?”

I let my gaze sail toward the server then back to him, like Max has been busted. “You can be charming.”

He pffts.

“Don’t pfft me,” I say.

He pffts again.

“You were charming,” I say, pointing at his big, broad chest. “Like when the Beast didn’t interfere with Belle reading at dinner.”

He scratches his jaw, all casual. “I don’t think we’re watching the same movies. Pretty sure he bellowed at her to join him for dinner or else.”

“And then he was charming. Eventually ,” I say.

“Fine,” he relents. “I was charming with the server. Does that mean I’ve passed and you’ll graduate me?”

I laugh. “Not on your life, Lambert.”

“You sure? You seemed pretty impressed I asked nicely for something. Why don’t you put in a good word with team management, and we’ll call this good?” He pushes back slightly in his chair.

“Nice try but sit your hockey butt down.”

With a sigh, he stays put. I’d expect nothing less from a competitive elite athlete, though, than to try to finagle a quicker way through this situation. It’s like when he stretches his body in all new directions to prevent a goal, doing the splits, it seems, in front of the net. Hmm. In what other inventive ways can he move his body? Or, really, mine, for that matter? I’m flexible too, thanks to pole. What would it be like to be flexible with him? It’s easy to picture in some ways, but hard too. It’s been a while since I’ve been with someone. Or really, it’s been a while since I took all my clothes off with someone. The last person was Gunnar—a guy I dated about a year and a half after the accident. An architect, he’d seemed thoughtful and smart on our first date, asking interesting questions and never hogging the conversation. Several dates and a few clothed make-out sessions later, I finally felt comfortable enough to tell him about my body. “I’m not afraid of a few scars,” he’d said with a wry smile. But still, once my shirt came off, he couldn’t stop staring at them. He never said a word about them, but his eyes said enough.

Pity.

His actions said more. He ghosted me literally an hour later.

Briefly, I think of Lucas, and the second date we’re planning. I don’t think he’d ghost me for the same reasons, since he knows all about the injuries, the surgeries, the marks on my body. I haven’t had sexy thoughts about Lucas recently, but then again, I haven’t seen him in a few months. Max is in my face every damn day.

I’m saved from my own wandering thoughts about both men when the server returns with a brand new combination of all things vegetarian. Max points to it with his chopsticks. “Vegetarians first,” he says.

I go for it, grabbing a roll, swiping it through the soy sauce and wasabi dish, then bringing it to my lips. I take a bite, and it’s…not bad. It doesn’t make me want to moan, but it is pretty tasty. When I finish the bite, Max looks at me expectantly.

“It’s unusual. And kind of fun. Is that weird for sushi to be fun?” I ask.

“No idea,” he says, but he sounds amused. He snags a piece, dips, and chews. Judging from the expression on his face, he’s not about to become an aficionado of this invented-on-the-fly roll, but he nods a few times. “It’s kind of like a vegetarian party in my mouth.”

And I crack up, laughing for longer than I’d expected. When I finally catch my breath, he looks pleased.

But he wipes the look off his face quickly. “All right. You tried a new thing. I guess I gotta try one now too.” He nods to the tablet by my side, and it’s no longer resignation in his eyes, but he’s wearing his game face. Like he’s ready to hit the ice. “What have you got for me, drill instructor?”

I flip it open and we get to work at last. There’s no need to mince words with Max. “We have one goal—we need to make you sellable again.”

His jaw ticks, but he nods, even though I know it can’t be easy to hear that he’s unlikeable. “No matter how good you are in the crease, no matter how much you love the sport, you have to be marketable these days,” I say. “I have some ideas for how to do that. A three-step plan, if you will. We’ll need to do a series of community outreach events, charitable appearances, and other fun things.”

He snorts. “We might have different definitions of fun.”

We probably do, so I soldier on. “And at the risk of being patently obvious, before we embark on the Max Makeover Tour ,” I say, flashing a big, dazzling smile that doesn’t land for my audience of one, but so it goes, “you’ll need to be on social media again.”

I brace myself for a bestial bellow. Instead, he drops his forehead in his big palm, and he’s the one groaning now. No orgasmic moans at all. Just one of pure dread. When he lifts his face, his eyes look tired. “Really?”

He doesn’t sound bitter. He sounds…dead. My heart squeezes for him. “PTSD from Lyra?” I ask gently.

A long sigh falls from his pretty lips. “Yeah, and everything that came after. The fallout.” He’s quiet for a beat, then he adds, with rare vulnerability, “It’s been kind of nice living my life offline the last year and a half. An unexpected side effect.”

I can see that. I have to imagine it was a relief to live a more unscrutinized life. I’ve researched past posts. Seen what she said about him when they were together. She was fawning, and sweet, and he was doting—a perfect athlete-and-pop-star couple.

Until it wasn’t. And a few months after the nasty public split, she released a song about how hurt she was, and the world blamed him rather than her new guy. The upshot? Max is like the grumpy mountain man who retreats to a cabin in the woods to live off the grid and make furniture.

“It does sound nice,” I say. But his media disappearance isn’t realistic for him at this critical moment in his career. Not with the team’s expectations or with the potential of The Ice Men documentary. “But even so, before we head down this path of public appearances and photo opps, I think it would be good if we start up your social again. Or really, a new one for you.” He shut down the old one and killed it.

His face turns stony. “There’s no other way?”

I stay strong as I shake my head. “There’s not, Max. This is how the world works now.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m not fucking five.”

And there’s the grump again. The sweetness didn’t last long at all. Which means I have to be all the sweeter by reaching for common ground. “Look, I wish we didn’t live our lives in a fishbowl. But we do. I promise, though, it doesn’t have to be painful.”

“More like soul-sucking,” he mutters.

“I’ve got some ideas that can make it more enjoyable.”

“Like take-a-puck-to-the-eye enjoyable? That level of pleasure? Because that’s what this whole battle plan sounds like.”

And he hasn’t even heard most of it. But I stay cheery. “It’ll be more like vegetarian-sushi enjoyable. We can share more about you on your feed without letting anyone in too deep,” I begin. I know how to do this. If he could stop acting like he has the man flu, I could explain it. “I’ve been working in the sports business for eight years. I have a plan. And here it?—”

“Why not just post on the team’s social media? Why do I have to have one?”

He’s like a lion crying over a teeny splinter in his paw. There’s nothing to do but remove the shard so I try gently, saying, “Of course I’ll post more of you on the team’s social media too. But that’s not enough for what the GM wants from you. And what your agency wants. Which is also what you want. We need to rebuild your social so you have some fan engagement. That’s important to your agency, and that’s step one. For step two, we’ll embark on some meaningful community outreach. Events and such, where you’ll need to pose for photos, and”—I pause, take a breath and gird myself for him to breathe a plume of fire—“talk to the press.”

He drags a hand down his face, sighing the world’s most aggrieved sigh.

What? Did you think you’d pull this off by staying silent? But you catch more flies with honey, so I add, “But I’ll be there. I’ll be with you at all the events and press opps. I’ll make sure you’re not blindsided.”

“If only that were a guarantee.”

Fine. There are no guarantees in life. Still, I add, “I’ll do my best, and I’m very good at my job.”

He offers me a wry smile. “I know. You’re relentless.”

It’s a small admission, but I’m glad he acknowledges my tenacity. “I am.” Then I play my ace. I didn’t show him this card yet because I knew he’d push back. I needed him to pull his protest act first before I offered him this . “And I’ll run your social for you. You won’t have to touch it or do a thing. I’ll take care of it all.”

His hardened expression softens at the edges. “Really? You can run it?” His voice is wary but a touch hopeful. Damn, this man has trust issues a mile wide and ten miles deep. I’ve got to remember that. It’ll help me deal with working with him. Since it seems—knock on wood—I’m finally getting through to the beast.

“Absolutely. You won’t have to touch it. I can take care of it all. Think of me like your…social media bodyguard.” I flash him a smile, bright, cheery, and smart. One that says I’ve got this under control.

His lips curve up in a slight grin. Yes! I’m getting through to him. “Okay,” he mutters.

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement, but it’s not a no, and that’s all that matters. “What’s step three?”

I shrug happily. “The easiest one of all. You do The Ice Men doc.”

“Easy for you to say,” he grumbles. “I’ll be under a microscope.”

It is easy for me to say, because if I do steps one and two right, my work is done. I can land the promotion I’m dying to get, and get my life back without having to deal daily with a stupidly hot, annoyingly broody, phenomenally grunty man who loves to bicker with me. “But you’ll be a pro at it by then. Because of the work we’ll do first. I already got you a new handle and everything. The Real Max Lambert,” I say.

He seems to give that some thought before he says, “You’re taking this seriously.”

“Of course I am. It’s my job. I love my job. I work very hard at it and I give it my all every day. And I’m in line for a promotion,” I say, laying my cards on the table. Since he doesn’t trust easily, or at all, it’s better if he knows my deal. I don’t want him to be surprised later.

With a decisive nod, he says, “Let’s get you a promotion then, Everly.”

It’s a welcome change from him angling to get out of this project.

As he snags another roll, I continue. “Great. Here’s how I think we should start. It won’t take too long to restart your social before we move onto the community outreach step. I’m guessing a week or so if all we need to do is build out your social with some fresh content. Nothing too taxing. Just pics of your favorite things.”

“Like rainy days with my favorite mug? Like soft blankets and the smell of lilacs in the morning?” He flutters his lashes in complete mockery.

But I fight fire with fire this time. “Sure. We can take a picture of you gazing out your bay window and watching the city roll by while you drink chamomile tea. Then we’ll snap a shot of you shopping for pumpkins at the farmers’ market. And maybe you can even sniff a candle when you get home. How does that sound?”

Oh, did that come out sarcastic? My bad.

“Let’s start Monday. I have a candle-making class, in fact,” he counters, not one to be outdone.

“Fantastic. I’ll be there taking pics.”

“And the farmers’ market is the next day. Let me just make sure I have my favorite wicker basket to bring.”

“The one with the red gingham cloth in it?”

“How did you know? I got it the other day at the craft fair. Then I wrote about it in my journal of good things. Fucking love that gingham cloth.”

“It’s so you, right? Upbeat and cheery?” I set my chin in my hand, playing it up .

He smiles, showing zero teeth, then says, “So very me.”

We’re not done yet though. We need to get a date on the schedule for the first pic. “Candle-making it is, then? That’s how you want to start with your favorite things?”

“It’s either that or the circus,” he tosses back.

And oh. Oh my . He has no idea what he just did, does he? I jump on the chance he just gave me. “I pick candle-making,” I say.

He narrows his brow, tilts his head, studies me. Naturally, being the naysayer he is, he replies, “Nah. Let’s do the circus.”

I fight off a smile—the one that says I set you up, Max Lambert .

I knew he’d pick the opposite of my choice. And I can’t wait to snap a shot of Mister Difficult ringside. “The big top it is,” I say.

His smile is smug, but he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.