Chapter 1
@HawksGirl22 Incoming: another hot season with the boys #GoHawksGo Is it me or does Ducharme getting rough with @ToddCowan make him even sexier?
Hamilton Steelhawks’ practice arena, late September
With a wave to the waiting Zamboni driver, Max Ducharme unleashed a final wrist shot at the empty net before heading toward the bench. A twist of his hips, and he stopped, the last woosh from his blades echoing through the empty arena. Snow sprayed over an ad for a local pizza joint.
First on the ice, last off—that was the work ethic his coaches and, before that, his dad had instilled in him since the first time he’d laced up a pair of skates.
Although he opened the gate and headed for the tunnel, he could have stayed out there another hour. Nothing fired him up more than an intense intra-squad scrimmage—unless it was the prospect of the Hamilton Steelhawks facing their long-time rivals in Buffalo for the season’s first exhibition game.
In two days, he’d stand at center ice, dressed in his white away jersey, a silver-stitched hawk emblazoned on his chest, awaiting the opening faceoff. With any luck, half of the packed arena might have made the hour or so journey across the border. Dressed in their red and black Steelhawks colors they’d shout, “Go, Hawks go!” and try to drown out the home team’s fans.
But if all he heard were boos, that would only fuel his strides as he ducked through the opposition from end to end. Chirps from the crowd would only add an extra punch to his body checks. He’d only be better prepared for the same match-up on opening night.
Until then, he still had a summer’s worth of rust to shake off before the grind of the upcoming season.
In the dressing room, he pulled off his red practice jersey before sitting on the bench to tug at his skate laces. Time to lose the pads and hockey pants in favor of a pair of shorts and tee-shirt. After his post-practice stretches, he just might do ten miles on the stationary bike.
In front of the next stall, Laurent Gill pushed his fingers through his short dark hair before bending to unbuckle his goalie pads. “Tabarnak.” He used his favorite French swearword, before continuing in accented English. “I had a shut-out going until you came along.”
Max grinned. The shot, wired high on the blocker side from the slot, had been near perfect. “Scoring, it’s what I do.”
Gilly narrowed a pair of blue-green eyes. “Yeah, we know all about your scoring.”
“I wasn’t talking about last night. Someone had to bring you down, Gilly.”
“Do it to UPL next time, eh?” UPL, better known as Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, was one of Buffalo’s goalies. No doubt, Gilly wanted proof the up-and-coming Finn wasn’t ready for the show yet. But then Gilly would rather challenge for the top save percentage in the league.
“At least three times, for sure, but that’s not for two nights. You just need to worry about Thompson and Skinner.”
“Thompson and Skinner,” grunted Jayden Kelly—also known as Killer, both for his tendency to cross-check the shit out of everyone and the effect his baby blue eyes had on Hawks fans—from the bench on Max’s other side. The big defenseman tossed his gloves onto the shelf before swiping a lock of dark, sweaty hair out of his face. “Buncha wimps.”
Gilly scratched his meticulously trimmed dark brown beard. Somehow, he managed to make it look like exactly three days’ growth. “Thompson’s not that soft, and they’ve got this rookie coming in. What’s his name?”
“You mean Trevor Reyes?” said Max. “No guarantee he makes the team.”
“I don’t know.” Jayden stepped into a pair of red shorts bearing the Hawk logo on the left leg. “He’s supposed to be good.”
“He hasn’t seen what this league can do to you,” Max countered. “Anyway, they’ll all be playing golf by May. We’ll still be in it for the Cup.”
“Playing golf, extended vacations, wheeling.”
Gilly snorted. “Like girls want them when they can have me.”
“Or any of us.” Jayden paused and pointed at Max. “Hey, almost forgot, Coach wants to see you.”
Max straightened his spine. He hadn’t given Coach Reed a reason to get on his case. Yet. “What’s he want?”
Jayden shrugged his massive shoulders. “Don’t know. He just said to send the douchebag to the office.”
Max grabbed his sweaty practice jersey and whipped it in the defenseman’s face. His teammates’ laughter followed him into the passage to the small office where Coach Marty Reed usually spent time after practice mapping out Xs and Os on his white board and tinkering with his forward line combinations.
But instead of the Steelhawks’ hard-nosed coach, someone even more hard-nosed sat behind the battered desk. A dark-skinned woman contemplated him from behind a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses. Shawntelle Alexander had broken barriers in her day, first as a Black woman sports journalist in the unapologetically white, male sport of professional hockey, but now as the newly appointed Vice President of Communications for the Hamilton Steelhawks.
Max knew from their previous interactions when Shawntelle was part of media scrums that she didn’t take shit from anyone, not her colleagues, not the players, and most especially not him. Now she sat, attired for her new position in a conservative charcoal suit and white blouse, her hair slicked back, tapping a Waterman pen against perfectly manicured nails. She didn’t merely mean business, she meant fucking business.
And she meant to start with him.
“Have a seat, Max.” She gestured to a forgotten wooden chair across from the desk. “How are you today?”
Suddenly conscious that he hadn’t yet showered, Max obeyed her unvoiced order. “Can’t wait to start the season.” Nothing like giving the pat answer. That’s what sports journalists expected. Newly appointed VPs, on the other hand…
“Glad to hear it.” Although she left her statement there, she may as well have added, I hope you’re still feeling that way when I’m done with you. “I want to show you something.”
She set aside her pen and pulled an iPad from her handbag. With a few deft movements of her fingers, she called up a video. Max watched his face flicker onto the screen. He sat at a table behind a microphone, the Steelhawks’ logo, a silver hawk with outstretched wings bearing a hockey stick in its talons, scattered across a panel at his back.
“This is yesterday’s press availability,” she added needlessly.
Max had already recognized as much.
“Why I thought streaming press availabilities over the Internet rather than just letting everyone into the dressing room was a good idea, I’ll never know,” she muttered. “It’s all over social media.”
Shit. Max kept his gaze steady, although he wanted to squirm. Something about this encounter felt like he was back in high school—and sent to the principal’s office. “I don’t check my accounts during the season.”
“Smart, but you’ll want to see this.”
He didn’t really need to. “I was there,” he grated.
He hated press availabilities. Most players did. They learned from an early age to skate their way through them by giving cliched responses about getting the pucks in deep and working hard, and when the team was losing by saying the answer was in the room. But yesterday, Max had deviated from the script.
Because a stupid reporter had decided to ask him about his dad.
On the screen, the scene played itself out. “You led the team in penalty minutes last season,” came the canned voice from over the speaker. “When your dad played, he often led the league in penalties. Do you intend to be a player like he was? Do you think there’s a place for goons in today’s league?”
Max’s on-screen self stiffened. His lips clearly formed the word fuck. “Do you want to rephrase that? Because it sounds like you’re calling my dad a goon.”
“You mean he wasn’t?” The follow-up dripped with fake innocence. Rewatching it now set Max’s jaw on edge.
“Show some respect. He was an enforcer, and that means putting the team’s needs in front of his. It’s the hardest job in the league. Or would you even know that?”
“Why are you getting pissy, Max?” More fake niceties that set Max’s teeth grinding.
“I’m not pissy. I’m telling you how it is. But I guess you’ll write whatever you want. Why bother asking me, you already know everything.”
“Is there something you’d rather I ask about?” God, what was this guy’s problem all of a sudden? Todd Cowan worked for the local paper, so this wasn’t his first time covering the Steelhawks. Max had certainly run into him in previous media availabilities, but it was as if he suddenly had to scratch at this particular itch until it bled.
“Maybe wonder how hard someone has to punch another guy before their nose breaks, I don’t know.” Yeah, and that would draw blood—his if Shawntelle had anything to say about it. Max had crossed a line, and maybe that had been the entire point.
“Is that a threat?”
“Of course, it isn’t.”
Thankfully, the video cut off there. In any case, his session had come to a halt at that point. “Fucking journalists,” Max muttered.
Shawntelle’s lips quirked in a suppressed smile. “Hey, watch it.”
“It isn’t fair when you can say what you want about me. When you can take my words and use them to frame the story you want.”
“They can only use what you give them. Yesterday, you gave Todd Cowan too much. He knows where to probe now.”
“You can always stop making me do media availability.”
Shawntelle shook her head. “You know better. They ask for you. You’re a good story, son of a former player, and a notorious one at that. If I stopped making you available, you’d only look like you have something to hide.” She paused. “Look, Cowan is a little shit. No one likes him, and that only makes matters worse. I’m going to have to release a statement on your behalf.”
“Fuck.”
“I have no choice here. This is a bad look. There’s a hashtag. It’s trending.” She didn’t have to tell Max what that meant. A reporter wanting to get noticed in a bigger way only needed to go viral.
He pushed his fingers through his short, curly hair. Christ, what a mess. “I got emotional. It’s who I am. It’s part of my game.”
“I think we all know that, as many penalties as you put up. But you need to rein it in in front of the media. Especially Cowan. He’s trying to move up to a national gig, and it looks like he’s made you this month’s target.” She leaned across the desk. “I want to help you with this.”
Max stretched out his legs and drummed his fingers on his thighs. “Just ban Cowan from press availabilities. Problem solved.”
“You know it doesn’t work that way. He’ll just bitch on social media, and we’ll still look bad. I want to give you a tool to change the narrative, something you can pivot to when reporters ask you about things you’d rather not discuss.”
God, he knew this. He’d known it since he played junior. He could have handled yesterday’s questions in a hundred different ways, but that asshole had blindsided him. And now Cowan knew just which buttons to push next time. “Too late.”
“Maybe not. I have an opportunity for you.”
Shit, he’d been in such a good mood earlier, but it was gone now. Poof. “Opportunity?”
“There’s a program here in Hamilton. It targets kids who wouldn’t have a chance otherwise and puts them into sports. As of this season, the Steelhawks are helping to fund them, but I’d like to have a more visible face on the community outreach.”
“And I’m the face?”
“You have to admit you’re photogenic.” Photogenic. Not for a hockey player, but photogenic in general.
“That’s what I get for having all my teeth.” But it was more than having all his teeth. It came from taking after his mum. He’d inherited her light hair, blue eyes, and cheekbones that would make a model seethe with jealousy. Despite his efforts to get his face smashed in every few games, none of his opponents had managed to even break his nose. More often than not, he was the one doing the smashing.
“So you want me to autograph jerseys and hand them out?” Max added. “I can do that.”
“You can. So could anyone on the team for that matter.”
“Invite us all, then. It would be a big media event, like when we visit the sick kids at Christmas.”
“I had something of a more personal engagement on your part in mind. The program involves all manner of sports, but naturally, we’d like to see you on the ice, working with the kids.”
Max leaned back in his seat. “So let me get this straight. You want me to give skating lessons.”
A smile broadened across Shawntelle’s face. “Pretty much. Though you won’t be working alone. The program has already hired an instructor. She will be taking the class solo on the weeks you can’t make it because, of course, we’ll have to work around the team’s schedule. My assistant will contact you with the details later today.”
Obviously, that was that. Shawntelle wasn’t about to give him any further say in the matter. Instead, he was going to be stuck in a rink with a bunch of kids and some forty-something soccer-mom type.
He pushed his chair back, and stood.
“Oh, and Max… Don’t give the media anything bad to say about you. Stay out of trouble.”
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A. C. Sheppard Romance Author 