Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,6
while he placed his order, not even offering the common courtesy of eye contact. Elena, her co-worker, said he played professional hockey and had recently been traded to the Chicago Rebels, the local NHL franchise. (Traded, like he was horsemeat or a stock exchange commodity.) Color her unimpressed.
But yesterday, Hot Jerk hadn’t lived up to his moniker. It was weird hearing him speak complete sentences in that deep-chested tone that belonged to a bass or someone who did voice overs for insurance company commercials. Like he was auditioning for Terminator, the Musical. (It doesn’t exist, you say? Someone really ought to make that.)
When he had curled his hand around the cup, Kennedy took notice. Oh, did she. Big, strong, with long fingers. An artist’s or a piano player’s hand, she would have thought except for the athlete thing. She spent a lot of time looking at hands while modeling for an art class over at the community college.
Shaking off thoughts of hot scowls and hotter hands, she refocused on Edie.
“I’d rather play the field. You know, like you’re doing here.” She gave a subtle nod to one of the other residents, a dapper gentleman who paid a lot of attention to Edie any time Kennedy came to visit.
Edie perked up as if the residential aide had swung by with the dessert cart. “All right there, George? Have you met my granddaughter?”
“This is your granddaughter? She looks like your sister.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes while Larkdale’s own Casanova in high-waisted pants ambled away.
Edie whispered, “He let me have the last chocolate chip cookie after dinner last night.”
“Go Edie, go Edie ...” Kennedy sang and did a little shimmy in her chair.
“We’ll see,” Edie said smugly. “Looks like I have a better chance of scoring these days than you do.”
Harsh, but as was often the case when our elders spoke, not entirely wrong.
3
Reid liked to get to the practice facility ninety minutes before he needed to be on the ice. Some players used that time to warm up, some for assessment by the trainers. Some liked to spend it joking around with their teammates.
Not Reid. Sure, he suffered aches and muscle pulls like everyone else. No elite athlete went a day without nursing some kind of injury. Playing through pain was ingrained in them all. Neither was he the kind of guy who spent time in the pockets of other players. This wasn’t play, it was his job. When he wasn’t checking in for a physical, he was in the viewing stand of the practice rink for at least an hour before he needed to dress. It was quiet and Reid liked the quiet.
His phone burned in his pocket, the message from Henri a sword about to drop, left while Reid was driving to practice. Typical from the man who liked to rant uninterrupted and enjoyed the option to leave a voice mail to do so. Then he would bemoan that Reid hadn’t picked up in the first place.
No way to win that argument.
Now Reid listened and tried to parse the tone, though really he knew him well enough to understand exactly what was in his head. Henri Durand, NHL legend, the Monster of Montreal, and Reid’s stepfather, wasn’t exactly a closed book.
Neither was he happy with Reid’s play at the home game against New York two nights ago. This was par for the course. If Reid had a good game—and a good game for Henri was at least two points, preferably solo with no assists—Henri called immediately. Any praise was invariably brief, because Henri preferred to spend the call discussing Reid’s mistakes.
Sitting in the stands with no one but the ice to eavesdrop, he decided it would be better to get it out of the way.
“You at practice?” Henri barked when he picked up.
“Starts in a few. What’s up?”
“What the fuck was that on Thursday?”
“I can’t control what Coach does. He’s experimenting with the lines, switching me up with Foreman.”
“If you were making more of an impact, he would be putting you in more. You know that.”
Reid gripped the back of the seat in front of him and watched dispassionately as his knuckles popped white against his skin. One, two, three …
Henri crashed through Reid’s answering silence. Something about Coach Calhoun being an asshole, the incompetence of the Rebels management—what did anyone expect with a team run by women—and Americans not knowing their asses from their elbows. The usual.