Getting Lucky - Jennifer Lazaris Page 0,3
who she’d always been. It’s who she’d always be, unless she decided to take some chances.
Wild. Uninhibited. Fun. That’s the way she wanted to be seen.
Yet, she remained the same straight-laced Zoe, making the same safe choices and following the same carefully laid out plans. The only thing she’d changed was the town.
As the highlight reel replayed, she watched herself get crushed into the glass again. It was a good metaphor for her life.
She was done getting crushed. It was time to take some chances.
CHAPTER 2
“Good game, O’Bryan. You killed it out there on the power play.” The bartender gave Ryder a pint.
“Can’t let you down, Jake. We don’t want you poisoning our beer if we play like shit.” Ryder handed him a credit card.
Jake took the card and punched a few buttons on the register. “I was tempted to last season when you guys had that horrible stretch of road games. Jesus, talk about brutal.”
“You would bring that up,” Ryder said dryly. He took a long pull on the beer.
A few more players wandered into the bar, and Ryder nodded at them.
Callahan’s served as a retreat for a small group of players on the team who preferred a relaxed atmosphere after home games. Rookies and younger guys headed to the more popular Vegas hotspots to unwind, while veterans and married guys preferred Callahan’s for the privacy.
Ryder dragged a bar stool next to his best friend and teammate, Roman Falanov. Jake had their post-game meal of chicken and pasta ready and waiting for them in their usual spots.
Falanov, better known as Fally, played left wing on the first line with Ryder. No one called him Roman, except for his mother, unless they wanted a punch in the mouth.
Fally had grown up in Canada with a Canadian mother and a Russian father. Fally’s dad, Aleksandr, was still pissed his wife had named their son after her father. Aleksandr never acknowledged the name, and called his son Fally from the day he was born.
Fally nodded toward the back of the room. “She look familiar, Irish?”
Ryder swung his stool around. A petite female in a sleeveless blue shirt sat alone at one of the tables. Her blazing red hair was pulled back into a long, sleek ponytail. She sipped her beer while studying a menu. Silver glasses perched daintily on her slender, straight nose.
She was attractive, but he didn’t know why Fally had singled her out. Fally knew it wasn’t Ryder’s style to pick up women in bars.
She crossed her shapely legs, which were shown off to perfection in a hip-hugging black skirt. He’d always been a leg man, and hers were slender and sexy.
His gaze traveled from her calves down to the designer high heels that enveloped her feet.
“Familiar? Should she?” Ryder asked. He took a bite of chicken.
Fally pointed toward one of the big screen televisions. “She got driven into the glass during your fight with Anderson.”
“Shit. Now I remember.”
Ryder turned to stare at the ugly, swollen welt on her shoulder. “The dude who fell on her was huge. I’m surprised he didn’t break her in half.”
“She’s cute though, eh?”
“Yeah. What’s your point?”
“Thought you might want to shake up your routine,” Fally said, shrugging.
Ryder had zero interest in shaking anything up. He’d finish his post-game meal, drink a beer or two, then call one of his regular female bed partners. He did the same thing after every game.
“Not going to happen,” Ryder told him.
“Oh right. Can’t break your post-game sex routine.” Fally rolled his eyes. “You’re such a control freak, O’Bryan.”
Admittedly, he was a control freak—on the ice and in the bedroom. It was the main reason he didn’t have sex with puck bunnies. He preferred to keep his reputation clean and his sex life private. Ryder liked a bit of kink in the bedroom, and only trusted his hand-selected bed partners with that information.
Controlling his image remained a top priority—it protected his endorsement deals. He didn’t need his sexual preferences ending up on a puck bunny Internet forum. As one of the top hockey players and fan favorites in the league, his reputation was something he took seriously.
Fally, whose taste for kink ran in the same direction, had introduced Ryder to many of his current bed partners. All were women in high-powered professions who also needed to keep their sexual interests under wraps.
What happened between himself and the women he slept with wasn’t anyone’s damn business. He respected women, and always behaved like a gentleman with his partners. At least,