signing event. I had no idea they were going to do all that.”
“Seriously.” She shook herself. Then she grinned and met my gaze in the rearview. “Kelly was totally checking you out, by the way.”
“What?” I coughed a laugh. “No, he wasn’t.”
“He was! I saw him do it like three times!”
I rolled my eyes, thankful the parking lot was mostly dark so she hopefully didn’t see my cheeks coloring the way I knew they were. “He was not. And he’s straight, remember?”
“Uh-huh. So they say.”
I met her gaze in the mirror again, and she arched an eyebrow. I shook my head and started backing out of the space. “Those are just rumors.”
“Yeah, but maybe they’re true.”
“Right. Because vindictive exes never make up things like that. And even if by some chance those rumors are true, I’m pretty sure he’s out of my league.”
“I know what I saw,” she said with the stubbornness she had absolutely gotten from her mother and not even a little bit from me. “He was totally checking you out.”
“No, he wasn’t. And by the way, thank you for telling him directly that he’s my favorite player. That wasn’t embarrassing at all.”
“Pfft. He was flattered. And he blushes almost as much as you do.”
I rolled my eyes. “He does not.”
“I know what I saw.”
“Uh-huh.” I headed for the parking lot exit. “Don’t you have friends to text about—”
“Don’t change the subject, Dad.”
I tsked, but let it go. She just giggled, and from the quiet tapping, she’d started texting her friends and probably posting some of her pictures on social media.
As I drove, I couldn’t stop thinking about the evening we’d just spent with the Snow Bears. And the truth was, I had caught a glimpse of Jase Kelly watching me, but I didn’t dare read anything into it. For one thing, he was Jase Kelly, and a man who’d dated supermodels could do better than an accountant who was up to his eyeballs in debt and could barely figure out Tinder.
For another, Kelly was straight, and I didn’t want to be one of those fans who started buying into the rumors about him being gay or bi. Because dear God, there were rumors.
Like a lot of people, I’d dismissed them as something started by Lila Spaulding and fueled by the tabloids covering their explosive breakup. Hockey players didn’t usually warrant that kind of attention, but he’d been dating a model-turned-actress who had been thrust into the spotlight after her most recent film had proven to be a blockbuster. She’d also pulled no punches talking about him and their split in interviews, never missing an opportunity to smear his name or drop hints about all the reasons she’d left him.
Some of those rumors persisted even now, and most of them revolved around the possibility of him being gay. One story was that his ex had left him for “a real man.” Another was that she’d caught him in bed with—depending on who you asked—his coach, his college roommate, another of her ex-boyfriends, her brother, or a FedEx or UPS driver (or both at the same time). She’d painted him as a lying cheater who’d stomped all over her heart by shamelessly parading men through their bedroom.
For a long time, people had bought into her vitriol, and he’d even been booed a number of times by people who’d brought giant posters of her to wave at him during warm-ups and games. He’d dodged questions about her and their relationship, and he’d laughed off rumors that they’d broken up because he was gay. Eventually, people had begun to realize that his ex was using him and their breakup to keep the media focused on her, particularly after she tried to do the same thing to a subsequent ex-boyfriend. People figured out that Kelly and the new ex weren’t the assholes she’d portrayed them to be, and things quieted down. Jase Kelly was back to being a star hockey player instead of a tabloid pariah.
It was hard for someone that high-profile to shake off rumors about his sexuality, though, and I had to wonder how that felt. What it was like to have people speculating publicly about who you had sex with, whether you were any good at it, and who you wanted to have sex with. I’d have been a ball of anxiety just listening to people’s opinions about my hockey skills. The minute they started in on who was in my bed or what was in my pants, I