On the Ice (Stick Side, #1)

by Amy Aislin

The lecture should’ve started five minutes ago. The crowd was getting restless and Mitch was sure the panelists who’d arrived on time were about to lose some of their audience. As if he’d conjured the missing Chris Blair, the door at the bottom of the lecture hall opened and in walked someone who was decidedly not Chris Blair. According to the picture in the brochure, Blair was a fifty-something gentleman with salt and pepper hair and a goatee. Good-looking in an older-dude way, if Mitch was the type to go after a guy three decades older than him. But the guy who walked in was— Holy jumping hockey sticks! The tall, jacked guy who’d just come in was none other than Alex Dean, a Tampa Bay defenseman who’d recently been put on the injured reserve list due to a broken arm. He was huge and muscled, his almost-black hair in disarray, khakis and checkered shirt wrinkled, as if he’d gotten dressed in the dark or in a hurry. Mitch might’ve drooled. Just a little. “Is that who I think it is?” Marco whispered in his ear. The crowd half-hushed as recognition of the newcomer set in, and dozens of hockey fans surreptitiously dug out their phones. Or not so surreptitiously, in the case of Yano, who stood to get a better angle. Marco kicked his seat. “Dude, have some decorum.” Yano made a face at him and sat. “It means—” “I know what decorum fucking means, douchebag.” Mitch ignored them both. He only had eyes for Dean. The man wasn’t handsome in the traditional sense. Rugged features, big...