Mark folded his arms across his chest. “It’s an open bar, numb nuts.”
Sam laughed and put his hand on Chelsea’s elbow. “Free booze. Even better.”
“Didn’t you bring a date?” he asked the man he used to consider a friend.
“No. I stagged it. Some of the other guys too.”
Great. A bunch of horny hockey players and Chelsea in a naked dress. He watched them walk away as bitter acid ate at his stomach. The feeling was rare, almost foreign to him, but he recognized it for what it was. He was jealous as hell and he didn’t like it.
“Mini Pit dyed her hair.”
He looked across his shoulder at goalie Marty Darche. “That’s not Mini Pit. That’s her twin sister, Chelsea.”
“She looks naked in that dress.”
“Yeh.” His gaze slid down her spine to her tight little butt. He didn’t need Marty to elaborate to know in which direction the man’s thoughts were running.
The goalie elaborated anyway. “Do you think her tits are real?” he asked out of the side of his mouth.
They were, and Mark felt another urge to punch yet another teammate in the head. “Big breasts like that cause shoulder and back pain,” he heard himself say. He sounded like such a girl, his neck caught fire.
The goalie laughed like Mark was joking. “I wonder if I got her drunk if she’d play knocker hockey?”
“Don’t be a dick, Marty.”
“What?” Marty looked at Mark as if he’d suddenly grown a horn out of the middle of his forehead. Like he didn’t recognize his former captain.
In the past, comments like that wouldn’t have bothered him. Hell, he might have made one a time or two. Or three. But there were rules. You didn’t talk that way about a teammate’s wife or girlfriend. “Nothing. Forget it.” Mark shook his head and walked away. Chelsea was not his wife or girlfriend. She was his assistant, and he’d been trying like hell to treat her like she worked for the Chinooks’ organization and wasn’t some living, breathing sexual fantasy they’d implanted in his house just to drive him batshit insane. He’d been trying to get the picture of her half naked sitting on his kitchen island out of his head. Mostly he’d been failing, and her touching his chest the other day, and looking up at him like she wanted to have sex right there at Hugo Boss, hadn’t helped. Not one bit.
He moved from the Sycamore Room into the crowded foyer. Music flowed through the doors of the ballroom as the band hit their first set.
“Hey, Bressler.”
Mark turned to his right and came face to face with one of the greatest enforcers to ever play in the NHL. “Rob Sutter. How in the hell are you?” He stuck out his hand.
“It’s been a long time.” Rob had been the Chinooks’ enforcer until a groupie shot him and ended his career in 2004. “Mark, this is my wife, Kate.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Ka
te.” Mark shook the hand of a pretty redhead with big brown eyes. He dropped his arm to his side. “What are you up to these days?”
“We have a sporting goods store and a grocery market in a little town in Idaho,” Rob answered. “My oldest daughter lives with us now, and we have two little boys.”
“Rob is teaching them all to fly-fish,” Kate said. “It’s very comical.”
Rob smiled. “It’s like the Three Stooges.” His smile leveled out and his brows lowered. “Listen. I was sorry to hear about your car accident.”
Mark looked down at the toes of his black leather shoes. “It changed everything.”
“I know what you mean.” And if there was one other person on the planet who did know what it was like to have your life shattered, it was Rob “The Hammer” Sutter. “One day you have everything and the next you don’t.”
Mark looked up.
“I thought my life would never be go {ld od again. Now it’s better than I ever imagined. Sometimes God has His own plan. Sometimes shit happens for a reason.”
Lord, he missed the Hammer. No one else could get his face slammed into the boards and get all philosophical about it afterward like Rob. “You sound like a Hallmark card.”
Rob grinned. “When you care enough—”