Dirty Score, A Rough Riders Hockey Novel

C
opyright
© 2016 by Skye Jordan

T
his book is
a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

A
ll rights reserved
.

N
o part
of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

A
big thank
you to my editor, Linda Ingmanson, for her consistently wonderful work. And a shout out to my proofreader Kim, a hockey afficiando who helped me keep the hockey depicted in

Dirty Score accurate.

R
afe Savage was going
to get laid tonight. Laid good. Laid hard. And laid by an extremely hot chick. Too bad it wasn’t the woman he’d wanted to fuck since he’d been eighteen.

He finished drying off in the locker room shower and tugged a towel around his waist, knotting it at his hip. Wandering back toward his bench, Rafe found most of his Rough Riders teammates already showered and dressed. And while they were planning various ways to celebrate their win on home ice tonight, Rafe’s head was still pounding from his last hit against the boards.

At his space among the heavily lacquered wooden benches, he pulled ibuprofen from his duffel bag, popped a few, and downed them with cold water.

“Mia’s going to be bummed when I show up without you.” Tate Donovan wandered to the bench next to Rafe’s and sat. “She just texted to say she’s sorry she missed the game. She’s waiting for us at Top Shelf with a few of the other girls.”

That made Rafe smile. He could see Mia catching up with the wives and girlfriends of teammates at the bar. Tate’s sister was as much a part of the Rough Riders as any of them. Maybe even more so. Wives could be divorced, girlfriends dumped, but sisters were blood.

Which was exactly why he’d never touch her. But that was only one of a slew of reasons. Those thoughts stole the smile from his face. Rafe could weather a lot—the hardest hit from any NHL player, the most grueling training schedule, new strategies thrown at him on the fly. What he couldn’t face was another concrete demonstration that he and Mia would never be more than friends.

“I’m sure I’ll catch up with her while she’s in town,” Rafe lied, scrubbing a dry towel over his head.

Every time Mia had come to see her brother over the last year, Rafe made some excuse to avoid her. But the longing never faded. If anything, it only got worse. She still texted him, but he rarely responded. She still called, but he never answered. And just knowing she was in town made him hurt. He fucking missed her.

And that was the problem. He shouldn’t care enough to miss her this badly.

He spread a little gel through his hair, wondering how
she
was wearing her hair now. What she looked like now. What perfume she was using. What new clothes styles she’d helped create and started sporting. Man, he could talk to her for hours about what she’d been doing in New York. Missed hearing her crazy stories about the characters she met and worked with in the fashion industry. Missed the way she made him laugh.

God, he
hated
it when she came to town.

“You okay?”

Tate’s question helped Rafe refocus on the night ahead and the stupid dinner he’d been roped into. At least the chick who’d won the charity auction and chosen Rafe as her companion for the evening was hot. He was hoping this puck bunny would be able to distract him from the fact that Mia was relaxing just blocks away from the restaurant, enjoying time with their mutual friends.

“Sure,” Rafe lied again. He pulled on his suit pants, wincing at the aches pulling through his body. “Just want this headache to go away. It’s not the head I want throbbing while I bang the hell out of someone.”

Tate snorted a laugh. “Just because she’s hot and she chose you for the dinner doesn’t mean she wants to fuck you.”

“Of course she does. She didn’t choose me for my excellent breeding or outstanding intelligence.”

His buddy grinned. “I see your point.”

That brought some laughter from the others in the locker room—because it was true.

“All right.” Beckett Croft, the team’s captain, tossed his duffel over his shoulder and walked toward Rafe on his way out of the locker room. “You’ve been milking the hell out of this damn dinner. Let me see her picture.”

Beckett had once been Rafe’s womanizing wingman. The two of them had been able to make more women swoon than a half a dozen karats from Jared’s. The bruise developing around Beckett’s left eye would have had women swarming around them in the old days. Before Beckett’s five-year-old angel of a daughter had been dropped on his doorstep and put a wrench into his bachelor lifestyle. But Rafe loved Lily. And he also liked the woman Beckett had recently swept off her feet too.

“I’m gonna tell Eden,” Rafe said, referencing Beckett’s fiancée as he picked up his phone and tapped on the photo of the season ticket holder who’d won the auction.

Ashlee Covington was the woman’s name, and she looked every bit the young, sexy puck bunny Rafe bedded on a regular basis. He handed the phone to Beckett and started on the buttons of his dress shirt.

Isaac Hendrix, their second-line right wing, glanced at the phone past Beckett’s shoulder and whistled through his teeth. “If her body is even half as nice as her face, you’ve got a twelve on your hands there.”

Rafe chuckled, hoping it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. “My thoughts exactly.”

He tucked in his shirt and fastened his belt. Beckett handed off the phone to Ty. “Don’t drool on it.”

The phone made the rounds through the locker room—for the tenth time since one of the team’s administrative assistants texted Rafe Ashley’s photo.

“You suckers were all pitying me last week when I got picked for this. But now, while you’re out shooting the shit like every other boring night at Top Shelf, I’ll be eating a five-hundred-dollar dinner and drinking a couple three-hundred-dollar bottles of wine from Bellissimo’s with that beauty, then moving up to her hotel room to get showered with sexual appreciation.”

The guys tossed out a variety of fake condolences and envious sarcasm that made Rafe smile.

“You’re so full of yourself,” Tate told him.

Yep, he was working his playboy image hard. It was the only tool left in his mental arsenal to fight thoughts of Mia.

“You have to be the luckiest shit on the planet,” Isaac said, handing his phone back. “Out of all the season ticket holders who could have won, what are the chances you’d get a woman like that?”

“Normally, I don’t believe in luck. I believe in skill.” He pulled his silk tie around his neck and wound it into a French knot. “But in this case, I’ve got to agree with you, because the probability of having a young, hot chick win this dinner out of a pool of rich old men has to be pretty low. I think the universe really wants me to get laid.”

“Probability?” Tate said, lifting a brow at Rafe. “This from the man who couldn’t pass high school stats without tutoring
and
cheating?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he told Tate. “I learned a lot from both tutoring and cheating.”

Like where my loyalties lie.
Fucking the most important woman in Tate’s and Tate’s father’s lives would hardly be considered showing appropriate gratitude for all they’d done. A great reminder of why Rafe hadn’t rescheduled this obligatory dinner when he’d found out Mia would be in town.

Beckett shifted his duffel to the other shoulder with a wince and glanced at Tate. “See you guys at Top Shelf?”

A few of Rafe’s other teammates left with Beckett. But Tate stayed, waiting for Rafe to pack up his duffel and put on his shoes.

“Dad’s coming into town while Mia’s here,” Tate said. “He wants to take us all out to dinner.”

Shit.

How was he going to get out of that?

The hell of it was, he didn’t
want
to get out of it. Joe had treated Rafe more like a father than his own dad. But Rafe knew how he’d feel if he had to sit through dinner with Mia. The same way he’d felt last year when she’d brushed him off for another man—like a mule kicked him in the gut.

“I’m sure he wants to spend time with you and Mia,” Rafe told Tate. “I’m not going to get in the middle of that.”

“What’s wrong with you?” The irritation in Tate’s voice signaled his friend’s suspicion, which meant Rafe wasn’t hiding his misery as well as he should. “Why don’t you want to see Mia or Dad?”

Shit.
Now he felt like a selfish, ungrateful asshole.

He shrugged into his blazer and looked at Tate. “It’s not that I don’t want to see them. But they don’t get to come all that often, and our game schedule is really tight while they’re here. You should be their focus. They’re your family, not mine.”

“Stop acting like a prick.” Now Tate was angry. “They’ve been as much your family as mine since we were kids, and you never had a problem hanging out with them before. Where is this coming from?”

The locker room was emptying out, and Rafe’s muscles were tightening with the direction of this conversation. “Look, I’ve gotta go. If I’m late to dinner, management’s going to bench me.”

“We’re in the fucking playoffs. You could spit in Tremblay’s face and he wouldn’t bench you. All Dad and Mia will talk about if you’re not there is
why
you’re not there.”

Tate shook his head, disgusted. He pushed to his feet, true frustration and disappointment darkening his eyes. “I moved my interview with the ESPN journalist tonight back a couple of hours, but I’ll still be leaving Mia alone with a bunch of puck heads at Top Shelf. If you’re not fucking this other chick blind all night, maybe you could at least check in with Mia and make sure she’s okay.”

Tate started to turn, then swung back to face Rafe. “You’ve become a real ass over the last year, you know that?” His eyes narrowed and searched Rafe’s face. “I thought it was a phase. That it was the stress of the game, the job, the travel, the growth. I thought it would pass. But, to tell you the truth, I’m getting pretty sick of waiting.”

And Tate stalked out of the locker room.

Rafe’s eyes closed. A rock bottomed out in his stomach. “Fuck.”

Guilt spiraled through him, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, but he didn’t have time to think of the way his life had veered off course.

After dropping his gear at his apartment, Rafe grabbed a taxi to the Bellissimo, a hip, upscale hotel, restaurant, and bar.

“Have you been to the Bellissimo before?” the friendly taxi driver asked. “I hear it’s very nice.”

“I haven’t.” Rafe stared out the window, distracted by the conflict brewing inside him.

“Pretty expensive, no?”

“Very. Luckily, I’m not paying tonight.” This dinner was on the team’s dime. Rafe only had to provide the entertainment. And now he was sure as hell hoping this woman was as hot as he’d been building her up to be, because he needed a full-scale distraction tonight.

His phone pinged with a message. Rafe pulled it from the pocket of his blazer with a sigh, but when he found a text from Mia, his heart jumped to his throat.

You’re not coming? WTF? I haven’t seen you in almost a year!
Frowning emoji.

Emotions whirled in his gut. Emotions Mia had been the only person, the only woman, to ever stir inside him.

He blocked those feelings and texted back:
Team PR commitment. Sorry.

Really.
Scowling emoji.
Tate says you’re ditching us to get laid.

Anger spiked. “Tate you—”

“I’m sorry?” the taxi driver asked.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.” He texted Mia back.
Your brother is a dumb shit.

That doesn’t make him wrong. Fine, go get laid. I’m going to do the same.

A carnal image of Mia, naked, in the throes of sex, flashed in Rafe’s brain, and his blood ran so hot, sweat broke out over his upper lip. He closed his eyes, wiped a hand down his face, and groaned.

He couldn’t remember exactly what her boyfriend looked like from the last time they’d visited. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the guy’s name. Even before Rafe’s affection for Mia had grown beyond platonic, he’d liked very few of her boyfriends. But this last one…

He shook the thought from his head. It didn’t matter. His opinion didn’t matter. The fact that he wanted to be the one to fulfill her need to get laid tonight
didn’t matter
.

Tate didn’t tell me you brought your boyfriend with you
, he texted.

That’s because I didn’t.

He lifted one brow.
You’re stepping out on your starched suit?

I’m done with starch. I’m ready for something different. Very different. And I think I’ve just found it.

Rafe’s brows snapped down.
What does that mean? And how could you have found anything? You just got into town.

I work fast. Gotta go.

Rafe pulled in a breath.
No.
But he clenched his teeth around the useless word. Dropping his head back against the seat, he covered his eyes with one hand and bit out, “
Shit
.”

Emotions roiled so quickly, Rafe was on the edge of insanity when the driver pulled up to the Bellissimo. When the car stopped, Rafe rolled his head toward the ornate entrance and prayed to God this woman was as ready to be fucked as he’d portrayed to his team. Because he had to get the thought of Mia doing some other guy just blocks away out of his head if he wanted to stay sane.

He paid the driver and took a minute outside the hotel, in the thirty-degree weather, to cool down and get his head on straight.

Mia was out of bounds. Off-limits. No amount of wanting her would change that fact. And this
“I’m ready for something different”
was surely just a phase she was going through after yet another breakup. The woman went through men like her brother put away pucks.

He forced the thoughts from his mind and walked up the marble steps toward the hotel’s entrance with the cool late spring wind whipping the edges of his blazer open. Greeting the doorman, he passed through the glass entry and sauntered into the grand lobby.

Rafe paused, slid his hands into his pants pockets, and scanned the plush sofas and chairs of the foyer. A few couples dotted the space. Off to the left, the hotel’s registration desk stretched across one wall. On the right, the bar opened up to the lobby. Already in full swing, music and chatter and laughter spilled into the space and echoed off marble.

Man, he was so not in the mood to socialize now.

Movement near a bank of elevators drew his gaze as Ashlee strolled into the lobby. Her body was even more gorgeous than her headshot. She was definitely a fifteen on the one-to-ten scale. Tall, leggy, slim, tight. She wore one of those dresses that looked like they’d been painted on. It was deep pink, starting low on her chest and ending high on her thighs. Her breasts were obviously fake, but fake tits felt just as good against his cock as real ones. Sometimes even better.