Lucky Score (The Hawkeyes Hockey Series Book 6)

I follow behind the large hockey player dressed in only his boxer briefs as he carries my luggage into the house and down the hall.

I should have known that this trip would turn out like this. I should have listened to my gut and canceled. This is exactly why I don’t put myself out there.

I keep myself safe by staying within my limits and within the boundaries of safety. Now I’m stuck in a country I don’t know, with a storm that could possibly hit my exact location, and even worse than all of that, my accommodations are anything but certain.

Tonight, I have a roof over my head, and at the very least, I assume that the starting goalie for the Hawkeyes isn’t an axe murderer.

I feel bad that I got his name wrong. I could have sworn that I’ve heard the sports broadcasters call him Lucky during the few games I’ve seen.

“But doesn’t everyone call you Lucky?” I ask.

I hear him groan with annoyance, and now I wish I had just let it go.

Who cares what he wants me to call him? I won’t be here long enough to use it much anyway.

“If you’re staying here tonight, it’s Seven.”

“Got it,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean any disrespect, I promise. I don’t follow hockey that closely, and it’s just what I’ve heard the sports announcers call you. I’m Brynn, by the way. Brynn Fischer.”

He doesn’t say anything back as we keep walking.

I follow behind him into the mostly dark house. All the lights are off except for the hall light he probably turned on when I woke him with my multiple failed key entries.

He leads me through a small entryway and then a large-sized living room.

A couch and a loveseat make an L shape set up with a flat-screen mounted against the far wall.

I look to my left to see an arched opening into a kitchen and dining room open concept.

Most everything in the house seems dated, besides the appliances in the kitchen and the large screen TV.

There’s certainly no woman’s touch in this house and based on the bland tile colors and late-nineties furniture, I’d say Seven bought this place and filled it with used furniture from a hotel getting rid of their old stuff.

The images from the website that Sheridan sent me don’t match the insides of this house at all. The pictures of a modern vacation home listed on the website with updated furnishings and a completely different layout only further prove Seven’s point that this house isn’t the rental that Sheridan thought she rented me.

I need to call her as soon as possible and hope that she can turn this fraud in to her credit card company for theft and get her money back. The next thing I need to do is get a flight out of here as soon as the airport resumes operations.

I’ll have to call tomorrow and see when they can rebook me. I don’t care about the change fee, I’ll pay whatever it takes.

I look down at my phone, hoping to see a text waiting from Daniel. With all the craziness, I almost forgot that he might have texted me back as I was flying. But then I realize that I don’t have any cell reception. There’s not a single bar to signal hope of getting correspondence out to Sheridan or my mother, either. I promised them both that I would call when I got situated in my rental house. The storm must be moving in and blocking the signal.

I quickly type up a text to Sheridan and send it as I follow behind the man who just so happens to be both my savior and my worst nightmare.

I know Sheridan won’t get the text right away, but if reception hits at any point tonight while I’m asleep, it might just be long enough to send her the text.

Brynn: Bad news. The house was a scam. Call your credit card company immediately. Good news. I’m not dead and the owner of the house is letting me stay tonight.

I think about it for a second and decide that just in case I’m wrong about Seven being an axe murderer, it wouldn’t hurt for her to know whose name to give investigators when they start a manhunt for my killer.

Brynn: If I go missing… Seven Wrenley from the Seattle Hawkeyes did it. Probably with a bat…

I fire off the last text and watch as my phone continues to attempt to send both texts with no luck.

“What do you write, Brynn?” he finally asks.

What do I write?

I don’t remember telling him that I’m an author. It’s not something I usually open up about, especially with strangers.

“How do you know I’m a writer?”

We pass by the first open door to our left in the hallway. The light is on, and from my limited visibility, it looks like a bathroom, with the door only cracked.

What I wouldn’t give for a bubble bath to warm up in and decompress from this day.

“You said that your writing agent booked you this house. Are you a journalist?” he asks.

“God, no!” I say with more emphasis than I meant.

There’s nothing wrong with being a journalist.

It’s a respectable profession, but I’m not interested in the amount of research required for that job, and the real world is too boring. I like writing about make-believe characters.

I clear my throat and try again.

“I mean, no, I write fiction.”

“You don’t peg me as someone who writes thriller novels.”

Seven is one of the last people I want to admit that I write steamy romance books to. Not because I’m ashamed but because guys like Seven just don’t understand the world of romance books.

And that’s fine. They aren’t my intended target audience.

“No, my books are romantic in nature. Do you read?” I ask.

‘Sometimes. But I’m not in the habit of reading historical romance.’

‘You should give it a try… who knows, you might learn a few things,’ I say, trying to lighten the mood, but he just makes a grunting sound of annoyance.

He doesn’t ask any more follow-up questions. Which means he’s probably judging me so hard right now, but whatever. He breaks people’s noses and knocks out teeth for a living, and I suspect he makes a whole lot more than I make doing it.

I shouldn’t feel inferior to this man, so I won’t allow myself to.

I follow as Seven turns right into the first room down the hallway and flips on the bedroom light.

The room looks just like the rest of the house. Dated furnishings and no real personality, but beggars can’t be choosers, and the queen-sized bed in the middle of the room is far better than sleeping on the hard porch out front.

I hear the creaking and wobbling of something against the window but it’s too dark outside for me to know for sure.

I cringe at the thought of sleeping alone tonight.

I can’t remember the last time I slept without Daniel in the middle of a storm.

Up until he left for Australia, he was the warm body lying next to me, reminding me that I wasn’t alone.

We agreed that I would no longer wake him any more during a thunderstorm since his job is really important, and he needs a full night’s rest to work on whatever deposition his team is pouring over.

Having him close does a lot to ease my mind and now I won’t even have that.

I feel naïve for thinking I could set out on my own and face my fears in one night.

“This is the only spare bedroom in the house,” he says, setting my bags down by the bed.

The bedspread is an older nineties tropical theme with palm trees and a coconut-print, with pillowcases to match.

“Thank you, this is more than enough. I appreciate you letting me stay here.”

He nods and then abruptly leaves the room.

I just stand there in confusion for a moment.

That was weird, wasn’t it?

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not a man of many words. I’ve heard a little bit about him from around town. He’s the stoic, keeps-to-self player on the team. The rumor is that he hasn’t been interviewed one-on-one with any media outlet in over ten years.

I start to take steps towards my luggage when he returns again.

“Here,” he says, walking to the left side of the bed, setting a battery-powered lantern next to the lamp and alarm clock. “We might lose power tonight. If that happens, you might need this.”

My heart begins to race at the possibility of losing electricity.

“Wait, we might lose power?” I ask. The anxiety I’ve been trying to push down is starting to bubble up again. “Do you think that will really happen?”

He turns after dropping the lantern off on the table and then faces me as he walks back.

“I wouldn’t rule it out. And if it does and you need light, the lantern has enough battery life for a couple of days. I already charged it all day today. Just flip the power button on.”

He keeps walking past me and towards the bedroom door as if this time he’s leaving and he won’t be coming back for the rest of the night.

A tiny moment of weakness has my brain begging me to ask if I can sleep in his bed tonight… or at least on his floor. The last thing I want to do is sleep in this storm alone, but sleeping with a strange man is out of the question, and I doubt he’d agree to it anyway.

No matter how bad my anxiety is, this is happening tonight, and the best thing to do is to remember my breathing exercises and prepare mentally as I’ve practiced with the therapist in Oklahoma that I used to see that helped with the anxiety after the tornado.

I had planned to find someone new when we moved to Seattle, but I just never got around to it, and I really felt like I had the tools I needed to combat my anxiety since my panic attacks were becoming less and less.

“My bedroom is at the end of the hall if something happens. Night Brynn.”

I bet he’d be as interested in spending a night with me in his bed as he would if he were volunteering to sleep out on the porch tonight.

“Don’t be such a scaredy cat, Brynn; you can do this. You can sleep alone in a storm. Your entire future happiness with Daniel depends on this.” I coach myself.

I stare over at the bed and think about stripping out of these drenched and grimy clothes and pulling on some pajamas. But the idea of sleeping all night in the saltwater that I’m covered in has me squirming in my own skin.

I spin quickly towards the exit of the spare bedroom just in time to catch Seven before he leaves me here for the rest of the night.

I hate to ask for more favors, but I really need this one.

“Could I maybe take a shower before bed? I feel gross from traveling all day, and the rainwater feels sticky.”

I doubt he cared about my reasoning, but I gave it anyway. I am inconveniencing him, after all.

He turns back to me and nods.

“Yeah, follow me.”

Seven took a right out of the bedroom and then immediately left to go back the way we came.

He flips on the light to the bathroom before I enter behind him.

Unsurprisingly, the bathroom continues the house’s general theme, but the walk-in shower looks like a new insert—something designed in the last decade.

Seven walks deeper into the bathroom, opening a floor-to-ceiling cabinet and pulls a crisp white fluffy towel out. Then he plops it down on the small countertop near the sink.

“If you need anything else, it should all be in the cabinet. There’s nothing fancy in the shower, but you can use whatever is in there.”

“Thanks,” I say, still standing just inside the bathroom doorway as I watch him move from one area to the next to make sure I have everything I need.

He reaches into the shower and cranks the handle one way. A stream of water with good pressure comes out of the shower head, and as of this moment, there is nothing sweeter that my eyes have ever beheld.

I’m itching to get into that shower and wash off this day, especially since the sand has dried between my toes.

“The shower was plumbed in wrong when they remodeled it. Hot is cold, and cold is hot. I’ve been meaning to fix it. If you forget which is which, it won’t take long before you figure it out.”

I half expect him to give me a playful smirk, but he doesn’t.

“Oh… okay. Got it,” I say, making a mental note.

“Tomorrow, we’ll find you somewhere else to stay.”

He turns back from the shower and then heads for the bathroom door, not bothering to look back over his shoulder.

“I appreciate you letting me stay here.”

I’m no more excited about the proposition of staying in this house with him than he is. The idea of finding a vacant room in one of the large, all-inclusive resorts in the city is far more appealing at this point.

“I’m headed to bed,” he says.

“Night,” I say, watching him walk out of the bathroom door frame and pull the door shut behind him.

I reach back and lock the door just for good measure, though I have a feeling that Seven has absolutely zero interest in me whatsoever.

He couldn’t care less about the woman who’s about to be naked in his bathroom, and the feeling is mutual.

I walk over to the mirror just to see the damage from this day, and I just about jump back the instant that I catch a glimpse of myself.

It’s not as if I was expecting to look like a bombshell after trudging through a tsunami to get to the front door, but no wonder he couldn’t wait to get away from me.

I look like a walk-on extra for a living dead movie.

My mascara is smeared under my eyes; my hair is matted against my head, and my fly-aways look like they’ve been dipped in hodgepodge and plastered against my cheeks.

My skin is an awful grayish color, while my nose is bright red.

Good God, I look as awful as I feel.

Actually, I might even look worse than how I feel.

Perfect.

I begin the exciting process of stripping out of every layer of wet clothing that clings to my body until I’m finally naked.

My skin is cold and a bright pink, even in this humidity.

The steam begins to billow from the top of the glass shower enclosure and my skin starts to warm.

I pull open the glass door and step inside. My freezing, sand-encrusted toes feel the healing powers of the shower water at first contact.

I let out a moan at how good it feels to be under the warm water. Even though a storm is brewing outside, and I could be homeless by tomorrow, or worse, depending on the hurricane, this shower is doing everything right to take away the tension in my shoulders.

I look around at the contents inside, which Seven said I was welcome to use.

It’s no surprise that a single dark gray bottle of men’s three-in-one shampoo, conditioner, and body wash sits in the shower nook, along with a lonely bar of soap.

Do people actually use bars of soap these days?

How old is this guy anyway?

I know he’s one of the oldest players on the team but I don’t think even my father uses soap bars anymore.

From the little information I’ve gathered, watching sports commentators talk about Seven during a Hawkeyes game, I believe he’s thirty-seven or thirty-eight. There’s a ten-year age gap between us, which means we probably don’t fall into the same generation.

A loofa is slung over the shower handle, but I think he and I would both agree that sharing a loofa is where we draw the line.

I should have headed back to my room to get my overnight bag before I stepped into the shower, but it’s late, and I’m exhausted.

I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to pull out the contents of my overnight bag, and hopefully, by then, I’ll be in the privacy of a hotel room with no grumpy hockey player in sight.

I bend closer to the single bottle of product he left in the shower. I guess tonight I’ll be smelling like Blue Arctic Glacier. Whatever the heck that scent is. There is no way that I’m using the bar of soap that he probably rubs over his pubes.

I push the shower’s glass door open again to quickly reach into the cabinet and grab a washcloth from the stack of items I saw when Seven pulled out a towel for me.

I close the door behind me and drench the hand towel under the shower and then squirt a decent amount of body wash onto it.

I begin to rub my body down with the blue gel that resembles toilet bowl cleaner, and I’m actually pleasantly surprised by its crisp, clean smell.

I won’t be adding this product to my daily routine once I get home, but I’ll admit that this isn’t horrible.

I’ll stick with the girlie stuff that Daniel swears he never uses, but I smell it on him from time to time, especially my leave-in conditioning hair detangler.

I can’t blame him for sneaking a few sprays of it every once in a while. It leaves your hair silky and soft and protects it from heat damage. Plus, it smells freaking amazing. Nothing like this blue goop that Seven uses, that I know will leave my hair feeling dry and frizzy after it air dries tonight on my pillow.

I wince at the thought of how my hair is going to look in the morning.

I’m just beginning to wash off the suds that are covering me from head to toe when I hear a crack against the side of the house that makes me jump, and then the power goes out.

I scream bloody murder the moment I find myself in the dark with the water beginning to slow to a dribble.

“Help! Help!” I yell out, feeling instantly trapped in the shower enclosure.

I frantically push at the glass door a couple of times in different areas, trying to find the exit. The familiar feeling of an onset panic attack threatens to give way if I don’t get out of here soon.

I hear Seven’s heavy footsteps barreling down the hallway, and now I wish I hadn’t screamed for help, even though knowing he’s close is an unexpected relief.

Finally, I find the handle and lean my entire weight into it as if my whole life depends on my escape.

The glass door gives way in a rush the moment I find the opening, and I’m not prepared for how quickly the shower enclosure dumps me out into the bathroom.

I stumble out like an uncoordinated brand-new baby giraffe in the pitch dark of the bathroom.

I attempt to run for the door, but I forget one tiny detail. Tile floors and wet, soapy feet are a slippery combination.

The moment that my feet connect with the tile, I know I just made a grave mistake, and at that same moment, I hear Seven ram up against the bathroom door, and cash through it with ease as if that door never stood a chance against him.

I yip at his abrupt entry as my feet slide out from under me just as I ram right into Seven’s bare chest. Seven swoops in, catching me around my waist with one arm, and hauls me up against his chest to keep me from falling flat on my ass.

The flashlight in his other hand illuminates the room well enough that I know he had to have just seen me completely naked.

I’m now wondering if I will ever forgive Sheridan for booking me on the writer’s retreat from hell.