Page 1 of Return

Chapter One

This wasn’t how today was supposed to go. The departures board at Boston Logan International Airport looked like it had declared war on happiness.

Canceled.

Canceled.

Delayed.

Canceled.

Dean Fields stood beneath the sea of red lettering with his carry-on at his feet, rubbing the back of his neck as another announcement crackled through the terminal. Around him, frustrated travelers sighed, argued with gate agents, or stared blankly at their phones as if willing the weather to cooperate.

No such luck. The hurricane riding up the East Coast had other plans for all of them. Mother Nature was in a bad fucking mood today.

He pulled out his own phone again, more out of habit than hope. Still nothing from the airline. The customer service line snaked halfway through the terminal, looking less like a queue and more like a support group for the stranded.

His fingers moved quickly across the screen as he composed a text.

Flight canceled. Need to get back to Baltimore ASAP. Any chance you can work some magic? Hotel for the night would help if not. Airport is a zoo.

He hit send to the Stingrays’ Director of Team Administration and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

Tomorrow night’s preseason game suddenly felt a lot closer than twenty-four hours away. He’d considered renting a car or even checking into a train, but it sounded like the worst of the weather would pass by them tonight, and the idea of driving through it was less appealing than just riding the storm out here and getting a new flight tomorrow.

Ordinarily, missing an exhibition game wouldn’t be the end of the world, but he was the head coach. Showing up mattered. Especially after disappearing for nearly a week. Though, his mother had insisted she was fine before he’d even boarded the plane to travel to Boston.

“Dean, honestly, it’s just a mild heart attack. They’re keeping me for observation because that’s what hospitals do. Cha-ching.”

Only his mother could make cardiac issues sound like an inconvenience or money-making conspiracy hatched by insurance companies.

Sure, the doctors were optimistic. Probably because she’d been bossing the nurses around and had threatened to check herself out twice before his father convinced her to stay put.

His father, meanwhile, had looked ten years older when Dean walked through the hospital doors. Seeing the strongest man he’d ever known completely unraveled by fear had shaken Dean more than he cared to admit.

It didn’t help that his parents hadn’t been at their own home in Phoenix when it happened, but spending a couple weeks with his dad’s sister, Aunt Sissy.

He’d spent four days grabbing meals for everyone, handling phone calls, reassuring his dad, and pretending he wasn’t terrified every time a monitor in Mom’s hospital room beeped.

Now his mother was back at Aunt Sissy’s, recovering, and Dean had promised he’d come back to Boston after the team’s exhibition schedule wrapped up in a week, if needed.

“Dean?”

The familiar voice cut through the airport noise, and he turned.

For a split second, his brain refused to connect the person standing ten feet away with the woman he assumed was in Baltimore…which was where he was supposed to be. “Vivian?”

She smiled, though it looked tired around the edges. “This is unexpected.”

He laughed despite himself. “I was about to say the same thing.”

Vivian Kelly was his best defenseman, Victor’s, little sister. A genetic counselor at Johns Hopkins and mother to an adorable five-year-old daughter, Pip.

He and Vivian had first met twelve years earlier, when she was eighteen and home from college for Christmas, and he was still sporting the Stingrays jersey on the ice. Back then, she’d been all strong opinions and ambitious plans, somehow unfazed by sitting in a crowded sports bar surrounded by professional hockey players. Not that that was surprising, considering her brother was always sitting right next to her.

Vivian had given Dean the impression that while she was a fan of the sport, she didn’t put the players on elevated pedestals like most of the other women—puck bunnies—hovering around that same table.

He hadn’t really paid much attention to Vivian at the time, to be honest. She’d been very young, and Victor would have kicked the ass of any teammate who’d flirted with his kid sister. Victor took overprotectiveness to extremes, though Dean could understand that concept…now.