Page 2 of Lucky Puck

Then I jump to my feet, my heart pounding with the beginnings of alarm. “Where is my fucking wallet?”

Slamming drawers as I search them, one after another, I scour every square millimeter of the room, looking in every corner and under anything that can be lifted. I come up with nothing but dust bunnies and slight rug burn on my knees.

The pounding in my head is now relentless, and I take a deep breath.

You’re okay. You’re in one piece. Nothing wrong with you—aside from a sore ring finger from tugging at it and a little rug burn, none of which amounts to a fraction of what I’ve experienced in my hockey career.

So what am I worried about? I’ll replace my credit cards and license, buy some new clothes, and I’m back in business.

And I’ll see a jeweler about getting this damn ring off my finger.

But the dread that lives low in my belly rises because under my devil-may-care attitude, I have a keen instinct for survival.

There’s one big problem I’m not sure about. Why did she put the ring on my finger and why was she wearing a matching one?

Also, I have a hockey game in a little over an hour and I need some clothes to get from here to there.

Shit. I stare at my phone for a hard second, knowing who I need to call and not happy about it. The fact that I need help from her, that I need to call the last person I want to call for help, burns me like I’ve eaten a combination of humble pie and the most powerful aphrodisiac oysters ever dug up.

I do not want to confess my predicament to Bianca Brooks knowing she’s the main reason I got myself into it.

I swear when this fiasco is over, I’m going to be smart. I swear I’m done making decisions with my dick.

Although, if it weren’t for Brooks following me around at the party, I wouldn’t have needed to escape with the handiest woman I could find. Brooks drives me crazy—and I mean that in a carnal temptation way.

But she’s so far off limits and the exact kind of woman I avoid at all costs—older and smarter. Not that I can’t hold my own with older, smarter women because my older sister’s best friend took care of educating me in a master class when I was too young and—never mind.

Heaving in a deep, bracing breath, I man up and pick up my phone to call Bianca Brooks, the assistant agent with the Jett agency chaperoning me—I mean accompanying me—on this trip, certifiable dynamite in a pinstripe suit. I bet she wears blood-red lingerie under that suit. Don’t go there.

Clamping down on the kind of wayward thoughts that got me into this situation, I continue to stare at my phone for a full minute before I force myself to stop wasting time and stamp my thumb on the icon for Brooks, which is a cartoon of a bikini-clad body because, hell, I have a filthy imagination, I admit it.

If there’s one thing I do remember about last night, which is slowly coming back to me in its fucking gloriously mad entirety, it’s Bianca’s warning to watch out for the so-called showgirl I invited to my room. And my promise that I could handle the showgirl who I still only remember as Star Baby.

The wait for my babysitter for the weekend to answer her phone is short because, of course, she picks up after exactly one ring. She’s erotically efficient, and I wonder waywardly how that would translate in bed as I put the phone to my ear.

“Good morning, Brody. You ready to go?”

Too ready. But Brooks is still as off-limits as ever, so I ignore my hot and bothered state and the sensual resonance of her voice in my ear. Sitting naked in a chair in my suite’s living room, I stare at my ring finger, my memory continuing to become less fuzzy, which not coincidentally coincides with a more pronounced pounding in my head.

I clear my throat. “I have a problem.” I stop talking because I don’t know where to go from here.

“Don’t we all,” she says. “Can you be more specific?”

I chuckle, still hesitant to tell her the details. I’m not looking forward to giving her the opportunity to say I told you so and further cement my reputation for trouble in her mind. I’ll have to examine later sometime why the fuck my reputation with her matters. It shouldn’t. She’s hot, but she’s not for me.

While I’m still puzzling out the events of the night and exactly what I want to settle on telling her, I settle on confessing to the crux of the problem.

“I think I may be married.”

Chapter Two

BIANCA

Brody’s few bewildered words explode into my consciousness, utterly destroying the world and my life as I know it. As my heart settles back down in my throat with much coughing, I wrangle control of my emotions, the fear of failure and the crushing disappointment. It takes a second for my brain to stop spinning and the power of reason—and not to mention the power of speech—to return to me.

Then I screech into the phone—apparently still not fully in control of my emotions, namely my anger. Or more likely I’m using anger to chase away the panic and horror of disappointment.

“What the heck are you talking about, Brody?”