Whoa, wait, a girl?
Shea rambled off names, not that Jordie was listening until he got to her. Baylor Moore. The girl Elli drafted this past summer. Usually, they sent the newbies down to the farm team, so that said something about Baylor. That Elli believed she could hang with the big boys. Jordie was actually excited to see this go down. A lot of the guys looked at her sideways, but that didn’t keep Baylor from standing proudly under all the scrutinizing gazes. At that moment, Jordie decided he liked her.
“Everyone ready?” he heard Kacey call, but he couldn’t see her through the sea of big hockey players. Even the chick was tall and strong.
“Okay, let’s get in the training room. Kacey has some torture to inflict,” Shea called, and everyone nervously chuckled as they started for the training room while Kacey laughed.
“Only enough to make you puke,” she said as everyone gathered around her, and she was all smiles. Well, that was, until she looked at him. Her eyes held something between disgust and hatred and maybe a little desire, but he didn’t care. He drank her in with no reservations at all. Karson was used to him checking out his sister; he may not like it, but Jordie did it anyway. She was wearing those naughty shorts and, man, they did something to Jordie’s equilibrium.
When she bent over to demonstrate a station of dead lifts, he took notice that she was lifting over a hundred pounds…and then the fact that she really did have a great ass. Watching her, he let out a long breath, trying to rein back in his desire, but then noticed that a lot of the guys were staring at her the way he did. Soon his chest was puffed out and his scowl was deep as he glared at each of the single guys. A few of them noticed and quickly looked away, but one, Liam Kelly, who Jordie was sure was gay, was staring extra hard.
What the fuck?
He decided he needed to have a talk with Kelly, put him in his place, but soon Kacey was releasing them, breaking them up in pairs for each workout. He was put on the dead-lift station with Shea, and like the boss that Shea was, he added some weight to the bar and dead-lifted with ease. When it was Jordie’s turn, he went to the bar, scooped it up and then shrugged.
He could do this.
But when he went to lift it, it wasn’t budging.
Or maybe not.
He blamed this on the fact that he’d just started lifting again two weeks ago. Before that, he was doing laundry and cooking and trying to stay sober. He ran a lot, but there had been no lifting going on.
“It’s fine, Thomas, take some off,” Shea said, helping him remove the weights, but then Kacey stopped by the two of them.
“What are you doing? That’s only two hundred and five. You can lift that with one hand,” she snapped and Jordie looked up at her.
“Not anymore, took some time off,” he said offhandedly, dropping it down to the weight she lifted.
“Are you kidding me? That’s pathetic,” she sneered and Shea glared over at her.
“Hey now, no need for that,” he said, but Jordie stopped him.
“Maybe so,” he agreed, because it was pathetic. It should have never happened, but he hadn’t been strong enough to say no to the bottle. Not that he was going share that with Kacey in a room full of his team.
She took a step toward him, her brown eyes burning into his as her mouth dripped with venom. “No ‘maybe so’ about it. Maybe if you weren’t fucking everything with tits and drinking yourself stupid, you’d be ready for this season. I hope you’re ready to work, because my job is to get you ready, and I don’t fail at anything I put my mind to. Oh, well, except you. I failed at you, huh?” she said in a low whisper and Jordie just held her gaze. He could feel Shea bursting at the seams, but there was no way he was breaking their intense stare-down.
“I am ready,” he said calmly, even though his heart was jackhammering against his chest. “And you didn’t fail me, Kacey. It’s the other way around.”