Damn it. That was not what she needed. When she pulled her two suitcases off the carousel at the same time, a hand reached out to help her with one of them. She stiffened, but it was only Jimbo, the youngest member of the travel team.
“Is that all of your bags, Miss Lauren?” he asked politely.
“That’s all. Thank you.”
“I’ll grab this one,” he said helpfully, adding one of her bags to the rolling trolley he was assembling.
“Thanks,” she said again, pulling the other one after her toward the door. She walked right past Mike, feeling his eyes following her out the door and into the Florida sunshine toward the bus.
Hell, they were still at the airport and she already felt butterflies in her stomach. This party made her nervous. Really nervous. Not only would Mike be there, but the Atlantic coast of Florida had way too much history for her. There was no way to feel the sunshine on her face and ignore the ghosts of her own happiness swirling around her.
On the bus, she busied herself with planning tasks for the next series of games. There would be two games in Tampa, followed by two games in Brooklyn. Only through constant alternation of host sites could home ice advantage be shared. The winner of the Stanley Cup would be the team who could perform at its peak for four best-of-seven series in a row.
Play-offs season was exhausting. The end.
Her phone rang. Checking it, she saw her father’s face on the screen. Yikes. She and her dad weren’t close, and she didn’t often enjoy their phone calls. On the other hand, taking his call on the bus gave her a perfect reason to cut it short.
“Dad? Is everything okay?”
He grunted an acknowledgment. “Your mother was expecting you this weekend for your cousin’s christening.”
No hello. No preamble. And Lauren knew beyond a doubt that family christenings weren’t usually her father’s concerns. He only wanted gossip about the team that had fired him. And this was his subtle way of asking.
“I’m in Florida,” she said quietly. “I told Mom already. There’s a benefit in Bal Harbour before the series starts in Tampa.”
He made a disgusted noise. “What owner parades his players around in tuxes before round two? They should have noses to the grindstone. It’s not party time, it’s work time. Fucking amateur.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. Their relationship had never been great. And when Nate fired her father but promoted Lauren, it deteriorated even further. “I’m sorry to miss the christening,” Lauren said. She wouldn’t rise to the bait.
“When are you coming home?” he asked. “Isn’t your graduation soon? You should let us take you out to dinner.”
“Good idea,” she said with false cheer. If he wouldn’t pay for NYU, he could at least buy her an overpriced meal for graduating from it. “I’ll send you and Mom the date. Got to go,” she said. “We’re pulling up at the hotel.” It wasn’t even a white lie. The sign for the Dorsal Club in Bal Harbour had swung into view.
Her father managed a civil good-bye, and they hung up.
Lauren got off the bus and eyed the sleek hotel. Under different circumstances, she would have enjoyed a trip to a luxury resort on the beach. But she and Mike had once been here together for the wedding of one of his teammates. They’d stayed at the adjacent resort.
It had been the most magical weekend of her entire life. The wedding was both elegant and fun. And afterward she and Mike had attacked one another in a partially secluded spot outdoors. It was risky and reckless. She’d loved every second of it.
But the memory loomed large.
These were her thoughts as she stepped into the sleek lobby and marched toward the check-in desk. This place was top shelf. It had been designed to make guests feel as if they were at a nightclub. There were no wicker chairs or potted palms. This was moneyed Florida—the low pulse of house music played in the background, and long linen curtains billowed from the thirty foot ceilings. The trippy, oversized furniture was straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
Lauren got her key as fast as she could and slunk off to the elevator bank without making eye contact with anyone except Nate. “You want to go over last week’s ticket revenue split later?” she asked him as they both waited for the elevator doors to open.
“Does it look okay to you?” he asked.
“At first glance,” Lauren hedged. “I want to add it up again before I decide that the box office got everything right.”
He grinned. “You take care of it, then. Just shoot me an e-mail with the results.”
“Anything else? I thought I’d spend the afternoon working on next week’s corporate sponsorship numbers.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Nate agreed, holding the elevator door open for her and then pushing his keycard into the slot so that the elevator would agree to open on the penthouse floor. They were both headed there. Wherever they traveled together around the globe, Nate always put Lauren in the room next to his, just to keep her handy. “I’m meeting up with Alex at six—an hour before the benefit. So I might need, uh, your services for a minute just before then.”
Lauren puzzled over that for a second and then smiled. “The bow tie, right?”
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “I hate black tie.”
“Then why did you let Alex talk you into it?”
“Some people are annoying when they don’t get their way.” He shrugged. “I’ll give her black tie, but I won’t give away the router division for less than it’s worth.”
“Oh, Nate,” Lauren laughed. “I love you.” She didn’t even know why she said it. It just slipped out. Must be the stress of working for the Bruisers and that unsettling conversation with Mike the other night.
He tilted his angular face in her direction and considered her with kind eyes. “You should say that to people more often, Lauren. It suits you.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she argued, trying to get back to the joking place they’d been in a minute ago. “I’m too crusty to go around telling people I love them.”
“You’re not, though. Not really.”
“Nate,” she warned under her breath.
“What?”
The elevator arrived on the penthouse floor and she followed Nate out. “I’ll make you a deal,” Lauren proposed. “I’ll tell more people I love them if you do the same.”
He paused mid-stride, and Lauren almost ran right into him. She braced herself for the words: mind your own business. Nate was famously nosy and famously tight-lipped about his own life. But if you ran a multibillion-dollar company you could behave that way, she supposed.
But Nate didn’t say anything. He just kept walking like nothing had happened. They headed down a corridor with carpet so thick that their footsteps were noiseless. He went to the far end of the hall, where the plaque read Ambassador’s Suite. Hers said: Princess Suite. “Knock when you need your tie tied,” she called softly.
He gave her a wink and then disappeared into his room.
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