“You’ve been gone, and he’s not spilling anything about her. I think she’s married,” Steele said.

“She is not. She’s very private. That’s all.” Kaden narrowed his gaze on me, effectively moving the focus off him to me. “What about you? First of all, why did you leave early? Did you have a hot date? And now you’re trolling for another?”

“Something like that.” I made a show of perusing the room for my next conquest. A group of women sat in one corner, and they were eyeing us. I winked in their direction. Originally, I’d been the self-proclaimed leader of the Puck Bros. This was my first opportunity since I’d rejoined the team to show I was still claiming that position.

“Don’t waste your time. They’re not available,” Steele warned me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they happen to be undercover cops,” Steele informed me as if it should be obvious to all of us. I narrowed my gaze and really looked at them. All I saw were thirtysomethings having a girls’ night out.

“How do you know that?” I glanced at Kaden, who shrugged. His head was buried in his phone, and his expression was unreadable.

“I just know. Trust me on this,” Steele said.

“Yeah, but how?”

“For starters, men have been hitting on them all night and nothing. Not one of them breaks ranks. Second, see the bulge in the purse hanging over the redhead’s chair?”

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s a gun.”

“I still don’t see how that makes them undercover cops.”

“Yeah, well, there’s more, but I can’t say.”

Steele had always had this overactive imagination, but sometimes he had an uncanny ability to see things no one else saw. I turned away from the women, essentially snubbing them. If Steele was right, and he was a serious guy and wouldn’t make statements like that lightly, I didn’t need any additional trouble with the team by hustling an undercover cop. I was actually relieved I had an excuse to not pursue those other women.

The only woman I wanted right now was sitting in the hotel bar across the street with a brother who despised me.

Chapter 11—Demons of the Past

~~Geneva~~

The two games of the road trip didn’t go well. Jock hadn’t been a starting goalie in years, and he was understandably rusty. The coaches and his teammates were encouraging. They didn’t lay blame at his feet, even though my brother blamed himself.

This hadn’t turned out to be one of my favorite road trips. Not just because of my brother and losing but also because of Axel. Not that Axel did anything or said anything to disturb me, but maybe because he didn’t. After that meeting in the bar and almost kiss, he avoided me like a person would avoid someone diagnosed with a contagious, incurable virus.

Unfortunately, I struggled with banning the man from my thoughts. Instead, he lived in my brain twenty-four seven, awake and asleep. Either I was thinking about him, his smile, his green eyes, his intensity on the ice, or I was dreaming about him naked and doing very naughty and very pleasurable things to my body.