After, I forewent the team bus that took us to Carbone’s—and followed them in my Range Rover. Emmersyn was outside the restaurant, and my mouth watered at the sight of her.

She was wearing another dress, this one longer. It brushed along the ground as she nervously chewed on the side of her thumb. Her hair was curled, one side pulled back with a clip, and strappy flat sandals tapped to the beat of the trendy pop music filtering through the casino’s speakers.

I walked in with Garrett on my left, and he noticed Emmersyn as soon as I did. “You invited your wife for lunch?”

He sounded surprised, but not upset.

“Couldn’t help it. I wanted her here.”

“I sure hope you know what in the hell you’re doing, Kane.”

Me and him both.

Emmersyn finally noticed us, caught me in the swarm of hockey players, and her smile was bright enough to lighten the entire casino.

“You look incredible,” I said, leaning down to whisper it only for her. “Thanks for coming.”

“I talked to Lizzie. She said wives or girlfriends are never invited to this lunch.”

Ah, so that was what the nerves were for.

Funny, how it had been Lizzie’s husband who said the same thing to me. “What can I say? I missed you.”

“Will they be mad? The guys?”

“Only the superstitious ones.” I was kidding. No one would give a shit.

“How many is that?”

I shrugged and took her hand in mine, my fingers finding the spaces between hers like it was the most natural thing to do. “All of them?”

“What?” she shrieked, and several customers in the restaurant turned to stare at her. “You’re kidding.”

“Of course I am. Come on, we have a back room.”

We walked through the casino to the restaurant, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised when phones came out from diners and pictures were taken. Most of them were tourists, and I never quite knew if they knew who we were or just figured a group of men, built like us, who had a private room had to be somebody important, and they didn’t want to miss the shot in case someone they knew recognized us.

Whatever. Didn’t make much difference to me.

“Does this happen a lot?” Emmersyn asked, noticing the phones out and pointing in our direction.

“Not all the time. A couple years back, Joey gave an interview to a sports blog asking him what his game day routine is like. We’d already been coming here for lunches before our night games for a year or so, and he mentioned the restaurant. After that, there were tons of fans, but our biggest ones seemed to have the most respect for our time and need to focus.” I escorted her to our table, where the restaurant was so fantastic, they left us name cards, always mixed up, so we sat next to different team members, and found Emmersyn’s card next to Dominick, three seats down from me.