Lucy had taken pity on her and joined them for the Phoenix game, but tonight in L.A., Freya had let it be known in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t up for sitting through another game.

“I’ll watch from my hotel room,” Lucy said as she headed for the suite’s door. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m too far away to give you the evil eye.”

Now it was just the two of them. And he was in a suit. She’d always been a sucker for a guy in a good suit. Ian’s had probably been custom-made. That would explain how it fit his broad shoulders perfectly and clung to his high, round hockey ass like it had been made for him—because it had.

Look away, Shelby. There be dragons with really great asses.

Ian glanced over at her and narrowed his eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” she all but squeaked in response as she took her seat as quickly as possible and became incredibly fascinated by the linesmen doing their warm-up circles around the ice.

He let out a grunt. “With your nose all wrinkled like I stink.”

Ian did smell. Wonderfully. So much so that she may have leaned closer while they were getting drinks from the buffet at the back of the suite so she could get a good long whiff. God, if he noticed that, she was going to die of embarrassment right here.

“Is that why you smelled me before?” He sat down next to her and did one of those sly pit-sniffing maneuvers.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. “I was clearing my sinuses.”

One eyebrow went up. One yeah-sure grunt was emmited. One very hot hockey player turned away from her and focused back on the ice below where his teammates were lined up for the first face-off of the game. Meanwhile, Shelby sat there frozen with indecision about whether to go all in and tell him about her myriad sinus issues and the fact that she knew absolutely nothing about her fake ailment.

The hockey gods, though, took pity on her.

The puck hit the ice and they were both glued to the action. Pheonix wasn’t a dirty team like the hated Cajun Rage, but they were hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners go-getters and they wanted to win. Badly.

By the end of the first period, Shelby’s voice had gone hoarse from yelling. By the end of the second, she’d thrown off any pretense of maybe-sorta-kinda playing it cool and had spent most of it either standing up and cheering on the Ice Knights or pacing in front of the buffet table, grumbling about missed passes as she rolled her six-year-sober coin over her knuckles like the talisman it had become. By the time the second intermission started, she was twisted up so tight, she was ready to pop.