The puck dropped. The clock started. The play went on. And Shelby couldn’t stop staring at the man who’d followed her blog when he had a million other things he could have been doing with his time. “Aren’t you just an onion.”

“As long as I don’t smell like one,” he shot back.

The urge to tease him about following The Biscuit was there, but she wasn’t going to keep poking at the bear’s vulnerable underbelly. They could have an unstated truce again. It was better than the pretending each other didn’t exist, especially since her job basically depended on being around him nearly twenty-four-seven.

“So who do you think is going to finally score?” she asked during a break in play. “My money’s on Alex.”

Ian scoffed. “Nope. He’s got the twitch tonight. Not gonna happen.”

She zeroed in on Alex as he sat on the bench fiddling with his stick as he watched a replay on the Jumbotron. “The twitch?”

“Watch the way he can’t sit still.” Ian nodded at his half brother, a knowing grin on his face, as if he’d had this conversation with Alex a time or twenty. “He’s messing with the tape on his stick, he’s asking for gloves that have been sitting on the heater in the tunnel, he’s chewing on his mouth guard like it’s bubble gum. He’s shit-talking himself in his head after that missed pass. That play always gets him in his own brain. He won’t score. What he needs is to refocus and work on that play until it’s muscle memory.”

“So help him fix it, Coach Know-It-All.”

He grunted and retreated back into himself as the players took the ice and the game resumed.

In the end, it was Phillips who scored off a beauty of a slap shot that the goalie never saw coming. It was one of the most gorgeous things she’d ever see. Shelby jumped out of her seat, yelling her head off. High off the thrill of a close victory, she spun around to face Ian, right hand raised for a high five. Instead of slapping his hand against hers, though, he wound his arms around her waist, picked her up, and twirled her. She didn’t think; she just threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with maybe—okay totally with—a little bit of tongue. In that moment, with her entire body zoned in only on Ian, the feel of him pressed against her, she forgot the crowd and the game and the rest of the world. Then he broke the kiss and she remembered where she was, who he was, and exactly why this was a very bad idea.