Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Nine

Dixon

The game was a lock, a big, beautiful check in the win column with only minutes left in the third period. All the whiny Ice Knights fans were shamed into quiet—except for Fiona. Honestly, it was hard for Dixon not to laugh at some of the creative curses she lobbed at the linesmen. He didn’t think it was physically possible for a crawdad to do what she’d suggested during the second period, but he wasn’t going to mention it. The grin he couldn’t wipe off his face pretty much said it all anyway.

She cut a glare at him. “Can’t you look the other way?”

“You don’t like my face?” he asked as he ate the hell out of a plate of bacon-wrapped scallops that were so delicious, they had to be from another planet.

She turned back to the ice and let out a groan as the Rage’s Carnov stripped the puck from the Ice Knights’ Stuckey. “Not at this moment.”

She slunk down in her seat, her arms crossed and a scowl for the ages on her face. This woman loved her hockey, and her team was getting a shellacking—one he was quite enjoying, but that wasn’t the point. He knew that feeling. Watching what you want disappear—seeing everything you’d expected to happen turn out to be a lie—hurt. It slid in deep right between the ribs and then poked you some more just for shits and giggles.

“Sorry,” he said, flattening his grin as much as he could, which wasn’t all the way but it was better than it had been. “I can’t help it. I love to win. There’s nothing better.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You haven’t had my dad’s blueberry pancakes.”

“That’s high praise coming from the woman who swore only yesterday that she doesn’t believe in eating for pleasure.”

She looked down at the stadium dog on her plate surrounded by the barely there remains of a soft pretzel and pursed her lips. “I was being polite, plus I missed lunch today.”

No way. He’d seen the way she’d closed her eyes and heard the happy hum as she chewed what could only be described as the best food in the universe that was likely to kill you. Fiona may not be the world’s worst liar, but she was up there. What he couldn’t figure out was who she really was, and the longer he spent with her, the more he wanted to know. This was why Ernie—beyond all of his many other talents as an assistant—was the perfect choice for a gatekeeper and assistant. He knew Dixon got sucked in by the riddles, the challenges, and the possibilities and, thus, lost sight of everything else.

If only he’d had Ernie to depend on before he’d met Nicole.

Clearing his throat, he moved the hell off that mental path before he got lost and turned back to the woman lying about God’s food. “That seems totally plausible. So tell me—”

What was about to come next died in his mouth as the crowd around them roared with approval. He jerked his attention away from Fiona to the ice, and his gut dropped.

Christensen had the puck for the Ice Knights, and he was flying down past the blue line in a breakaway that shouldn’t have happened. The Rage defensemen were still trying to catch up when Christensen flicked the puck over Lefebvre’s right shoulder and into the net. The crowd went wild. Fiona shot out of her seat, her arms going straight up in the air and a huge smile on her face. Then she started sing-yelling the Ice Knights theme song along with the other sixteen thousand people in the arena while he crunched his way through a second helping of nachos and reminded himself that Lefebvre was headed for the hockey hall of fame and Christensen had gotten lucky. It happened, no big deal.

But then it happened again.

And again.

Hats littered the ice after the Ice Knights’ pretty-boy forward scored his third goal to tie the game with less than thirty seconds left. Dixon was glaring at the ice when Fiona snagged his Rage hat and sent it sailing down to sit like a maroon spot in a sea of silver and blue.

“I’ll buy you a new hat,” she said as they stood there looking down at the ice. “I promise.”

He watched the ice crew skate out and start picking up all the celebratory debris. “One signed by Lefebvre?”

Her eyes rounded and her jaw dropped. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ll talk to security and see if they can recover it.” She took out her phone. “I’ll text Fallon; she has coffee with one of the guards pretty regularly during the season when she comes to the arena with Zach. Shit. I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll get it back. It’s gotta be the only Rage hat. You don’t think they’ll stomp on it a few times first, do you—”

“Fiona,” he said, interrupting her panicked ramble. “Gotcha.”

The look on her face went from absolute regret to one that had him worried about the chances of his balls staying attached to his body in half a second flat.

She shoved her phone back in her bag. “You’re such a jerk.”

“I can’t help it,” he said with a shrug, not feeling bad even in the least little bit. She had stolen his hat. It served her right. “You always fall for it. The hot wings. The hat. I gotcha again.”

She froze as if she’d been slapped and had been shocked still. Her muscles flexed as she worked her jaw back and forth and then, without saying anything, she turned her attention back to the ice. The whole thing had taken maybe five seconds, but he’d caught it.

Way to go, fuckface.

“I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his hands to himself even though he wanted to reach out and what, pat her on the back? “I shouldn’t have done it.”

She didn’t say anything for at least thirty seconds, a world record for her during the game, and then let out a sigh and held her hand to him. “I shouldn’t have tossed your hat to celebrate Christensen getting a hat trick and tying the game against the most awful team ever.”

“You just had to add that last part, didn’t you?” he asked as he shook her hand, not letting go right away—not because he was trying to pull some weird intimidation thing but because it felt kinda right to hold her hand.

Reminder, Beckett, this is why you don’t date. You see possibility everywhere, and it’s definitely not here.

She nodded. “I absolutely did.”

They stood there for a second, a little closer than necessary, alone while surrounded by tens of thousands of cheering fans as overtime started.

For a woman who had spent the entire game up until now screaming her head off, she spent the three-on-three five-minute overtime in her seat with her mouth closed, her eyes wide, and her entire body curled into a ball of tension so tight, he was afraid she’d snap when overtime ended and the shoot-out began.

It got to such a point that when Rage star forward Gustaf Hawke made a sweet fake and then hit a hard shot right through the goalie’s five-hole that sent Dixon jumping out of his seat in celebration, he thought she just might snap in two. When Petrov got the puck on the end of his stick at center ice, it was Dixon’s turn to put a hard grip on the arms of his seat. It all came down to this. If he missed, the Ice Knights were done, finished, kaput. Petrov pulled back and let the puck fly. Lefebvre dropped into a butterfly move, stick and glove on the ice. Everyone in the arena held their breath, waiting for the red light to go on indicating the puck had slid across the line.

It didn’t.

Lefebvre lifted his glove and revealed the puck in front of the line.

Dixon and the handful of Rage fans let out a yowl of celebration that was drowned out by the multitude of Ice Knights fans’ disappointed groans.

Next to him, Fiona let out a gusty sigh and stood up. “Well, that was something. Everyone has an off night, I guess.” She looked over at him. “Congratulations.”

Now it was his turn to go all statue. “Really?”

She shrugged and started up the five steps to the suite proper. “Even as much as I love the team, it’s just a game.”

Just a game? He’d heard her yell. He’d seen firsthand how passionately she’d watched her team. And she could just let it go with some greeting-card platitude? That was pretty much Greek to him, except he could understand Greek—classical and modern dialects.

“I guess I better start heading out before the trains are completely clogged,” Fiona said as she pulled a hat out of her bag.

It was a godawful knit stocking cap in Ice Knights colors with a blinking pom-pom on top. She tugged it onto her head and then got out a pair of light gloves—also in navy and silver. The woman had just spent hours in an ice arena but now she was putting on layers to walk home in early fall? She had to be expecting a long trip home. He didn’t like that. She’d worked all day. Her shoulders had a tired bend to them now that the adrenaline of the game was gone.

Yeah, she wasn’t taking a train.

“I can give you a ride,” he said, trying his best to make it sound like a question when he very much meant it as a statement.

“Nah, it’s okay.” She smiled at him. “I got here on my own; I can get home that way.”

“I don’t doubt it, but it seems silly for you to take the train when I have a car and you’re on my way home.”

She narrowed her big brown eyes at him. “You don’t even know where I live.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugged because he wasn’t about to lose this argument. “It’s still on my way.”

And no, he wasn’t being a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue. He was winning an argument. That’s all. Nothing more.