She grinned broadly and dipped her spoon into the ice cream again. “Really? You have a strange way of showing it! Until now, I’ve only been criticized for my decision to professionally ensure that you’re doing well.”
“Hello? I brought you flowers!” Dax defended himself. “And it’s not like we’re not proud of everything you’ve achieved, we simply wish that you had achieved it a little further away from the L.A. Hawks.”
She snorted. “Tell me, do your fellow players know how much you hate and judge them?”
“We don’t hate them, we just know them incredibly well. That’s the problem,” Jack interjected quickly. “You can respectand love horny idiots — and at the same time, judge them for their behavior.”
“Oh, yes,” Anna confirmed, nodding seriously. “Just like I do with you, right?”
Dax grinned broadly and glanced at his brother. “You should have seen that coming. It was a perfect set-up.”
Anna just laughed while the other women at the table sighed deeply. “Anna, I have the utmost respect for you for putting up with both of these idiots for over twenty years. At least Lucy and I only have to deal with one each,” Penny said softly, but loud enough so that everyone could hear.
“Yes. And then there’s the studying and all the exams,” Lucy agreed. “I don’t know how you coped with all the stress. This last year must have been hell.”
That it had been, but… Anna lowered her gaze, smiling, and her thoughts automatically wandered to Lucas’ hands on her body, to his breathing in her ear.How can you talk while you’re coming?!
As heat flooded her cheeks, she cleared her throat. “Oh, I had my…stress management strategies,” she replied lightly, quickly shoveling more ice cream into her mouth to drive away the telltale warmth in her face.
“What kind?” Lucy asked. “I could use a few tips. My job stresses me out too. Yesterday, I had to explain to Charkov what avulvawas because he didn’t know the English word. He wanted me to draw a picture and everything. But hey!” Her face lit up. “You’re a doctor! I’ll just send the next player with a question like that to you!”
“No!” simultaneously came from Jack and Dax’s mouths.
“I’d love that,” Anna said, happily ignoring her brothers. “I guess most of them could use a little medical refresher, like on STIs.”
“Fantastic! Lucy, you should videotape the whole thing for our social media channels,” Penny interjected.
The redhead’s eyes lit up and Dax buried his face in his hands, groaning. “We should never have brought the three of them together, Jack,” he said, regretfully. “Everything that happens from now on is entirely our fault.”
The only way Jack could have looked more horrified was if someone had thrown his favorite stick into a wood chipper in front of him.
Lucy and Penny took this as an opportunity to laugh loudly.
“We’ve gone a little off topic,” the PR manager admitted, grinning at Anna. “You were about to tell me about your great stress management strategies.”
Crap. Anna had hoped she had forgotten. “I’ve been, uh…jogging a lot,” she said quickly, believing it was close to the truth. Shehadbeen jogging horizontally.
Lucy grimaced. “No, that’s not for me. If I want to sweat in public, I go to the sauna.”
Thank God, that was the end of the topic, because Anna really couldn’t say any more. Not to her brothers, not to the owner of the Hawks, and certainly not to the PR consultant who was supposed to nip any scandal involving the hockey players in the bud.
Anyway, even if it came out that she’d been sleeping with their goalie regularly for six months, that wouldn’t be a scandal. The scandal would only happen when Jack and Dax killed him.
Then again, how would they ever find out? The secret was safe with her. Just as no one knew she was planning to order a second ice cream to celebrate.
No more exams, no more stress. No more need for meaningless sex. Maybe she should just find something…real? Now that her life was really beginning? Her brothers, at least, seemed to be doing well withsomething real. Maybe with themas role models, she could grow beyond short-term happiness and find new confidence in…medium-term happiness…?
The thought alone made her uneasy. What Dax and Jack had found was rare. In her experience, the only things that lasted in the long term were doubt and negative consequences.
“Are you nervous?” Penny pulled her out of her thoughts. “Because it’s a new job? A new head doctor that you have to impress?”
“No,” she answered honestly. “I’m good at what I do. The only thing that makes me nervous is…” She narrowed her eyes and looked back and forth between her brothers. “These two bad apples here.”
“Well, I see myself more as a delectable strawberry, the queen of fruits,” Dax said, shrugging. “But Jack is definitely an apple.”
“Because I’m the forbidden fruit that gives wisdom?”
Dax grinned. “Nah. Because you fall to the ground so often that you can explain gravity. Seriously, man. You were on the ice five times in the last game.”
