Nothing. Ash Gunnarsson. Familiarize yourself and be prepared to discuss.
I’m aware it took me less than an hour to break my promise to Ash about not telling anyone he came to see me, but there’s no official NDA in place yet, and I’m pretty sure BFFs are exempt in situations like this anyway. I have to tell someone, and Celena can keep a secret.
A minute passes before my phone pings again with her reply.
Celena
Oh my.
Oh my is right.
Chapter 3
Gray
“Let me get this straight,” Celena says as she cradles her glass of Chardonnay later that night at the local wine bar.
I want to explain that wine glasses have stems for a reason – so the heat from her hands doesn’t warm the wine – but I bite my tongue. I’m an admitted wine snob and also what they call in the wine world an ABC drinker…Anything But Chardonnay.
“A tall, gorgeous professional hockey player just walks into your office today,” she goes on, “asks you to fix his trash talk problem, and offers you an obscene amount of money to do it?”
“Technically the HR guy offered me the obscene amount of money,” I correct, “but otherwise, that’s the gist of it.”
Celena takes a long gulp of her wine before setting the glass down.
“I hope you bought a lottery ticket before you got here,” she says, “because the stars must be aligned.”
“No lottery ticket. I still haven’t accepted it happened.”
“Have you told your boss yet?” she asks, leaning forward. “Don’t you have classes and shit?”
“I did, and I do, but Melinda tentatively okayed it. I still have to teach classes and advise, but she agreed to suspend all my other university obligations, and she all but promised me tenure if I make this happen. The funding they’re offering is too good to pass up. She just wants the university’s lawyers to look at the contract to see if we can negotiate around the NDA so I can publish any results that come out of the…I’m not even sure what to call it.”
“Doyou get to go to games?” Celena asks. “Will you meet the rest of the team? Ooo! Can you get me an autographed jersey?”
She gets more excited with each question, but I have to burst her bubble.
“I’m not even sure I’ll agree to it yet.”
She looks at me like I just told her the beehive hairdo is coming back in style and I’m thinking of getting one.
“Gray, why wouldn’t you agree to it?” she asks incredulously. “Between the money and the opportunity to work with a professional athlete, this is a no-brainer. And have you seen the man, for God’s sake?”
“Oh, I’ve seen him. That’s the problem,” I counter. “How the hell am I supposed to work with a man like that for the next few months?”
“How the hell can you not?” she shoots back.
I sigh and take a sip of my Malbec. I opted for the heavy stuff tonight.
“Look, that’s not the main reason I’m wavering,” I say. “If I have to, I’ll give myself a few orgasms before I meet with him, then put on my big girl panties and do what I can to help him. My bigger problem is that I don’t actually knowhowto help him. All my work is theoretical. He needs a practical solution, and I don’t have time to research and test one for him. Best case, I may be able to put a bandage on the problem. Worst case, I exacerbate things, he’ll be kicked off the team or sent back down to the farm league, or whatever they do in hockey, and I’ll have wasted thousands of dollars of Kaladin’s money and pissed off not only a billionaire, but the entire state of Connecticut.”
Celena stares at me, then takes another healthy sip of her wine. “Or,” she says, holding up her forefinger, “you could succeed in finding a solution and pioneer a psychological treatment that turns him utterly trash talk-proof. He, in turn, helps the Hydra win the Stanley Cup, and the entire state of Connecticut rejoices and re-embraces professional hockey. Both Ash Gunnarsson and Max Kaladin are so grateful that the three of you become a throuple, and you live happily ever after with your billionaire and hockey star husbands, which I swear I saw in a novelsomewhere.”
I roll my eyes. “Polygamy is illegal. I could only marry one of them, and how on earth would I choose?”
Celena lets out a long groan. “Jesus Christ, Gray. How does your brain always fixate on the one negative in a sea of positives?”
Celena is the ever-optimist to my little cloud of doom. Give me any situation, and I can tell you the ten different ways it can go sideways. Celena, on the other hand, is still convinced she’ll one day take that flight into space she’s always wanted.
