Coach squints, exhaling through his nose. “Hendricks… please tell me you’re not sneaking around with Lydia.”
“What?” I choke. “Who’s Lydia?”
“Don’t play dumb, Hendricks. It’s not cute,” he adds. “She’s one of the ice girls. The redhead.”
I rack my brain, trying to remember if I’ve ever spoken to her. “She’s also my daughter.”
Oh, shit.
“I see her around here after hours, and you’ve been around after hours. It doesn’t take a detective to know what’s going on.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
“No,” I say quickly, hands up in surrender. “Coach, I would never—Lydia? No. Definitely not.”
His shoulders drop—not in relief exactly, but in that subtle shift he does when he unclenches his butt cheeks by two percent. The guy’s a brick wall ninety percent of the time, so two percent is basically an emotional monologue.
“Good,” he says. “Last thing I need is to have a talk with her about ‘appropriate use of the storage room.’”
Storage room?
I want to die.
Actually die.
He said storage room.
He thinks I was in the storage room… with Lydia.
Which means he knows someone was with me.
My face burns.
“So,” he says, eyes pinning me, “if it’s not Lydia… who’s the girl?”
No getting out of this.
I swallow hard. “Laura. The… uh.” I clear my throat. “The girl Professor Foster tried to set me up with last year.”
Coach’s brows shootup. “No shit.”
I nod.
“My wife will be happy.”
“Uh, that’s good?”
“So what’s the reason for you being here with her late at night? You trying to get some privacy?” he asks with a raised brow.
“No, no,” I answer quickly. “I mean, Ilikethe privacy, but that’s not why we’re always here.”
His lip tilts with amusement at how flustered I am. I can’t help it when it comes to her.
“She’s a singer,” I admit softly. “She’s incredible. I’ve been here late helping her train for an audition that involves skating.”
“She can skate?”
I rub the back of my neck. “We’re working on it, but her voice is perfect for the role.”
