“Is this what you called me in for today, Cassie?” Piper asks, leaning closer to her. She tucks a soft lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “You told me you wanted to meet to talk about something.”
She waves her off. “Would you have come if I told you my idea? No, you wouldn’t have.”
Cassie is no-nonsense about everything. It’s how she’s gotten this far in her career, no doubt.
“Wait, so this is really your great idea? Cassie, you really think this whole…princess is going to help me change my image? She’s Fields’s little sister.”
“Okay, I’m more than just his little sister, thank you very much.” She glares at me from her chair. If looks could kill, she’s trying really hard to put me six feet under. “And I’m not a princess.”
I give her another once-over. Everything about her looks like a princess, even if she’s wearing the blandest uniform the team has.
I ignore her. “Seriously, Cassie. This is the great plan to save my career? I don’t think we could be more different if we tried.”
“Exactly why I think she’d be perfect to help reform the bad boy of hockey.”
“Are people really calling me the bad boy of hockey?” I quirk a brow at Cassie and lean back in my chair.
“Yes.” One word. It’s all she needs to make it stick.
Fuck.
Of course this is her solution. Make me look reformed by getting me a girlfriend.
“This is the only plan you have?” I ask.
“If your career didn’t need saving to start with, we wouldn’t be here right now. Now, the two of you”—she reaches into her folder on her desk and grabs two pieces of paper—“have a few team events that you need to go to in order to make this thing believable. I want you to have a few dates, go out to dinner, make Cash look like the loving boyfriend that he is so people don’t start hating him. Maybe it’ll even help your performance on the ice. And then I won’t have to deal with you anymore.”
“You know, you’ll still have to deal with me because I’m on the team, right?”
“Hold on,” Piper interjects. “I haven’t agreed to this yet.”
“I haven’t either,” I agree.
“You,”—Cassie points at me—“don’t have a choice. Piper, on the other hand, you don’t have to agree to anything. Take this home and think about it.”
“Why me?” Piper asks.
“It makes the most sense. You work for the team and it’d be easy to pass off the two of you meeting while working.”
“That makes me sound unprofessional. I’ve made it a point to never date players again.”
“Again?” I shift in my seat to look at her.
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“I dated?—”
“Look,” Cassie cuts Piper off, “take the night to think about it and we’ll meet back here tomorrow, okay? If you say yes, we can play it off as a fairy-tale romance.”
“Because she works for the team? Not much of a fairy tale,” I mutter.
“You wouldn’t know a fairy tale if it slapped you in the face, Cash.”
“Ouch.”
Cassie goes back to ignoring me, something she’s gotten very good at. “Think about it, okay, Piper?”
