“Right?! I told Li the yeti body is dumb.”
I nod. I’m not sure how Larsen became my ally in the crusade to ditch the aprons, but I will take what I can get.
“They clearly should’ve done our bodies wearing, like, Yeti-branded boxers,” Larsen continues. “Like the bikini ones, but for guys. Or yours could’ve been a bikini one. Oh, man, yours would’ve been awesome. Can you imagine a little black bikini—”
Larsen is cut off as Li, with a look of absolute horror on his face, pulls him away from me and the ungodly number of sprints he was about to be told to go skate.
I swallow the laugh that’s about to escape me at Larsen’s ridiculousness when I realize Kane is staring at my stomach, his gaze vacant.
“Um, Earth to Kane?”
He shakes his head, dragging his focus back to my eyes.
I hold out the apron. “I’ve made an executive decision: I’m not wearing this.”
“Then don’t. I’m, personally, not willing to appear anything but an active participant for something the owner seemed overly invested in, but that’s just me.”
I glare at him, then, begrudgingly, put the apron on, pulling the strings tight behind me. As someone whodesperatelyneeds the owner in her corner, the man has a good point.
“You look,” Kane starts, running a hand through his dark hair, “ready. You look ready.”
“Well, looks can be deceiving, because I am, in fact, a terrible cook.” I purse my lips, realizing that’s not quite correct. “Unless it’s a big piece of protein and a salad coming straight from a plastic bag.”
He smiles, and it disarms me slightly. This might be the first real smile I’ve seen on him. Kane has been stepping up at practice lately, and while I occasionally catch him joking around with the other guys—usually exchanging good-natured insults with the other defensemen—he’s not a guy who smiles frequently.
“This might be rough,” he warns, and I nod.
“Hopefully, Sabrina is one of the judges—it’ll serve her right for making us do this.”
Kane chuckles, and I realize I’ve said more than I usually would’ve. Exposed a glimmer of my nonprofessional side.
***
“Do you know anything about making cupcakes?” I ask, forcing myself not to grind my teeth as Larsen and Li sprint toward the supply shelf behind us. Ihatelosing.
We’re in a teaching kitchen, with cameras trained on us from every angle. If it’s not the social team in our faces, recording on their cell phones, it’s the professional cameras of our PR team set up to capture each of us.
“I’m pretty sure I haven’t eaten a cupcake in the last decade,” Beckett mutters, massaging a point on the back of his neck as he scans a vanilla cupcake recipe in front of him. “Jesus Christ, how do those two dumbasses already have their ingredients?”
I follow his gaze to where Li and Larsen are back at their station, setting out bags and tubs of God-knows-what.
“Okay, it’s supposed to be Yeti themed,” I say, trying to work through this. “So, we could do ice rinks, skates, or jerseys?”
“Do you have a secret cupcake talent you’ve been keeping from the world?”
“No.” I shake my head. “But for the record, if I did, I wouldcertainlykeep it from the world. Plus, how hard can it be?”
“I mean, hard?” he asks. “Isn’t that the point? To make us look like idiots?”
Knowing that running out of time is a real issue in the cooking shows this event is based on, I force myself to focus, looking through the recipes the PR team set out for us to choose from. “Too bad for them, I’m pretty good at not looking like an idiot, even when I have no idea what I’m doing. Okay.” I tap the vanilla recipe in front of him. “I think we go vanilla on vanilla. If it turns out neither of us is good at decorating, we can at least call them snow mountains or something.”
“Smart,” Kane says. “Or we can draw lines and turn them into rinks. Though vanilla on vanilla is the worst flavor combination, and taste is half of the score.”
“I like vanilla with vanilla. It’s what I had every birthday growing up.”
Kane’s look of disgust makes me want to give him a good uppercut to the solar plexus, but instead of resorting to violence, I put down the recipe cards.
“I’m open to your suggestions.”
