I yank the pad strap tight with more violence than the strap has earned.
“I let you because shoving you off would’ve made noise. Tactical. Don’t get sentimental about it.”
“Mm.”
He doesn’t believe me.
It is written all over the insufferable golden warmth of his face that he does not believe me, and worse, that he is far too kind to say so, which is somehow more annoying than if he’d just called me a liar outright.
“Here’s the thing, though. Whoever that was, Voss, his charming little congregation, they’ve apparently spent their whole morning hunting the lost figure skater. And if they’d found her half-dressed in a closet with me? Withme?” He shakes his head, mournful, theatrical. “That is not a headline that helps you, sweetheart. New girl, day one, caught playing tonsil hockeywith a winger in the supply room. They’d have it stitched on a banner by Thursday.”
And the worst of it, the genuine worst, is that he is right.
I know exactly what that looks like. I have spent my entire life being looked at by people hunting for the precise frame that proves I don’t belong on the ice, and a closet, with a stranger, and a mouth I very nearly locked with on my own free will— that is not a frame. That is the whole film. That is the thing they would play on a loop until it became the only true thing anyone here ever knew about me.
He just deleted that film.
Without being asked.
Without making me ask, which is somehow the part that gets under my ribs and stays.
I straighten up.
I look at him properly, the loose-limbed ease, the crimson, the hazel eyes that I am now fairly sure hide considerably more than they advertise, and I find, to my deep displeasure, that the cold-blooded threat assessment I run on every Alpha who gets within scenting distance of me has come back with a verdict I did not order.
Not dangerous. Not to you. Not like the rest of them.
It is not trust.
Let us be extremely clear. It has been one conversation, one near-miss, and I trust him roughly as far as I could throw his sneaker collection. But it is a strange, grudging certainty that this one, unlike the matched set of men who laughed me down a corridor an hour ago, is not running an angle that ends with me being smaller.
He hid me to spare me, not to own the favor.
Even if he is absolutely, transparently, about to try to own the favor.
“So,” Matteo says again, brightening, right on cue. “The way I see it.”
“Here it comes.”
“The way I see it, I have just performed a heroic act of reputation management, entirely free of charge, for a woman who has not even told me her name.” He pushes off the door, ambling closer, hands lifting in a little gesture of wide-eyed reason. “Which means…and I want you to follow the logic, because it is airtight…you owe me.”
“I owe you,” I repeat, flat as a frozen pond.
“One favor. My choice. To be redeemed,” he adds graciously, “at a time of maximum inconvenience to you. That’s just good business.”
“You understand I could have handled three hockey players,” I tell him, hauling my mask out of the bag, turning it in my hands so the cage catches what little light there is. “I’ve handled worse with less. You didn’t rescue me. You inserted yourself into a situation, and now you’d like a receipt.”
“God, yes. An itemized one. Possibly laminated.” He is grinning so hard now that it has to hurt. “Come on. One favor. You’re a goalie, you live and die by the rebound, you know there’s no such thing as a free save. What’s your name?”
I have a whole policy about this.
The policy is robust.
“Iris,” I say. “O’Shea.”
Something moves across his face when I say it,quick, there and gone, a flicker I almost miss,and for half a second the performance thins and I get a clean look straight through it to whatever the actual man is doing back there.
He files my name.
