Gray Brannon is the general manager for the Carolina Cold Fury hockey team. This is her second year in the position and she is proudly sporting a Stanley Cup championship cup. This is also my second year with the team, as I was added last year after Gray took over management. I owe a lot to her for her faith in me, and knowing that I could be a great contribution to this team.

However, just because I’m grateful to her does not mean I’m going to take her shit or change my ways.

Gray lifts her head from some documents she’s reviewing on her desk, and for a brief moment, I’m captivated by the sheer beauty of this woman. I’ve never been a fan of redheads, but I have to say Gray Brannon wears the color well and her face is almost angelic. So yeah, our general manager is hot as hell, but she’s also fucking brilliant at her job, and while I’m sure every man on this team has eyeballed her in a way a man will look at a gorgeous woman, she is more than respected for her abilities to do right by this organization.

As I step into her office, Gray stands from the desk and holds her hand out across to me to shake. My eyes immediately draw down to the rounded bump of her belly before coming back up to lock with her own. Gray announced a few weeks ago at the team Christmas party that she and her husband, Ryker Evans, were expecting their first child together in May. Ryker was the starting goalie last year for the Cold Fury and was instrumental in our winning the Stanley Cup. He retired this past summer and is now one of the goalie coaches for the team.

I take Gray’s hand and give it a quick shake before releasing. She waves to a chair behind me and I take it, settling in casually. While I am most assuredly going to get an ass-chewing during this meeting, I don’t ever want her to have the impression that it bothers me.

I pretty much do what I want and I take my lumps when I deserve them.

And in fairness, I probably deserve this ass-chewing.

Gray sits down in her chair, rests her elbows on the top of her desk, and steeples her fingers in front of her. “No sense in beating around the bush. You have to pick your battles better, and frankly, a little less frequently.”

“Not sure I’m following,” I say with utter honesty as I blink in surprise. I thought I was going to be given the command to stop my wild ways completely, not telling me to dial it back a notch.

“Well, let’s take a look at your history,” she says blandly and with a touch of sarcasm. It causes me to give an involuntary smirk, which she chooses to ignore. “A year and a half ago, you celebrated joining the Cold Fury by going out and getting extremely drunk at an away game in Toronto and got into a shoving match with a fan from the other team.”

“He started it,” I say with a smile.

She ignores that too. “You got arrested for drunk and disorderly.”

“Those charges got dismissed,” I point out.

“Then,” she says, barreling right past my excuses, “you pulled the infamous ‘possum’ stunt.”

I snort. That was a good one. I took a high stick to my shoulder, then took a dive to the ice. It hurt, but not enough to put me down. The other players didn’t know that, though, and while a shoving match started right in front of me, my teammates clearly coming to my defense, I lay there on the ice playing dead. One of the trainers even came over to check on me. The scrums around me got broken up by the refs, and about the time all the players started to slowly skate away, I jumped up from the ice—scaring the shit out of our trainer Goose—and attacked the fucker who gave me the high stick in the first place. Got a few solid hits on him before the refs jumped on me.

That earned me a game misconduct ejection.

Gray Brannon does not laugh, but continues to extol my “virtues” as a member of this team.

“You’ve been suspended for eleven games over the past two years,” she says distastefully. “Three for illegal boarding, two for cross-checking, and six for abuse of an official,” she recites.

“Well, the abuse of an official was for ten games, but it did get reduced to six, so that’s good, right?” I ask without a hint of apology. “Besides, you and I both know that guy is a douche.”

“You’re late to practice most of the time,” she throws at me.

“I need my beauty sleep,” I say as I bat my eyelashes at her. “And it’s not personal. I’m late to everything.”

I can tell she wants to roll her eyes at me, but she never breaks that direct, hard stare. “You’ve heckled and threatened fans, gotten into a public drunken spectacle on several occasions—the last just four days ago—with your girlfriend that made the social media rounds—”

“I fucking hate Snapchat,” I say glumly but very truthfully. “And that was an ex-girlfriend. We’d been broken up awhile and had just run into each other at a bar, and she’s the one that—”

“—and then today,” she cuts in on me, grabbing the newspaper off her desk and sliding it across to me. “You make the front page of the sports section.”

My eyes drop down and I have to practically bite my tongue not to grin at the photograph taking up the entire top of the page. It’s of me, sound asleep in bed. I’m lying on my back, covers pulled up to my hips, but it’s clear I’m naked underneath. And next to me is a woman, also clearly naked but with the sheet pulled up over her breasts, taking a selfie photograph with me.

Unbeknownst to me because I was dead asleep.

Didn’t find out about it until she sent me a text with the photo day before yesterday along with a short but clear demand for money, and if I didn’t pay, she would go to the media with it.

My text back to her was simple: Fuck off.

Of course, that text exchange ended up in the paper too, along with a quote from yours truly. After all, the reporter called me for my side of the story and I told him I’d never be bribed by anyone, not to mention a two-bit model who would jump in bed with someone just for the attention.

I actually think I handled the situation well.

Inclining my head toward the paper, I try for my most seriously affronted expression. “You can’t honestly be mad at me for that. I had no clue she took that picture.”

“She was previously engaged to one of your teammates,” Gray grits out.

I hold my hands up in mock surrender. “I did not know that. Well, not until after the clothes came off, but still…she wasn’t engaged at the time.”