The Season: Rush (Austin Arrows #1)

Rush

Also by Nicole Edwards

The Alluring Indulgence Series

Kaleb

Zane

Travis

Holidays with the Walker Brothers

Ethan

Braydon

Sawyer

Brendon

The Austin Arrows Series

The Season: RUSH

The Club Destiny Series

Conviction

Temptation

Addicted

Seduction

Infatuation

Captivated

Devotion

Perception

Entrusted

Adored

The Coyote Ridge Series

Curtis

The Dead Heat Ranch Series

Boots Optional

Betting on Grace

Overnight Love

The Devil’s Bend Series

Chasing Dreams

Vanishing Dreams

The Devil’s Playground Series

Without Regret

The Pier 70 Series

Reckless

Fearless

Speechless

The Sniper 1 Security Series

Wait for Morning

Never Say Never

The Southern Boy Mafia Series

Beautifully Brutal

Beautifully Loyal

Standalone Novels

A Million Tiny Pieces

Inked on Paper

Writing as Timberlyn Scott

Unhinged

Unraveling

Chaos

Naughty Nice Holiday Books

2015

THE

SEASON

Rush

NICOLE EDWARDS

Nicole Edwards Limited

PO Box 806

Hutto, Texas 78634

www.NicoleEdwardsLimited.com

www.slipublishing.com

Copyright © Nicole Edwards, 2016

All rights reserved.

This is a self-published title.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The SEASON: Rush– An Austin Arrows Novel
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover Image:
© Darren Birks Photography

Models:
Darren Birks and Jessica Avaline

Cover Design:
© Nicole Edwards Limited

Editing:
Blue Otter Editing
www.BlueOtterEditing.com

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-939786-66-1

ISBN (print): 978-1-939786-65-4

Contemporary Erotic Romance

Mature Audience

Dear Reader,

RUSH is a spin-off from my stand-alone book,
A Million Tiny Pieces
. You do not have to read AMTP in order to enjoy this book. However, if you do want to find out more about Phoenix Pierce, the owner of the Austin Arrows, you should definitely check it out.

RUSH is a 135k word stand-alone novel.

Dedication

To my brother, Bryan.

You will always be my favorite goalie.

Prologue

Phoenix Pierce

I thought that after winning the Stanley Cup two seasons ago, my team was destined for greatness.

Seriously.

Epic. Fucking. Greatness.

At one point, the Austin Arrows were the up-and-coming team in the National Hockey League. Under my father’s watchful eye, year by year, they went from decent to good to better. Then they transformed into something phenomenal. The year my father died, I took over and devoted all of my energy to taking them to the top.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Superman, leaping tall buildings and all that shit, but I think I deserve a pat on the back for at least motivating them enough—combined with a brilliant coaching staff and their own natural talent—to get them where they were all destined to go.

Unfortunately, that was short-lived.

Epic turned to embarrassment.

Instead of holding their heads high and coming back to defend the championship, the team I now refer to as
what the fuck happened
took us from first place to dead last. I’m not joking. From number one to number thirty. But it doesn’t stop there… They topped it off by doing it two fucking years in a row.

I’m sure you want to know how the hell anyone even pulls that shit off, right?

That’s a question I’ve asked my coaching staff a million times, trying to understand how we could go from bathing in six-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne to entertaining the notion of becoming a waiter at the Waffle House.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, but it wasn’t fucking pretty.

Even the sports commentators can’t keep from snickering when they have to talk about the Arrows.

Quite frankly, it’s pathetic, so chuckle on, assholes.

I sure as shit don’t know what happened to cause the downslide, and being that I own the damn team, I’m pretty adept at what’s going on. Usually, anyway. Obviously—as my husband and wife (that’s a story for another day) like to tell me—I’ve been doing little more than praying for rain in the desert.

And if one more person tells me to look on the bright side, by coming in last, we were entered into the NHL draft lottery, I’m going to punch them square in the face. Let me tell you that winning the draft lottery—which, as it turned out, did earn us the first-round draft pick—was not worth it. Oh, sure, we grabbed up some phenomenal prospects, including a left winger who could very well be the spur that gets us into the play-offs this year, but I would’ve preferred not to follow our Cup win with devastating seasons the way we did.

It sucks.

Which is why Tarik and I are currently en route to one of the Arrows’ practice facilities to have a little heart-to-heart with Coach Moen before everyone shows up for the first regular-season practice on Monday morning. I’ve disguised my visit as a good-natured drive-by. You know, the kind that makes it look as though I’m inhaling rainbows and shitting glitter, when I’m really not. Seriously, I’m not. I don’t have to play nice, because this is business and there’s a lot of fucking money invested in this team, but I’m going to pretend I am.

Now that training camp is over and this year’s team is in place, it’s time I get my mug all up in their business and let them know we won’t stand for another shitty season. I’m all tapped out of nice at this point. What gets me the most, I guess, is the fact that the actual players morphed into people I was even embarrassed to acknowledge. No lie.

As is par for the course, this year’s training camp started with fifty-six players and we painstakingly dwindled that down. Sometimes we reduced by three, sometimes eight, once even sixteen. All the way until we narrowed it down to the twenty-three men whose names were on the official opening-day roster submitted to the league last week.

It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. And watching as we lost six of the seven preseason games gave me a bit of heartburn, as well, but I’m holding out hope for this year. We’re skating well, have solid puck handling, the team looks strong. Much stronger than last year, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

Admittedly, I couldn’t let go of some of my key players, no matter how much of a disgrace they’ve been to the team. But I’ve got my eye on one of them in particular right now. Kingston Rush, a.k.a. Mount Rushmore.

Here’s a guy who was the league’s top goalie two years ago, with three Vezina Trophies under his belt. Quite frankly, he’s a beast and a huge asset to this team—when he’s on his game, that is—so I’m hoping a little extra attention might go a long way.

I have an idea of
what
got his jock strap in a twist; I simply need to dig deeper to get to the root of it. Something, or rather some
one
, turned him from the easygoing, mysterious badass to an instigator who started picking fights with everyone. Not only that, but he was publicly accused of hitting a woman.

Now, before you start thinking he’s a bad guy, the woman recanted her statement, but never openly admitted that she lied. Instead, she chose to disappear off the grid. I personally believe she did fabricate the story—if I didn’t, I would’ve kicked Rush’s ass myself—I simply don’t know why she did it, but I intend to find out.

Trust me, there are more who need my attention, but I’m only one man, and right now, getting Kingston back on top of his game is my only focus. He’s my priority and I’m giving him one last shot.

Hell, I’m giving them
all
one last shot.

1

Six months ago…

FOCUS. PUCK, PATIENCE. REACT. Focus. Puck, patience. React.

“Good luck out there tonight,” someone calls from my left.

I nod my head, keeping my focus internal. Or trying to. For me, this is usually the easy part. Key word being usually. Unfortunately, the phone call from this afternoon has fucked my world to shit, and
usually
isn’t cutting it.

I know you’re getting ready for a game, but I need to tell you something and it can’t wait.

Shaking my head, I try to dispel that stupid voice, to stop it from rattling around in my brain. It seems to be stuck there.

This thing between us… Well, I don’t see it going anywhere. You’re too focused on yourself, and I deserve more attention than you give me.

More attention, my fucking ass.

If I don’t get my head in the game, this is going to be one fucked-up night. I’m ready to tear someone limb for limb with my bare hands, and it’s been nearly three hours since she called me.

I’ve met someone, Kingston. He’s nice and funny. He’s an architect, by the way. Good money, you know. And oh, he’s … God, he’s great in bed.

The words still feel like a slap, taking me completely by surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re not … bad. He’s just better.

I heard her fucking giggling, for fuck’s sake. Then she moaned.

Fucking bitch!

There is so much going on around me it takes every ounce of mental fortitude to tune it out. Generally, I’ve got one thing in my head right before a game. Tonight’s cerebral billboard should read like this:
Focus. Puck, patience. React. Focus. Puck, patience. React.

Nothing else.

For an hour before the game, that should be the only thing that flutters through my gray matter. I started that early on in my career, casting all the other bullshit out of my head. And it usually works for me. Right now, it’s doing dick to get my mind where it needs to be. It’s all I can do to keep pacing, tapping my stick every so often as I try to draw up mental images of how I expect this to play out. Instead, I can practically see her lying there, another man hovering over her.

Fuck.

The sad part is, I wasn’t that close to her anyway. Our relationship was more superficial than anything, and it was by no means serious. For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t in love with her, I’m merely taken aback by her … execution. Not to mention the timing of it.

Someone taps me on the head with their glove, then another. I know my teammates are silently wishing me luck. It’s what they do. It’s what we all do. I won’t say that I don’t need it—tonight especially—because anything can happen on that ice. But I was fucking born for this, and that means I need to shut the rest of the shit off and focus.

Focus. Puck, patience. React.

“We’ve got this, Rush,” another teammate calls as he passes.

You’re damn right we do.

Oh, and you might want to turn down the dirty talk.

I try to block out the voice in my head, but I can’t. She had the fucking audacity to call me three hours before the game. A very important game, I might add. These days, every game is important considering we’re hovering at the edge of being in last place. Not only in the Western Conference but in the entire fucking league. If we don’t win damn near every game left, that’s exactly where we’ll be. Last fucking place. Two years in a row… I don’t want to think about the repercussions of that.

Now that I think about it, the kinkiness factor is a little much, too.

The lights in the arena shut off, the announcer rumbles our introduction, but as is generally the case, he sounds so disinterested he might as well simply call us “the other team.” However, it’s our cue to go out onto the ice, so we do. Since this is an away game, we’ll have to endure Detroit’s theatrical entrance while we do last-minute warm-ups.

Really, Kingston. Thanks for a good time. But I’ve got another man to warm my sheets, so your services are no longer needed.

The minute I step out onto the ice, I know this night’s going to be shit. I can feel it in my bones.

I stare blankly at the mirrored wall behind the bar. Every now and then, the bartender crosses in front of me, breaking my concentration. Studying the fucking bottles lining the glass shelf isn’t exactly rocket science, though.

I’ve been sitting here for the past half hour drinking a Sam Adams and trying to persuade my overtaxed brain to give up and call it a night. I declined the invite from some of the guys to go out for drinks. After our brutal loss, it would probably be smart to relax a bit, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

“Mount Rushmore?”

I cast a cautious glance over my shoulder and see a skinny brunette standing there, smiling at me. I cock an eyebrow, waiting.

“Can I get a picture?”

I want to tell her no. I want to tell her to leave me the fuck alone. I’d rather sit here and have a pity party without interruption, thank you very much. Instead, I turn on the stool and face the other girl holding the camera. The brunette leans in, getting rather cozy for a second while her friend figures out the iPhone. When it appears their acquired picture is all good, I sit up straight and wait for the questions to come. I’m quite familiar with having very little privacy, especially after a game.

Turning to the brunette, I wait, but…

I frown when she takes her friend’s arm and disappears as quickly as she arrived. She says nothing, doesn’t even look back.

“Okay then.” Pivoting back around, I grab my beer.

I’m tempted to put the cold bottle against my eye. The damn thing’s swollen and will likely be black by tomorrow. It’s a trophy I took home from tonight’s game, given to me by one of their asshole forwards who felt it necessary to bowl me over in the net. Most of the time, one of my teammates would right the wrong, but tonight I was too pissed off to let it go. Rather than take a deep breath, I discarded my mask and my gloves, and the two of us went to blows.

To add insult to injury, I was ejected from the game.

No doubt I deserved it. The black eye, for sure. So did the other guy. He took a five-minute major and got back in while I scolded myself repeatedly in the locker room. Regardless, we’ll both be sporting shiners tomorrow.

Glancing down at my phone, I check the time, then nod to the bartender to pay my tab.

I’m wicked tired and if I don’t give up now, I’m only asking for trouble.

Quite frankly, I’ve had enough of that today.

It’s definitely in my best interest to call it a night.