Play the Man Read online

  “Promises, promises,” she sighed with a playful eye roll. Jenna took a seat on the couch next to Alex and turned the laptop toward her so she could talk to Ryan. Alex began to holler and yell, about how it was his computer and his house so she needed to start acting more submissive, but she held up a stern finger and he shut his mouth. “I’m the one taking care of you today, you gimp. Be nice to me, or I’ll mix arsenic in your applesauce.”

  “What has got you so wound up today, Jenna? You’re abnormally feisty. I kinda like it though,” Ryan laughed, waggling his eyebrows at her.

  “Speaking of promises, I’ll gladly tell you what’s bugging me. Your mother called me. Again. To ask if we’d set a wedding date. Again. You told me you’d talk to her, Ryan.”

  “I did, babe. Yesterday.”

  Jenna frowned. She thought that Ryan had slacked on his word, but if he were telling the truth, then nothing was going to stop the onslaught of questions. She just couldn’t take it anymore, because they were driving her clinically insane. “Well, apparently it didn’t work. Which means I think we need to go to plan B.”

  “Plan B?”

  “Yes. Let’s do it. Let’s just pick a date.”

  “But I said—”

  “I know, Ry, I know,” she interrupted. Jenna softened her voice. She didn’t want to nag, but she couldn’t take the incessant badgering from their mothers anymore. “You don’t want to make the plans under duress. But seriously, I can’t handle your mom anymore. I love her, you know that, but she won’t leave me alone and I need to study.”

  “Then just don’t answer the phone. Problem solved.”

  She let out a long breath. “That doesn’t solve anything. I really don’t want to be the bad guy, but you’re not getting the brunt of the attack because you’re not here. Your mother leaves you alone.”

  “Can I Skype you later, Jenna?” he asked, not wanting to deal with the problem then and there. “We’ll talk about it tonight.”

  “I don’t think so. Every time we talk on Skype, you want to do other things,” she scolded him. She wanted to say that Ryan thought naked web-conferencing outweighed every other possible conversation topic or progress toward her eventual wedding day, but she wasn’t going to say that in front of Alex.

  “Can you blame me?” His voice was a smooth purr. He leaned in toward the camera and waggled his eyebrows. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too. I know you don’t care about any of the planning. I don’t blame you, Ryan, because I know this kind of stuff doesn’t interest you. But if we get this out of the way, then everyone will back off. I need to be able to give your mom a date, and I need to know how big of a guest list we’re talking about. It’ll make it look like we’re taking this seriously and planning, and they’ll leave us alone. So let’s do it. I just need two small answers. You know I want soon and small, but this is your wedding day, too, so I need your input.”

  “You know me. All I care about is the cake,” Ryan laughed. He stopped his chuckle when he saw the look on her face. “Okay, okay. Well, I like the number 30.” It was his jersey number, the same number he had had since his junior hockey days. “So I wanna get married on the thirtieth of the month.”

  “Okay, good, that’s a start,” she replied, tapping her finger against her lips as she thought. “A thirtieth is fine by me. So let’s pick the month.”

  “Well, Valentine’s Day is in February, so why not that month?” he asked, fighting to keep a straight face.

  Jenna’s heart beat a little more quickly in her chest. This was it; he was finally taking this seriously. She’d get a reprieve from the pestering. And she was starting to get excited about the prospect of beginning her wedding planning. Her engagement finally began to feel real. “February? That’s so soon. But if we keep it small, then I think we can do it.” She grabbed a pen and began to write down the date. That’s when it dawned on her. “There is no February 30th. You jerk! You think this is some kind of joke, don’t you?”

  Ryan flashed her his impish grin. “What? Don’t you think it’s as brilliant as I do?”

  Alex burst out into a fit of laughter, clutching his sides as they began to burn.

  “Don’t make a mockery of this, Ryan. I know this doesn’t affect you as much, but can you just do this for me? Think about a date, and think about the guest list.”

  “I want everyone there,” he interjected, immediately thinking about all the people he would invite. “Our families and friends—I want to share it with them all.”

  “So, like, one hundred people, tops?” she asked.

  “For family, maybe. But don’t forget all the guys.”

  “The guys?”

  “Yeah. The team. And then there’s the coaches, the staff, management....”

  “Are you serious? You’re talking hundreds of people. In the plural.”

  “So? More people equal more presents.”

  Jenna leaned against the back of the couch. “I really just need you to be serious about this for half a second. One straight answer. Is that too much to ask for?”

  “Yes,” Alex chimed in.

  “Frazier, go jump off a cliff. And Ryan,” she said, sick of having to do this over and over, “please think about it. I want to be able to have a conversation about this when you get back.”

  “Okay. When I come back, we’ll talk about wedding stuff. Will that make you happy?”

  “A decision now would make me happiest, but if that’s the best you can do....”

  “Good. It’s settled then. When I’m back in Chicago, we’ll start planning.” Then he smiled. “So how about the Skype date later? You, me, and a bottle of red. Say eight o’clock. I really like not having you here, Freeze. I get to have the room to myself whenever I need it.”

  Jenna blushed. Of course everyone knew that she and Ryan had sex; there was no way that they wouldn’t. But it was embarrassing for Ryan to talk about it so openly in front of someone else, especially someone as despicable as Alex. She could only imagine how the guys talked in the dressing room when she wasn’t around. “We’ll see,” she said, and then she quickly said I love you before she closed the laptop.

  Chapter 5

  Jenna tried to look nonchalant and as calm as possible as she waited with Alex for the bus to pull into the United Center. The team’s plane had landed at O’Hare on time, and the boys were being shuttled back to the arena to be reunited with their families. It didn’t make a lot of sense to Jenna that it worked that way, but she concluded that it meant the players didn’t have to worry about parking at the airport. She stood there quietly and ignored Alex, who was just as excited for the team’s return. She was happy that Alex would finally start leaving her alone. He was bored without the guys around to keep him company, and Jenna was a poor substitute for his friends and teammates.

  When the bus pulled into the parking lot, all the awaiting family members began to perk up, and Jenna was no different. She was excited and anxious to see her fiancé again; she was surprised by how much she had missed him, even though he had only been gone for five days. She looked for Ryan as guys started to pour out from the bus and find their loved ones.

  Nick stepped off and didn’t bother to look around. No one was there to greet him and welcome him back to Chicago. There wasn’t a girlfriend to bum rush him with hugs and kisses, and his family was back home in Kamloops. He was a grown man, fully capable of taking care of himself, and he certainly had enough on his plate without having to deal with the additional hassle of a relationship. He scanned the crowd as he headed farther into the parking lot toward his car, and he spotted Jenna waiting with Alex. He walked over to her.

  She smiled and nodded at him in a silent hello. He smiled back and asked, “How’s it going, Mrs. Linsenbigler?” Nick was immediately met with a pointed, scathing look, to which he instinctively raised his hands in the air in self-defense. “Whoa. Whoa, what did I do?”

  Jenna shook her head, and Alex threw in his two cents. “Ah, those two are
having marital issues already. Best not to interfere, Marty.”

  Nick didn’t reply. He knew when to keep his mouth shut. Nick knew that Ryan cared about Jenna, but he also knew that Ryan couldn’t make himself care about having to set a date when he knew that he would be marrying Jenna but felt like he didn’t have the time to worry about stuff like dates and guest lists. Honestly, Nick thought that Ryan could hardly concentrate and focus on being a hockey player and being the best role model for his team, so maybe Jenna and his mother were asking for too much of him by demanding his input on something he didn’t think was important to deal with at that time.

  Jenna had become very sensitive to the topic of her pending wedding. She was sick of all the questions from everyone who wanted updates on the progress of the planning, and she had started to want to begin the preparation for her own reasons beyond satisfying her mother and future mother-in-law. The fact that she was engaged had sunk in while Ryan was away, and she wanted to do the things that all brides wanted to do: to try on wedding gowns, scout locations, and book a romantic honeymoon. But she couldn’t do any of that yet—not until they settled on a date. While she wanted to be married to Ryan, and had already been wanting that for years, she would’ve been fine with a date a long ways down the road so long as they had set something in stone.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. The words spilled out of her mouth before she even realized she was saying them; something about Nick made her open up. “Why is picking a date such a hassle that he can’t think about it right now? I know he’s busy and focused on the season starting, but is it really that difficult to find a day that we can agree on? It’s not at all as complicated as he’s making it out to be. We could go to the Cook County Bureau of Statistics today and do it, for all I care. Just him, me, our driver’s licenses, and thirty bucks—and I know that because I looked it up. You know, I’m not asking for him to pick out flower arrangements or color schemes or figure out the seating charts. This should be so simple. And until we pick a date, I can’t plan anything. I can’t book venues, order invitations, or any of that stuff. And I just want to marry him already and be able to call him my husband. Is that too much to ask for?”

  She let out a deep breath after that fast and unexpected admission. Every word of it was true; she didn’t care about the wedding itself, just as long as Ryan was the groom and she was the bride. But his mother had e-mailed her checklists, and each of them required a date to get them started. How was she supposed to complete the tasks that needed to be finished six months in advance if she didn’t know when six months was in advance was? After eight years together, Jenna didn’t see any point in dragging out the process any longer; she was ready to get married to Ryan.

  Neither Alex nor Nick responded once they saw how serious she was about it. “It’s not a rhetorical question, Nicky. Do you think I’m asking too much of him?”

  He was caught; he had to answer. Nick felt bad for Jenna. It was evident how much she loved Ryan, and if it mattered that much to her then maybe Ryan should just do it to please her. “No, Jenna, I don’t think it’s too much.”

  “Thank you, Nicky,” she said, flashing him a smile and feeling reassured. She hadn’t realized until just then that she had begun to feel insecure about the situation.

  “You pussy,” Alex laughed while rolling his eyes. “You’re such a woman. You would say something like that.”

  “Shut up, Frazier,” Jenna admonished him. “Nicky, thanks for making me feel like I’m not crazy. You’re going to make some girl very happy someday.”

  Nick rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like he couldn’t go out and have his pick of the puck bunny elite, because he certainly could; it was just that he didn’t want that. If there was only one thing Nick had learned while observing the way Jenna and Ryan had been acting lately, it was that relationships took a lot of work and effort. He didn’t have any of that to spare, because he wanted to win that damn Cup this year. “Thanks.”

  “I mean it,” she said, touching his arm. Nick looked at her hand on him before he swallowed and looked up into her eyes. “Sweet, sensitive, and you know when to listen to a woman. I wish Ryan were more like you. Marrying you would be easy,” she laughed, letting go of him and looking back toward the door of the bus in anticipation of Ryan’s appearance, completely unaware of the can of worms she just opened.

  When Jenna removed her hand from Nick’s arm, he looked up at her looking for Ryan. She wished her boyfriend were like him, because it would be easy to marry him. Her comments weren’t made to provoke this line of thinking, but they did. Now Nick was heading down the rabbit hole into an alternate dimension, one in which Jenna was waiting for him to get off the bus to go home with him. And how it would feel to come home after a skate around to her in their home. What it would be like if they were together, what it would be like to hold her, touch her, kiss her, and so much more. Everything that being a couple entailed. It sounded... wonderful. Suddenly, he wanted that. He wanted her.

  Nick had never thought of Jenna that way before. She was always Biggie’s Girl. The captain’s girl. Hell, half the guys on the team probably didn’t even know her name because that’s all she was known as. He only knew her a little better than the rest of the guys because they were often thrown together at different functions because they were the only wallflowers in that group, the outsiders who watched the antics of the other people.

  And why not? What was so wrong with thinking they’d work well together? They were so alike. Their personalities, their senses of humor, their mannerisms.... That’s why they always seemed to find each other at the bar or at the team functions. They truly enjoyed each other’s company, even if they only spent time together in those very situations. Nick and Jenna could fit together just as well as—if not better than—the way Ryan and Jenna fit together.

  But Jenna was taken. She had a man who she cared about, and that man cared about her too, even if he couldn’t care about her the way he should. Ryan should be making her interests and feelings and desires his priority, because that’s what she deserved. That’s when Nick decided that Jenna deserved far better than Ryan, even though Nick himself would never get the chance to be that for her. Nick would never let himself be that for her. He wouldn’t do that to Ryan, his teammate; he shouldn’t do that to himself; and he couldn’t do that to the team.

  It didn’t just matter that Jenna was Ryan’s girlfriend; it mattered that she was his captain’s girlfriend. And Nick was an alternate captain of that same team. He was partly responsible for keeping the cohesiveness of the team, as well as for setting a good example in order to lead the other players. Crushing on a teammate’s girl was not acceptable. It was improper. Inappropriate. And she wasn’t just a fling or a temporary girlfriend; Jenna was his fiancée, and she was apparently desperate to marry Ryan. Even though it suddenly didn’t make any sense to Nick why Jenna would want to marry him. It took him eight years to make enough of a commitment to her to propose, and now he didn’t even want to take the extra step and set a date. It was like Ryan was doing everything in his power to delay the marital process.

  Nick kept his eyes trained on her even as Ryan jumped off the bus and headed in their direction. Jenna pouted, crossed her arms across her chest again, and stayed as still as a statue as he walked toward her with his arms outstretched. It surprised him when she didn’t reach out and run toward like she always did. His expression fell and he started to worry. “Hey, babe. What’s wrong?”

  “I think you and I should have a talk.”

  “A talk?” Ryan knew from experience that Jenna’s “talks” were more like lectures, and nothing good ever came out of them. He sighed and tried to play it off. “And to think I was looking forward to this,” he laughed, ignoring her weak verbal and physical protests as he reached around her and brought their bodies together in a lengthy embrace. Once she was resting against him, her willpower and attempts to stay mad melted away, and she relaxed her tense muscles. She breathed in the scent
of him and realized again how much she had missed him. “That’s more like it,” he teased, planting a quick kiss on the top of her head.

  “We’re still going to have our talk,” she mumbled against his chest. Jenna was determined to drag anything out of him at any cost, but she wasn’t nearly as angry at him as she wanted to be. Who was she kidding? She never stayed mad at him for long. She couldn’t. That’s how they could work so well together; even though one was sure to get on the other’s nerves, it never lasted long before they were kissing and making up. Ryan was too easy going to hold grudges, and that just rubbed off on Jenna.

  “Of course we are. I couldn’t imagine otherwise,” he laughed again while giving her an extra squeeze. Then he let go and looked at Alex. “How’s the knee, Freeze?”

  “Still attached.”

  “That’s good,” he said, and then directed his next words to Jenna again. “Ready to go home?”

  “Yes. Are you ready to have that talk?”

  Ryan had no intentions of having this discussion now. Not after a long flight from Vancouver back to Chicago. He’d hardly slept on the flight, knowing that it would be late evening when they arrived. The best way to beat the jet lag would be to stay awake during the flight and then get a full night’s worth of rest in Central Time. He was thoroughly exhausted and just wanted to relax in bed with his girl.

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and dragged his bag behind them as they walked toward her parked car. Alex should have followed them, but he didn’t. “Frazier. If you want a ride back home, you’d better get your ass in gear. I’m not waiting around for you, gimp or not,” Jenna called over her shoulder.

  “You two lovebirds go ahead. I don’t want to be in the car while you guys bicker about ministers and caterers. Marty’ll drive me home, right?” he asked him.