Page 14 of A Vegas Crush Collection #3

the new gm of the crush

Devon

That did not just happen.

But it just did!

The extremely hot guy I had sex with a few weeks ago was not just in my office.

But he just was.

Oh my God. This is not possible. He can’t be the new GM.

I sit back down in my office chair, totally shell-shocked.

I mean, I knew Bud had retired at the end of the season and they had been interviewing for the role around that time.

And they sent out an email a week ago saying they were bringing on board someone named Grantham Gerard.

Frankly, I didn’t pay much attention and it didn’t have a picture attached.

Oh, Christ on a ham sandwich. This is a whole hot mess.

Despite the duds I’ve dated over the years, and the fact that I’m divorced, I still have hope that true love and soulmates exist. I may have joked around here and there that I’d like to find my own hockey hunk to enjoy, but I wasn’t at all serious in regards to players who play for the Vegas Crush.

Pam’s bachelorette party comes to mind when Scarlett told us how she slept with Viktor in a moment of sexual weakness.

It sounded romantic and all, but for one irrevocable rule. I never, ever, ever date my coworkers.

Plenty have asked or flirted, and others may have flouted the non-fraternization policy, but not me. No way. I’m not at all interested in crossing that line. I am a rule follower to the nth degree.

I am genuinely happy for the people who have fallen in love around here.

Truly. But I’m only interested in keeping things totally professional here at work.

I just want to do my job and go home. No added worry or stress, which dating a colleague would certainly create for my anxious self.

No. Nope. Dating a colleague is not on my to-do list.

Not that I’m dating Grant Gerard.

The new General Manager of the Vegas Crush Organization.

Who is gorgeous, nice, and a total rock star in bed.

Oh Christ.

Nope. Nope. I will not flip out here. We were two consenting adults.

He wasn’t the GM yet when it happened. We had a fun night, and we agreed that was all.

I gave him my number on a whim, and he didn’t call, and I’m okay with that.

Honestly, I’m glad for it. It made things easier.

Cleaner. And especially now. Thank God his fear about the condom breaking didn’t end up being an issue.

I think that’s the second time I’ve thought that, too, but it’s even more imperative now.

Which means, we both have to keep things professional. No lusting after the sexy new GM.

His demeanor was so weird today, anyway. He was short and closed off and clearly uncomfortable. Which I get. I sure as hell wasn’t expecting to see him, so why would he be expecting to see me?

And he needs to distance himself. He’s the GM.

FFS—For. Fuck’s. Sake. He cannot cross boundaries like that.

Grant is the new guy with lots to prove and this is probably a very big deal for his career.

No messing around with the staff. That would be a bad look right off the bat.

Well, it would always be a bad look. Players and staff are one thing.

I’ve never seen anyone from management go down the fraternizing path.

It takes several steadying breaths for me to get my pulse back to normal, to clear the panic and anxiety. I pull up a search engine and plug in Grant’s name. I don’t know why I didn’t in the first place, when the email first went out.

Pictures from all throughout his career pop up. Good lord, he’s gorgeous. Heat and want pools between my legs, and I squirm uncomfortably. I have seen all of that man. Every glorious inch. Of every part. In living color.

Flushed, I turn my attention to the bio I should have read in the company email about his hiring.

Thirty-nine years old, he’s one of those men who only gets better looking with age.

Still, he’s eleven years older than me, not that it matters because we won’t be anything but colleagues from here on out.

Reading more, I find out he played center for three NHL teams, played for the Cup twice, winning once, and played for the gold medal-winning Canadian team in the Olympics.

A year later, he had a career-ending injury and went to the AHL as a middle-manager.

A good one, I take it, from the comments calling him a “rising star in sports management.” I’m sure he’s good at what he does, but I can only imagine how hard that transition to AHL management must have been for him.

A guy like that? With a player pedigree like that?

It’s probably a little like being taken out of the Wall Street high-rise with a view of the city and being sent to the smallest, darkest, dreary office to peddle penny stocks in the pre-Internet era.

So, yes, the Crush GM position is a good one, a real opportunity to use his experience on and off the ice for the hottest team in the game. I can’t get in his way.

I don’t notice Pam until she’s right behind me, her voice nearly rocketing me out of my chair.

“Watching porn in here?” she asks with a laugh. I try, futilely, to close out my browser windows, but Pam sees the multiple pictures I have of Grant Gerard and gives a long, low whistle. “You were stalking our hot, new GM, I see. Carry on then.”

“No, I wasn’t stalking.” I feel the heat in my cheeks giving away my lie.

“Girl,” she says, hands on her hips. “He’s a Clark Kent for sure. I’d be stalking him, too, if I was single.”

“I wasn’t…” I can’t even finish the sentence. “He was just in here to meet me, and I was embarrassed because I barely skimmed the email about him when he got hired. I was reading his bio.”

“Reading his bio,” Pam emphasizes, making air quotes. “And looking at PR photos from his Olympic glory days.”

She cackles and steps back around my desk.

“Was there a business purpose for your visit, Pamela?” I ask with a forced smile; I know she knows I’m giving her only because it’s past time for her to stop harassing me with this.

“No,” she says with her usual snark. “I actually came to chat about the hot, new GM, but it seems you have already become acquainted.”

“Only for like two seconds. He was stand-offish.”

“No, he was not,” Pam says, pursing her lips. “He was charming and smart and awesome.”

“Not to me. He said hello, tuned out when I was talking, and then shot out of here like he was worried he might have gotten cooties.”

I don’t mention that it was totally because of his panic over seeing a woman he’d had a one-night stand with a few weeks ago standing in front of him in his new place of employment.

“You sure we met the same guy?” Pam asks.

I raise a shoulder.

“Well, hmm.”

I go back to my computer. My actual work, and studiously ignore her. Pam is too observant for my liking, especially now, when I’m wet between the legs and totally ready to go home and work off some of this discomfort with my vibrator in the privacy of my own home.

She sits for long enough to make me further uncomfortable. When I look up, asking, “What?” She just laughs some more.

As she walks out, she says, “Don’t drink the water, Pearson. You might be next.”

I hear her laughter all the way down the hall.

As hard as I try, I simply cannot get my head into my work after all of this craziness. It’s almost lunchtime, so I grab my phone and weave my way through the catacombs and out into the daylight. I call Gia, needing someone to talk to about this crazy twist in my life plot.

“You never call me during the workday,” is how my friend answers her phone. “Are you at the hospital or something?”

“No. I can’t call my best friend over my lunch break?”

“You’re you, so no. What’s up?”

“Um, remember that guy? From the hotel?”

“Hot-sex guy? All-night-long guy?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”

“He called you finally? Or he’s married or something and his wife came to wreck you with a hatchet?”

“What? No. No wife. No hatchet.”

“But?”

“But he’s the new general manager for the Crush.”

The line is silent for a few seconds. Then, “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. That’s about the same reaction I had when he showed up in my office with the team’s owner this morning.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“Yeah. He acted super weird. Shook my hand for a beat too long. Tuned out in a way that made me think he was calculating his escape route.”

“Probably wasn’t expecting his tasty midnight snack to be back on the plate for breakfast.”

“It’s not—I’m not his midnight snack, you fool.”

Gia laughs. “Come on, you know you’d hit that again.”

“Sure, if he wasn’t like the boss of all of us. I would never sleep with a coworker. Never.”

“Well, guess what? You already did.”

A weird, strangled groan escapes my throat. “Gia, that is not me. I am not that person. I’m not even the person who does one-night stands with handsome strangers I meet in hotel bars. He was my first.”

“Yes, I am aware that you’re a big fuddy-duddy and that this was out of your precious comfort zone.”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

Gia laughs. “I’m always a jerk. You love me anyway.”

“What do I do?”

“You do your job, mind your business. How often did you interact with the old GM?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Well, there you go, then. You’ll probably never see him. Top management doesn’t slum it in the basement at any business, right?”

“I guess…” I’m not so sure about that. In fact, I think Grant will be a vastly different manager than Bud ever was.

Bud, though competent at the job, sort of bumbled around, seeming a bit out of his element on the admin side of things and a little lost in his interactions with personnel.

Bud Bellikowski was old-school hockey—a guy who climbed up through the player trenches.

No Boston University degree for him. Grant Gerard, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of bumbling.

Nor does he come off as a hesitant administrator.

He’s young and energetic. Sharp and focused in all the ways that Bud could never be, and I’m thinking he’ll pay far more attention than his predecessor ever did.

“You’ll be fine. You didn’t know who he was when it happened and if I know you, you won’t let it happen again now that you do know who he is. You’re disciplined that way.”

“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath, trying to convince myself of her logic. “You’re right. This is in my control. And he’s a professional, too. This is a big deal for him and he’s not going to cross a line. It will be fine.”

As we hang up, I head back to my office, hoping against hope that my—it will be fine—turns out to be true.