Page 14

CHAPTER 14

HEL

H el stood outside the door of Frost’s house. What was she doing here? Well, she knew what she was doing here. Coach Morgan had asked if she could go and check on Frost, as he was being released from the hospital, and the team were at an away game, so he couldn’t go himself.

She wished she was travelling with the team as she would rather be anywhere else instead of standing on Frost’s doorstep.

She took a few more deep breaths before she rang the bell. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. Then she could leave and have done her duty.

Reliving the feeling of his lips brushing over hers, she shivered despite the warmth of the evening. What would she say to him? Would he mention it? Actually, there was a chance with the injury and the drugs, he wouldn’t remember. Did she want him to remember or not? She wasn’t sure.

After what felt like a lifetime, while her brain whirled at a million miles an hour, Frost finally answered the door. One of his crutches clutched under his arm to help him walk. He stood and stared at her, not saying anything.

Hel shifted around uncomfortably. She shouldn’t have come. She should have made an excuse and told Coach Morgan no. But once he texted her Frost’s address, she hadn’t been able to help herself.

This was insanity, brought on by the last few days of stress trying to sort out everything after the house fire. Insurance claims for her things, talking to the fire service—who were pretty sure the ignition source was a cigarette butt on their front porch—and explaining to the landlord none of the registered tenants smoked. She told Emma it was her boyfriend who smoked, and it was up to her to tell the landlord that. Hel wanted nothing to do with it.

The silence stretched, and still he stared until Hel said, “I should go.”

She turned around and began to walk off the porch. This was stupid. He thought she was a desperate woman stalking him in his own home. Her ears started to ring, and the noises around her were muffled.

But Frost’s voice broke through the cacophony of her own mind. “Wait.”

Hel paused, unsure if she heard him correctly.

“Hel, wait. Come back.” This was followed by a clatter.

This time, she knew she had heard him. Turning slowly, she let her gaze lock with his. He was hanging onto the doorframe, his crutch having fallen to the floor.

“Hi.” She stood there staring dumbly at him.

“Hi,” he replied and then winced.

Hel dashed forward and back up the steps. “Are you okay?”

She snatched the crutch up off the floor and handed it back to him. When her hand brushed his, a tingle rushed up her arm, so she quickly tucked it into her armpit to stop herself from getting any dumb ideas, like trying to touch him.

“Yeah. I dropped my crutch, and my stupid leg is sore.” He braced onto his single crutch and hopped back over to the sofa.

While his back was to her, Hel let her eyes rove over him. Watching the tensing and relaxing of his muscles in his short-sleeved t-shirt as he hobbled along and admiring the solid physique that told her he was a professional athlete.

When he got back to the sofa, he flopped onto it with a grunt. “I would offer you a drink. But this chair is the end of the road for me. If you want something, feel free to go and help yourself.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Hel reassured him and sat down in the seat opposite.

Even though the sofa was massive, easily big enough for two people to stretch out fully on, she didn’t think she should sit close to him.

“What are you doing here?” Frost asked gruffly.

Hel managed to control her wince. Ouch, he definitely didn’t want her there.

“Coach Morgan asked me to check in on you while the team was away.”

“Oh.” His voice was flat.

Hel glanced around the room. Well, this was going just swimmingly. Whatever spark she felt on their previous meeting was clearly a figment of her imagination and his drugged state.

“Yeah. So, is there anything you need?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head.

Hel looked down at her hands and began picking at her nails. She had to ask him. She needed to find out how much he remembered from that night.

“About the other night—“ She started, but Frost broke in.

“I need to apologise,” he blurted.

“You don’t need to apologise. It was my fault as well.” Finally, she managed to look up and meet his eyes, and he looked—well, he looked totally bewildered.

“How was it your fault?”

“If I hadn’t… If I didn’t.” She waved her hand vaguely in the air, not wanting to finish any of those sentences. In the end, she took the easy way out. “What exactly do you remember?” Hel was pretty sure they were having slightly different conversations to each other.

“I was absolutely off my face on those drugs, and I have vague memories of you telling me I’d had enough of the green whistle and then me acting like a small child with candy and refusing to give it back.”

“Yes,” she said slowly and waited for him to continue talking, keeping her fingers crossed that he didn’t recall anything else that happened.

“I think I threw it on the floor to stop you from getting it.”

“You did,” she confirmed. Not mentioning that it had dropped out of his hand because they were staring into each other’s eyes.

“Yeah. Sorry, it’s all a bit fuzzy.” He shrugged. “But I know I was behaving like a total ass.”

Hel relaxed a little bit. He didn’t remember her practically throwing herself at him. A small part of her brain reminded her that he moved towards her. He kissed her.

Although she wouldn’t call it a kiss, their lips had barely brushed. Which, okay, was technically a kiss. But he didn’t remember, so it didn’t matter.

“That’s okay. Occupational hazard for me. I work in an emergency department. It’s a good day when no one takes a swing at me. Dropping the green whistle on the floor to annoy me doesn’t even register on my radar,” she reassured him.

But kissing did register on her radar, and she had replayed it over and over again. So many times, she was getting sick of telling herself to forget about it.

“People take swings at you?” Frost sounded surprised.

“Yeah. It’s part of the job. We see people at their absolute worst. The worst day of their lives, the worst pain, the worst drug trip, their worst mental breakdown. They often take it out on us.” Hel shrugged.

She wore trainers at work and was now excellent at getting out of the way, having developed a sixth sense of when it was time to run away and fetch the security guards to deal with the patient.

“That’s awful.” Frost sounded really concerned.

“Don’t you play a sport where you all seem to fight all the time?”

“Ahh. Yeah, but there are rules to the fights,” Frost explained, sitting forward on the sofa and putting his elbows on his knees.

He winced, and Hel didn’t even think, she was on her feet and moving around to the sofa.

“Why are you sitting like that? You should have your leg up. It’ll help the swelling.” She pushed him gently to lay back down and helped him lift his leg up onto the cushions. Then she grabbed one to put under it.

When he looked uncomfortable, she grabbed a few more and pushed them behind him, shuffling them around until she was satisfied.

For a moment, she forgot he wasn’t a patient but, in fact, a very handsome hockey player with the most gorgeous green eyes she had ever seen, which were now looking at her full of amusement.

She flushed and took a step away from him, then scuttled back to her chair.

“You were telling me about the fighting?” she prompted to distract from the awkward moment.

“Yeah. You’re only supposed to fight if both players agree.”

“And how do you agree? You shake hands and then put your fists up?” Hel held her hands up in front of her face as if she was a boxer.

Frost laughed. “Not quite. If both players drop their gloves, then that’s the signal you want to fight.”

“That sounds very civilised,” Hel said sarcastically. “The referee doesn’t mind?” she added.

“They mind,” Frost chuckled, then winced as the movement jolted his leg. “But it’s become so ingrained in the game they have to accept it.”

“That is truly bizarre.” Hel shook her head. She tried to avoid the fists that came her way at work at all costs. She couldn’t imagine voluntarily getting punched. “Do you get into many fights?”

“Not as many as I used to. I was much more hot-headed ten years ago.” He grinned ruefully.

“Has age slowed you down?” she asked cheekily.

Frost laughed again. “Yes. It has, and things which seemed so important at twenty-six, seem much less important at thirty-six.”

“People in their twenties really are morons,” Hel supplied.

“They really are,” Frost agreed.

“Speaking of. Where’s your girlfriend?” She couldn’t bring herself to say her stupid name.

“Did you call Star a moron?” Frost looked very serious, and Hel’s eyes widened.

“Oh no. No, no, no, no. I meant she was in her twenties.” Hel internally berated herself. While she did think the younger woman was a bit of a moron, it didn’t seem the best plan to say it to her boyfriend.

Frost’s expression changed in an instant from serious to his mouth pulling upwards. “Actually, you’re right. She’s a bit of a moron. And she also dumped me. So she’s now my ex-girlfriend.”

“Oh!” Hel couldn’t think of anything else to say.

But her brain was doing a very, very happy dance. He was single! Oh, hang about. He had been dumped. Maybe he didn’t want to be single and hadn’t meant what he said when he was drugged. But he called his ex a moron, so maybe—. And stop. She put a break on her whirling thoughts and concentrated on Frost again.

She was about to ask him how he felt about it when she remembered it wasn’t any of her business and instead said, “Do you want me to get you anything from the shops? I’m going after work tomorrow. I can drop you some things off?”

And it would be an excuse to come back and see him.

Frost was silent for a moment before he replied, “You know what. That would be good. It’ll only be a couple of things, like milk and bread. I’ve got a food delivery coming Friday. As long as it’s not out of your way, that is.”

“It’s not out of the way to my house.” Hel fudged the truth a little bit. It wasn’t out of the way to her house, but she wasn’t staying in her house as that was currently a pile of ash.

She grinned at him, and he smiled right back at her. Hel’s phone bleeped, and she ignored it. Then it bleeped again and again and again.

“Should you get that?” Frost indicated to her bag, where her phone seemed to have taken on a life of its own as message after message arrived.

“Probably.”

She rummaged through the bag, which resembled Mary Poppins with the amount of stuff she always carried around. There was half a medicine cabinet, a drink, snacks, lipstick, hair brush (not that she ever used that!), a packet of hair grips, hand sanitiser and right at the bottom of the debris, her phone.

She opened the messages. It was Clara.

‘OMG. The wedding planner is here.’

‘She’s a little bit scary.’

‘She told me off for telling her I didn’t care about flower colour.’

‘And she told me off again when I said I didn’t know what my wedding dream was.’

‘What even is that?’

‘My dream is to marry Taylor.’

‘Maybe I can make Gloria talk to her.’

‘Help! Gloria’s gone out.’

Hel snorted as she read the stream of messages. Looking up, she saw Frost staring at her intently.

“Clara is getting stressed about her wedding to Taylor.” While she explained, more messages arrived.

‘She’s now demanding I get Taylor on the phone.’

‘I can’t. He’s in Spain working. He’ll be asleep.’

‘Gloria isn’t answering her phone.’

‘What do I do???’

“I need to talk her down from her stressed-out place.” Hel figured she had better reply before Clara had a stroke.

Glancing up at Frost, she blinked in surprise to see his eyes were staring at her with an intensity that stole her breath. Rather than analyse it, she looked back down at her phone and began typing.

‘Calm down. Pick your favourite colour and tell her you want flowers that shade. Theme-wise, tell her, simple but elegant. You guys aren’t over-the-top people.’

Clara’s reply was immediate. ‘Thanks. I’ll do that. And she says I need to finalise the guest list today. Do you need a plus one?’

Hel hesitated, her fingers hovering as she decided what to reply. Without a conscious decision, her eyes rose to Frost. Maybe he would be her date? He wouldn’t be phased by the Hollywood side of things, as she had Googled him and found in the world of sports in America and Canada, he was a big deal. In fact, he was massive.

She shook her head to clear the errant thought. She couldn’t ask a man like Frost, who, while she had initially thought if he didn’t have a girlfriend, he might be someone she could get to know a bit better, she now realised the extent of his fame and how far out of her league he was, so she needed to put it out of her head.

Leaning back in her seat, Hel sighed. She didn’t want to go to the wedding alone. She wanted a date. Well, it was still weeks away, maybe she would meet someone before then that she could take.

She pictured her roster over the next few weeks. Between that and the extra work she was doing for the hockey team, there was no way she would have enough time to go on any dates, let alone date someone and invite them to a wedding.

‘I had better say no. I don’t want you to waste a place.’ Hel loved Clara, but she was so in love that it made her jealous at times, and it stung a little that she would be alone at her wedding.

‘I’ve got a great plan.’

Hel cringed when Clara’s message arrived, knowing her plan wouldn’t be great and would likely make her feel embarrassed. She just hoped Clara wouldn’t try to set her up on a pity date with one of Taylor’s actor friends. She didn’t think her self-esteem could cope with that.

Her eyes rose to Frost. Maybe she should ask him after all?

‘You should ask Frost.’ Clara sent her.

To see it in writing, rather than as an abstract idea in her head, made Hel blush to the tip of her ears.

“Is your friend sending you dirty messages?” Frost enquired, his voice holding a slight edge that had her glancing up.

Hel was surprised to see him staring at her, a frown pulling down on his brows. Was he annoyed someone might be sending messages which would make her blush?

“No dirty messages.” Hel fought hard to get the heat in her cheeks to recede. But the relieved look on his face didn’t help things.

Glancing down at her phone to avoid looking at Frost, she saw another message from Clara.

‘He’s single. I looked on Star’s social media, and she’s posted that she’s single and ready to mingle and is looking for an Aussie croc hunter.’

“She’s asking if I have a plus one for her wedding,” Hel lied.

“And do you?” Frost tilted his head to the side as he examined her.

“No. I’m single as a pringle.” Hel cringed. Why had that phrase left her mouth? It was something her dad would say. She was thirty-five, not a sixty-five-year-old grandad.

‘ASK HIM.’ Clara’s text message shouted at her, which didn’t help her flustered state, so she stuffed her phone back into her handbag after putting it on silent.

“Me too,” Frost replied wryly. “Can you add some Pringles to the bread and milk?” He grabbed his own mobile off the coffee table. “What’s your phone number? I can text you if I think of anything else.”

Hel’s flush roared back up her cheeks, and she spoke firmly to herself. He wanted her phone number for groceries. Nothing else. GROCERIES.

“Of course.” Hel was sure her voice sounded a little squeaky and hoped he didn’t notice. She gave him her number, then got to her feet. “Right. I’ve bothered you enough. I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Don’t stand up. I’ll see myself out.”

She felt her phone vibrate in her bag and gave it a disgusted look. It would be Clara nagging her, and she would probably recruit Sadie to join in.

Rushing away from Frost, she waved over her shoulder when he called out goodbye.