Page 7

CHAPTER 7

HEL

“H i. Doctor Rayleigh?” A man with a camera slung over his shoulder strode along the corridor toward Hel, waving at her.

“Yes?” Hel stopped and stepped to the side to let the other people rushing along the arena corridor flow past her.

The man smiled at Hel. “Great. I didn’t have a chance to catch up with you at the last game. My name’s Greg. I’m a cameraman and producer. I work for Icehouse Films. We’re making a documentary following Jake Forster as he moves from the NHL to the AIHL.”

“Sorry, but what’s the AIHL?” Hel knew what the NHL was, but the AIHL was new to her.

“The Australian Ice Hockey League,” Greg explained slowly, a frown pulling at his brow. “You are Doctor Rayleigh? You’re the team doctor?”

“Yeah. That’s me. Sorry, I’m new to this ice hockey stuff.” She waved her hand vaguely around at the corridor of the rink. “Long story short. The doctor they had got sick and couldn’t do the job any more. I stepped in at the last minute. I know a lot of medicine and absolutely no ice hockey.” Hel shrugged ruefully.

She had meant to research a bit about ice hockey. Maybe read up on the rules or something. Because last week, she had no clue at all about what was happening. Or why players kept leaping on and off the ice. It was a fast game, and she couldn’t keep up.

“Yeah, makes sense.” Greg nodded. “I have a release form I need you to sign.”

He placed the camera down on the floor, and reached into his back pocket, pulling out some crumpled papers and a pen, then holding them out to her.

“Why do I need to sign a release form?” Hel didn’t take the papers. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and stared at Greg.

“We’re filming all the time, so it’s standard as you’ll be caught in the background of some shots. Also, after your heroic save last week, I would love to get a short interview with you.” Greg pushed the paperwork out again.

“I’m sorry. But I don’t want to give an interview.” Hel shook her head. She did not want to talk on camera. Not in any way, shape or form.

“Are you sure?” Greg asked.

“Yeah. Sorry, it’s not something I want to do. I hope you don’t mind.” Hel grimaced in apology, but she couldn’t think of anything worse than speaking on camera.

“No. That’s fine. Totally fine.” Greg’s eyes darted around as if he was trying to work out where to go from there. “Can we use the footage with you in?”

Hel thought about it for a moment. The look on Greg’s face was so pleading that she finally huffed and said, “Sure.”

“Great.” The cameraman thrust the crumpled paper into Hel’s hand. “This is our standard release form. It says you give us permission to use any footage you’re in while we’re filming Jake.”

Hel took the paperwork this time and scanned it. The agreement was short and as Greg had described. It stated she wouldn’t be the focus of any filming, but she agreed for them to use any footage of her that was caught incidentally.

Not seeing any problem with that, she signed and handed it back.

“That’s great. We’re trying to keep this all as natural as possible, so please feel free to ignore me from now on,” Greg stated as he stuffed the paperwork into his back pocket.

Hel eyed the camera dubiously. “Yeah, that’s going to be tough.”

“Hel.” The assistant coach yelled to her from down the corridor. “The boss wants you in the locker room for a meeting.”

“Sure,” Hel called back. “Sorry,” she said to Greg, who waved his hand and picked up his camera, ready to follow her.

The assistant coach, Adam? Or Aaron? Or perhaps Arthur—it began with an A—called for her again.

When Hel got to the door, she put her hand on the man’s arm to prevent him from entering the changing rooms without her.

“I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.”

She hated forgetting people’s names, but unfortunately, it wasn’t one of her strengths. She would meet someone and be so caught up with introducing herself without looking like an idiot that she would forget their names the second they told her them.

“It’s Steve.” He gave her a little head nod.

Right, Steve, she hadn’t even been close. She followed him without comment, she needed to pay more attention to names.

The first thing Hel noticed as walked through the door of the locker room was the smell. It was all pervasive and reminded her of old socks or wet dogs. She controlled her urge to wrinkle her nose, which she was well practised at, as in work, she was subjected to far worse smells than a few sweaty men.

When she got over the smell, she started to examine the room, and the first thing she saw was a nearly naked hockey player, then another and another. Blinking a couple of times, she stood there a little dumbly.

Without her conscious control, her eyes sought out Frost, who thankfully had his pants on. Her gaze lingered for longer than it should have on his muscled torso, which had as many tattoos as his arms. She studied the fading bruises peppering his skin, assuming they were from some of the heavy hits he took during the previous game.

Finally, her eyes rose to his face, and he was staring straight at her, one eyebrow raised. She met his piercing green irises for a moment before she dropped her eyes to her shoes.

He had a girlfriend. He literally told her he wasn’t single, so she should stop looking at him. She corrected herself. She hadn’t just been looking at him, she had been ogling him. Examining his muscles, staring at his tattoos, studying his bruises. Definitely ogling.

Whelp, she was a total idiot. He picked her up to save his teammate, not for any other reason. Although a small part of her brain told her how much she enjoyed being swept off her feet, even if it was for life-saving purposes.

“Put your clothes on, boys. You’re making the lady blush,” Coach Morgan yelled at all the players.

Fabulous, she had hoped the flush she could feel on her cheeks was not noticeable. Clearly, she was delusional.

She needed to get it together. She had seen hundreds, if not thousands, of naked people in her career. This was no different. She silenced the treacherous voice in her head that wanted to tell her it was different, she had never seen Frost undressed before. He has a GIRLFRIEND, she reminded herself.

Once the rustling stopped, suggesting they were all now fully clothed, she lifted her eyes and looked back at the players. She surveyed the faces staring back at her, skipping over Frost as she already felt like an idiot.

Rocky waved at her enthusiastically, and she answered his greeting with her own wave and a grin.

They all looked so young, probably in their mid or early twenties, and despite most of them being more than six feet tall, a lot of them didn’t appear to have quite grown into their bodies yet, still having boyish looks.

Except for Frost, he was a man. Nope, not thinking about him, she told herself again and didn’t let her eyes drift back to him however much they wanted to.

“Doc has an update on Aiden.” Coach told them without preamble.

Hel wondered if she should ask him his first name, but realised no one ever called him anything but Coach Morgan, so there didn’t seem any point in asking.

“Hi. I’ve spoken to Aiden, and he’s given me permission to update you all on his current condition.” Her gaze drifted along the row and snagged on Frost. She let herself look at him for a moment, but no longer than she looked at any of the other players. “His doctors have diagnosed him as having had a condition called Commotio Cordis. This is basically a fancy way of saying the puck hit him at the wrong millisecond in the electrical cycle of his heart. It means there’s nothing wrong with his heart. He was just very, very unlucky.”

She spent a few more minutes explaining and answering all the questions the team threw at her before Coach Morgan took over.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering what this means for his future on our team, and at this point, the honest answer is, I don’t know. I’ve spoken to Aiden, and he’s going to take a few weeks off to recover and consider what he’s going to do.”

Hel had chatted to the Coach at length about this, pointing out that the incident would have a massive impact on Aiden’s mental game and might even mean he wouldn’t want to play again. She advised him that Aiden should see a psychologist, and he had agreed.

Hel stood awkwardly through the rest of the team briefing for the game, trying not to yawn as they spoke about a sport she didn’t understand. As her mind wandered, so did her eyes, and every time they passed over Frost, he was looking straight back at her. No, he must be looking at the Coach, she was standing right next to him.

She glanced back at him to check. He was definitely looking at her. Their eyes locked, and she couldn’t look away.