Page 3

How are you here already?

Remy

By the time I landed, I had a few messages to deal with.

The team had scrounged up an address for me, and someone named Elsa Harbourn sent it to me.

I didn’t know shit about Austin, so the street name meant nothing and I had no idea what kind of place I was going to.

The animal transportation company notified me that a vet had signed off on Beast and they would be shipping him down once I sent word.

I’d need to do that ASAP. That animal had issues on his issues, and being in a kennel environment wouldn’t help him.

No one had recognized me on the flights, but I was used to that.

I wasn’t one of the stars of the NHL, and over the summer I let my hair and beard grow.

Instead of the suits we wore to travel, or a hockey jersey, I was in khaki shorts and a faded T-shirt.

I didn’t even recognize myself in the reflective surfaces around the airport.

I hadn’t had a chance to hit up a barber before my flights, but I should make that a priority now that I was here.

Once I’d picked up my luggage, I was met by a young man holding up a sign with Daniel Rempel on it.

I walked over to him. “That’s me.”

He ran a surprised glance over me but put on a polite smile. “How was your flight?”

I shrugged. “Fine.” This guy didn’t want a real answer.

“If you come with me, I’ll drop you off at your new home.” He was so bright and perky he had to be an intern.

I followed him out to a black SUV. Austin was hot as hell compared to the cottage where I’d been all summer. I shifted my grip on my duffel and waited for him to open the vehicle up.

Once the bags were tossed in the back, we got in and he turned up the AC. We pulled out of the airport and onto a main road. He seemed confident driving, so I asked, “What’s this place like that I’m going to?”

He shot me a glance. “I don’t know. Elsa, the GM’s assistant, is in charge of that. Because of the dog situation we couldn’t use the usual hotels. All I know is that it’s a private residence. But it’s in an expensive neighborhood, if that helps.”

I didn’t need anything fancy. I wasn’t sure how Beast was going to behave in a new environment, so something more affordable might help if he decided to chew on the furniture, but I didn’t have a lot of options.

The areas we drove through kept getting nicer as we got closer to the location on his GPS.

Expensive hardly touched these places. The car pulled up in front of iron gates.

Through them I could see huge, immaculately maintained grounds.

This place screamed money. Who the hell lived here, and why was I getting to stay?

Did it belong to one of my new teammates?

One of the stars? It didn’t look big enough to belong to a billionaire team owner.

I’d been given the security code for the gates in an email, and they swung open after I’d input them. I’d never lived in a place like this. The only reason I wasn’t freaking out was because the email also indicated I’d be staying in the carriage house, not the main residence.

Who the fuck had a carriage house?

We turned right when the driveway split, just after we got through the gates, and stopped in front of what had to be my new home.

It was two stories tall, white stucco with clay tiles on the roof.

The building had a staircase to the side, and the main doors were open in front of us.

Most people would have been happy to have this as their home, let alone the huge place I could see to the left through the trees.

The driver got out and started to remove my bags.

He left the gear bag in the back, saying he’d been instructed to take it to the team’s equipment room.

We could hear a grinding noise coming out of the open doors, and for a moment I wondered if this was the right place.

The gate code worked, so this must be it, but why was someone inside working?

They weren’t renovating the place for me, surely.

I thanked the driver and offered him a tip. I watched him leave before I turned to check out my new home. My duffel had wheels, and I threw the bag with my suits over my shoulder as I headed for the doors, fingers crossed that someone inside could help me out.

When I looked through the doors I found a workshop, not a residence, and it was big, the whole bottom floor of the building.

I hoped upstairs had a bedroom, because this place wasn’t ready for anyone to live in.

On the wall was a board of instruments, tools for someone who worked around the house.

Below the tools were benches, with machines and shit on them.

There were stairs to the second floor, a kitchenette, and a door to what could be a bathroom at the back.

My dad had been strictly a “call people when something goes wrong” guy, so I’d never learned to use a hammer or drill the way some of my teammates had growing up, but even to my untrained eyes the stuff in here looked different to the hammers and saws I’d seen at people’s houses.

There were a couple of larger machines on one table—I had no idea what they’d do—and pieces of wood, glue and clamps, everything clean and well cared for. I saw guitars hanging up, as well as the one on the central workbench, which had the strings off and looked bare and empty.

Someone was standing in front of one of the machines, the one making noise. She—I was pretty sure it was a she—was maybe five foot six, with baggy jeans and a T-shirt, hair covered by a dusty bandana, and big headphones on, to protect her ears.

I tried to say hello, getting louder each time, but she didn’t hear me. Maybe she shouldn’t leave the doors open when she had the headphones on? I didn’t want to scare the shit out of her by going over and getting in her line of sight, since she was handling equipment.

I finally yelled a “Hey” just as she turned off her machine, and she jumped, whipping around and brandishing a piece of wood at me.

She pulled off the headphones, stick still pointing at me. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

I held up my hands in a non-threatening gesture. “I’m here for the carriage house apartment?”

She was attractive, but not typical, with straight brows that gave her frown a lot more weight.

Pale skin, with what could be freckles or just bits of wood from what she’d been working on.

A long nose, and right now, lips thinned together in a disapproving frown.

Again I had to question whether this was the right place.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’d say that if you were planning to hurt me.”

Fair point. “I was given this address, a gate code, and told to come to the carriage house.”

Her hand holding the wood lowered. “How are you here already?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but at least it sounded like she knew I was coming. “There was a driver waiting when I landed. He just dropped me off outside but you didn’t hear me. You might want to close the doors when you’re wearing those headphones.”

Her back straightened. “This is a secure property, and you need that gate code you were given to get in. Normally this is perfectly safe.”

“Okay. Just trying to find where I’m staying.” My eyes moved to the staircase, wondering if I’d have to walk through her shop every time I came and left the building.

She followed my glance. “Oh no. Those stairs are locked off. You can use the outside ones. You have the code for that lock too?”

I nodded and held up my phone. Like she could somehow read the messages on there through the dark screen. “Sorry to disturb you, then.” I took a step back, ready to get out, grab my stuff and escape upstairs.

“Wait—how long are you staying here?”

She looked worried, but I didn’t have a definite answer. “I’m not sure…maybe through June?”

Her head dropped back. “I don’t suppose you work nine to five?”

“No. My hours are weird and I travel a lot. Why?”

She huffed a breath, sawdust shifting off her face. “Because this is where I work, and as you might have noticed, it’s noisy sometimes.”

“No one said anything about that. Just that this was a place I could stay with my dog.”

She stared at me. “Your what?”

“Dog.”

“Damn it, Cash,” she muttered. I had no idea who or what Cash was. “I hope your dog can get along with the cat who lives here.”

I sincerely doubted that. “I’ll keep him on a leash.”

She dropped the stick of wood on the workbench, near the disassembled guitar. “So you’re here, you’re around in the daytime, and you’ll be around till June. Just peachy.”

I almost apologized, but this wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t made the arrangements. “Maybe you should talk to whoever set this up. Right now I need to put my stuff somewhere because I have to check in tomorrow.”

“What time do you start work?”

I swiped my phone open and scrolled through the emails that had come from the team. There were a lot, but I finally found one that detailed what was going on for the first day of training camp. “I’ll be gone around nine.”

“I have a couple of projects I need to finish before I can find another place to work. I’ll try to get that done while you’re out.”

“Thank you.” I still felt bad for disrupting her business, but I had no idea what the setup was here.

I just knew I needed to be ready to mesh with a new team in the morning, one with a goalie coach who didn’t like me.

Once I got to know the team, maybe I could find someone else to room with, or another rental.

I escaped up the stairs with my stuff, punched in the code, and checked out what would be my home for tonight at least. An open room with a kitchen to the right, a breakfast bar and stools separating it from a small table and a living room with a couch, a chair and a TV.

Through open doors on the left I saw a bathroom and a bedroom.

It wasn’t luxurious, but it would do. I put my things in the bedroom, and scrounged for linens to make the bed.

I lay down, hands crossed behind my head. It wasn’t my fault, but I’d now pissed off two of the three people I knew in Austin. Otts, my new goalie coach, and the woman downstairs. I didn’t think the guy driving the SUV hated me, but I might never see him again.

What I wouldn’t do for hockey.