Page 22 of Ice Cold, Red Hot (Coldwater Firehawks Hockey #1)

CELESTE

“What are you going to wear?” Nat sat on the edge of my bed, practically drooling over the drama that was about to unfold.

I stared into my closet. “I don’t know. What does one wear to a skeevy mixer you’re invited to by your lecherous grad advisor when your intention is to nail him to the wall?”

“Ew. No nailing.”

I giggled in my nervousness, realizing what I’d said. “Yes. Definitely no nailing.”

“Sexy but serious, I think,” she said. “Where are those jeans with the high waist, the dark ones?”

“These?” I pulled the jeans from a drawer. “Are they fancy enough for a ‘mixer’? What the hell is a mixer, anyway?”

“No idea. But if you put on this blouse,” she said, pulling a patterned blouse with flowy sleeves from my closet, “and tuck it in, I think it hits the right note. ”

“Heels?”

“Boots. These.” She pulled my maroon suede ankle boots out.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Go get ‘em,” she laughed.

An hour later, I was stepping into Ethan’s apartment, willing my skin to stop crawling.

Someone I didn’t know had answered the door, introduced herself and then disappeared, so I was left to my own devices, which is what I preferred.

I spotted the long table in the corner covered with alcohol bottles and mixers. Maybe some liquid courage. I headed in that direction, avoiding eye contact and small talk. It wasn’t what I’d come for.

At the bar, I poured a shot of vodka and dumped it over ice in a glass. I dripped in a bit of tonic and then stood there, focused on drinking the whole thing before I did what I’d come here to do.

“Careful, you look like a lightweight.” Ethan’s voice purred over my shoulder, sending my adrenaline spiking.

I finished the drink, put down the glass and spun to face him. “I think I’ll be okay.”

He ran a finger up my arm. “Hope so.” That obsequious smile. Ugh.

“Hey, is there someplace we can talk? Someplace a bit quieter?”

Ethan’s eyes lit up and he glanced toward the hallway. “Bedroom? ”

“Definitely not. Kitchen?”

He let out a playful chuckle—as if whatever I had in mind was just confusing foreplay—and we headed through a door at the other side of the living room. There were two people at one end of the kitchen, so I stopped and faced him near the door.

I cleared my throat and met his eye. “I heard what you said. About Shepherd. About the money.”

Ethan’s mouth held the stupid smile, but his eyes flickered and he gave the tiniest shake of his head, as if to clear it.

“You’re going to tell Gunning that my placement isn’t a good fit and recommend me to another lab. Tell her it’s a mutual decision.”

Ethan’s eyes turned flinty. “Or what?”

“Or I go public.”

He laughed. Actually laughed.

And my rage ramped up like a tornado inside me.

“Who will they believe? An established PhD candidate whose been working here for years or some upstart first year whose been sleeping with her students?”

He had no idea what he didn’t know. “Try me. We’ll just see who they believe. Gotta say, though… one of your TAs sleeping with a student under your supervision? That looks bad, right? Then you’ve got blackmail and a messy ethics violation…”

Ethan’s smirk faltered for a second.

“You haven’t got a chance,” he hissed.

He had no idea what I had. I was sick and tired of being underestimated .

I looked around and let out bored sigh. “Great party. Thanks.” I headed for the door and didn’t look back once.

The apartment building was quiet that weekend—eerily so.

“Hockey team’s on travel,” Nat told me. “Griff says Shepherd’s sitting the bench at all the games, but I guess he still goes.” She answered my unasked question.

“Did you meet his brother?” I asked her, stirring the margarita she’d made me as we sat out on our patio, feet up on the railing.

“No, but I saw a Shepherd clone heading out the door the other day. Is he the NHL star?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Hot just runs in that family, I guess.”

I nodded. She wasn’t wrong.

“What’s uh… what’s going on there? After what you said to Ethan and everything?”

I let out a long breath. “Nothing.”

“He’s gotta be grateful, though, right? You ending the blackmail?”

“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s gonna be happy someone rescued him. Not me, anyway.”

“Maybe you underestimate him?”

The margarita was tangy and a little bit spicy. I let it roll over my tongue before answering. “The guy is not exactly expressive when it comes to emotion,” I pointed out.

“But you’d entertain the notion?”

“Nat. There is no notion.” But god, how I wished there was. “Hey,” I said, realizing something. “It’s Saturday night. Why are you hanging out with me?”

She faked a hurt expression. “Can’t I hang with my best girl?”

I frowned at her.

“I just… I mean, it’s not a big deal.”

“Evan?”

“Yeah, we’re just… it was casual, you know?”

“You were so into him, though.”

She sniffed. “Yeah, casually into him.”

“Okay. So…it’s more than a break?”

“We’re done and it’s fine. Mutual.”

I examined her face, looking for signs of heartbreak, for any evidence that she felt the same kind of soul-crushing longing that I couldn’t seem to shake. It wasn’t there. “Okay. Well, I’m here if you need me.”

“You and tequila. You’re all I need,” she laughed, sipping her drink and reaching for the pitcher next to her when she’d drained the glass.

Monday morning I was prepared. I’d printed every bit of evidence I had, and cued it all up attached to an email to Dr. Gunning, scheduled to send at noon. And then I went to the lab.

Ethan was in his office, and the look he threw me when I appeared in his doorway was not friendly. “What?”

“Just curious if you’ve made progress.”

“With what, Moreno? I’m working here.”

Oh. It was going to be like that. Of course it was .

I pulled the sheaf of papers from my bag and spread them in front of him on the desk. The messages he’d sent me. The ones he’d sent Daria. The messages he’d exchanged with another girl who’d left Coldwater, which were even more telling.

“I don’t have time for this,” he said, pushing the papers away.

“Oh, no problem,” I said. “I can read them to you.” I picked up my favorite.

“Great work today, Steph. Let’s celebrate in my office later by exploring some of your deeper insights. With champagne? And wear that tank top you had on today—it was driving me crazy during our meeting.”

Ethan’s jaw dropped open.

“Oh, here’s a good one. ‘Daria, I’m impressed. But I bet I’ll be even more impressed with the skill set you demonstrate at my apartment after the mixer.’”

“I didn’t… that’s not…”

“It is,” another voice said from behind me. I turned to find Daria standing with her arms crossed. “And you know it.”

“You’re going to fix this. Today. For both of us.” I gestured to Daria.

Ethan had the gall to snort. “Are you actually threatening me?”

“It’s not a threat. It’s a warning.” I told him about the email. “Next stop is the Title Nine office.”

I let that sink in while I tidied all the papers strewn across his desk and tucked them back into the folder, dropping it onto his keyboard with a pat. “I think it goes like this. You don’t just lose the lab. You lose the program. And maybe your degree.”

Ethan was silent for a long moment. And then, without looking at either of us, he turned to his computer and pulled up a blank email.

“Good,” I said. “Let’s send it to the psych department chair, Dr. Gunning, and the athletic director.”

“No, I—” Ethan sputtered.

“Oh, and blind copy Daria and me please,” I instructed.

Ethan followed directions.

“You use your own words here of course, but here’s the gist: The bar incident was a personal misunderstanding.

You take responsibility and ask that all disciplinary action against Shepherd Renshaw be dropped.

Apologize for not being honest about it in the first place.

Emotions ran high, but you’re man enough to admit that Shepherd wasn’t the aggressor. ”

“But—” Ethan’s fingers began moving, even as he started to protest.

“And the next paragraph,” I went on. “Explain that Daria and I have some impressive ideas and talents, and that your lab and your own background are not equipped to best maximize these. You formally request we be placed in another lab research setting with a more established PhD or a tenured professor. Say that we need more academic mentorship than you’re capable of providing. ”

Daria giggled at that and we exchanged a look—this was working!

“Is that it?” Ethan snarled, finishing the last line.

“Well, I mean. Sign it. You don’t want to be rude.”

He sighed as he typed out his name .

“And go ahead and hit send,” I instructed.

He did. I listened to the satisfying chime that told us the email was gone, out there in the ether.

I pulled out my phone and checked to see that I’d received it. No going back now.

“Great,” I said as I confirmed it. “Oh. One more thing. The money.”

“What about the money?” Ethan asked, his face pale and his voice tired.

“I’m guessing you know what to do there,” I told him. “Only a cretin would keep it.”

Ethan didn’t answer, just closed his office door behind us as Daria and I headed out of the lab.

“Holy shit,” she breathed as the building door closed behind us and we emerged into the sunlight. “I can’t believe we just did that. You just did that!”

The surging adrenaline was fading and slowly being replaced by a similar disbelief.

“Right?” I laughed. “We did it.”

We sat for a minute and talked through next steps. Daria was just happy to be out of Ethan’s lab, but less concerned about what came next. I, on the other hand went straight to Dr. Gunning’s office.

“Celeste, come on in,” Dr. Gunning said as I stepped into her open doorway. “I was just reading an interesting email from your research lead, Ethan.” She raised an eyebrow and gestured at the chair beside her desk.

“Yeah, that’s why I came.”

“Go on.”

“I think the email covered everything that needed to be said on the record,” I said, speaking slowly as I decided what else I wanted to confide in her.

I trusted Dr. Gunning, and something about her demeanor suggested she would understand.

Women in sports and science fields were not strangers to this kind of behavior, unfortunately.

“Okay.” She leaned back in her chair, her posture inviting, as was her friendly smile. “I take it there’s a bit more to it.”

“There is,” I told her. Quietly, I told her about the advances Ethan had made, to me and to others.

“I appreciate your honesty,” she said. “I actually suspected there was something going on. There was a complaint last year that got hushed up rather quickly.”

“Daria.”

Dr. Gunning frowned. “I never got briefed on the specifics.” She sighed. “Well, I appreciate your information and your honesty. And your timing is actually fortuitous.”

“It is?” I tried to repress any feelings of optimism. Life hadn’t given me a lot of reasons to think the universe was working in my favor lately.

“It is if you’re interested in joining the grant-funded sleep performance lab team.”

“Sleep performance?”

She smiled. “A slight offshoot from psych, to be sure, but related. There’ve been interesting studies lately in sleep extension in high-performance athletes, and we’ve just gotten funding to do one of our own.

” She told me more about the physiology of sleep and how psychology had direct impacts on the success of study protocols.

“This is the kind of study that gets funded once in a career,” she said.

“And as a first-year, you’re perfectly positioned to see it through. ”

I nodded, afraid even to tell her how exciting that was.

“And the best part?” she added with a smile.

I waited, curious.

“I’ll be the lead on this one.”

I grinned, relief flooding through me.

Ethan might have tried to paint me as a cautionary tale, but I’d turned the tables. It might have been too late to solve anything with Shepherd, but at least Ethan wouldn’t be ruining anyone else’s career.