Page 1 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Elsie

What's hotter than playing touch football with a team of professional hockey players at your new job?

Getting tackled by the silver fox coach.

When I woke up this morning, I knew I’d be surrounded by the players, but I had no idea just how close I’d get to Weston Wolfe.

I walk out onto the field. The sun streams through the alders and pines and I stop for a second to close my eyes and breathe it all in.

The damp smell of the lawn, the faint buzz of insects, and the shouting from oversized athletes with an extra dose of testosterone.

“Are you seriously stopping to smell the roses?” Mabel jokes.

She rolls her eyes and tosses her long, blood-red hair over her shoulder.

We were friends in our Physical Therapy program at school, and now we’ve managed to both get spots on the PT team here, too.

I’m happy to have her with me. “You’re too chipper about this.

You’re really excited to spend a week in the outdoors with a bunch of hockey players? ”

“This is a dream come true for me,” I say to her. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that I am one of the 154 attendees at the San Francisco Squids Pre-season Team Building Camp.

“Now, get to stretching. Set a good example for these guys.” Karlee—the squid’s GM and a close family friend of mine—says. She tosses us each a jersey: one red, one blue.

Mabel and I drop to the grass, reaching for our toes and looking around the field, taking in the others.

Obviously, it’s mostly hockey players, Neil Cuevas, the VP, some people from HR and PR, and a whole slew of coaches.

Including Weston Wolfe.

Head coach.

And already a massive pain in my ass.

He’s on the other side of the field, casually tossing a football back and forth with one of the assistant coaches.

Everyone else is smiling, which makes sense—it’s a beautiful day, there’s plenty of open space, and everyone together—but Weston is, as per usual, scowling.

He’s clearly older than the rest of us.

A little younger than my dad, but definitely a different generation.

Though he doesn’t look it.

He’s wearing a black Squids hat on backwards, his brown hair sticking out from under it in a way that’s almost boyish.

Does he wear that jockey to hide the specks of gray in his hair?

My gaze goes down to his torso. His Squids t-shirt hugs his chest and biceps.

And I wet my lips.

He has those strong hockey legs that come from years and years on the ice, a confident sway to his movements.

My eyes hitch on his hands as they wrap around a football, the smooth way he draws back, the perfect spiral of the throw as he releases.

His body is tight, graceful, but with a certain tense quality that you want to dig your hands into.

A lap you want to sit in.

Skin you want to skim your nails over.

Scruff on his jaw you could drag over your cheek.

Dark blue eyes that send a jolt down your spine when you meet them, the challenge there impossible not to rise to.

“Elsie!”

I startle, blinking at Karlee, who stands at the center of the field, a whistle hanging from her lips, an expectant look on her face.

“Right,” I say, forcing a smile onto my face and hoping nobody saw me ogling—except when I glance at Mabel, her expression is basically laughing at me.

I shake myself out and run over to the red jersey group, listening to one of the younger guys—Elroy Wheeler, a center—standing in the middle and detailing our offensive plan.

“Montgomery,” he says, pointing at me with the football after his long spiel. “You’re our running back.”

I shake my head at him—my understanding of football is rudimentary at best, but running back sounds like something a little out of my depth. “Me?”

“That’s right,” he says, grinning a little evilly. “That defense isn’t gonna wanna go after a girl. Besides, they’re all scared of your dad.”

My dad. Team legend.

“It’s not tackle football,” I protest, and another one of the guys laughs, shaking his head at me.

“Always turns into it,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder. “You’d better hope Wheeler is right about them not coming after you.”

Five minutes later, I’m standing behind what I’m told is the offensive line, hands shaking.

Mabel whoops from the other side of the field as they snap the ball and I run forward, Wheeler rocketing the thing into my stomach so hard I wheeze.

I may not be a professional athlete, and I may not know much about football, but I do know how to run.

My muscles jump to attention, years of ice-skating practice flooding back through my body. I dart and dance, spinning around every guy who reaches out to touch me.

They’re surprised. I'm fast. I'm nimble.

That is, until I’m staring down nothing but the open field.

Toward Weston Wolfe.

All six foot four of him.

“Slow down, Montgomery,” he shouts out, his knees bent, that scowl firmly on his face. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Good luck!” I huff, running even harder and faster.

He shakes his head, a stiff competitive look crossing his face that sends shivers down my back.

His eyes are locked on me.

His expression says he’s not backing down.

I’ve seen that look on his face before, when I used to watch hockey with my dad.

We’d watch whatever games were on—Dad didn’t really have allegiance to a certain team—but I’d always secretly enjoyed watching the college games.

Seeing the guys, like Weston, fighting for their right to head to the big leagues.

Then, before he became a coach, Weston Wolfe was an unstoppable right winger, brutal and exacting, doing whatever it took to get that puck under his control. By that time Weston was at the height of his career.

“Go, Elsie!”

“Run!”

“Juke him out!”

I don’t know what that means, but I have an idea.

And I push on.

When I get close enough to Weston the game turns from a foot race into chess.

I plant my left foot and turn hard, muscles engaging in the same sequence that would have sent me into a salchow on the ice, hoping to spin away from him here on the grass.

Except, for some reason, I don’t spin away from him.

My face plants into his chest.

My body against his.

I let out a breathless oomph as his momentum—and the fact that my legs are positioned weirdly under my body—starts to send us plowing toward the earth.

We seem to realize at the exact same moment that he’s going to land on top of me.

All two hundred and fifty pounds of him.

I brace for impact.

But he grabs me, twisting.

Time splits, and for the second we’re suspended in the air.

I exist in two places at once.

Here, tumbling to the earth with Weston.

And somewhere else, falling down on another man.

“Ah, fuck,” Weston hisses.

We hit the ground together, and it jolts me back into the present.

Instead of landing under him, I’m on his right bicep, cradled in his arms.

Blades of grass rising up between our locked gazes.

For the briefest moment, it’s like we’re in bed together, and he’s holding my body to him.

I can hear the steady thump, thump, thump of his heart, can feel the way his muscles—both soft and strong at once—react, absorbing most of the blow.

His nose presses into the top of my head, and I swear I can imagine what it would be like for him to kiss me there.

But he closes his eyes and rolls onto his back, letting go of me.

The moment ends too soon, like an open question my body wants the answer to.

I don’t want to let go.

Heat blooms through me, even as pain starts to move over Weston’s face. My hands twitch to reach back out to him, as stupid as that is.

But the slight wince over his brow snaps me out of it. As a physical therapist, I’ve gotten very used to seeing that look. Especially from men who don’t want anyone to know something is hurting them.

“Shit, sorry,” I whisper, my voice coming out hoarse, my mind still stuck several seconds in the past, when our bodies were flush from chest to hip.

I drop the football, forcing myself to focus on the present moment, rising to my knees, nausea pounding up hard and fast into my throat when I see his jaw tighten, the severity of the moment blinking into my brain.

I have to fix this, have to make sure he’s okay. I need to numb the panic starting to course through my veins. “Sorry—sorry. Are you okay? Where does it hurt?”

“It doesn’t,” he grunts out, his eyes meeting mine for a moment before darting away again.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter again, hands shaking as I look him over, vision swimming a bit. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Wolfe, I—.”

“It’s fine,” Weston says, but it comes out through his teeth.

“Please,” I say, meeting his too-blue eyes. “If you’re hurt, just let me help you.”

“I’m fine,” he says, sitting up and pushing my reaching hands away. The others arrive on the scene, the tips of their shoes covered with blades of grass in my peripheral.

“But—” I try to protest.

“You good man?” Bernie Wright, one of the assistant coaches, asks, standing over us and blocking the sun from shining directly on our faces.

Bernie looks like he could be someone’s grandpa, or maybe a mall Santa.

“Fine,” Weston says, and I blink at him as Bernie reaches down to help him up.

His voice is level, and he actually sounds like everything is fine, despite the pain I saw on his face just a second ago.

“Too bad,” Mabel says, grabbing my arm and hauling me to my feet. “We almost went to state, champ.”

I’m still staring at Weston as he says something casually to the other coaches, laughing and turning, walking toward the cabins.

He was able to keep the pain from his voice so effortlessly. And now, as he hurries back toward the cabins, he almost, almost manages to hide the slightest limp on his right side.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, patting Mabel on the arm. “Cover for me?”

“We’re not even on the same team,” she says.

But I’m already leaving the field, following Weston, itching to get to the bottom of that look on his face.

And maybe itching for something else, too.