SECOND CHANCE WITH MY POSSESSIVE BILLIONAIRE CAPTAIN

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

NADIA

The team's practice facility had a smell too, sweat and ice and rubber floor mats, and I stood in the hallway outside the locker room telling myself this was just another assignment.

It was not just another assignment. It was the only assignment that had ever made me consider quitting before I even started.

"You must be the reporter." A man in a team polo stopped in front of me, clipboard in hand, sizing me up like I was a piece of equipment that had arrived without a manual. "Beckett. I handle media relations. Coach wants you to shadow practice from the bench, not the ice. Camera crew waits outside until we clear specific segments."

"Understood."

"Captain Donovan already signed off on the access, so I guess congratulations are in order." Beckett's tone made it clear he did not think congratulations were in order at all. "Most reporters wait months for this kind of clearance."

"I got lucky."

"Sure." He did not sound convinced. "This way."

Beckett led me down a corridor lined with framed jerseys and old championship photos, past a wall of trophies polished so hard they threw back the overhead lights in sharp little flashes. He stopped in front of one photo in particular, Grayson at maybe twenty two, grinning in a way I had not seen in five years.

"You know him," Beckett said. Not a question.

"A long time ago."

"Funny thing about this team." He straightened the frame though it had not needed straightening. "Everyone thinks they know him. Almost nobody actually does."

"Is that a warning?"

"Take it however you like." He pushed open a set of double doors, and the roar of the rink swallowed the rest of whatever he might have said.

The ice was louder than I remembered, blades cutting hard turns, sticks cracking against boards, coaches shouting drills in short, clipped bursts. I found a spot on the bench and opened my notebook, grateful for something to do with my hands.

Grayson skated past without looking at me. Then again. On the third pass, he slowed just enough to speak without breaking stride.

"Enjoying the view?"

"I'm working."

"You used to hate hockey. Called it a sport for men who never learned to use their words." He skated backward a few feet, studying me. "Funny, ending up here."

"People change."

"Some do." He turned and rejoined the drill before I could answer that.

I watched him for the next hour, and somewhere in that hour, work stopped feeling like the right word for it. He moved like the ice belonged to him, sharp and certain, nothing like the careful, deliberate way he used to move through our apartment five years ago, like he was always half braced for me to leave again.

I had been right to brace him for it, in the end.

A whistle cut through the rink. "Water break. Ten minutes."

Grayson skated straight to the bench, straight toward me, and dropped down close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.

"You're staring," he said, toweling off his neck.

"I'm observing. There's a difference."

"Is there." He took a long drink from his water bottle, eyes never leaving mine over the rim. "You've been observing for exactly one hour and forty minutes, and you haven't written a single word."

I glanced down at my blank notebook page and hated that he was right.

"I'm still finding my angle."

"Your angle." He said it slowly, like he was testing the weight of the word. "Is that what your editor called it? An angle?"

"Grayson."

"That's the first time you've said my name since you walked back into my life." Something shifted in his voice, quieter now, no trace of the performance he had given the cameras. "Say it again."

"This is a professional assignment."

"You keep saying that like it makes it true." He leaned in just slightly, close enough that I caught the sharp, clean smell of ice and effort on his skin. "I know exactly what this is, Nadia. Callahan didn't send you here because you're the best reporter at that network. He sent you here because he knows you're the only person who might actually get me to talk."

My pulse spiked. "That's not true."

"And you know what the worst part is?" His voice dropped lower, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "I'm going to let you. Every single question. Because some part of me still wants to know what it takes to make you stay in a room with me this time."

"Donovan." Beckett's voice cracked across the ice like a snapped stick. "Coach wants you back on the line. Now."

Grayson held my gaze a beat longer than the moment required, then stood, unhurried, and skated back onto the ice like nothing had happened at all.

I did not write a single word for the rest of practice.

Camille was waiting outside my apartment that evening, sitting on the front step with two coffees and an expression that told me she had already heard something.

"Vivienne Holt," she said, the second I got close enough. "Ring any bells?"

My stomach dropped. "Where did you hear that name?"

"It's trending. Some gossip account posted a picture of her leaving the arena an hour after practice ended today, with the caption 'is the captain's ex-girlfriend back in the picture, or is someone else already occupying that spot.'" Camille handed me a cup, watching my face carefully. "She's his teammate's sister. Apparently very close with the team. Very close with him, if the comments are anything to go by."

"I don't care who he's close with."

"You care so much you just spilled your coffee on your own shoe."

I looked down. She was right.

"It's not relevant to my assignment," I said, wiping at the stain with a napkin that did nothing to help.

"Nothing about this is relevant to your assignment, Nadia. That's the whole problem." Camille sat back down on the step, patting the space beside her until I gave up and joined her. "You left him once. You can leave again if you need to. Nobody's forcing you to feel anything."

"I don't feel anything."

"Say that again with your shoe still wet."

I did not have an answer for that.

My phone buzzed before I could try to find one. Callahan's name lit up the screen, and something about the timing, so soon after practice ended, made my stomach tighten before I even answered.

"You're not going to believe this," he said, without any greeting at all. "Vivienne Holt just agreed to an exclusive sit down interview. Tonight. Her people are saying she'll talk about her relationship with Donovan, on the record, if we send someone she trusts."

"Who does she trust?"

"You, apparently. She specifically asked for you by name." A pause, and I could hear him smiling through the phone, the way he always smiled right before handing someone a problem disguised as an opportunity. "Hotel Meridian, room 1408, eight o'clock. Don't be late, Nadia. This is exactly the angle we needed."

The line went dead before I could ask a single question, and I sat there on the step with a cold coffee in my hand, staring at a name I had never heard before tonight, already dreading whatever waited for me in that hotel room.