Iced Out

Chapter 10: First Public Outing

NOVA

I stared at my reflection in the floor-length mirror of my bedroom and let out a slow, unsteady breath.

*Wear green.* It had been a directive, not a suggestion. Naturally, my first instinct had been to buy the most aggressive, stark white pantsuit I could find. But when I had walked into the boutique on Michigan Avenue on my lunch break, my eyes had locked onto a silk slip dress the exact shade of a deep, shadowed forest.

Now, wearing it, I realized exactly how much trouble I was in.

The dress was a masterpiece of minimalist architecture. It had no heavy beading, no dramatic cutouts, just liquid emerald silk that draped over my curves like water, falling to the floor in a sleek, uninterrupted line. The neckline was a soft cowl that hinted at my collarbones, and the back dipped low. Low enough to make me acutely aware of the cool air in my apartment. I had swept my dark auburn hair up into a sophisticated, loose chignon, leaving a few tendrils to frame my face.

I didn’t look like a clinical psychologist. I didn’t look like an anonymous whistleblower carrying five years of guilt.

I looked like a woman who belonged on the arm of a king.

My phone buzzed on the vanity. *I’m downstairs.* I grabbed my black clutch, threw on a long wool coat, and took the elevator down to the lobby. When the glass doors slid open to the street, a sleek black SUV was idling at the curb.

The rear passenger door opened, and Cole Harrington stepped out onto the pavement.

*Oh, for God’s sake.*

I was used to seeing him in bulky hockey gear, sweat-drenched practice hoodies, or the casual, dark layers he favored around the facility. I had built a perfectly functional mental image of Cole Harrington as an oversized, hostile athlete who happened to have good bone structure. The man standing on the curb in a custom-tailored, midnight-blue tuxedo with a black lapel that fit his broad shoulders and narrow waist with irritating precision was not that man. His dark hair was styled back, though one errant lock still managed to fall over his forehead, because of course it did.

He looked like a problem I hadn’t budgeted for.

Cole turned, his silver eyes finding me in the dim light of the streetlamps. He went still. His gaze moved over me once, quickly, and his jaw tightened in a way I couldn’t read. It could have been appreciation. It could have been irritation that the arrangement required this much visual effort. With Cole, the two were frequently indistinguishable.

“Dr. Calloway,” he murmured, his voice a gravelly rasp that seemed to vibrate directly in my chest.

“Mr. Harrington,” I managed to reply, keeping my face as impassive as possible as I walked toward him. “You clean up reasonably well.”

A corner of his mouth twitched upward. “You actually listened to me. You wore green.”

“It was on sale,” I lied effortlessly.

Cole stepped aside, holding the door open for me. As I slid into the leather interior of the SUV, he leaned in close, the scent of expensive cologne and crisp winter air wrapping around me. “I don’t care if you stole it, Nova. You look...” He paused, his jaw tightening slightly. “You look perfect. Diane is going to have a stroke.”

He shut the door, walking around the back of the SUV to slide into the seat next to me.

The ride to the Glaciers’ Annual Charity Gala at the Field Museum was suffocatingly tense. The partition separating us from the driver was up. We sat on opposite sides of the spacious back seat, separated by a foot of pristine leather, yet the air between us crackled with an undeniable, heavy static.

“Rules of engagement,” Cole said smoothly, breaking the silence as we turned onto DuSable Lake Shore Drive. “Diane briefed me. We walk the red carpet together. We stop at the press wall for exactly sixty seconds. We answer two questions from approved reporters, and then we go inside and sit at the owner’s table.”

My stomach performed a sickening drop at the mention of the owner’s table. *Victor Raines.* “Understood,” I said, gripping my clutch until my knuckles ached.

“You’re nervous,” he noted. It wasn’t a question.

“I am clinically preparing for a high-stress environment,” I corrected.

Cole let out a low, huffing laugh. He shifted closer, destroying the safe distance between us. “Nova. Look at me.”

I turned my head. He was so close I could see the darker ring of charcoal around his silver irises.

“Out there, I am the captain of a team that is under a microscope, and you are the only thing keeping the league from ripping me apart,” he said quietly, the banter vanishing. “I won’t let the press eat you alive. Follow my lead. Let me handle the cameras. You just have to stand there and pretend you don’t hate me.”

*Pretend you don’t hate me.* The instruction was simple enough. The problem was that it required pretending, which required acting, which required a skill set I had not listed on my Stanford application. I was a psychologist, not a performer. And the man sitting next to me smelled like expensive cologne and winter air, and the combination was making it difficult to remember that this was a job, not a date.

*It’s the cologne,* I told myself. *Chemical response to an olfactory stimulus. Textbook.*

“I can pretend,” I said aloud.

The SUV slowed to a crawl, joining a line of black cars pulling up to the museum’s grand entrance. Even through the tinted windows, the blinding pop of flashbulbs was aggressive. The dull roar of reporters and fans shouting names leaked through the glass.

“Showtime,” Cole murmured.

The door opened. The cold air hit us, followed immediately by a wall of sound.

Cole stepped out first, buttoning his jacket with effortless grace. He turned back, offering me his hand. I took it, stepping out onto the red carpet.

The second my heels hit the pavement, the shouting doubled in volume.

“Cole! Cole, over here!”

“Who is she, Cole?”

“Captain! Just one shot of the two of you!”

Cole didn’t flinch. He didn’t rush. He simply pulled me flush against his side.

My breath hitched. We hadn’t been this close since we stood in my office. Through the thin silk of my dress, I could feel the hard, radiating heat of his body. He guided us down the carpet, his presence a solid, immovable shield against the chaos.

We reached the step-and-repeat wall adorned with the Glaciers’ logo.

“Stop here,” Cole whispered, his breath ghosting over my ear.

We turned to face the firing squad of photographers.

I tried to arrange my features into a polite, serene smile, but my posture was rigid. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-truck.

“Smile, Doctor,” Cole murmured, keeping his gaze straight ahead on the cameras, his teeth flashing in a perfectly calculated, camera-ready grin.

“I am smiling,” I muttered through my teeth.

“You look like you’re calculating my copay,” he shot back, his tone laced with dark amusement. “Relax.”

And then, he moved.

He shifted his weight, turning slightly toward me so that he was shielding me from half the cameras. He lifted his hand from his side and placed it directly, firmly, on the bare skin of my lower back.

Every muscle in my body locked.

His palm was hot against my shivering skin. His long fingers splayed over the dip of my spine with a possessive, heavy weight that felt nothing like a performance and everything like a claim. Every professional boundary I had spent the last forty-eight hours constructing collapsed under the pressure of five fingers on bare skin. *That was not in the terms. Unscripted contact. Behind closed doors only. This was neither closed nor scripted and his hand was on my bare skin and I was going to kill Diane.*

I gasped, a tiny, involuntary sound, and looked up at him in shock.

Cole looked down at me at the exact same moment.

The flashbulbs erupted in a blinding frenzy, capturing the look that passed between us. I was staring up at him with wide, unguarded eyes, my lips parted, the clinical armor shattered into a million pieces. And he was looking down at me with an intensity that made the rest of the crowded, screaming red carpet completely vanish.

For three seconds, it wasn’t a PR stunt. It wasn’t a fake relationship to save his captaincy. It was just a man and a woman, standing too close, caught in a gravitational pull neither of them knew how to fight.

His thumb moved once across the bare silk at the base of my spine. A small, deliberate gesture that could have been an adjustment. Could have been accidental. Was neither.

“There,” Cole whispered, his silver eyes entirely focused on my mouth. “Now you look like you’re with me.”

He slowly turned us away from the cameras, keeping his hand firmly on my waist, and guided me into the gala. I went. Not because I wanted to. Because my legs were moving and my brain had temporarily outsourced all motor functions to the part of me that understood how to walk in heels on autopilot.

*I was going to kill Diane. Slowly. With her own iPad.*