“It’s not too far for us,” Amy replied, smiling. “So we’ll be here barring any unforeseen circumstances. Ryder is now a believer in taking vacations.” She caught her boyfriend's eye and grinned. “Although the break in the hockey schedule at Christmas is usually pretty short. But we'll make it work!”
“Us too.” Jacques nodded.
“Hot chocolate anyone?” Connie skated up to us with a tray containing eight cups of hot chocolate.
“Thank you!”
Everyone got a cup and I lifted my glass. “Merry Christmas, everyone.”
“To extended family,” Amy said, winking at Noelle.
“To friendship,” Holly said, nodding.
“To us,” Jacques agreed.
“To the Garland Grove Ice Arena,” Noelle said softly.
We pressed our glasses together.
“Until next year.”
* * *
Thank you so much for reading Knight Before Christmas and the other books in the Romancing the Rink series! If you missed any of them, find all the links here.
* * *
You can also flip the page to read the first chapter from SLAP SHOT, the first book in the Lauderdale Knights series—where you’ll see more of Remy and Noelle!
Excerpt from “Slap Shot”
Chapter One
Julliet
* * *
I glanced at the time on my phone half a dozen times as I waited for traffic to let up. I was beyond excited to be attending the inaugural season opener for the new professional hockey team here in my hometown of Ft. Lauderdale, but I’d been late leaving work and now I was going to miss the warm-up. Two of my brothers, Mario and Tony, who also worked at our family pizzeria, had left early, of course, leaving me to handle all the last-minute details to make sure the staff was ready for the dinner shift.
I loved my big, loud Italian family, but they drove me crazy sometimes.
Traffic finally moved, I found a parking spot, and hurried through the lot to the entrance. We’d bought four season tickets, and though there were technically nine of us who’d shared in the cost, I’d paid a quarter of it myself, so I had a seat at every game if I wanted it. Which I did. I loved hockey and getting a team here in South Florida was the most exciting thing to happen to me in a long time. Hopefully, hockey games would make up for my disaster of a personal life. But I wasn’t thinking about that tonight.
I grabbed a glass of wine and a bag of popcorn and finally found our seats. Mario, Tony, and Tony’s wife Desi were already in the seats and they looked up as I sat down.
“You’re late,” Desi said, grinning at me.
I rolled my eyes. “Apparently, I’m the only one who cares about whether or not the dinner shift is prepared.”
Tony turned to me, eyes wide as if he had no idea what I was talking about, but there was a grin playing on his lips. “What’d we forget to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know…count out the register from the day shift cashier? Make sure everyone on the schedule showed up so we wouldn’t leave them short with no manager on duty. Shit like that?”
Mario grimaced but Tony just laughed. “That’s why we have you. We cook, you do business stuff.”
“Sorry, sis,” Mario said softly. “We were just excited.”
“Because I’m not excited?” I met his gaze squarely. This wasn’t the first time they’d cut out early and left me working late to handle things that weren’t necessarily my job. It was a family business, but I worked more hours than all of them.
“Are you actually mad?” Tony looked confused.
“I missed the warm-up,” I said, trying not to snap at him. “That’s my favorite thing. This was the very first one. And I missed it. There will never be another first game or first warm-up.”
Tony blew out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Honest to god, it never occurred to me we were leaving you with a lot to do.”
“Because all you pay attention to is the food and your paycheck,” I responded. “You don’t care about the business side and I can’t do it all. In fact, going forward, I’m not going to do it all. You guys are going to step up, or I’ll find another job.”
The three of them stared at me as if I’d just sprouted a unicorn horn.
“You can’t leave the pizzeria,” Mario said.
“Jules, you’re not serious.” Even Desi was gaping at me.
“I absolutely am. This is the last time I miss something important to me because you guys think you can cut out whenever you feel like it. I worked until midnight last Wednesday because Edie forgot to input the timecards. If it hadn’t gotten done, our staff wouldn’t have gotten paid on Friday. But you guys were out the door at four-thirty like your asses were on fire. You knew there was something up with the timecards, but you just assumed I’d handle it. This is the last time.”
“That’s my bad,” Desi said. “I should have stayed with you but Tony said…” She reached over and punched his arm. “You told me it was no big deal, that Jules would handle it in a few minutes!”
“I didn’t know nothing had been input,” he said, rubbing his arm. “I thought it was a computer glitch and I don’t do so good with technology, so I figured Jules had it covered.”
I took a sip of wine and stared out at the ice. I hadn’t meant to bring this up at the game, but I was pissed about missing the warm-ups. It might have been a little petty, but I had a lot going on in my life and my brothers often treated me like a cute pet who needed feeding and the occasional petting, and then forgot all about me. The sad part was, most of the people in my life treated me that way, and starting today, I was done. I was a strong, smart, independent twenty-five-year-old woman.
We had to stand for the national anthem, so conversation died and then the game started. I was on my feet immediately, cheering and whistling. Though I’d grown up in South Florida, we still considered ourselves New Yorkers. I’d been ten when we moved here from Long Island, so I remembered Mario and another one of my brothers, Roberto, playing hockey when we were growing up.
There were six of us kids, all two years apart. I was the only girl and the youngest, which was another reason I was annoyed. Older brothers were supposed to look out for their little sister, not treat her like an afterthought. Especially after we’d lost our father two years ago to cancer. Mario was the oldest at thirty-five, and twice divorced with no kids. Then came Roberto who was thirty-three and married but no kids yet. Anthony, who went by Tony, was thirty-one and had been with Desi since high school. They’d gotten married right after graduation and had three kids. Salvatore was twenty-nine and engaged, and Peter was twenty-seven and as single as ever.
Then there was me. Twenty-five and struggling to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to work in our family pizzeria for the rest of my life. I had big changes coming up that I hadn’t told anyone about because I was so tired of being questioned about everything I did, but we had a big family dinner this coming Sunday and I was going to tell everyone about the new developments in my life then.