“Thank you.” I handed her a twenty. “This should cover what’s left of my tab. Tell Rico I’ll see him later.”
She nodded. “What should I tell your DD?”
That he can go fuck himself.
When would I learn that a man like Nolan Lund—charming, wealthy, gorgeous, well-connected—would never look beyond the surface of any woman, let alone me? I had no issue admitting that my outer shell had none of the slick, glossy veneer he required. Most days I was perfectly fine with that.
However . . . today was not one of those days.
“Gabi?” Brenda prompted.
“If he asks, tell him I got a ride home.”
I already had the Uber app open as I slunk out the delivery exit.
Two minutes until the car arrived.
Enough time to chastise myself for thinking for one moment that Nolan Lund and I could ever be friends.
Three
GABI
Bang bang bang.
I pulled my pillow over my head and tried to sink deeper into my mattress.
The banging continued.
Jerking the covers back, I stumbled out of bed. It was the first Sunday in months I didn’t have to be up at the crack of nothing to be at the rink, and dammit, I deserved to sleep in.
I didn’t bother checking the peephole before I twisted the deadbolt, slipped the chain and threw open the door, bellowing, “What!”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine.” Liddy, my pesky neighbor/pain-in-the-rear friend, breezed past me carrying a covered plate that smelled heavenly. She disappeared around the corner and called out, “I’ll just put on the kettle.”
Yawning, I made my way into the kitchen. Liddy looked every inch the English rose with her smartly styled strawberry-blond hair, her flawless ivory skin, her knee-length floral dress topped with a formfitting pale pink cardigan and ending with nude-colored kitten heels.
When she spun around, I half expected to see a string of pearls around her neck, white gloves on her hands and a designer pocketbook tucked in the crook of her elbow. She scowled at me. “Bloody hell, woman. You actually answered the door in shambles? You’re lucky I didn’t bugger off at the sight of you.”
So much for my comparing her to an English rose; she was more English bulldog. “You woke me up. And you would’ve kept beating on the bloody door if I’d ignored you.”
“True. But you will forgive me, when you see I brought scones. Thoroughly English, freshly baked blueberry scones with real clotted cream and lemon curd.”
I curtsied. “Did you bake them before you headed off to church, milady?”
“Piss off, puckhead. Not only don’t I go all British Bake Off, I refuse to step foot in any of the fifth-cousin-removed churches here in the colonies that blasphemes the glorious Church of England.”
I laughed. “I thought you were an atheist?”
She sniffed. “Darling, I’m agnostic. True atheists don’t celebrate Christmas and I just can’t imagine a life without presents, eggnog and plum pudding.” She gave me a once-over. “Speaking of presents . . . I have a delicious morsel of news to accompany the scrummy scones, but you’ll have neither until you hit the loo and look less knackered.”
“Oy. Just get off the telly with yer mum? Because blimey, you’ve gone full-on British slang first thing this morning, mate.”
Liddy rolled her eyes. “Wanker.”
“You love me.”
“I do. Which is why, ever since our conversation Wednesday night, I’ve been thinking of ways to help get you out of this slump.”
My face got hot. After a couple of glasses of wine during our weekly Whine Wednesday and Liddy’s urging, I’d voiced my dissatisfaction about my personal and my professional life. I didn’t regret opening up to her even when I should’ve known that Liddy—a “fixer”—would obsess about helping me. Maybe that’s what I’d secretly wanted. “Liddy—”
The teakettle whistled. The interruption allowed her to shoo me off, promising my tea would be the perfect temperature after I exited the shower.
I shuffled off to the bathroom after snagging a Red Bull from the fridge. While I liked tea, it didn’t provide me with enough of a caffeine kick.
Under the lukewarm shower spray, my thoughts drifted to my friendship with Liddy and how important she’d become in my life.
Liddy and I had met months ago when I’d moved into Snow Village.
Snow Village was like any other gated community in that it was comprised of three connected apartment buildings with separate parking garages, a fitness facility with a large multipurpose room, a fenced pet park and a playground. The unique aspect? Most of the residents were athletes—current and former—who competed in winter sporting events. I’d been lucky to score a two-bedroom apartment due to the fact my boss, Jax, and Jensen Lund, the owner of Snow Village, were cousins, not solely because I played hockey.
Other than having my new furniture delivered, I’d opted to move myself in, since my boyfriend, my sister and most of my hockey buddies were in Florida at USA Olympic training camp. It’d felt wrong asking my colleagues at Lakeside for help, so there I was hefting boxes onto a handcart, hauling them out of my truck bed and up the elevator to the third floor in building three.
On the second-to-last trip, I heard a very annoyed, very British female voice yell, “Are you daft? Moving all those bloody boxes by yourself? Just wait a minute.”
Then I found myself looking up at the lithe, lovely Liddy Eldridge, who I’d soon discover was the former national ice dancing champion from Great Britain. Not only did she help me drag up the rest of my belongings, she assisted me with assembling my IKEA furniture. Between the cursing over missing hardware, sharing two bottles of wine as I unpacked, and her gentle teasing about my sports-themed decorating style, we became fast friends.
I also learned that Liddy had retired from professional skating after an ugly breakup with her skating partner/husband, and after a few years touring the world with Disney on Ice, she’d become a freelance ice dancing choreographer as well as a representative for a London-based athletic apparel company. She, in turn, heard about my assorted hockey triumphs, from winning back-to-back state championships at Fargo North High School, to accepting a full-ride hockey scholarship to UND with hopes of bringing a women’s hockey Frozen Four title to my college, to playing on the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team, winning three world championships and two Four Nations Cups, to winning silver medals in 2010 and 2014 playing with the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team, as well as my short-lived honor of being named the first female assistant coach to a college men’s hockey team at UND, only to resign in protest a few months later after that same college—my alma mater—eliminated the women’s hockey program entirely.