Destiny on Ice (Boys of Winter #1) Read online

  And that’s saying a lot.

  “Hey, where’s Benny?” I ask Nolan as I scan the shadows of the room.

  He nods to a sofa that’s been pushed way-ass off to a far corner.

  “Oh, I should’ve known.” I chuckle as I take in an eyeful.

  Benny is sprawled out on a sofa in the shadows, sleeping like a baby. His massive chest is rising and falling in perfect rhythm with the ticking clock on the stone mantel above his head. Some puck bunny he was fucking around with last night is with him, passed out on top of him.

  The sheet covering their naked bodies is hiked up just enough to afford a view of the girl’s creamy thigh, which is casually slung over my linemate’s muscular, hairy-as-hell leg, and positioned under his semi-exposed junk.

  Chuckling at Benny’s total lack of modesty, I pick up a throw pillow and lob it at his head—the one that clearly controls all his thinking.

  And he scores!

  As the pillow makes contact—and how could it not with a pole like that marking my target?—the sheet falls off completely. I get a quick flash of perky tits and tiny ass. And then, shit—a big honking piece of man-meat assaults my eyes.

  “Dude,” I snort, mock-offended. “You need to cover that shit before you blind us all.”

  Benny stirs to life. Sitting up, he barks, “What the fuck, Oliver? I was having the best dream ever. That is till you started tossing shit at my balls. ”

  Nolan lets out a low chuckle. “Only you, Benny, could find a way of using ‘tossing’ and ‘balls’ in the same sentence. But really”—he tilts his bottle to Benny’s dick—“you need to do what Brent said and cover that shit up.”

  Throughout this entire brain-draining exchange, the girl wakes up. And damn, she looks young. Letting out a little squeak, not unlike a hamster, she gathers the sheet around her naked self and scurries off to where she seems to think the bathroom is.

  I only know this ’cause she’s muttering something about having to pee. But the poor girl has no idea where to go. Hamster-girl flies past me, heading down the wrong hallway, the one that leads to my bedroom.

  As I rush to retrieve her, I can’t help but grumble, “Why in the hell do they always think the damn bathroom’s down my hall?”

  I catch up to and redirect the girl, pointing her in the correct direction. “It’s that way, sweetheart,” I say in my kindest tone.

  No need to be an asshole; the poor thing already looks shell-shocked. Though whether that’s due to waking up in a strange house or waking up next to that monstrous thing Benny calls a cock, I have no clue.

  “Thanks, Mr. Oliver,” she replies.

  And then she runs off.

  “Mr. Oliver?” I shake my head. “What the fuck is up with that? If she thinks I’m old and I’m only twenty-two, then…”

  Whoa, wait.

  Hurrying back out to the living room and pointing an accusatory finger at Benny, I say, “That chick better be over eighteen, dude. We’re in enough trouble already with the team.”

  Benjamin Perry is twenty-eight, but he likes younger girls. Nothing illegal, so don’t get your panties in a bunch. He just happens to favor babes who either look young, or are just old enough.

  “She’s twenty-three,” he replies, sounding hurt by my accusation.

  “What? Five years past eighteen?” Nolan peers over at me and smirks. “Hey, Oliver, you think Benny is working up to go cougar on us?”

  Laughing, I reply, “Seeing as he’s on his way to fucking the full spectrum of girls in their twenties, I do indeed think he’s secretly working his way up to thirty.”

  “Small steps,” Nolan says.

  “Fuck you,” Benny interjects. “You’re both dickheads.”

  I put up my hands. “Hey, don’t be pissed at me. Take it up with Nolan. He started with the jokes. I only brought up the chick’s age for your own protection. I’m always looking out for you, buddy.”

  “Yeah, you usually are,” he concedes. “And thanks for that.” He shoots me an apologetic grin. “You really are a good kid at heart.”

  I shrug, feeling a little self-conscious at being called a kid. But then I see what Benny is up to, preparing to bust my balls.

  Sure enough, the next words out of his mouth are “You do know I mean kid in a good kind of way. Like maybe”—he smirks—“a golden boy sort of style.”

  “Ha. Ha,” I retort. And since he’s enjoying yanking my chain far too much, I shoot him the bird. “Shut the fuck up, man.”

  Benny may give me a hard time, but his underlying sentiment is genuine. What he said about me being a good guy, like a decent person, is true. Despite all the craziness of late, I want nothing but the best for my friends. And just because I’ve been fucking up my own life lately doesn’t mean Benny’s and Nolan’s lives have to go down the shitter too.

  Really, I probably should’ve never invited them to Minnesota. I should have come up to the lake house by myself. That would’ve been the smart thing to do, especially if my intention all along has been to piss away my career.

  I don’t really want that, though, do I?

  No.

  I just need some help in getting back on track.

  But where would I find something like that?

  Ah, fuck it.

  “So what do you say, Benny?” I ask, back to focusing on the party. “You in?”

  He stretches, covering his dick with the pillow I threw at him. I make a mental note to have all my furniture and their decorative accents, especially the pillows, steam cleaned.

  Running his hand through his shaggy, dark blond hair, he says, “Am I in for what?”

  “Party tonight,” Nolan interjects in his usual no-nonsense tone. “One last blowout, and then Brent here says we’re stopping with the bad behavior.”

  I have to laugh. Nolan is only three years older than me, but it’s like he’s twenty-five going on forty. He’s the voice of reason in our crew.

  Well, most of the time.

  Not today, though. No, today he agrees to go all-out.

  With the party plans full steam ahead, we get on our phones, texting and calling everyone we know.

  “Tonight we party hard,” I declare when we reconvene in the living room.

  “Yeah,” Nolan says, holding up a freshly opened bottle of beer.

  “You mean hell, yeah,” Benny corrects, raising the full shot glass in his hand.

  “Hell, yeah,” I echo, a beer and a shot on the table in front of me. “And just so we’re clear,” I add. “Tomorrow we give up the booze and the women. Tomorrow we start training for real.”

  The boys agree, and we drink to our plan.

  Yeah, tomorrow we’ll do all those things…

  YOLO, Bitches

  “No way, Aubrey,” my bubbly little sister squeals in my ear.

  Even with all the noise at O’Hare at eight thirty in the morning on a bustling Tuesday, I hear only her. Really quite a feat when you think about it.

  “You’re leaving Chicago in what? Like an hour?”

  “Yep,” I confirm. “I’m scheduled on the nine-thirty flight to Minneapolis. And then I’ll be on my way up to see you, little sis.”

  I decided late last night that detouring up to Minnesota before I head out to Nevada for an upcoming work assignment—a job which I know very little about, except that it’ll likely consume the next two to four months of my life—would be a nice surprise for both me and my only sibling.

  Lainey recently returned to Minneapolis after spending the summer at our parents’ house in Butler, Pennsylvania. I didn’t have a chance to visit her, or my folks, even after I promised I would.

  This is me correcting at least one of those wrongs.

  Lainey is about to start her senior year at the University of Minnesota. She’s majoring in marketing, and soon she’ll be busy with her business classes. Same as I’ll be busy readying for my new work assignment by this time tomorrow.

  My little sister starts gushing, going on and on about all the
fun things we can do in Minneapolis, most of which involve bars and parties.

  I gently remind her, “I’m only staying for one night, Lain. Plus, I have an early morning flight to catch tomorrow.”

  It’s not that early—the plane I’m booked on to Vegas doesn’t leave till eleven—but it’s safer to let on like the flight is at the ass crack of dawn. I’m hoping to deter party girl from keeping me out half the night.

  “Okay, okay,” she concedes. “It doesn’t matter when you leave. We’re still finding ourselves some kind of trouble to get into tonight. And I mean trouble with a capital T, chica.”

  She’s referring to drinking, which I don’t do much of these days.

  But tonight I’ll make an exception.

  “All right,” I say, a smile playing at my lips. “Maybe it’s time I show you I really can party with the best of them.”

  “You’re on,” Lainey replies.

  Gulp. I hope I can hang. The last time I had anything more than a glass of wine with dinner was on a date I went on last year. Yes, you read that right. A whole twelve months have passed since my most recent even remotely romantic encounter with a man. But even that was a bust. My date and I had absolutely nothing in common. He spent dinner texting on his cell phone, probably with another girl, and I drowned my sorrows with copious amounts of margaritas. It was all I could do to soothe my bruised ego.

  While I lament the sad state of my dating life, Lainey continues to jabber on excitedly about this evening and what we can do while I’m there. Between my “yeah” and “uh-huh” responses, I have to chuckle. My sister turned twenty-one last month and everything to her is still so über-exciting.

  I’m the calm one in comparison. I guess that’s because I’m three years older. But it’s not only that. We’re just different. Really, the only thing we have in common is the way we look. Both of us have raven-black hair that we wear long, and we share the same turquoise-blue eye color.

  Apart from that, we’re like night and day.

  Lainey is the party girl.

  I’m the serious, career-oriented one.

  She’s the boy-crazy chick with guys lining up to ask her out.

  I, as established, rarely date.

  Hmm, I really need to change that, though. I’ve been feeling extra-lonely lately.

  “Wow,” Lainey says, sounding suddenly shocked, and thus distracting me from my reverie.

  “What’s wow?” I ask.

  “I still can’t believe you worked things out so you can come up and visit me. And all while getting ready to go on a business trip. I have to say, Aubs, this is very unlike you.”

  “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf,” I reply with a firm nod she unfortunately can’t see.

  You need to mix it up if you ever expect this boring life of yours to change, a little voice inside my head has been reminding me, thus prompting this decision.

  “I hope so.” Lainey sounds cautiously optimistic. “You need more fun in your life. I love seeing you take a chance here and there. It’s like I always say—you never know what might happen if you throw caution to the wind once in a while.”

  I’ve shared with Lainey lately how I’m tiring of the dull and routine-driven life I lead, this existence filled with work, work, and more work. I’m married to my job, but damn it, I need a mistress. Or would that be a master?

  Oh my! My long-neglected lady bits like that idea.

  “Aubrey, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes.” I clear my throat. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve been thinking about what we talked about a while ago and I’m trying to go with the flow a little more. That’s why I booked the flight, totally impulsively, to come see you. Who knows, Lainey? Maybe tonight I’ll really cut loose. We all know I’m due.”

  That’s right. I may as well jump aboard the YOLO train and ride it to the land of wild abandon. Maybe if I do, I’ll even meet someone tonight. Someone I’ll never see again, of course, but that’s good. I need a practice-man I can sharpen my flirt moves on. They’re rusty as hell and could use some fine-tuning, especially if I ever plan to use them to land a guy some day. Hopefully that “landing” will occur within the next decade, seeing as the last real boyfriend I had was way back in college.

  Damn, that puts things in perspective. And it reminds me of my sex life.

  Pfft, what sex life?

  “Right,” I whisper. “More like lack thereof.”

  Beneath my jeans, I imagine my lady bits making a little sign of the cross, praying to reverse the curse of the dreaded dick-drought. Realistically though, despite all my bluster, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Not with another work assignment starting up in Las Vegas.

  “So, Aubrey, this more impulsive you,” my sister begins. “Does this mean we’ll be seeing more of her? Like, on a consistent basis?”

  “Don’t expect me to be wild all the time,” I hedge. When I hear her groan, I hasten to add, “Don’t worry, though. Compared to how I’ve been lately, there’s a lot more crazy-Aubrey days brewing up ahead.”

  She laughs, but then warns, “Be careful. You’ve gone so long without taking chances that you’re at risk of getting hooked on the adrenaline rush you’re bound to feel when you finally let go.”

  Jeez, am I really that bad? Probably, seeing as I don’t do anything impulsive, like ever. My job pretty much precludes me from that kind of recklessness.

  “I hope you’re right,” I murmur. “I need a jolt of…something.”

  “Hey, I’m just happy I get to spend some time with you, even if it is just for one night.” Softly, she adds, “I really missed not seeing you at Mom and Dad’s this summer.”

  “Oh, Lainey, I know.”

  Regret gnaws at my gut. See, this is why I need a change. My lonely existence not only lacks a man, but my relationship with my family has been suffering, as well.

  “I wanted to visit,” I continue. “Really, I did. But I got so damn tied up with my last client that the next thing I knew summer was over. And then there you were, back at school.”

  “Yeah, here I am,” she murmurs. “And you’re about to start a new assignment.”

  “Yep,” I reply.

  “The busy and exciting life of a life coach continues,” she says with a smile in her tone.

  “Hardly,” I scoff. “It’s busy, yes. But I don’t know about the exciting part.”

  “Hey, I know you claim it can be grueling sometimes—and you miss out on things, true—but really, Aubrey, what a gig.”

  “It’s not all sunshine and roses,” I assure her.

  Undeterred, she goes on. “So this latest client, the one you just finished with, was he another rich dude who turned out to be a handful?”

  “Aren’t they all?” I say on a sigh.

  I like my job, but truthfully it wears on me. Being a “life coach” to troubled celebrities requires a ton of commitment. Not to mention you have to jump at a moment’s notice. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past twelve hours, scrambling like a chicken with its head cut off.

  After I received a call from my boss, Mr. Delahunty, late last night, the scrambling began. I have a new client. A client I have no real info on that I need to meet with tomorrow afternoon. It’s usually like this with my kind of work. I go in blind to assure the client’s anonymity until all the contracts are signed.

  Lainey sighs longingly into the phone. Even after assuring her that it’s not all fun and games, she insists on clinging to the false illusion that my job is great.

  Dreamily, she murmurs, “Difficult clients or not, you still have the coolest job on the planet.”

  “I guess,” I grudgingly reply.

  My job is pretty cool, when viewed as an outsider. I mean, come on, working with celebrities, most of who end up being hot male clients. That can’t be all that bad, right?

  Wrong.

  It’s a huge time and energy commitment. And though it pays well, I sacrifice a lot. I guess I should throw in here tha
t I’m employed by a very discreet firm, one that specializes in helping not only troubled celebrities, but also messed-up musicians and professional athletes with issues. My job is to help the client get their life straightened out, so they can shine like the star they are.

  Sometimes booze is the problem, and other times it’s drugs. One time we had a client who was addicted to hookers. I got that one, lucky me. But no matter what the issue is, I’m there, playing counselor, psychologist, and friend.

  Our firm is based in Chicago, so that’s where I live at the moment. I could live anywhere really, seeing as I’m always traveling and spending months at a time in various locations around the country. I go where I’m needed…and stay as long as required.

  “Where are you crashing tonight?” Lainey asks out of the blue. Before I can answer, she adds, “You can stay with me if you want. I’m sure my roomies wouldn’t mind.”

  What? No.

  Lainey lives in a house with three other girls, all of whom are in school. Their place is located only two blocks from campus, making it party central most nights. I might never make it to Vegas if I crash there.

  “No, that’s okay,” I reply. “I already have a room booked at a hotel out by the airport.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  I remind my disappointed-sounding sister, “This is still part of a business trip, Lainey.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” I imagine her rolling her eyes at her not-quite-wild-yet big sister. “But we’re still having fun tonight, no matter what. I’m making sure of it.”

  The sensible side of me takes over for a minute and I remind her, “A good time is fine, but I need to be back at the hotel at a sensible hour. I can’t miss my flight. I need to be sharp and clear-headed when I get to Vegas tomorrow. The client will be at the meeting, and I’d like to make a good impression.”

  “The new client is out west, that’s cool.” Lainey says.

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “So who is it this time around?”

  “I don’t know,” I honestly reply, not that I could tell her even if I did. Confidentiality is paramount in my line of work. Still, it’s safe to say, “My boss didn’t inform me of much. Only thing I know for certain is I’m attending a meeting with the client and their management team in the afternoon. Everything about the client—what he does for a living, what his name is—will remain a secret till then.”