The Alpha's Power Play

ure and not know it until the swelling hit that night. It wasn't a marketable skill outside of professional sports, which was how she'd ended up standing in the tunnel of

" he said, n

reed. "Marlowe. A

the size of a dinner plat

e ret

ct, not a rumor, and went back to his shou

ot going to be the girl who asked questions in her first week. She was going to show up, do the job, cash the check

ll caught herself doing

quite dried between games. What was different was the quiet. Twenty-two grown men getting ready for a morning skate, and nobody was loud.

iller than stiller, if that was a thing rooms could do, and every head

en made for him, which it probably had. He was younger than she'd expected from the team photos in the hallway, maybe m

fore she'd even decid

Hale,"

down the back of her neck, the specific unease

gaze instead of looking away like every instinct t

room seemed to blink much, now that she

er her hand. She hadn't m

she said, keeping her voice level.

"Small hockey world," he said instead, which wasn't an answer, and turned to Dane before she c

that the way you understand a door closi

e in this sport had heard of her father, that he'd been a beat reporter for the regional paper

or the second ice machine and ended up in a hallw

rd fire-rated stuff, and it had a keypad instead of a handle. She stood there a second longer than she should have,

not fo

ithout a sound despite his size, which should not

nd," she said. "Looking f

didn't reach anything past his mouth. "T

rself the whole way that she was imagining the way his nostrils flared twice, deliberate

ded, she'd almost talked herself

red in the doorway of the training room, alone this

d," he

ent, giving herself something to do that wasn't stare at h

out my b

attention.

rip through Millbrook." He watched her face while he said it, watched for something, and she had the dis

cond ago. "My father wrote about a lot of

before he died," Rhys said, quiet and

, and she'd spent exactly one year trying to understand why a careful, sober, unremarkable man had driven off a road he'd

dn't file?" she asked, and her voi

as running a low fever that never broke. "Because I read every word my brother's team lawyers pulle

on of her, the one who'd wanted to be an investigative reporter just like her dad be

swore, she saw them flare gold at the edges, just for a second, just lo

because something shut behind his face

say another word, leaving her alone with a half-capped bottle of liniment and the