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  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  Other Bella Books by Tracey Richardson

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Synopsis

  Passion and patriotism sizzle on the ice at the Winter Olympics.

  It’s been a dozen years since two of the world’s best women hockey players, Niki Hartling and Eva Caruso, first competed against each other in the Olympic Games.

  The pressure of the intense USA–Canada rivalry forced an end to their love affair, and both women moved on—Niki to coach and to marry, Eva to stretch out a playing career that her ravaged body can barely sustain anymore.

  The Games are upon them once again. Eva wants one last chance to beat the Canadians and win hockey’s biggest prize. Niki, now a widow and single mother, strives to coach her country to gold, even as the obstacles against her mount. The locker room seems to have ears and there are few people Niki and Eva can trust.

  Rivals and former lovers on hockey’s biggest stage, will Niki and Eva feel the same spark that first brought them together? And can they win on—and off—the ice with the whole world watching?

  Copyright © 2017 by Tracey Richardson

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  First Bella Books Edition 2017

  Editor: Medora MacDougall

  Cover Designer: Judith Fellows

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-526-8

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other Bella Books by Tracey Richardson

  Blind Bet

  By Mutual Consent

  The Campaign

  The Candidate

  Side Order of Love

  No Rules of Engagement

  The Song in My Heart

  The Wedding Party

  Last Salute

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the women I’ve had the pleasure of playing hockey with over the years. The game, the people who play it, the fans, have all enriched my life tremendously. This book would never have been written without the encouragement of fellow author Chris Paynter, who simply told me I had to write a hockey-themed romance and wouldn’t let me off the hook. I want to thank my local writers’ group (ASCRIBE Writers) for their ongoing friendship, support and encouragement and for making our monthly meetings fun. Thank you to Bella Books and their awesome staff for their unmatched dedication and professionalism. As always, I’m indebted to my favorite editor, Medora MacDougall, who gets me and my books, and makes my books, and me, better. And last but not least, thanks to my partner Sandra, who’s helped make it possible for me to indulge in this passion called writing full time.

  About the Author

  Tracey is a two-time Lambda Literary award finalist and a first-place (RWA) Rainbow Writers winner. Retired from a twenty-six-year journalism career, Tracey enjoys golf, hockey, guitar and kayaking (when not writing, of course!) in the beautiful Georgian Bay area of Ontario.

  Author’s Note

  All characters and events in this novel are fictional. The 2010 Winter Olympic Games were held in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the scores of the Olympic women’s hockey games in this novel are correct, but all other details and information about the Olympics, the hockey games, the individuals and the teams in this novel are products of the author’s imagination.

  Chapter One

  Interference

  August, 2009

  Niki Hartling’s first instinct was to ignore the two sharp raps on her office door. There was precious little time for interruptions with the start of the new semester eleven days away and the mountain of curriculum work that lay ahead of her.

  A third knock forced her out of her chair. Fine, she thought with fresh exasperation. She’d make them go away quickly, especially if it was a colleague wanting to grumble about course loads and schedules. Or worse, a student begging to get into one of her already filled classes or perhaps wanting a teaching assistant’s job. Or God knew what else.

  She pulled open the door and stepped back in surprise. “Lynn O’Reilly, my God, woman! What are you doing halfway across the province?”

  Lynn, a tall woman whose leanness had given way to a muscled stockiness in the years since her hockey-playing days, wrapped Niki in a bear hug, squeezing the breath from her lungs. “Nice to see you too, Nik.” Her grin was as wide as a watermelon split in two. That was Lynn, wearing her emotions on her sleeve, whether it was her temper or her cheer. “I bet I’m about the last ex-teammate you’d expect to see standing in your very impressive university office after all this time, eh?”

  No, Niki thought as a blade of sadness bit into her heart. The last former teammate she’d ever expect to see standing in front of her was a woman she’d mostly given up thinking about a long time ago. A woman she’d once loved with the naîvéte and abandonment that could only come with being in love for the first time, where every feeling, every moment together, dwarfed all else. But eleven years had sailed by. Eleven years in which Niki had married, become widowed, was left with a child to raise alone. Eleven years in which she had grown up and been through more than most people endured over the course of decades. Seeing Lynn again only reminded her that she didn’t have the time or the inclination to think about the old days. Not when there was so much in the present to worry about.

  “Jeez,” Niki said, rubbing her face by way of giving her emotions a reset. It wasn’t Lynn’s fault that so much had changed, that so many things in her life had
become hard. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “Hard to believe it’s been over a decade since we shared the same ice. But you haven’t changed a bit. You look like you could still strap ’em on and give ’em hell on the score sheet, the way you did in ’98.”

  Nagano 1998. The first Olympic Games to include women’s ice hockey as a medal sport, and a bittersweet silver medal for Niki, Lynn and their Team Canada teammates. The memory was as clear as if it had happened yesterday, that moment when the silver medals were prominently placed around their necks. When all of the players but Niki and Lynn cried tears of frustration and disappointment and anguish. Their team had been the favorite to win gold, but Niki and Lynn, the team’s de facto leaders, had known better than to buy into all that sanctimonious, head-swelling hype. It was the underdogs who were blessed with the advantage, with the mental edge in sports, Niki tried to counsel her teammates then, because the underdogs were almost always hungriest and played with the least amount of pressure. But her advice—and the goals she scored almost single-handedly—hadn’t been enough. It was in that moment when the silver medal was draped around her neck that Niki knew it was time to hang up her skates, because she, too, had ultimately come up short in matching the Americans’ desire to win. She’d given it everything and it hadn’t been enough. The wanting was there but the result wasn’t. Ultimately she’d failed her team, failed herself, and knew that as a player it would be impossible to want—and to come so close to achieving—anything like that again. When you tried your best but couldn’t quite reach the top of the mountain, there came a time when there was nothing left but to turn around and go back down.

  Niki swallowed, deciding it was too long ago and too painful to dredge up their playing days. Little could come of this little stroll down memory lane. “Speaking of the Olympics, congratulations, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Lynn said, whistling under her breath. She would be the assistant coach for Team Canada’s entry into the Vancouver Olympics six months from now. But there was a current of worry in her voice and the way she was shuffling her feet. “I don’t know, Nik.”

  “There’s nothing not to know. You’re up to it. They wouldn’t have picked you otherwise.” Niki was deeply familiar with the pressures Lynn faced, because she had been an assistant coach to the national team in the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, where Canada had claimed gold against the Americans, exactly as they’d done in Salt Lake in ’02. But the golden glow was short-lived. Six weeks later her wife Shannon was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only months to live. Niki had not coached a game of hockey since.

  “It’s not that, Nik, but thank you for your confidence.”

  No, it wouldn’t be a lack of confidence, not with Lynn. Lynn was capable, was brutally ruthless at times. Or at least, when it came to winning. She wasn’t afraid of making decisions, wasn’t afraid of doing whatever was required. A bull in a china shop, as both a player and a coach.

  “Got time for a walk?” Lynn asked with a hopeful lilt to her voice.

  “Of course.” Anyone who’d traveled the four hours down the clogged Highway 401 from Toronto to the University of Windsor campus deserved a few minutes of her time, curriculum be damned. And for Lynn to show up unannounced after all these years, well, whatever she wanted to talk about had to be important.

  The campus was deserted, as it would remain until the semester started. It took only minutes for Niki and Lynn to reach the Detroit River and the meandering, paved walking path along its shore. Summer still hung hot and humid in the air, autumn giving no hint that it was poised to take over. But that would change in a few weeks, when the leaves would begin their costume change and a damp chill would deepen its claim on the days.

  “Not that I pretend to know much about it, but I guess you’re getting ready for the new semester?” Lynn said. She’d never gone to college or university. Right out of high school, she had joined the professional women’s hockey league—the National Women’s Hockey League. The professional part was a joke, though, because it only paid a few hundred dollars a month. Lynn had slogged in a factory making bicycle parts to augment her income, then made the transition to coaching in the same league a few years ago. It was a big step up for her to join Hockey Canada’s coaching ranks, just as it had been for Niki four years ago.

  “You’d think I’d have the curriculum down cold after all these years, but I like to tear it down and rebuild it every year.”

  Lynn laughed. “You would. Biggest perfectionist I’ve ever seen.”

  Niki taught sports management in the university’s business school. Her classes were popular, especially with professional and semi-professional sports becoming bigger and bigger business in North America. And yeah, she was a taskmaster as a teacher, expecting her students to exhibit the kind of drive and ambition they’d need to get ahead in their work life. Schools were insular, protective. The real world, whether it was business or sports, was a snake pit.

  “Which,” Lynn continued, “is why you were such a damned good coach. Your attention to the smallest details, for one.”

  They stopped to gaze out at the river, gray today beneath the lightly overcast sky. A lake freighter inched toward the skeletal-like, murky shadow cast by the Ambassador Bridge, the ship’s mammoth steel hull so close that Niki could probably have thrown a stone and hit it.

  “Ever miss coaching?” Lynn asked, and something in her voice told Niki the question wasn’t entirely rhetorical.

  “I don’t think about coaching anymore. Haven’t in a long time.” It wasn’t a lie. Hockey was no longer on Niki’s radar because other, much more pressing things claimed her attention. Like making a living. Like being a single mother.

  “You playing at all?”

  “Recreational pickup once a week. It’s about all I have time for. Look.” Niki knew Lynn wasn’t the type to beat around the bush. Nor was she here for a friendly catch-up session. They were friends, but they were hockey friends. Lynn hadn’t even made the trip to attend Shannon’s funeral three years ago. “Why are you really here, Lynn? What’s on your mind?”

  The look in Lynn’s brown eyes was forthright. “Hockey Canada is going to fire Coach Rogers next week.”

  “What? Why?”

  Mike Rogers was head coach of the women’s team and had been for the past two years. Niki knew it was highly unusual to start fresh with a new head coach six months away from an Olympics. In fact, it was pretty much guaranteed suicide for the team. The planning, the strategy sessions, the selection camps and meetings, would all have been taking place for months now. It would be like switching jockeys in the start gate of the Kentucky Derby.

  “I’m not high enough on the ladder to know all the whys. But there are rumors.”

  Niki considered pressing Lynn, but decided it wasn’t her business. Nor did she really care what was behind the firing. She was about to ask Lynn why she was telling her all of this when it hit her like a two-by-four across the shoulders. “Oh, no no no. No, you don’t, Lynn O’Reilly.”

  Lynn didn’t try to deny anything. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and one dark eyebrow posed a question.

  Niki turned sharply and began walking quickly. It took only seconds for Lynn, with her longer strides, to pull even with her. “You’re here on a recruiting mission, aren’t you? Well, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time, Lynn. Would have been cheaper and quicker if you’d just called, you know.”

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  They walked in silence for another minute, Niki fuming inside that Lynn didn’t know her better than all this. Didn’t know that there was no way she’d even consider taking on a coaching job with Hockey Canada. It was about as likely as joining the astronaut program.

  “You’re pissed at me, aren’t you?”

  Niki stopped, fixed Lynn with a look that contained no forgiveness. She felt used. “There are at least ten good reasons why I won’t return
to coaching, but only one that matters. To me, anyway.”

  Lynn’s expression softened. “How old is Rory now?”

  “She just turned ten this summer. She’s young, Lynn, just a kid. A kid who’s known more upheaval and heartache than a kid her age ever should.”

  Dread and grief and anger formed a hard knot in Niki’s stomach. Most days, she muddled through, doing her best to maintain a stable environment for Rory. Routines had kept her sane and Rory secure while they waited for grief to dissolve into something more tolerable. They’d recently begun to get a little comfortable with their new normal, but it was a process. A slow process. She’d kept everything the same since Shannon’s death. Same house, same Sunday dinners at Shannon’s sister Jenny’s house, same two-week-long vacation at a Lake Huron rental cottage every July. Even if she were interested in coaching Team Canada—which she wasn’t—she would never pack up Rory and move her to the team’s training center in Calgary for the next six months. It’d be far too selfish. And way too hard.

  “Look,” Lynn finally said. “They’re going to be calling you in the next couple of days. I only wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “And to feel me out?”

  Lynn shrugged, wouldn’t meet her eye for a moment. When she did, there was no apology in her stare. “All right. Here’s the truth. Hockey Canada wants you for the head coach’s job. They know your track record, know you’re a proven winner. You helped the team to gold at the last Olympics as an assistant coach, and before that you won two CIS titles coaching Windsor here. You’re money in the bank, Nik. Rogers has been losing his grip on that team for months. ’Course, doesn’t help that he’s been screwing one of the players.”