DELAYED PENALTY
Pilots Hockey #1
Sophia Henry
Releasing Sept 1st, 2015
She closed her heart long ago. He
just wants to open her mind. For fans of Toni Aleo and Sawyer Bennett, the
debut of Sophia Henry’s red-hot Detroit Pilots series introduces a hockey team
full of complicated men who fight for love.
Auden Berezin is used to losing
people: her father, her mother, her first love. Now, just
when she believes those childhood wounds are finally healing, she loses
something else: the soccer scholarship that was her ticket to college.
Scrambling to earn tuition money, she’s relieved to find a gig translating for
a Russian minor-league hockey player—until she realizes that he’s the same
dangerously sexy jerk who propositioned her at the bar the night before.
Equal parts muscle and scar tissue,
Aleksandr Varenkov knows about trauma. Maybe that’s what draws him to Auden. He
also lost his family too young, and he channeled the pain into his passions:
first hockey, then vodka and women. But all that seems to just melt away the
instant he kisses Auden and feels a jolt of desire as sudden and surprising as
a hard check on the ice.
After everything she’s been through,
Auden can’t bring herself to trust any man, let alone a hot-headed puck jockey
with a bad reputation. Aleksandr just hopes she’ll give him a chance—long
enough to prove he’s finally met the one who makes him want to change.
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“I hope you don’t think you’re going to sit
on your butt your whole break,” Grandpa said. He punctuated his sentence with a
quick snap of his newspaper. He’d done it to lift a falling corner, but he may
as well have cracked an invisible whip.
“Come on, Dedushka,” I
said, stopping my arm midair and lifting my tired eyes from the milk dripping
off the spoon to his customary stern face. “I just got home yesterday.”
“And you start your job today.” His steel
blue eyes caught mine before returning to the paper.
“Funny. I don’t remember interviewing.” I
smirked, then shoveled the spoonful of soggy cereal into my mouth.
“Oh, how I’ve missed your smart mouth,
Auden,” he said without even looking up.
Though I would be home for less than a
month, living with my grandparents again would be rough. After my first taste
of freedom living in the dorms freshman year, going back to Hawk-eye Land will
be a challenge.
All my life I had wished I’d had a sibling,
but the yearning was never so prominent as when I came home from school. It had
been fourteen years since my mom died. Fourteen years of being the only person
my grandparents had to worry about. While I appreciated the motive behind their
undivided attention, I’d always wanted someone who understood my rants about
their constant hovering. Someone to talk with and share silly inside jokes.
Since my well-being was my grandparents’ first priority, they were always on my
case. It would’ve been nice to have a sibling to pick up some of the slack. I
never wanted to sound ungrateful for what they’d done for me, but sometimes I
needed a break.
“What kind of job is it?” I asked, keeping
any smart-mouth comments to myself. Didn’t feel like ticking him off today.
“Translating.” Grandpa folded the newspaper
into a rectangle and set it next to his Not
only perfect, but Russian, too coffee mug.
My grandfather, Viktor Berezin, was a
retired Russian language professor at a state university outside of Detroit.
He’d taken on various translating jobs for friends and coworkers his whole life
and had set me up with small projects since my junior year of high school. The
work hadn’t been difficult; translating documents or contracts from Russian
into English or vice versa. It was great money for a teenager, since it paid
better than babysitting or a part-time retail job.
“Documents?” I asked.
“For a person. He doesn’t know much
English, and he needs a translator to speak with the media for his job. You
will help him.”
“He speaks with the media for his job? Is
he super-high profile?”
“In some circles, I suppose.” Grandpa
shrugged.
“You trust me to be someone’s PR person? I
have a pretty smart mouth, you know,” I joked, shoveling more cereal into my
mouth.
“I’m counting on it, Audushka.”
“Is he an actor? A model?” I pushed my
empty cereal bowl to the side. “Wait! Is he some kind of dignitary?”
“I think I’d handle the dignitary if he
were one.” Grandpa took a sip of his coffee. “He’s a hockey player.”
“A hockey player,” I repeated. “For the Red
Wings?”
Excitement bubbled in my stomach. I’d been
a Detroit Red Wings fan since before I could speak. Being a translator for a
Russian player on my favorite team in the history of the universe would
complete my life.
“Not that high profile.” Grandpa laughed.
“He plays for the Pilots.”
A minor-league player? The bubbles in my
stomach fizzled and popped, and my tense, excited shoulders dropped.
“Where am I meeting him?”
“You will meet Zhenya at Robinson Arena at
noon.”
Grandpa was talking about his lifelong
friend, Evgeny Orlenko. Zhenya is the Russian term of endearment for the name
Evgeny. Personally, I thought of Orlenko as an uncle, since he and Grandpa were
as close as brothers. Professionally, he was a sports agent who represented a
number of Russian hockey players. According to recent documents I’d translated,
he’d peppered his clientele list with a few basketball players as well.
“Hey, Gram,” I greeted my grandmother, who
had just walked into the tiny kitchen with the electric lighted mirror she
swore by.
For someone who didn’t approve of her kids
or grandkids being vain, Gram was pretty concerned with her looks. She never
wore foundation or mascara, but her cheeks were always powdered and her lips
were never without lipstick in public. Her fair skin was wrinkled with soft
lines, but it didn’t take away from the beauty of her features. Her blue-gray
eyes and high cheekbones were complimented by perpetually dark blond hair,
thanks to the magic of hair dye. She would’ve been beautiful even if she’d let
her hair go gray. I could only hope I got some of those graceful-aging genes.
“What time did you get home last night?”
Gram asked, setting the mirror on the table and flipping it to the
ultra-magnifying side before stooping to plug it in.
“Around one-thirty, I guess.”
“I can tell. You’re puffy.” She reached
over to pat my cheek before turning to inspect her own face in the mirror.
Thanks,
I thought. I didn’t dare say it out loud.
My grandparents and I had a better relationship since I’d left for college than
we ever had when I was growing up. Didn’t want to mess up a good thing. “Where
are you off to?”
“It’s my week to clean the church,” Gram
answered as she slicked a rose shade across her lips. Then she patted the skin
under her eyes with her fingers and turned the mirror’s light off.
“Do you need any help?”
“Pat and Emma will be there, but thank you
for asking.”
My breath of relief was almost audible. I
hadn’t been back to church since I’d left my grandparents’ house two years ago.
Just thinking about the place made me itchy.
I slid out of my seat, tapped my inseams
together with a flourish, and straightened my arms at my sides.
“Are you going to tell me my client’s name
or is this a super-secret mission, Sir?” I asked in a military monotone.
My grandpa shook his head, picked up the
newspaper, and straightened it out. “Don’t know it. I just told Zhenya you’d be
happy to do it.”
“Super secret. Got it. I won’t let you
down, Sir.” I saluted him. Still staring straight ahead, I waited to be
excused.
Grandpa lowered the paper. “Is there
something else?”
“May I be excused? I have to shower and
dress for the mission.”
“You are a ridiculous girl, Audushka.” He
dismissed me with a shake of his head.
“Auden, you're only home for a month.
Please try not to drive your grandfather crazy,” my grandma said.
With a salute to both of them, I ignored
her warning. I’d driven my grandpa crazy years ago.
I thought Grandpa would continue to reward
my almost-native knowledge of reading, writing, and speaking Russian by giving
me tedious translating projects my whole life. I never expected him to allow me
to work directly with a client, let alone a client in the public eye. Maybe he
had more faith in me than I realized.
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Sophia Henry, a proud Detroit
native, fell in love with reading, writing, and hockey all before she became a
teenager. She did not, however, fall in love with snow. So after graduating
with an English degree from Central Michigan University, she moved to North
Carolina, where she spends her time writing books featuring hockey-playing
heroes, chasing her two high-energy sons, watching her beloved Detroit Red
Wings, and rocking out at concerts with her husband.
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