Playing for Keeps

Eve

The first thing I learned about Alberta is that the sky doesn’t believe in ceilings. It stretches in every direction like a dare, a vast, terrifying blue expanse that makes me feel approximately three inches tall—which, considering I’m five-foot-three on a good hair day, is a real structural problem for my ego. In California, the sky is a backdrop for palm trees and overpriced rooftop bars. Here, it feels like it’s actively trying to swallow the land whole.

I leaned my forehead against the Uber’s window, which was smeared with a questionable grey slush that I was quickly learning was the official mascot of a Canadian prairie winter. The heater in the back of the sedan was humming a valiant but losing tune against the draft coming from the door seals. My toes, even in my expensive Italian leather boots, were starting to feel like ten little frozen peas.

“First time in Calgary?” the driver asked. He had a cowboy hat hanging from his rearview mirror and a thick accent that sounded like it was cured in maple syrup and woodsmoke. He caught my eye in the mirror, his expression a mix of amusement and genuine concern.

“First time in Alberta,” I corrected, trying to keep the tremor of what-have-I-done out of my voice. “I was… expecting Vancouver. You know, oceans? Mild rain? People who don’t need a PhD in Arctic survival just to fetch the mail?”

The driver whistled, a long, low sound of pity that did nothing for my rising anxiety. “Ah. Bit of a detour, then. You traded the ocean for a freezer, lady. They call this ‘The Heart of the New West,’ but in January, it’s mostly just the heart of a giant ice cube. Best of luck to ya. You’re gonna need a bigger coat.”

Detour. That was one way to put it. A week ago, I’d been in my tech lab in sunny California, surrounded by silicon molds, high-frequency sensors, and a team of interns who actually understood the concept of ‘personal space.’ I’d been waiting for the email that would confirm my placement with the Vancouver franchise. Coastal air, lululemon-clad coworkers, and sushi on every corner. I had already picked out an apartment with a view of the Burrard Inlet. I was going to learn how to paddleboard. I was going to be a “Pacific Northwest girl.”

Instead, my supervisor, Dr. Aris Vahn, had called with the kind of forced cheerfulness usually reserved for telling someone their cat died while they were on vacation.

“Great opportunity, Eve! Change of plans. The Alberta Wranglers have the highest injury load in the league. Their defensive core is essentially held together by medical tape and prayers. It’s the perfect ‘stress test’ for the Cortez Plate. If it can survive a Calgary winter and a sixty-minute bombardment from the league’s heaviest hitters, it can survive anything. You’ll be amazing!”

Translation: The team is a walking trauma ward, and we need you to fix them before the owners lose another fifty million in benched contracts. Also, no one else wanted to go to the tundra, and you’re the only one I can’t say no to.

The car rattled as we pulled into an industrial sector that looked like the place where dreams—and possibly people—go to disappear. There were warehouses made of corrugated metal and trucks with tires the size of my torso. But then, the facility rose out of the sprawl like a white-paneled ship. The Alberta Wranglers Performance Center. It was sleek, modern, and intimidatingly large, glowing under the harsh prairie sun.

The moment the door opened, the cold hit me. It wasn’t just cold; it was a personal insult. It knifed into my lungs, froze the moisture in my eyelashes, and turned my nose into a popsicle instantly. I hauled my two rolling cases out of the trunk—one filled with a half-million dollars in proprietary sensor technology, the other filled with enough high-protein snacks, dry shampoo, and thick wool socks to survive a small apocalypse.

I’d dressed for ‘Competent Tech Genius Who Definitely Isn’t Intimidated by Professional Athletes.’ Black turtleneck (very Steve Jobs, but with better curves), tailored charcoal trousers, and boots with enough traction to climb a glacier. My curls were piled into a high puff that was currently fighting a losing battle against the wind, which seemed to be coming from four directions at once.

Inside, the transition was jarring. The lobby was all glass and brushed steel, smelling like my childhood: damp rubber, expensive espresso, and that metallic, ozone scent of freshly shaved ice. It was the smell of physics in motion. My father had been a rink manager back in Chicago, and I’d spent my formative years doing my physics homework in the bleachers while the local semi-pro team beat the hell out of each other. I knew this world. I just didn’t expect to be the one responsible for keeping its stars from breaking.

“Eve? Eve Cortez?”

A blonde woman in a blazer that cost more than my first car came power-walking toward me. She had the kind of polished, terrifying efficiency of someone who could hide a body and make it look like a brilliant PR move. She was clutching a tablet like a shield.

“Jenna Markham, PR Director,” she said, shaking my hand with a grip that meant business. “We were worried the storm would ground you. Welcome to the madhouse. Sorry about the temperature—we keep the lobby at ‘brisk’ to prepare people for the reality of the rink.”

“The sky is very... enthusiastic here,” I managed, my face still thawing. My jaw felt like it was made of frozen plastic.

Jenna laughed, a bright, practiced sound that echoed in the high-ceilinged lobby. “That’s one word for it. Usually, we just call it ‘the reason we drink.’ Come on, Coach Miller is already on the ice. He’s old school, which means if you’re five minutes early, you’re ten minutes late. And he’s anxious to see if your ‘magic plastic’ can actually keep his defensive line from crumbling. Last week we lost our star defenseman to a cracked rib from a slap shot. Ownership is breathing down his neck.”

She led me through the halls, a labyrinth of team history. Giant framed photos of men with missing teeth and terrifyingly large shoulders lined the walls. Silent TVs cycled B-roll highlights—bone-crushing hits, spectacular saves, and a lot of very fast-moving rubber. We stopped at the heavy steel doors of Rink A. Jenna pushed them open, and the sound hit me first—the sharp crrr-ack of a puck hitting a post, the thunder of skates carving into ice, and the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of bodies hitting the boards.

“Miller!” Jenna shouted over the noise.

A man who looked like he was carved out of a granite cliff coasted over. He didn’t use his skates to stop so much as he commanded the ice to cease movement under him. He blew a whistle that nearly shattered my eardrums. “Bring it in, boys! Meetings in the circle! Now! Move those asses!”

I felt the shift in the room immediately. Twenty-odd players, all of them hovering between six-foot and ‘actually a mountain,’ turned in unison. They glided toward the center, their movements a terrifyingly graceful display of power. I stood my ground at the edge of the ice, keeping my shoulders square and my expression neutral as forty eyes flicked over me. I felt like a very small, very well-dressed gazelle that had just walked into a lion’s convention.

“This is Eve Cortez,” Miller barked, gesturing toward me with a gloved hand. “She’s the lead engineer from the Vahn group. She’s here to fit you for the new impact-diffusing plates. You wear what she says, you listen to her data, and maybe we’ll actually finish a game with six healthy defensemen for once. Anyone who gives her a hard time answers to me. Clear?”

A guy with sandy hair and a grin that screamed ‘trouble’ tilted his head, leaning on his stick. “Smart, pretty, and she makes armor? Are we in a superhero movie, or did I hit my head during drills again?”

“That’s Mackie,” Jenna whispered beside me. “He’s a golden retriever with a gambling debt and a mouth that should come with a mute button.”

“She’s tiny,” another player added—Oskar, a defenseman who looked like he spent his off-hours wrestling bears. He gave me a slow, unabashed once-over, his eyes lingering on my boots. “What are you, five-foot nothing? You sure you can reach our shoulders to measure anything, or do we need to provide a step-ladder?”

I didn’t let my smile slip. It was my ‘I have a PhD in Applied Physics and you play a game for a living’ smile. “I’m five-three, Oskar. And I’ve spent the last three years studying exactly how much force it takes to shatter your ribcage. Trust me, I can reach everything I need to. And if I can’t, I have sensors that will tell me exactly how much you’re whining before I even get close.”

A few of the guys ‘ooh-ed,’ stick-tapping the ice in that rhythmic hockey approval.

“She’s feisty,” Mackie grinned, his blue eyes twinkling. “I like her. But watch out, sweetheart. Reinhardt’s probably going to try to bite your hand off if you get too close to his crease. He doesn’t like ‘tech’ interfering with his ‘vibe’.”

The atmosphere in the room chilled by about ten degrees, and it wasn’t the AC. The mentions of ‘Reinhardt’ seemed to act as a verbal vacuum, sucking the levity out of the circle.

“Eyes on the ice,” Miller growled. “Back to the neutral zone drills. Mackie, stop flirting before I bag-skate you. Reinhardt—stay. Cortez, he’s your first test subject. He’s the one who’s been taking the most heat lately, and he’s the one most likely to break my equipment out of spite.”

I turned my head toward the crease.

I’d seen his stats. Alexander Reinhardt. The ‘Wall of the West.’ A man who held the league record for shutouts and the league record for most fines accrued for ‘unprofessional conduct with the media.’ He was currently leaning against the crossbar, his mask propped on top of the net.

If the other players were mountains, Alex Reinhardt was a storm cloud.

He was towering, even for a goalie. His dark hair was damp with sweat, clinging to his temples in messy curls, and his jaw was shadowed with the kind of rough stubble that looked like it would feel like sandpaper against soft skin. His shoulders were impossibly broad, making the net behind him look like a toy.

His eyes were hazel—a sharp, piercing green-gold that felt like a physical weight when they landed on me. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even acknowledge the team’s banter. He just looked at me like I was an unwanted interruption in his very grim, very focused day.

“Cortez,” he said. His voice was a low, gravelly vibration that I felt somewhere in the center of my chest, vibrating against my ribs. It wasn’t a greeting; it was a warning.

“Reinhardt,” I replied, matching his tone. I stepped onto the ice—carefully, digging the heels of my boots in so I wouldn’t pull a ‘Bambi’ in front of the whole franchise. I stopped just outside his crease. Up close, the sheer scale of him was terrifying. He smelled like winter and sweat and something sharply masculine. “Do you go by Alex?”

“Only on legal documents and when people want something from me,” he snapped. He didn’t move. He just loomed. “What do you want, Cortez? Besides making me late for my post-practice meditation?”

“Right. Well, ‘Only on Legal Documents,’ I’m going to need you to hold still while I calibrate the sensors on your chest protector. I’ve looked at your game tape from the last three weeks—you tend to drop your left shoulder by about two inches when you’re tracking a low puck to your glove side. It’s leaving your upper clavicle exposed. It’s a bad habit, and it’s going to get you hurt.”

He stiffened. The green in his eyes flared, turning dark like a forest at night. “I don’t need a lecture on my form from someone who probably needs a stool to see over the boards. I’ve been playing this position since you were in middle school.”

“And you’ve been dropping that shoulder for at least two of those years,” I retorted. I took a slow, deliberate step into his personal space. I was now well within the blue paint of the crease. The scent of him hit me again—cold air, expensive laundry detergent, and pure, concentrated testosterone. It was intoxicating in a way that made my brain short-circuit for a microsecond. I was looking at the middle of his chest, which was a very broad, very firm place to be looking.

“I don’t care if you like my height, Reinhardt,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper so the guys back-checking in the distance wouldn’t hear. “But I can sense the bruises you’re hiding under that jersey. I’ve analyzed the impact data from the Wranglers’ last home game. Your save percentage is dropping in the third period not because you’re tired, but because you’re favoring your right side to protect a hairline fracture on your left ribs that you haven’t told the trainers about.”

His eyes widened, just a fraction. A hit. The stillness in him shifted from ‘bored’ to ‘predatory.’ He leaned down, bringing his face inches from mine. I could see the gold flecks in his irises. I could see the way his eyelashes were tipped with frost.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growled, but he didn’t move away. He stayed right there, in my air. “You’re a girl with a laptop and some fancy plastic. You don’t know what it feels like to have a hundred-mile-an-hour piece of rubber hitting you for two hours straight.”

“I know physics. I know the way energy transfers through bone. And I know your body is screaming, even if you’re too stubborn to listen,” I whispered back. My heart was thumping so hard against my ribs I was worried he could hear it. “Now, are you going to let me do my job and give you the protection you actually need, or are we going to stand here and measure dicks until the ice melts? Because I can tell you right now, I’m much more efficient with my time.”

He stared at me for a long, agonizing beat. I could see the pulse jumping in his neck, right above the collar of his jersey. He looked like he wanted to argue, to toss me over the boards, or maybe just keep staring until I dissolved. But something—maybe the sheer audacity of me standing in his crease and calling his bluff—made him subside.

“Make it fast,” he muttered, turning his back to me. It was a surrender, however surly.

As I reached up to clip the first sensor to his shoulder, my fingers brushed the damp fabric of his jersey. Even through the thick padding, he felt like solid iron. My heart did a weird, frantic little flip-flop. My hands, usually so steady in the lab, felt suddenly clumsy.

“Hold still,” I murmured, more to myself than him.

“I am still,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You’re the one shaking.”

I glared at the back of his head, though he couldn’t see it. “It’s cold in here, Reinhardt. Some of us didn’t grow up in a walk-in freezer.”

I worked quickly, my fingers dancing over his gear. Every time I brushed against him, I felt a spark of something that definitely wasn’t static electricity. He was a wall of heat in the middle of the rink. By the time I was done, I had a dozen data points and a lingering awareness of hazel eyes watching me more carefully than he wanted anyone to notice.

It’s just business, Eve, I told myself as I stepped back out of the crease. He’s a grumpy goalie in a city that’s too cold, and you’re a tech genius with a career to save. You are not falling for the first broody athlete who looks at you like you’re a puzzle he can’t solve.

But as Alex Reinhardt pulled his mask back on, the metal cage hiding his face but not the intensity of his stare, I had a sinking feeling that Alberta was going to be a lot more than just a detour.

It was going to be a wrecking ball, and I was standing right in its path.