Page 2 of Holiday Hostilities
“Legendary?” I peer up at Jake, wondering what on earth he could have said about me. My brother is notoriously tight-lippedabout, well, everything. “What, did you tell them about the time I won that chili-dog eating contest?”
“No,” Dallas says, his dark eyes wide beneath thick lashes. “He did not. No idea why, because that is averyintriguing intro.”
Jake rolls his eyes at his teammate. “Don’t even think about it, Cooper. She’s off-limits.”
My eyebrows shoot up.
“Excuse me,” I interject with a wave of my hand. “I am an adult woman who makes her own decisions.”
My older brother was always protective of me, but we’re not in high school anymore. I’m twenty-six now for goodness sake. Moreover, we’ve lived apart for most of the past decade, and I’ve done just fine on my own.
Yet Jake’s lips press in a familiar thin line as he raises one skeptical brow at me. “Says the woman who once decided to eat sixteen foot-long chili dogs and then proceeded to get sick on every available surface—including inside my brand new Camaro.”
“That was a very long time ago,” I protest.
Dallas’s eyes gleam. “Damn, girl. Sixteen chili dogs? You have talent.”
“Can it, Cooper,” Jake orders before turning back to me. “You can, and should, decide to dateanyone other thanthese goons, also known as my teammates.”
The “goons” he’s referring to are the players for the Atlanta Cyclones, an NHL team who have a decent shot at winning the Stanley Cup this year, according to Jake.
When he told me that, I wiggled my cherry-red metal water cup at him and informed him that I already had a Stanley cup, which earned me a gargantuan eye roll.
“Hey!” Jimmy Jones-Johnstone—affectionately known as “Triple J” to his teammates and the media—pipes upindignantly. “I take grave offense to that.” He swivels his head to look at me, an endearingly dopey look on his dimpled face. “Jacob means any of his teammates, except for me. I’m the quintessential ‘good guy’ sailing in a sea of hockey-player hooligans.”
Jake smacks him upside the head. “I was definitely including you in the equation, bonehead.”
“But why?” Jimmy sniffs haughtily. “You’d be lucky to have me as a future brother-in-law, Griswold.”
“Sounds more like a waking nightmare,” Jake grumbles darkly, scratching his beard.
Not the most personable of men, my brother.
“Well, nightmare or not, she’s an adult woman who makes her own decisions,” Dallas parrots my words with a lazy smile, then flashes me what I can only describe asbedroom eyes. The guy’s good—too good. I can’t imagine how many women have fallen for that look. “So, you up for the best night of your life, Griz’s baby sister?”
I wrinkle my nose at him. “Ew, no.”
The guys burst out laughing, and Jake flashes a rare grin.
Dallas, apparently unperturbed by my rejection, simply shrugs and winks at me. “Your loss.”
He proceeds to break off from our conversation and approach an attractive blond nearby, that flirty expression of his back in place without missing a beat.
Which just goes to show that I was right all along:Dallas is hot. But I know better than to trust a hot hockey player.
Involuntarily, my eyes travel back to Aaron, who’s staring at me again. I want to be cool. Want to believe that I’m one of those people who rises above it all… but my petulant inner child wins out and I instead flip him off with a sweet smile, trying to ignore the way my heart is nervously galloping in my chest.
“Where are you jetting off to next, Olivia?” asks Colton Perez, another Cyclones teammate who has an impressive head of shiny hair that almost looks like a helmet.
I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Back to London Heathrow tomorrow.”
“Whew,” he whistles through his teeth. “Busy schedule.”
I shrug casually. Like this small talk is totally normal when it’s actually pretty surreal to be standing here with all these guys I’ve seen on TV countless times, playing alongside my brother. “Yeah, it can be pretty tight. Gets even worse when a flight’s delayed.”
It’s not a complete lie.
When Iamworking as a flight attendant, I’m not officially on the clock until the doors of the plane shut and the aircraft is ready for takeoff. So, in that way, delays suck.