Decidedly with Luck (By the Bay #6) - Stina Lindenblatt Page 0,3

I ended up missing part of practice when I failed to return to the arena on time, and the head coach rightfully reamed me out. My punishment? Sitting out that night’s game as a healthy scratch.

But the look on Kiera’s face when I gave her the necklace had made it all worth it.

I couldn’t believe she still had it.

“Are you enjoying the ball so far?” she asked, yanking me from my thoughts.

“I can’t say it’s my scene,” I said, adopting a slight yet undistinguishable accent so that she didn’t recognize my voice. “But it’s for a good cause.”

“I’m sorry about your grandfather.” She smiled softly at me.

“Thank you.” I swallowed down the urge to tell her I was sorry about her husband. To do that would’ve given away too much. “Did you come all the way to Lake Tahoe just for the ball? Or are you also here to hit the slopes?” I didn’t believe it was the latter. Stephen had told me Kiera wasn’t much of a skier.

“Just the ball. I’m returning to San Francisco on Sunday. Winter break doesn’t start for another five days. What about you?”

“I have a flight out tomorrow morning.” The Blackhawks had a game scheduled in Anaheim for Sunday afternoon. As it was, I was lucky the team had granted me permission to miss two practices to be here.

The smile returned to Kiera’s lips. And the sudden need to kiss her powered through me.

I wasn’t the only one who seemed to share the sentiment. Her gaze dropped to my mouth, and I leaned down without any thought to what I was doing. All I could think about was what she would taste like.

“Sorry to interrupt,” a man said next to us. I jerked away from Kiera. His name tag claimed he was a member of the hotel staff. “There’s a call for you, Mr—”

“Okay,” I said, cutting him off before he had a chance to finish the sentence.

Kiera’s sister had already mentioned my last name when she introduced Kiera to my grandmother. Still, I didn’t want Kiera to link it to me if she hadn’t already. As it was, I was lucky my grandmother preferred to use my middle name, Grayson, than the one everyone else called me. I couldn’t explain why, but I didn’t want Kiera to learn it was me.

At least not yet.

You’re probably thinking that Mathews isn’t exactly an uncommon last name. You’d be right about that. But I still didn’t want to give her a reason to add two and two together and start asking questions.

Whoever was calling me must’ve been doing so with good reason. Only a few people knew I was here, and I’d left my phone in my room to charge.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Kiera, then followed the man toward the main ballroom doors.

At the front desk, he handed me the phone.

“Hello, Logan Mathews speaking.”

“Hey, sorry to bug you,” Stacy, my ex-wife, said. “But Livi has a stomachache, and she wanted you to sing to her. I told her you were busy—”

“No, that’s okay. Give me a minute, and I’ll FaceTime her from my room.”

I could hear the smile in Stacy’s voice when she said, “Thanks, Logan. I keep telling Tony to take singing lessons since it’s not always feasible for you to sing to her when she’s sick.”

I chuckled. Most men would probably be jealous if their ex-wife’s new husband wanted to sing to their child. And maybe I should’ve been.

But Tony had been there for Livi when I couldn’t because of my hockey career—a career that had eventually led to Stacy and me divorcing over a year ago.

Not wanting to risk some asshole swooping in on Kiera like a ravenous vulture because I left her alone for too long, I jogged to the elevator.

“Hey, baby girl,” I said a short time later on my phone. I was sitting on the wing-backed chair in my hotel room. Olivia was lying on her bed at home, surrounded by a billion stuffed animals.

“Hi, Daddy.” At the sound of her sweet, seven-year-old voice, my heart drooped like a wilted plant thirsty for water. Shit. I missed her, even though I’d seen her just yesterday. “Have you danced with any princesses yet?”

I laughed. “It’s not that kind of ball.”

Her face screwed up into a comical look of disappointment. “Great Granny said there would be lots of princesses there. And at least one on-duty fairy godmother, just in case.”

Stacy’s laugh came through the speaker even though I couldn’t see