Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
She feels so damn good. Jesus.
She opens her mouth, her lips forming my name. But instead, ice-cold water spews out, spilling all over me.
"What the fuck?" I jerk upright, shock surging through my system as I reach for her.
Only…she isn't on top of me.
My publicist, Emelia Jónsson, is standing over my bed, an empty water pitcher in her hands and a scowl on her face.
"Look who is finally awake," she snaps, flinging her blonde hair over her shoulder.
"Emelia?" I yank the covers up over myself, trying to hide my rapidly shrinking cock. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Making sure you're still alive." She slams the pitcher down on my bedside table hard enough to rattle my brain inside my skull. "You weren't answering your phone, your email, or your front door. I used the hide-a-key to come in and check on you since you were supposed to be meeting me for breakfast two hours ago."
"Fuck." I scrub my hands down my face, trying to get my shit together. "That was today?"
"Yes, Teo. That was today." Her brows wrinkle with distaste, her green eyes narrowed. "Not that I expect you to remember since you smell like you fell into a distillery last night."
"I'm not hungover." I'm lying like a motherfucker.
She snorts, crossing her arms and hitting me with this look that screams don't bullshit me. It's honestly a little terrifying. Then again, rumor has it that she takes after her mom. Kelsey Jónsson is a legend. She's been terrorizing the hockey team back home for two decades. I lucked out when Emelia agreed to represent me. And I lucked out again when she didn't boot my ass to the curb when I got traded to the Sabres. For some reason, she decided to stick with me.
"So you weren't drunk when you got into a bar fight last night?" she asks.
Fuck my life. How does she possibly already know about that?
"It wasn't a bar. It was a nightclub."
"Hold that thought." She snatches the pitcher off the table and marches toward the bathroom, her heels clicking against the tile floor. A few seconds later, I hear the water running.
I may be hungover, but I'm not an idiot. I jump out of bed before she decides to try drowning me again for pissing her off. She's got a temper. At least, I give her a temper. Something like that.
I quickly jerk on a pair of sweats, covering my naked ass, before she materializes in the doorway, her pitcher of water full to the brim.
She glances at me, her expression cool. "Pity," she mutters. "I was looking forward to drowning you in your own bed today. No one would even blame me for it, Teo. Not after they see the pictures that hit my email this morning."
"So…we're not getting breakfast?"
"You were making out with Nadia Mikhail in a freaking parking lot last night!" she practically shouts at me, sloshing water over the brim of the pitcher. "After you beat up three people in a bar."
"Nightclub. And in my defense, they deserved it."
"You always say that."
"Yeah, well, anyone who sexually harasses and threatens women deserves a beating. Who am I to deny them what they deserve?"
She actually growls at me like a pissed-off grizzly.
Jesus Christ. I need to learn to shut my mouth.
"I'll be quiet now," I mutter, snagging a t-shirt off the back of the chair in the corner. "Continue berating me."
"We aren't getting breakfast," she mutters, marching back into the bathroom. "You'll be lucky if you're able to leave your house anytime soon. You have an entire army of paparazzi camped out there."
Fucking hell.
I stomp to the window and flick the curtains back to check for myself. She wasn't lying. There are cars lined up three deep outside the gates. Goddammit. This is the last thing I wanted.
"How bad are the pictures?" I shout to her.
"You and pop star Nadia Mikhail are making out in a parking lot," she says, popping her head out of the bathroom to glare at me. "How bad do you think they are?"
Nadia is going to kill me.
I sink down onto the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. It pounds like a motherfucker. Getting wasted when I got home probably wasn't a good idea. But fuck. Didn't know what else to do to get her out of my head. It was either drink or drive myself crazy thinking.
Turns out, I still managed to do that drunk.
"She's the girl you're messed up about, isn't she?" Emelia asks, her voice softer. She may be a terror, but she has a heart. A big one, actually. It's why I chose her to represent me. She manages to humanize me even when I fuck up. She privately gives me nine kinds of hell, but she's always publicly on my side. And she makes the people who count want to root for me, too. When I've given them as many reasons to wash their hands of me as I have…well, that shit isn't easy. But she manages to do it.