Seduced by the Game (60 page)

Prologue

The noise from
the crowd was deafening. Keith Lambert, the twenty-two-year-old captain of the
Philadelphia Flyers, loved it. Every decibel. However, he could tell by the way
Sammy Read was fidgeting with his helmet that the constant chants of
“Saaaaaamy, Saaaaaamy” were seriously screwing with the goalie’s focus. The
louder the crowd grew, the more agitated Sammy got, which could only be good
for Philadelphia—Sammy was Vancouver’s goalie.

They were
playing their final game of the season—the most important game they’d play. The
Flyers and Canucks were competing for the hardest trophy to win in any
sport—the Cup.

There are
eighty-two games in the regular season alone. If you place high enough to even
make the playoffs, you then face four seven-game series. If you win each
series, and go all the way to the end, you’ve won
sixteen
playoff
games. 

Hockey also
has a grueling schedule, sometimes traveling coast-to-coast from one day to the
next. Aside from the intense travel, the daily physical strains put on hockey
players are far more than any one person would choose to endure. Their
adrenaline spikes up to maximum levels for sixty minutes of play. They’re in
full sprint each time their skates hit the ice. No other sport demands quite so
much of its players.

They were down
to the last fourteen minutes of the seventh game in the last series. Winner
takes all. “Come on, guys. Keep up the energy! We’ve got this.” Keith spared a
second to scan the crowd. The splashes of blue on the fans wearing the visiting
team’s jerseys stuck out in the sea of orange Philly’s fans wore.
We can’t
blow this.
“Let’s do it! G, take the face-off.”

Jake
Gourneau’s head snapped up at Keith’s words. “Huh? You want me to take it?”
Keith always took the face-offs.

“Yeah, man.
You’re better against Drake. I don’t have anything to prove. I just want that
Cup.” Keith slapped him on the butt with his stick and took the winger’s
position as G bent low to take the face-off.

Gourneau won
the draw, but it wasn’t enough. It took a bad bounce off Keith’s stick and went
directly to Vancouver’s winger who immediately tried to slap it high into the
net, but Ward saw it all the way and snagged it out of the air with his glove
hand—mere inches before it crossed the goal line.

“Fuck, that
was close, G. Take it again.” Being so close to their own goalie for the
face-off was intimidating so late in the game with a tie score. It could be
game changing if they lost the faceoff.
We need to clear the zone!

Beads of sweat
glistened on G’s forehead as he got into position again. One drop, then two hit
the ice. The crowd was loud as the referee held the puck two feet up, between
Drake and Gourneau, waiting until he was good and ready to drop it. And still
they waited. Drake got antsy and stepped back to get a better grip on his stick
and the ref straightened up. “Get in position Drake or I’ll let someone else
take this faceoff.”

With the
threat of losing his spot on the circle, Drake skated back up to the ref and
got into position. Seconds ticked by and still the ref didn’t drop the puck.

“Drop the
puck!” The crowd started yelling. “Ref, drop the puck!”

The puck hit
the ice and bounced back up. G got a piece of it and it flew back to Keith, but
was high in the air. Keith hit it straight down with his hand to land on the
ice in front of him. He got his stick on it and weaved his way through two
Canucks.

Seeing
Callahan in front of him, almost at the blue line, he made a fast pass and
rushed to join him, hoping G would catch up to them and they could have a
three-on-two rush at the net.

The Canucks
defensemen were ready to shut them down, but Callahan executed a beautiful deke
and went through them to take a shot that rebounded off Sammy’s goalie pad.
Keith was right there to gather the puck for another shot, but Sammy covered it
and the play was called dead.
Dammit!

After a couple
of more plays, which bore no fruit for either team, the clock was down to three
minutes. Vancouver called a time-out to give their best players a chance to
catch their breath.

At the Flyers’
bench, tensions ran high. Ward ripped off his goalie mask and squirted water
over his head to cool down. Gourneau was re-taping his stick—that didn’t need
re-taping—and nodding his head as the coach spoke. Keith was banging his foot
against the boards while trying to convince himself that it was just another
game. Their coach made one request before they went back onto the ice.

“Go out there
and get me a goal!” One finger waved in the air and he shook it for emphasis.
“Just one goal.”

“Fuck yeah.”

“Hell yeah.”

“You got it,
Coach.”

“Let’s do it!”

The boys
skated out to the face-off circle in Vancouver’s zone and prepared to get that
elusive goal. The puck hit the ice, and Vancouver won it. Drake shot it in
front of him to a waiting winger. Between the two of them, with some help from
their other winger, they made it all the way to Philly’s zone where Ward was
waiting, hunched over, his glove hand up and at the ready.

Drake took the
puck and skated around the back of the net. Fighting through Callahan and
Lambert, he faked a pass to the front. Using that precious millisecond of
inattention from the Flyers around him, he wrapped the puck around the net from
behind. The Canucks on the bench went wild.

It was as if
time stopped. Keith looked at his teammates on the ice around him, brows raised
and mouth open in abject disbelief. It couldn’t be! Keith never saw it, G never
saw it, and Ward sure as hell never saw it, but damn if that puck wasn’t
sitting in the fucking net. The Canucks had just won the coveted Cup—in Philly’s
arena.

Chapter 1

A couple of
weeks after losing the Cup found Keith on the golf course with his father,
getting back to normal off-season life. Most of his teammates had gone home to
visit their families, scattered through Europe and Canada. Born and raised in
southern New Jersey, Keith was the lone American of the team. Philly was the
only pro team he’d ever played for, so he never had to venture far from home.

“You feeling
any better yet, son?” Mr. Lambert knew Keith still had the sour taste of loss on
his tongue.

A gusty sigh
escaped him as he ran a hand distractedly through his windblown hair and looked
at his father, shrugging his shoulders. “I guess a little. God, we were so
close! I just keep thinking—if we could just have one more shot...”

“I know. I
swear my heart stopped beating when I saw that puck go in the net, but you boys
had a great year. Your performance in the playoffs, all the way up to the
finals…” He broke off, his voice husky with emotion. “You gave it everything
you had. I’m so damn proud of you, son.”

“Thanks, Pop.
It still sucks though.”

Mr. Lambert
winced sympathetically as he lined up his next shot. “Yeah, it does.”

The bell
coming from Keith’s watch reminded him that he was meeting his girlfriend in an
hour. “Let’s finish up, Pop. I’m meeting Phoebe for dinner soon.”

“When are you
going to cut that girl loose? She’s not the one for you.” Mr. Lambert put his
hand up to stop Keith from talking. “I know. It’s none of my business. Your
mother and I, we don’t hate her, she’s just not the one for you. I think you
feel more for her than she does for you.”

“While I
appreciate your concern, Pop, I think you’re wrong. But you are right about it
not being your business.” Keith meant no disrespect to his father, but he
wasn’t a kid who needed his parents to make his decisions for him anymore.

“Okay, son.
Enough said. We’ll butt out.” He pulled his club back, took his shot and
watched his ball sail over the fairway, sweetly landing right on the edge of
it, putting the last nail in the coffin. Keith had never beaten his father at
golf.

* * * *

“Hey, babe.
Get us another round, will you?” Phoebe’s girlfriends looked at her knowingly,
waiting to see how long it took Keith to make yet another bar run. There wasn’t
much of anything she couldn’t get him to do for her. Truth be told, since
they’d been together, she’d gotten kind of lazy. Why do things for yourself
when you had a hot boyfriend to do them for you?

They were
supposed to be there alone, but Phoebe’s girlfriends conveniently appeared as they
were ordering drinks and sat down with them. Keith knew they saw him as an ATM,
and to his embarrassment, he went along with it. The guys he hung out with
constantly told him to dump Phoebe—and her friends—but when they were alone,
she was great. Really, she was the perfect girlfriend.

“Jesus he’s
got a great ass, Not to mention the waves in his hair. I mean really, those
thick locks? How about the one that droops right over his forehead? So friggin
cute,” Tori said as she watched Keith walk over to the bar.

“Hey, girl.
Eyes forward. He’s still mine.” The one thing Phoebe didn’t appreciate was his
height. He was only three inches taller than her five foot seven. And he was
lean. Muscled, but lean. She typically liked men with big, in your face,
muscles.

“
Still
yours? What does that mean? Is something wrong with you two?”

“No, I guess
I’m just getting a little bored. I mean, Keith is great and all, but there are
so many other great guys around, you know?”

Tori pulled
her glasses down to the edge of her nose as she tilted her head down to look at
Phoebe in incredulity. “Are you insane?” With a sweep of her hand, she
indicated the other girls sitting with them. “Any one of us would kill for a
chance to have Keith Lambert worship us, wouldn’t we, Vicki? Deb? Damn, Pheebs,
he’s got you on a pedestal so high, if you fell off, you’d never even hit the
ground.”

“Well, we’re
not there yet so, whatever.” Phoebe gave the girls a weak smile. She was saved
from having to say anything further by Keith returning with their drinks.

“Why do you
all look so serious?” Keith set down a tray with four beers and a glass of
white wine on it. As he passed the drinks out, he waited for an answer.

“Oh, nothing,
sweetie. Just girl talk.” With her hand on his thigh, she leaned over and
kissed him sweetly, bringing an immediate smile to his lips.

“So, would you
ladies like to stay and join us for dinner?” To his eternal delight, they
declined. Tori answered for them.

“No thanks,
Keith. We were on our way to Chinatown when we saw your car out front, so we
just stopped in to say hi.” The clock on the wall over the bar showed them that
they’d been sitting there for a half an hour already. “We’ll just finish this
round and go. Thank you, by the way.”

“Sure, no
problem.” They made polite, inane conversation for a bit and the girls left.

“What do you
want to eat, Keith?”

He reached
over and ran his thumb along her bottom lip. “You. I want you.”

Phoebe grabbed
his hand and stood up. Aside from enjoying Keith’s deep pockets, he was
fantastic in bed. Sex with him was something she’d never say no to. “Let’s go.
We can eat later.”

A burst of
laughter left his lips as she hauled him out of his chair. “Yes, ma’am.”

They barely
made it back to Jersey alive. Phoebe’s hands were all over him as he drove.
When they were in the middle of the Ben Franklin Bridge, she had his pants
unzipped and was stroking him, almost to the point of no return.

“Jesus, babe.
You have to stop or it’s going to be over before we even get home.”

“Sorry, but I
really
want you.”

“Almost there.
Just a little bit farther.”

“Nope. Can’t
wait.” She threw off her seatbelt and leaned over, taking him into her mouth as
he drove.

“Oh God,
that’s good, Pheebs, but you might want to slow down.”

She didn’t
slow down. At all. She continued to lick and suck him.

“Phoebe …”

“Do it, baby.”
She said, her mouth full.

“Ah, Jesus.
We’re gonna die and I don’t even care.” He tried to concentrate on not hitting
the barrier as he exploded into her mouth.

When she’d
licked him clean, she sat back in her seat and re-buckled her seatbelt. “You
owe me one hell of an orgasm,” she said with a cat ate the canary grin on her
face.

“Just give me
about thirty minutes, Pheebs, and it’s all yours.”

Several hours
later, he’d repaid her three times—and enjoyed every minute of it.

Chapter 2

June 23
^rd
.
Keith Lambert would never forget that day. Ever. Not if he lived to be as old
as the Egyptian pyramids. Never.

“What the fuck
is going on with my phone?” Keith and Phoebe were sitting in his living room
watching reruns of
The Big Bang Theory
. “How the hell can I have ten
texts all of the sudden?” Right as he was swiping his phone to open his texts,
the ringer went off. Abandoning the texts, he answered it instead.