All Chapters of 21 Days In The Hockey Captain's Bed : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The arena thundered around Yennifer, all roaring voices and flashing lights, but the noise narrowed the second George Ashford stepped onto the ice.He did not skate. He landed. Sharp, controlled, all force and precision, like the rink had been built around him. Yennifer forgot to breathe.“Stop staring,” Chloe muttered beside her.“I’m not staring.”“You’ve been staring since he came out.”Yennifer looked down at her notebook too quickly, as if that might save her. “I’m observing.”“Sure thing.” Chloe said mockingly When the horn was blown to signal the beginning of the game, George looked too relaxed, like he's got control of everything but before I could observe this calmness of his further, he moved through the game with precision, like he could feel the shape of every pass before it happened.He took the puck, cut past a defender, and sent it across with such clean certainty that the shot seemed inevitable before it reached the net. The arena exploded.He did not.That was what c

“His eyes stayed on hers. “For the story you think you saw tonight.”Yennifer stared at him for a while, trying to discern his words and read his thoughts, but nothing came to mind. She stared at the door, then at the veiny hands holding it, connected to the most confusing man she'd ever crossed paths with.And for the first time since this ridiculous assignment began, she had absolutely no idea what George Ashford meant.She frowned at the closed door.What exactly was that supposed to mean?She started walking, slower now, the corridor suddenly too quiet around her. George Ashford had spent the entire evening acting like a locked door with a pulse. No interview. No access. No patience. Then, just when she was ready to write him off as another arrogant, impossible man, he had turned around and left her with a dare.She hated dares, hated that she understood him less now than she had an hour ago.“Men,” she muttered, catching herself and giving a sharp shake of her head. “No. Not doin

The music filled her the second she stepped onto the dance floor.One hour later, Yennifer stopped checking the time and stopped worrying about when and how they'd get home safely.Instead, she danced, laughed, and had crazy fun. She allowed Chloe, laughing like she inhaled laughing gas, to drag her from one side of the dance floor to the other, with the kind of reckless joy Yennifer never let herself have. Even when her feet started hurting and her throat burned from laughing, she did not care.Yennifer stopped thinking about deadlines, stopped feeling the sharp little ache of everything waiting for her outside the club. And for once, she wasn't thinking about work or her family; neither was she thinking about Daniel nor the man who had somehow managed to become the most irritating part of her life.She was simply just enjoying herself; maybe she had needed this. One night where nobody needed anything from her and a night where she could just be Yennifer.Just one night to unwind, a

Lady Eleanor was awake by six, long before the house had properly stirred. She had no appointment, no pressing obligation, and no reason at all to be grinning like a 12 year old girl prepping to begin school with her new friends except one.Today, she was going to New York.That alone was enough to keep her from sleeping another minute. After weeks of secret calls and messages with Mark, George’s painfully loyal PA and, in Eleanor’s words, “the most useful informant in the family”, she finally had something worth traveling for.George was in trouble or, if she were being generous, on the brink of it.And Eleanor, naturally, intended to see for herself, she can't miss an interesting show now can she?Eleanor was acting with the kind of bright excitement and impatience of a 12 year old school girl that made it look as if New York were a first-time adventure for her, though she had been there so many times she could have crossed the city blindfolded. At seventy-something, she had no bus

For several seconds, nobody movedYennifer froze in the bed, one hand clutching the sheet to her chest, the other still tangled in George’s black shirt.George stood beside the mattress, very still, his face unreadable in that infuriating way that meant he was either calm or angry, but you can't tell which.Yennifer stared at the woman in the doorway, and the woman stared right back.Then her eyes slowly moved from Yennifer's face…to the oversized black shirt covering her and then to George, then back to Yennifer.Very slowly but elegantly, the lady lifted one well-carved eyebrow, and Yennifer’s stomach dropped so fast it felt like missing a step in the dark. Oh God, she screamed in her headGeorge’s jaw flexed once, then he called out. “Grandma,” he said flatly.“Yes, darling,” Eleanor replied, as if she had merely walked into a tea party and not into the wreckage of a very private morning between her grandson and, well, a woman.George looked toward the clock, then back at her. “Why