Wild Ice by Rachelle Vaughn Read Free Book Online Page A

be.
    Cody Lambert, team captain of the Razors, still came by every few months to check on JD and to give him an update on Cody’s twin boys and little girl. Even though JD told Cody he didn’t have to keep dropping by for visits, he secretly enjoyed the company of his old team captain. When Cody wasn’t telling some story about his kids, they mostly talked about hockey. JD had already missed an entire season and lived vicariously through his TV. Cody would try to talk JD into coming back to the Razors and JD would say he needed more time. It was a dance they’d been doing for months.
    Outside the kitchen window, the bird cooed again and JD grumbled. Even if he wanted to stay in bed all day and feel sorry for himself he couldn’t because of the damn birds squawking outside. So, he dragged himself out of the recliner and attempted to function like a normal human being. He shuffled into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, fed Mel and gave him fresh water and then disappeared into the weight room for a few hours. Then, he’d take a long hot shower, settle back into the overstuffed recliner and watch movies for the rest of the day. For dinner, he’d scrounge up something that didn’t take too much effort to cook, watch some more TV, fall asleep during a late night show and do it all over again the next day.
    JD wasn’t proud of his new life. It was monotonous and empty and completely meaningless. In a matter of months he lost the two things he loved most. Darla and hockey.
    Darla didn’t want him to retire because she knew how much the sport meant to him. But he couldn’t travel around the country playing hockey while she was fighting for her life. She was the realistic one, volunteering and doing charity work while he played a game for a living, but when she got sick, reality hit him like a body check into the boards. Given the choice between his wife and the game, he chose Darla. It was the easiest decision he ever made and the one decision he didn’t regret. Even now.
    “ Retired” was the technical term. It wasn’t a decision he announced with a press conference or with a bunch of hoopla like most guys did. He just quietly slipped away from the sport and took his place next to Darla where she so desperately needed him.
    Retired. Was that what he was? JD had always dreamed of playing his entire career with one team—the Red Valley Razors—and then retiring his jersey when he was too old and decrepit to lace up his skates anymore. He knew good and well he was far too young to be in retirement. What was he doing out here in no man’s land, wasting away the best years of his career?
    He was protecting himself. Yeah, that’s what he was doing. He didn’t bother to go back to playing hockey because someone or something would come along and find a way to take that away from him, too. So he just didn’t go back. It was better to avoid everything from his old life altogether. Avoid it and look back on it from afar.
    Sure, he could eventually go back to it if he wanted to. He could play and travel and have no one to come home to. The emptiness would still be there as ripe and painful as ever. No. No sport was worth that.
    JD had lost a part of himself. It was gone and buried with Darla and he didn’t know how to get it back.

Chapter Five
    Buddy
     
    Early the next morning, a s a reward for working so hard at cleaning up the cottage, Lauren set out on the trail. She knew she needed a hat to protect her fair skin from the harsh California sun, so she grabbed her Aunt Cora’s old sun hat from the hook by the door. The backpack she wore was full of granola bars, her journal and field guide, a bottle of water, and her camera.
    The thick trees around the cottage opened up to a clearing in the field of tall grass behind the mansion next door. If she remembered correctly, there should be a creek not too far from the edge of the property and Lauren was determined to find it. She just might get lucky and find a heron or