Hat Trick (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

She was so proud of Jeremy she could burst. It had been a long road to his recovery. When the bones in his leg had refused to heal at twelve weeks post-surgery, his doctors had done a bone graft operation, taking bone from his hip and grafting it on to his poorly healing tibia. It had been an extremely painful operation, and Jeremy had refused to take pain medication shortly after the surgery, terrified of becoming dependent on it. It had broken her heart when she’d heard Jeremy crying in pain late at night when he thought she and Nathan had been sleeping. Physical therapy had worked wonders on his range of motion, but they still had a long way to go. Jeremy had lost a significant amount of weight, mostly muscle mass. He’d started lifting weights again, under his therapist’s supervision, and his overall health was improving every day.

Jeremy had accepted the fact he would never play professional hockey again almost right from the beginning. There had been some bad days, of course, where Jeremy had raged about the injustice of what had happened, but luckily, those had been few and far between. He’d thrown himself into his first love, creating video games, and had sold three to major gaming corporations.

Rachel watched the two men play, keeping an eye on the clock. They were expecting Billy for dinner. Jeremy had struck up quite a friendship with the young reporter, and he’d been over at the house frequently while Jeremy was recovering. It had been impossible to keep the nature of their relationship from Billy with the number of times he’d been over to play video games with Jeremy. To his credit, the young man hadn’t even batted an eyelash. He’d just smiled and told Jeremy he was a lucky bastard.

Billy arrived right on time, bearing three pizzas and a small bag of Chinese takeout. Long past the need for formality, the four of them ate in the kitchen, sipping beer while Nathan and Jeremy got into a heated discussion about the best form of dry land training and whether the goalie, Johnston, really had a dead horse fetish.

“Do you ever miss it?” Billy asked, wiping the pizza sauce from his mouth with a paper napkin. “You never did get your hat trick.”

Jeremy looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled hugely. “I do miss hockey sometimes,” he confirmed. “But I love making video games and kicking your ass at them.” He paused and winked at her before leaning over to kiss the corner of Nathan’s mouth. “And I think the three of us make a pretty great hat trick.”

Nathan groaned at the bad pun but kissed him fully on the mouth. Jeremy grabbed her hand and pulled her to a stand, yanking her so that she stood between his legs. “Don’t you agree, Mrs. Reiner-Vaughan?”

Cupping his face, she looked from his happy eyes to Nathan’s and smiled back, joy filling her. “Always, Jer. Always.”

THE END

HTTP://LYNNTYLERBOOKS.COM

Lynn Tyler was born and raised in Southern Ontario and still calls it home today. She married her first and only boyfriend and now they have two beautiful, very active children.

When not writing, Lynn can be found engrossed in her e-reader, and is seriously considering starting a campaign to make chocolate its own food group.

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Be With Us

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